The Prophets and the Rise of Judaism

Adolphe Lods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136201561
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published between 1920-70,The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings:
* Prehistory and Historical Ethnography
Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: £800.00
* Greek Civilization
Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: £450.00
* Roman Civilization
Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: £400.00
* Eastern Civilizations
Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: £650.00
* Judaeo-Christian Civilization
Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: £250.00
* European Civilization
Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: £700.00

PART I

THE ERA OF CONFLICT

(760–586)

ISRAEL AND JUDAH AT WAR WITH ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA

THE PROPHETS OPPOSE THE NATIONAL RELIGION

BOOK I

THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE

CHAPTER I

THE ASSYRIAN CONQUEST. THE END OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL

IN the first centuries of their existence the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been a match for all their enemies. Once the oncoming tide of Assyrian victories reached their frontiers their immunity was at an end.

Assyria was a military state, organized throughout with a view to war. To each of its men-at-arms, no less than to its kings and its god Asshur, the spoils of war brought wealth and glory. War was literally its national industry. This war-mindedness was to a certain extent the result of historical and geographical conditions, for the Assyrian had to defend his fields and orchards on the left bank of the Tigris from the raids of the rough mountain folk who were his neighbours on the north and east, while on the south and west the country had no natural defences. Assyria had first to free itself from the bondage of Babylonia (in the days of Hammurabi and his dynasty, for example), then of Mitanni (in the days of Tel-el-Amarna), and when freedom was assured it continued to harass its neighbours. By 1300 it had conquered the territories belonging to its former rulers, but it lost them again. About 1100, however, Tiglath Pileser I once more took possession of Babylon. On the west he reached the Mediterranean at Arvad, in the north of Phenicia.

These rapid expansions and contractions of subjugated areas are characteristic of Assyrian conquest. The empire of the kings of Asshur could not boast of even the relative solidarity of that of the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. This was due in part to a difference of method. For the maintenance of their authority, the kings of Egypt relied to a much greater extent on carefully fostered discord among their vassals than on the inadequate forces which they sent to guard the provinces. They observed, moreover, a policy of tolerance and assimilation, most evident in their attitude to native gods, which they worshipped, identifying them with Egyptian divinities or even admitting them to the pantheon of the metropolis.¹ The Assyrians, on the contrary, preferred the alternative of brute force, destroying everything which they could not carry off, cutting down fruit-trees, levying exorbitant taxes, inflicting barbarous punishments upon rebels, whom they impaled or flayed alive, sometimes exhuming the dead in order to deprive them of the honours of burial. Nor did they scruple to humiliate the divinities of conquered nations, taking them captive or even destroying their statues. In this way the seeds of implacable hatred were sown, which bore fruit in refusals to pay tribute, and in revolt whenever the Assyrian troops were recalled to deal with disorder at home or to wage war on other frontiers. The king’s death was often a signal for the dissolution of his empire, which his successor had to reconquer.

It is only fair to add that while the Egyptians had ruled only over populations endlessly subdivided and disintegrated, the Assyrians measured their strength against strong and virile nations : Babylonians, Elamites, nomadic or sedentary Aramaeans (particularly the Chaldeans), Medes, Khaldi from the country of Urartu (Ararat) in Armenia, Hittites, barbarians from the north—such as the Moschi, the Cimmerians, the Akkhuzi (Scythians), Arabs, Egyptians, and Ethiopians.

FIG. 1.—Assyrian horsemen of the ninth or eighth century, after a mural painting discovered by M. Thureau-Dangin in the palace of Tell Ahmar (Syria, xi (1930), fig. 7, p. 126).

