The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  Political stability cannot guarantee economic or social well-being, however. The book of Malachi belongs to this period. The Temple is operating, and the prophet tries to assure doubting Judeans of Yahweh’s continued love in spite of infestation, drought (Mai. 3.10–11), and general social ills and inequities (Mai. 3.5). If Third Isaiah (Isa. 56–66) can be assigned to this period, it confirms Malachi’s portrayal of economic struggle and religious uncertainty.

  According to the prophet in Malachi, who speaks from within the priestly establishment, Judah’s misfortunes are Yahweh’s punishment for breach of the covenant in both ritual and ethical terms. Priest and people alike offend God by improper practices in the Temple and by their cruel treatment of each other, particularly by casual divorce. A much discussed passage (Mai. 2.11–12) warns against marriage to “the daughter of a foreign god”; it is unclear whether the writer means intermarriage with foreigners, later a prime concern of Ezra and Nehemiah, or whether instead the offense is syncretistic religion. By repentance and reform, Yahweh’s people must ready themselves so that the coming “day of the LORD” (Mai. 4.5–6) will be one of salvation.

  While Judah’s problems are only hinted at in Third Isaiah, and Malachi’s listing of misfortunes is stereotypical, signs of a spiritual and moral malaise appear in the archaeological record of early fifth-century Judah. The decades following the construction of the Temple did not bring the abundance promised by Haggai and Zechariah. Persian I sites in Judah are distinctly smaller and poorer than coastal cities, towns in the adjacent Shephelah, and particularly the Phoenician centers to the north, whose thriving commercial activities expanded continuously in the eastern Mediterranean under Persian rule.

  The question of the degree of provincial independence that Judah might have enjoyed before the governorship of Nehemiah in 445 remains unresolved in modern scholarship. The Bible portrays Nehemiah’s governorship as unprecedented, and no governor is mentioned between Zerubbabel and Nehemiah. This has led some scholars to conclude that during this period Judah was subject to Samaria, and that when Nehemiah refers to “former governors” (Neh. 5.15) he means Samarian governors with authority over Judah, not former governors of Judah. By this theory, Nehemiah’s arrival signals Judah’s independence from Samaria; his commission from the Persian king is to set up the governing apparatus of a new Persian province. It is equally likely, however, that Judah was autonomous from at least the time of Zerubbabel and probably all the way back to Sheshbazzar. Had the Samarians controlled Judah before 445, they could have exercised their governing authority and put a stop to the wall-building in Ezra 4 instead of appealing for permission from faraway Persian administrators. It seems, thus, that the Persians dispatched Nehemiah to Judah not to supervise a newly autonomous province but to tighten the empire’s grip on a province with newly perceived strategic importance.

  A key to the argument for pre-Nehemian autonomy rests on two tiny objects recently purchased on the antiquities market: a stone seal and a clay seal impression (bulla). As part of a significant cache of early postexilic seals and sealings, these objects unfortunately lack archaeological context, but the cache is believed to come from the Jerusalem area. The clay seal impression refers (in Aramaic script of the Persian period) to “Elnathan the governor,” the stone seal to “Shelomith the maidservant of Elnathan the governor.” One difficulty lies in the word translated “governor.” Did Elnathan enjoy the same status as governor Nehemiah? The term might even refer to some other office. Also problematic is the dating of the scripts, which some assign to the early Persian period and others to later in the era.

  If Shelomith can be identified with Shelomith the daughter of Zerubbabel in 1 Chronicles 3.19, then the conjunction of the names Shelomith and Elnathan raises the probability that Elnathan followed Zerubbabel as governor of Yehud sometime after 515. Were Shelomith the wife or concubine (a possible interpretation of “maidservant”) of Elnathan, then a governor not of Davidic descent would have strengthened his position by marrying into the royal family, an astute move in a transitional period when the civil authority of the governor was giving way to the ascendant power of the priesthood.

  In addition to the Shelomith and Elnathan seals, jar-handle sealings found at Ramat Rahel and Tell en-Nasbeh help close the Yehud “governor gap.” They supply the names of two Judean governors, Yehoezer and Ahzai, possibly bringing us down to the governorship of Nehemiah. Neither appears to have any connection with the family of David. For Shelomith to possess a seal in her own name shows that she held a high administrative position; the seal, along with her presence in a male-dominated genealogy, indicates that she must have been a memorable woman. With Shelomith we have reached the end of the Davidic dynasty’s hold over Judah, but the list of Davidic descendants in 1 Chronicles 3.17–24 continues to the end of the fifth century, attesting to an ongoing regard for David’s line in some Jewish circles. The cryptic references in Zechariah 12.7–10 to David’s line may also come from the period following Elnathan and Shelomith.

