The Oxford History of the Biblical World (68 page)

In Ezra-Nehemiah the “empty land” is a literary theme, reflecting the interest of Jewish circles preoccupied with asserting privileged ethnic boundaries—with defining “Israel” by a policy of exclusion, particularly of nonexiles whose existence Ezra-Nehemiah often ignores. For the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah, “Israel” was restricted to the returned exiles who had established themselves in Jerusalem and Judah in the first generations of the restoration, along with (presumably) those sympathetic Jews remaining in Babylonia and Persia who provided the returned exiles with moral and financial support. Ezra and Nehemiah themselves come from the Jewish communities in Babylonia and Persia, respectively. Accordingly, in Ezra “Israel” is equated with more frequently encountered terms, such as
exiles, the exile,
and
the congregation of exiles.
To this true Israel alone belonged the land of their forebears. Nevertheless, according to Ezra 6.21 and Nehemiah 10.28, which allude to people who have separated themselves from the “pollutions of the people of the land,” some nonexilic native Judeans—in other words, Jews technically excluded from the Israel of Ezra-Nehemiah—did receive admittance into the exclusive “exilic Israel” community.

Another significant population of local Yahweh worshipers inhabited the Persian province of Samaria and possibly southern Galilee. The Bible suggests that after the Assyrian deportation (722) only foreign immigrants populated this area (2 Kings 17; Ezra 4). But the Assyrians did not deport the entire Israelite population, and 2 Chronicles 34.9 implies that some urban Israelites not of the ruling class, as well as rural Israelites, remained in the land. Just as the Judean “people of the land” are viewed with contempt by Ezra-Nehemiah as impure and unworthy, so the Samarian Yahwists, led by the Samarian governor Sanballat, are presented as spiteful enemies of the true Israel, not as another group of Jews with a variant understanding of religious matters and ethnic definitions.

Both Chronicles (see 2 Chron. 30.5–11, 18; 34) and Zechariah convey a more conciliatory and inclusive attitude toward the inhabitants of Samaria. The brief period of a reunited monarchy under Josiah in the late seventh century
BCE
may have reinforced social and religious connections between north and south. Jeremiah 41.4–5 is intriguing in this regard; after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple,
eighty worshipers bearing the marks of deep mourning came south from Shechem, Samaria, and Shiloh to make offerings at the site of the destroyed Temple.

Aramaic letters from Elephantine also attest to Samarian Yahwism. For example, they show that Nehemiah’s Samarian nemesis, Governor Sanballat, gave his sons Yahwistic names. Moreover, when the Jews of Elephantine in the late fifth century needed help rebuilding their temple, they appealed for aid to Jerusalem and Samaria alike as if both cities had some claim to their religious allegiance. And while many of the names mentioned in the Samarian Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri (fourth century
BCE
) are foreign (Edomite, Aramaic, Moabite, Phoenician, and Babylonian), the largest percentage of names with divine elements is Yahwistic, confirming the notion that, among the ruling elite at least, Yahwism persisted and even flourished in the Persian period. Moreover, the Zadokite priestly family of Jerusalem and leading Samarian families were allied by diplomatic marriages (Neh. 13.28; Josephus,
Antiquities
11.8.2). Reassessments of sectarian Samaritanism have demonstrated that its feasts, its conservatism toward the Torah, and its version of the Pentateuch indicate more derivation than deviation from Judaism of the Second Temple period.

North of Samaria the ancient Israelite territory of Galilee included prosperous coastal cities that were subject, politically and culturally, to the Phoenician powers of Tyre and Sidon. But the cultural and ethnic affinities of inland Galilee’s population during the Persian period remain enigmatic. Can a Jewish (Yahweh-worshiping) population in this formerly Israelite land be assumed during the Persian period? The usual answer to this question, if even asked, has been “no.” Archaeologically, the evidence suggests that Phoenician culture dominated inland regions. Moreover, Galilee is never mentioned in biblical sources describing the Persian period, and Galilee appears to have been predominantly Gentile in sources describing it in Hellenistic times. Nevertheless, a case can be made for the existence of a significant Jewish community in Galilee during the Persian period, based partly on the evidence of deep-rooted Galilean Jewish traditions in late Hellenistic times that cannot be explained if the population had been entirely ignorant of or antagonistic to Judaism.

