Historical Background: General
By the waters of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.. . . How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. (Psalm 137:1, 4—6; NRSV)
Despite the despair expressed by the author of Psalm 137, the Judeans who were exiled to Babylonia in 586 B. C.E. not only adjusted to their new setting but also managed to preserve their religious identity under community leaders called elders. Some scholars believe that the institution of the synagogue originated during the Babylonian exile, providing a framework for the dissemination and study of God's laws. These laws are contained in the Torah (Pentateuch = the Five Books of Moses), which may have been edited in Babylonia together with the books of the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings).
By the second half of the sixth century, Babylonia and the rest of the ancient Near East had come under the rule of the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire, which was based in the area of modern Iran. Persian rule extended as far as the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which was inhabited by Greeks. In 499 B. C.E., with the encouragement and backing of Athens, the East Greeks rebelled against Persian rule (the Ionian revolt). After subduing the uprising, the Persians retaliated by invading mainland Greece, first in 490 B. C.E. and again in 480 B. C.E. Despite sustaining heavy losses, including 300 heroic Spartan troops at the pass of Thermopylae, and despite being hugely outnumbered, the Greeks managed to defeat the Persians and preserve their independence. to its leadership role during the Persian wars, Athens emerged as a political force at the head of an alliance of Greek city-states, which eventually became a de facto empire (the Delian League). The Athenian acropolis, which had been ravaged by the Persians, was rebuilt, its ruined temples replaced by iconic Classical monuments such as the Parthenon and the Erectheum. Athens witnessed a flourishing of the arts with rapid advances in architecture, sculpture, wall painting, vase painting, literature and drama, and philosophy.
A second major power bloc in Greece formed around Athens' rival, Sparta. In 431 B. C.E. a war erupted between these two city-states — the Peloponnesian War (after the Peloponnese, the southern part of mainland Greece). Although Sparta emerged nominally victorious thirty years later (404 B. C.E.), the war drained both city-states and their allies of their finest young men and valuable resources.
Winston Churchill once remarked, “History is written by the victors." Not only did the Greeks defeat the Persians (twice), but we also have only their side of the story, as reported by our main surviving source, the Greek historian Thucydides. Therefore, the Persians often are presented as villains — aggressors led by a despotic king who wrought havoc and sought to subjugate the freedom-loving Greeks. This point of view may be understandable from a Greek perspective, but it is biased and inaccurate. In fact, the Persian Empire was one of the most enlightened and tolerant powers of its time. Ancient powers often dispersed native elites to break up local power bases, replacing them with nonnative populations brought from elsewhere, as the Assyrians and Babylonians did when they conquered Israel and Judah. Persian policy was just the opposite: the Persians repatriated displaced peoples, allowing them to return to their homelands and worship their native gods. Thus, in 539 B. C.E., the Persian king Cyrus II issued an edict granting the exiled Judeans permission to return to their homeland and rebuild the Jerusalem temple:
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent heralds throughout all his kingdom, and also in a written edict, declared: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people — may their God be with them! — are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel — he is the God who is in Jerusalem." (Ezra 1:1-4; NRSV)
The author of the book of Ezra makes it appear as though the God of Israel was the agent responsible for Cyrus' actions. However, a Persian cuneiform
3.1 Map of the Persian Empire. Ancient World Mapping Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Www. unc. edu/awmc).
Text called the Cyrus cylinder reveals the king's motives for rebuilding (other) temples:
I am Cyrus, king of the world. . . from as far as the settlements on the other side of the Tigris, where their temples have long lain in ruin, I returned the gods who lived therein to their places and provided them with permanent temples. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned them to their homes. Daily, may all the gods whom I have brought back to their holy sites speak on my behalf for long life and plead my favor before Bel and Nebo.
As a result of this policy of toleration and repatriation, the peoples of the Persian Empire lived in peaceful coexistence for hundreds of years, with no native rebellions aside from the Ionian revolt.
Historical Background: Palestine
The Persian Empire was the largest ancient empire of its time. For the purposes of government and administration, the empire was divided into units, similar to the way the United States is divided into states, each of which is further subdivided into counties and townships. The largest administrative units of the Persian Empire were called satrapies, which were vast territories governed by satraps. Palestine belonged to a satrapy called eber hanahar (Aramaic abar nahara), Hebrew for “[the land] beyond the river," as this territory lay to the west of the Euphrates River — that is, beyond the river from the point of view of the Persians, to the east. Each satrapy was divided into smaller administrative units called medinot (singular medinah). Palestine included several medinot: 2
3.2 Map of Persian Palestine. Ancient World Mapping Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Www. unc. edu/awmc).
In the wake of Cyrus' edict, waves of Judean exiles returned from Babylonia to Judea and rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, which was consecrated in 516 B. C.E., marking the beginning of the Second Temple period. The Persian policy of religious freedom meant that Jewish law was the law of Judea. In other words, the inhabitants of Judea were not only free to worship the God of Israel as their national deity, but were also obligated to follow his laws (the Torah). Therefore, in 458 B. C.E., a priest and scribe named Ezra arrived in Jerusalem on behalf of the Persian king. His mission was to instruct the Judeans in the law and its proper observance. The Judean exiles returned from Babylonia in clans, as the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests had destroyed the tribal structure and bonds that had characterized Israelite and Judahite society. Whereas we refer to the religion of the twelve tribes before 586 B. C.E. as Israelite religion, Judaism is the religion of the returning Judean exiles, implemented under the guidance of Ezra.
