31.10.2024

Charles Texier ‘Cyrus the Great’ (1852). In biblical accounts, Persia’s king is depicted as an agent of the Jewish god

A monotheism sponsored in Persia

Historical research, biblical studies and archaeology reveal a complex picture of royalist nationalism, opposition prophets and class struggles. Jack Conrad investigates the origins of Judaism

During the 8th century BCE two states rose to prominence in what is now Israel-Palestine. In the north, the Israeli kingdom became something of a regional power, while in the south there was the much weaker kingdom of Judea. We must discount the existence of the united kingdom of David and Solomon and their fabulous empire. A politically motivated invention.¹

However, when it comes to real, verifiable history, both the northern kingdom of Israel, based on the city of Samaria, and the southern kingdom of Judea, based on Jerusalem, clearly owed their existence to the strategic power vacuum that existed in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, caused by what historians call the general crisis of the late Bronze Age.² The Hittite empire disappeared entirely, the Mycenaean city-states collapsed and Egypt was severely weakened.

Egypt slowly began to revive - crucially, though, there was the growth of the neo-Assyrian empire. It expanded east, south and west. At its furthermost extent its realms stretched from the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean coast - the first world empire.³ Surviving reliefs, stelae and monumental statues boast of the terrorist methods its kings employed:

With battle and slaughter I assaulted and took the city. Three thousand warriors I slew in battle. Their possessions I carried away. Many of their soldiers I took alive; some of them I cut off hands and limbs; of others the noses, ears and arms; of many soldiers I put out the eyes. I devastated the city, dug it up, in fire I burned it; I annihilated it.⁴

Inevitably, given the power balance, the northern kingdom fell under Assyrian domination. In 738 BCE Tiglath-Pileser III reduced it to vassal status and demanded substantial tribute. A thousand talents of silver was paid over, reports 1 Kings xv,19. Pro- and anti-Assyrian factions formed and fought for influence in the Samarian court. Doubtless, though, there was political overlap and considerable fluidity, given changing internal and external factors.

When the anti-Assyrian faction momentarily gained the upper hand, Israel’s monarch, Pekah (reigned 735-32 BCE), attempted to force the southern kingdom of Judea to join his rebellion - that would have involved recognition of northern leadership - something which the southern king, Ahaz, was less than willing to do. The anti-Assyrian coalition united Israel and Syria, but both had to sue for peace, when the king of kings once again entered the Levant with his mighty army. There was a heavy price to pay for the so-called Syro-Ephraimite⁵ war of 734 BCE in loss of territory and extra tribute.

Pekah is then murdered by the pro-Assyrian faction and replaced by Hoshea. He is favoured by the Assyrians. However, with the death of Tilath-Pileser, the anti-Assyrian faction once again gains the upper hand and Hoshea, this time allied to Egypt, makes another attempt to gain independence. He was soundly beaten too by the new Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V: he besieged and took Samaria during his campaign of 727-25 BCE. A few years later, perhaps in 720 BCE, Israel made a last independence bid. It revolted against either Shalmaneser or his successor, Sargon II (the records are unclear). But once again there was failure. The Assyrians dismembered the kingdom. And to ensure that nothing of the like happened again there was a social decapitation.

The local elite - the great landowners, priests and the most wealthy - were deported. Assyrian records tell of 27,290 being marched off into exile. Thereon after, the northern kingdom ceases to exist except as an object of Judean expansionism. Later, of course, its common people became Christian and later again Muslim. Many of today’s Palestinian Arabs are surely the descendants of these ancient Hebrews.

Down south

Events moved according to a similar, but delayed, rhythm in the southern kingdom. Archaeological evidence shows that between the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE the population of Jerusalem multiplies many times over - from a thousand to perhaps 15,000. A rough estimate, of course; and with equal vagueness historians reckon a one-in-20 to one-in-10 ratio between urban and rural populations in the ancient world. So that would give a total population in Judea of around 200,000 at the time.

A new, 20-foot thick wall was built to surround Jerusalem’s western hill and incorporate the tightly packed houses that had sprung up around the city. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic, mercantile and religious elite amassed considerable fortunes and indulged their whims on conspicuous consumption. They provided themselves with numerous hangers-on, married handsome wives, lived in large town houses and were buried in elaborate tombs. As for the Judean kings, they crowned the city heights with impressive temples and palaces for the first time.

Enhanced wealth for the elite derives in the main from the spread of market relations, intensified tax demands and a surge in international trade. Under Assyrian domination Judea becomes a branch line on the highly lucrative Arabian trade route. Both imports and exports mushroom. Caravan trains from the south bring in incense, spices and other exotic luxury goods. Within Judea commercial-scale olive oil production takes off. Extensive vineyards are planted and wine shifts from being a private and local, to a highly profitable, state-controlled industry. Sleepy villages are transformed into bustling towns with reassuringly expensive public buildings, thriving bazaars and all manner of artisanal workshops.

Although hugely benefiting from integration into the Assyrian economic space and still vassals, politically the kings of the newly prosperous Judea begin to entertain expansionist ambitions of their own. Royal eyes fix on the north. Israeli ‘reunification’ soon becomes the official slogan: one Davidic dynasty, one supreme god, one capital city. Twenty years after a miscalculated rebellion ended the northern kingdom, the southern king, Hezekiah (reigned c727-698 BCE), made his own declaration of independence.

The elderly Assyrian king, Sargon, died unexpectedly while fighting in the southern Caucuses. Hezekiah seized his moment. A royalist movement for national liberation is launched, which is combined, reinforced or wrapped up with a religious reformation. The second book of Kings reports that Hezekiah rebelled “against the king of Assyria” and goes on to praise him, because he “removed the high places, and broke down the pillars, and cut down the Asherah”. Hezekiah is given additional plaudits, because he “broke in pieces the bronze serpent”, called Nehushtan, “that Moses had made”.⁶

Baruch Halpern argues that it would be mistaken to interpret this account as equating to a full-blown, Jerusalem-centred monotheism. That came later. Hezekiah is viewed as taking Judea in the direction of exclusive Yahwehism.⁷ Halpern believes that Hezekiah did not close state temples in provincial towns, though he suppressed rural shrines - traditionally located on hill and mountain tops and wooded glades - and locked his kingship into Yahweh worship. The archaeological record is inconclusive.⁸ Yet there can be no doubt that Hezekiah did preside over far-reaching changes.

