The Literary and Ideological Character of the Letters in Ezra 4–7

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Grätz
Keyword(s):  
Persian Period ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Biblical Texts

At first glance, the Aramaic letters embedded in the biblical book of Ezra look like authentic documents issued in favour of the Judaeans by the Achaemenid chanceries. This chapter shows that the letters display formulaic and stylistic features differing from authentic imperial Persian royal correspondence, that the contents of these letters are influenced by other biblical texts, chiefly Deutero-Isaiah and the books of Chronicles, and that the image of the king in these letters comprises aspects of the euergetism characteristic of Hellenistic monarchs. Grätz therefore suggests that the letters in Ezra 4–7 are fictitious and serve certain literary and ideological purposes: they present the Persian period as a time of divinely monitored reconstruction after the exile, and they emphasize God’s lasting election of Judah and the Jerusalem temple. The deployment of letters for such purposes can be compared with similar practices in Hellenistic historiography.

Esther and Additions to Esther

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Middlemas
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Good Story ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Intimate Relations ◽  
Latin Version

The biblical book of Esther is the story of a Jewish heroine (Esther, or Hadassah—the character’s Hebrew name) and Mordecai, her adopted uncle, who live in Persia and involve themselves with the Persian authorities in order to save the Jewish people, who are under threat. The story is the liturgical text used during the Jewish celebration of Purim, and it may have been written to serve as an etiology for the festival because it authorizes its observance by providing a historical situation origin for it. Critical discussions of the book of Esther were once dominated by historical debates that focused on identifying an event in the Persian period to which it corresponded and the origin of the traditions of Esther, Mordecai, and the festival of Purim. Recently, more attention has focused on literary matters including the story’s genre and its artistry as well as its applicability to contemporary situations of oppression and genocide. The tale of Esther is a good story with heroes and villains, court intrigue, the threat of destruction, feasting and fasting, intimate relations, and great reversals. It lends itself to—even invites—the application of different approaches, and there have been many. It has been fertile ground for the application of feminist approaches, for example—the story begins with the deposition of one queen and the installation of another; it is one of the few books of the Old Testament to be named after a woman; and the titular character is a woman who acts courageously in the midst of threatening times and as a marginalized individual within a marginalized group, but theological and other thematic readings have been made as well. There is something about the scroll of Esther that welcomes different approaches, various analyses, and seemingly endless discourses. This has been as true with the reception of the book since the intertestamental period when at least two Greek manuscripts (the Old Latin version is now thought to give evidence of a third) with different stories of Esther circulated among Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt and elsewhere outside the homeland. Moreover, the Targumim (Aramaic translations and paraphrases of biblical texts) evidence a number of significant aggadic (homiletic) expositions interwoven within the story. This article presents a guide to enable the reader to wade through the enormous variety of studies of the scroll of the Hebrew Esther and its Greek relations.

Hellenistic Judaism

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester L. Grabbe
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Hellenistic Judaism

The term “Hellenistic Judaism” is a conventional one, long used, but a misnomer according to many contemporary scholars. Traditionally, “Hellenistic Judaism” was a designation for Judaism in the Greek-speaking world, including those Jews who spoke Greek and adopted (to some extent) a Greek way of life. It has been argued, however, that all Judaism after the conquests of Alexander was Hellenistic Judaism. The Hellenistic period begins with the conquests of Alexander, but when did it end? In one sense, it continued under the Romans and even encompassed the Byzantine period, ending only with the Islamic conquest. For practical purposes, however, the bibliography given here covers primarily the period from Alexander to the Roman conquest under Pompey, circa 335 to 65 bce, a period of almost three centuries. From the point of view of the region or province of Judah, it takes in first Ptolemaic, then Seleucid, and finally Hasmonean rule. The last is very important as almost a century of rule by a native Jewish dynasty of priest-kings. Although many have seen the Maccabean revolt as opposing Hellenistic culture, this is to be very much doubted. Hellenistic Judaism is part of a wider historical period and phenomenon known as “Second Temple Judaism,” which refers to Judaism from Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon to the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce, or the Persian, Greek, and early Roman periods. Many of the major developments of Judaism during this time actually began in the Persian period, but they sometimes accelerated under Greek rule, and Greek rule brought its own influences and contributions to the Jewish people. This has been most discussed with regard to Hellenization and the so-called Hellenistic reform preceding the Maccabean revolt. See Hellenism and Hellenization and Maccabean Revolt and Hasmonean Rule.

Another Look at the Hosea/Malachi Framework in The Twelve

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Leuchter
Keyword(s):  
Persian Period ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Book Of The Twelve ◽  
Literary Unity

Abstract Though most scholars agree that the prophetic books identified as “The Twelve” (or “The Book of The Twelve”) have gone through extensive stages of redaction, debate ensues as to whether they should be read as a literary unity or as a collection of independent prophetic works. A closer look at the framework surrounding this material—the book of Hosea and the book of Malachi—suggests that the primary purpose of the redaction of The Twelve was not to be read as a literary unity or as an anthological collection, but to establish a model of how priestly scribes were to countenance and teach diverse textual corpora in the context of a single, dominant temple establishment. The redactors of the Twelve were probably a Levite scribal group, who created the work to affirm their own status within the hierarchy of the Jerusalem temple in the Late Persian period.