As members of the elite, Ezra and the returning Judeans were concerned with the purity of bloodlines, as reflected in the genealogical lists in Ezra 8:1—14. This concern accounts for Ezra's prohibition against intermarriage, an innovation that became a lasting hallmark of Judaism (remember that even Solomon had numerous foreign wives). Many of the poorer people who remained in Judea after 586 B. C.E. had intermarried in the meantime. The impact of Ezra's implementation of this new prohibition is described vividly in the Hebrew Bible:
Then all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month.
All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now make confession to the Lord the God of your ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives." (Ezra 10:9—11; NRSV)
The new prohibition against intermarriage also affected the inhabitants of the medinah of Samaria, to the north of Judea, whose inhabitants claimed descent from the old Joseph tribes (Ephraim and Manasseh). Ezra's decree excluded this population, which had intermarried with peoples brought in by the Assyrians in the centuries following the fall of Israel in 722 B. C.E. Nonetheless, the inhabitants of Samaria viewed themselves as the true Israel and worshiped the God of Israel as their national deity. Excluded by the Judeans from the Jerusalem temple, the Samarians (later known as the Samaritans) eventually erected a temple to the God of Israel on their own sacred mountain, Mount Gerizim (discussed later). The Judeans considered the Samaritans schismatics, and despite (or perhaps because of) being closely related, they were bitter enemies.
Nehemiah served as governor of Yahud (Judea) from 445 to 424 B. C.E. He was a Judean who had attained high office in the Persian administration (as the cupbearer of the Persian king). Under Nehemiah's supervision Jerusalem's fortifications were rebuilt, a project that was opposed by the governors of the surrounding medinot:
So we rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the gaps were beginning to be closed, they were very angry, and all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. (Nehemiah 4:6—8; NRSV)
Nehemiah's foes included Tobiah, the governor of Ammon, and Sanballat I, the governor of Samaria. The latter's grandson, Sanballat III, was the governor of Samaria at the time of Alexander the Great's conquest (332 B. C.E.). Josephus reports that in exchange for his support against the Persian king, Alexander granted Sanballat III permission to build a temple to the God of Israel on Mount Gerizim, the sacred mountain of the Samaritans overlooking the biblical city of Shechem. Manasseh, the brother of the Jewish high priest Jaddua in Jerusalem, married Sanballat III's daughter Nikaso and became the high priest of the new Samaritan temple.
Archaeology
Then I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my ancestors' graves, so that I may rebuild it." (Nehemiah 2:5)
No identifiable remains of the second temple survive, which was much less impressive than Solomon's temple because of the limited resources of the returning exiles, some of whom wept when they compared it with its predecessor: “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who has seen the first house [Solomon's temple] on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house" (Ezra 3:12; NRSV). The book of Nehemiah indicates that the returning exiles rebuilt Jerusalem's fortifications by filling in the breaches that had been made in the walls at the time of the Babylonian conquest. However, along the eastern crest of the City of David they erected a new wall, higher up the slope than the Bronze Age and Iron Age walls. This is the wall that Macalister and Duncan uncovered and erroneously attributed to the Jebusites (with the addition of a Hasmonean period tower; see Chapter 2). During the Persian period, Jerusalem's settlement was limited to the City of David, including the temple on the Temple Mount but no occupation on the
Western hill, which lay outside the walls. The city's size suggests a small population, which is not surprising, as many Judean exiles chose to remain in Babylonia, forming a large and prosperous Diaspora community that flourished for centuries.
Excavations on Mount Gerizim have brought to light a fortified village and sacred enclosure that were established in the fifth century B. C.E. (a couple of centuries earlier than Josephus reports) and rebuilt in the early second century B. C.E. The top of the mountain was surrounded by a temenos wall (temenos is a Greek word denoting a sacred precinct). Finds from this enclosure include hundreds of inscriptions, many of which mention YHWH and sacrifices, and
3.4 Monumental staircase of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. Courtesy of Todd Bolen/BiblePlaces. com.
Thousands of charred bones belonging to sacrificial sheep, goats, cows, and pigeons. Unfortunately, nothing survives of the temple building that originally stood inside the enclosure, which was destroyed by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus I in the late second century B. C.E. and obliterated when a church was constructed on that spot centuries later. A monumental staircase connected a fortified village on the mountain's west slope with the sacred enclosure at the top. The houses in the village were large and sturdily built of stone, with two stories of rooms arranged around a central courtyard. Pressing installations and storage facilities indicate that the village's main economic base was the cultivation of grapes and olives and the production of wine and oil.
Although Persian-period remains have been found at sites around Palestine, archaeologically this is one of the least-known periods in the country's long history. In part this is because many sites that had been occupied for centuries were abandoned after the Persian period. Because the Persian period occupation is the last (uppermost) stratum, it tends to be eroded, damaged, and less well preserved than earlier levels. For this reason, Persian pottery types are less well known than those of other periods. Persian pottery has also been difficult to identify because the types generally developed out of the local Iron Age tradition.