Hence the related suggestion that refugee priests played a key role in shaping his Yahwehite nationalism. Those who fled from the destruction of the northern kingdom would have loathed the Assyrians with a passion. And, coming from a richer, better connected, more sophisticated culture, they could well have been regarded as an invaluable intellectual asset by Hezekiah, as he set about formulating his version of Israeli ‘reunification’.

Others say that the Yahwehite priesthood in Jerusalem wanted to assert its domination over the increasingly prosperous, but still fiercely polytheistic countryside … and therefore stake a holy claim to be the sole beneficiary of religiously required tithes and offerings.

Not that the two arguments are mutually exclusive. Northern and southern priests could easily have fused into a single Yahwehite party. A ‘Yahweh alone’ movement⁹ is thought to have emerged prior to Hezekiah’s reign, perhaps beginning in the north. Hezekiah, though, certainly appears as a key figure in the second book of Kings: “[T]here was none like him among the kings of Judea after him, nor amongst those who went before him.”¹⁰

It is worth noting that it was under the combined circumstances of irredentist royalist nationalism, burgeoning commercial relations and expanded state control that for the first time written texts, rather than recited epics or ballads, became the main form of ideological authority. Literacy had doubtless spread from the narrow confines of the elite to the much wider middle classes, yet it is clear that it was politics that sat in the driving seat here.

Selecting from the jungle of lists, annals, mysteries, hymns, regulations, popular legends and recent memories, and fashioning a coherent literature, required learning, a clear aim - that and artistry. But committing the result to parchment and papyrus fixed the message. That empowered the sponsor. Priests were expected to recite scripture to their congregations. Hence, whereas the term ‘scribe’, or ‘writer’, previously designated administrative and clerical functions, now “didactic connotations became predominant”.¹¹ Scribes were valued because of their creativity; nonetheless there is every reason to believe that Hezekiah himself provided guidelines, close supervision and generous rewards.

Anyway, we can safely reckon that Hezekiah drew confidence about his coming military adventure not only through faith in Yahweh. Hezekiah agreed to include his little kingdom in an Egyptian-backed, anti-Assyrian alliance. So as a personality he would appear to have been a sober-minded realist who recognised the advantages of exploiting big-power rivalries. Hezekiah was therefore no crazed religious fanatic embarking on a suicide mission. I think we can safely say that.

Nevertheless, four years after Hezekiah’s rebellion began, the newly installed Assyrian king, Sennacherib, son of Sargon, soundly defeated the Egyptians. He then proceeded to burn, slash and exterminate his way through the Judean countryside and sack town after town. Archaeology provides ample confirmation. Naturally, Jerusalem itself was put under siege, though its defences proved far too strong to allow easy capture, Hezekiah, sensibly, sued for peace. The terms imposed by Sennacherib amounted to amputation: massed deportations to Assyria; agriculturally rich and heavily populated western territories, the Shephelah hills, ceded to the Philistines; and significant additional tribute transfers. We can dismiss biblical claims that an angel miraculously slaughtered the Assyrian forces surrounding Jerusalem and thereby lifted the siege. A later invention, designed to enhance Hezekiah’s image.

The attempt by the Judean monarch, the ‘Yahweh alone’ movement and the anti-Assyrian court faction to assert monopoly rights over an expanded peasant tax base - after all, that was what independence was really about - proved almost as disastrous for the south as it had been for the north.

In the countryside one might guess that the common people blamed Hezekiah for the havoc, trauma and death wrought by the Assyrians. He presumably met with unremitting hostility from sections of the elite too - not least the rural priesthood. Those committed to the traditional 70-strong heavenly host of the ancient Hebrews would in all likelihood have accused him of blasphemy. We can imagine them demanding an end to Hezekiah’s reformation and a return to all the trusted gods and goddesses of old: Yam, Mot, Baal, Astarte, Dagon, Tirosch, Horon, Nahar, Resheph, Kotar Hosis, Anat, Shapshu, Yerak, etc.

Writing the book

Hezekiah must have mobilised all available resources to prepare Judea for the oncoming struggle against Assyria: new fortifications, building up enormous food reserves, deep tunnelling to secure Jerusalem’s water supplies and, one presumes, a substantially expanded army too. Such a programme could only have been carried out by draining the treasury, imposing compulsory labour and squeezing extra surplus product from the immediate producers. Adding to their woes, those who survived amongst the peasantry would have been bled white in order to pay for the heavy tribute Sennacherib demanded in exchange for his victor’s peace.

Though the Bible relates, in a convoluted account, how an aged Hezekiah eventually died of natural causes, replacing him with his 12-year-old son, Manasseh, amounted to a palace coup. Hezekiah’s anti-Assyrian nationalism is yanked into reverse. Renewed cooperation with Assyria and religious counter-reformation marches in step. As detailed by a scandalised second book of Kings, the image of Yahweh’s wife, Asherah, is reintroduced into the Jerusalem temple, altars dedicated to Baal are re-established, along with worshipping the “host of heaven” on the high places.

Manasseh is condemned for practising soothsaying and augury, and dealing with wizards and mediums. In that exact same spirit the king is said to have “burnt his son as an offering” some time during his 55-year reign.¹² A sacrificial act which, of course, he might actually have performed. All in all, Manasseh is depicted as one of the most dreadfully wicked monarchs and is even blamed for the future destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (obviously another later interpellation).

