The following (and previous) post can be used as part of an argument for the Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible.

In the previous post I bracketed off the main paper in a reader that might not be immediately visible in all browsers so here it is reformatted to be read directly as a blog post.

There are two parts to the essay. In the first, I address the theoretical or literary reasons many scholars have assigned much of the biblical literature to the Persian period and point out why those reasons are flawed. Some have wondered why certain Bible sections would seem to present Persian time as the setting for a revival of a reformed and revived Yahweh worship and the beginnings of what we would recognize as Judaism unless that had a historical basis. As I point out in the first part, we see an alternative answer when we acknowledge that Hellenistic writings were quite open to looking back on the Persian era as something of a golden age in order to contrast it with “the present evil times”.

The second part is the main argument: we look at the archaeological evidence that can tell us whether Jerusalem was the kind of society where we would expect to find scribes and priests engaged in the archival work of selecting and collating various texts, writing out new or revised treatises and traditions, — (in Hebrew) — and so forth. One must note the degraded condition of Jerusalem ever since the Babylonian conquest. The area settled was drastically reduced. Some estimate a population as low as 400, but others prefer to imagine (without any evidence) that a large area between the city proper and the Temple Mount was also populated and so bring an estimated population up to 5000. Jerusalem at this time has been described as a “post-collapse society” — a society where a remnant continued to eke out a living by occupying ruins, meaning that their dwellings remained ruins with scant attempts at rebuilding. No Hebrew inscriptions are to be found. Jerusalem was not even an economic or administrative hub. Yet some archaeologists continue to interpret the finds — more particularly, certain absences of finds — as indicators of the kind of community posited by Nehemiah and Ezra, with a thriving priesthood tending a regular flow of pilgrims coming to worship at their cherished Temple. This image owes much to biblical literature and traditions. It is very difficult to catch glimpses of it in the recovered evidence, as the essay following demonstrates.

The Persian Period and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A Reassessment of the Evidence from Jerusalem

This essay seeks to test common arguments that much of the biblical literature was taking shape in Persian period Jerusalem against Finkelstein’s observation above. It will begin with some general methodological points of argument before exploring in depth how the evidence has been interpreted by archaeologists.

The Hebrew Bible’s formation is almost² universally recognized as a complex process involving the collation and redaction of multiple Judean and Samarian texts into a more or less coherent narrative. Numerous scribes—and even entire scribal schools—worked with archived sources to produce documents forming the ideological foundation of the Jerusalem Yahweh cult.³ The results reveal a high level of literary sophistication among both authors and intended audiences.⁴

There is also a widespread understanding that much of this literature was composed or at least took final shape in Persian-period Jerusalem.⁵ The paucity of archaeological evidence in Jerusalem from the Persian period is not generally seen as a major hurdle since the “lack of a distinct Persian material culture has also been noted in other territories under Persian rule.”⁶ In Jerusalem, this relative absence of Persian period remains has been explained as later building over earlier Achaemenid levels.⁷ Scribal institutions are assumed to have continued in the land despite the Babylonian deportations. Especially since the appearance of Hans Barstad’s The Myth of the Empty Land in 1996 the view that these conquests inflicted on Jerusalem major, even irreparable, cultural and institutional collapse has been widely dismissed as an ideological “biblical myth”.⁸ It is now common to accept the continuation of both a substantial population and cultural and cultic institutions, including the scribal class,⁹ and even that a significant number of elites returned with the advent of Persian rule.¹⁰ Hence Jerusalem is often imagined as the cradle of biblical composition.

The essay has two parts. The first assesses arguments linking specific literary outputs to Persian period material conditions; the second focuses on Jerusalem. A comprehensive study would extend beyond the city to the wider province of Yehud, Samaria, and Elephantine, and compare Persian-period evidence with Iron Age and Hellenistic contexts. That extended scope could confirm or challenge conclusions of this essay. But we begin with a limited focus. Unless otherwise stated references to Jerusalem will be to Persian period Jerusalem.

