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The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future

by Dr. Jacob L. Wright
Week 3

3.1: Week 3 Introduction (2:18)
This program is brought to you by Emory University.
>> So, hi guys.
What we're going to do throughout this week is turn to that question that is, the really the
question that we're dealing with throughout the whole course.
And that is, why? Why the biblical authors created this very sophisticated, elaborate corpus of
writings.
And why is it not happening elsewhere? To get at that question in this first attempt, we're going to
look at the narrative writings.
The narrative I think from stretching from Genesis to the book of Kings is one of the most
important aspects of what we do as Biblical scholars.
And to study the formation of this great history.
Is going to be an important step for everything else that we do throughout the course, so that's
what we're going to focus on this week.
But before we do so, I want to look at the facts on the ground, meaning how did the Judean
communities actually live? How did the Israelites communities after 720 what happened to them?
What are we suppose to imagine when we think about the theory of deportations, and the
Babylonian deportations? Are these communities all being moved in mass to Babylon, and
throughout the Mesopotamian regions? Or is there something else going on? Are we to imagine.
People fleeing to Egypt and other places without really being exiled per se.
And what other factors on the ground in terms of how the communities eventually come together
and then return to Jerusalem or do they even return? To what extent are they returned.
Those are some of the things that are important for us to look at, because we want to know what
the biblical authors are really facing.
What kind of situations are they dealing with? What kind of communities are they addressing? Or
is there any community to speak of? Are they trying to build one up? And this will then help us
understand what they do in terms of gathering writings.
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And the kinds of messages they have in these writings.
So this, we're going to start with narrative writings, but before we do so, we want to look at some
of the, the actual practices and facts on the ground that typical authors have to deal with
themselves.
3.2 Part 1: Judah After the Babylonian Conquest (7:20)
So, what can we say about the conditions in Judah after the Babylonian conquest? A number of
scholars have insisted that the land was not empty.
And by this, they intend to take issue with a naive interpretation of the biblical text, according to
which the Babylonians deported most of Judah's inhabitants.
And Judah remained in a condition of ruins until the Persian rulers, who conquer the Babylonian
empire allowed the Jews to return to their homeland.
Now this view is sharply rejected by, other scholars and rightly so.
First of all, one must be quick to point out that even the biblical text, do not present the exile in
such a facile way.
And secondly in denying the radical discontinuity, discontinuities that the Babylonian conquest
introduced.
These scholars have overstated their case.
Almost every urban and major military installation, from the seventh century in Judah was
destroyed or abandoned.
With few exceptions, they remained unoccupied, until well into the Persian period.
The urban sector in Judah, is marked by a major break or gap or, what we call, discontinuity, and
everyone seems to agree on this point with regard to the urban sector.
The difference of opinion, relates not to the urban sector where the cities are, major sites, but
rather these smaller sites, these ones on the countryside, the rural, sites.
Which was, the country side was dotted by many farmsteads and hamlets, and villages, and
they're unexcavated, and they're more numerous, and much smaller.
And in contrast to the major urban sites in archaeological tale, tales, they have not been subjected
to the intensive excavations that really require us to do in order to study them, and to know what
has happened to them over the course of the centuries.
Yet still some insist that the rural sect, rural sector in Judah experienced minimal destruction, and
since a large part of Judah's population before the Babylonian onslaught lived in the rural sector,
these scholars claim that Judahite society is characterized by more continuity than discontinuity.
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Now, there are many problems with this view.
The first is that the small sites in the rural sector, in most cases did not continue into the Persian
period.
Second, the rural sector depended on the urban sector in many ways.
And it's likely that it could not have, persisted in the same way when the major sites were
destroyed the whole infrastructure was gone, and these small sites depended on them, and for
their existence.
Third, there are a number of items in the material culture, from Judah during the late Iron Age that
did not continue into the Persian period.
Thus in the Iron Age, two period, in the late Iron Age we see a new type of burial that emerged
from Judah.
And these are tombs that were human to rock with benches, the bench tombs.
Now we can count hundreds of these bench, Judahite tombs all over the area that is the kingdom
of Judah.
And they were probably used by extensive, by extended, or families or clans, for generations, and
became important spaces for, kind of the clan identity.
Now this type of burial disappears in the Persian period and the same goes for the four roomed
house.
The four roomed house was the common, kind of house that we notice throughout the Iron Age
within Israel and Judah.
They are common up until the Babylonian destruction but are not attested in the Persian period.
Now similarly with the Judahite pillar figurines, and that's the subject of my conversation with Erin
Darby and the video from last week, they're very wide spread as, as professor Dabude points out
in Judah during the late monarch period and they go all the way up to the Babylonian conquest.
And they are so wide spread and so proliferated throughout the Judah height territories, that they
are understood to represent some kind of Judah height identity.
They're very different, one can tell, differences in style, and shape, and so forth within Judah, and
then beyond the borders of Judah, there's a sharp demarcation there.
And the presence of these Judah height pillar figurines indicates to archaeologists, that an
occupational layer of a site, is older than the Persian period for example, so it's so clear that the
Judah Pillar figurines are from the late Monarch-in period, that one can use them as a dating
period, a dating in, indication.
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So, all this goes to show that something in the material culture had drastically changed.
The pictographic and linguistic evidence clearly changes also with the Babylonian destruction, and
then there is the elaborate and fascinating system that we can't really go into right now, the
measuring weights of their widely attested, likely Judah, Judean pillar figurines.
They're widely attested throughout Judah, but they disappear with the Babylonian conquest and
the reason for this is that, there was the collapse in the economic structure that the Babylonians
onslaught brought.
Further attesting to the collapse isin the economic collapse, is that we don't really see any Greek
pottery, these international wares that are brought from the East of _ and throughout the
Mediterranean.
All of that is really not widely attested, after the Babylonian conquest, which shows that life had
radically changed and there was no longer a market or a demand for expensive international
prestige objects.
Now the demographic and settlement trends from the late iron age to the Hellenistic age is highly
debated.
It seems safe to say that the level of prosperity that you had achieved in the seventh century, sank
precipitously with the end of the Iron Age, and Babylonian destruction.
The recovery was extremely slow and gradual.
It was not until the late Hellenistic period, that comes after the Persian period, that things
returned to the way they once were.
The population at the lowest point after the Babylonian destruction, was probably only one tenth
of what it was during the monarchy period.
Across the span of Judah's, history, the seventh century was a time of great prosperity.
Only in the Shfela, that area that is right between the coastal area and the Judean Highlands, only
there, was the eighth century better off, and that's, the reason for that is that the Assyrian ruler
Sennacherib, at the end of the eighth century, during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, he
wiped it out and really wreaked a lot of havoc there.
Yet the devastation wrought by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, was far greater than the that
wrought by the Assyrian leader Sennacherib.
Whereas Judah recovered from the Assyrian campaign, and quite quickly, actually, it was crushed
demographically and administratively, and economically and politically and in many other ways by
the Babylonians and never really recovered.
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All these things that we see in the material culture are probably matched also by ideological
changes that the population underwent things just radically shifted with the Babylonian
destruction.
It took many centuries to recover from that devastation.
3.2 Part 2: Factors Leading to Depopulation (9:04)
So how should we explain the radical demographic decline in Judah after the Babylonian conquest?
Where did everyone go? Were they all deported to Babylon? I'll pick up this question in a later
video segment this week.
But, right now, I want to discuss some of the factors leading to depopulation.
And what I say here goes for both Judea and Israel.
Now, the first thing we need to recognize is that the death toll in wars in Antiquity was usually
quite high.
This was due to problems of evacuation, medicines, sanitation, contamination, and pollution and
all of that.
And since the battles with the great imperial armies that Judah and Israel fought were usually a
matter of the population from the countryside taking refuge behind the municipal fortifications in
the capital cities and just waiting it out, what we call siege warfare, all these factors played in, in
an even more drastic role.
Now contributing to the death toll in a major way was also famine and epidemics.
Long after the enemy army had returned home, the subjugated population was still struggling to
survive.
I discuss this in an article that you guys can read this week.
And as I discussed there, you can see how an invading army sought to destroy the life support
systems, what I call life support systems, of an enemy city.
It did this through both intentional destruction, that is cutting off or polluting the water sources,
laying the fields to waste, or cutting down fruit trees and orchards that took many years to grow,
some salt in the ground, and all kinds of different other things like this.
And what it did not intentionally destroy was often inadvertently ruined.
If the fields were not regularly plowed, locust eggs could grow, could hatch and, and locusts could
grow, and it could become a catastrophic plague.
And that is the case that, even to the present day in times of warfare.
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Also, protracted fighting or years of siege interfered with the delicate balance of tilling, planting
and harvesting, so that when an army left the scene, the population had to struggle for years
thereafter.
Rib-Adda is a ruler of Byblos during the late Bronze Age, and he writes in one of these Armana
Letters that we discussed in the first couple of weeks of the course to the Egyptian pharaoh.
And he says there how he's trapped in his own city like a bird in a cage and with the enemy at his
doorstep, planting was impossible.
He says, for lack of cultivation, my field is like a woman without a husband.
This, in turn, he says, had, has as having catastrophic consequences.
His own people have sold not only their household object but also their children in order to buy
provisions, and the escalation of hostilities had made field work impossible; they couldn't go out
and take care of their field.
And threat of starvation during the winter led to the depopulation of the region even for months
and years thereafter.
Even if the inhabitants of Byblos could hold out against their besiegers, famine was inevitable and
would continue to inflict losses long after the military conflict had ceased.
So, if the enemy army managed to conquer the city, the collapse of the administration, the social,
political infrastructure would of brought about many problems for the surviving population.
Once the administration was eradicated, safety was seriously undermine.
Conditions of lawlessness and lack of security lead to deaths and voluntary, involuntary migrations
to neighboring areas where conditions were better.
Finally, after a population had capitulated, the imperial army would often perform public
executions.
The ones selected for these punitive rituals were often elites and administrative officials and
people in the palace.
But the numbers could be very high.
the, these executions could also be indiscriminate, killing both men, not only men but also women
and children.
And we have attestations of the burials, in a couple of places like Lachish and Ashdod, from the
eighth century.
These are during the wars with Assyria.
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At Ashdod for example, in one locus, we have, 2,434 human beings that were, the remains of
these humans were unearthed, and 22% of them were less than 15 years of age at the time of
death.
In another locus, other remains of another 376 people were found, and the majority of them were
also under 15 years of age, and this goes on and on in all these different loci that we can find
around Ashdod.
And that Lachish had about mass burials for 1,500 people were discovered in the surrounding
caves, and many of them were or have their heads severed from their body.
So these are not just people who had happened to die, but rather they were executed in very
graphic ways.
So de, deportations may, may have played a significant role in demographic de, decline, that is the
Assyrian, Babylonian armies forcing them through exile to leave their land.
But there are many other factors that I've just listed here that both directly and indirectly
contributed to the depopulation of Israel and Judah in major ways.
In the book of Jeremiah and some other Biblical sources are, offer some glimpses of these larger
social dynamics.
For example Jeremiah depicts Judahites fleeing across the Jordan to Ammonite territory during
conditions of lawlessness in the years after the Babylonian conquest.
Eventually a large number make their way down to Egypt, which we noted in the first week of the
course, had always been a place which, to which refugees fled in times of both political turmoil
and natural catastrophes.
Remember how Abraham leaves in the 12th chapter of Genesis, how he immediately goes down
at a time of famine to Egypt after he had just arrived there from Mesopotamia.
And it's important to realize that the primary reason we even hear about the incidents such as
these in the Bible, is that the biblical authors regard Israel's abandonment of its own promised
land as one of the worst things imaginable.
Finally a note about forced migrations, about deportations.
The Assyrian Empire practiced so-called two way deportations.
This means that they moved subjugated populations around their empire, uprooting them from
their homelands and transporting them or, and transplanting them in regions that they wanted to
develop.
Thus, we are told in the book of Kings, chapter 17 from 2 Kings 17, that the Assyrians, after
conquering Samaria, brought in populations from the east and settled them in Israel's territories.
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They likely did this in the northern regions of Israel that they had conquered earlier as well.
So in the Galilee, remember that Samaria is conquered at the end, but many of the northern
regions that had belonged to the king of Israel had been conquered in the years prior to that and
were not told about them.
And they may have done the same later in, around the area of Judah when they wiped out they
[UNKNOWN) and went to war against Hezekiah.
Now the reason Biblical authors do not tell us much about the case of Judah, whether they
brought in foreign public populations and planted them there, is because the Judai authors in
Jerusalem who are responsible for our Biblical sources were in competition with the community in
Samaria.
That was the people that came to be known as Samaritans.
And by claiming that much of the population up there in the north were really foreigners without