Yet Manasseh would appear to have pursued a successful diplomatic policy by reinventing Judea as an ultra-loyal Assyrian vassal. For its part, Assyria had a real interest in a prosperous Judea, so that it could serve as a strong buffer state against the Egyptian arch-enemy. Manasseh’s pro-Assyrian course certainly brought about an unmistakable economic revival. Judea once again integrated itself into the Arabian trade route, and commercial agricultural production was intensified and pushed east and south into once arid zones.

Manasseh was succeeded by his son, Amon, but he lasted less than two years. Amon was assassinated. Perhaps another palace coup, but this time carried out by the anti-Assyrian faction. The second book of Kings blames Amon’s servants and they are duly put to death by the “people of the land.” Manasseh’s eight-year-old son is elevated to the throne. Josiah (reigned 639-609 BCE) goes on, however, to be a king in the mould of his grandfather, Hezekiah, not his father or great grandfather.

How does the biblical account go? Amazingly, the high priest of the Jerusalem temple and Josiah’s secretary discover a previously unknown “book of the law”. It provides - quelle surprise - the new king with the very pretext he needs for another bid at imposing root-and-branch religious change.

Having fortuitously stumbled upon Yahweh’s legal code, Josiah immediately proceeds, as surely intended, to decisive action. As told by the second book of Kings, the statues of Baal and Asherah are once again removed from the Jerusalem temple … and burnt. Their, and all other, “idolatrous” priests, are “deposed”. Josiah issues further orders. The temple brothels which housed the “male cult prostitutes” are closed. His reformation tsunamis out from Jerusalem. Holy sites on the high places, the tophets, where children are sacrificed in honour of this, that or the other member of the heavenly host, are destroyed. And, taking advantage of a well ordered Assyrian withdrawal from the Levant and the absence of an Egyptian presence in the highlands, Josiah extends his Taliban-like campaign into Samaria (the old kingdom of Israel). The great cult site of Bethel is trashed. Its altar is broken into tiny pieces. Josiah carries out the same programme of purification throughout the north, killing priests as he goes, before returning triumphantly to Jerusalem.¹³

Understandably, most biblical scholars consider that Josiah himself sponsored the writing of the ancient law codes found by his secretary and the Jerusalem high priest. Obviously the ten commandments - and similar legal instructions - purportedly given to Moses on mount Sinai by Yahweh … are, of course, now found in Deuteronomy. While doubtless there were later redactions, its “main outlines” begin “for the first time” during Josiah’s reign.¹⁴ In other words, Deuteronomy was a 7th century BCE invention.¹⁵

Likewise, doing Josiah’s bidding, it was in all probability the scribes of the ‘Yahweh alone’ movement who completed the first versions of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. Existing religious literature inherited from the reign of Hezekiah, as well as suitable poems, hymns, prophecies and popular legends, was collected, woven together, elaborated and theologically interpreted. Hence the theory that each of these books should be treated as a series of original blocks, which are then overlaid by subsequent authors and redactors.

Once again, the whole exercise of literary creation was carried out in order to further political aims. Exodus, Joshua, Samuel, Deuteronomy, Kings, etc being prequels to Josiah’s reformation and Anschluss with the north. His bold plan for territorial expansion would have been considerably aided by manufacturing a unified religion and a unified history. Maybe the hope was that he and his troops would be greeted as liberators.

Anyway, thanks to Josiah’s scribes, the peoples of the south and north are cleverly united through 12 ancient tribes, which are in their turn given a common ancestor in the form of the patriarch, Jacob (renamed Israel by an angel), along with a superbly crafted story going back to the first man and woman (indeed to creation and the beginning of time itself). Deuteronomistic history provides them with a never-to-be-forgotten common enemy too. Significantly, Egypt, not Assyria.

Revealingly, when it comes to the so-called exodus from Egypt and the so-called conquest of Canaan, the Bible unfailingly reflects the political, strategic and geographic realities of the 7th century BCE. Not the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age: ie, the 15th to 10th centuries BCE. The exodus, of course, provides the narrational springboard for Joshua’s Assyrian-like conquest. In an obvious attempt to forge a common, nationalist pride, the Judean-Israelites are portrayed as mighty warriors. Their forefathers stormed cities, humiliated mighty kings and ruthlessly exterminated enemies. It was they, not the late Bronze Age general crisis - ie, urban abandonment, the sea people and peasant revolution - who were responsible for the still highly visible ruins that littered the Palestinian countryside.

In status terms the southern, Judean, kingdom is presented as the elder brother to the wayward northern, Israeli, kingdom. After the glory days of David and Solomon the Deuteronomistic history has the north irresponsibly splitting away. The two kingdoms are ruled by a string of good and bad rulers, who in terms of a “cultic interpretation of history” explain why the north fell to the Assyrians and the south survived.¹⁶ Bad kings being defined, of course, by their participation in unacceptable religious practices.

As it turned out, Josiah’s national liberation gamble went the same way as that of his grandfather. He too was defeated and killed - not, however, by the now visibly declining Assyrians, but the reassertive Egyptians under pharaoh Necho II. A miscalculating Josiah had aligned Judea with faraway Babylon and thereby inadvertently made his kingdom the front line in the Egyptian-Babylonian war of 609 BCE. In the desperately fought battle of Megiddo the Egyptian army overcame the Judeans en route to taking on the Babylonians (there was an Assyrian-Egyptian anti-Babylonian alliance).

There follows a brief, three-month, interregnum under Josiah’s son, Jehoahaz - who reversed his father’s reformation. But, returning from his unsuccessful Babylonian campaign, the Egyptian pharaoh deposed Jehoahaz and replaced him with his elder brother, Jehoiachin. He became Egypt’s stooge in Jerusalem. Another terrible reversal for Judean royalist nationalism … but, exceptionally, on this occasion, the losers got to tell their side of the story to future generations and countless millions. The Hebrew canon provides the foundational text for both Christianity and Islam.