Elephantine Trespasses

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Collin Cornell
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts

Abstract This article identifies two examples of constructive theological argumentation in recent religion-historical research: specifically, research on the Yahwism of a Persian-period island called Elephantine. These examples are significant because the task of history of religions is to offer critical (re)description of the contents of religion and not to make positive recommendations for current-day god-talk or ethics. In addition to setting out these disciplinary stakes, the article suggests that the location of these trespasses is also of interest: the historical subdiscipline that studies Elephantine, by virtue of its propinquity to the Bible proper, draws theological cachet from the Bible, while its smaller infrastructure relative to academic biblical studies makes room for more editorializing. Lastly, the article answers each theological proposal in kind, with brief theological counterarguments made, not obliquely and paracanonically, but directly from canonical biblical texts. In this way, the article advocates for maintaining the integrity of each discipline: descriptive history of religions and constructive theologizing.

Haggai

2021 ◽  
pp. 510-523
Author(s):  
John R. Barker
Keyword(s):  
Persian Period ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Major Area ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Book Of The Twelve ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
The Temple

This essay offers an overview of the content and major critical issues related to the book of Haggai. In a series of dated oracles, the book reveals an ongoing internal dispute within the Yahwistic community in Judah concerning divine permission to rebuild the Jerusalem temple under Zerubbabel in the early Persian period. The prophetic oracles suggest that the basis for the dispute lay in differing interpretations of the poor socioeconomic circumstances the community faced at the time. Major themes of the book include the difficulty of determining the divine will, the role of the temple as mediator of divine presence, and the effects of divine presence on the community. A major area of critical interest in the book is its compositional history, particularly as it relates to the development of the “Book of the Twelve.”

scholarly journals Blev templet på Garizim bygget med templet i Jerusalem som forbillede?

2015 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Temple

Was the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim modelled after the temple in Jerusalem? This question is important for our understanding of the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and the people who worshipped there; if the Gerizim temple was modelled after the Jerusalem temple the argument in favour of the Gerizim cult as derived from the cult in Jerusalem is strengthened. On the other hand, if no such connection can be demonstrated convincingly one must look elsewhere for the answer to the question of Samaritan origins.The present article gives a brief introduction to the relationship between early Judaism and early Samaritanism, or rather Southern and Northern Yahwism, followed by a presentation of Mount Gerizim and the excavations that were recently carried out there. Finally I shall turn to the theory that the temple on Mount Gerizim was modelled after the Jerusalem temple, which has recently been recast by Dr Yitzhak Magen. I conclude that the archaeological remains from the Persian period sanctuary on Mount Gerizim offer no evidence that this temple was modelled on the temple in Jerusalem.

scholarly journals “The Pentateuch that the Samaritans Chose”

2015 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Hjelm
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Biblical Texts

“The Pentateuch that the Samaritans Chose”, is the heading of Chapter Seven in Magnar Kartveit’s The Origin of the Samaritans (2009). The heading is highly problematic in regard to both the origin of the Samaritans and the production of biblical texts and books in ancient Palestine. Kartveit’s  assumption that the Samaritans “chose one text-type in particular among the different texts available” rests on several old paradigms about Samaritan origins and religion, which badly fit recent evidence from archaeology and epigraphy. A continuous and independent Yahvistic cult in Israel, from at least the Iron Age, a temple on Mt Gerizim from early in the Persian period, and a highly developed temple city on Mt Gerizim in the Hellenistic period, do notsustain paradigms about Samaritans as an “aberrant” branch of Judaism or the Samaritan Pentateuch as an off-shoot of a Jewish pre-Samaritan or proto-Masoretic Pentateuch.

scholarly journals Was the Temple on Mount Gerizim Modelled after the Jerusalem Temple?

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Temple

Was the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim modelled after the temple in Jerusalem? This question is important for our understanding of the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and the people who worshipped there in the Persian and Hellenistic period; if the Gerizim temple was modelled after the Jerusalem temple, the argument in favour of the Gerizim cult as derived from the cult in Jerusalem is strengthened. On the other hand, if no such connection can be demonstrated convincingly, one must look elsewhere for the answer to the question of Samaritan origins. The present study gives a brief introduction to the relationship between early Judaism and early Samaritanism, or rather Southern and Northern Yahwism, followed by a presentation of Mount Gerizim and the excavations that were carried out there between 1982 and 2006. Finally, I shall turn to the theory that the temple on Mount Gerizim was modelled after the Jerusalem temple, which has been recast by Dr Yitzhak Magen (2008). I conclude that the archaeological remains from the Persian-period sanctuary on Mount Gerizim offer no evidence that this temple was modelled on the temple in Jerusalem.

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