any long standing ties to the people of Israel, they could deal an ideological blow to their
competitors in Samaria.
The rivalry between Jerusalem and Samaria is really one of the major communal challenged the
biblical authors face.
And so, they look for any chance to, kind of, deal with the relationship between Israel and Judah,
and by saying that the population of Israel were actually foreigners, and then they can say that
these really are not true Israelites.
That's just one view, and it's the book of Kings.
And, you can find it a bit in Ezra and Nehemiah but not everywhere.
So, even if the Assyrians practiced deportations on a much larger scale than the Babylonians, we
should not imagine that they deported even more than 20% of the population.
And when they did deport them, they kept families intact and moved ethnic groups together,
rather than dispersing them.
So why is this important? First, because it means that we must imagine many communities that
persisted in the former territory of the Kingdom of Israel, who contributed substantially to the
formation of the biblical writings, okay? And second, the deported Israelite families and
communities most likely maintained their identity over generations and came into contact with
Judahites, who had been deported to various places in Mesopotamia.
Later, both from the Assyrian deportations but also the Babylonian deportations, they must have
come into some kind of contact.
In many cases, we can identify deported Israelites and Judahites in the same region or city.
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What role this played in the formation of a pan-Israelite national identity and the composition
history of the biblical text is a difficult question to answer, but one that should be kept in mind as
we proceed.
3.3: A Judahite Community in Egypt (9:41)
So we just looked at how a Judaite community living in the land after the Babylonian conquest
leaves the land with Jeremiah and settles in Egypt.
Now the interesting thing about Egypt is that we have extra Biblical evidence related to a
community that lives in Egypt.
Actually we have lots of archives from various periods but for the early period for the Persian
period, that is the Persian Empire, that takes the, replaces the Babylonians we have an archive
from way down on the borders of the empire in a place called Elephantina.
It's actually called [UNKNOWN) at the time, and it's an island in the Nile.
The Nile River has an island in it, and this island here has a garrison on it garrison of Persian troops,
and the Persian troops come from various places in the empire and one of them is from Judah,
Judah Heights, and they live together, and there's this tight-knit community.
We have a body of papyri that stem from this period that relate to a lot of different things but
many of them relate to the Jewish communal life there.
And they range from the dates are from 495 to 399 B.C.E. and they really give us a lot of
information, not about military operations that these Judahites were engaged in.
It's a question whether they even were engaged in military operations.
But they give us a really fascinating insights into the way the Judahites lived the together among
the families, the business operations, all of the struggles they had with other ethnicities that were
in the Persian Empire and within that garrison itself.
And I want to share with you just briefly why this is so important.
So the biblical text presents one view of how Judahites should live, and also present a way, how
Judahites were living at the period of time, Ezra - Nehemiah, we'll get to that later.
And this Elephantine papyri, they present a very unorthodox way of living.
Things that are banned most drastically, most concretely by the Biblical authors are being
performed and done at will, in these archives.
So one of the things is that Sabbath observance for example, we have one letter where a guy says
I'll meet you down by the docks to unload a boat on the Sabbath, and Sabbath of course being the,
the day where no work is to be done.
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Another aspect has to do with intermarriage.
Intermarriage is clearly proscribed.
It's not something that is allowed.
Especially at this time where Ezra- Nehemiah are preaching very vehemently against mixed
marriages.
We find in these letters and even temple officials who marry Egyptian women.
And we have, in one case, a nine year official of the temple.
The temple Omega today, of Yahuw, of Yahweh, of Yahuw and she marries, and he marries a
woman named Talmud.
And Talmud used to be a slave to another Judite official living there.
But we won't get into that.
And so here is mixed marriages.
Not mixed marriages just among the (FOREIGN), among the average people (FOREIGN), but rather
among the priestly, the, the officials, the temple personnel.
It's very strange.
Now, what about this temple, this temple to Yahuw, Yahuw being the same name as Yahweh.
Yahweh, (FOREIGN), it's missing the final letter.
And Yahoo is the central deity for the Egyptian community there of the Elephantine community of
Egyptian Judites I mean.
And there's another temple of course among the Egyptian's community, Tatu Khnum to the god
the god Khnum, but to the God Yahuw for the Judites, they have their temple.
Now this temple had been destroyed and apparently by the Egyptians at some point in time we
don't know exactly what circumstances lead to the destruction, but they write these letters, the
Judahite communities, they write these letters seeking support for it to be rebuilt and they say this
temple to Yahuw, to their god had been standing there for many generations.
And now it's been destroyed and they kind of lay out all the politics behind the destruction.
It's fun to read and you can read them.
We'll post the letters for you to read I encourage you to do so.
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But then what they are doing is they're writing these letters and sending them back to the
communities in Judah, and Jerusalem, and in Samaria.
Samaria has a governor there appointed by the Persian government, Sombalic, we know him from
the, the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, and then we have another governor in Jerusalem, we don't know
him from the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, we know Nehemiah, but the successor to this guy Bagoi,
receives the letter and then we have responses and the responses seem to indicate that they are
all okay with the temple being rebuilt.
The one caveat is that the temple probably should not be used for meat sacrifices, which is the
most, the highest form of sacrifices but the temple is okay, it's fully fine with the officials within
Jerusalem and within Samaria.
Now, why is that strange?
According to biblical law, there should be only one temple and that temple is where God chooses
to place God's name.
And that's understood, within this time, to be Jerusalem.
And the Jerusalemite communities are speaking out very harshly against all the other temples that
are being built elsewhere.
But there is only one place for the temple and that is in Jerusalem.
Now here is, that's according to the biblical depiction, but we know from these extra-biblical
evidences, this archive of letters, that that's not actually how the Jerusalem community was
behaving, that they were actually quite fine with temples outside of Jerusalem, and that they write
a letter and say fine, rebuild the temple on the place where it once stood.
On the place where it once stood is actually the same kind of formulation we find within the book
of Ezra-Nehemiah, where Darius writes and says, the temple of Jerusalem can be built on the place
where it once stood.
So very similar kind of formulations, and here we have a very authentic historical witness to a
Jerusalemite community.
Priest and governor allowing a temple outside of Jerusalem to be rebuilt.
Now, this temple is to Yahuw, it's not to another god.
But this Yahuw has a consort, a wife and something that is extremely prohibited according to the
biblical text.
Only the pagan or only the opponents of the profits are abiding by this.
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Here we have a Judahite community that has no problem with this deity and we have in addition
to that, addition to the deity and not Yahuw, this female deity, we have letters coming from
officials in Jerusalem with expressions, with salutations, such as, may the gods seek your welfare.
They don't even say, may Yahuw seek your welfare, may the Yahweh or God seek your welfare,
but may the gods seek your welfare.
It's, something that is fully, open and, nothing of the sort that we would imagine from a
community at this advanced stage in Jewish history where they should be very monotheistic.
Now in the letter that where they, where this Judahite official sends this greeting, may the gods
seek your welfare.
It's in response to a question about how to keep a festival.
And that festival is one of the most important in the bible.
Passover.
And the community in in the Ephantine, the Judahite community, Judahite community does not
appear to know how to observe the laws of Passover and they write and they find out and the
response comes from a guy named (UNKNOWN), and he begins by saying, may the God seek you
welfare, but then he lays out all the prescriptions of how Passover should be, performed.
And the question arises well why didn't the Judahite community just check the Torah scroll? Open
the Torah scroll and read it, and there they would have had exact prescription for it.
They do not seem to have a Torah scroll there.
And in the response coming from (UNKNOWN), he's not citing the Torah scroll.
He's citing something we see tradition, a legal tradition, but it's where it's coming from, it's not
said.
The one authorization that is, mentioned is the authorization not of the Torah itself but of the
Persian Empire.
Darius, let these things be done in keeping with the laws of Darius, the King of Persia, so very
strange consolation of facts here.
We have in Judahite community living on the far outskirts of the Persian Empire.
Protecting, serving the Persian Empire.
Being good Persian subjects.
They are living with other communities, ethnicities who do not get along with them, who may
have wiped them out.
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After the Persian Empire fell, who probably hated them in some ways, we don't know why they
hated, but there is this, this is the beginnings of a kind of phobia of Judahites maybe, perhaps.
But here is a Judahite community that does not observe all the laws of Moses, does, who, that
does not have a text of the Torah that they can consult.
That writes letters to Judah and to Samaria and asks them for help to understand most basic
things, and the responses to them being not in keeping with Biblical law.
So, this is a fascinating archive of evidence.
I hope you guys will all do, spend a little bit more time of your own on it because I think it's one of
the most important, eye opening witnesses to how drastically different life was on the ground
compared to life as described in the Biblical text.
3.4: Judahite Communities in Babylon (10:12)
Okay, so what we just looked at was this community in the Diaspora, Judahite community living in
Elephantina.
And now we want to switch our perspective from Egypt, Elephantina, from the, the borders of the
Persian Empire in the south, to the other side and that is to Mesopotamia.
And what are Judahites doing in Mesopotamia after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587? And we
have no body of evidence like the archive from Elephantina that really describes daily life in all of
its varieties and that's why Elephantina is such a phenomenal case to study.
Bu we do have quite a few references to Judahites living in Babylon.
They're not as fun, but I want to present them to you and tell you what we can gather from them.
I'm going to go through these things just in order to sketch out what we know about these
communities at this time.
Things will change drastically in the years to come, but at the present time there are a number of
scholars working on this.
I'm going to, the names are Ron Zadok, so you can look them up on the internet.
Ron Zadok has a project in Tel Aviv University called the cuneiform text, mentioning Judeans,
Israelites, and related population groups.
The CTJI group and he's really developing a whole database of all the texts, cuneiform texts.
These are the old tablets that would mention any Judahites or any names or any connections to
Judahites, Israelites, or related population groups okay? Along with him there are a host of others
such as Laurie Pearce in Berkeley, Cornelia Wunsch in Leizig, Kathleen Abraham in Tel Aviv, as well
as Cornelia or sorry, Caroline Waerzeggers in Leiden.
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And there's some others and they're all doing this fantastic job of studying these cuneiform
documents and glean from them data that we can use to reconstruct life among Judahites, exiled
Judahites, in the Mesopotamian region around Babylon.
Now, let me go through with, with you a couple of the varieties of, of text that we have.
The first group that we have are the Weidner Texts and the Weidner Texts relate to King
Johoiachin, a Judahite king who had been exiled.
And we know about him from the last verses of the Book of Kings and I'll discuss them at a later
point, but King Johoiachin is there presented receiving rations from the royal palace.
So here is a body of evidence that relates directly to the royal palace and to a Judahite exiled king,
who probably was understood to be the legitimate heir to the Davidic throne.
Now, other texts are the Sippar Texts.
The Sippar Texts mention Judean individuals in a market town.
Then we have the Murasha Texts.
They relate to a sizable Judean community.
We have about a hundred Judean names mentioned in them.
And they live in close proximity to other ethnic minorities and they did business, these Judeans did
business, with the wealthy Murasha firm.
The Murasha firm was a firm that whose job was really, was the management of royal fiefs and
estates and tax collection and leasing out these lands and they worked with Judahites agents in
order to do business and some of these Judahites are very wealthy.
And it's there's a lot to be gleaned from that, that body of evidence and it has been done for quite
a few years.
Other bodies of evidence are, there's a handful of texts from Uruk, Nippur, Marad, Isin, and other
places, that suggest that some Judean individuals lived in small units among Babylonians in a
variety of urban context not only in the, rural context, but also in the urban.
But this is a small population.
But the newest and most exciting body of texts are come from what we call the Al Asha Yahudun,
(UNKNOWN) body or Al Yahudu texts.
And the Al Yahudu is really what we translate as Judahville or German would be Jeudenstag.
Jew city, kind of the Jew's town.
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And we only have about 5% of these texts published so far.
And what the we do see from them is very fascinating.
And but it really does, only is the tip of the iceberg.
And it remains to be seen what new information we can get from these texts once more than 5%
has been have been published and studied.
So most studies in the past have focused on these name giving patterns, looking at how Judahite
has children who have non-Judahite names and that this might be evidence for assimilation.
Things though are changing, as we are starting to find more sophisticated ways of studying these
texts, and some of the fascinating stuff that's being done.
For example, by Caroline Waerzeggers, on network and how we can connect a Judahite in one
rural place by three degrees of separation to a high ranking priestly official at the, at the center of
the empire, and what that might have meant for the knowledge and cultural acquaintance of the
Judahite in a rural context.
So what we know other than that is that the deportees from Judah were settled in regions that the
palace wanted to develop in order to increase the agricultural production.
So that they are placed on, lands in the Tigris owned by the crown.
And their job is to develop these lands, to pay taxes to the, to the king but really, to develop the
infrastructure of these unsettled areas or these places where they need more development.
Now, Judeans resided in old and new villages together with foreigners.
I mean, they're not being settled alone.
They're not separated from others.
They do have contact with foreigners, even though the Judahite communities seem to be seem to
enjoy a high level of cohesion consolidation.
They still are in contact with other foreigners.
And a lot of these foreigners are Phoenicians and Philistines.
These groups originated from neighboring regions and they spoke dialects that are similar to each
other.
But over time, then the problems with oral communication were less acute as the, the children
grew up in these families.
16

