In this post I will explain “my personal reason” for strongly suspecting a Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature — though I am sure I have come across the same ideas throughout different books and articles over the years. It follows on from #5 in the preceding post. When I wrote that I was expecting to follow up with detailed discussions from interpretations of the archaeological finds but have decided now to put that off for later.
I have more recently (subsequent to writing this post on the earlywritings forum) come across a comparable view that was expressed in a 2016 conference (my bolding):
As Jean Louis Ska suggests, The disappearance of a culture triggers off a certain type of literature. This is the case in Mesopotamia with Berossus and in Egypt with Manetho. They wrote their work in Hellenistic times when their civilizations’ glory already belonged to the past. The Torah could be – to some extent – an answer of the same type to the end of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah.
– Markl, Dominik, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, and Peter Dubovsk, eds. The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. p. 6
Russell Gmirkin, it should be noted, published evidence that pointed to both Berossus and Manetho being sources for parts of the Penteuch.
My “personal vibe” that is in sync with the Hellenistic era is reflection on “the nature of the biblical literature itself”. The Primary History [i.e. Genesis to 2 Kings] is not the kind of literature that arises sui generis from a vacuum. One expects to see antecedents over time that lead to that kind of work. And the closest antecedents we find are in the Greek literature, not in that of the SyriaMesopotamian regions. Assyrian vassal treaties, the epics of Gilgamesh, of Baal, and so forth, simply fall short by comparison.
But what kind of society produces that kind of literature? It takes more than a scribal elite responsible for administrative and trade records, or even engaged in cultic verses and prayers and spells for cures, etc. The kind of literature in our Bibles required reasonably prosperous and complex societies with a literate class that engaged with the kinds of stories and ideas that had relevance to their class, ethnic and regional identities. They had to have a reasonably widespread audience to engage with those ideas and stories and whose interest or vulnerabilities or needs encouraged their literary development. The social groups must have been somewhat extensive and complex because of the various competing and related ideas found in that literature.
In other words we are talking about fairly advanced societies in economic growth and social complexity, and who also have comparable antecedent literature.
The archaeological record does point to some kind of growth of Jerusalem and surrounds in the eighth and seventh centuries, but I am not sure it really reaches the kind of level that Finkelstein and Silberman seemed to think was adequate for a “renaissance literary activity”. Besides, what kinds of antecedents were available at or up to that time to mushroom into what we find in the Bible?
The Persian era is by all accounts that I have seen in relative decline. Persian “liberal” rule that allowed Judeans and Samarians to do their own thing is more easily understood as administrative neglect, not caring at all about their development — only collecting levees for the army and taxes for the king. (Witness the Xenophon’s ability to march his Greek army untouched through the empire!)
The economic revival, with its related social growth in complexity and size, came with the arrival of the Greeks. So did the antecedent literature.
Herodotus’s Histories has a remarkably similar structure to the Primary History: opening with world history, having a close look at Egypt as a follow up, and finally getting down to the narrow view of the conflict between two powers — AND all told within the framework of a theological interest: the lesson of the deciding hand of the god through his earthly sanctuary. And all told in a series of books in prose, both frequently with competing accounts of the same event.
I am not denying the obvious differences when saying that. What I’m trying to do is to draw attention to the “equally obvious” similarities. Did those similarities really emerge independently? Did the Hebrew literature really inspire that of the Greeks? Were the Judeans and Samarians in the poverty-stricken, underdeveloped Persian era really hosting a literate class devouring Greek literature? (I am on record as deploring argument by rhetorical questions so I will hasten to add that those questions are more than rhetorical: they represent a series of expectations that we must propose with hypotheses other than the Hellenistic era one.)
And then we have the ideological content of the literature. How do we explain the sudden introduction of stories of Exodus, Joshua’s Conquest, Judges, David and Solomon’s united kingdom and empire, if those — as the archaeological record tells us — never happened?
At this point it is worth looking at the propaganda use the biblical works were put to in the Hasmonean period. Were not the Hasmoneans seeking to justify their conquests by appeals to a historical heritage? In a time of Greek conquest do we not expect indigenous populations to at least sometimes seek redress by counter-narratives that put themselves in the positions of the god-blessed and ultimately greater powers? Again, these are more than rhetorical questions.
As for the divisions found even within the literature — the Samarian/Mount Gerizim point of view versus that of Jerusalem — have not scholars long since identified these differences underlying the multiple points of view (and sometimes outright conflict) within the biblical literature?
Mention has been made of Gmirkin in this thread. Before I read Gmirkin’s book I was prompted to read Plato’s Laws (as well as, again, Timaeus and Crito) by another scholar and was completely thrown back in my chair when I saw (and wondered how I had not seen it before) the striking similarities between Plato and the Pentateuch’s laws. Oh of course all those sacrifices and cultic rituals are of Levantine/Syrian/Canaanite origin, but the Pentateuch is a lot more than those.
The creation, the merging of humans and gods, the flood and annihilation, the wandering of the new generation, the coming together ….. and so forth. And then the laws about holiness, godliness, sacred feasts, marriage and sexuality, the judges and tribes, etc etc etc etc : Did Plato really twig to all of that from his reading of the Pentateuch? (At least one scholar has addressed the relationship of a scene in Plato’s Symposium with the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.)
And further yet — how many scholars have noticed the similarities between the biblical Yahweh and the Greek Dionysus? I have read the comparisons a number of times. Surely pre-Hellenistic Yahwism was distinctively Levantine, with no appreciable differences between the Yahwism of Samaria, Judea, Negev, Canaan, Syria…. So what gave him the Greek overlay in the Bible?
Okay — these are my generally subjective responses to how I read the literature of the OT with my knowledge of Greek literature in mind. I have not presented a systematic argument, I know. But for what it’s worth, I thought it might be of some point to note how I have come to read the literatures of the Hebrews and Greeks and the conclusions that seem to present themselves to me as a result.
by neilgodfrey » Tue Feb 20, 2024 4:29 pm
To read the original post in context and to see Stephen Goranson’s critical responses ….
By the way, I have informed Stephen Goranson that he is welcome to respond here to my resposting of his criticisms of Russell Gmirkin — despite my earlier prohibition on his posts to this blog. For this series alone I have lifted my relegation of SG’s comments to spam.
In Part 4 I pointed to discussions that answered a list of criticisms against the case that the Hebrew Bible was composed prior to Hellenistic times. Those discussions were mostly from other blog posts of mine but they covered what had been repeated at various times in the earlywritings forum. For anyone interested in the details and context of Stephen Goranson’s ongoing discussion of my responses to his list of data points (that he presented as “evidence” of pre-Hellenistic biblical writings) see the copy of the page at the end of this post.
What follows here is the second part to my attempt to justify the plausibility (even greater explanatory power) of the Hellenistic provenance of all (though Russell Gmirkin would, I think, have said only “most”) the books of the Old Testaments. In my opening post (Part 1) I addressed the circularity underpinning the dominant current view of the Documentary Hypothesis. This time I branched out into the data that is better explained by the Hellenistic era thesis.
I included this in my discussion on the earlywritings forum — again, see the link below for the context.
Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2
There is more to the Hellenistic provenance thesis than the simple fact of the circularity of the methods of dating the OT books by the past conventional scholarship — something that so far not even SG has denied. Given that SG’s reference to Langlois (when read in full) also allows at least for the possibility of a Hellenistic provenance, we have room to continue.
Archaeology reveals
1. The archaeological evidence of pre-Hellenistic Judea-Samaria has demonstrated that major moments of biblical history are fictions. The “invasion” of Canaan by an “Israelite” ethnic group never happened. The most that can be said about the “Kingdom” of David and Solomon is that it was little more than a village incapable of extending dominance over any area of note. (Jamieson-Drake saw evidence of development from a “lower-order society” to a “chiefdom” in Jerusalem, which falls far from the level of “a state”.)
Why write fiction?
2. The question must arise, then, why such stories were told? Were the stories derived from historical memories? Archaeology has suggested that is unlikely. A fundamental and inescapable fact of any literature is that it must reflect the ideas and beliefs and understandings that are part of its cultural matrix. One specific ideological feature of the narrative of David is that it shares manners, customs, assumptions that we find in the Persian kingdom. One might therefore wonder if the stories were told as part of ideological hopes for an imminent greatness, or at least as an attempt to identify with other great powers, whether of the past and/or present.
But what kind of fiction?
3. The literary structure and style of the Primary History (Genesis-2 Kings), as other scholars (not those arguing for a Hellenistic origin, by the way) have shown, is comparable to the Histories of Herodotus. The closest genre to the Primary History is found in the Greek world. Another comparable genre is the autobiographical narrative. Some scholars have attempted to explain this observation by speculating that Greek works were well known to the subjects of the Persian empire or that even the biblical books were known to the Greeks and influenced the Greeks. One needs to look for the explanation that raises fewest difficulties or questions.
Nothing uniform — why?
4. There are vastly different styles among the biblical books. One can explain this fact by positing a long period of evolution and various cultural influences over centuries. One can also explain the same fact by positing contemporary regional differences. As one scholar noted, imagine if all we had about Socrates were the writings of Plato and Xenophon. Would we have to assume that there was a vast time gap between the two accounts since they are so at odds in so many ways?
What kind of society?
5. One ought also to look at the kind of socio-cultural-economic society that would be required to produce the biblical literature. Here again the archaeological evidence can be interpreted in favour of the Hellenistic period. But this is a vast topic of its own.
The argument emerges from other hypotheses
The scholars I have had in mind while setting out the above points have, with one exception, not been advocates of the Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature. The archaeological evidence that discounts the historicity of “biblical history”, the comparisons with Greek literature and Persian royal ideologies, — all of these are found in works of scholars who never entertained a Hellenistic time setting, as far as I am aware. Philip Davies himself (with whom I began in the OP) always argued for the Persian era for the Primary History and Prophets.
But there are also problems with a Persian era setting that disappear if we move the compositions of the books to the third century.
by neilgodfrey » Tue Feb 20, 2024 11:24 am
In the next post I will set out my personal reason for strongly suspecting a Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature.
Stephen Goranson has been a regular critic of Russell Gmirkin. Stephen posted the following points (in the earlywritings forum) that he claimed gave reasonable grounds for dating the entire Hebrew Bible (he referred to the “TaNaK“) before Hellenistic era:
There are reasons to consider some TaNaK texts to be older than third century, some of which have been discussed here.
Qumran texts, safely considered to be copies rather than autographs, show developments over time. And some may themselves may be older; at least, so Michael Langlois (name searchable here) has argued concerning some paleo-Hebrew mss. Few have been radiocarbon dated (more to be published). Statistically it is unlikely that the oldest one has yet been tested and published.
Deir ‘Alla inscription.
Silver amulets.
It is not plausible that temple priests, before third century, were illiterate and had nothing to read.
As Stephen Goranson noted, several of those points had been discussed previously on that forum so one might have expected him to have addressed what had already been presented as responses to his claims that they pointed to a pre-Hellenistic date for the Jewish Bible. I posted my response to Stephen’s reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Michael Langlois’ argument in an earlier Vridar post:
As for the Deir ‘Alla inscription, I posted my own observation about how it could well be interpreted as confirmation of Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic era thesis. See
Stephen’s next point — implying the Hellenistic era hypothesis was declaring that priests “were illiterate and had nothing to read” — is just silly.
As for the difference between the Hebrew of the Pentateuch and other parts of the Bible, we cannot assume that the only explanation for the difference must be a long period of development, and I am sure Stephen knows this. Recently I translated a French work by a couple of renowned biblical and archaeological scholars that included this section:
Linguistic Evidence?
Can the question of the date of the texts of the Pentateuch, or of other biblical texts, be resolved by distinguishing between Classical Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew—a distinction that would offer certain seemingly objective criteria for dating biblical texts? It is not surprising that this method has gained a significant number of adherents, particularly in North America and Israel; we will not go into detail here.19 Let us simply highlight a few precautions to observe in using this method. First of all, we must ask, with E. Ullendorf and E. A. Knauf, whether Biblical Hebrew was truly a spoken language.20 The evidence for the existence of so-called Classical Hebrew21 outside the Bible is limited to a few inscriptions and personal names, which do not allow us to affirm that there existed a unified “Classical Hebrew” during the monarchical period. We must allow for dialectal variation in extrabiblical written and oral texts and, more importantly, for differences between literary language and vernacular language. Furthermore, there is no doubt that certain late texts like Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) differ from what is called Classical Biblical Hebrew. But texts that may well be as late as Ecclesiastes can also be written in perfectly “Classical” Hebrew, as is the case with Zechariah 1–8 and the extracanonical Psalm 151.22
Finally, it is also very difficult—if not impossible—to draw a clear dividing line between “Classical” and “Late” Biblical Hebrew. As C. Edenburg recently observed, biblical texts that all scholars agree are late (from the Persian period) share with Iron Age Hebrew/Moabite inscriptions a preference for direct object suffixes attached to verbs.23 This means that we cannot assert a linear development.24 “Biblical Hebrew” is, above all, a literary language, whose lifespan would have extended beyond the spoken stage (if such a stage ever existed), and which endured in the scribal milieu. The distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew—especially when applied to an entire book—fails to take into account the widely recognized fact that every biblical text is the product of a long process of composition and revision. It thus appears that the scribes were capable of preserving or even partly inventing a language that had not been spoken for many centuries. We must therefore be cautious when claiming that the entire Pentateuch was composed before the Exile simply because it is mostly written in Classical Biblical Hebrew.25
[19] C. EDENBURG, Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19–21, Atlanta, SBL, 2016, 115–123.
[20] E. ULLENDORF, Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1977, 3–17 ; E. A. KNAUF, « War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache? », in K. SCHMID et al. (éd.), Data and Debates, Münster, Ugarit-Verlag, 2013, 411–423 (421): « l’hébreu biblique n’a jamais été une langue parlée. »
[21] KNAUF, « War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache ? » remet même en question la plausibilité d’un tel concept.
[22] I. YOUNG, « What Is “Late Biblical Hebrew” ? », in E. BEN ZVI et al. (éd.), A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics, and Language Relating to Persian Israel, Piscataway, Gorgias Press, 2009, 253–268 (258–259).
[23] EDENBURG, Dismembering, 120–121.
[24] Voir I. YOUNG, « What Do We Actually Know about Ancient Hebrew », Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (2013), 11–31, qui remet en question ladite théorie des trois étapes (hébreu classique, hébreu tardif et hébreu mishnaïque), voir également des appréciations différentes du livre de Job par A. HURVITZ, « The Date of the Prose Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered », Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974), 17–34, et par I. YOUNG, « Is the Prose Tale of Job in Late Biblical Hebrew ? », Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009), 606–629.
[25] M. EHRENSVÄRD, « Once Again: The Problem of Dating Biblical Hebrew », Scandinavian Journal of Old Testament 11 (1997), 29–40.
(Translation of a section written by Thomas Römer)
— Finkelstein, Israel, and Thomas Romer. 2019. Aux Origines de La Torah: Nouvelles Rencontres, Nouvelles Perspectives, Paris. 2019. (My electronic copy that does not include page numbers.)
Since I don’t expect to have much time to write new posts again before the end of the year, I will from time to time copy what I once posted on another forum in defence of Russell Gmirkin’s thesis dating the Old Testament books to the Hellenistic era.
The orthodox view is that biblical books about the Exodus, wilderness wanderings, Joshua, David, the various kings and prophets originated in the time of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even as early as the era of David and Solomon, circa 900 BCE. What became part of the Old Testament started to take on a recognizable shape after the Kingdom of Judah went into Babylonian captivity around 600 BCE. “By the waters of Babylon” Jews pining for their homeland devoutly penned much of what became their sacred literature, and on their return under Persian rule and intermittent efforts to rebuild their Jerusalem temple, circa 500-400 BCE, the “Jewish Bible” began look more like what it is today. That, more or less, has long been the conventional view of scholars.
The Hellenistic era refers to the period following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, from circa 300 BCE. It marks the spread of Greek cultural and political influence across Asia Minor, the Near East, and Egypt, extending as far as the borders of India, and lasting until the Roman annexation of these regions.
If these biblical writings were composed so late, a host of other questions inevitably arise, especially in relation to the historical information they seem to contain, their source materials, and even why they were written and the kind of relationship they have to the origins of Judaism.
In 2001 there was published a chapter, written by Niels Peter Lemche:
Lemche, Niels Peter. 2001. “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?” In Did Moses Speak Attic?: Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 287–318. Sheffield, England: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
Russell Gmirkin took up the idea and closely analyzed the early books of the Old Testament in the light of Greek literature. (Attic was the Greek dialect of much of Classical and Hellenistic Greek literature.) Detailed discussions of Russell’s work are linked in my earlier post, Russell Gmirkin. So the Hellenistic thesis per se is not exclusively Russell Gmirkin’s, but it seems fitting to acknowledge the particular contribution of Russell at this time.
In place of regular original posts for coming months, I would like to post some of my defences of the Hellenistic thesis for dating the Old Testament books. These defences were posted on the earlywritings forum (in its “Academic Discussion” section) but I chose to delete them from there after I lost all confidence in how that forum was run by the moderator. (Russell demonstrated far more patience there than I could muster.)