Part One

A common rationale for situating the development of biblical literature in the Persian period is the perception of its ideological and thematic resonance with the Persian world. The texts are said to reflect a community “euphoric”¹¹ over Cyrus’s conquests and “obsessed with ideological constructions and memories” of monarchy, exile, and hopes of return, redemption, and utopian renewal.¹² Biblical writings, it is argued, assume a stable, divinely ordered world¹³—Egypt being the hostile exception¹⁴—and express faith in a future golden age following national disaster.¹⁵ Since these themes align with conditions in sixth- to fourth-century Jerusalem—peace, absence of native kingship, imperial recognition of a universal “God of heaven,” and enmity toward Egypt—Jerusalem is posited as their setting. Underlying this view is the assumption of returning priests, scribes, and others from Babylonia, as depicted in the Bible, though archaeology yields no evidence even for small-scale repatriation.¹⁶

Linking literary themes to archaeological contexts without accompanying justification is logically flawed, as Benjamin Sommer¹⁷ and Jon Levenson have shown¹⁸. The error lies in overlooking alternative historical settings that could also match the literature. One example¹⁹ is Konrad Schmid, who, despite acknowledging Sommer’s critique, continues this approach “with due caution.”²⁰ In doing so, he repeats the same mistake: identifying the “God of heaven” as a Persian-period concept among Jehudians²¹ while neglecting the possibility of Hellenistic influence on Pentateuchal authors. Ironically, his cited source discusses both Persian and Hellenistic usages, yet the latter is deemed inconceivable as a formative context for biblical literature.²² An inverted version of this error occurs when archaeological data are used to exclude Persian-period composition. Thus Finkelstein argues that some biblical narratives emphasize places irrelevant to Persian Yehud and thus could not have been written then.²³ Such reasoning ignores the likelihood that Persian-period scribes engaged with earlier materials and fails to consider other forms of ideological or cultural relevance.

A concept or setting associated with Persian culture need not have been adopted during the Persian period itself. Hellenistic writers, for instance, are known to have looked back to Persian times for ideological or literary inspiration, idealizing a pre-Alexandrian past.²⁴

Linguistic evidence has likewise been used to support a Persian-period provenance for the Pentateuch or parts of it—and also to challenge such dating on “ideological” grounds.²⁵ These debates remain unresolved.²⁶ Even paleo-Hebrew is ambiguous: it appears both in early inscriptions and in Hellenistic-Hasmonean coins, showing that the script was revived after the Persian period.²⁷

Part Two

Turning to Jerusalem, population estimates potentially show whether a viable literary scribal elite could have existed.

Map illustrating extent of the southwestern hill area that ceased to be occupied after 586 BCE.²⁸

Jerusalem’s inhabited area shrank drastically in the Persian period; archaeologists agree the southwestern hill was abandoned.²⁹

Population estimates for the city by the late fourth century range from 5,000 to as few as 400.³⁰ The latter figure could hardly sustain a scribal elite capable of advanced literary production.

If Yehud was so small and impoverished, how could its social and religious elites have supported the literary activity attributed to this era?³¹

Oded Lipschits, noted for his detailed analysis of Jerusalem’s Babylonian and Persian-period archaeology,³² estimates a population of 1,000–1,250,³³ possibly up to 3,000 for Jerusalem and its environs.³⁴ The gap between his figure and the lowest estimates (400–500) stems mainly from how “negative evidence” is interpreted.³⁵ By including the Ophel hill—where no Persian structures, floors, or pottery have been found—Lipschits doubles Finkelstein’s estimate.³⁶ Lipschits justifies this by hypothesis and assumption:³⁷ he points to (a) an adjacent area where pottery sherds were dumped and (b) his own reasons for believing that the area would have attracted occupation.³⁸ This reasoning—interpreting an absence of evidence through speculative hypothesis—is not unique to Lipschits; Finkelstein has explained in detail why he rejects such an approach.³⁹

Lipschits’ map showing the extent of the Ophel area beside the rest of the city.
Not immediately clear in this map but a point that should be noted when assessing debates over habitation is that
the Ophel area is an incline between the Temple Mount and City of David.⁴⁰