Opposition voices

Not that the Old Testament consists of uncontested or seamless Judean royalist propaganda. The prophets, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and Micah, are clearly voices of opposition. They are generally thought to have got their calling during the late monarchical period, Amos and Hosea being active in the north. Isaiah and Micah in the south. Apart from the notable exception of Amos - he was a sheep-herder - they came from the better-off classes, and were therefore educated and free from crushing relations of dependence. However, they detached themselves from their specific origins. Albeit mediated through the prism of religious fervour, they clearly championed the interests of the peasantry as against the landowning elite. By including the complaints, protests and demands of the rural poor within their “says the lord god” indictments, the so-called ‘minor prophets’, provided eloquent testimony as to their plight.

Violation of traditional inheritance codes, alienable property, onerous rates of interest and confiscatory loan guarantees are deemed akin to outright robbery. By such sinful means the rich join field after field to their already extensive estates till they are the sole owners of the land. Meanwhile, those who have fallen into debt are sold off into slavery for silver, or even a pair of sandals, if they fail to pay up on time.

The prophets seethe with righteous indignation against a legal system which enforces the separation of the peasant mass from the means of production. Courts are dominated by the upper classes and, if need be, can easily be persuaded through intimidation or bribery - a crime against god’s laws, the prophets defiantly reminded people. Because of their arrogant rejection of traditional egalitarianism, callous treatment of the poor, idleness, licentiousness and luxurious way of life, the elite are soon to suffer terrible retribution from Yahweh. And, though they will flee to mountain tops and hide in the depths of the sea, there can be no escape for them.

Because of ideological blinkers mainstream biblical scholars think of oppositional prophets within a reformist frame. True, in the texts we have available to us, there is no explicit demand for peasant revolution. Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, etc are therefore said to have directed their message to those above. The elite is admittedly called upon to repent and re-establish social justice. But this ignores the likely context: Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, etc were preachers and I think it is safe to say that they delivered their wonderfully vitriolic homilies not in temples, palaces and mansions, but market squares, village assemblies and crossroad meeting places. Here, in a popular environment, their damning condemnations and terrible warnings cannot seriously be interpreted as designed to produce a contrite elite. No, their simple, fluent, lacerating words would surely have focused anger amongst those below. At a village level resistance would have been internalised and, when the opportunity arose, released in mass protest actions.

Conceivably, when it came to the national stage, the message conveyed by the opposition prophets would have been taken as inspired advice to wait upon Yahweh’s divine vengeance. Clearly the opposition prophets did not ignore or neglect high politics. Well versed and well connected, they formulated penetrating critiques of the foreign policy pursued by Judean monarchs.

Put trust in Yahweh: ie, common interests. Not fickle foreign powers and catastrophic military adventures. Condemnations of the disastrous war policy pursued by the ruling classes, warnings of pending national disaster - sanctioned by Yahweh - are combined with appeals for a rediscovery of old egalitarian ideals. Hosea ii,18 urges a new covenant between Yahweh and those who would abolish war and introduce righteousness/egalitarianism. Hosea iii,4 even predicts the abolition of corrupt kings and princes before a return to the imagined ideal of David. Surely a rallying call for the revolutionary refoundation of the state.

Not surprisingly then, the “provocative message” of the oppositional prophets is rejected outright by official society.¹⁷ Blaming national woes on the religious transgressions of the monarch, the landowning classes and the state priesthood drained their Yahwehism of theological legitimacy. Yet, though the prophets were clearly despised by the elite, doubtless suffered state-sponsored persecution and never achieved their stated goals, self-selecting groups of disciples took up, passed on, supplemented, refined and finally systemised their teachings in written form. Hence an oppositional religious literature arose alongside the newly created official religious literature.

The sayings of the oppositional prophets must have proved widely popular and obviously resonated with tremendous interpretive possibilities. Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah, etc therefore had to be incorporated into the official religious literature of the Nevi’im (the second part of the Tanakh - ie, the Old Testament). The result is the much commented upon textual fractures: official versus unofficial, egalitarian versus monarchical, peasant versus landlord, international manoeuvring versus national solidarity.

Tragically, in terms of Judean elite pretensions, not only did Josiah miserably fail, but in 586 BCE the Babylonians - having rid themselves of the hated Assyrians - once again established themselves as the masters of Mesopotamia … and from there the whole of the Middle East. They defeat the Egyptian army based on the west bank of the Euphrates and advance into northern Syria and demand immediate Judean surrender. Emboldened by Egyptian promises of aid, the Judeans prove defiant. In purely military terms a blunder. Nebuchadnezzar II launches a standard punishment expedition. He easily asserts his will through overwhelming martial force. Mimicking the Assyrians, the Babylonians maintain the Davidic dynasty, but cart off into exile the “mighty of the land”.¹⁸ Something like 7,000 individuals were reportedly involved. They included king Jehoiachin and his family.

Despite this draining defeat, there followed yet another Judean independence declaration. Oded Lipschitz paints the situation in Jerusalem as bitterly divided between “religious-nationalist” fanatics around the new king, Zedekiah (reigned 596-586 BCE), and “realists”, who calculated that rebellion against Babylon and reliance on the Egyptians was inviting yet another disaster.¹⁹ Interestingly, amongst those who wanted to accept Babylonian rule - albeit as a form of divine punishment - was the prophet, Jeremiah (as recorded in the biblical book named after him).

Another Babylonian punishment expedition inevitably followed. However, this time round, Nebuchadnezzar opted for an entirely different solution to the ‘Judean problem’. This was part of a wider strategic reorientation. He decides to depose the Davidic dynasty, blot out Jerusalem and its royal temple, and transform Judea into a mere Babylonian province. Jerusalem is put under siege and eventually its defences are breached. A fleeing Zedekiah is captured and his sons are killed before his eyes, after which the king is blinded. A month or two after the city was seized the laborious work of razing its walls, gates, palaces, big houses, the royal temple - everything - began. Meanwhile, in or around 587 BCE, there was another deportation of the elite (including the blind king and his royal household). Maybe 8,000 were involved (plus perhaps a couple of thousand smiths and other craftsmen). The book of Jeremiah tells how the Babylonians only “left in the land of Judah some of the poor people who owned nothing”.²⁰ However, some of these people have vineyards and fields allocated to them (one presumes to simultaneously buy gratitude and expand the imperial tax base). Needless to say, they, the rural and urban poor, constituted a clear, overwhelming, majority of the population.