Since Russell’s sudden passing some of his critics have returned there to rebut his work without having the honesty to acknowledge and address earlier answers to their criticisms. Therefore, I have decided to repost my own defences of the Hellenistic hypothesis here in a series of posts.
I must add that I could not help but find myself at times in disagreement with some of Russell’s lesser points. These differences arose from our different ways of approaching historical sources. I seem to recall, for example, that Russell did not date “all” of the biblical books in the Hellenistic era. He placed one or two of them in the Persian period. I disagree, as I did on some other issues with Russell. But I believe the core of my argument in defence of the Hellenistic thesis remains solid. At least until others can demonstrate its flaws in method, logic and evidence.
Why the Hellenistic era for ALL “Old Testament” books should be taken seriously
When we apply the fundamentals of historical methods as practised by historians in fields other than biblical studies we quickly see logical flaws at the heart of the conventional understanding that the sources for various biblical books (in particular the stories in Genesis and Exodus) go back as far as the times of David and Solomon.
Multiple sources and circularity
Several times I have engaged in EarlyWritings on the question of the Documentary Hypothesis and every time, it seems to me, the argument submitted to “prove” the validity of the DH has been a point by point demonstration of how multiple sources were combined to create a new single story: e.g. how two different narratives were combined to compose the story of the great flood in Genesis. Each time I have attempted to make it clear that I have no doubt that different sources were mixed to create the Genesis Flood account, but a pre-Hellenistic antiquity of the biblical flood story does not logically follow from the fact of such a mix.
Biblical scholars, it is no secret to anyone, not even to themselves on the whole, do have interests that go beyond pure historical research. Even Julius Wellhausen, to whom we tend to attribute the modern notion of the “Documentary Hypothesis”, has been criticized for allowing his Protestant (anti-legalistic) bias to subconsciously influence his model of the “Documentary Hypothesis”. (The criticism has been directed at the notion of “legalistic” texts being a latecomer addition to the original narratives found in the biblical canon.)
When hypotheses become facts
Julius Wellhausen
So much in biblical studies that pass for facts are actually hypotheses. But they are repeated so often it is hard to notice that they have no basis in the hard evidence. Look at this passage from Wellhausen:
With regard to the Jehovistic document, all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also belong,the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the Assyrians. About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah’s reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans.
That’s from Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel. His assertion of relative dating is grounded entirely in scholarly consensus, not in the evidence itself.
The Documentary Hypothesis, it has been pointed out by at least one scholar in the biblical field, might well never had got off the ground had the Elephantine remains — indicating that Persian era Jews knew nothing of the Pentateuch — been discovered earlier and had more time to gain traction and wider and more focused attention than it had before the time of Wellhausen’s work.
None of this is to say that biblical scholars are unprofessionally “biased” or “unscholarly”. Of course they are scholarly and their biases are generally known and admitted and taken into account. But their work tends to be picked up by others and over time taken for granted as fact.
Independent evidence is critical
The fact remains that there is no independent evidence that the OT was composed prior to the Hellenistic era. That datum alone does not prove it was a Hellenistic product. But it does at least allow for the theoretical possibility that it was created in the Hellenistic era, and given that our earliest independent evidence for a knowledge of the Pentateuch is situated in the Hellenistic era, it is entirely reasonable to begin with that era when searching for the Pentateuch’s origins.
It also is a fact that scholarship has only cursorily (by comparison) considered assessing the evidence within the Pentateuch itself with Hellenistic literature and thought. Those are facts. Another fact is that Documentary Hypothesis is not without its inconsistencies and problems.
Those facts do not prove that the Pentateuch was created in the Hellenistic era. But they do at least make it possible to ask the question. It makes it all the more necessary for anyone proposing an earlier date to ground their reasons in supporting independent evidence of some kind.
The meaning of “Hellenistic”
The Hellenistic provenance of the Pentateuch does not deny any use of pre-Hellenistic literature or sayings or concepts. Hellenization even means a uniting of Greek and Asian cultures, not a replacement of one by the other. So one should expect in any Hellenistic era hypothesis for the creation of the Pentateuch clear allusions to non-Greek (i.e. local Canaanite and Syrian) sources. Merely pointing to evident instances of Ugaritic or Syrian influence in the OT does not, per se, contradict a Hellenistic origin for the OT.
The fateful year of 1992
My own understanding of the history of the scholarship in this area tells me that the floodgates to a more widespread acceptability towards questioning the “deep antiquity” (pre Persian era) origin of any of the OT books were opened by Philip R. Davies in 1992 with his publication of In Search of Ancient Israel. The irony was that Davies was only collating various criticisms and doubts about the conventional wisdom of “biblical Israel” and its “bible” that had been available to scholars for some decades. But by bringing these questions and doubts all together in one short publication (only about 150 pages of discussion) Davies’ work started something of an academic “kerfuffle”. Davies himself argued at length for a Persian era provenance of many of the OT books, but those who followed the evidence he set out could see that the way was also open for an even later period. Some scholars identified stronger links between the Pentateuch and Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings) and Hellenistic literature than to anything earlier. One French scholar has even argued that the entire Primary History was composed by a priest in the Hasmonean era.
Davies certainly established the circularity of the arguments that much of the OT literature was composed in the times of King Josiah and the Babylonian captivity. He also brought together the archaeological evidence not just for the absence of a united kingdom of Israel but the archaeological evidence that indicates the very notion of “biblical Israel” is as fanciful as King Arthur and Camelot.
The basics of historical inquiry
I opened this post with a reference to the methods of historians in non-biblical fields. In short, those methods are nothing other than any journalistic or forensic or “common sense” method of trying to find out “what happened” — minus the theological provenance from which the quest is embarked upon. Start with what we know to be the most secure “facts” on the basis of collating independent evidence and working from there. Unfortunately, our cultural heritage has taught us too well that certain narratives about the past are “facts” (or at least based on facts) so that we find it very difficult to remove these from our minds when trying to see clearly the material evidence before our eyes.
Change is very often a generational thing. It happens as the new ideas are embraced by the new students who are less emotionally and intellectually committed to the old ideas.
by neilgodfrey » Sun Feb 18, 2024 6:58 pm
(images were not part of the original)
The above post met with some criticism and I will post that along with my response next time.
The past few posts have set out the grounds that different scholars have either accepted the historicity of Josiah’s reforms (with varying degrees of certainty) or rejected it.
What we read of Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23 has engendered many questions, problems and hypotheses — theological, textual and historical. In this post I set out some of the various solutions to those questions.
First, recall a few of those problematic questions:
Josiah is said to be one of the “good kings” of Judah, even the best since David. He is said to have restored the “true worship” of God and rid the land of idols. But then we read that Pharaoh kills Josiah and God punishes Judah by sending them into exile because of the sins of his long-dead predecessor!
When Josiah hears the words of the book that was discovered in the temple he tears his robes and weeps. Because of his contrition the prophetess promises him a peaceful death. But his end was not peaceful at all. As mentioned above, we read that Pharaoh killed him.
The prophetess even tells the king that God is going to punish the people of Judah and there is no indication of any hope for them. Yet we read that Josiah proceeds to lead the people in mass repentance — all in vain. God still punishes them. What was the point of the reforms and covenant renewal?
Why do we read that Josiah felt it necessary to consult the prophetess about the book found in the temple when it is clear that he understands the message of the book very well and he acts on it accordingly?
When we read about Josiah’s list of reforms we sense a disconnect from all that has gone before. There is no reference at all to those reforms having anything to do with the discovery of the book of the law.
Later passages in the book of Kings imply that Josiah was one of the “bad kings”. This negative evaluation of Josiah is also found in the books of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. Why was his major reform of returning Judah to God ignored?
Proposed Solutions
Up to the 1940s scholars had generally looked at the first six books (Genesis to Joshua) as a self-contained unit with the following historical books being tied to those six with only a minimum of editorial commentary. The Pentateuch (Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy) began with promises of the land of Canaan to the patriarchs and the book of Joshua (the sixth book) told of how those promises were fulfilled. Hence the Hexateuch made cogent sense: it began with the promises being made and concluded with them being fulfilled. The historical books from Judges to 2 Kings were of quite a different set of styles and themes.
Martin Noth broke with that assumption and analysis and influenced many to follow or only slightly modify his arguments. For Noth, the historical books through to 2 Kings began with Deuteronomy. An editor or editors had before them existing writings about the law, Joshua’s conquests, various judges, prophets and kings, and they brought these works together into a narrative unity, joining and interrupting the various segments with commentary that reflected key themes and ideology found in Deuteronomy. The result was “a Deuteronomistic history” that, despite some bright moments along the way, was doomed to end in disaster.
Noth’s Deuteronomistic editor(s)/author(s) was working with sources already in existence but these were augmented. The original book of Deuteronomy, for example, was thought to only include our chapters 5 to 30 but Noth’s Dtr (the standard abbreviation for this person or persons) added introductory and concluding chapters that addressed core themes found interspersed throughout the ensuing historical books.
One of the most conclusive and least disputed findings of scholarly literary criticism is that in the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings we are confronted with the activity of a Deuteronomistic author in passages both large – sometimes very small. Like all the other historical books in the Old Testament, this author’s work is anonymous, but we call him the “Deuteronomistic” author because his language and way of thinking closely resemble those found in the Deuteronomic Law and in the admonitory speeches which precede and follow the Law. Broadly following present academic practice, we shall refer below to this author and his work by the abbreviation Dtr.
It is generally considered that Dtr. is by a single “Deuteronomistic editor”, or rather by different “Deuteronomistic editors” closely resembling one another in their style . . . . (Noth, 4)
This style is distinguished by its simplicity, fluency, and lucidity and may be recognized both by its phraseology and more especially by its rhetorical character. . . .
The deuteronomic phraseology revolves around a few basic theological tenets such as:
1. The struggle against idolatry 2. The centralization of the cult
3. Exodus, covenant, and election
4. The monotheistic creed
5. Observance of the law and loyalty to the covenant
6. Inheritance of the land
7. Retribution and material motivation
8. Fulfilment of prophecy
9. The election of the Davidic dynasty . . .
What makes a phrase deuteronomic is not its mere occurrence in Deuteronomy, but its meaning within the framework of deuteronomic theology. . . .
The most outstanding feature of deuteronomic style is its use of rhetoric. This is true of all forms of deuteronomic writing. . . . (Weinfeld, 1-3)
For over 40 pages of specific instances of Deuteronomistic style and rhetoric see Weinfeld’s Appendix A on archive.org
What is that style and theological flavour identified as Deuteronomistic? For a detailed answer by Moshe Weinfeld to that question see the extracts and link in the side box.
Our interest here is on the core theme of that history. For Noth, the story was a story of failure. The people of Israel time and time again apostatized from the Deuteronomist’s true worship and, from the vantage point of the author/s, ended their days in exile from their land. The northern tribes of Israel were deported by the Assyrians and the southern kingdom of Judah was exiled into Babylonia. Maybe it could be called a morality tale. Beware, we can see what has happened because of transgression of the laws of Yahweh. So beware.
Though highly influential, Noth’s interpretation seemed to be too easily dismissive of other more positive moments in that history. Were not the promises made to David that his dynasty would last forever unconditional? Does not the final chapter of Kings provide a hint of future hope with the raising of the captive king of Judah to royal favour? And how can one explain the glorious time of Josiah’s reformist rule?
Frank Moore Cross proposed another explanation for the combination of hope and despair in the Deuteronomistic history. For Cross, the first historical books were written or at least shaped in the gloriously hopeful days of good king Josiah. The historical work ended on a high note: Judah had repented, Josiah had cleansed the land of idolatry, and a king as great as David was once more on the throne. Sadly, a few kings later (587 BCE) and Judah was overrun by Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and a large portion of the population were deported. Around the middle of the sixth century another scribe, reflecting on the disaster that had overtaken Judah since the time of Josiah, picked up the historical tale and added the chapters of apostasy and failure following the time of Josiah.
Cross’s proposal had the advantage of somewhat explaining how the anomaly of the record of Josiah’s righteousness sat so awkwardly prior to the final doom of Judah. But if the evidence for the historicity of Josiah’s reforms is scant to non-existent, why is it included at all? And how do we account for other oddities in the Josiah narrative, some of which I listed at the beginning of this post?
Other scholars have proposed other refinements: Helga Weippert has suggested there were three redactions. The first Deuteronomist editor concluded the history with Hezekiah’s reforms; the second with Josiah’s reforms; and the third with the fall of Jerusalem. Rudolf Smend identified three different hands working over the same material: the first Deuteronomist redactor completed the historical book so that it concluded with the demise of the kingdom of Judah and its Babylonian exile; the second worked through the existing text by adding prophetic commentary and speeches and documenting their fulfilment; while the third worked at making the importance of the Deuteronomistic law more prominent at key points. There are other variants. Too many — and that’s the reason there has been such a wide gap between this post and my previous one: I have been tracking down and taking on board many of these various explanations — only to set most of them aside so I could conclude this series.
But there is a common thread through all of these proposed explanations. They view Josiah’s reforms as an unremovable fact of history that must be included despite the problems this raises in relation to their beliefs in God’s justice. They scarcely account for the difficulties raised by the Josiah portrait — a good king who leads his people in repentance is cast aside without his promised reward and the people are punished for the sin of a long-dead king.
An Alternative
But what happens if we consider the likelihood that Josiah never undertook any reformist program: that possibility has been raised in recent posts (see above). What happens if we imagine the historical chronicle without any mention of Josiah’s reforms? What if the first historical rendering did not conclude with Josiah’s reform but, knowing nothing of that reform, proceeded to trace the final demise of Judah and its Babylonian captivity?
In other words, What happens if we treat the Josiah reform story as a late interpolation into the earlier doomsday narrative?
Before answering that question, notice that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting it to be a valid scenario.
Possibly the most striking evidence that the Josiah reforms were not written by the same deuteronomistic author/s responsible for the larger and final portrayal is its violation of a fundamental premise of Deuteronomy: that repentance leads to forgiveness and mercy. Up until the story of Josiah the consistent message we have read is that if kings turn away from the sins of their predecessors they can avoid God’s wrath. Josiah completely undid the sins of his predecessor Manasseh:
Manasseh (2 Kings 21:3-6)
Josiah (2 Kings 23:4, 8, 10, 12)
3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them.
4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.”
5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts.
6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. . . .
4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lordall the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem
8 Josiah . . . desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. . . .
10 He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek.. . .
12 He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. . . .
Scholars have written at length about the problems raised by the cruel fate of Josiah and the nation despite their wholehearted turning to Yahweh. It is often thought that among the exiles there emerged a crisis in understanding the ways of God. Rationalizations abound, but there is little evidence in any of the biblical writings to support these revisionist notions about the justice and will of God. Some scholars have seen in Josiah a foreshadowing of the death of a righteous messiah. The first difficulty with that interpretation is that in the story of the discovery of the book of the law the prophetess Huldah assures him he will die in peace. One more rightly must conclude that we have a text whose parts were written by authors “not talking to each other”.
There are other pointers to an interpolation. Immediately after the death of Josiah we read of the next king, Jehoahaz, that
He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done. (2 Ki 23:32)
Then of the following king, Jehoiakim, we read
And he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done. (2 Ki 23:37)
Did not the author recall that immediately prior to these kings was a predecessor who was the greatest and most righteous king of all since David? How could that author lump Josiah in with those who had done evil just like all the rest?
Further …. we have other writings referring to Josiah yet are oblivious to any righteousness associated with his reign. One of these is the book of the prophet Jeremiah and the other is that of Zephaniah.
The only prophecy that the book of Jeremiah directly dated “in the days of king Josiah” was Jer. 3.6-11, in which the idolatrous whoredoms of faithless Israel (Samaria) were said to have been exceeded by her unrepentant sister Judah. Additionally, the book of Jeremiah stated that Jeremiah’s prophecies and warnings over a period of 23 years from the thirteenth year of Josiah to the fourth year of Jehoiakim went entirely unheeded. The Jewish people were destined for punishment for their disobedience and their having violated the divine covenant. Repentance by the Jewish nation or its kings could have averted disaster, but none took place in the years leading up to the fall of Jerusalem. Indeed, the rise of Nebuchadnezzar was the direct result of the utter lack of repentance of the Jews during the preceding 23 years of Jeremiah’s prophetic activity (Jer. 25.1-14). It was precisely the utter lack of reform during those years that signaled doom for Jerusalem. There is thus not the slightest hint that Jeremiah’s author(s) were acquainted with changes in religious practices prompted by a purported discovery of the book of the law in Josiah’s eighteenth year. Quite the contrary, Jeremiah’s prophecies against Jerusalem and its rulers starting in the reign of Josiah were unremittingly negative and Jeremiah had nothing favorable to say of any of Judah’s kings after the time of Hezekiah. . . .
A speech in Jer. 44.2-30 to the exiles in Egypt contains significant literary parallels to the regnal evaluations of the last kings of Judah: the speech twice referred back to abominable sins committed in Judah and Jerusalem by their “fathers” and by “the kings of Judah” who made offerings to other gods, committed abominations, ignored the laws and statutes and did evil in the sight of Yahweh (Jer. 44.9-10, 21-24). This negative evaluation of the people of Judah, their ancestors and their kings forms a close verbal parallel to the negative evaluation of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim and their ancestors. Both painted a negative picture of the last kings of Judah and neither was compatible with Josiah or his generation having walked in obedience to the laws of Yahweh, especially in the matter of worship of other gods.