And there was at some level a kind of assimilation among the ethnicities, at least on the level of
language and communication exchange and so forth.
Most Judeans in the Babylonian text were settled in crown lands called lands and they were
involved in all kinds of quotidian affairs involving agriculture and shepherding and working for
business firms and doing tax collections and so forth.
What do we know then about how their social organization was, the religion? They seemed to
have been organized in clans.
And that's, for example, the descendants of the deportees belong, in the Nippur region, belong to
several big clans and we can follow them.
How they do business and when they do business, how they engage in business with members of
the same clan rather than other clans, and so there seems to be some clan divisions among them.
None of the documents in which are, Judeans are recorded was for religious purposes were issued
on a Saturday or during a high holiday, and that's maybe just due to the state of our evidence.
But that seems to be quite distinctive, especially when we compare it to the Elephantine
documents, where we see a letter being written.
I'll meet you and we'll unload a ship on the Sabbath.
Now with regard to Temple and existence of sanctuaries we saw in the Elephantine documents
that they had a temple to Yahu whereas we don't really have any reference to a temple in the
Babylonian documents.
That, once again, may be just a, due to the evidence.
It's probable that they have some sort of sanctuary or sanctuaries in each of their villages, because
in order to practice religious life, Judeans were, and other ethnicities, non-Babylonians, were not
really a part of the temple society of the Babylonian cities.
And they would have had to have their own places of worship and But, in general, what we can say
is, one reason for the non-assimilation of Judeans into Babylonian society and that the reason why
Judeans continued to live separately for many centuries to come by the Parthinian period we have
according to some estimations, a million Judahites living there, that is in the Roman times where
here we only have a very small population.
Why is the small population not assimilating and merging with the Babylonian society? And the
one reason maybe is that the Babylonians themselves, the elites, did not want to mix with others.
They held to themselves.
Babylonians would maybe take the wives the daughters of other nationalities for their own sons,
but they would never give their own daughters to any other nationalities.
17

They were very much a closed off from others.
And so that really led, probably in many ways to a Judahite community that, as other ethnicities
that were much less absorbed with the neighboring populations.
And that kind of encouraged a mimicking of this Babylonian separateness.
And when we have a return of Babylonian Jewish communities to Judah they seem to carry with
them this these ideals of remaining separate, and that may have been picked up by, from the
Babylonians.
3.5: The Return to Zion (8:29)
So,.
So, we've looked in the previous segments at how the communities within Babylon and
Elephantina are dealing with their issues.
That they, for example, when they want to know how to celebrate a festival, they ride to
Jerusalem.
But they really don't look into their text of the Torah and find out how it's actually stipulated
according to the laws of Moses.
And even when the priest and the officials from Samaria and from Jerusalem itself ,are writing
back to the community in Elephantina, they are not quoting any texts from the Torah.
And what we'll want to do now is look at how this whole period is depicted within the Bible.
Specifically within Ezra-Nehamiah, and within another less known book called Haggai, and this
book is not so much a description of communities elsewhere, but about the return, and that's very
central to the biblical authors' interest, and that is, to show that once the communities in Judah
are deported by the Babylonians.
For their sin as divine punishment.
Then, as soon as they are allowed to go back, they all do.
And that's really how Ezra-Nehemiah presents that.
When I was learning about the period of the exile and the return, Here's how I was taught about it.
And I think this is the way most people actually think about it.
It's the way I, my students often think about it.
And it's that the Babylonians came, they destroyed Jerusalem.
18

They took all of the Jews and they went to Babylon, and there they wept by the rivers of Babylon
when they remembered Zion.
You know, quoting from Psalm 137, and they spent all their days really lamenting, just waiting for
the day to return, and the only thing they were occupied in, other than just trying to survive the
only thing they really were occupied in is, collecting their writings and when they come back they
bring a lot of their biblical writings with them, and they're longing to return to the homeland.
Well, we already saw that we have communities within Babylon that are not very interested in
returning.
Documents that come very much after 586, decades, centuries after 586 and Judeans are there
living, thriving, and not at all interested in going up to Zion.
And so how does Ezra-Nehemiah depict that period? It says, begins with the first year of Cyrus and
Cyrus the great Is the one who conquers Babylon, and he, with the Persians then takes over the
Babylonian empire, and Cyrus then issues this decree according to Ezra 1:1.
Ezra-Nehemiah once again, is the narrative telling about this period, this return to Zion.
And so, he issues this decree, Cyrus does, and then all the Judeans throughout the empire, who
have been exiled, immediately go up, and then as the narrative goes on, you hear about the
Jewish community beginning the work on a Temple, they laid the foundations, or they first of all
set up the altar, then they lay the foundation stone.
But after they laid the foundation stone, the enemies of the Judeans come and thwart their
building project, and they want to participate, but they're not allowed to participate.
Therefore they tried to stop the project.
And because they're successful at stopping the project, the actual building the temple is delayed
until the reign of Darius.
So it doesn't happen, even though the decree is sent out in the first year of Cyrus, it doesn't
happen till the years of Darius much later.
That the temple is actually built.
So, the problem with that depiction of Ezra-Nehemiah, is that the community according to another
Biblical writing, really was not so much interested in building the temple.
And the, the writing I'm referring to, is the prophet Haggai.
Haggai is a prophet from.
Who rises up in the second year of Darius, and he issues a word of the Lord, a prophecy, and I'll
read it to you here.
19