The Babylonians proceed to appoint Gedaliah, from a renowned family of priests and royal courtiers, as their “governor” in Judea. So they did not deport the entire Judean elite. Gedaliah would have been counted as one of the ‘realists’ before the Babylonian conquest. His administrative-religious centre is obviously not going to be Jerusalem. Mizpah, some four miles north-east of the ruined Jerusalem, is chosen as the new capital by the Babylonians. From here their tribute demands are allocated, collected and dispatched. As an aside, Gedaliah is assassinated. Part of a failed uprising, this triggers another, third, though little mentioned, wave of Judean exile: rebels sought sanctuary in Egypt.

Judea in Judea and Judea in exile proceed to go their own separate ways. In Judea notions of an exclusive Yahwehism based on Jerusalem, its royal temple and its royal line are clearly no longer tenable. Other cultic centres arise once again. Amongst the remaining elite there were those who probably fashioned their own version of Yahwehism. And, from what we can gather, ordinary folk - the people of the land - happily returned to, or simply continued, with their old ways. Reliant on the soil, the seasons and the vagaries of the weather, these Hebrews sacrificed to the heavenly host and maintained their family shrines. Lacking state power, the elite could do precious little to stop them.

By the rivers

Nowadays, the clear balance of scholarly opinion is that the destruction of Jerusalem, social decapitation and the subsequent diaspora in Babylonia had a “critically important” impact on Yahwehism.²¹ Jill Anne Middlemas emphatically confirms that the “importance ascribed to this period cannot be overestimated”.²² Throughout most of the 20th century that was not the case. Exile was de-emphasised. Academics tended to downplay the changes wrought by the deportation to Babylonia.

However, in his Studies in the book of Lamentations (1954) Norman Gottwald anticipated “a changed attitude to the exile that would emerge more fully at a later time”.²³ Whether it was exposure to Babylon, and its ancient, wealthy and sophisticated culture, or the subsequent role played by the successor Persian state that exerted the biggest influence on Yahwehism, remains a bone of contention. The great biblical scholars, Julius Wellhausen and Eduard Meyer, engaged in a long and acrimonious polemic over the issue - Wellhausen favouring the Babylonians,²⁴ Meyer the Persians (and therefore Zoroastrianism).²⁵ And that debate continues today … not least because we have so little material evidence available to us about the Judeans during this relatively brief period of time.

What we can say, and with some assuredness, is that removing a whole swathe of the elite from Judea and relocating them in the heartlands of the Babylonian empire (mostly in the lush, southern region of Mesopotamia) did not bring about either a jolting henotheism or a jolting monotheism.²⁶ Nor did the Persian takeover. The elevation of one god above others was as much in evidence in pre-exile Judea as in Babylonia.

Nonetheless, the whole deracinating experience obviously produces far-reaching change. The exiled elite were doubtless traumatised. They had seen Jerusalem overrun by a vengeful army; days of killing, rape and pillage would have followed. After surviving those horrors, they, including what remained of the royal household, were picked out, because of their elevated social standing, and marched off to live in a faraway foreign land. Trauma must have been mixed with grudging admiration. They would have been awed by the magnificent buildings, canals, elevated gardens and other architectural wonders. Babylonian literature and learning was no less impressive. There was bound to be a degree of cultural assimilation. Though they never entirely dropped Hebrew, the exiles adopted the Aramaic language, along with its square-scripted alphabet. There were obvious religious borrowings too. The garden of Eden, the flood, Noah’s ark and the Tower of Babel all have their origins in Mesopotamia. As for Babylonian names of the month, they entirely replaced those used back in Palestine.

If it were to survive Yahwehism had to change - I think that much is obvious. The “identity movement”, interestingly summarised by Victor Matthews and James Moyer, was clearly in the vanguard of those who “refashioned” ideas, customs and institutions.²⁷ That, we can safely conjecture, involved a split, a party conflict, within the elite - one that would have been based on rival responses to the novel “social realities” created by Babylonian exile and oppression.²⁸ The more flexible priests of the “identity movement” strove to “creatively” adapt to the new conditions, as opposed to those traditional leaders who wanted to doggedly resist in the name of outdated concepts, such as the Davidic kingdom. Not surprisingly, the priests of the “identity movement” win out and come to serve as the leaders of the community; they demand ritual purity, a ban on outside marriage, male circumcision and strict religious observance from all members. The Sabbath becomes of central importance. All such practices mark out the Judeans and bind them together (some exiles would doubtless have broken ranks and become Mesopotamian).

With the Jerusalem temple in ruins and impossibly distant, the Judaeo-Babylonians invented the synagogue (Greek for ‘place’). These prayer houses substituted for the temple cult in many respects. There were hymns, religious readings and sermons; however, the Sabbath and feast days were observed without the previously proscribed blood sacrifices. It should be pointed out, not least to highlight the uncertainty, that some academic authorities dispute the claim that Babylonia was the birthplace of the synagogue. Ptolemaic Egypt has been suggested; but frankly, given that we are dealing with a kind of Judean dark age, it is still impossible to come to anything like a hard and fast conclusion till more evidence, one way or another, is brought forward.

That aside, in Babylonia, being what Bob Becking calls a “religion under stress”, Yahwehism underwent a “multidimensional” process of “transition”.²⁹ Despite humiliation at the hands of Egyptians and Assyrians, the Judean elite could still content themselves with the self-view of being, at least potentially, on a par with other nations. Their underlying assumption was that the power of each state formation reflected the power of its patron god. With Babylonian conquest - and deterritorialisation, demilitarisation and demonarchisation - that way of thinking about the world became untenable. As the Babylonians were so evidently powerful, so too must be their god; by the same logic, if Judea could so easily be overthrown, it followed that their god was not as powerful as had been claimed.

