THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
The answer
Babylon, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, took Jerusalem and burned the first temple around 586 BC, carrying much of the population off to exile.
Why it’s interesting
This is the catastrophe that haunts much of the Old Testament — the psalm 'By the rivers of Babylon' is written from that exile. Centuries later a different empire, Rome, would destroy the second temple.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.