Scribal elites required financial backing: writing materials were expensive, archives demanded long-term upkeep, and schools needed sustained support throughout the Persian period. Such activity presupposes a sufficient tax base, comparable to that supporting administrative or military staff.⁴¹ Yet archaeology offers no evidence that Jerusalem functioned as an economic or administrative hub. Moza, about 7 km away, shows denser remains indicating a more active economy,⁴² while Ramat Raḥel, 3 km south, served as the province’s fifth-century administrative centre.⁴³ Zwickel adds another indicator of Jerusalem’s economic insignificance:

If one considers the location of the Persian-period settlements north of Jerusalem, they all appear not to have been oriented toward the city of Jerusalem. Rather, they lie in the immediate vicinity of a road that leads up from the Jordan Rift and descends toward Jaffa. It was not Jerusalem that was of significance for these settlements; the forts were not intended to protect the way into the holy city, but to secure the trade between Transjordan and the Mediterranean coast. (AI translation) ⁴⁴

Though “depopulated and impoverished”,⁴⁵ Jerusalem has been proposed as a pilgrimage centre.⁴⁶ Its temple supposedly attracted regular visitors from afar. Comparisons have been made with other low population yet frequented cult centres—Delphi, Olympia, and Praeneste⁴⁷—none of which was known for sophisticated scribal activity.⁴⁸ The idea presupposes that biblical traditions were part of people’s consciousness so early – which of course is what is being questioned here. Zwickel even wonders whether anyone saw a reason to build a temple in the early part of the Persian period.⁴⁹ Nonetheless, correspondence from the Jewish colony in Elephantine, dated 407 BCE, is addressed “the High Priest and his colleagues [or “brothers”] the priests who are in Jerusalem”,⁵⁰ so we can infer by the end of the fifth century Jerusalem did have a cult centre, presumably a modest temple of some kind, supporting multiple priests. Notably, the letter was written in Aramaic, not Hebrew.⁵¹ Further, both papyri remains and the iconography associated with the Yahwist temple in Elephantine attest to a polytheistic cult that the Jerusalem priests were expected to recognize.⁵² The cultic practices of Elephantine were inconsistent with Pentateuchal laws,⁵³ raising further difficulties if Jerusalem scribes at this time were developing the Pentateuch.

Archaeological finds that have been associated with pilgrimages to Jerusalem are coins. These coins bear paleo-Hebrew inscriptions naming “Yehud”⁵⁴. They are from the later half of the fourth century⁵⁵ and are the only artefacts from Persian Yehud that contain Hebrew script.⁵⁶ Being of low denomination they are often thought to have served in the temple cult, providing indirect support for Jerusalem as a pilgrimage centre. This inference must be balanced against two facts: their iconography—such as the ear and the deity on a winged throne—parallels pagan cult imagery;⁵⁷ and Jerusalem priests evidently accepted another Yahwist temple outside Jerusalem. Without assuming that the Hebrew scriptures were already authoritative and prescribed Jerusalem’s cultic centrality, there is no evidence that it functioned as a pilgrimage centre. Materially, Jerusalem shows no sign of being either a pilgrimage or literary hub.

What is of particular significance, however, even if one accepts a population double or more than Finkelstein’s “minimalist” estimate, the crucial fact remains—emphasized at the outset of this essay—that throughout two centuries of Persian rule there is a “total disappearance of Hebrew” in Yehud.⁵⁸ Evidence for scribal activity in the language of the Hebrew Bible does not reappear until the Hellenistic period.

There is almost a complete absence of Hebrew inscriptions from the Persian province of Yehud. Until the mid-third century B.C.E., practically no evidence exists of writing in Hebrew (apart from the Bible). Ironically, this is exactly the time when Biblical Hebrew literature is supposedly exploding, when Biblical Hebrew literature has its magical moment.⁵⁹

Aramaic, the language of Persian administration, not Hebrew, is found in inscriptions.