New religious concepts come to the rescue. A new generation of prophets break the theological link joining “heavenly power and earthly kingdoms”. Though Babylon was powerful, this did not mean that the god of the Judeans was weak. Yahweh became the universal god. Correspondingly, the gods of Mesopotamia were dismissed as mere idols made from stone or wood. As a result, Assyria, Egypt and then Babylon had not succeeded in war because of the might of their gods. Instead, in the mind at least, Yahweh now decides the fate of all nations. In short, the rise and fall of empires reflected a divine plan: “One god stood behind all these world-shaking events.”³⁰ Hence, the rise of the Assyrians, Egyptians and finally the Babylonians testified not to innate virtue or innate blessedness, nor the power of divine patrons. It was Yahweh who presided over all events. Defeat and exile were due not to the weakness of Yahweh: it was his anger over the backslidings and abominable practices of the chosen people. Yahweh wanted to teach a lesson and purify them. Accordingly, the notion arose that a new king would help redeem Israel. A god-chosen messiah. To begin with, he was doubtless Davidic or at least Judean. But, over time, hope and meaning shifted. As can be seen in the book of Isaiah, he could even be a foreigner. Hence Cyrus, the Persian king, is said to have served as Yahweh’s anointed.³¹

Suffering servants

Life for the exiles in Babylonia is widely credited as being relatively cushy. Hence, in a popular history we read of an “absence of racism”, along with the claim that exile could not have been “universally abhorred”, because so many stayed on, even though Cyrus offered to “repatriate” them in 539 BCE.³² Such liberal ideological biases appear throughout mainstream biblical scholarship. Eg, Babylonian policy was not “overly oppressive” and there was no “overt pressure” on exiles to assimilate and lose their identities.³³ The same scholars are at pains to stress that the Jews were not slaves and were not forced to endure “inhuman conditions” - in terms of strict Babylonian jurisprudence undoubtedly true. The Jewish exiles were not slaves (I shall from here on start to refer to the Judean exiles as Jews).

The standard point of comparison when it comes to life for the exiles in Babylonia is, of course, classical Greece and Rome; or perhaps the antebellum United States south when it comes to American academics. A misleading compass. In these social formations the institution of slavery was sometimes joined with commodity production in agriculture (and mining) and thus assumed particularly extreme, unremitting, vicious and murderous forms. Slaves were robbed of all humanity and treated as mere objects of exploitation. Hence they were commonly worked to death in accordance with nothing more than a cold, profit-and-loss calculation.

We know that a portion of Babylonian prisoners of war were directly incorporated into the branded, tattooed and tagged class of slave labourers. However, a majority of war captives were apparently “able to return home” after the completion of a period of labour duties.³⁴ That said, those condemned to slavery could be lashed or mutilated merely on a whim. But relationships between slaveowner and slave were in general still personal. Necessarily, that involved acts of generosity, flattery, loyalty, mutual respect and even friendship (though it needs to be stressed that the underlying relationship was always grossly unequal). Exploitation - and this is the point I am getting at - was therefore limited, compared with the mines and latifundium of classical Greece and Rome (but especially the US southern plantations). Slaves in Babylonia could marry non-slaves, own property and buy their freedom. Babylonian legal codes afforded them definite rights and by implication recognised their innate humanity (not that that stopped slaves making escape bids).

Besides the lowest of the low, there were domestic and royal slaves. As in classical Greece and Rome (but not the US south - which practised a racialised slavery), a few amongst them rose to positions of high influence and became in our terms billionaires. Privileged slaves themselves owned slaves. However, slavery was not ubiquitous. According to the relevant volume in the Cambridge ancient history series, the majority of the dependent population in Babylonia were semi-free labourers, named ikkaru in legal texts.³⁵ True, these poor wretches could not leave the land without the owners’ permission, but they lived with their families and could neither be bought nor sold. Most agricultural production on big estates, it would seem, was carried out by them. And here, we can reasonably say, lay the main source of surplus product, and therefore the main social relationship which reproduced the royal, religious and land-owning ruling classes.

While temples owned “increasing contingents” of slaves - who were regularly augmented by kings handing over new batches of war captives - Babylonia cannot be categorised as a slave mode of production.³⁶ The role of slaves in artisanal and agricultural production was marginal, when compared with free or semi-free labour.³⁷ Eg, though temples had slaves who were “trained as craftsmen”, we have abundant records available to us showing that they had to regularly pay for the services of jewellers, brewers, bakers, tanners, smiths, carpenters, weavers, launderers and potters. Temples also had to employ free labour during harvest times. And in cases of a failure to supply food and drink, and low or unpunctual payment of wages, these workers would strike or simply pack their bags and head off. It was “impossible to replace them by temple slaves”.³⁸

Not merchants

Another misconception. Projecting back from the Radhanites and the caste position of Jews in early medieval Europe, north Africa and the Middle East, the Jewish exiles in Babylonia are widely credited as being proto-capitalists. Hence the constantly reproduced account of the non-priestly Jewish exiles turning to mercantile trade for a livelihood and thereby becoming seriously rich. Here, on this subject at least, Marxist writers such as Karl Kautsky and Abram Leon simply gave a leftwing spin to the standard scholarly paradigm of their time.

Not that such arguments lacked foundation. In 1893 a long-buried room stacked full of hundreds of cuneiform clay tablets was discovered in Nippur (about 100 miles south of Baghdad). They were the business archives of a firm called Marasu. By 1898 they had already been partially translated and analysed. These documents appear to show that Jews in the area were involved in commerce - they worked as tenant farmers, rent collectors and minor officials - and therefore, so ran the conclusion, they were relatively well off. From here, given prior assumptions, it was only a small step for European scholars to categorise some, at least, as merchant adventurers. However, apart from such slippery logic, there is a chronological problem too. The Marasu archives date from the time of the Persian king, Artaxerxes I (reigned 464-424 BCE). Whether they reflect life of the Jewish exiles in the Babylonian period is highly problematic, to say the least.