(Gmirkin, 15f, 29f)
and
A similar picture of Josiah may be inferred from the book of Zephaniah, whose prophecies were dated to “the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah” (Zeph. 1.1). Zephaniah predicted the coming of the day of the Lord to punish Jerusalem and make the land desolate, brought on as a result of idolatrous practices (Zeph. 1.4-6) and violence against the law (Zeph. 3.1-4). Jerusalem would not accept correction (Zeph. 1.4, 6; 3.1, 7); the kings’ sons and royal officials were singled out as sinners destined for punishment (Zeph. 1.8; 3.3). While these prophecies are connected to the figure of Zephaniah only in the Deuteronomistic superscription, one may reasonably infer that at the time the superscription was created, the Deuteronomistic editor knew nothing about the reign of Josiah that would rule out assigning these prophecies to his time. Specifically, the charges of Baal and Molech worship in Josiah’s days at Zeph. 1.4-5 appear to indicate that the Deuteronomistic editor was unaware of the cultic reforms of 2 Kgs 23.29
29 Attempts to harmonize Zephaniah and 2 Kings 23 typically overcome this difficulty by postulating that Zephaniah was written early in Josiah’s reign, prior to his initiation of cultic reforms. Such an approach assumes that both Zephaniah and 2 Kings 23 were both ancient, authentic witnesses to historical events under Josiah. It is preferable to maintain the literary integrity of both texts by acknowledging their dissonant content.
(Gmirkin, 16)
So it appears from evidence both within the book of 2 Kings and in writing outside 2 Kings that at some point there was no knowledge of the Josiah reforms currently in 2 Kings 23.
The alternative I am setting out here is entirely from Russell Gmirkin’s article published in the Journal of Higher Criticism over two years ago. It is available to all on his academia.edu page. You can read the full argument there.
Another piece of evidence that the 2 Kings 23 recital of Josiah’s reforms were not part of the original work is found in the comparison of Josiah with Moses. The comparison with David and the reminders of God’s promises to David is part of the Deuteronomistic language (see the insert box above and instances of the Davidic notices by the Deuteronomist in Weinfeld’s list at archive.org). Richard Elliot Friedman has detailed the allusions to Moses in Josiah’s portrayal, although note that Friedman is not himself arguing that the Josiah episode is an interpolation. He in fact concurs with Cross’s view (above) that the Josianic reform was the conclusion of the original book of Kings and argues that with Deuteronomy and references to Moses it formed an inclusio to the entire history. But the comparison of Josiah with Moses implicitly nullifies the comparison with David who cannot match the status of Moses. In the table below I have restricted the comparison of Josiah to the person of Moses and not to other passages relating to the law in Deuteronomy.
Moses
Josiah
“There did not arise a prophet again in Israel like Moses . . .” (Deut 34:10)
“There was no king like him before him turning to Yhwh with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the Torah of Moses, and after him none arose like him” (2 Kings 23:25). – REF acknowledges Jack R. Lundbom for observing this allusion
Moses burns and smashes the golden calf “thin as dust,” . . . and casts the dust on the wadi . . . (Deut 9:21).
At the site of Jeroboam’s golden calf of Bethel, Josiah smashes the [high place] and burns it, “and he made it thin as dust . . .” (2 Kgs 23:15).
Josiah burns the statue of Asherah which Manasseh had set in the Temple, at the wadi Kidron, “and he made it thin as dust . . .” (23:6). The phrase [“made it thin as dust”] occurs nowhere but in the passages noted here. Josiah also smashes the altars which his ancestors had made and casts their dust into the wadi (v 12).
I have illustrated other proposals with diagrams. Here is one that helps us visualize what the biblical record looks like if the Josiah reform narrative were never part of the original deuteronomistic history. The first writing did not include or conclude with Josiah’s reforms. Rather, Josiah was among the “bad kings” that marked Judah’s decline after the good Davidic king Hezekiah. The story outline of the final chapters of 2 Kings is thus:
The Davidic Kings keep David’s “lamp” alight until Hezekiah; after Hezekiah the new king, Manasseh, followed the ways of the wicked king Jeroboam of Israel; Manasseh and Jeroboam are alike (for the extensive parallels between these two figures see Gmirkin, p.34), and both lead their kingdoms to ruin: Jeroboam set Israel on the path to Assyrian captivity and Manasseh set Judah on the path to Babylonian captivity.
The discovery of the book of the law in the temple of God was included in this anecdote as a classic final doomsday warning. This is not only a common enough motif in ancient literature but it is also the explicit reason Moses had the book of the law placed in the ark of the covenant. Recall Deuteronomy 31:24-29 —
24 After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end,25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord:26 “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you.27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!28 Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to testify against them.29 For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord and arouse his anger by what your hands have made.”
The prophetess speaks the words of “a female Jeremiah” (Jeremiah 19:3, 11, 25:7, and 7:20 — the comparison is Christoph Levin’s – p.366) and echoes the above words of Moses. The purpose of the book was not to provoke repentance but was to testify mercilessly against king and nation:
15 She said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, 16This is what the Lord says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. 17Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by all the idols their hands have made, my anger will burn against this place and will not be quenched.’ (2 Kings 22:15-17)
Indeed, Russell Gmirkin’s case for the favourable presentation of Josiah is that it arose only after the completion of the book of Jeremiah:
It was only after the book of Jeremiah was completed that a new literary tradition arose in which Josiah was recast as a Deuteronomist reformer extraordinaire. Once both 2 Kgs 22-23 and the book of Jeremiah are understood as late literary accounts rather than archaic historical accounts, the problem of determining the relationship of the two becomes a simple matter of literary analysis rather than a torturous exercise in historical speculation, as in most past attempts to reconcile Jeremiah and Kings. It is only under the assumption that the reforms of Josiah described in 2 Kings and the prophecies of Jeremiah in Jer. 1-25 were both grounded in historical fact that a compelling need to reconcile the two literary traditions arises.
(Gmirkin, 21f)
Josiah’s reforms are an anomaly at many points:
they violate the theology of the Deuteronomist author who promised salvation to the repentant;
they are contradicted by independent works, Jeremiah and Zephaniah;
they are contradicted by the ensuing text in 2 Kings that refer to the sins of the last kings of Judah;
they present Josiah as a figure who stands beyond comparison with David (viz. with Moses);
the blame placed on Manasseh for the Babylonian captivity only makes sense if Josiah was originally among the “bad kings” — or if the author added an explanation that Judah apostatized after Josiah’s death (Gmirkin, 28);
the archaeological evidence indicates “business as usual” regarding worship of Asherah and idols at Josiah’s time.
I have skimmed the surface of the far more detailed arguments of Russell Gmirkin’s proposal by which the many problems of the Josiah report in 2 Kings 22-23 can be resolved. But one more salient feature must be added.
The book of the law that witnesses against king and nation is not the same one that Josiah acts upon. Or rather, the creator of the righteous Josiah had a different kind of book in mind from the one in the original judgement narrative. Rather than the book of the law that witnessed against the sins of the people, the author states that Josiah is acting on “the book of the covenant”. The covenant restored by Josiah culminated in a mass observance of the Passover and this aligns with the vignette of the Mosaic covenant at Sinai. God came down to show himself to Moses once more after he had broken the first stone tablets:
10 Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you.13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a]14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. . . .
17 “Do not make any idols.
18 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt. (Exodus 34)
As did Josiah…
Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.2 He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah . . . . He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.3 The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
21 The king gave this order to all the people: “Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” (2 Kings 23)
So we can add here a seventh point on which the Josianic reforms sit anomalously with the broader text: the book of the law with its pronouncement of curses has been redescribed as a book of covenant renewal.
How it happened
The original document consistently set forth the sins of the kings in the wake of Hezekiah’s son Manasseh. The discovery of the book of the law in the temple was a climactic moment pronouncing the ultimate curses that were about to fall upon the nation.
Another scribe, presumably unaware or only partially aware of that original writing, independently composed a biography of Josiah as an ideal king restoring a utopian covenant renewal with Yahweh.
When that scribe (or another closely associated one) learned of of the detail whereby the prophetess delivered the curses from the book of the law, an additional scenario was added in which Josiah repented and a new statement by the prophetess was added acknowledging Josiah’s righteousness.
When an editor decided to add this new idealistic biography of Josiah to 2 Kings, they made a few adjustments to “make it fit” between 2 Kings 22:1 and 2 Kings 23:verses but failed to create a smooth transition leading to his death and the subsequent notes about the wickedness of all kings in the wake of Manasseh.
A literary analysis of the closing chapters of 2 Kings thus provides evidence for multiple Deuteronomistic authors.
(Gmirkin, 87)
Conclusion
Russell Gmirkin is best known for his books setting forth the evidence for a Hellenistic provenance of the Hebrew Bible. If his arguments are sound then the traditional view that the book of Deuteronomy and a deuteronomistic history were authored or revised in the days of Josiah and soon after in the exilic period must be set aside.
An alternate model of Deuteronomistic authorial and editorial activity literary activity is to view it as the product of a relatively small group of Deuteronomist authors working contemporaneously and collaboratively. The interrelationship of [the original Josiah account and the subsequent somewhat clumsy Josiah reforms additions] already points to this conclusion. Given that the entire corpus of Deuteronomistic texts display awareness of Jerusalem’s fall and anticipate a return of exiles to the land of Judah, this would seemingly point to a date for this Deuteronomistic activity after ca. 450 BCE and conceivably as late as the early Hellenistic Era when we have the first external evidence for the book of Deuteronomy (the LXX of ca. 270 BCE), Kings (Demetrius the Chronographer, ca. 221-204 BCE) and Jeremiah (Dead Sea Scroll fragment 4QJera palaeographically dated to ca. 225-175 BCE). If we take these texts as roughly contemporary, this points to a date no later than ca. 270 BCE. The Deuteronomists should thus be situated within a relatively brief time span falling sometime within the period ca. 450-ca. 270 BCE.
(Gmirkin, 95)
Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Friedman, Richard Elliot. “From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2.” In Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith, edited by Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson, 167–92. Winona Lake, Ind. : Eisenbrauns, 1981. http://archive.org/details/traditionsintran0000unse.
Gmirkin, Russell. “The Manasseh and Josiah Redactions of 2 Kings 21-25.” Journal of Higher Criticism, January 1, 2022. https://www.academia.edu/82084563/The_Manasseh_and_Josiah_Redactions_of_2_Kings_21_25.
Levin, Christoph. “Joschija Im Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk.” Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 96, no. 3 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1515/zatw.1984.96.3.351.
Noth, Martin. Deuteronomistic History. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981 [1943].
Provan, Iain W. Hezekiah and the Books of Kings: A Contribution to the Debate about the Composition of the Deuteronomistic History. Berlin New York: De Gruyter, 1988.
Weinfeld, Moshe. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School. Eisenbrauns, 1992.
Weippert, Helga. “Die ‘Deuteronomistischen’ Beurteilungen Der Könige von Israel Und Juda Und Das Problem Der Redaktion Der Königsbücher.” Biblica 53, no. 3 (1972): 301–39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42610051
If the Old Testament books were not written before the Hellenistic era as a number of scholars have argued and as I have posted about for some years now, why would their authors have chosen a very favourable Persian empire as the narrative setting of the restoration of Judea after the Babylonian exile? We know Persia and the Greek states were enemies, after all.
One may object that the narrators had little choice but to choose the Persian period for the release of the Babylonian exiles simply because the Persians did historically replace the Babylonian empire and they were historically tolerant towards other religions. It would have been difficult to place the return from captivity as late as Hellenistic times if the story were to have any credibility at all. But why depict the Persians as being so benevolent towards the Judeans? The account of the exodus from Egypt proved that one could create a high drama in a tale of escape to freedom if one introduced a hostile ruler. Besides, the Persians were not in fact as magnanimous as the Bible has portrayed them. In reality, the Persians continued the mass deportations that Assyrians are infamous for.
* Nabonidus Chronicle III.12–14 (Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, p. 109): . . . “In the month Tašrītu (27 September–26 October 539), when Cyrus did battle at Opis on [the bank of] the Tigris against the army of Akkad, the people of Akkad retreated. He (Cyrus) plundered and killed the people.” — (Van der Spek 255)
Cyrus’ clemency towards the subdued nations must not be exaggerated. The massacre among the Babylonians after the battle of Opis has already been mentioned.* The Nabonidus Chronicle mentions how he looted the Median capital Ecbatana after he had captured it. In 547, Cyrus killed the king of Lydia and Lydians, Phrygians, and Urartians were probably deported to Nippur.185
185 The Murashû archive provides evidence that deportees from Lydia, Phrygia, and Urartu were settled in Nippur. . . .
Later Persian kings also deported people.
(Van der Spek 256, 258)
Similarly for Cyrus’s “religious tolerance”:
The idea of Cyrus as the champion of religious tolerance rests on three fundamentally erroneous assumptions. In the first place, it rests on an anachronistic perception of ancient political discourse. In antiquity, no discourse on religious tolerance existed. Religion was deeply embedded in society, in political structures, in daily life. . . .
Secondly, it is too facile to characterize Cyrus’ rule as one that had ‘tolerance’ as its starting point. Although it is indeed possible to describe his policy as positively pragmatic or even mild in some respects, it is also clear that Cyrus was a normal conqueror with the usual policy of brutal warfare and harsh measures. . . .
Thirdly, the comparison with Assyrian policy is mistaken in its portrayal of that policy as principally different from Cyrus’. . . .
(Van der Spek 235)
There is no contemporary evidence outside the Bible testifying to a Persian policy of deliverance for the Judeans. The archaeological evidence is clear: during the Persian era both Judea and Samaria were polytheistic societies (Yahweh being the chief god but not the only god) and sacred sites were multiple (not centralized in Jerusalem). The previous link will take you to several explanatory posts. See also the post on Yonatan Adler’s research demonstrating the “late origins of Judaism“. The Persians were no more tolerant of the Jewish religion than any other ancient power.
Cyrus proclaims end of Babylonian captivity. Image from MediaStorehouse
Yet Persia holds pride of place in the narrative background to the religion of the Bible.
According to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Persian rulers from Cyrus to Artaxerxes allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, and helped with the building of the second temple. Jean Soler believes that this era saw the ‘invention of monotheism’ as the influence of Persian religion would have led the Jews to consider their regional god, Yahweh, as a unique god who alone created the universe. Soler thinks this invention was made after the writing of the Bible, when it became a national tradition. I disagree with Soler’s position as it still speaks from the perspective of religious evolutionism in that it fails to understand that the Bible is not a primitive literary work; rather, it was written directly under highly philosophical influences—mainly that of Plato. Moreover, this evolution of religion towards monotheism is actually part of the biblical narrative; in a world where polytheism and sin ruled, a pious people and their ancestors came to discover the only god. Once again, interpretation is a new version of the myth. Most scholars still paraphrase the divine revelation, always later in chronology, but the Persian era is kept as the ultimate end-point. (Wajdenbaum 38)
The authors of Chronicles, Isaiah and Ezra certainly give the Persian king Cyrus the highest praise as God’s anointed and as the restorer of the Judeans to their “homeland”. I wrote about the origin of the Cyrus-Messiah myth not so long ago. But if we accept the influence of Hellenistic literature (Apollonius of Rhodes, Berossus, Euripides, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, Manetho, Plato, Xenophon . . . . ) on the Pentateuch and other biblical texts, the question inevitably arises: why do the Persians get such good press?
Personally, I found myself wondering if Persia was chosen as the matrix for a resurgence of biblical religion in an effort by some biblical authors to implicitly rebut their intellectual captor, Hellenism. But no, the answer is surely simpler than that. Returning once again to Plato’s Laws (a work that others have seen as highly influential on both biblical narratives and laws), we read:
ATHENIAN: Hear me, then: there are two mother forms of states from which the rest may be truly said to be derived; and one of them may be called monarchy and the other democracy: the Persians have the highest form of the one, and we of the other; almost all the rest, as I was saying, are variations of these. Now, if you are to have liberty and the combination of friendship with wisdom, you must have both these forms of government in a measure; the argument emphatically declares that no city can be well governed which is not made up of both.
CLEINIAS: Impossible.
. . . .
ATHENIAN: Hear, then:−−There was a time when the Persians had more of the state which is a mean between slavery and freedom. In the reign of Cyrus they were freemen and also lords of many others: the rulers gave a share of freedom to the subjects, and being treated as equals, the soldiers were on better terms with their generals, and showed themselves more ready in the hour of danger. And if there was any wise man among them, who was able to give good counsel, he imparted his wisdom to the public; for the king was not jealous, but allowed him full liberty of speech, and gave honour to those who could advise him in any matter. And the nation waxed in all respects, because there was freedom and friendship and communion of mind among them.
CLEINIAS: That certainly appears to have been the case.