  Backwater Judah was not where Darius’s interests lay. His sights were set north, across the Bosporus and west to the Greek mainland. In 499 BCE, rebellions aided by Athens in the Ionian Greek cities and Cyprus set in motion decades of Greco-Persian, east-west conflict, a fateful clash with deep ramifications for biblical—and world—history. Following the Greek naval disaster at Lade, Ionian Miletus was retaken in 494. The Persian destruction of the city and deportation of half its population became a byword among fifth-century Greeks in their struggle against Persia. Herodotus reports that Phrynichus had to pay a fine when his play The Capture of Miletus caused the audience to burst into tears. A rough guess of around 490 for the end of governor Elnathan’s term coincides with the year of Darius’s most humiliating defeat, inflicted on him by the Greeks at Marathon. Darius’s death in 486 put an end to his plans for another go at the Greeks. Instead, his successor Xerxes I (486–465) was forced to quash first a minor Egyptian attempt at secession (486—483) and then a Babylonian uprising that began in 482 with the murder of the satrap Zopyrus. With Egypt and Babylon pacified, Xerxes attended to affairs in Anatolia and to avenging his father’s disgraceful defeat by the Greeks. But after Xerxes repeated his father’s mistakes in Greece at Salamis (480) and Mycale (479), he turned his attention to building programs at Persepolis. He died in a palace coup in 465 and was succeeded by Artaxerxes I.

  Surveys of biblical history describe the decades leading up to Ezra and Nehemiah as turbulent, noting the uprisings against Xerxes by Egypt and Babylon, as well as the more serious Egyptian revolt of 460 early in the reign of Artaxerxes I. Judah, some scholars propose, took advantage of the Egyptian independence movements to do some rebelling of its own. Unrest in Palestine explains an essentially unresolved issue, namely, the Persians’ reasons for sending Ezra (458 or 428) and Nehemiah (445) to Judah. Their missions, which mark a turning point in Jewish self-definition, must first be placed in the context of Persian imperial policies.

  It would not be surprising if Judah had tried to revolt at some point during this period, given the tendency of lands on the fringes of empires to do so. Both the Bible and the archaeological record have been cited for evidence of political unrest, but both sources have been overinterpreted. There is the biblical story of Nehemiah’s shock on hearing, seventy-five years after the completion of the Temple, that the walls of Jerusalem are broken, its gates burned (Neh. 1.3). And there is the variously dated episode(s) in Ezra 4.7–23 in which Jerusalem’s attempts to repair its walls are reported by Persian officials as an act of rebellion and are halted by imperial edict. Perhaps Xerxes I visited Jerusalem on his way to Egypt in 485 to intervene personally. Or Ezra 4.7–23 could be set in the reign of Artaxerxes I, associating it with the Egyptian revolt of 460 or with Ezra himself, who was exceeding his imperial brief by attending to the walls. Unfortunately Ezra 4.7–23 continues to resist attempts at secure dating and has been assigned to the reigns of every Persian king from Cyrus to Artaxerxes I. T
he fallen walls of Nehemiah 1.3 could have been caused by an isolated event, such as a raid by an Arab tribe from the south. As the biblical text now stands, Nehemiah 1.3 is a literarily shaped story that falls in the center of a three-step thematic movement, commencing with the disheartening wall episode of Ezra 4.7–23 and reaching a triumphant climax with Nehemiah’s completion of the walls (Neh. 6.15–16).

  Archaeological evidence for a possible Judean revolt is equally ambiguous. Modern accounts of the Persian period mention widespread destruction and thus social unrest around 480 in areas of Benjamin and southern Samaria, most notably at Shechem, Bethel, Tell el-Ful, Tell en-Nasbeh (Mizpah), and Gibeon. Reexamination of the relevant strata at these sites shows that at Shechem abandonment, not destruction, was more likely, and that this occurred in the mid-fifth, not early fifth, century. Tell el-Ful was abandoned, not destroyed, about 500. The destruction of Bethel cannot be dated later than the sixth century, and Tell en-Nasbeh shows signs of continuous occupation well into the mid-fifth century. The picture of disturbances in Judah at the end of the first quarter of the fifth century can no longer be affirmed or denied. In the succeeding quarter century, however, Judah became entangled in the epic struggle between Greece and Persia.