Anyway, as noted above, the Babylonian mode of production did not rest on slavery. But, quoting the holy name of Marduk, its kings did command corvée labour … and on a very extensive scale. Families, villages, districts, whole communities, including exiled communities, were expected to supply labour quotas for temple construction, canal digging, road building, irrigation and other such state projects. A particular form of tribute. Then, as now, all such labour - especially when it comes to the grunt work of pulling, carrying, lifting and digging - is physically draining and dangerous. Exhaustion, injury and death would have been commonplace. Hence there is no reason to dismiss agonised cries emanating from exilic prophets about ‘suffering servants’.

Naturally, we need to take into account the social snobbery of the elite. They would have been unused to manual labour of any kind. Nor would they have respected such work. In fact they would have regarded anything resembling the daily drudge of the lower classes as being utterly degrading. But, along with other exile communities forcibly transported into Babylonia - Persians, Carians, Phrygians, Tyrians, Arabs, Indians, etc - the Jews were subject to repeated labour demands by their imperial masters.³⁹ And they were given no choice, of course. Community leaders had to deliver their set human quota as commanded.

So prior to the Persian period, in Babylonian exile, Jews constituted a distinct, oppressed population. Yet, despite that, they were largely self-governing and self-taxing - typical of all such quickly gained sprawling empires of the epoch. Religion, community and tribute thereby combined to form a single metabolism. Though it was always structured around the threat of violence, such multiculturalism perfectly dovetailed with official Babylonian ideology and the policy of minimising state expenditure on administration.

Nonetheless, whereas the northern elite disappeared into Mesopotamian society, their southern counterparts retained a definite separateness and cohesion. Perhaps it was just a matter of time. Maybe if they had stayed in Babylonia longer than 50 years the Judeans would have become fully assimilated. But most likely not. Before the triumph of intolerant, universal monotheistic religions, pre-capitalist societies were characterised by a generally unproblematic, combined, but separate development. Toleration was the norm. Depending on its size, each religious/ethnic minority has its own land allocation or city quarter, district or street. Such peoples maintain a traditional language, sometimes over many hundreds of years, when it comes to religious and other such internal affairs; meanwhile in day-to-day matters the dominant language is adopted. Bilingualism and trilingualism are common.

Persian agents

Showing its extraordinary fragility, the neo-Babylonian empire collapsed, like the proverbial house of cards, before an unexpected Achaemenid Persian invasion. And, having taken Babylon in 539 BCE, virtually without a fight, their king, Cyrus, allowed (or, much more likely, organised) a return by a section of the Jewish population in Mesopotamia. They went back to Judea not as a free people - a cosy story - but as colonial agents with a prime mission to extract tribute.

The Persians had no interest in restoring the old kingdom of Judea and its Davidic monarchy. Undoubtedly this was the hope of those who belonged to the royalist-nationalist party (and it is possible that for a short initial period the Davidic heir to the throne might have served as the Persian governor in Judea⁴⁰). That said, after a considerable gap, maybe 18 years, the Persian king, Darius, did give his active backing for the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple - of course, not over the ruins of Solomon’s mythical marvel. High priests were to substitute for kings. Many scholars see in this decision an integral part of an overarching plan by Darius to manage his newly acquired empire (he usurped power in 522 BCE, overthrowing the populist monarch, Bardiya/Gaumata).

Joel Weinberg, a Latvian (Israeli) biblical scholar, developed an influential ‘citizen-temple-community’ thesis. Political power, he suggested, was concentrated in major temples under the Persians, and through priests and temple officials the religious community was controlled, exploited and reconciled to foreign rule. Weinberg provided a two-fold taxonomy when it comes to distinguishing temple political-economies. The first owns, or controls, large tracts of land and thereby extracts surplus through rent. The second lacks significant landholdings. Instead, these temples rely on obligatory tithes and other such offerings coming from the religious community. Clearly the post-exile Jerusalem temple falls squarely into the second category.⁴¹

The elite returnees would oversee the extraction of surplus product from the local population in Judea and perhaps draw on religious donations required from the Jewish diaspora (inhabiting towns and cities in Mesopotamia and perhaps the Nile too) - that before handing a maximised portion of it over to Darius as tribute. Put another way, the rebuilt city of Jerusalem and its temple would function as a conduit for tribute.

To help securely root what was a subordinate social order in Judea (the Persian sub-province of Yehud) the returnees once again refashioned the religious tradition. Davidic kingship was downgraded in favour of asserting the kingship of Yahweh. Scholars are generally agreed that that included adding to the Torah, hence the Jewish versions of the flood and the Tower of Babel, and introducing the books of Ezra, Ruth, Nahum, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, Lamentations, proverbs 1-9 and various psalms.⁴² Transparently, however, the main innovation in this new material was the purity laws developed in Mesopotamia. In tandem, accepted traditions were reversed ... and, of course, claimed as ancient.

The evolution of Yahwehism was clearly bound up with military weakness, religious xenophobia and extracting tribute. Being Persian vassals, the returnees had no proper army: only a religious police force. Therefore they had to rely to an extraordinary degree on the authority of Yahweh and the religio-ethnic exclusiveness of the kind laid down in Deuteronomy. A weapon of class warfare. Theologically their self-defined community had been saved, chastised and purified by the humiliating experience of exile and had thereby regained the blessing of Yahweh. The common people, those who had stayed behind in Palestine, remained defiled and had to be treated as foreigners.

Those who remained in Judea would have, surely, made an exact opposite charge: one that perhaps finds expression in Ezra xxxiii,23-29 and other texts responding to the 597 BCE deportation. The exiles had been banished by Yahweh because of their dreadful sins and those who were allowed to stay were always true followers of Yahweh. I think we can soundly reason along those lines, even though we only have the filtered account of the returnees available to us.