In addition to nonexiled Judeans, the inhabitants of Samaria, and possibly Galileans, there may have been an additional group of local Yahwists. In Nehemiah’s time, a prominent family with a Yahwistic name, the Tobiads, lived across the Jordan in Ammon (Neh. 2.19). They intermarried with members of the Jerusalem priestly family (Neh. 6.19) and participated in some way in the Jerusalem Temple (Neh. 13.4–9). Some scholars see a connection between Nehemiah’s Tobiah and the large “family of Tobiah” (Ezra 2.60; Neh. 7.62; 1 Esd. 5.37), which returned with Zerubbabel from exile but could not prove an Israelite pedigree. Because a Tobiah is also mentioned in Zechariah (6.9–15) as a returned exile who participated in the symbolic crowning of Joshua, the mention of an imperfect pedigree in Ezra and Nehemiah may be a tendentious attempt, made long after the reestablishment of the Temple, to cast aspersions on a losing group in a Temple power struggle. This family continued to be important; the archaeological record supports the evidence from Josephus
(Antiquities
12.4.2) and the Zeno papyri for a powerful Jewish landowning family called the Tobiads in third-century
BCE
Ammon.

Thus, the Palestinian (as opposed to Diaspora) “Jewish” population throughout the Persian period consisted of local, nonexiled Jews of Judah; exiled Jews who had
returned to Judah; Samarians; Galileans; and at least one family in Ammon across the Jordan. These local Jewish communities maintained contacts with Jews who remained in Babylonia, Persia, and Egypt.

Many questions surround the earliest Judean restoration. Is Judah’s first governor, the fatherless Sheshbazzar (ca. 538) in Ezra 6.14 (a book that downplays the role of the house of David), the same as Shenazzar, a son of Judah’s captive King Jehoiachin (1 Chron. 3.18)? His title
prince
merely indicates high status, not royal blood. Perhaps he was not a Judean. Sheshbazzar is also the first of several important Judean officials who vanish mysteriously from the biblical record. Was his role in the restoration suppressed for theological reasons by the editors of Ezra-Nehemiah, or did he fail in his mission to complete the Temple? The suggestion that he took part in a thwarted Judean independence movement against the Persians is likewise only a guess.

Little is known of events in Judah or Samaria in the generation after the disappearance of Sheshbazzar. Temple building came to a halt, if it had ever begun. Haggai 1 suggests that any early movement toward Temple restoration quickly ran out of steam. Considered realistically, to exiles intent on building homes and organizing a subsistence system, the fields, the “well-roofed houses,” and the wage earning described so bitterly by Haggai could well have mattered more than the Temple.

One decade after Sheshbazzar’s time, Cyrus’s son Cambyses (530–522
BCE
) realized his father’s dream of conquering Egypt. In 526 the Persian army, its ranks augmented by Greek mercenaries, invaded Egypt via northern Sinai. A Kedarite king provided camel trains bearing water skins for the desert crossing. The Persian fleet, largely Phoenician ships, penetrated the Nile mouths, and together these land and sea forces defeated the pharaoh Psammetichus III, the last king of Dynasty 26. When Egypt submitted to him in 525, Cambyses also gained Cyprus for the Persian empire. Judah and Samaria as inland territories lacked the strategic value of coastal cities like Acco, the staging area for the invasion, and were unaffected by invasion activities.

Cambyses’s policies in Egypt mirrored those of his father in Babylon. Just as Cyrus added “King of Babylon” to his titulary, his son was formally crowned the first pharaoh of Dynasty 27. Like Cyrus, Cambyses presented himself as the restorer of a land suffering sad misrule, in this case, from the late usurper Pharaoh Amasis and his heir Psammeticus III. And, like his father, Cambyses was careful to cultivate good relations with important priestly establishments, although he alienated other priests by diminishing their income. In sum, the first two Persian kings set a pattern for culturally informed flexibility in ruling diverse foreign subjects.

With the reign of Darius I (522–486
BCE
), Persian and Jewish history takes a new turn. Darius was probably a usurper, and he spent his first year and a half quelling rebellions on multiple fronts. To consolidate his control and to further integrate the political and social order of conquered territories into his imperial system, Darius embarked on a series of administrative reforms. He organized the empire into twenty tributary satrapies, large territorial units that included provinces usually following the former boundaries of conquered lands.