It says if you read Haggai 1:1 with me.
In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of
the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Sheal, Sheatiel, governor of juhudah,
of Judah.
And to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest.
These two figures are the one who, are the same ones who built within Ezra-Nehemiah.
And this is the word that comes to Haggai.
He says, thus says the Lord of hosts: these people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the
Lord's house.
Then the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai saying, is it the time for you to live in your
paneled houses, meaning very beautiful, elaborate houses, while this house, this temple, lies in
ruins? Now, therefore, says the Lord of hosts, consider how you have fared.
You have sowed much and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but
you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages, earn
wages to put them in a bags with holes.
Thus says the Lord of hosts.
Considered how you have fared.
Go up to the hills, bring wood, and build the house so that I may take, may take pleasure in it, and
be honored, says the Lord.
You have looked for much, and, lo, it does not come.
And it goes on and on.
The point of this prophecy is, it's not going well with you guys.
You are very interest in your own individual affairs, building your own houses.
Making them very elaborate, while you allow the Temple to lie in ruins.
So, it's a time to change that, and go up to the hills and start rebuilding.
And then, things will start changing for us.
Of course, here, Haggai is representing a, an agenda that is very much in keeping with the Temple.
It's not anymore historically accurate than, let's say, Ezra-Nehemiah.
20

What it does do, though, is offer a different perspective.
Whereas Ezra-Nehemiah says, the reason why we didn't build, the reason why it took so long, why
we didn't finish it.
When the decree was sent out by Cyrus, was because the enemies stopped us.
Haggai shows us, no, the reason why we didn't build, why you are not building, is because you
don't really want to, so Ezra-Nehemiah is written from a perspective of trying to explain that the
Jewish community was all taken to Babylon, returns altogether, and they.
Are given the decree to rebuild, and they, and they want to rebuild, but then they are stopped.
And this is the very positive image of Judea history, that they want to rebuild the temple, but that
they were not allowed to because of enemies.
From Haggai we get a much more pessimistic view, a much more negative view of the, what was
really going on in Jerusalem, and that is that the community itself was really not committed to the
project at all.
So, here we have within the biblical writings themselves, from the period of the Persian reign two
very different views.
One more point here with regard to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah.
One of the most historical sources, one of the most throughout the whole Bible, is found in this
book, and it's the Nehemiah Miamia memoir, and Miamia is this cub bearer who comes from
Court of (INAUDIBLE) at a much later time, probably around the middle of the fifth century 450.
And he wants to rebuild the, the wall of Jerusalem.
But the problem is that he faces many obstacles along the way.
Mo, many of the obstacles are from the enemies from round about.
But the problem is, is that the community that lives in Jerusalem.
Is very much affiliated or somehow in collaboration with these enemies of Judah.
And so, Nehemia is coming 100 years after the Babylonian exile.
And, or more, and facing a situation where Judeans are really not.
Eager to rebuild the ruins, and he has to pressure them to join him, and to get something going.
And along the way, he faces many obstacles.
And so this, all of this evidence from Haggai to Ezra-Nehemiah, to Nehemiah's first-hand account.
21

Gives us extra evidence, in addition to what we found from Elephantina, and from Babylon, that
the biblical authors are facing a situation in their communities in which the community is very torn
apart, and they're not really committed to coming together and doing something collectively in
order to.
Rebuild the their temple, the ruins, but also to commit themselves to education and the study of
Torah, and all of that.
That is often thought to be the case, in the post (INAUDIBLE) period.
3.6: Introduction to the Biblical Project (3:12)
So now that we've established that the communities in Egypt, in Babylon, and Judah itself really
present major problems in terms of, they're not really literate about the laws of Moses.
They don't know Israel's history very well.
They don't even seem, Elephantine, for example, we saw that they don't even use the name Israel
and that Nehemiah, when he comes to town tries to get together a community that is behind his
building project in Judah, but the community seems to be very interested in other things, not
really supporting anything to do with a collective building project, especially one that is so
important to the life of the community that is in Jerusalem.
So what we want to do now is transition to how the biblical authors respond to this situation.
And I want to show that what they're doing is not radically new.
They're drawing from something on the past.
That is they are picking up on older histories but that they are carrying on the tradition of
connecting disparate communities by showing how these communities, through their
representative individuals, whether it be Abraham, Isaac, whether it be Miriam and Moses, or
David versus Saul, how they all actually are connected in some way.
But if they're are connected in some way, then a community can say, no, we are not separate from
this group over here.
Once Judah had been destroyed, we do not go back to our prior identities of being a, the town of
Bethlehem, the town of Lachish, that has nothing in common, but that we really do belong to a
larger group, that we belong to a larger nation, a larger family that goes all the way back to our
ancestors.
And in order to establish that, in order to respond to the loss of the identity that the states of
Israel and Judah had given these communities the Biblical authors are going to pick up the work
that actually had originated during the times of Israel and Judah as they were kingdoms.
And then draw that out and make it much more elaborate, make it much more robust, as a way of
storytelling that will really hold a community together that could have easily gone their own way
22

and gone back to their individual identities that really were the ones that that the kings of Israel
and Judah faced that when they conquered these regions and brought them together.
The regions we're going to be looking at are within Judah itself, but also across the Jordan, up in
the (UNKNOWN), the Galilee and various other regions that (INAUDIBLE).
3.7: From the Bible to the Sumerian King List (6:59)
The Bible presents a nice and neat genealogical line extending from Abraham.
Abraham's son is called Isaac, and Isaac is father of Jacob, who undergoes this name change to
Israel, right? And Jacob Israel is the father of 12 sons and who represent the 12 tribes of the whole
nation.
And then Jacob and his family go down to Egypt and during the days of Joseph, there they do
pretty well.
But at a later time, Egypt begins to oppress Israel and they make their escape under the leadership
of Moses.
And we are told that Moses is a descendant of Levi, that is one of Jacob's twelve sons.
And he's joined by his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron whose line is awarded the prestigious
role of high priest.
Right, Aaron, the Aaronite line would become the temple high priest.
Later Moses passes the mantle on to Joshua, who brings Israel into the Promised Land and after
Joshua dies, a series of judges appear.
Judges or saviors, all these individual figures who kind of govern Israel, save them from their
enemies, and each is from a different clan or tribe in Israel.
They are eventually eclipsed by Saul, Israel's first king, and then Saul proves to be the wrong guy
for the job and is eventually replaced by David.
Now after the death of David's son, Solomon, his successor, the kingdom of Israel end is split in
two.
The Davidic the king rule only in the Southern part, that's called Judah, what we've been discussing
all last week.
While the myriad of rulers and dynasties are in the northern part of Israel, they don't have a
unified dynasty.
It's all very simple.
23

This is one lengthy history of one people stretching from Abraham all the way down to the final
kings of Israel and Judah.
The simplicity however, can be deceptive and should give us pause if we're really being critical
about this history.
It's all too neat.
All these figures can really be related as they are presented, or is it possible that they originally
had very little to do or nothing to do with each other and that the Biblical authors are bringing
together in order to make some larger point about what it means to be Israel.
And thus they would be aligning, maybe individuals who are not related, or even simultaneously,
they might be aligning them into a sequence, so that everyone can fit into one unified past.
If they did that, it would mean that the building blocks that they used to construct the Biblical
narrative, not really already linked together, Abraham to Jacob, Moses to Miriam, Saul to David, et
cetera.
And you have to then ask the question, are Moses and Miriam really brother and sister? Or do
Moses and Miriam represent separate traditions that the Biblical office brought together in order
to affirm some kind of unity? Now if this is the case, the biblical narrative is an even more
impressive achievement than one would otherwise suppose.
But also raises the question, why would the Biblical writers have gone to the trouble of weaving all
these stories into one grand historical tapestry.
And how do their efforts in this regard relate to the experience of Israel's defeat and the loss of
sovereignty.
So when I introduce these possibilities to my theology students and how the Biblical lines may
have been originally comprised to very different traditions and that the typical authors are
bringing things that were originally had nothing to do with each other together and that Moses
and Miriam may have not been brother and sister and et cetera.
They get very excited about it, and, decide then and their right on the spot that they want to do
Biblical studies full time and, it is very exciting.
I think you'll, you'll agree with them.
But before we get into a Biblical text, I want to look at an extra Biblical text a non-Biblical text from
(UNKNOWN) and by the way if you have any examples from your own histories or from things that
you've studied.
Please let me know about them because I'd really be interested in hearing about similar
phenomena, literary phenomena, but creating the history from individual sources that originally
had nothing to do with each other, and aligning them into some kind of sequencing and continuity.
24

But the source I want to discuss with you is called the Sumerian King List, the king list from Sumer.
This source presents the names and reigns of Mesopotamian rulers from the time before the flood,
all the way to about 1730 BCE.
As in the Bible, the figures living before the flood the flood is really the central kind of dividing
point, enjoy these fantastically long lifespans and so it is also with these kings before the flood.
After the flood they are shorter lifespans, so that's one of the more common things one learns
about these Sumerians King List when one's in school.
But there's a more important thing, for our purposes about this thing.
And that is, first the authors have aligned all the Rulers into a sequence.
Even in cases when these Kings reigned simultaneously.
So if there was a king here and one city and a king in another the city, what the authors have done
is to say well one reigned before the other, and so that they did not happen simultaneously.
Now why would they have done that, it's a mystery.
But the most likely reason is that there is a concept of kingship, and kingship is unified and it
cannot be held by two different entities at the same time.
The Danish famous art Assyriologist name Thorkild Jacobsen wrote a study on the Sumerian King
List in 1939 and I want to read a quote from Jacobsen's work.
quote, the author of the King List worked on the theory that Babylonia was and always had been a
single kingdom.
Within the country, the capital could change from one city to another, but there was never more
than one king at a time.
So, according to Jacobson's idea, it's not that that kingship is this one entity that's passed from
various places throughout the whole region but rather that the Babylonias is one, what he calls a
single kingdom.
Now really the most important aspect of this analogy for us is that the unifying thread for the
Sumerian Kingship List, and this is, this is a really grand history that they've constructed, is itself
monarchy power, just reading one line from it.
After kingship descending from heaven the kingship was in (INAUDIBLE) and in (INAUDIBLE).
Alulim became king and he ruled for 28,800 years and it went from on and on.
So, it's really this unity of, of history, seen from the perspective of the throne, of monarchy power.
25