It was in the course of the eighth century that, having perfected their methods of conquest, the Assyrians reached the zenith of their power. Instead of allowing conquered states a certain amount of autonomy under native rulers, from the time of Tiglath Pileser III onwards (745–727) they show a preference for transforming these states into provinces administered by Assyrian governors. Tiglath Pileser III also seems to have been the first to make systematic use of deportation on a large scale, a procedure less cruel and much more effective than the traditional terrorism. His plan was to deport in a body the pick of the conquered population, which he replaced by foreign colonists from some other rebellious city. The Syrian prince Panammu says of him in an inscription :—

“ He transported to the west the populations of the east, and to the east those of the west.”²

As a rule, the Assyrians succeeded in finally undermining the entire fabric of national existence in the communities so treated.

By thus shuffling and reshuffling the populations of Asia and by obliterating frontiers, the Assyrians were chiefly responsible for the levelling process which prepared the ground for the great empires of Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome.³

Before the end of the eighth century the Israelites had already come in contact more than once with these redoubtable invaders—at the battle of Qarqar (854), at which Ahab joined forces with the King of Damascus against Shalmaneser III,⁴ at the battles fought by Joram in 849 and 846 ⁵ against the same ruler, when Jehu paid tribute-money to the same Shalmaneser in 842,⁶ and Joash, King of Israel, a subsidy to Adadnirari iv for his campaign against Damascus between 806 and 803.⁷ None of these unfortunate encounters, however, had lasting consequences. The Assyrians renewed warlike operations near the borders of Palestine at the time of the expeditions of Shalmaneser iv against Damascus (778) and Hadrach (772), and of Asshurdan against the last-named city (765 and 755)⁸ ; but there is no proof that Israel was involved in the struggle.

The situation grew rapidly worse in the reign of Tiglath Pileser III,⁹ an energetic ruler and skilful warrior who, after having taken possession of the throne by force, restored on all frontiers that favourable state of affairs which the weakness of the last princes of the overthrown dynasty had compromised : at Babylon (745), on the borders of Media (744), then on the Syrian side, where he drove out the King of Urartu (743). He took three years to reconquer the city of Arpad (the present-day Erfad, to the north of Aleppo). He made an Assyrian province of the territory belonging to it and did the same with that of the princes of Unqi and Yaudi ¹⁰ in 739. Warned by this success, the petty kings of Syria, Palestine, and southern Asia Minor, and even an Arabian queen, sent tribute (738). Tiglath Pileser names, among others, Rasunnu (Resôn) of Damascus, and Me-ni-khi-im of Sa-me-ri-na-ai, that is to say, Menahem of Samaria.¹¹

The kingdom of Israel had indeed fallen from the high estate it had known only a few years before, when Jeroboam II, after his decisive victory over the Aramaeans of Damascus,¹² the hereditary enemies of his country, had been in the forefront of the rulers of that region (Am. vi, 1). His son Zechariah, after reigning for six months, was assassinated and supplanted by one Shallum, son of Jabesh, possibly a native of Jabesh in Transjordan. It may be gathered from this that the overthrow of the house of Jeroboam was due to tribal rivalries ; Isaiah mentions strife between Ephraim and Manasseh (ix, 21). A month later Shallum was put to death by Menahem, another claimant to the throne who ruled over Tirzah, the former capital of the country. As he was “the son of a Gadite ”, it has been supposed that he also came from Transjordan, but the translation might equally well read “ the son of Gadi ” In any case, it was owing to these civil wars, marked by episodes of the utmost barbarity, such as the massacre of the people of Tappuah by Menahem, that the country lay at the mercy of the stranger. According to the book of Kings, the tribute of a thousand talents of silver sent by Menahem to Tiglath Pileser was paid in the hope of strengthening his position ; he obtained the money by levying a tax of fifty shekels on every citizen capable of bearing arms. According to the Hebrew account, the King of Assyria then invaded the country, but the silence of the cuneiform records on this point suggests that he merely sent one of his officers.