(See also the R.G. Bury translation along with book and line citation at perseus.tufts)
The very notion that in the time of Cyrus the Persians possessed the purest form of an ideal monarchy, the type of monarchy that could confidently give freedom to its subjects, was a myth perpetuated in Plato’s Laws. Another genre introduced in the Hellenistic era was the biographical “novel”, such as we find in the Book of Nehemiah. Should one further be reminded of the freedom with which Nehemiah (and later, Esther) conversed with remarkably friendly Persian kings. Those later incumbents to the throne fell far short of Cyrus’s beneficence, of course, and Plato went on to explain why such an ideal could not be maintained.
(If I have read this same point somewhere in work by Philippe Wajdenbaum or Russell Gmirkin I do not recall doing so, although both scholars are responsible for my train of thought and interpreting this passage in Plato as a rationale for Persia’s key role in the narrative of the Judean restoration.)
Continuing in Laws, Plato has his Athenian speaker explain why later Persian kings fell short of the ideal said to be embodied in Cyrus. While Cyrus was busy fighting to build his empire his sons were left to the care and instruction of women and eunuchs. This was sufficient to explain the flawed characters of Cyrus’s successors. Kingship ideals were somewhat restored under Darius but that was because Darius had not been subjected to a “royal education”.
ATHENIAN: [Cyrus] had possessions of cattle and sheep, and many herds of men and other animals, but he did not consider that those to whom he was about to make them over were not trained in his own calling, which was Persian; for the Persians are shepherds−−sons of a rugged land, which is a stern mother, and well fitted to produce a sturdy race able to live in the open air and go without sleep, and also to fight, if fighting is required …. [Cyrus] did not observe that his sons were trained differently; through the so−called blessing of being royal they were educated in the Median fashion by women and eunuchs, which led to their becoming such as people do become when they are brought up unreproved. And so, after the death of Cyrus, his sons, in the fulness of luxury and licence, took the kingdom, and first one slew the other because he could not endure a rival; and, afterwards, the slayer himself, mad with wine and brutality, lost his kingdom through the Medes and the Eunuch, as they called him, who despised the folly of Cambyses.
CLEINIAS: So runs the tale, and such probably were the facts.
ATHENIAN: Yes; and the tradition says, that the empire came back to the Persians, through Darius and the seven chiefs.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: Let us note the rest of the story. Observe, that Darius was not the son of a king, and had not received a luxurious education. . . . he made laws upon the principle of introducing universal equality in the order of the state, and he embodied in his laws the settlement of the tribute which Cyrus promised,−−thus creating a feeling of friendship and community among all the Persians, and attaching the people to him with money and gifts. Hence his armies cheerfully acquired for him countries as large as those which Cyrus had left behind him. Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes; and he again was brought up in the royal and luxurious fashion. Might we not most justly say: ‘O Darius, how came you to bring up Xerxes in the same way in which Cyrus brought up Cambyses, and not to see his fatal mistake?’ For Xerxes, being the creation of the same education, met with much the same fortune as Cambyses; and from that time until now there has never been a really great king among the Persians, although they are all called Great. And their degeneracy is not to be attributed to chance, as I maintain; the reason is rather the evil life which is generally led by the sons of very rich and royal persons; for never will boy or man, young or old, excel in virtue, who has been thus educated.
If that story of an ideal warrior king (and former shepherd) having the misfortune to see less worthy sons engage in bloody strife sounds familiar, it might be because you are aware of the story of King David — a narrative that another scholar, John Van Seters, believes owes much of its detail to the history of the Persian court. One might further wonder if we can focus that provenance a little more sharply by suggesting it was the Persian court as interpreted through Hellenistic ideals.
If Plato could imagine the Persian monarchy as a kind of antithetical ideal foil to Athens, a monarchical ideal that granted liberty to former captives, and one whose kings had the self-assurance to encourage discourse with their subject people, one might conclude that nothing would have been more natural than for Hellenistic authors to find a respectful place for Cyrus and at least a few subsequent (not quite so perfect) Persian monarchs who represented “the highest form” of the alternative to the government of Athens.
Plato. “Laws.” Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The Internet Classics Archive. Accessed May 18, 2024. http://classics.mit.edu//Plato/laws.3.iii.html.
Spek, R.J. van der. “Cyrus the Great, Exiles and Foreign Gods.” In Extraction & Control: Studies in Honor of Matthew W. Stolper: 68, edited by Charles E. Jones, Christopher Woods, Michael Kozuh, and Wouter F. M. Henkelman, 233–64. Chicago, Illinois: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014.
Wajdenbaum, Philippe. Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. London ; Oakville: Equinox, 2011.
So let’s resume my specific responses to criticisms raised on the earlywritings forum over the question of the Hellenistic era being the earliest setting for the Pentateuch and other books of the Bible. (I am posting my responses here after discovering that on that forum some of my responses were being removed without notice or explanation.)
I have now come to the moment when the moderator (Peter Kirby) of what was designated an Academic Discussion part of the forum entered. His initial post was lengthy and it took me quite a number of readings before I thought I understood the main points clearly enough before responding. But I’ll focus here on what was clear.
Gulliver discovers Laputa, the flying island (illustration by J. J. Grandville)
From that remark I assumed that the commenter must have known the arguments I was referring to and disagreed with the claim that they were circular. But in the course of the discussion I learned that he did not know what those arguments were and simply assumed I must have been falsely claiming they were circular. The fact that I had alluded to the critique of circularity itself came from scholarly criticisms was no doubt inadvertently overlooked.
I found myself in a confusing situation. Here I was being asked to reword arguments (that I later learned were unknown to the commenter) in such a way that they were no longer logically invalid.
In effect, the daunting challenge that I was being confronted with was this:
Take the following argument:
The biblical narrative of King Josiah strongly indicates that Deuteronomy made its first appearance in the time of King Josiah
We conclude this from the fact that the story of Josiah appears to have been written to prove to readers that King Josiah learned of the laws in Deuteronomy and proceeded to act on them. Many passages in the Book of Kings reflect Deuteronomistic language so it looks like Deuteronomy was a key text motivating the author of the story of King Josiah.
Therefore we conclude that the author of the narrative had historical sources about these events and used them to create his narrative
The narrative is therefore based on historical events that came to be known to the author although we concede that the author put his own spin on the events.
Now I was given a monumental challenge. I was being asked to accept that the above line of “logic” was not credible (to this much I agree!) — that I was being asked to grant that biblical scholarship would not be so crudely fallacious (to that I cannot agree, having seen so many, many instances of biblical scholarship arguments based on fallacies and ignorance) — and that I was being asked instead to find a way to re-present the arguments for Deuteronomy being known to Josiah in a way that was not circular.
If only I could inform readers of the arguments in a way that did not make them look fallacious!
Now I fully agree with the principle that one should always construct one’s opponents’ arguments in as strong a manner as possible before attempting to address them, but how does one rearrange a circle into a straight line and still claim one is addressing the original point?
And what should I make of countless scholarly volumes that at some point zero in on critiquing a logical fallacy (most commonly circularity) of arguments being bandied about in the field?
My dilemma was that I had read and analysed the arguments of the Documentary Hypothesis (or let’s keep it simple and limit it to the discussion of Josiah and the Book of Deuteronomy), AND I had read the observations of scholarly critics of those arguments, and now was being asked to create new arguments for Deuteronomy being known in the time of Josiah that were not circular.
I felt like I was being asked to perform a magic trick even though I knew I was not a magician. If the only arguments that have been presented in the literature are indeed circular, how could I re-word them so they would not be circular?
If such a challenge was coming from one of the well-known trolls on the site I would have brushed it aside. But the moderator had some kind of reputation for being reasonably knowledgeable and intelligent — and he even said he wanted me to take his criticism in the presumably well intentioned spirit in which it was offered.
I do have to give him credit, though. He really was kindly condescending enough to try to help me out and to get me to “be reasonable” and join his world in the land of Gulliver’s Laputans.
It took a little more discussion — one that devolved into where I found myself fending off a barrage of presumptuous psycho-analysis in which he attempted to persuade me to acknowledge my “hidden psychological identity needs” that were propelling me to make the arguments in the way I was — before it finally dawned on me that I had misguidedly been knocking on the gates of Laputa.
Thus it has ever been the way, has it not? Guardians will always be there to fiercely defend the defined limits of allowable discussion and criticism. And the weapon they will always pull out is the pop-psychological analysis, otherwise known more politely and generically as “ad hominem”.
The Cyrus Cylinder is not evidence that the Persian king Cyrus commissioned a return of Judeans to restore their temple (as explained in the previous post) but it does show us why the biblical authors proclaimed Cyrus to be the “anointed one” as their central character in their mythical narrative of that return.
In the book of Isaiah (a work that claims itself to have been written around about 700 BCE) we read that God foretold that 200 years hence he would use a king named Cyrus to restore the Judeans (who since 700 BCE had been taken captive into Babylonia) back to their homeland. The author of the “book of Isaiah” boasted that God knew 200 years in advance that the name of this ordained king would be “Cyrus”.
This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut: 2 I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. 3 I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. 4 For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. (Isa 45:1-4 NIV)
I suggest that the biblical author was very likely inspired by the propaganda of the priests of the god Marduk. Their god, Marduk, according to what was written in that famous Cylinder, prophesied that a king by the name of Cyrus would arrive as a savior and restorer of his temple cult:
Marduk examined, inspected the totality of all his countries. He looked for a just prince to his heart’s content, who holds his hand (in the new year’s ceremony). Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan, he told his name, he announced his name to rule over the whole universe. He threw the Gute country, the totality of the ummân-manda before his feet. (Harmatta 226)
or in another translation of the cuneiform tablet:
He [Marduk] scanned and looked [through] all the countries, searching for a righteous ruler willing to lead [him] [in the annual procession]. [Then] he pronounced the name of Cyrus, king of Anshan, declared him to be[come] the ruler of all the world … (Wiesehöfer 45)
Was the god Marduk emulating Yahweh in calling Cyrus “by name” for his mission or was it the other way around?
But why was Cyrus the chosen figure in the first place? If the biblical accounts were written in the Hellenistic period — a view that I have been supporting in recent posts — how do we explain their interest in the Persian king Cyrus?
The answer to that question comes from Hellenistic era works themselves. Or at least it comes from Greek works that surely became better known throughout the “Near East” in the wake of Alexander’s conquests.
We have some evidence that there were popular stories told about Mesopotamian kings by word of mouth, folk-tales if you will, throughout the centuries.
That the non-literate public not only told, but also shaped tales about the past is, I think, shown by the curious relationship between the stories of the young Sargon of Akkad and Cyrus the Great. (Drews 388)
The stories, Drews points out, that are told about a much earlier (by centuries) king Sargon of Assyria are almost an exact prefiguring of stories that came to be told about Cyrus —
Both were abandoned by their parents
Both were raised by lowly parents and became gardeners
Both became cupbearers to the king
Both replaced the king they served
Robert Drews reasons that the fact that the same story can be told about two different figures in different times indicates that the story was passed on by oral tradition. If the details such as the identity of the hero had been a matter exclusively of written record it is hard to understand how such a detail could be changed. Drews further points to “the same story” told by an even earlier Mesopotamian hero, Lugalzagisi. The oral tradents changed the name to suit each new situation.
Let’s come forward to the Hellenistic era, or at least to Greek authors who were already “classics” by the time of Alexander’s conquests.
Xenophon was a Greek commander of mercenaries who had traversed through the Persian empire. In one of his works (written around 370 BCE — circa 160 years after the time of Cyrus) he wrote what was essentially a philosophical treatise on the qualities of an ideal ruler. The person who embodied all of his ideal attributes was Cyrus. Though his account of what became known as “The Education of Cyrus” is more philosophical and idealistic than historical-factual, he did note that
Of Cyrus himself, even now in the songs and stories of the East the record lives that nature made him most fair to look upon, and set in his heart the threefold love of man, of knowledge, and of honour. He would endure all labours, he would undergo all dangers, for the sake of glory. Blest by nature with such gifts of soul and body, his memory lives to this day in the mindful heart of ages. . . . (Xenophon, trans. Dakyns 5)
We can conclude that popular story-telling about Cyrus continued into Greek (Hellenistic) times.
What of the reality, though? What did Cyrus do that might have lent some credence to such stories? After all, after Cyrus defeated the Babylonian army (outside the city of Babylon) at Opis, …..
The Persian victor [i.e. Cyrus] followed up his massacre at Opis by receiving the surrender of Sippar and sending his general Gobryas to invest Babylon, where the defeated Babylonian king, Nabonidus, was taken prisoner. In the calm following battle and defeat, the Babylonian populace received Cyrus formally into the great capital as their new king. Cyrus accepted the surrender, cast himself in the role of divinely blessed ruler of Babylon and expressed it through sanctioning civic and sacred building-works, authorising offerings to the gods and proclaiming formally the restoration of destroyed sanctuaries and the return of their peoples. . . . Such public proclamations were part of the traditional rhetoric of Babylonian conquerors after triumph …: they guaranteed continuity to the defeated and provided a way for the local élite to collaborate with the new rulers ….
Cyrus’ achievements can only be described as spectacular: in less than thirty years, he brought a vast territory under the control of a kingdom which, at the beginning of his reign, had been tiny. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist, able to move rapidly across enormous distances, take his opponents by surprise, and make calculated use of brutal and placatory gestures. The Persians celebrated his fame in song and story . . . . His astonishing success led rapidly to the creation of innumerable popular stories, which obscured his true background: he was presented variously as the grandson of the Median king, Astyages, exposed by his jealous grandfather, brought up by humble herding folk, ultimately identified and eventually returned to his parents (Herodotus 1.107—108), and as the son of poverty stricken parents who worked his way up at the Median court and eventually overthrew the Medes . . . . Other stories abounded, according to Herodotus. They are typical of the tales told about culture-heroes and founders of great empires (e.g. Sargon of Agade … , Moses, Romulus and Remus). (Kuhrt 1995: 659-661)
I have referred to the Greek author Xenophon. Herodotus also related heroic tales of Cyrus — how he was divinely ordained to inherit universal power despite human attempts to thwart his rise. Another Greek author who wrote of Cyrus as a divinely blessed child and triumphant ruler was Ctesias, a Greek physician who tended the Persian royal family in Babylon in the 490s BCE.
It was in the Greek literature that Cyrus stood out as an obvious candidate to fulfil the retrospective role of an ideal ruler chosen by God to fulfill his
The Greek doctor, Ctesias, who worked at the Persian court in the late fifth to early fourth century,2 has Cyrus start life in the lowest stratum of Persian society, working himself up to the position of royal cup bearer, and eventually overthrowing the Median realm . . . .
2 There is now a growing consensus that Ctesias’ account reflects Persian oral traditions….
(Kuhrt 2007: 108)
Returning to the original testimony of Cyrus, moreover, we find another strong act that made him a most likely “saviour” candidate. The Cyrus Cylinder inscription borrows a line from the Babylonian creation epic (Enuma Elish) to present Cyrus as nothing less than a restorer of the intended order of the creation of the universe:
Without battle and fighting he [i.e. Marduk] let him [i.e. Cyrus] enter Babylon. He [i.e. Marduk] saved his city Babylon from its oppression.
. . . [N]obody should doubt that what is being described here is not a national disaster but a process of salvation (et ̧e-ru = ‘to save’). However, there is much more to the passage than meets the eye. As Hanspeter Schaudig has pointed out, we have here a thinly-veiled allusion to a line from tablet vi of Enu-ma eliš, the Babylonian ‘Epic of Creation’, as it is often called. The relevant passage comes near the end of Enu-ma eliš and forms part of the solemn list of Marduk’s names. It sums up the defeat of Tiamat …, the creation of the world … and the building of Babylon …. The Persian takeover, in the allusive words of the Cyrus Cylinder, becomes part of this grand cosmic drama. Far from disrupting the familiar patterns of Babylonian thought and culture, it presents itself as the moment of ultimate restoration, not only of the city’s political and religious institutions, but of the cosmic order more generally.
In the Cyrus Cylinder, then, the Persians cast their conquest of Babylon as the final act in the cosmic drama which, to Babylonian readers, guaranteed the very existence of their universe.24
24 In case it be objected that the Cylinder was a building inscription and cannot therefore have had any real impact on Babylonian audiences, we need to remember that archive copies were kept of important building inscriptions, and that the extant text of the Cyrus Cylinder may have been just such a copy: Schaudig (2001), 46. More generally, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1991), 74 emphasize the public nature of major building inscriptions such as the Cyrus Cylinder.
(Haubold 2007: 51f)
In another Babylonian text from the time of ….. Cyrus is said to have followed in the footsteps of Nebuchadnezzar insofar as his piety in restoring Babylon and the cult of its god to the highest prominence. What could a comparison with Nebuchadnezzar mean? Nebuchadnezzar, in Greek culture, was on a par with the god-man hero Heracles. Perhaps not quite as grandiose as a Restorer of the Cosmic Order, but a powerful figure in the minds of Greeks and others nonetheless.