  The tempestuous first half of Artaxerxes I’s forty-year reign included a protracted revolt in Egypt (460–454?), in which Persians and Greeks again clashed. The Athenians allied themselves with Egypt as a step toward their ultimate goal of supplanting the Persians as masters of the eastern Mediterranean; and it was not so much the Egyptians who worried the Persians as the Athenians, whose presence in Egypt represented a direct military threat to Persia’s holdings in the Levant. If the city named “Doros” on Delian League tribute lists for 454 is the coastal city of Dor just south of the Carmel range, then the Greeks had gained a strategic foothold on Palestinian soil. The participation of the Greeks in the Egyptian revolt of 460 has been described as the most serious challenge to imperial control the Persians faced in the fifth century.

  Megabyzus, satrap of Abar Nahara, led Artaxerxes I’s forces to eventual victory in Egypt. With substantial help from Phoenician ships the Persian navy obliterated the fleet of the Delian League led by Athens in 454 at Prosopitis in Egypt. Three years later, the Greek admiral Cimon’s naval expedition to oust Persia from Cyprus, while not well understood, is a good example of Athenian determination to take over Persia’s western holdings. Athens may have been successful enough to achieve a stalemate, which was formally recognized by a treaty with Persia. The existence of the “Peace of Callias” (449) has been disputed since antiquity, but for several decades after 450 there are no recorded Greek efforts against Persian interests in the eastern Mediterranean or Persian attacks on the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Nevertheless, even after the signing of the putative Peace of Callias, tensions and plotting between Athens and Persia continued.

  In the light of the Greek threat to Persia in the decade between 460 and 450, a secure hold on the Levant became more important to the Persians than ever before. The missions of Ezra and Nehemiah can be understood as part of the Achaemenids’ altered practices in the administration and control of the region. We lack nonbiblical documentary sources directly relevant to this period, but the archaeological record indicates that as part of their strategy for guaranteeing Levantine loyalty the Persians proceeded to garrison imperial troops in a new series of fortresses scattered throughout the region. Distinctive square courtyard buildings dated to the mid-fifth century BCE have been discovered in the Negeb, on the southern coast, in the Judean hill country, in Samaria, and in the Jordan Valley. Their uniformity and contemporaneity suggest a standardized imperial blueprint for small Persian garrisons. Rather than being border fortresses or centers for tribute collection, their wide distribution and often remote locations along ancient roadways suggest that they were deployed to maintain and control the famous Persian road system, which bound the empire closely together and ensured rapid military deployment. The abandonment of many of these sites not long after their construction also suggests that the specific strategic problem prompting their establishment had come to an end. By the late fifth century, mainland Greece had exhausted itself in the Peloponnesian War (431–404) and had no energy for campaigns in the Levant.

  Ezra and Nehemiah

  The missions of Ezra and Nehemiah were part of a conscious imperial strategy for strengthening the empire’s hold on Yehud, as Persia responded to threats resulting from the Egyptian revolt and Greek expansionism. But the books of Ezra and Nehemiah gloss over the possibility that the reformers were acting primarily in the interests of Judah’s Persian overlords. Instead, the Bible tells us, the two leaders come to Judah full of concern for the moral and material well-being of the people and with the express purpose of forming an exclusive holy community. As representatives of the influential and wealthy Diaspora Jewish community, their attitudes—which met resistance among Palestinian Jews—were influenced by the strict Yahwism found in the Deuteronomic laws. Ezra and Nehemiah are remembered in Jewish tradition as religious heroes whose reforms shaped and secured the future of Judaism.

  Ezra’s very existence has been doubted. In the stylized presentation of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, Ezra is a leader and lawgiver patterned after Moses. The similarity between Ezra the priest-scribe (but not high priest) and Nehemiah the secular governor on the one hand and Joshua and Zerubbabel on the other has been observed. Writing in the early second century BCE, Jesus ben Sirach praises Nehemiah (Sir. 49.13), but makes no mention of Ezra. The Ezra narrative has obviously been carefully shaped, but this does not mean that Ezra is a fictional character. The “historical Ezra” has simply been given a theological buildup, ancient “star treatment.” It is impossible to state conclusively when he operated and what he did for the twelve months covered in the biblical account, but attempts to reject Ezra’s historicity have been unsuccessful.