During the years 787–735 Tiglath Pileser’s whole attention was absorbed by the campaigns in Media and Armenia. Resôn—or Resîn—of Damascus seized the opportunity to organize a general rebellion of the States of Syria against the governor who had been imposed on them in 738. Israel joined the coalition. Pekahiah, son and successor of Menahem and considered as the puppet of the King of Assyria, was overthrown and assassinated by one of his officers, Pekah, son of Remaliah, at the head of fifty men of Gilead. The new king of Samaria and his ally Resôn declared war against Jotham, king of Judah, probably because the latter refused to take part in a rising against Assyria. Under Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the situation became critical. Israelites and Aramæans marched upon Jerusalem with the avowed intention of setting up the “ son of Tab-el ”—possibly Reson himself—on the throne of David.¹³ The Edomites retook Elath, the port on the Elanitic gulf, which Azariah, the grandfather of Ahaz, had succeeded in wresting from them.¹⁴ It was doubtless also at this time that the Philistines took possession of various towns in the southwest.¹⁵ In his extremity Ahaz, against the advice of Isaiah, enlisted the help of Tiglath Pileser by sending him the entire wealth of the Temple and the royal palace.

In consequence the King of Assyria came to chastise the rebels. According to the eponym list he penetrated as far as Philistia. It was therefore probably in the same year that he invaded and dismembered the kingdom of Israel (2 Kings xv, 29), making of Transjordan (Gilead) and Galilee—whose population had to submit to the usual deportation—an Assyrian province. Pekah was overthrown by the pro-Assyrian party in Samaria ; the murderer, Hoshea, son of Elah, prevailed upon Tiglath Pileser to recognize him as king. During the years 733 and 732 Tiglath Pileser concentrated all his energy on the task of subjugating Damascus. When at length the town yielded, Resôn was executed and the surrounding territory annexed to Assyria. Tiglath Pileser received tribute in the conquered town from Ammon, Moab, Ascalon, Gaza, and Edom, while Ahaz himself brought that of Judah. It was in Damascus that Ahaz saw an altar, obviously Assyrian, and had a copy made in order to curry favour by having it set up in the Temple at Jerusalem. It was perhaps at this time that he made an attempt to exalt himself at Israel’s expense (Hos. v, 10), probably without success.

From 732 the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah were in almost desperate straits. There was no longer any bulwark to defend them from the empire of Assyria. The northern kingdom, three-quarters of which had been annexed, now consisted solely of the tribe of Ephraim, which, however, had the insane audacity to engage once more in open combat with the enemy.

Tiglath Pileser died in 727, having assumed the title of King of Babylon, but under the name of Pulu (Pul, 2 Kings xv, 19), so as to give the inhabitants of the famous city the illusion of independence. Thinking to avail himself of the change of ruler in order to regain his liberty, Hoshea sought the help of So, whom the book of Kings describes as King of Egypt, but who is certainly to be identified with Sabe’ or Sibi’, “ Pharaoh’s commander-in-chief,” mentioned in Assyrian documents. This personage, the Hebraic version of whose name was doubtless Sévé, was perhaps at the same time one of the minor “ kings ” who shared the Delta among them. Hoshea also probably joined forces with the King of Tyre, Luli or Elulæus, who at that time recovered the country of the Kittim (in Cyprus), which the Assyrians had taken from him.¹⁶ Hoshea did not go beyond suspending payment of tribute, but Shalmaneser v, son of Tiglath Pileser III, took him prisoner, probably in 725, in the course of the campaign in which he conquered the whole of Phenicia with the exception of the island on which the town of Tyre was built.¹⁷ As Samaria had not surrendered, Shalmaneser returned the following year and laid siege both to it and to Tyre. After a five years’ siege the Assyrians failed to capture Tyre,¹⁸ but Samaria capitulated after a heroic resistance lasting three years (724–722).

Shalmaneser died during the siege, and a new sovereign, Sargon II—who had usurped the throne in 722—sealed the fate of the residue of northern Israel. He deported 27,290 inhabitants of Samaria, evidently th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• The History of Civilization
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I The Era Of Conflict (760–586) Israel And Judah At War With Assyria And Babylonia The Prophets Oppose The National Religion
• Part II The Beginnings Of Judaism
• Bibliography
• Index