Administrative scribal outputs (specifically here, seal impressions on jar handles) are hardly evidence for literary activity but it is nonetheless worth noting that the name Yehud appears only in Aramaic script.⁶⁰ Only in late Hellenistic (Hasmonean) times does it appear in paleo-Hebrew.⁶¹ The name for Jerusalem (yršlm) itself is unattested in the Persian period, emerging only in Hellenistic administrative contexts when Hebrew script began to replace Aramaic.⁶² For this reason, along with sixth century Babylonian references to Jerusalem as the “city of Yehud”, Ya’akov Meshorer has even questioned whether Jerusalem was known by that name among administrators until after the Persian period.⁶³ This potentially further weakens the idea that Jerusalem had any distinctive status.

One might suggest that Hebrew literary works have simply been lost because they were written on papyrus. Yet if scribes had engaged in Hebrew literary activity, some trace would likely appear in other media—seals, bullae, or ostraca.⁶⁴ Though papyrus decays, scrolls were labelled with appropriate clay-based identification. Scribes would have their own seals. All indications point to scribes working exclusively in Aramaic administrative contexts.

Despite the absence of archaeological evidence for sophisticated literary activity in Jerusalem, and despite the positive evidence for a very low population, scholars still imagine a thriving post-586 scribal culture producing an advanced literary heritage. The reason appears to be interpreting both positive and negative archaeological evidence through biblical narratives. Even where the justification for this scenario is not made explicit it nonetheless is present, as can be seen in the work of Lipschits. Lipschits, as pointed out above (note 30), is among the most prolific authors of archaeological data on Jerusalem and Yehud. His studies frequently note how closely his population estimates closely match those in Nehemiah—sometimes uses Nehemiah through which to reconstruct Jerusalem,⁶⁵ at other times claiming the figures merely coincide with archaeological results.⁶⁶ (In one publication he criticizes scholars who cite different Nehemiah passages when proposing “minimalist” population estimates.⁶⁷) For this reason, his methods warrant scrutiny—as has been done in part by Finkelstein (note 37 above) and Avraham Faust.⁶⁸

Faust contends that the Babylonian conquest caused such a sharp break in material culture that the Persian province of Yehud should be viewed as a “post-collapse society”.⁶⁹ A frequent feature of a post-collapse society is a precipitous population collapse (75-90%), not only in the urban areas but also in their rural hinterlands.⁷⁰ Social order collapses, self-sufficiency increases, trade and specialized crafts fade from view, urban construction largely ceases or reuses older structures, much of it recycling older buildings, and the archaeological record is notably more ephemeral.⁷¹ For Faust, Tainter’s analysis of “post-collapse societies” fits the evidence for Persian period Jerusalem.

Maps illustrating the extent of Jerusalem in the late Iron Age, Persian and Hellenistic periods.⁷²

Analyzing various population estimates for the Persian period, including those of Lipschits, Faust concludes that soon after 586 BCE the population in Jerusalem’s administrative zone fell to about 20% of its pre-destruction level, reaching only a third of its late Iron Age size some 250 years later.⁷³ Lipschits agrees that certain areas saw dramatic declines but disputes that they applied to all regions.⁷⁴ While this essay cannot review the full debate between Lipschits, Faust, and Finkelstein, two archaeological indicators merit emphasis. Both point to a profound cultural and sociological rupture after 586: the disappearances of the four-room house and the Judahite tombs.⁷⁵

The four-room house, characteristic of Judahite society in Iron Age II, was more than a functional design: it reflected cultural patterns now lost, appearing across rural and urban settings, among rich and poor, fulfilling private and public functions, and even being a template for tombs.⁷⁶ That it should disappear, without even the older houses being re-used, suggests a major cultural dislocation. Another break from the Iron Age is the absence of new or reused Judahite tombs in the Persian period.⁷⁷ Only two such tombs have been found within Jerusalem.⁷⁸ Lipschits acknowledges this is an indicator of the city’s “wretchedly poor”⁷⁹ state. Yet later he attributed these disappearances more positively to reflecting “deep religious and social change.”⁸⁰ Part of the rationale is the inability to accept that Babylonian deportations caused such devastation. Against this point, Faust cites evidence that deportations alone were not the reason for the population collapse, but losses also that resulted from famine, disease, massacres, fleeing refugees that are known to have accompanied such wars.⁸¹

