The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion after the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem.

In 587/586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah; the Judeans lost their independence upon the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, during which the First Temple was destroyed. After the Babylonians annexed Judah as a province, part of the subjugated populace was exiled to Babylon. This exilic period lasted for nearly five decades, ending after the Neo-Babylonian Empire itself was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which annexed Babylonian territorial possessions after the fall of Babylon. Soon after the conquest, Persian king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus, encouraging the exiles to return to their homeland after the Persians raised it as an autonomous Jewish-governed province. Under the Persians (c. 539–332 BCE), the returned Jewish population restored the city and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. In 332 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great, and the region was later incorporated into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (c. 301–200 BCE) and the Seleucid Empire (c. 200–167 BCE).

The Maccabean Revolt against Seleucid rule led to the establishment of a nominally independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE). While it initially exercised governance semi-autonomously under Seleucid hegemony, the Hasmonean kingdom increasingly exercised total self-governance as it undertook military campaigns to push the weakening Seleucids out of the region, establishing itself as the last Jewish kingdom and preceding an almost 2000-year-long hiatus in Jewish sovereignty in the Levant. In 63 BCE, the Roman Republic conquered the kingdom. In 37 BCE, the Romans appointed Herod the Great as king of a vassal Judea. In 6 CE, Judea was fully incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea. Growing dissatisfaction with Roman rule and civil disturbances eventually led to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, which ended the Second Temple period.

As Second Temple Judaism developed, multiple religious currents emerged and extensive cultural, religious, and political developments occurred. The development of the Hebrew Bible canon, the synagogue and Jewish eschatology can be traced back to the Second Temple period. According to Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased during the early Second Temple period; this left the Jews without their version of divine guidance when they felt most in need of support and direction. Under Hellenistic rule, the growing influence of Hellenism in Judaism became a source of dissent for those Jews who clung to their monotheistic faith; this was a major catalyst for the Maccabean revolt. In the latter years of the period, Jewish society was deeply polarized along ideological lines, and the sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and early Christianity were formed. Important Jewish writings were also composed during the Second Temple period, including portions of the Hebrew Bible, such as the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel and writings that are a part of the Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the major sources for the time period are the writings of Josephus, Philo, the Books of the Maccabees, Greek and Roman writers and later Rabbinic literature.

The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE is considered one of the most cataclysmic events in Jewish history. The loss of mother-city and temple necessitated a reshaping of Jewish culture to ensure its survival. Judaism's Temple-based sects disappeared. Rabbinic Judaism, centered around communal synagogue worship and Torah study, eventually evolved out of the Pharisaic school and became the mainstream form of the religion. During the same era, Christianity gradually separated from Judaism, becoming a predominantly Gentile religion. A few decades after the First Jewish-Roman War, the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE) erupted; its brutal suppression by the Romans further dwindled the Jewish population in Judea and enhanced the role of Jewish diaspora. During the ensuing Rabbinic period, the Jewish demographic center shifted to Galilee, where the Mishnah was compiled, and later to Babylonia, while smaller Jewish communities persisted across the Mediterranean.

According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE. The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event.

The Persians may have experimented initially with ruling Judah as a Davidic client-kingdom under descendants of Jehoiachin, but by the mid–5th century BCE Judah had become in practice a theocracy, ruled by hereditary High Priests and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.

A second group of 5,000, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to Judah in 456 BCE. The first was empowered by the Persian king to enforce the Torah, the second had the status of governor and a royal mission to restore the walls of the city. The Bible mentions tension between the returnees and those who had remained in Judah, the former rebuffing the attempt of the "peoples of the land" to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple; this attitude was based partly on the exclusivism which the exiles had developed while in Babylon and, probably, partly on disputes over property. The careers of Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century BCE were thus a kind of religious colonisation in reverse, an attempt by one of the many Jewish factions in Babylon to create a self-segregated, ritually pure society inspired by the prophesies of Ezekiel and his followers.