The Intertestamental Period, approximately the 400 year time span from the ministry of Malachi (420 B.C.) to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early 1st century A.D., is roughly contiguous with the Second Temple period (516 B.C. to 70 A.D., encompassing the age of Hellenistic Judaism, a time when a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), including the apocrypha, designed primarily for the Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt during the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., but eagerly adopted by the early followers of Christ, thoroughly grounded in Greek culture. The prophet Nehemiah, returning from Persia to Jerusalem, where he had earlier guided the homecoming exiles under the decree of Cyrus, now found that Judah had returned to the vile practices (Sabbath breaking and idolatry) which had brought curses from Almighty God on their ancestors. For the next 400 years, the apostate children of Judah suffered harassment and enslavement from a series of regimes (outlined by Daniel's vision in Daniel 2 and 11) describing Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Judah's language was replaced by a foreign tongue (similar to what is occurring in lands occupied by Jacob's offspring). Consequently, Judah was a Roman province under the reign of Herod the Great. As Greek became the lingua franca during the intertestamental period, English has assumed that role in the last several centuries. Much intellectual ferment took place, not all positive. For example, the Jewish literary mind cranked out the apocrypha, having some literary value, but absolutely no use in the canonicity of scripture. Josephus rejects the apocrypha and Jesus never mentions it. Many other phony candidates for scripture use the names of Adam, Moses, Ezra, Barach, or Enoch, but all lack key elements allowing canonization. The Pharisees placed more emphasis on their Talmudic interpretations than on the Scripture.