  The defective and probably fictional priestly genealogy for Ezra (Ezra 7) is not meant to mislead but rhetorically to convince the reader that Ezra’s mission should be viewed in continuity with preexilic legal and ritual traditions. Ezra’s commission (Ezra 7.12) from the Persian king Artaxerxes (I?) calls him “the priest… [and] scribe of the law of the God of heaven,” the official Persian name for Yahweh. While Ezra’s title has been cited by those who claim that Ezra served as the imperial official in charge of Jewish affairs, there is scant evidence for such a post elsewhere in the empire. The title “scribe,” however, does suggest that Ezra had some official function. Ezra is sent to Judah and Jerusalem to inquire concerning the “law of your God, which is in your hand” (Ezra 7.14). Of what Ezra’s “inquiry” was to consist is also a difficult question. The Judean priesthood and community were not bereft of religion nor ignorant of Israel’s legal traditions, many of which had long ago been set down in writing. The Temple ritual had been restored, a theocracy well established. There is no reason to think the people were hearing anything startlingly new. The account of Ezra’s public Torah reading (Neh. 8–9) follows a liturgical pattern also found in the account of Josiah’s reform in the seventh century (2 Kings 23); the narrative is shaped to impress readers with the theological momentousness of the event.

  Rabbinic tradition attributed to Ezra the creation of Judaism (m. Abot 1.1), and claimed that “Ezra and the Torah surpassed in importance the building of the Temple”(b. Megilla 16.b). The author/editor of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8, the ancient rabbis, and many modern scholars have believed Ezra’s “law” to be the completed Pentateuch (Torah). But it is almost impossible to correlate any aspect of Ezra’s commission in Ezra 7 with specific Pentateuchal legislation, and the few quotations that we have from Ezra’s Torah do not match the wording of the received Pentateuch. Biblical references to the Torah need not refer to the Pentateuch at all. For example, the word tora in Psalm 119 (roughly contemporary with Ezra and Nehemiah) refers not so much to a written text as to a fluid principle of God’s commandments and teaching, received fr
om teachers and sages and by charismatic revelation.

  Some scholars maintain, with justification, that the editing and promulgation of ancient Pentateuchal traditions occurred in an “Ezra school.” The Ezra-Nehemiah narrative, like the book of Chronicles, does contain numerous allusions to Pentateuchal legal traditions—Deuteronomic, Priestly, and the Holiness Code. For example, in the list of peoples excluded from Israel (Ezra 9.1), we see Deuteronomic laws undergoing a process of exegetical development, in other words, early Jewish biblical interpretation. The Ezra narrative drops some groups from the traditional Deuteronomic seven peoples (Deut. 7.1) and adds others, including Ammonites, Moabites, and Egyptians. Notably, the list does not include Samarians, with whom the Jerusalem priesthood continued to intermarry into the next century. To complicate the picture there are also practices that accord with neither Deuteronomic nor Priestly law. By the mid-fifth century, then, the Pentateuch was on its way to completion but not yet fully formed.

  Clearly, some of Ezra’s tasks are quite worldly. He is charged with distributing gifts and Temple vessels to the “God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7.15). And in accordance with the wisdom of Ezra’s god (Ezra 7.25–26), he is ordered to appoint magistrates and judges to uphold “the law of your God and the law of the king” and to ensure that all the people observe them. The close association of the law of God and the law of the king suggests that Ezra’s task may have involved replacing existing officials with new appointees charged with enforcing a new legal order in a region of new strategic importance.

  Whatever the nature of his imperial mission, in the biblical text Ezra’s main interest is the problem of mixed marriages and consequently of denning the boundaries of Israelite ethnicity. Because some of Judah’s leaders, namely, priests, head the list of guilty persons (Ezra 10.18), Ezra may represent an exclusivist faction of Yahwism battling a more assimilationist local priestly or lay-priestly governing faction. Ezra 10.15 describes Jewish leaders as resisting Ezra’s orders.