The Babylonian record comparing Cyrus with Nebuchadnezzar: . . . for the inhabitants of Babylon, Cyrus declared the state of peace. . . . Big cattle he slaughtered with the ax, he slaughtered many aslu-sheep, incense he put on the censer, the regular offerings for the Lord of Lords he ordered increased, he constantly prayed to the gods, prostrated on his face. To act righteously is dear to his heart. To repair the city of Babylon he conceived the idea and he himself took up hoe, spade and water basket and began to complete the wall of Babylon. The original plan of Nebuchadnezzar the inhabitants executed with a willing heart. (Livius.org)
[W]hen Cyrus marched into Babylon, the priests of Marduk declared him a new Nebuchadnezzar in the so-called Persian Verse Account, a pamphlet against Nabonidus. It was not necessary to be of Babylonian descent/come from Babylon in order to impersonate Nebuchadnezzar. It was rather the other way round: Cyrus became legitimately Babylonian by acting like a new Nebuchadnezzar. . . . . (Haubold 2022: 80)
And how did Nebuchadnezzar act — at least according to Hellenistic writers?
Nebuchadnezzar’s importance as a model king would have been evident to any Babylonian readers of Berossus: for them, he was a national hero. It would have been less obvious to Greeks, who could read about him neither in Ctesias nor Herodotus. Things changed under the Seleucids, with Megasthenes comparing Nebuchadnezzar favourably to Heracles.32
32 FGrH 715 F1. Megasthenes’ claim may owe something to traditions about Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Tyre, imagined as the city of Heracles/Melqart.
(Haubold 2007: 112)
I don’t have the Jacoby fragment cited but there is the following freely available online (Megasthenes was a Hellenistic author around 300 BC):
Abydenus, in his history of the Assyrians, has preserved the following fragment of Megasthenes, who says: That Nabucodrosorus, having become more powerful than Hercules, invaded Libya and Iberia, and when he had rendered them tributary, he extended his conquests over the inhabitants of the shores upon the right of the sea.
Cyrus in the minds of Hellenistic authors and audiences was clearly a prime candidate to be a Messianic figure ordained to restore the Judeans to their “homeland”.
Subsequent Persian kings were only represented decline. Plato’s great myth of Atlantis is widely interpreted as referring to the once-great Persian empire that only declined in its glories and virtues after Cyrus. The Persian monarch Xerxes is even depicted by Herodotus as reviving the ancient Trojan War when he wrote of the king staging a visit to Troy on the eve of his march into Greece:
As has long been recognized, the visit of Xerxes to Troy was a carefully planned piece of propaganda, designed to cast the king as the champion of Troy in the eyes of a Greek audience. . . . But . . . it is not difficult to see that what he heard, or was rumoured to have heard, was an imperial version of the epic past to match the prophecies [that] had ‘shown’ the king how he could conquer Greece. . . . .
. . . the overall message was clear enough: Xerxes had declared himself the avenger of Priam.
the invaders kept alive the idea that their campaign was a continuation of the Trojan War. (Haubold 2007: 55f)
The Trojan War in Greek minds marked the time that separated the present word of mortals from an earlier time when humans and gods directly interacted, even mating and bearing heroic offspring. If Xerxes was threatening to overturn the will of the gods that had long been decreed, Cyrus, the first Persian king, had “saved” a corrupted world and restored the will of the supreme god by fulfilling the edicts of Marduk, the god who had called him “by name” — just as Isaiah declared that Yahweh would do.
One will not be wrong in thinking that the overall tenor of these recent posts is that they suggest a probability that the Bible originated as a work of the Hellenistic era.
Drews, Robert. “Sargon, Cyrus and Mesopotamian Folk History.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33, no. 4 (1974): 387–93.
Harmatta, J. “The Literary Patterns of the Babylonian Edict of Cyrus.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 19 (1971): 217–31.
Haubold, Johannes. “Berossus.” In The Romance between Greece and the East, edited by Tim Whitmarsh and Stuart Thomson, 105–16. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Haubold, Johannes. “Memory and Resistance in the Seleucid World: The Case of Babylon.” In Cultures of Resistance in the Hellenistic East, edited by Paul J. Kosmin and Ian S. Moyer, 77–94. Oxford ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK, 2022.
Haubold, Johannes. “Xerxes’ Homer.” In Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium, edited by Emma Bridges, Edith Hall, and P. J. Rhodes, 47–63. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kuhrt, Amélie. “Ancient Near Eastern History: The Case of Cyrus the Great of Persia.” In Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, edited by Williamson, Illustrated edition., 107–27. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press UK, 2007.
Kuhrt, Amélie. The Ancient near East c. 3000-330 BC: Vol II. London: Routledge, 1995.
Wiesehöfer, Josef. Ancient Persia. 4th edition. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001.
Xenophon. The Education of Cyrus. Translated by Henry Graham Dakyns. London: J.M. Dent, 1914.
In my book collection I have a massive (both in size and weight) Reader’s Digest 1971 version of the King James 1611 translation of the Bible. On page 377, the second page into the Book of Ezra, is this image and caption:
Now these are the children of the province that went up out of the captivity, of those … whom Nebuchadnez’zar… had carried away unto Babylon, and came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city. Ezra 2:1
The page has other images and captions:
King Cyrus of Persia proved to be a benevolent conqueror after defeating the Babylonians in 538 B.C. He refrained from slaughtering or enslaving his foes, and issued a proclamation allowing the exiles from Judah and other countries to return to their homelands. A similar decree of Cyrus, shown at the top of this page, was found at Babylon. In it, Cyrus tells of rebuilding the temples of his vanquished enemies and restoring the people to their dwelling places. After Cyrus’ decree the exiled Jews organized their return to Judah. Those who chose to stay in Babylonia aided those who returned with “the freewill offering for the house of God” (Ezra 1:4), which must have included silver vessels much like the Persian bowl [left], excavated in Palestine. . . . .
I am sure I am not alone in having wished that the cited Cyrus Cylinder really did say what the Biblical verse placed adjacent to it said. There was always a slight discomfort over the fact that it was limited, exclusively, to a restoration in Babylon.
An ancient history textbook widely used right through to the mid 1960s introduced students to Cyrus thus:
[The author of the Psalm 137] greeted the sudden rise of Cyrus the Persian with joy. All kings, he taught, were but instruments in the hands of Yahveh, who through the Persians would overthrow the Chaldeans and return the Hebrews to their land. . . .
When the victorious Persian king Cyrus entered Babylon, the Hebrew exiles there greeted him as their deliverer. His triumph gave the Hebrews a Persian ruler. With great humanity the Persian kings allowed the exiles to return to their native land. Some had prospered in Babylonia and did not care to return, but at different times enough of them went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city on a very modest scale and to restore the temple. (Breasted 233)
Undergraduates in the later 1960s who used the Scramuzza and MacKendrick text read the following:
Characteristically and sensationally, Cyrus liberated the men and gods who had been war prisoners. He sent most of them back home, including some of the Jews . . . . (110)
The myth has known no bounds….
Soudavar, Abolala. “Cyrus, Ben Gurion and Ben Zion.” https://www.academia.edu/34828896/Cyrus_Ben_Gurion_and_Ben_Zion.
amazon ad
Was there a Mass Return of Judeans from Babylonian exile?
If the concept of a mass return from Exile were correct, then
(1) hints of it should be present in official Persian documents;
(2) traces of it should be observable in the archaeological record of Persian-Period Yehud; and
(3) a dramatic demographic decrease of Judeans in Mesopotamia should be traceable.
(Becking 7)
1 Persian Documents regarding a Return from Exile
If the mass return from Exile was a historical fact, then one might expect traces of it in official documents from Mesopotamia or Persia. The Cyrus cylinder has been interpreted as showing a liberal policy of respect toward other religions — as showing that Cyrus’s policy toward the descendants of the Judean exiles was not unique but fitted the pattern of his rule (e.g., Bickerman 1946; Ackroyd 1968: 140-41; Weinberg 1992: 40; Young 1992: 1231-32). Amelia Kuhrt, however, has made clear that the inscription is of a propagandistic and stereotypical nature (Kuhrt 1983).
Recent posts have focussed on the case for the earliest books of the Bible being composed as late as the Hellenistic era, that is less than 300 years before Christ. The longstanding conventional wisdom has understood the first biblical narratives go back to the time of King David (around 1000 BCE) or at least to the time of the Babylonian captivity (circa 600 BCE) and that much editing of these earlier works and creation of some new ones all took place under the benign rule of the Persians (late 500s through to 330 BCE).
The very idea of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament covering creation, the patriarchs, the exodus, the giving of law) and later books depicting the conquest of Canaan, the united kingdom of David and Solomon not having at least some roots in the historical past (however much real events may have been mythologized) of the “Near East” is very hard to accept for many of us. A long held assumption has been that the thought of the Near East is in many ways so opposed to Greek or Hellenistic thought and intellectual and ethical culture that it is inconceivable to imagine the early books of the Old Testament being products of Hellenistic times and culture. Recent posts here have attempted to demonstrate that such conventional assumptions need to be questioned. New scholarship has been drawing attention to a symbiosis between Hellenism and Near Eastern cultures and I will be addressing more of that work in future posts.
Meanwhile, it is surely necessary to understand as much as possible about the various settings and cultures that are being proposed as the birthplace of the Bible. In this post I am continuing to write up what I have been learning about Persian era Samaria and Judah (known as the Persian province Yehud). Do we find in either of these places the conditions that make the production of the biblical works likely?
The beginning of Persian era Palestine
The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and the southern kingdom appears to have come to its end at the hands of the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The long term results of the respective conquests were very different from each other. Let’s compare how each region fared in the wake of their respective conquests.
I have adapted the Persian era map from Michael Wolffsohn’s Whose Holy Land? to include the eighth century BCE site of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (discussed below), the site of Wadi Daliyeh and the estimated “borders” of Yehud according to archaeological finds (blue line based on article and map by Frevel and Pyschny). The original map shows the Yehud according to Ezra-Nehemiah.
Samaria from Assyrian conquest into the Persian period
In the north, the city of Samaria was made the provincial capital of the new Assyrian province. The entire region of Samaria did suffer significant population decline in the wake of Assyrian deportations of much of the population but the archaeological evidence also informs us that there was significant continuity of settlement. Assyrian destruction was not all encompassing. Large areas remained untouched, perhaps the result of surrendering rather than attempting resistance. New ethnic groups were brought in by the Assyrians but these coexisted with indigenous populations. There was no population replacement. After the Assyrian conquest much of (northern) Samaria continued to increase in population and prosperity (Knoppers 2004). Major recovery for southern Samaria had to await the Hellenistic era (Knoppers 2006).
This growth continued into the Persian period. Newly built major and minor roads no doubt facilitated this expansion:
The Achaemenid [= Persian] Period witnesses an unprecedented number of sites in the northern region, suggesting that this was a time of considerable demographic expansion. . . . Almost all of these Iron Age [= kingdom of Israel before 722 BCE] rural sites exhibit continuity into the Persian Period . . . . The western area of Samaria was intensively settled during the Achaemenid era. (Knoppers 2006: 268)
The city of Samaria itself was in the forefront of this expansion:
In Samaria, unlike in Jerusalem, one finds a fundamental continuity of settlement from the beginning of the Iron III period to the Achaemenid era. . . .
The areas around the town of Samaria were thickly settled during the Achaemenid era. . . .
The city of Samaria prospered and grew during much of the Persian era. . . . Stern (2001: 424) thinks, in fact, that Samaria was one of the most important urban areas in all of Palestine during the Achaemenid era. (Knoppers 2006: 270f)
The city’s population and material growth peaked in the Persian period with descendants of deportees from Assyrian times returning:
Surveys indicate that about half of the Iron II Israelite settlements in Manasseh, including the city of Samaria, continued to exist into the Persian period . . . ; in the Persian Period the area around Samaria was more densely populated than at any other time in history . . .
It also appears that deported Israelites or their descendants later returned to their homeland in significant numbers (Barmash 2005: 229-231). (Leith 273f)
Judah/Yehud from Babylonian conquest into the Persian period
The destruction of Judah by the Babylonians was punitive and “fateful” — in unmistakable contrast with how Samaria fared at the hands of the Assyrians.
The immediate results of the Babylonian conquest of Judah are clear. Much of the country, especially in the west, south, and east and in the immediate environs of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the foreign invaders. Archaeological excavations at many Judean sites show evidence of destruction that scholars have related to Nebuchadrezzar’s campaigns. Evidence for destruction extends from Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish) in the west, to Arad and environs in the south, to En-gedi and Jericho in the east. This is not to suggest, however, that every Judean city was left in ruins. Primarily those cities that served as fortress towns and where anti-Babylonian sentiment was high would have been the most likely targets for the Babylonians. One area, however, is the exception to the rule. Cities north of Jerusalem, in the traditional territory of Benjamin, suffered little or no destruction. . . .
The destruction of most Judean cities meant a disruption in the governmental apparatus as well as in the industry and economics of the country. Because soldiers profited from the spoils of war, plundering was the conqueror’s privilege and the conquered’s fate. Thus one must assume that much of the people’s possessions became Babylonian spoils of war. Many cities, like Jerusalem, that had once been thriving centers were left as depleted, subsistence-level villages if occupied at all. The primary economy of the country was probably reduced to a purely agricultural base.
A significant percentage of the manpower and leadership was killed off. There is no way to estimate the number of casualties who died at the hands of Babylonian troops, but it certainly would have been a sizable portion of the population, even though the Babylonians had no reputation for needless destruction and excessive killing. Nebuchadrezzar had taken a lenient attitude toward the country in 597, but no ancient ruler was very hospitable to a rebellious subject on the second military visit. (Miller and Hayes 479f)
Persian rulers did not improve the situation for Yehud (the name of the Persian province for the erstwhile kingdom of Judah):
The Jerusalem of the Achaemenid era has been described as a village with an administrative center. (Knoppers 2006:272)
Yehud was essentially irrelevant to the major interests of Persia:
One has to face the reduced extent of Yehûd against the background of the broader development in the Southern Levant in the 5th/4th century BCE. The marginal international importance is likewise true for the Persian period, when Yehûd achieved the status of a Persian province (at the latest) in the mid-5th century. . . . At least until the upheavals in Egypt and the loss of the control of Egypt by the Persian authority, the province of Yehûd was politically and economically more or less irrelevant. (Fravel and Psychny 4)
Transition to the Persian period is often unclear
With reference to the archaeological remains. . . .
. . . we are still largely unable to distinguish clearly between material remains of Iron Age III (the period of Babylonian overlordship) and those of the early Persian period (in turn, this might indicate a very smooth transition from one to the other, with Persian administration remaining in fact ‘Babylonian’ for quite some time). (Uehlinger 136)
Most histories of this period focus on Palestine’s relations with Persia and to some extent Greece as the rival power to Persia. The economic impact and cultural influence of Phoenician cities is also recognized. Yet there was evidently a strong Egyptian influence in the area given the number of scarab amulets, Egyptian-style bronze statuettes and Egyptian deity representations on coins in Palestine during this same period.
In this respect, the impact of Egypt on Palestine during the 5th and particularly the 4th century . . . is too often disregarded in historical treatments of the period. (Uehlinger 136)
Evidence of Persian interest (or lack of it) in Samaria and Yehud
Images on seals and coins functioned as imperial propaganda to remind subject populations of Persian power. By comparing the locations of these finds and the particular styles of iconography archaeologists are informed about the areas of main interest to the Persians. Persian royalty appears to have little interest in stridently imposing its presence in Palestine until very late in the Persian period.
The bulk of seals and sealings discussed belongs to the second half or even last third of the Persian period, which makes the potential for Persian impact in the late 6th and earlier 5th centuries BCE even slimmer. . . .
In great contrast to other imperial administrations that had ruled in Palestine during earlier periods (Middle and New Kingdom Egypt and to some extent Assyria), the Achaemenid imperial administration apparently did not interfere in any way in the local seal production, certainly not in the engravers’ choices regarding the composition of their figurative repertoire.
Two main reasons may explain this contrast: basically, Persian interest and involvement must have been much more intense in Asia Minor than in far-off Palestine which was ‘Third World’ to the Achaemenids not worthy for investment. . . . To the extent that the physical presence of people of Persian origin was probably limited to military officers and administrators, Persian culture remained a largely foreign element in Palestine. Granted that we interpreted the incomplete evidence correctly, we could even observe a certain reluctance or reservation on behalf of Phoenician seal engravers to adopt Persian Achaemenid (even royal) figurative models, an attitude which is in strong contrast to the same craftsmen^ openness to integrate schemes from Egypt, Cyprus or Greece. (Uehlinger 171f)
Most of the seals and coins promoting Persian power that do appear come from Samaria, not Yehud.
Achaemenid iconography and other ‘Persianisms’ figure much more prominently on coins from Samaria than from anywhere else in the country. . . . It is striking that except for one item from Jericho, Yehud is not represented at all in our survey on iconographical Persianisms. (Uehlinger 173)
There is little evidence that the Persian administration was interested in interfering with local religious practices as a rule. The indication for this is the absence of specifically Persian religious or cult images on coins and seals.