When we come to the Biblical writings, as were about to do, we're going to see that the unity is
not so much at all monarchic power.
Monarchic power is placed way back in history, way back in the time after many things have
already been achieved and accomplished through the patriarchs and through the, the Exodus and
Joshua and Judges and all of that.
And what unifies the history is, first of all, this God, this God that will become the God of Israel and,
above all, Israel itself, this people who has a special relationship with this God.
So it's really much more of a unity of family, of nation, (INAUDIBLE) their God, in contrast to the
unity of kingship and monarchy power that you have in the Sumerian King List.
(BLANK
AUDIO
)
3.8: Analyzing a Biblical Text: Genesis 26 (6:40)
So what we want to do now is transition to a biblical text, and I want to give you a firsthand
glimpse of how I and other biblical scholars work with the reconstruction of text.
That means looking at different sources within the biblical passages, as well as additions or what
we call supplements, and other types of editing techniques.
And this will give you a good feel for how, disparate traditions, what I've just discussed here in the
preceding segments, disparate traditions are brought together to create a larger unity, to create a
larger narrative.
So the, the chapter I want to treat with you is from the Book of Genesis, chapter 26 in Genesis, it
treats the, the story of Isaac.
Isaac is the son of Abraham, and is the father of Jacob, so he's a pivotal figure.
And this is, I think, a very old tradition of Isaac, but I want to see for yourself how we analyze it.
The story tells, about Isaac living in the Philistine land of Gerar.
Philistine land is to the west of where Judah is, and so it's a foreign territory, and it tells about how
he has a very attractive wife named Rebecca.
Rebecca will be one of the matriarchs, a very important figure in Israel's history.
So, one day his neighbors come and ask him about Rebecca, and instead of telling them the truth,
he claims she is sister not his wife.
Why does he lie? Because he fears that these men living there, the Philistine men in Garar, would
kill him and take him, take his beautiful wife.
26

So one day, the stories tell us the King of the Philistines, whose name is Abimelech, or Abimelech,
is gazing out his window and he spots Isaac and Rebecca.
And the way Isaac is carrying on with Rebecca is not what one would expect from a brother.
Quote, behold Isaac, Yitzchak, was playing or fondling, Metzacheck, with Rebecaa, his wife.
So, there's a play on the name of Isaac and playing, most literally a play on the name.
And so, just as Isaac is playing with his beautiful wife, so this legend is playing with the name of
Isaac and, the kind of play in which Isaac is engaged is probably sexual, because the king is
wondering how could this be his sister? And when the king realizes that Isaac has lied, he demands
an explanation.
So he says, so is she you're wife? Why then did you just say she's my sister? Isaac said to him,
because I thought I might die because of her.
So what infuriates the king, is that one of his subjects might have slept with his wife.
And if this had happened, his whole dominion, his whole reign would have been guilty, and thus
vulnerable to some kind of divine retribution.
So the king takes it upon himself to issue a decree, and the decree is whoever touches this man, or
his wife shall be put to death.
As the story goes on, Isaac prospers among the Philistines, and eventually becomes more mighty
than they.
And the king finally asks him to move on because he's getting too important too wealthy.
And everywhere Isaac goes, in the parched environs of Abimelech's kingdom, he has enviable luck
and discovers water sources.
And his success then arouses jealousies with local inhabitants.
Yet instead of standing his ground and fighting for his territories, Isaac is, moves on and finally
ends up far in the south, in the really arid region of Beersheba.
And, and this, and the final episode of the story Abimelech pays Isaac a visit at this remote
location, way down the Negev, in Abimelech.
You can look and see it on your map.
One of the most remote regions or towns within Israel's borders.
Although Isaac is, expects hostility from, Abimelech, the Philistine King, Abimelech actually blesses
him.
27

And Isaac in turn, invites him and his retinue to a, a sumptuous feast.
Then after eating, and drinking all night long, they exchange oaths of peace at the daybreak and,
Abimelech goes his way.
Later that day, then, Issack's servants come and bring him this great news.
They had found a water source, they'd been digging and they found this well called a Be'er.
And now that they had struck water, Issack then says he names this, this well BeerSheba which is a
play on the treaty that they had just made with the Philistines.
Therefore, the tower is called BeerSheba to this day, and so the biblical authors are giving what we
call an etiology.
Why is the tower called BeerSheba? Because this is where Isaac and the Philistine king made an
oath.
What really is going on in this story is not just an etiology though, it has much more of a political
agenda.
We can imagine how the descendants of Isaac would have taken great pride in retelling this legend.
Isaac, their ancestor, had such a beautiful wife that he feared for his life, you know, the mother of
our, in our nation's history, was so beautiful that they would have killed the father or the great
ancestor of our history to take her.
yet, if the Philistines had achieved that, Isaac would have no descendants to tell the story in the
first place.
So, it's a fun story, but its also has a political agenda, and the political agenda is to say that this
region, this Beersheba, this town belongs to us.
It goes way back, and that's when Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, who was the king of the
land at that time, came and he made an oath with our forefather Isaac.
And, and this well that was struck is was struck on that, water was found at that well on that same
day, and thus everything comes together in this nice neat story that proves that, Israel or at least
Isaac's clan, has a claim to this well and to this territory.
Something very important in the arid region of the Negaf.
So, this is a story that one can read on its own.
Now what I would like for you to do, is to go through this chapter, Genesis 26, and look for pieces
of it that are linked to larger parts of the story in Genesis.
28

What I just retold for you, you could isolate, perhaps do it in one color and that story is kind of a
self-standing story that makes very good sense, as a story about Isaac's clan.
Now, go with it through another color, and highlight those parts of it that are linked to larger parts
of the narrative in Genesis, whether it has to do with Abraham, whether it has to do with the
promises, whether it has to do with the sons of Isaac.
Anything, use two different colors to demarcate them, and you'll see on the handout I provided
for you.
That I've done it myself and let's see if our results match up.
3.9: A Closer Look at Genesis 26 (13:40)
So what I've just asked you to do is to go through Genesis 26, that story that I've just recounted for
you and to use two different colors to demarcate two types of material.
One type of material that really is the self-contained story that can be told on its own about Isaac's
clan and how he came to possess towns in the, in the far south and especially Beer-Sheba.
And the other parts that are linked to the larger narrative of the book of Genesis.
And you can look at the hand out that I provided for you.
there's, this is one attempt there are many different types of attempt.
I'm going to go through with you it again and see how I come to the conclusions and perhaps
where we would differ.
And we can discuss this in the forum.
You can do it among yourselves and perhaps I'll be able to interact with you on it.
So getting at Genesis 26.
The first five verses I think are part of the larger narrative.
So if you have one color that's dealing with the larger narrative of genesis, that should be probably
marking all of one through five.
Now there are parts in one through five that one could say no, these could belong to the
independent story.
The story that Isaac coming to possess Beer-Sheba, you could say that there verse one, that there
was a famine in the land.
And that just 1A itself is perhaps an independent line.
29

But soon as you go to 1B that means the second half of your verse, verse one.
It, it brings in the larger narrative of Abraham; now Isaac is being linked to Abraham.
Why, because it says there was a famine in the land just like the former famine that occurred in
the days of Abraham.
So now the story is being compared to something else.
So there you'd want to make a distinction.
If you were going to be very fine within verses one through five, you could say verse 1:A is part of
independent story, but everything else after that seems to have Abraham's narrative and view.
You could also say within verse 1:5 that where God speaks to Isaac and says, don't go down to
Egypt.
That this is somehow a part of an independent tradition.
I don't follow that route because it's very similar to the Abrahamic traditions.
This is a lot of background information that you may not know inside baseball.
But, if you've read through the book of Genesis a lot you'll notice that the resonances with other
narratives.
And it seems that, that part of the narrative is really picking up on other aspects.
And trying to make links with them that they're less explicit, but nevertheless pretty clear for
those who have an ear to hear.
So, I would actually though, begin in the most neat way, in Genesis 26:6, that's where the story
would begin.
And it begins in English in a way that really does not make sense for us, so Isaac settled in Gerar.
Now, so is a word that we use in English it could have been and Isaac was living in Gerar.
It's a, it makes for a inter, a perfect introduction.
How would you know if you don't know the Hebrew how to find a word that actually makes for a
good introduction.
In most cases where you have an independent clause it begins with a vav, and the vav can be
translated in any different way, and, so, but, nor, for.
It depends on how the va, the verb and the subject are related.
30