Darius did not create the satrap system, but he did bring to it a new level of systematized administrative practices. In charge of each satrapy was the satrap (Median
Khshathrapan,
“Protector of the Realm”), a Persian aristocrat who was the king’s personal representative. The satraps were responsible for justice and security and most especially for ensuring carefully specified tribute payments. Important satrapal centers such as Memphis in Egypt and Sardis in Lydia were fortified by permanent imperial garrisons, whereas in other centers only household troops were regularly billeted. Large numbers of native Persians also received land in the satrapies; if called on, they were required to lead local recruits in battle. Like the great king, the satrap had a chancery staffed with Aramaic-speaking scribes to maintain communication with the royal court and with local authorities subject to the satrap. The provinces within individual satrapies had no uniform mode of government: sometimes they were headed by a native dynast, sometimes by a local or a Persian appointee, sometimes by a city prince or priest.

Darius also introduced imperial coinage and a postal system, and he greatly expanded the network of royal roads connecting all parts of the Persian empire. Inns along the way provided travelers on imperial business with free board and lodging. In addition to facilitating communications among the satrapies, the well-maintained roads ensured the efficient movement of troop convoys wherever they were deployed.

Darius’s ambitious building projects included a short-lived Suez Canal. Its purpose may have been to enhance Red Sea trading enterprises, or, as a royal project in the pharaonic tradition, to emphasize continuity with Egypt’s past and to impress Darius’s subjects. The archaeological record confirms that Darius improved or built new palaces in the old royal capitals of Babylon and Susa and in Cyrus’s city, Pasargadae. But most notably, Darius planned and began the construction of Persepolis in the heart of the Persian homeland, a city whose magnificence served well the ideological program that informed its creation and whose impressive remains still stand today in southern Iran.

Darius sagely kept an eye on religious matters in his empire. In Egypt the satrap, on Darius’s behalf, personally confirmed and dismissed appointees to the priestly post of temple superintendent. Darius sent his Egyptian physician Udjahorresnet back to Egypt to reconstitute the old Saite temple-colleges, which taught priestly learning, ritual procedure, and medicine. Another project personally initiated by Darius and entrusted to Aryandes, satrap of Egypt, was the codification of Egyptian “laws” (probably temple endowments, privileges, and immunities) and their translation into Aramaic and Egyptian Demotic.

In 520, Darius’s second year and almost twenty years since the exile had ended, two Judean prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, began a spirited campaign to convince Judean leaders and the citizenry that the time was ripe to rebuild the Temple. Haggai’s first oracle (Hag. 1.1–11) directly challenges Zerubbabel the governor and the high priest Joshua to remedy the deleterious consequences of letting God’s Temple remain a rubble heap. Both Zerubbabel and Joshua (Jeshua) may have been born and raised in Babylonia; Zerubbabel was the grandson of Judah’s captive Davidic king Jehoiachin (Hag. 1.1; Ezra 3.2; Neh. 12.1; 1 Chron. 3.19). Joshua is described as the son of J(eh)ozadak (Ezra 3.2), the last preexilic chief priest (not high priest) according to 1 Chronicles 6.15. (However, 2 Kings 25.18–21 instead names Jehozadak’s father, Seraiah, as chief priest and does not explicitly say that his family went into exile. Nevertheless, it is likely that surviving members of Seraiah’s family were exiled.)

Under Zerubbabel and Joshua, presumably the governor saw to secular affairs and the high priest attended to matters of ritual, but whether they always shared equal power or one at first outranked the other is uncertain. One of Zechariah’s visions (Zech. 6.9–15) alludes to friction between high priest and governor over jurisdictional questions. Perhaps in this period of imperial and provincial administrative restructuring, the heretofore rare title
high priest
(more common was
chief priest)
was assumed by Joshua in recognition of new, expanded powers. This diarchy may also reflect the restoration program described in Ezekiel. On the other hand, that prophet’s allusions to a future leader from the priestly Zadokite family (Ezek. 43.18–27) that had dominated preexilic Temple ritual and to a pious Davidic prince (Ezek. 37.24–28) need not imply a formula for diarchy. Although the status of Judean governors may have fluctuated during the two centuries of Persian rule, for the most part it is accurate to call Judah’s form of government in this period a theocracy, with the deity’s representative the high priest assuming an increasingly dominant role, possibly even filling the post of governor on occasion.