At many Persian period sites, a palace, fortress, and/or central administrative building were erected on the summit of the earlier tel. These buildings typically consisted of a room surrounding a central open courtyard, a layout
3.5 Houses at Tel Dor with pier and rubble construction.
That was introduced to Palestine during the Assyrian period. For example, the last phase of occupation at Tell Jemmeh in the northwest Negev dates to the Persian period, when a fortress and then a large building with storehouses were constructed in succession. Recent excavations at Kedesh in Upper Galilee have brought to light a monumental building with columned halls that was established on top of the south tel. The building was constructed in the Persian period and continued to function until the site's abandonment in the mid-second century B. C.E. Kedesh appears to have served as a regional administrative center under Persian rule. Although it is not clear whether this administrative center was independent or operated under the hegemony of Tyre (one of the autonomous Phoenician cities), Phoenician influence on the local material culture suggests a Phoenician presence at Kedesh.
At the Phoenician site of Tel Dor on the northern Palestinian coast, a residential quarter dating to the Persian period has been uncovered. On one hand, the quarter has a Greek type of layout called a Hippodamian town plan (see Chapter 4), reflecting Greek influence on this Phoenician coastal town. On the other hand, the walls of the houses are constructed in a typical Phoenician style, with ashlar piers alternating with stretches of rubble fill (perhaps a device intended to limit earthquake damage to sections of wall). This construction style, called a telaio, is known from Phoenician colonies in the west including Carthage, but so far has been found in the eastern Mediterranean only at Tel Dor.
There is extensive evidence of Persian period occupation at Ashkelon, one of the cities of the former Philistine pentapolis, including monumental ashlar buildings and warehouses. Among the Persian period remains is a huge dog cemetery, out of which more than 800 canine burials have been excavated. The dogs are male and female, of medium height and build, and include adults and puppies, with a high percentage of puppies (62 percent) that statistically resembles modern urban populations. Each dog was laid on its side in a shallow pit, with the tail around the hind legs. The dogs seem to have died of natural causes and there is no evidence of butchering. Although a number of ancient Mediterranean peoples venerated canines, the excavator believes that the dogs buried in the cemetery most likely were connected with a Phoenician healing cult.
Important evidence of everyday life at the end of the Persian period was discovered in a cave in Wadi ed-Daliyeh, north of Jericho. In 331 B. C.E., the population of Samaria revolted against the governor appointed by Alexander the Great. Approximately 300 men, women, and children from the city of Samaria took refuge in this cave, bringing their most valuable possessions. The refugees were discovered by Alexander's troops and suffocated to death when the soldiers lit a large fire at the cave's entrance. Bedouins found the victims' skeletons lying on mats inside the cave. The most important finds from the cave are fragments of papyri from personal documents that belonged to the refugees, along with clay bullae bearing names or motifs in various styles, including local, Persian, and Greek.
Material Culture Pottery
During the Persian period, fine table wares were produced in Greece and exported around the Mediterranean. Athenian (Attic) table wares dominated the markets in the fifth century, characterized especially by red-figure ware, so called because figures were reserved in the natural red color of the clay and set against a shiny black “glazed" background. The fine table wares were widely exported because of their value and were used for dining, similarly to expensive modern china dishes. Many of these table wares are wine sets that include drinking cups and bowls, kraters (large bowls) for mixing wine and water (following the Greek custom), and jugs for pouring wine. In addition, large numbers of Greek amphoras have been discovered at Persian sites in Palestine. Amphoras are large jars for transporting wine and other liquids. They were equipped with two handles and a pointed base so they could be loaded easily onto ships, using one hand to grasp the handle and the other hand to lift the base. Not surprisingly, the largest quantities of Greek pottery — both fine wares and amphoras — have been found at coastal sites such as Tel Dor and Ashkelon.
3.6 Greek black-glazed and red - and black-figured pottery found in Israel, including a krater (rear center) and an early closed oil lamp (front left). Courtesy of Zev Radovan/BibleLandPictures. com.
The concentrations of Greek pottery at these sites suggest that small numbers of Greeks might have settled among the native population, and at the very least it indicates that some locals hosted Greek-style symposia (drinking parties).
The local pottery continues the Iron Age tradition and tends to be plain (undecorated). For example, open oil lamps with a thick stump base and wide ledge rim are similar to the characteristic Iron Age type. On the other hand, some new types and features were introduced, including local (undecorated) imitations of Greek imports. One hallmark of the Persian period is mortaria (singular: mortarium) — large, shallow, thick-walled bowls with a ring base made of coarse, light yellow ware. Scientific analyses and signs of abrasion indicate that the mortaria were used for grinding. Also common in Persian period assemblages is a distinctive type of amphora of light brown or light red clay, with two high, vertical (“basket") handles and an elongated, pointed base. An inscription on a basket-handled amphora from Kadesh Barnea (in the northern Sinai) suggests that oil was one of the products transported in these jars.
World History