But in most cases, it's going to be the verb followed by the subject.
And then it can be just, make a nice.
And it makes for a nice introduction to a story, so that it's very easy with the Hebrew syntax to add
two stories.
And also then to subtract from them to find where they might have be the older parts of them.
Now, the story goes on.
So from 20:6:6 on, and it continues and there's really, through that whole first paragraph, 20:6:6
through 11 nothing that really draws on an separate narrative perhaps the only thing is the name
Isaac and Rebekah.
Now Rebekah we know from other chapters is the wife that Isaac had eventually found, but if you
could imagine a story that is really is about Isaac and Rebekah as known that they are together.
The story about how Isaac manage to marry Rebekah could be a prelude to that.
So, setting that question about whether Rebekah is a part of the larger narrative aside, let's move
on to the next paragraph, 2612 through 16.
And there you'll see that there is a mention of Abraham in verse 15.
Now the Philistines have stopped up the, had stopped up, and filled with Earth, all the wells that
his father's servants had dug, in the days of his father, Abraham.
And that verse, in my translation which is the NSRV or the new, the NRSV, sorry the new revised
standard version, is in parentheses.
And it's in parentheses to show that it's actually kind of a statement that is inserted there, and
doesn't really contribute to the narrative, it's kind of an add-on.
Other than that, there's really nothing that is connected to the larger narrative of Genesis there.
So, the next paragraph, 27 or 26:17 through 22 anything that you see in there, yes, there is the
mention of Abraham, Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father.
Abraham or Avraham and it goes on in verse 18 to describe that, but taking out those references
does not really disturb the flow of the stories.
So you would, as you're going along, you would highlight any of these things, references to
Abraham and parts of the narrative that, that are connected and leaving the other parts to see if it
really makes for an independent whole that, that can be read and makes sense on its own.
Okay, moving on to the next paragraph 26:23 through 25 we, we read from there, he went up to
Beer-Sheba.
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And that very night, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the God of your father Abraham.
Do not be afraid for I am with you and will bless you and make you offspring and numerous, for
my servant Abraham's sake.
So he built an altar there and called the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there.
And there Isaac's servants dug a well.
So what's interesting here is that.
You ought, what, what I did when I came across this text is, I went from 26:23 that line, from there
he went to Beer-Sheba.
And then 24 through 25A, so the first part of 25, first 25, I put in different color.
The color that is linked to the whole narrative of the book of Genesis.
Why? Because here God appears to him, he blesses him, he mentions the name Abraham, and the
blessing is very much similar to the ones that Abraham had already received and that Jacob would
later receive.
So, what about 25, building an altar, then calling on the name of the Lord? Why have I not
included that in the older part of the text.
Well, here again is a case where if you have read the Book of Genesis you will know that that's a
really standard feature of these narratives and that it's a larger theme.
And so it's, it's really quite clear to me and those who, who have read the Book of Genesis law that
that is a part that really does not belong in the independent story.
If there is such a thing, the independent story.
Now the one clause and pitched his tent there, which is in Hebrew and he pitched his tent there,
might be linked directly to 26:23 A.
Which is not 23 A but the whole verse 23, from there he went to Beer-Sheba, verse 23 could
follow.
And he pitched his tent there.
And there, Isaac's servants dug a well.
So, if you take out the middle portion, 24 through 25 A, you have a narrative that comes back
together.
From there, Isaac went to Beer-Sheba, and he pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's servants
dug a well.
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Okay, so why would the promise come right in before that? Well, the Biblical authors want to pre,
preface this whole climactic scene where Isaac is going to have, fortune is going to turn.
And he's going to discover water and he's going to make an oath, a pledge and a treaty with the
king of the Philistines.
And it's going to well with him thereafter.
That before that happens, that the Lord appears to him, Israel's God appears to him and blesses
him and that Isaac had actually built an altar to God and called upon his name before all this good
happens.
So it's a perfect place for later a supplementary editor redactor to add that to the narrative.
So 26:26, the final part of the par of the story, it all comes together.
And there's, I don't think there's anything there that we would have to assign to the larger
narrative of the book, but when you get to the final verse.
And, and 34, or the final, final two verses I should say, 26:34 through 35.
We have the mention of Esau.
Now, who is Esau? Esau is the son of Isaac.
And, we're told when Esau was 40 years old, he married Judith.
Daughter of Barry the Hittite and then another woman, and they made life bitter Isaac and Rebeca.
Which raises the question, this is of course very clearly linked to the larger story of, of Genesis but
the mention of Esau here raises a question.
Where was Esau all along in this story? And for that matter, Esau has a twin brother, right? Jacob.
Where is Jacob? Where are the two sons when Isaac and Rebekah are having all of these dealings
with the King of Avemelach in the Philistine countryside.
Where are they when he makes the oath, and why are they not part of the feast and so forth.
They're all missing.
This then becomes all the more interesting the question where they, where are the boys.
When we realize that in the preceding chapter 25, that they're, we're told about that they're Isaac
and Rebekah have two twin sons and they then grow up.
And they are adults by the end of Chapter
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1.
So that when we get to Chapter 26, they should be somehow mentioned in the narrative, they are
protecting their mother, father and mother.
So to wrap this session up, what I want to do is show how these things related to the sons are
wrapped around the story of Isaac and Rebekah and their dealings with the King of the Philistines
in order to create a larger story.
So, we have, if you read through Chapter 25 you'll find these portions of the text I just mentioned
that describe how they're born, Isaac and or Esau and Jacob, and then how Esau tells his birthright
to Jacob.
And that story resumes at the end of 26 where I just mentioned where we're told about Isaac or
Esau marrying these Hittite women.
And then in 27, if you have time to look at that, you'll see that's the story of where Jacob then in
the, the scene with his mother actually then seizes the blessing that was coming to Esau, and then
has to flee.
Now, along all of these trajectories, these interweaving narratives.
You have the births of Esau and Jacob.
Then Esau taking wives at the end of chapter 26.
20, 25 tells the birth story, 26 is this independent story, and then it resumes in 27, and then
1.
You have different sources.
And there's diff the, one of the sources that is very clear to everyone is the P Source, the priestly
source.
That is one of the sources that is considered to be the latest of, within the Pentecostal tradition.
We will discuss that a little bit more in the following segments but for our purposes now what's
important to remember is that this P Source is a late source that is, tells an independent story of
Israel, and that's been woven in to the narrative.
And that narrative describes how Esau marries this Hittite women, and the Rebekah, Esau's
mother, has fear that Esau's brother, her son Jacob, would do the same as Esau, and so he ask, she
asks Isaac to send Jacob away.
And so that he would find women who were not that would make her life miserable for her,
according to the text.
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So there's a P explanation for how Jacob escaped from Esau that really has nothing to do with him
stealing the birthright, but rather.
That he is in danger of mixed marriages.
Mixed marriages being one of the big topics, for those who know, of the Second Temple Period
where Ezra and, Ezra and Nehemiah are dealing with this question.
So we, to sum up, we have an older narrative according to my results that really tells about Isaac
and Rebekah and how they come to possess Beer-Sheba.
And around it is wrapped a story of their children, and here Isaac then is the son of Abraham and,
he is the father of Esau and Jacob.
And there is a pea story that tells about how Rebekah sends Jacob off to find wives from her, her
own family.
And then, there's another source that tells about how actually Jacob steals the birthright from his
brother Esau.
But we have an older story and then two sources that weave into a larger narrative.
And, within the older story, we find some of the themes that connect the larger narrative to this
individual story.
So that it's not just possible to take 26 as a whole and say it is independent, but there are certain
parts of it where the redactors and editors have come in and added little pieces of it that
presuppose the larger narrative.
So there I hope you have caught a glimpse and can follow what we are trying to do in terms of
isolating an older narrative, and how the older narrative has been woven in to Israel's history
through both older sources, but also through supplements.
And we'll discuss that in the forum, and then you can see that in the handouts to make it clearer to
you.
3.10: Interweaving Sources (5:04)
So now we've come out to the campus after spending some time in the studio working on a text,
and what I want to do now is to reflect upon what we did, and to go from there to the larger
perspective of how it all came together.
We looked at Genesis 26, and Genesis 26 is the story of Isaac and Rebecca, and how Isaac as a
patriarch.
Perhaps the progenitor of a clan then comes to possess territories deep in the South.
And maybe that's where Isaac, the original Isaac narratives, or the Isaac clan was situated.
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What we saw was that within that narrative, you can find various portions and passages, verses,
that link it to the larger narrative of the Book of Genesis.
So you have an older story and then you have some aspects, supplements, that have been inserted
into that story that then create this trajectory that really reaches throughout the whole history of
Israel.
At least the early part of Israel's history with Abraham the father of Isaac, and then on to Esau and
Jacob, the sons of Isaac, that will be, who will become the latter representatives of Israel and
Israel's neighbors (INAUDIBLE).
So one thing I wanted to discuss before we go on, is to show how some of the theories that have
developed around this text.
According to one of the sources that we've called P in the last segment when we discussed it,
there we see how the marriages of Esau to Hittite women cause a concern for Rebecca and then
she, in the next chapter or the chapter thereafter ask Isaac to send Jacob away so that Jacob does
not commit the same errors that Esau does when choosing a wife.
And that is the P Source, the Priestly Source.
And it's a pretty good argument that P Source is a late, post-Exilic source because it has the issue
of the identity of Israel in relation to others.
Mixed marriage and marriages with others outside the, the Jewish people become a huge issue
after the defeat of Judah and when Judah's now faced with a situation where it has to do
something to beat Judah height.
And one of the things that one does is marriage.
Marrying within the clan, within the nation, so that one can continue a community that is really
defined by a common ethos and common culture and so forth.
We won't get into all those issues of intermarriage.
But that is a strong indication that the Priestly source, at least one of the threads that connects the
older Isaac story to the history of Israel, it's a very late layer, a very late thread that connects it.
So in addition to that P source, the Priestly source, there is another source that scholars talk about,
and that's the J source, and that J source, is the part of Chapter 25 that tells about the birth of
Isaac, and or of Jacob in Esau.
Isaac and Rebecca's sons.
And then it continues in Chapter 27 and a little bit in 28 about how Jacob, picking up in Chapter 25,
how he then stole the birthright of Esau and then actually goes through with the deal with the
help of his mother Rebecca.
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And then Jacob has to then go off and run off to another land because he fears Esau.
So what we have is an older source that's been incorporated into a larger narrative according to
the J according to the theory that J has done this.
And then P comes along and gives a new reason why Jacob has to leave.
It's because of mixed marriages, not because Jacob.
The patriarch of Israel was a trickster as the older narrative.
One of the problems with the J theory is that you have within it a contradiction.
So when you read chapter 25, and do this on your own and we'll discuss it in the forum, when you
read chapter 25 followed by 26 and then 27, 28, 26 we saw, the older part of it really has nothing
to do with, Jacob and Esau.
Isaac and Rebecca seem to be alone they don't have any children.
So how is it that, a the theory works that J has this in the same series of narratives that chapter 25
and 27, and 28 are.
And one way to deal with that is the creator of this J narrative used this as a source.
But perhaps it raises larger questions of whether the J source itself has not undergone lots of
layers and development.
We don't want to get into that.
It's possible to do, to work both ways.
Perhaps the earlier.
The suggestion that J is using a source here and then expanding it and integrating it into a larger
narrative is the easiest way to go.
But all of this shows us that we have, within the formation of some older narratives, a source that
is then interwoven into a larger narrative around Genesis and the, and the history of Israel.
In the next segment, I want to think about some other examples of that before we go on to discuss
the whole development of what we call the (UNKNOWN) that means the story that runs from
Genesis to Kings, that primary history.
So we'll come back and deal with that.
3.11: Compositional Theories (5:29)
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So I just discussed some of how our work and what we did in the studio in the two segments
before really relates to the development of a larger narrative.
And the importance of this for our purposes is the following.
That the formation of the earliest sources, the histories of Israel, whether it be the history of
Israel's ancestors and the lives of.
Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, or the histories of the exodus leaving Egypt and the conquest of the land,
really are built upon the linking of what are separate individual representatives of clans and that
they're being brought together to create a larger conception of a people.
Of what's, is, what's called Israel.
So, I've mentioned also P&J and there's another sigla that we use, siglum that we use, E and
another one in addition to that, D.
So, JEPD you probably know this before, from the documentary hypothesis where you prepared
for the course, or you had it in your college courses or read it somewhere.
There is this theory that the Torah or the Pentateuch really consists of four sources that have been
spliced together.
And this theory goes way back, long into really 18th, 19th century and we won't go through the
history, you can read about it in various places, whether on the internet or in textbooks.
We don't need to go into that but what I would like to draw attention to is where we are now
within biblical studies.
The current situation is, is that there is a renaissance of this strict JEPD theory, that the, the
theories that, that there are four sources, one is called J, which really refers to the Yahwist, which
we would write with a Y but it's in German, so it's said with J.
And then there's an Elohist which is, comes from a, a different place that tells a very similar story,
and along comes the priestly source, the P source that I talked a little bit about.
And then later the d source.
And we'll talk a little about the d in greater length later.
But this theory goes way back into the study of the Pentateuch and the formation of the Biblical
literature.
And it's now regaining a foothold in various places in America and Israel and other places.
On the other side of the spectrum are those, mostly within the continent, continental Europe.
38