We may notice in passing the total lack of specifically ‘religious’ subject matter other than ‘heroic combat’ or ‘encounter’, such as cult (worship or offering) scenes, representations of deities, divine symbols or the like, which contrasts neatly with Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian glyptic and their respective influence on Palestinian glyptic in earlier periods. This observation confirms the commonly accepted opinion that the Persian administration generally did not interfere with the religious beliefs of their subjects, certainly not by imposing nor even publicizing the worship of Persian deities, but rather aimed at favouring cultic normality in pacified provinces . . . . The one common notion which is emphatically stressed by a great proportion of seals and sealings is the heroic character of Persian kingship. (Uehlinger 175)
When we come to the fourth century BCE (note Persian rule over Palestine commenced in the late sixth century BCE) it is Samaria, the northern province, that is the leading representative of imperial power.
Yehud coinage, generally of rather poor minting quality, shows very few ‘Persianisms’, but also no particular dependency on Phoenician models. . . . In contrast, Samarian coinage is literally full of ‘Persianisms’, surpassing by far any other mint of the region in this respect. This confirms and emphasizes our conclusion based on the glyptic evidence, namely that Persian iconographical models and Achaemenid royal ideology had a particularly strong impact on 4th-century Samaria. (Uehlinger 177f)
Was this because Samarians were inherently more loyal to Persia? Or might the explanation be somewhat more complex?
Obviously these depictions are not all an expression of Samarian loyalty to the Achaemenid king and to the Persian imperial administration. One should rather suspect that the unusual emphasis betrays propaganda which may have intended to cover particular tensions in real life. The many ‘portraits’ of Persian officers point to a strong Persian military presence at Samaria. Many of these issues must have been minted by order of Persian officials stationed in the province, or of some higher authority such as Mazday the satrap. . . .
In sum, one cannot ignore that more than any other repertoire of the area, the coins of Samaria emphatically claim strong allegiance of the province to the Great King and his representatives. (Uehlinger 178f)
Comparing Samaria and Yehud culture and religion
If the archaeological evidence indeed supports such disparity between Samaria and Judah, there is no comparison, only contrast, between Samaria and Yehud (the name of the Persian province) in the Persian era. Yehud became a backwater under Persian rule.
I distinguish between ‘Samarian’ and ‘Samaritan’ studies, the latter having long been a subset of biblical studies, addressing the Jewish sect that continues to worship on Mt. Gerizim to this day. (Leith 268)
The two regions shared a common language and scripts.
The language of the [Samaria] papyri is a conservative version of Official Aramaic. The language used is virtually identical to the language employed in thefifth-century Elephantinepapyri . . . .
The hundreds of short inscriptions found in Samaria dating to the late Persian and Hellenistic Periods suggest that the Samarians wrote and spoke the same language as the Judeans did during this time. Aramaic evidently was employed, as it was in other provinces in western Asia, as the language of governance and international diplomacy. Hebrew was employed, but not restricted to, certain official or sacred purposes. The scribes of both communities employed a similar system of scripts, an Aramaic script for diplomatic and commercial activities and a Hebrew script (the so-called palaeo-Hebrew) for certain religious purposes . . . Both the Judeans and the Samarians used the two scripts as late as the Hellenistic era. (Knoppers, 273f)
The names of persons between the two provinces are similar, both pointing to a religious affiliation with Yahweh worship.
The linguistic and religious features of onomastica can be used to provide some indication of their bearers’ religious identities. One may begin by observing the large number of proper names shared with Judah. . . .
In addition to the Yahwistic nomenclature found within the Samaria papyri, Yahwistic names have also been found on the legends of fourth-century Samarian coins. (Knoppers 2006: 275f)
There are also non-Yahwistic names, names with links to other deities, though some scholars would prefer to date these to the early Hellenistic era. Even so, one notes that they are Samarian and not from Yehud.
In contrast with the Samarian coins bearing Yahwistic appellatives, there are a few Samarian coins featuring non-Yahwistic theophorics. One Samarian coin type with the divine name ‘Zeus’ (ΙΕΥΣ) is attested, along with an image of this deity . . . On the reverse of this coin is the name ׳Jeho’anah’ (yhw’nh). On yet another coin one finds the face and short form of the name of the god ‘[Hera]cles’. . . . The appearance of these Greek deities may indicate a stronger western cultural influence in Samaria than in contemporary Yehud . . . . (Knoppers 2006: 277)
But the Yahwistic names are far more numerous:
Neither did Samaria post 722 become a majority non-Yahwistic province; the names of Samarians mentioned in the fourth-century Samaria Papyri in the fourth century are overwhelmingly Yahwistic. (Leith 274)
As for the material evidence of religious developments in these two areas, there is nothing to indicate any difference from the pre-Assyrian and pre-Babylonian monarchic periods of Israel and Judah.
There was no “religious revolution” in Yehûd or in Samaria that can be drawn from the account of the material culture. Even if there was a ‘material otherness’ of the Yehûdite material culture, Judaism was not the outcome of a revolution and a deliberate distinctiveness. (Fravel and Psychny 19)
The message is that there was cultic or religious continuity from the time both regions were independent kingdoms through to the time they became separate Persian provinces.
What did that common and long standing religious life look like?
Yahweh worship in the Kingdom of Israel continues through the Persian era
In the above context one should take special note of the evidence for the continuity of religious practices of the people of the Kingdom of Israel through to the Persian province of Samaria. We had a glimpse of aspects of the Samarian cult in an earlier post so I won’t repeat what I posted there but supplement it a little.
Around 800 BCE an Israelite settlement (from the northern kingdom of Israel) of what appears to have been a group of Israelites sent by the king of Israel to establish within the southernmost borders of the kingdom of Judah. The site is known to us as Kuntillet Ajrud (meaning “the isolated hill of the water sources”). The Kingdom of Judah had earlier established a fortress at Kadesh Barnea but this had been abandoned at the time of the Kuntillet Ajrud settlement.
Evidently, the founders of Ajrud did not want to occupy the fortress because of its Judean identity. They preferred to found a new site, in a less comfortable location with a meagre water source, 15 km off the main road, rather than settle in a place associated with a Judean tradition. (Meshel 67)
How do we know it was a distinctively (northern) Israelite site and not a (southern) Judahite one? Some of the clues:
Inscriptions at the site specifically document “YHWH of Samaria”
the site’s personal names use the Samarian “yw” as opposed to the Judean “yaho” to refer to YHWH
the pottery is Samarian style
the script is Phoenician (as used in Israel)
The site was short-lived, being abandoned by around 750 BCE.
The artwork at Kuntillet Ajrud is clearly related to the images on Samarian coins and therefore throws more light on Samarian religion of the Persian era. The images in the left column are from eighth century Kuntillet Ajrud and their comparable Samarian Persian coin images on the right.
1. Cow and calf: coin inscribed with “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” – Symbol of mother goddess; 2. Ibexes [goats] flanking blossoming tree (see below); 3. Bes, Egypto-Phoenician dwarf deity of life and prosperity; 4. Harpist on chair; Samarian coin of nude harpist with Egyptian goddess Hathor’s headdress in front; 5. Lion – frequent image in Israelite coins; an image of Yahweh? or a goddess “mistress of lions”? (Images and notes from Leith)Referring to the second from the top, a pair of ibex flanking a tree, Leith writes:
This motif was a common one throughout the ancient Near East for centuries, but is not a known coin motif anywhere except fourth-century Samaria. The uniqueness of the coin image and the inscribed letters Š-M-R (abbreviation for ‘Samaria’) on the coin reverse suggest this particular coin was specifically designed to communicate Samarian identity. . . . The goat and tree motif is plausibly linked with the goddess Asherah. (Leith 276)
Here is a photo of the original image:
For clarity, here is a sketched outline of that tree:
And here is a copy of Russell Gmirkin’s recent comment:
A key aspect of the Iron II cult of Asherah was a pole or rod. A contemporary representation of this rod appears at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, where a picture of a stylized sacred tree flanked by ibexes appears on Pithos A where it is thought to represent Asherah as a fertility goddess (Leith 2014: 276; Asherah is associated with flocks of sheep or goats at Deut. 7:13; 28:4, 18, 51). This sacred tree corresponds in great detail to the blooming rod of Aaron, the symbol of his priesthood, with its buds, blossoms and almonds (Num. 17:8), which was laid up in the sacred ark in the tabernacle (Num. 17:10; cf. Heb. 9:4).
“It is difficult to imagine a more precise pictorial representation of the object described verbally in the Pentateuchal account than this drawing. The central element of the drawing plainly resembles a staff. It is adorned with six buds alternating with eight blossoms. And at the top are two elements shaped like almonds in the shell and speckled with dots that match the pockmarks typical of these shells.” (Eichler 2019: 36.)
It would appear that the Priestly author, perhaps along with Ezekiel, did not find the Asherah objectionable, and included this flowering staff among the most precious contents preserved in the sacred ark (Eichler 2019: 40-41). This sacred staff later featured in the account of Moses striking the rock to obtain water in Num. 20:1-13 (Eichler 2019: 41-45). The sacred tree flanked by rampant goats is an image that also uniquely recurs in fourth-century BCE Samarian coinage, along with other imagery also depicted at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Leith 2014). This seems to indicate the persistence of the Asherah as revered sacred tree at a late date in Samaria.
It would appear that if we are looking at a Hellenistic provenance for the Hebrew Bible, the biblical tropes themselves go back much earlier.
Frevel, Christian, and Katharina Pyschny. “A ‘Religious Revolution’ in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case: Introduction.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd?: The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 1–22. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014.
Knoppers, Gary. “In Search of Postexilic Israel: Samaria After the Fall of the Northern Kingdom.” In In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, edited by J. Day, 150–80. JSOTSup 406. London: T. & T. Clark Continuum, 2004.
Knoppers, Gary N. “Revisiting the Samarian Question in the Persian Period.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming, 265–90. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Leith, Mary Joan Winn. “Religious Continuity in Israel/Samaria: Numismatic Evidence.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd?: The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 267–304. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014.
Meshel, Zeev, Shmuel Aḥituv, and Liora Freud. Kuntillet ʻAjrud (Ḥorvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.
Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. 2nd edition. Louisville, Ky. London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.
Uehlinger, Christoph. “‘Powerful Persianisms’ in Glyptic Iconography of Persian Period Palestine.” In The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, edited by Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel, 134–82. Brill, 1999.
Our quest is to test the thesis that the earliest books of the Bible were written or at least heavily redacted and supplemented in the Persian period. To that end we have been trying to understand what Persian era candidate “biblical” societies were like. We’ve looked at Judeans in Persian times according to the evidence in both the Persian province of Yehud and their “brethren” in Egypt, so for the next stop we will have a look at the “Samarians”. Samarians may seem unusual against our more familiar Samaritans . . .
The Samarians (no “t”) of the Persian period are not to be confused with the Samaritans of the first century CE. (Betlyon 27)
We are talking about the people who inhabited the “biblical northern kingdom of Israel” after the biblical united kingdom of David and Solomon divided between “Israel” in the north and “Judah” in the south. After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom they established in its place the province of “Samerina”, but in subsequent Persian times we speak of the Samarians.
Samaria, though subservient to imperial overlords, continued to be a major administrative centre.
When Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus and his successors retained Samaria as the administrative center in the “Province Beyond the River [Euphrates]” and placed it under the governorship of Sanballat. Excavators have discovered a large garden area (.25 m-thick; 45 x 50 m) that surrounded the district governor’s palace there. A fifth-century Athenian coin, three Sidonian coins from the reign of Abdastart I (370-358 BCE), fourteen Aramaic ostraca, plus significant quantities of pottery imported from Aegean centers during the late sixth to late fourth centuries BCE . . . all attest to the solvency of the Ephraimite economy . . . . (Tappy 583)
Coins
Ancient coinage in general can provide significant information not only about the economic, but also the political, cultural and religio-historical state of affairs of a city or province. Coins were commissioned by those in power, were often used to communicate specific values and ideas and served as mass medium in Antiquity. Accordingly, the images appearing on them were not randomly chosen but selected with great precision and reflect a certain ‘spirit’. (Wyssmann 222)
The sampling here is taken from Wyssmann’s study and were selected on the basis of having been more probable than not minted in the province of Samaria itself. The inscriptions on Samarian coins were in Aramaic, Paleo-Hebrew and Greek letters. Greek gods appear along with names of Persian satraps and Samarian governors.
These images have been selected from Wyssmann, Patrick: “The Coinage Imagery of Samaria and Judah in the Late Persian Period” 2014.
Man wearing Persian dress with bird’s tail and two pairs of wings. A “human-headed bird deity”?Crowned bearded man on throne reminds us of the Persian king. But the adjacent inscription ZEYΣ (=ZEUS). Some scholars claim ‘Zeus’ refers to the Greek name of Baal or Baalshamen and Yhwh respectively who were already equated in Samaria in pre-Persian times.Draped bearded man on throne holding blossom. This is an adaptation of Baal of Tarsos. The name behind him is Hananyah. A Samarian governor with a theophoric name (including Yah [=Yahweh]) thus had no trouble being associated with Baal.The inscription between the two figures = Jeroboam (a Samarian governor). Some scholars have interpreted the scene as Jeroboam (right) being blessed by the (naked) god on the left. Or it might be a scene of worship of a local god (Yhwh?)Some interpret the woman to be Aphrodite, others a city goddess, Tyche.Common female heads were Athena, Arethusa and Gorgo Medusa.Heracles, who was connected with the Phoenician god Melqart.
The Wadi Daliyeh finds
The Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh provide us with precious information regarding some of the inhabitants of Samaria, including some of its officials. (Dušek 2020, 2)
The cache of papyri, coins, jewelry, pottery were deposited in a cave in Wadi Daliyeh by people fleeing from Samaria as Alexander the Great was on his way back there after the city had rebelled against his recent conquest by burning his appointed governor alive (according to Josephus). Those who hid in the cave were probably found and suffocated by a fire Alexander’s troops lit at the cave’s entrance.
Wadi ed-Daliyeh in relation to Samaria: From researchgate
The following notes are taken from Dušek 2007:
Names on the papyri contain theophoric elements relating to Yahweh (mostly) but also El, Ab, Nabu, Shamash, Sahar, Šalman, Bel, Baga, Sîn, Baal, Isis, Ilahi et Qôs.
Clay seals include images of Hermes, Heracles and Perseus.
The following images are from Lapp, Paul W., and Nancy L. Lapp, eds. Discoveries in the Wadi Ed-Daliyeh. American Schools of Oriental Research, 1974.
Possibly the Greek hero JasonHeracles, nude, with club on the left and fighting a lion.Scarab with goddess wearing crown of Egyptian goddess Hathor, incense altar, Horus hawk, papyrus flower.
According to the onomastics of the Wadi Daliyeh manuscripts, the population of the province of Samaria would have been quite diverse: most of the names are Yahwist; in the other names, the theophoric elements El, Ab, Šamaš, Sahar, Bel, Baga, Sîn, Nabu, Šalman, Ba’al, Isis, Ilahi and Qôs refer to West Semitic, North Arabic, Aramaic onomastics, Hebrew, Babylonian, Phoenician, Egyptian, Persian and Idumean. We also identified a possible Assyrian name and a name expressing ethnic origin. As we have suggested, not all of these people were likely inhabitants of the province of Samaria; in certain cases it may have been merchants who were traveling, or slaves sold in Samaria, but originating from other provinces. The variety of the population of the province of Samaria can be explained on the one hand by the great prosperity of the region and by political stability which favored settlement in the territory of the province, and on the other hand by the deportations of populations in the province of Samaria before the Persian era. (Dušek 2007, 601 – translation)
Mount Gerizim
One of the most astonishing discoveries was unearthed by a team of archaeologists led by Yitzhak Magen, who excavated a site in Samaria at Jabal al-Tur, one of the three peaks of Mount Gerizim, from 1982–2006. They identified a Yahwist sacred precinct active from the 5th century BCE until its destruction in the mid–late 2nd century BCE.4
Betlyon, John W. “A People Transformed Palestine in the Persian Period.” Near Eastern Archaeology 68, no. 1/2 (2005): 4–58.
Dušek, J. Les Manuscrits Araméens Du Wadi Daliyeh Et La Samarie Vers 450-332 Av. J.-C. Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2007.
Dušek, Jan. “The Importance of the Wadi Daliyeh Manuscripts for the History of Samaria and the Samaritans.” Religions 11, no. 2 (January 29, 2020): 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020063.
Economou, Michael. “The Aramaic Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim: Production, Identity, and Resistance.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 15, no. 1 (October 16, 2023): 154–73. https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-bja10032.
Lemche, Niels Peter. “Samaritans in History and Tradition.” In Samaritans and Jews in History and Tradition, by Ingrid Hjelm. Taylor & Francis, 2024.
Tappy, Ron E. The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria. Volume 2: The Eighth Century BCE. Brill, 2001.
Wyssmann, Patrick. “The Coinage Imagery of Samaria and Judah in the Late Persian Period.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 221–66. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 267. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/9216977/The_Coinage_Imagery_of_Samaria_and_Judah_in_the_Late_Persian_Period.
I have transcribed the last ten minutes of the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s December 2022 Conference presentation because it dovetails with my recent posts and discussion points about the evidence relating to the composition of biblical texts in the Persian era.
If Jerusalem — nor the whole of Judea — had a “Writing Culture” in Persian times, we need to take a few steps back from the conventional view in biblical studies that it was in the Persian period that our principle biblical books were taking shape.
