Exile and Return

The Babylonian Context

Jonathan Stökl, Caroline Waerzeggers, Jonathan Stökl, Caroline Waerzeggers

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9783110419528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Many books of the Hebrew Bible were either composed in some form or edited during the Exilic and post-Exilic periods among a community that was to identify itself as returning from Babylonian captivity. At the same time, a dearth of contemporary written evidence from Judah/Yehud and its environs renders any particular understanding of the process within its social, cultural and political context virtually impossible. This has led some to label the period a dark age or black box – as obscure as it is essential for understanding the history of Judaism. In recent years, however, archaeologists and historians have stepped up their effort to look for and study material remains from the period and integrate the local history of Yehud, the return from Exile, and the restoration of Jerusalem's temple more firmly within the regional, and indeed global, developments of the time. At the same time, Assyriologists have also been introducing a wide range of cuneiform material that illuminates the economy, literary traditions, practices of literacy and the ideologies of the Babylonian host society – factors that affected those taken into Exile in variable, changing and multiple ways. This volume of essays seeks to exploit these various advances.

End Notes

Identifying Judeans and Judean Identity in the Babylonian Evidence

1	Michael Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia in the First Millennium BC: Economic Geography, Economic Mentalities, Agriculture, the Use of Money and the Problem of Economic Growth (AOAT 377; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2010), 5.
2	The major groups of Murašû texts have appeared in the following, listed in chronological order of publication: Hermann Hilprecht and Albert T. Clay, Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur Dated in the Reign of Artaxerxes I (464–424 B. C.) (BE 9; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Archaeology and Palaeontology, 1898); Albert T. Clay, Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur Dated in the Reign of Darius II (424–404 B. C.) (BE 10; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Archaeology and Palaeontology, 1904); Albert T. Clay, Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur Dated in the Reign of Darius II (PBS 2/1; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1912); Matthew W. Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch- Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1985); Veysel Donbaz and Matthew W. Stolper, Istanbul Murašû Texts (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1997). Small groups of texts or isolates appear in: Henry F. Lutz, ‘An Agreement Between a Babylonian Feudal Lord and His Retainer in the Reign of Darius II’, UCP 9/3 (1928): 269–277; Oluf Krückmann, Neubabylonische Rechts- und Verwaltungstexte (TuM 2/3; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1933); Ira Spar and Eva von Dassow, Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Private Archive Texts from the First Millennium B. C. (CTMMA 3; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Matthew W. Stolper, ‘Fifth Century Nippur: Texts of the Murašûs and from Their Surroundings’, JCS 53 (2001): 83–132.
3	BE 9 27.
4	BE 9 26.
5	2 Kgs 24:15–16.
6	2 Kgs 25:7 and Jer 52:11 identify Babylon as Zedekiah’s destination. The subsequent verses do not explicitly state that the Judeans were taken to Babylon, although the report on the delivery of the broken brass Temple implements to Babylon contributes to the impression that Babylon was these exiles’ destination. The Weidner Ration Lists (Ernst Weidner, ‘Jojachin, König von Juda, in babylonischen Keilschrifttexten’, in Mélanges syriens offerts à monsieur René Dussaud: secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, par ses amis et ses élèves. Tome II [Paris: Geuthner, 1939], 923–935) identify Jehoiachin, the deported Judean king, by name, and reference his sons as recipients of ration portions. Support for the impression that, at the least, upper-class or royal deportees resided in or near Babylon comes from the tablets’ excavated context, the Kasr Südburg 21s area of Babylon (Olof Pedersén, Archive und Bibliotheken in Babylon: die Tontafeln der Grabung Robert Koldeweys 1899–1917 [ADOG 25; Berlin: SDV, 2005], 112).
7	Admittedly, in the course of the 135 years that separate the destruction of the Temple and the date of the earliest Murašû texts, any number of factors could have affected the demographics of the exiles. What is of concern here is the clarification of the various sources’ reports on the distribution of the population across urban and rural environments.
8	Israel Ephʿal, ‘On the Political and Social Organization of the Jews in Babylonian Exile’, in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag: vom 24. bis 29. März 1980 in Berlin: Vorträge (ZDMGSup 5; ed. Fritz Steppat; Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), 106–112 (110).
9	A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000), ABC 5: rev. 11–13.
10	ABC 5: rev. 5–7.
11	ABC 5: rev. 9–10.
12	ABC 5: rev. 7.
13	David Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets (HSM 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 34–49, esp. 40. Along with ABC 2, 3, 4, and 6, ABC 5 belongs to a group of texts referred to in the scholarly literature as ‘Chronicles of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty’. Caroline Waerzeggers (‘The Babylonian Chronicles: Classification and Provenance’, JNES 71 [2012]: 285–298 [295]) identifies ABC 5 as the final component in a three-text series consisting of ABC 3–4–5, which focus ‘primarily on military history; religious concerns are secondary at best’.
14	Michael Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia.
15	Francis Joannès and André Lemaire, ‘Trois tablettes cunéiformes à l’onomastique ouestsémitique’, Transeuphratène 17 (1999): 17–34.
16	TuM 2/3 91:7; see also Ran Zadok, Geographical Names According to New- and Late-Babylonian Texts (RGTC 8; Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1985), 98.
17	BIN 2 118: 12, NBDM 89: 32. On the basis of a small orthographic difference, Zadok (RGTC 8: 102) lists these toponyms separately. He locates the Bīt-rēʾi attested in NBDM 89 in the Uruk region and suggests it may be associated with the Bīt-rēʾi in Bīt-Amukāni, attested in Neo-Assyria sources. Uruk, at the southern end of Bīt-Amukāni (Grant Frame, Babylonia 689–627 B. C.: A Political History [Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1992], 39), is close to Karkara, one of the vertices of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titel
• Impressum
• Inhalt
• Introduction
• Identifying Judeans and Judean Identity in the Babylonian Evidence
• Negotiating Marriage in Multicultural Babylonia: An Example from the Judean Community in Āl-Yāhūdu
• From Syria to Babylon and Back: The Neirab Archive
• West Semitic Groups in the Nippur Region between c. 750 and 330 B.C.E.
• Egyptians in Babylonia in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods
• Babylonian Kingship in the Persian Period: Performance and Reception
• “A Youth Without Blemish, Handsome, Proficient in all Wisdom, Knowledgeable and Intelligent”: Ezekiel’s Access to Babylonian Culture
• The Setting of Deutero-Isaiah: Some Linguistic Considerations
• Picking Up the Pieces of the Little Prince:Refractions of Neo-Babylonian Kingship Ideology in Ezekiel 40–48?
• The Reality of the Return: The Biblical Picture Versus Historical Reconstruction
• TSheshbazzar, a Judean or a Babylonian? A Note on his Identity
• The Impact of the Second and Third-Generation Returnees as a Model for Understanding the Post-Exilic Context
• Temple Funding and Priestly Authority in Achaemenid Judah
• Abbreviations
• Non-bibliographical abbreviations
• Index
• Fußnoten