Returning to the literary perspective, it deserves notice that post-collapse societies often develop a post-collapse mythology of what went before:

Often the fall of early states and empires comes later to represent a paradise lost, a golden age of good government, wise rule, harmony, and peace, when all was right with the world.⁸²

This outlook contrasts sharply with the biblical literature, which portrays the past not as an ideal age but as one of repeated apostasies requiring repentance. Yet even here a leading archaeologist has recreated memories of a golden age among a section of those inhabiting Jerusalem’s ruins, as the following explains.

At the same conference that featured the Finkelstein quotation cited at the start of this essay, Lipschits uncontroversially described Jerusalem as “sparse and poor residences built into the ruins of the Iron Age city.”⁸³ He highlighted a two-storey house showing evidence of a plentiful food supply, presumably from trade with the Phoenician coast⁸⁴, suggesting a relatively prosperous household. Notably, Lipschits interprets these finds—and even the thoughts and memories of those living among these ruins— through passages from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra-Nehemiah, demonstrating how scriptural references shape his reading of both the evidence and the “negative evidence”.

we should interpret the “return to Zion” as a slow and gradual process of a very small number . . . of the exiled elite, who did not leave an imprint on the archaeological data⁸⁵

assuming that they contain some historical reliability⁸⁶

with no support from any other source⁸⁷

The paper constructs the mentalities, historical consciousness and memories of two distinct groups in Jerusalem: descendants of those who had remained in the land and elite descendants of deportees who had (without leaving a trace in the ground) returned. The former, on looking every day at the ruins around them, are said to have recalled the past as a glorious era that was ruined because of the sins of the elites. The elites returned, looking down on the “remainees”, wondering if now was the right time to rebuild the temple. The ideological debates Lipschits constructs, and even the existence of two groups, is entirely read into the meagre archaeological data from the biblical texts:

The existence of both perspectives is most clearly expressed in the prophecy of Haggai . . . Zechariah 1:12–17 can also be interpreted in this direction, and Ezekiel . . . .

This is the basis of my attempt to understand the reality revealed in the archaeological excavations in Jerusalem.⁸⁸

The reader is left to imagine a scribal elite, presumably sheltering in spaces eked out among ruins yet with access to writing materials and archived scrolls, with the means of sharing and passing on their skills, penning, editing, collating texts with the divergent ideological perspectives of the “remainees” and “returnees” in mind.

Faust applies the label “continuity school” to scholars who believe that, despite comparative impoverishment of the times, sophisticated scribal institutions survived the Babylonian conquest.⁸⁹ Among others who share his criticisms of this school are Stern,⁹⁰ Schniedewind,⁹¹ Oded,⁹² Vanderhooft.⁹³ As a leading figure in this “continuity school”, Lipschits hews closely to both the archaeological data and to hypotheses to explain the absence of that data. At the same time he insists that the archaeological method has its limitations in historical research and warns against the “motivation and ‘hidden polemics’” of scholars whom he characterizes as proponents of “the myth of the empty land”.⁹⁴ By proponents of the “empty land” myth he is referring to scholars like Faust and Stern who interpret the evidence as depicting a post-collapse society from which Jerusalem and its region took two and a half centuries to recover.

The material evidence presents Jerusalem as an impoverished region, catastrophically reduced both geographically and demographically, with scant remains of residential architecture, without any signs of Hebrew script except in a few late coins, with no sign of an affluent community present, with no unambiguous indicators of any of the rituals or observances to be found in the biblical texts. The material evidence suggests cultural practices that conflict with those biblical texts. The only evidence of scribal activity lies in the basic administrative tasks in Aramaic. The prevailing reconstruction of an adequate literary culture in Persian-period Jerusalem can be sustained, it appears, by resisting the “motivation and hidden polemics” that would read the biblical narratives into the “negative evidence”.

Endnotes

Continue reading “Evidence Against Jerusalem in Persian Times Producing the Hebrew Bible”