Where I was trained, and that is a group of scholars which really have their roots that go back into
the JEPD theory, it's a German theory or a continental European theory and that only later took
hold in America.
These scholars that are still working in continental Europe and really are in many ways some of the
leaders in Biblical studies, have departed from the JPD theory.
And what they work on in, in, in general, and I'm now being very collapsing a lot of differences, but
what one usually does when training students, PhD students to work with Biblical literature is to
show that there is a base text.
And then the base text is also, has a corresponding source, and that base text is sometimes called j.
And in keeping with the old, JEPD theory, and that supplemental text is most often, very rarely not,
called p.
So what one does is separate the p text from non p text and then try to define whether the non p
text is older or later than the p text.
So, there are two very different ways of thinking about these things.
One.
The one I just explained, this continental European tradition, allows for a lot more supplements.
A lot more additions to the text, and that is in keeping with a whole evolution and each generation
as the text is expanded.
And the other is much more fixed on separating independent sources.
The importance of all of this for our work is that the supplementary approach, which is really
falsely called supplementary, because it also has sources at the base of it.
But, the one that allows for much more additions and redactions, and Layering in the sources and
the biblical traditions, is much more in keeping with I'm trying to do in showing how generation
after generation came to grips with issues that faced their community.
And, or their communities I should say.
And they adapted their literature to address those concerns.
And that this is not a formalistic bringing together of sources at one point in time.
But rather something that is an ongoing process.
And the second reason is that this is also going on at a time where when the states of Israel and
Judah are destroyed.
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According to the older JEPD theory and the one that's being revived in many corners of the field,
the strict neo-documentary approach.
All of this, all of these sources really took on shape during the times when Israel and Judah were
thriving as kingdoms and when great kings were on the throne.
Whether they be Hezekiah or Josiah, what have you.
It goes all the way back to King David and Solomon and the earlier generations of this theory.
My attempt is to show that yes, there is some stuff that goes back to the states of Israel and Judah,
but it's real shape, it's real color and profile and some of the most fascinating details, and what
makes it so fun to read is due to the multiple, small additions to the text that really respond to
great crises facing the people.
After they lose things that they take for granted, such as their state, such as their borders, and
their armies and so forth
3.12: Division of the Books: Organizing a History (8:07)
So I just discussed a little bit about the JEPD theory and how some are still maintaining it and some
are moving away from it in a more kind of supplementary mode of allowing for a lot more hands
involved in the process.
I need to discuss one more theory before we go and that is the so called Gutranomistic history
theory.
And that goes back to a guy named Martin Note who was writing actually before World War II and
continued it through the war.
It became a very influential theory and that's still maintained by many today.
And that is that there is this person, this author, this intellectual, maybe Martin Note sees himself
in this author, who responds to the crisis that faced his community with the defeat of Judah, who
then set down and compiled a large history to tell why it all happened.
And that history can be found within, from Deuteronomy and it continues all the way to Kings.
The strange part of that history, theory is that you have four book, books but it's called the
(UNKNOWN) that is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers that are broken off from
Deuteronomy and they are, are kind of missing a conclusion and how one deals with that problem
is a very long and onerous history to deal with, we won't get into it.
So what's important for Martin Note's theory about the Deterministic History is that he sees it
really emerging out of direct response to 586.
That is the Babylonian captivity, and Martin Note himself is writing during the war and after it and
as a German.
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So, there are a lot of interesting things to consider there, and you can discuss in the forum, but for
our purposes and the, wrapping up this week is to note how various scholars have come along and
tried to revise that theory.
And that they have seen it in terms of either redactions, multiple layers within in the story running
from Deuteronomy to Kings, or in terms of different endings.
Some have said that, especially in the American context, one of them being Frank Morecross, a, a
famous professor at Harvard, said that there is a, earlier form of the (UNKNOWN) history that was
actually written during the reign of Josiah, and it was a very positive history.
He built on the ideas of Gerhart Funrad, a German who had also criticized Note's view.
But Cross really insisted that the initial impulse for this great history writing came from the court,
came from Josiah's court and then why is it continue on into the downfall? Well, things changed,
political things changed Josiah died as (UNKNOWN) last week and it was probably caused a lot of
turmoil within the society, and then others came along and took the very pro-Davidic, pro-state
optimistic history about how Judah would continue on forever in the hands of their Davidic kings,
and then added this kind of negative, pessimistic judgment theme to it.
So in my own work on this literature, this what we call the primary history, stretching from
Genesis to 2nd Kings.
I really depart quite radically from the deterministic history theory of Note, and in doing so, I pick
up on the work of my teachers from Europe and I try to show how this larger history really consists
of separate small histories.
And that these separate small histories consist of traditions that have been brought together, like I
noted in the previous segments around various representative individuals.
So I want to briefly talk about how those small histories work, and one of these histories is found
within the books of Samuel and Kings, that is on the, at the very end of this larger history.
Samuel of the Kings tells the story of the rise of the monarchy, the rise of states.
It begins with Israel in bondage, but Israel's not in bondage in Egypt, Israel is in bondage in its own
land and the enemy is not, are not the Egyptians but rather the Philistines and Saul rises as king to
to really liberate Israel so that it can be sovereign in its own land, but really doesn't succeed.
And then along comes David and David really finishes the job that Saul never could manage to
achieve.
And Solomon after and then the split of the kingdoms and it continues.
So there's a history of how kingship really is the response to the problems that the, Israel faces
within its land.
That's one history.
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Same of the Kings, what I call a monarchic history.
Another history, and this is, I'm drawing on the work of many others, and I will discuss that in
some of the handouts, where you can read more about the theory.
Another history though is found from Exodus to Joshua and Exodus to Joshua tells the story of
how Israel is liberated.
But this time it's liberated not in its own land, but when it's living outside its borders.
Where it's living in bondage in Egypt.
And then it's brought out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses and then Joshua and it takes the
land and conquers it and what we have here is something quite different than the monarchic
history, because there is no king at the center of it.
Moses, neither Moses nor Joshua are monarchic rulers, they don't establish dynasties, all of the
great military exploits and triumph (UNKNOWN) are ascribed to Yahweh, Israel's god.
And so this is, had a history of the people as a whole, who leave their bondage in Egypt and takes
the land under the directed guidance of their god.
That is a much more, what I would call national history.
And what has happened is that the national history has been prefaced to the monarchic history.
And its done that to, to place the monarchic history in its context.
Long before there were kings, there was a time where God reigned as king, and it was the nation
who was in direct relationship with this God who could bring them into their land, and the whole
focus of that attention is to show that Israel could exist as a people, even without a king.
One did not need a king to do the job.
Now, the other parts of this whole primary history are just added on to that, so Genesis is a
patriarchal story, also a national story of how Israel becomes a people through family ties, and
relations, and so forth, and that continues that project of the national history that we find within
existed to Joshua.
And then the final link into the whole chain from Genesis to patriarchal history that's connected to
the Exodus to Joshua, people's history and then connected to the monarchic history in Samuel-
Kings, is the book of Jo, Judges.
The book of, the book of Judges explains how we get from Joshua, where everything is going really
well for Israel, where the people have conquered the land with the help of their god through the
(INAUDIBLE) through the leadership of Joshua to a time when, at the beginning of the Monarchic
history, things are not going well.
42

