Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context

618 Pages·2011·5.98 MB·English

by  Oded Lipschits

Judah and the Judeans in the
Achaemenid Period

Judah and the Judeans
in the Achaemenid Period
Negotiating Identity
in an International Context
edited by
Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers,
and Manfred Oeming
Winona Lake, Indiana
Eisenbrauns
2011
© 2011 by Eisenbrauns Inc.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

www.eisenbrauns.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid period : negotiating identity in an
international context / edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and
Manfred Oeming.
p. cm.
“In April, 2008, an international colloquium was held at the University of
Heidelberg—the fourth convocation of a group of scholars (with some rotating
members) who gathered to discuss the status of Judah and the Judeans in
the exilic and postexilic periods. The goal of this gathering was specifically to
address the question of national identity in the period when many now believe
this very issue was in significant foment and development, the era of the
Persian/Achaemenid domination of the ancient Near East”—ECIP summary.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57506-197-9 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Ethnicity in the Bible—Congresses. 2. Group identity—Congresses.
3. Jews—Identity—Congresses. 4. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation,
etc.—Congresses. 5. Jews—History—586 b.c.–70 a.d.—Congresses.
6. Achaemenid dynasty, 559–330 b.c.—Congresses. 7. Jewish diaspora—
Congresses. 8. Judaea (Region)—Ethnic relations—Congresses. I. Lipschitz,
Oded. II. Knoppers, Gary N., 1956– III. Oeming, Manfred.
BS1199.E84J83 2011
220.9′5009014—dc22
2010054514
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. †Ê
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Part 1
Negotiating Identity:
Diversity within the Biblical Evidence
Judean Identity and Ecumenicity: The Political Theology of
the Priestly Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Konrad Schmid
Torah and Identity in the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Joachim Schaper
The Absent Presence: Cultural Responses to Persian Presence
in the Eastern Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Anselm C. Hagedorn
Ethnicity and Identity in Isaiah 56–66 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Christophe Nihan
Trito-Isaiah’s Intra- and Internationalization:
Identity Markers in the Second Temple Period . . . . . . . . 105
Jill Middlemas
From Ezekiel to Ezra–Nehemiah: Shifts of Group Identities
within Babylonian Exilic Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Dalit Rom-Shiloni
Israel’s Identity and the Threat of the Nations
in the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Jakob Wöhrle
The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives
in Ezra–Nehemiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Yonina Dor
v
vi Contents
The Holy Seed: The Significance of Endogamous Boundaries
and Their Transgression in Ezra 9–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Katherine Southwood
What Do Priests and Kings Have in Common?
Priestly and Royal Succession Narratives in the
Achaemenid Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Deirdre N. Fulton
Part 2
Negotiating Identity:
Cultural, Historical, Social, and Environmental Factors
Yahwistic Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomastics . . . . . 245
Paul-Alain Beaulieu
“Judean”: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian and
Achemenid Babylonia? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Laurie E. Pearce
Some Observations on the Traditions
Surrounding “Israel in Egypt” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Donald Redford
Judean Identity in Elephantine:
Everyday Life according to the Ostraca . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
André Lemaire
The Interaction of Egyptian and Aramaic Literature . . . . . . . . 375
Joachim Friedrich Quack
Yehudite Identity in Elephantine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Bob Becking
Judean Ambassadors and the Making of Jewish Identity:
The Case of Hananiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah . . . . . . . . . . 421
Reinhard G. Kratz
Negotiating Identity in an International Context under
Achaemenid Rule: The Indigenous Coinages of
Persian-Period Palestine as an Allegory . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Oren Tal
Judaeans, Jews, Children of Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Joseph Blenkinsopp
Contents vii
The Controversy about Judean versus Israelite Identity
and the Persian Government: A New Interpretation
of the Bagoses Story ( Jewish Antiquities XI.297–301) . . . . . . 483
Rainer Albertz
Surviving in an Imperial Context:
Foreign Military Service and Judean Identity . . . . . . . . . 505
Jacob L. Wright
ʾel-mĕdînâ ûmĕdînâ kiktābāh: Scribes and Scripts in Yehud
and in Achaemenid Transeuphratene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
David S. Vanderhooft
Jewish Identity in the Eastern Diaspora
in Light of the Book of Tobit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Manfred Oeming
The Identity of the Idumeans Based on the
Archaeological Evidence from Maresha . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Amos Kloner
Indexes
Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588

Foreword
The present volume comprises the published outcome of an interna-
tional conference held at the University of Heidelberg on 13–16 April
2008, entitled “Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Ne-
gotiating Identity in an International Context.” Recent discoveries in
archaeology, epigraphy, historical linguistics, numismatics, and cunei-
form studies have shed welcome new light on the history of the far-
flung Persian empire (ca. 550–330 b.c.e.) and the various regions this
empire claimed as its own. This particular conference, the fourth in a
series that began in 2001, paid special attention to the history, culture,
and religious practices of one particular ethnic group (the Judeans)
during the Neo-Babylonian, Persian (especially), and early Hellenistic
eras. Among the disciplines represented at the conference were archae-
ology, Assyriology, anthropology, biblical studies, Egyptology, epigra-
phy, history, numismatics, ritual studies, and theology.
Although the focus of the conference was on the different economic
and cultural circumstances under which Judeans lived throughout the
Persian realm, the conference also devoted ample attention to related
communities (e.g., Babylonians, Samarians, Idoumeans, Egyptians, Mo-
abites, Ammonites, Phoenicians, Arameans) and the shifting cross-
cultural relations among these national (and international) groups. To
complicate matters, a sizeable group of Yahwists is also attested in the
province of Samaria to the north of Yehud. During Persian and Helle-
nistic times, more than one community claimed to carry on the legacy of
ancient “Israel.”
The goal of the conference was, therefore, not simply to study the
history of one group in the southern Levant but also to explore the rela-
tions of the Judeans with other peoples. Moreover, given that Judeans
found themselves residing in a variety of lands during the Achaeme-
nid age, the participants in this conference were asked to explore how
early Judaism changed as a result of its growing internationalization.
As the large selection of essays in this book attests, the documentation
available among the literary, epigraphic, and material remains from
Babylon, Egypt, Samaria, Yehud, and Idoumea varies but has been
steadily increasing thanks to new archaeological and epigraphic dis-
coveries. Many of the contributions integrate the evidence provided by
ix