Scholars have long relied upon the texts of Ezra-Nehemiah and some chapters of the prophets to conclude that priests and scribes connected to the Jerusalem temple were busily shaping the biblical material (especially the Pentateuch) during this time.
Next to the biblical sources that are set explicitly in the Persian period, scholarship generally dates several other writings or parts of biblical books to this period. From the plethora of the material we will simply look at one (significant) example: the completion of the Jewish law in the form of the Pentateuch, the Torah of Moses, a document of which more than half was written or composed in the post‐monarchial period, i.e. during neo‐Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic times. Especially the multiple‐layered literary stratum, commonly called “Priestly Writing”, is best explained in reference to the second temple period. (Kratz, Biblical Sources 141)
Do archaeological finds support or cast doubt on that scenario? To ask a disturbing question: Is it more likely that the biblical narratives were completely unknown until after the conquests of Alexander the Great opened the way to Greek cultural domination of the “Near East”? But Israel Finkelstein does not broach that question. His conference presentation was limited to what the archaeological evidence can tell us about Jerusalem and Yehud (the Persian province name for Judea) in the Persian time slot.
The minute-and-second markers are approximate. I have used square brackets and dots to substitute for words I could not pick up from the soundtrack of the video. The images I have added were used by Finkelstein in his slide presentation but I have taken them from other publications where possible. The video presentation is available at the University of Haifa’s Yahwism under the Achaemenid empire site – scroll down to select the Prof. Israel Finkelstein (University of Haifa) : Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods link.
My transcript:
23 min:40 sec
As I have already suggested, Yehud was ruled from the small temple village in Jerusalem which was located on the temple mount and which had a limited population. Still, its status as the capital of the province . . . I mean we have to admit it’s clear from the Elephantine papyrus, from the seal impressions, and seemingly also from the high level of silver in the Yehud coins which seems to be related to the role in the temple economy.
Based on the interpretation of the literary sources, the population of Persian period Yehud had been estimated to have numbered up to 150,000 souls.
24:30
More reasonable archaeology-based studies have estimated a population of the province to have been between 20 and 30,000 people. Yet the latter number, too, seems to be somewhat inflated. Scholars use too big density coefficients, that is to say people per built up hectare, to be estimates for the population of Jerusalem that is not realistic archaeologically, and too big estimates for the extension of Yehud.
I repeat, my own figures are based on scrutiny of the archaeological data per se yet limiting it to the area from north of Beth Zur to Mizpeh and from the Dead Sea to the border between the Highlands and the Shephalah.
Finkelstein, Israel. “The Territorial Extent and Demography of Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Revue Biblique (1946-) 117, no. 1 (2010): 39–54.
As far as I can judge, and you can see on the screen, the total bit of area in Yehud is estimated around 60 hectares.
25:30
Employing a density coefficient of about 200 people to one built-up hectare the population of the entire province of Yehud in the Persian period including Jerusalem would be about 12000 people, comparable to the population of Jerusalem alone in the late Iron II [i.e. the period of the presumed biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah before the Babylonian captivity in 586 BCE] and the late Hellenistic period.
This comes to about 15%, only, of the population of the Highlands part of Iron IIB and C Judah. These demographic estimates work against scholars who tend to belittle the scope of the catastrophe that befell Judah in 586 BC. At the same time they contradict the notion of massive waves of returnees to Yehud. They also seem to lessen the importance of the population of Yehud relative to the elite deportees in Babylonia. In the production of exilic and post-exilic biblical texts and in shaping the nature of early post-exilic Judaism.
26:30
Material Culture
So let’s turn to material culture.
The demographic deterioration which I have just described and the poor state of the population of Yehud find expression in two items of material culture.
First, the disappearance of elaborate rock cut burials, especially in Jerusalem, but also in the countryside of Judah. These indicate that compared to the Iron II c elite groups shrink dramatically.
Second, the evidence for scribal activity. Probably even more important.
Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira, Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Yana Gerber, Eli Turkel, Eli Piasetzky, and Israel Finkelstein. “Literacy in Judah and Israel: Algorithmic and Forensic Examination of the Arad and Samaria Ostraca.” Near Eastern Archaeology 84, no. 2 (June 1, 2021): 148–58. https://doi.org/10.1086/714070.
So, whilst scribal activity in late monarchic Judah is demonstrated by the corpora of ostraca of […] Arad, Lachish, Uza, Malhata, Kadesh-barnea and other places. The spread of literacy is also attested in the proliferation of the inscribed seals and seal impressions.
27:30
The most striking evidence for the dissemination of literacy in Judah comes from the work of the Digital Epigraphy team at the Tel Aviv University which has been directed by Eli Piasetzky and me. Algorithmic based comparison of handwriting identified five authors in sixteen Arad ostraca with enough data for analysis representing the entire echelon of the Judahite military system down to the assistant quartermaster of the fort.
Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira, Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Yana Gerber, Eli Turkel, Eli Piasetzky, and Israel Finkelstein. “Literacy in Judah and Israel: Algorithmic and Forensic Examination of the Arad and Samaria Ostraca.”
Now forensic examination by the entire chief handwriting expert of Israel’s police extended the number of authors of these sixteen ostraca even farther. This shows that the recognition of the power of writing spread in the Judahite administration far beyond temple and palace.
28:30
Late monarchic Judah became what I can describe (all of us can describe I suppose) as a “writing society”. This was probably the end outcome of the century when Judah was dominated by Assyria and was incorporated into the sphere of the Assyrian global economy, administration and culture.
This impressive evidence for scribal infrastructure in Judah disappeared – I repeat – disappeared after the 586 BC destruction. In the Babylonian and Persian period the southern highlands show almost no evidence of Hebrew – underline Hebrew – inscriptions. In fact, the only meagre evidence comes from a few letters on a few Yehud coins which date to the fourth century. And coins can hardly attest in my opinion to general scribal activity.
29:30
This means that not a single linguistic inscription is known for the period between 586 and 350, not an ostracon, nor a seal, not a seal impression, nor a bulla.
In short, there is no evidence for Hebrew writing culture in Yehud.
One could argue for production of literary works on papyri in the temple. (I put in this picture only as an example.)
This is possible of course, though I find it extremely difficult that nothing of this activity leaked to other media of writing. I’m not suggesting here that the knowledge of writing Hebrew disappeared altogether, because such a statement would contradict the revival of Hebrew in the second century Hasmonean state. But scribal activity declined dramatically. This should come as no surprise.
30:30
The destruction of Judah brought about the collapse of the kingdom’s bureaucracy and the deportation of many of the educated intelligentsia, the literati. The vinedressers and [ploughmen] who “remained in the land” (to use the biblical expression) were hardly capable of producing written documents.
Excursus: Bethel
Before I close I wish to briefly refer to Bethel – outside the territory of Yehud. Since Bethel has been mentioned in scholarly discussions as the “repository” of biblical texts, mainly northern ones in the Babylonian and Persian period. And I refer for instance to a very important article by Knauf [I am deducing that the link points to the article Finkelstein is referencing.]
A few years ago Lily Singer-Avitz and I revisited the finds with … site. All the published reports and the unpublished in storage in Jerusalem and in Pittsburgh. We actually went to Pittsburgh to look at the pottery.
31:30
The results of our investigation indicated that the settlement history of this site was not continuous as held by the excavators based on an uncritical reading of the biblical text by the excavators. Rather it was characterized by oscillations, with two periods of strong activity in the Iron I, Iron IIB and Hellenistic periods; two periods of decline, in the Late Iron IIA and Iron IIC, and two periods of probable abandonmentin the Early Iron IIA and more significantly in the Babylonian and Persian periods.
This evidence cannot be brushed aside as stemming from deficiencies in the excavations, as significant sectors of this small mound, bigger than [. . .?] have been excavated. They did not yield Persia period finds.
32:30
So, the meaning of this:
The data presented here, the archaeology of Jerusalem, the settlement and demographic situation in Yehud and the poor evidence for scribal activity cast doubt on the notion of major activity of composition of biblical texts in Jerusalem in the Persian period.
My humble advice is twofold.
First, to try to date as much material as possible to periods in Judah-Judea that demonstrate widespread scribal activity and literacy in all media and all forms of inscriptions – that is, the later phases of the Iron Age and the late Hellenistic period after 200 BC, perhaps even later [….?] For lack of time I refrain from dealing with this question in detail.
33:30
My second advice is that for the era between 600/586 and 200 BC, especially the Babylonian and Persian periods to place the compilation of as much material as possible in Babylonia and in Egypt. This has recently been advocated by Thomas Römer my friend in the footsteps of others and others. Of course I accept that there must have been some continuity in the production of literary works in […?] One can imagine for instance a secluded, educated priestly group near the temple. But even this is not an eloquent solution, as I mentioned before would have expected something from this scribal activity to leak to daily life, and nothing did. In short, I too am tantalized by this fact and can only urge scholars not to ignore the archaeological evidence despite the fact that at times it is mainly negative and even if it threatens to shatter fad-driven theories.
34:30
And what about the armies under the Achaemenid empire? As I said in the beginning of my talk, with evidence coming solely from military texts (mostly) and with no clue from archaeology I would only advise that we be exceedingly cautious in addressing this thing, too.
I can’t help feeling that proponents of a Hellenistic origin of the Old Testament must postulate conditions in the early Hellenistic period for which (at least IMO) we have no direct evidence and which (at least IMO) are prima-facie improbable, but which are necessary in order for the Old Testament to be produced at that time.
My response:
I think the reverse is actually the case. The Hellenistic era hypothesis is grounded in the normative approach to evidence that we expect to find among historians of any other field.
1. No independent evidence for….
There is no independent evidence, archaeological or literary, for the existence of the biblical literature prior to the Hellenistic period. There is no “postulate” there — it’s the reality, as we know. (Of course that fact alone does not disprove the existence of biblical literature prior to the Hellenistic era, but nor is it a fact that should be ignored.)
2. Evidence exists for….
The independent evidence prior to the Hellenistic era (including the Persian era) that we do have actually witnesses against knowledge of any of the biblical literature (e.g. Elephantine). I suggest that the circularity enters when one begins with the assumption that there was some Pentateuchal type literature and that the persons who left us the pre-hellenistic evidence probably had it in mind — only did not see fit to inscribe it in the data that has come down to us. Or the surviving evidence was written by a person (Herodotus) who unfortunately wrote a few years too soon before the Pentateuchal cult developments were under way in Palestine.
To interrupt my reply for a moment…. I have been posting some of that evidence in the past few days. Here is another quotation from Reinhard Kratz that elaborates on the above point. It begins by pointing out that the idea of “biblical Judaism” simply must be seen as an anomaly in the light of existing evidence:
Contemporary scholarship often considers the Judean colony at Elephantine an exception that proves the rule. Some contend this religious diversity first emerged in Egypt, where military service brought Jews into close connection with Arameans who venerated the god Bethel (cf. Jer. 48:13) as well as the Queen of Heaven, also attested in pre-exilic Judah (cf. Jer. 7:18; 44:15ff.). Others, by contrast, assert the Judeans of Elephantine preserved and transmitted an older, pre-exilic form of syncretistic Yahwism imported from northern Palestine, where—as the Hebrew Bible contends—Israelite Yhwh devotion alloyed with elements of Canaanite and Aramean religion. Yet a different explanation seems far more reasonable to me: rather than Elephantine and the Judeans of Egypt, it was the Hebrew Bible and biblical Judaism that were the exception to the rule, even into the Persian period. Accordingly, the situation at Elephantine would typify Judaism of the Persian epoch, a standard manifestation not only in the Israelite–Samarian region but also in Judah itself.
Despite drawing that conclusion from the data/facts available, Kratz still finds a place for “biblical Judaism” — surely a speculative notion given the absence of evidence, and an unlikely one at that given that we have no way from the available evidence to see how such an anomaly could have arisen:
Biblical Judaism, then, would stand as one specific faction’s ideal. By no means presupposed by all Judeans or Yhwh-devotees during the post-state period, this ideal would have developed slowly and alongside other forms in pre-exilic and post-exilic times, achieving general acceptance only in the Hellenistic-Roman era. Accordingly, the situation at Elephantine would typify Judaism of the Persian epoch, a standard manifestation not only in the Israelite–Samarian region but also in Judah itself. Biblical Judaism, then, would stand as one specific faction’s ideal. By no means presupposed by all Judeans or Yhwh-devotees during the post-state period, this ideal would have developed slowly and alongside other forms in pre-exilic and post-exilic times, achieving general acceptance only in the Hellenistic-Roman era.
Kratz returns to underscoring the evidence that stands against his speculation:
Objections to this interpretation of the evidence might consider the archives of Elephantine, largely documents from daily life, incomparable to the biblical literature in terms of genre, which could then prohibit any broader conclusions on Judaism at the time. However, the conceptions and norms of biblical literature — had they won validity in the first place — would have certainly found reflection in one way or another in the realm of everyday life and therefore in the practical texts of everyday life, especially in the sphere of religion and cultic practice. As already shown above, they reflect no such norms and concepts. Moreover, not only practical but also literary texts have surfaced among the papyri from Elephantine. Though only two in number, these literary texts fully compete with biblical literature in terms of genre and literary quality. Concerning personal conduct and its compatibility with the demands of biblical literature, common divine veneration provides an unambiguous instance. In Egypt, as in Palestine, Yahu/Yhwh was undoubtedly the highest god, i.e., the “God of Heaven.” Nevertheless, the documents from Elephantine clearly show that other divine beings and even deities received veneration alongside Yahu himself. Communication with the deities of other peoples developed easily and informally as well. (Kratz 143)
Gard Granerød likewise continues to maintain the existence of the religion, or at least a “dimension” of the Judean religion, despite the evidence:
Again, what was Judaean religion in the Persian period like? Indeed, its centre was the god YHWH/YHW/YHH. However, the Judaean religion had many facets, that is, it had many dimensions, above all because it was directed towards multiple places. Thus, from a religio-historical point of view, poly-Yahwism continued to be a characteristic of Judaean religion even in the Persian period. (Granerød 339)
Es gibt im Judentum von Elephantine nicht nur keinerlei Hinweis auf die Existenz einer »Bibel«, es gibt im Gegenteil deutliche Hinweise auf die Nicht-Existenz einer Bibel. Als es die Tora dann als solche gab, macht sie sich auch bemerkbar: seit ca. 375 ist die Münzprägung von Yehud/Jerusalem anikonisch, das Bilderverbot ist in Kraft. Die Münzen von Samaria bleiben ikonisch, denn auch die Tora ist noch nicht so eindeutig monotheistisch, wie ihre Rezeptionsgeschichte es nahelegt. Als Kompromiß vereinigt die Tora den impliziten Monotheismus der P-Tradition (es gibt nur einen Gott, aber er hat verschiedene Namen bei und verschiedene Beziehungen zu der Menschheit insgesamt, den Abraham-Völkern und Israel) mit dem programmatischen Henotheismus der D-Tradition (die nachdrückliche Forderung, Jhwh allein zu verehren macht nur Sinn in einem Kontext, in dem die Verehrung anderer Götter eine reale Möglichkeit darstellt). Aber damit beginnt ein ganz neues Kapitel der Religionsgeschichte Israels. Das weitere Geschick der vor biblischen Juden von Elephantine ist uns unbekannt; ihre Geschichte endet hier. (Knauf’s original text)
Ernst Knauf, however, is surely right to draw conclusions that the evidence alone will justify:
Not only is there no indication in Elephantine Judaism of the existence of a “Bible,” there is, on the contrary, clear evidence of the non-existence of a Bible. When the Torah existed as such, it also makes itself felt: since about 375 the coinage of Yehud/Jerusalem is aniconic, the prohibition of images is in force. The coins of Samaria remain iconic, for even the Torah is not yet as clearly monotheistic as its reception history suggests. As a compromise, the Torah unites the implicit monotheism of the P tradition (there is only one God, but he has different names with and different relationships to humanity at large, the Abrahamic peoples, and Israel) with the programmatic henotheism of the D tradition (the emphatic demand to worship Yhwh alone makes sense only in a context in which the worship of other gods is a real possibility). But with this a whole new chapter of Israel’s religious history begins. The further fate of the pre-biblical Jews of Elephantine is unknown to us; their story ends here. (Knauf 187 – translation)
Resuming my initial reply on the earlywritings forum….
3. The conventional eras and the “hermeneutic circle”
The conventional model of the Documentary Hypothesis has been demonstrated to be based on invalid reasoning. This error came about as a result of the bias of assuming from the outset that there was some historical core behind the OT narratives and then seeking to place strands of the OT in a diachronic order that matched that presumed historical core. (e.g. Wellhausen placed the P source last because it represented a “legalistic” response to a more “spiritual” religion of an earlier time, mirroring the general Christian assumption at the time that “good Judaism” degenerated over time into “Pharisaic legalism”.) Indeed there are many arguments based on testing biblical literature with pre-hellenistic scripts and language and so forth, but these all arise from the above fallacy, I suggest.
4. Evidence also exists for….
Our earliest independent evidence (both archaeological and literary) for the existence of any of the biblical literature is in the Hellenistic era. The scrolls found in the caves of Qumran.