Where Israel is now in bondage again, and that they need a Monarchic savior, a king to rise up and
to rescue them from the, the Philistines.
So what the book of Judges does, is tell about this downward spiral from the time of Joshua, the
conquest to how it got to a situation where they need a king.
All of this is brought together to unify history of Israel, to connect various pieces and the work in
making this larger history is to show that Israel can be a people, can be a nation without a king.
Whereas the monarchic history tries to affirm that Israel and Judea can reunite, politically that the
real wrongdoing in their past was the political division that caused this separation between the
Kingdom of Israel and Judah.
The people's history and the formation of the whole, primary history from Genesis to Kings does
much more.
This is long before the split between Israel and Judah, there was a people that lived for
generations without a king, without any centralization and, the real bond that unites Israel and
Judah goes back to common ancestors, and a common God, and a common covenant.
These are the things that we're going to pick up in the coming weeks when we go into, into greater
detail about covenant, when we're going to look at King David, and how these stories of King
David deal with various issues of the rivalries between Israel and Judah, but also questions of
nationhood and defeat, and so forth.
3.13: Doctoral Student Aubrey Buster (13:06)
No transcript available.
3.14: Epigrapher and Professor Christopher A.
Rollston (15:09) Now I have with me professor Christopher Rollston.
Who is the new professor at George Washington University, a very good university, where he will
be teaching with Eric Klein.
And before that, and currently you're still at the Albright Institute for National Endowment for the
Humanity's Scholar, a very prestigious award that you have there.
That you've just finished? >> That's correct and I'm, >> You're going to go to Tel Aviv now to teach
for a semester? >> Correct.
Yes.
>> And he's really quite familiar with a lot of different institutions both in Israel and the United
States and Europe.
And it's a such a pleasure to have you with my students.
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>> Well it's marvelous to be with your students.
>> Your field is paleography inscriptions, everything that has to do with, has to do with writing and
material finds related to writing.
What is, what is that all about? What is Paleography, what does that mean? >> Sure, sure.
Might be easiest to start with epigraphy, epigraphy is basically the field that, that works with
inscriptions that are found on excavations.
When something's found on an excavation, as you know, basically scientific excavations are very
precise, stratified excavations.
Excavations that work basically scientifically, they take elevations.
They want to know precisely at what level above or below sea level something was found, the
associated architecture, the associated objects, you know, was it in some sort of a room that was a
scrollery.
Was this a home of a scribe? All of those things are so important >> Yeah.
>> and they're part >> The interpretation of it or should that if they're into the interpretation? >>
Absolutely.
>> Or do you think that's going to be mythologically problematic to say I know all of this about the
find, therefore I make also this judgment on the reading of the text itself.
>> Very good question.
I think there should be a reciprocal impact or influence between those things.
In other words, the location of a find doesn't necessarily determine the proper interpretation.
>> Yeah.
>> Sometimes things are found in secondary or tertiary context.
>> Okay.
>> Someone has to incorporate that data as well,.
But often times the location of a find will be very helpful.
So, for example, there were a number of bulli that were found in Jerusalem.
>> What are bulli? >> It would seem David.
A bulla is basically a piece of clay that was impressed with a small seal.
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>> Okay.
>> Seals were about the size of a fingernail.
And in Antiquity, if someone, for example, had a, a document, a, a, might be a, a purchase, it
might be a sale, it might be a marriage, a divorce, an adoption.
They would actually write that out, a scribe would write that out normally on papyrus paper >>
Yeah.
>> and then it would be rolled up.
Usually there would be two copies.
>> Yeah.
>> An open copy that they could consult at any point and then also a sealed copy.
And they would literally roll it up, wrap a string around it, put a piece of clay on there, and then
stamp the seal.
>> And that seal might have their name on it, right? >> It, it, it normally did.
>> Okay.
>> From the 9th century on they often had names, and then even the name of the father as well.
And so that, that's really useful.
And in Jerusalem a few years ago, there were a number, in fact several dozens, of these bulli that
were found.
That probably demonstrates that at some point, that was an archive.
And there was a fire, and so the papyri documents burned.
But the seal on it, the bull, the bulli, were actually preserved.
So even though the scrolls or the papyri burned.
>> So these are the things that remain when we are with a writing culture that's using materials
that are, that can, are destructive.
Or not destructive, that deteriorate.
>> Perishable, yeah that's right.
>> Perishable.
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And other types of writing, bulla, go along with leather or parchment, whereas other types of
writing would be like, say, on pottery pieces.
>> Yes.
Yeah.
>> What is that called? >> Right.
It depends on sort of the nature of it.
If it's ink on a broken piece of pottery, then we call it an ostrican.
>> Ostrican.
Okay.
>> If it's ink on
>> So ostrica.
>> That's right.
Plural ostrica.
>> If it's, if it's actually incised on a pot.
>> Yeah.
>> That wasn't broken in antiquity >> Okay.
>> But an entire pot we usually call that an incised inscription in a pot.
>> Incised inscription, okay.
>> So pot inscription or something such as that.
>> So you're an expert also in, when it comes to determining the minor differences that show how
the language and how the writing system developed.
And on the basis of these minor differences also a lot about the political histories that go along
with that and the development of the language.
Tell us more about just, in terms first of all about how, one goes about working at an epigraphist
like yourself.
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>> The different cultures in antiquity in the Levant countries such as ancient Moab, ancient Aman,
ancient Israel, ancient Philistia ancient Syria, ancient Lebanon - they all had distinct versions,
distinct dialects and distinct languages really we might say.
>> Yeah.
>> In addition to that they also had distinct scripts fairly often.
>> Yeah.
>> And so, >> Do scripts, do scripts correspond to an identity? Do, do, does one develop? Can we
say that these people are using scripts to say something about themselves? Or is that over
interpretation in some cases? >> At times they do.
In other words many of the.
>> Writing styles.
>> Right, right.
Many times the national script is actually determinative for the language.
And they are making a statement.
>> Mm-hm.
>> A political statement of some sort.
So, for example, if one is reading a Hebrew inscription from the 8th century, I suspect that the
ancient Hebrew scribes could very well have written that in the Phoenician script >> Mm-hm >>
and in the Phoenician language.
Or, in the Aramaic script >> Mm-hm >> or the Aramaic language.
But they chose to write in the Hebrew script and in the Hebrew language for a particular reason.
Namely, first of all, it was the language that everyone spoke and, and read.
>> Mm-hm.
>> At least, the elites read it.
>> Yeah.
>> Everyone spoke it.
And also, it was you know, this was the national script and the national language, and so they used
that.
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Sometimes, though, if there's a prestige language in script a country will actually use that prestige
language and that prestige script even though it's not native to them.
So, for example we find this in Anatolia at times, during the early part of the iron age or northern
Syria.
You remember, of course, the tough Acarean scription.
>> Mm-hm.
>> That's actually written in two different in two different languages, in two different scripts.
>> And they say a little bit different things too which is really fun to look at too.
>> Yes, absolutely.
And so you know, in this particular case the telefactory inscription is written in the Aramaic
language but it is written in the Phonetian script.
And there was a reason for that.
They, they could have written it in, in you know, an Aramaic script but they chose not to.
So making it, deciding to write in a particular language or a particular script is a statement of some
sort.
One has to be careful not to read too much into that.
>> Yeah.
>> Because sometimes it, it has nothing to do with anything except for, that's the language and
script that the scribe happens to know best.
>> So, when it comes to Judah, Israel, we've done a lot in the course, the differences between the
Israel and Judah, we really can't tell too much with regard to the writing scripts or the style of
writing that would say that the scribes in the south in Judah are using a different type of style to,
to present their identity.
Even though it's in the north in Israel? Or? >> That's correct.
That's correct.
The first thing that I would say is the old Hebrew script begins in the ninth century B.C.E., so it
doesn't begin prior to that.
Joseph Navat, Hebrew University, now the late Joseph Navat said cogently many, many years ago
and it still holds true today that the old Hebrew script begins in the 9th century BCE and I believe
that to be the case as well.
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So the, the script begins then.
I suspect that the old Hebrew language was in existence for several centuries prior to that.
So, that's the first point that I would make.
With regard to Israel and Judah, there's one script, and, it was used in Israel and it was used in
Judah.
I suspect, that if Israel had continued after 722, that is to say if the neo Assyrian empire with
Shalmaneser V, and Sargon II, hadn't destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, that we would
have begun to seen, in time, differences in the scripted self between the North and the South.
>> Why so? >> Just because you have different capitals different countries different.
>> So you're thinking that Judah probably is too much under the shadow maybe of Israel? That it
describes her adopting the style of the North? Is that one possible way of seeing it? And that if
they had developed Judah's political power had developed independently of Israel that they would
have taken different directions with their writing styles, or? >> I would probably frame it
differently >> Okay.
>> That's a possible way to do it.
For me, I, I think that basically in the 9th century BCE that there were close connections between
the northern king of Israel and the southern king of Judah.
I think that both kingdoms had scribal apparati within them.
>> Okay.
>> And so basically, I would suggest that if Israel had continued to exist for another 200 years
there probably would've been some differences between the script that was used in Israel and the
script that was used in Judah just because of the longer period of development.
>> Okay.
>> I should hasten to add.
That there, we know with certainty that there were different dialects of Hebrew that were spoken
in Israel in Judah.
>> Yeah.
>> So for example, >> But these dialects don't get reflected in the writing system? >> Sometimes,
they don't get reflected in the script, but we can actually see it in the written document.
So for example, in Northern Israelite Hebrew, the word for year is (FOREIGN).
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But in Judean Hebrew, it's chanah of course, and so this is a difference.
There are some other sort of finer differences, dipthongs for example >> Yeah.
>> In terms of the spelling.
in, in the northern Israelite dialect the dipthongs actually collapsed.
They contracted but in Judah it didn't.
So for example in northern Israel if you wanted to say the word for wine you would have said yain.
But, in Judah of course, if you would want to say the word for wine it is yiyin.
>> So, one thing that we are doing a lot in the course is, the both the destruction at 722 the
destruction of Israel, but also the destruction of Judah at 587.
>> Yes.
>> As a epigraphist what would say with regard to Judah? What happened with regard to in your
material base, in your data, what changes with 587? >> After 587? >> After 587.
What are something that you say this is pre-exilic and this is post exilic.
Is there anything of note? >> Yeah, one of the striking things is that the, the, the Persian period
basically, you know, once we get 587 people continued to live in the region, but we don't get very
much written material in old Hebrew at all >> Yeah.
>> after 587.
>> And what kind of script develops then? >> Well, gradually we see the development and the
usage of the Aramaic scripts.
>> Aramaic scripts, okay.
>> Right.
Within Juda.
So, for example, the Tel-herod.
We actually have many inscriptions that date to basically the, the ninth century B.C.E through 587.
Those are all written in the Old Hebrew script and the Old Hebrew language.
>> Okay.
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>> From Herod from later periods we actually get the Aramaic script and the Aramaic language
that's used on those inscriptions.
>> And what is that, briefly, what is the reason for that shift from a, from a Hebrew, old Hebrew
script to an Aramaic script? >> I think it has to do with political hegemony.
And, in many ways, in other words there were new kings and kingdoms that were in power.
And so because the language, or one of the languages of the Persian Empire was actually Aramaic.
>> Yeah.
>> This one basically in many ways began to supplant.
Didn't really entirely ever supplant, but it began to supplant the old Hebrew script and the old
Hebrew language.
However, the old Hebrew script and the old Hebrew language sort of persisted in many ways, and
as we see it Qumran, >> Yeah.
>> In some of the materials that are written there, and not simply the texts that are copied, but
also in some of the documents.
>> And what, in conclusion, what would you say about writing and the development of statehood,
and, and the state authorities? What can we say about scribes? Are they independent of the state
to some extent already during the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, or was it always a matter of
control by the palace? >> I suspect that the aegis for writing, and that is to say that, the powers
that were in place that facilitated the writing, that were the aegis for writing, were those of the
state.
In other words, I think that scribal education was often something that the state had great interest
in.
They needed people that were capable of writing down.
>> But can you imagine like, we have a lot of discussion about these pottery makers who go
around and make pottery, >> Mm-hm.
>> And they're kind of independent of the state.
And some have argued that maybe that the scribes are also like, we for example, from Babylon, I
know that scribes would come through town and make you up a contract.
>> Mm-hm.
Mm-hm.
>> And these are kind of a cottage industry of, of scribes.
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Perhaps in Babylon.
Do we have something like that that we can imagine, independent of the state during the iron age
of Judah and Israel, or? >> I think that we would have to posit that that's certainly something
that's plausible to suggest.
>> Yeah.
>> The evidence that we have for writing in Israel and Juda comes predominate, predominately
from sites such as Sumeria, Arad, Makish, Royal Rhahove (CROSSTALK) and these are, these are
political sites, these are royal sites.
And so, because of that evidence, I suspect that most of the scribes were in the employ of the
states.
And, I suspect that most of the scribes were educated, in some fashion, through the aegis of the
state.
Now, it may have been a scribal father educating a scribal son.
But, still, the aegis was probably the scribal father who was functioning in some capacity within
the state.
Now, I also think that some scribes did indeed sort of hang out a shingle, as it were, and did work.
>> Yeah.
>> And so, I think that was the case as well.
But I think that the primary aegis.
>> The primary.
>> Was to actually that of the state because some ordinary people, you know, a, a potter, a
carpenter, a blacksmith, they really don't need too many written documents.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, they can do the things that they need to do without written documents.
A shepherd, a farmer, an agriculturist, they don't need written documents.
They can function rather well without those.
But the state does need those things.
The state needs correspondence, the state needs royal records, and so I think that probably is why
most of the writing we have comes from basically the state.
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>> Well, thanks so much for coming and treating my students to a really interesting lesson in
epigraphy.
And I know my students are really happy to have had encountered the epigraphist of our time and,
thanks so much for coming by Professor Ralston.
>> You're very kind and thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So thank you very much.
>> Okay, take care.
>> Okay, all right.
>> The preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University.