5. Conclusion:
It is prima facie reasonable to begin our investigation into conditions in the Hellenistic era to see if they can explain the appearance of the biblical literature (not only its physical existence but its genres, languages, ideas, narratives, laws, etc.) and how these conditions compare with those extant in earlier times. — Always balancing those inquiries into earlier times against #2 and #3 above.
I followed up the above reply with an extract from a article that compares the methodological errors of Pentateuchal study with something similar that once occurred in Classics:
Concerning Pentateuch research, Eckart Otto has recently posed the question: “What went wrong in the last two hundred years . . .?” . . . . It is of greatest importance when somebody who belongs to the most important Pentateuch researchers asks such a fundamental question. . …
Something similar has happened to the scholarship of Roman Law. After decades of hunting interpolations of the classical Roman Law in the Corpus Iuris Civilis, about 30 years ago the legal historians became aware that there was something wrong in the foundations or, to be more precise, in the methods and assumptions. . . .
Nowadays everybody asks themselves how such brilliant scholars could have fallen into the trap of arbitrariness and uncontrolled subjectivity in this field of research.
In my opinion, a similar turning point has come for Pentateuch research now.
Granerød, Gard, and Granerod. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine. Berlin ; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.
Knauf, Ernst Axel. “Elephantine Und Das Vor-Biblische Judentum.” In Religion Und Religionskontakte Im Zeitalter Der Achämeniden, edited by Reinhard G. Kratz, 179–88. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2002.
Kratz, Reinhard G. Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. Translated by Paul Michael Kurtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Having surveyed what the archaeological evidence tells us about religious practices of the Judeans in Elephantine (see the previous post) let’s now compare the evidence for Judah and Samaria in the same period. This time I am quoting only two sources, a chapter by Reinhard G. Kratz in A Companion to the Achaemenid Empire and a refreshingly new perspective from Annette Yoshiko Reed in her book Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism.
We saw in the Elephantine post the slide that sums up all that archaeology has given us and it’s nix. But Kratz finds a few epigraphical sources before turning to the biblical literature.
Epigraphical Sources
Inscribed stamps and seals attest to some external trade. They inform us that the region was called Yehud (yh, yhd, yhwd). Names of some governors are preserved. Samaria and Elephantine were fortress centres (p. 136) so Kratz suggests we can assume the administrative centre of Yehud was also a fortress. (He may be nudged to make that comparison because that is what Nehemiah 2:8; 7:2 attests.) On the basis of the Elephantine letters we can conclude that Jerusalem had a high priest and other priests as well as nobles and other officials.
There is a coin depicting a deity on a winged wheel. Not quite what we expected to find from the land of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Meshorer, Ya’akov. A Treasury of Jewish Coins. Amphora Books, 2001. p.2
We learn something of the ethnic makeup of the population from ostraca inscribed with personal names. There are names containing a form of Yhwh and El, as well as Aramaic, Phoenician, Edomite and Arabian personal and divine names. Three temples or sanctuaries are also mentioned: The Temple/House of Uzzah, … of Yahu, … of Nabu.
Apparently the cultic worship of the Judean‐Samarian deity Yahu was not limited to the “place that Yhwh will chose” (Deut. 12) during the fourth century BCE. The historical constellation represented in the epigraphic material appears not to differ from the one of the Judeans at Elephantine … or from the (Israelite) worshippers of Yhwh in the Province of Samaria. (Kratz 135)
North of Jericho have been found papyri that are . . .
. . . private deeds that first and foremost deal with the selling of slaves . . . The clay bullae and coins are of interest because of their iconography. Here too, the minting shows different (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Greek) cultural influences and motifs, amongst them representations of deities and naked men. Especially significant is a coin that shows a portrait and inscription of the god Zeus on one side and has a Yahwistic name on the reverse . . . (p. 135)
In Samaria….
Here we have – especially amongst the owners, contractual partners, and slaves – mostly Israelite‐Judean names; next to them and especially amongst the witnesses for the deeds and the officials there exists a plethora of Aramaic, Phoenician, Edomite, Akkadian, and Persian names. . . . [T[he situation is reminiscent of the situation in Judah and Elephantine and implies the same historical constellation: we learn of a coexistence and cooperation of several ethnicities within the political structures of the Persian Empire. These ethnicities do not define their identity by a strict separation from each other; rather, they live side by side . . . (pp 135f)
How can we know if “Samaria” was known as such?
The name Samaria is attested in its long form (šmryn/šmrn) as well as in abbreviations (šmr, šm, šn, š). The Persian satrapy of Transeuphrates is the superordinated political unit. Its satrap Mazaios/Masdaj is mentioned by its full name or in abbreviated form (mz) on coins: “Mazday who resides over Ebir‐nari and Cilicia” (mzdy zy ʿl ʿbr nhra wh. lk). Samaria itself had the status of a province (šmryn mdyntʾ) and was ruled by a governor (ph. t šmryn/šmrn). The capital is called a “fortress” (šmryn byrtʾ). In accordance to this terminology, the papyri are written “in the fortress Samaria (that is) in the Province of Samaria.” Coins mention a prefect (sgnʾ) and judges (dynʾ) as subordinate officials. (136)
And that’s about it for the epigraphical evidence relating to Judea and Samaria in Persian times on the basis of epigraphical sources.
Literary Sources
Reinhard G. Kratz
Kratz next turns to literary sources. It’s not looking good for those of us who are looking for independent evidence of the biblical narrative:
Literary sources that are attested archeologically in the Achaemenid period are only known to us from Elephantine: Here we have the “Words of Ahiqar” and an Aramaic version of the Bisitun inscription …. Otherwise we have to rely entirely on the biblical tradition and on the tradition dependent on it, such as the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus. (137)
While the literary sources from Elephantine fit well with what is dug up in Judah and Samaria, the biblical writing become something of an outlier:
In contrast to the literary works from Elephantine that fit well into the picture reflected by the epigraphic material, the biblical tradition contains a series of particularities. (137)
Everything we read in the Bible about this period appears to be at war with what we find in the ground:
Rather, the Bible seems to be highly critical toward the historical situation and even rejects it by creating its own religious counter‐world, a world that centers on the Torah of Moses and/or the biblical prophets . . . (137)
So what can the scholar honestly say about the facts of the Persian period Jehud and Samaria?
Here, one has to accept that one will hardly ever reach beyond a well (or less well) argued hypothesis. (138)
Kratz divides up the literary sources into two groups:
1. Writings set in the Persian period but not necessarily written so early:
Ezra-Nehemiah
1 Esdras
Esther
Isaiah 44-45
Haggai
Zechariah
Daniel
In these writings the roughly 200 years of Persian rule over Judah and Samaria are condensed to three – if we add Esther, four – events:
(i) the end of the Babylonian exile and the rebuilding of the temple under Cyrus and Darius (2Chron. 36; Ezra 1–6 and 1 Esd.; Isa 44:28–45:13; Hag.; Zech. 1–8; Dan. 1;6 and 8–11);
(ii) the mission of Ezra under Artaxerxes (Ezra 7–10; Neh. 8; 1 Esd.);
(iii) the mission of Nehemiah under Artaxerxes (Neh. 1–13);
(iv) the rescue of the Jewish people under Xerxes (Esther).
(138 – my formatting)
Kratz claims that two of the above events find a point in actual history:
the rebuilding of the second temple
the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem
However, Kratz provides no evidence to support his declaration that these events at this time are “actual history”. As far as I can see he has relied entirely on the assumption that the unprovenanced biblical narratives relate genuine historical events.
Kratz again:
Two – possibly authentic – prophetic oracles from the time of the reconstruction of the temple have come down to us and are now incorporated into the book of Haggai: Hag 1:1.4.8 and 1:15–2:1.3.9a. (138)
But he is surely aware of the thin ice on which he stands:
Both prophetic books [i.e. Haggai and Zechariah] contain some Persian flavor, but we cannot derive reliable historical information from them. Even the role of Serubbabel and Joshua remains unclear as they both appear only in secondary, i.e. later, passages . . . . The same has to be said of the figure of Sheshbazzar, who is mentioned only in Ezra 1:7–11 and Ezra 5:14–16 (6:5?) and who cannot be placed historically . . . . (138)
Kratz assigned other writings such as sections of Isaiah to the Persian period. What historical value do they have?
The oracles in Isaiah 44–45 . . . , the narrative in Ezra 1–6 and 1 Esdras . . . , as well as the literary reflexes on the beginnings of Persian rule in the book of Daniel . . . , have to be seen as later literary creations that have little historical value. (138)
What about Ezra 5-6 that seems at face value to be “so historical”?
A comparison of the Aramaic narrative in Ezra 5–6 – which is the literary nucleus of Ezra 1–6 where we find the older variant of the two versions of the famous edict of Cyrus (Ezra 1,1–4; 6,1–5) – with the papyri from Elephantine shows that this narrative appears to work with general historical knowledge and contains quite a bit of the flavor of the time. This, however, does not imply that the material has to be regarded as historical. Rather, Ezra 5–6 are written in the spirit of the biblical tradition and they are indebted to the Chronistic view of history (Kratz 2006). (139)
What about Nehemiah?
All the other passages of the book of Nehemiah, including those designating Nehemiah as “governor” (Neh. 5:1419; 12:26), are secondary literary supplements that were added to the building report in order to integrate Nehemiah into the (biblical) sacred history of the people of Israel, i.e. the people of God. Their historical appraisal stands on very shaky ground. (139)
Kratz acknowledges the crux of finding a way to prise history from Ezra-Nehemiah.
The evaluation of the mission of Ezra, reported in Ezra 7–10 and Neh 8–10, is most difficult . . . . His mission too is dated to the reign of a king called Artaxerxes. Scholarship generally identifies this king with Artaxerxes II since Nehemiah does not seem to presuppose Ezra. Such a dating operates on the premise that the Ezra memoir existed independently and is historical. This approach blends the historical and literary levels of the narrative. The historical fiction of the biblical tradition emphasizes that the same Artaxerxes is meant here. Ezra and Nehemiah are supposed to be contemporaries in order to complete the restitution of the people of Israel in the Province of Judah in accordance with the Mosaic law . . . Only in literary‐historical terms Ezra is younger than Nehemiah. (139)
We would love books that look like history to yield genuine history but we can’t always have what we want:
Historically, however, we can say little about Ezra. The Aramaic rescript in Ezra 7 forms the literary kernel of the Ezra narrative: Apart from bringing donations to Judah, Ezra is ordered to ensure the execution of the law (dat) of the Jewish God, that is identical to the law (dat) of the king, in the territory of Transeuphrates. The Hebrew narrative in which Ezra executes this order (Ezra 8–10; Neh. 8–10) is dependent on this rescript. The authenticity of the Aramaic rescript that once again is a mixture of Persian period flavor and biblical topoi continues to be disputed since the time of Eduard Meyer and Julius Wellhausen . . . . Despite the ongoing debate the authenticity is unlikely (Schwiderski 2000; Grätz 2004). The text reads like a foundation legend of the legal status of the Torah of Moses in Judaism and is comparable to the Letter of Aristeas reporting the origin of the Greek translation of the Torah in Alexandria under Ptolemy II. The historical background of the Ezra legend is probably the experience of the growing dissemination of the Torah as binding commitment in Judah and Samaria; this dissemination possibly started during the Persian period but came to full effect only in Hellenistic times. (139f)
What history can be gleaned from the book of Esther?
The book of Esther displays an extraordinary familiarity with details of the Persian court – commentaries generally quote the corresponding parallels from Herodotus and Xenophon. This general knowledge is supplemented with all kinds of fantastic details such as the marriage of the Xerxes to the Jewess Esther and woven into a narrative that portraits – in recourse to the biblical tradition – the situation of the Jews in the eastern diaspora . . . . (140)
In brief: it is a romantic novel that echoes Greek writing.
Kratz reminds us of what we should not need to be reminded. The fact that he says it at all is a regrettable commentary on so much traditional biblical scholarship:
The book of Esther is an instructive example that one should not use the flavor of a time to argue for the historicity of the events narrated or to deduce from it a date for the literary origin of the story. (140f)
That principle, Kratz notes, should also be applied to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Yet by far most discussions of Ezra-Nehemiah that I have encountered assume without question that those narratives are Persian era documents with historical underlay.
The example of Esther should also be used in the interpretation of Ezra‐Nehemiah. In both cases the Greek versions . . . . show that the legends about Israelites and Judeans during the Persian period – legends on which the self‐understanding of Judaism rests – were still relevant during Hellenistic times and were spun out further. (141)
To be a little more precise, it would be better to remove the qualifier “still” from “relevant” in the above. There is no evidence that they were ever relevant in the Persian era. The evidence we have surveyed testifies against the stories of Ezra-Nehemiah having any relevance in the Persian period.
2. Biblical sources dated to Persian times
This dating is a scholarly construct. It is not based on material evidence.
[S]cholarship generally dates several other writings or parts of biblical books to this period. From the plethora of the material we will simply look at one (significant) example: the completion of the Jewish law in the form of the Pentateuch, the Torah of Moses, a document of which more than half was written or composed in the post‐monarchial period, i.e. during neo‐Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic times. Especially the multiple‐layered literary stratum, commonly called “Priestly Writing”, is best explained in reference to the second temple period. (141)
Here we surely have an enigma. So far we have seen nothing at all in the evidence from the ground that would lead us to suspect anything like the biblical literature being a product of this time and place. On the contrary, what little we do see in epigraphical and the related archaeological evidence bluntly resists any compatibility with the themes of the Pentateuch. One has to imagine the authors of the Pentateuch shutting themselves off from society at large and writing in a way that is contrary to all that exists around them — and then shelving their work until it eventually takes root and is accepted in Hellenistic times.
As Kratz notes, the Pentateuch has the appearance of “multiple-layered literary strata”. When we read of “compromise between several rival groups”, should we necessarily assume this compromise was worked out over centuries?
The literary development has been interpreted as a compromise between several rival groups within Israel . . . (141)
Scholarship seeks an explanation within the Persian period:
. . . a compromise prompted by an initiative of the Persian authorities or as part of the Persian legal practice called imperial authorization.(141)
Again, we are entirely in the realm of unsupported hypothesis:
The historical hypothesis lacks any evidence and cannot be supported by the texts themselves. The literary development is undeniable but it can be shown only in a relative chronology of the literary strata. It is further undeniable that we have Pentateuchal manuscripts amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, which attest for the period around the middle of the third century BCE several different versions of the texts, including the proto-Samaritan version. To this evidence we have to add the Septuagint that attests the dissemination of the Pentateuch amongst the Greek‐speaking Jews in Alexandria, and Ben Sira, who canvasses the biblical tradition around 200 BCE in Judah. . . . It is equally unclear in which circles these documents were copied, studied, and adhered to and what status the Torah had in Samaria (Mt. Gerizim), Judah (Jerusalem), and Alexandria during the Persian and early Hellenistic period. (141)
So it all comes down to speculation.
We have to admit that we know far less about the history and status of the Pentateuch as Torah during the Persian period than we would like to and we are forced to rely on speculation. The Maccabean revolt during the reign of Antiochus IV during the middle of the second century BCE may provide a historical starting point. Here the Torah is no longer a document of marginalized groups such as the religious community from Qumran but has started to play a significant role in the quarrel over political and economic influence between rival groups within Judaism. During the reign of the Hasmoneans it became (for the first time?) a political and legally binding document for entire Judaism. This is, however, a different story for which we would have to assess the sources for the Hellenistic period. (141f)
Why not assess the sources for the Hellenistic period?
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Sometimes scholarly wheels turn very slowly. Let’s farewell Kratz and say hello to Annette Yoshiko Reed sees a “Near East” that is imbued with a more active cultural role in the Hellenistic era. Reed remarks on how slow certain ideas are sometimes picked up and their worth acknowledged.
Scholars of Biblical Studies have habitually treated Near Eastern “influence” as an emblem of pre-exilic antiquity, while interpreting post-exilic sources in terms of resistance or assimilation to Greco-Roman culture – with divisions of periodization, selections of comparanda, and conventionalized reading-practices thereby naturalizing the notion of the two as mutually exclusive. Due in part to the structurally embedded persistence of old dichotomies like Greek/Near East in the study of antiquity, and “Hellenism”/“Judaism” in research on Second Temple Judaism, studies of Hellenistic-era Jewish sources have tended to neglect Near Eastern comparanda from the Hellenistic period, either treating their Jewish echoes as survivals from the pre-exilic past or dismissing them as akin to the return of the repressed.
Reed laments that calls to change our perspective were made by two scholars (J.J. Collins and J.Z. Smith) way back in 1975!
“We can no longer consider Israelite tradition and Hellenistic syncretism as mutually exclusive alternatives.” What we see, rather, is how “the conquests of Alexander had a profound impact on the eastern civilizations” and how this “impact included an unprecedented circulation of ideas among the various peoples” as well as changes in the “conditions of life” and a resultant “transformation of attitudes.”
Both articles have been widely cited. Puzzlingly, however, their calls for attention to Hellenistic-era Near Eastern comparanda have gone largely unheeded.
(From the Introduction in the ebook edition of Reed’s Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism)
Kratz, Reinhard G. “Biblical Sources.” In A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, edited by Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger, 133–48. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021.
Reed, Annette Yoshiko. Demons, Angels and Writing in Ancient Judaism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