Suffice to say, the concerns of the returnees were as much socio-economic as theological. The peasants not only worshipped their own family gods, along with Yahweh and the host of heaven: they still held the land given over to them by the Babylonians. And gaining possession of the lion’s share of the surplus they produced had to be justified by Yahweh’s chosen ones; both to those they were robbing and to themselves. Not surprisingly, the local people of all classes confronted the returnees as a resentful, resisting mass.

Breaking from the royalist nationalism of the past, excusing collaboration with conquerors and dismissing most of the native population in Judea as foreigners had to involve a high degree of falsification. Here the returnee scribes and priests had a great advantage. As noted above, they had dropped the ancient Hebrew alphabet - a variant of which is still being used by the Samaritans in their liturgy - in favour of a version of the Aramaic square alphabet, in which Hebrew is written today. Opportunities for dissembling opened up by the transliteration from one alphabet to another must have been considerable.

Not that the returnees constituted a monolithic bloc. Morton Smith describes two main parties that coalesced amongst them.⁴³ Using historical shorthand, we can describe the majority party as Levites and the minority as Zadokites. Whereas the Levites were dedicated adherents of the ‘Yahweh alone’ movement and therefore emphasised the practice of religious purity, the Zadokites emphasised their rights as the hereditary priests of the Jerusalem cult. That was, as will already have been gathered, no mere theological quibble. The Zadokites wanted to establish themselves over Judea as an exclusive theocracy - a term, incidentally, first used by Flavius Josephus in his Contra Apionem.⁴⁴

No evidence existed proving that the Zadokites had an uninterrupted lineage going back to Zadok - that is, the man supposedly appointed by Solomon to be high priest of his new Jerusalem temple (let alone to Aaron, the brother of Moses). That is why impossibly ancient and impossibly uncontaminated genealogies had to be invented. Despite that, the Zadokite bid to establish themselves as theocrats relied first and foremost not on genes: rather in carrying out the wishes of Darius and showing themselves at every opportunity to be loyal servants of the Persian empire.

Understandably, the spokespersons of the Levite party raised strong objections to the plans for the Jerusalem temple. Hugely costly and, once built, it would, they rightly feared, give its priests enormous authority and wealth. The arrival of the prophet, Ezra, from Babylonia, along with the second wave of returnees, settled matters, however. He seems to have been accompanied by Persian military detachments. Ezra and his ally, the new governor, Nehemiah, are depicted in the Bible as proceeding to impose the programme of the Zadokite priesthood in its most extreme, most inhuman form. Returnees who had married “foreign women”, or “people of the land”, were told to immediately divorce them and “put away their children”. Those who refused to obey Ezra’s foul instructions were to be barred from the community and faced severe punishment: “for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods or for imprisonment”.⁴⁵ I would interpret such demands as a kind of apartheid terror - designed to stigmatise, divide and cower not the mass of the population, but the Levite party.

Protected and, we might suppose, encouraged by the Persians, Ezra lifted the Zadokite priesthood into power and forcibly concentrated religious authority into an easily controlled singularity. Other existing cults were suppressed. Apart from the Jerusalem temple (completed in 515 BCE), all rival places of sacrifice, along with their fetishes and festivals, were branded abominations and destroyed. That would have included alternative versions of Yahwehism. By tradition Levite priests had a role in the Jerusalem temple, but in the main presided over local cultic shrines. So, once again, another attack on the Levite party.

Nevertheless, while Zadokite ideology had a lasting impact on the biblical canon, their exclusive power proved short-lived. The Levites seem to have aligned themselves with the common people - perhaps achieved by cynically championing the egalitarianism and fiery denunciations of the rich contained in the teachings of Amos, Hosea and other oppositional prophets. This unstable coalition would appear to have forced upon the Zadokites a conciliatory policy, including when it came, in the words of Morton Smith, to “the great document of this compromise”: ie, the Torah. Through what would have conceivably been a carefully negotiated historic compromise, the Levites regained a role, albeit a subsidiary one, in the Jerusalem cult and, no less importantly, the citizen-temple community was considerably expanded. Weinberg reckons that this - what equates to a great reform act - was agreed in the second half of the Persian period (around 400 BCE).

The masses were thereby reconciled with and quickly internalised the refashioned religion. Though this is a subject which I need to study further, there is overwhelming evidence that the popular classes became militant Jews. Strictures demanding religious purity, developed by the elite exiled in Mesopotamia, were turned against the rich and powerful.

For the Zadokite priesthood there was what might well have been seen as a generous compensation package. Those willingly paying tithes, making pilgrimages and sacrificing at the Jerusalem temple greatly expanded. That promised riches for the Zadokites who monopolised the altar and decided on matters of law. However, the temple cult also employed thousands of Levites as lesser officials: accountants, guides, musicians, doormen, librarians, guards, porters, maintenance workers, cleaners, etc. The Jerusalem temple can be imagined as a combination of church, bank, library, high court, abattoir and storehouse.⁴⁶ As such it provided a tolerable living for a still wider circle of others: suppliers of sacrificial animals, incense sellers, hostel owners, peddlers, pickpockets, pimps, prostitutes, etc.

Hence the Jewish religion familiar to us from both testaments of the Bible comes into view at last l

This article is an edited extract from Jack Conrad’s Fantastic reality: Marxism and the politics of religion. The book can be purchased or downloaded from: communistparty.co.uk/resources/library/jack-conrad

I Finkelstein and NA Silberman David and Solomon: in search of the Bible’s sacred kings and the roots of the western tradition New York NY 2006.↩︎
See, for example, JA Tainter The collapse of complex societies Cambridge 1988.↩︎
See BS Düring The imperialisation of Assyria: an archaeological approach Cambridge 2020.↩︎
Quoted in H Webster A history of the ancient world London 1955, p57.↩︎
Ephraimite after the so-called main Israeli tribe.↩︎
2 Kings xviii, 4.↩︎
B Halpern The first historians: the Hebrew Bible and history Pennsylvania PA 1996, p226.↩︎
I Finkelstein and NA Silberman The Bible unearthed New York NY 2002, p250n.↩︎
A term coined by Morton Smith in his book Palestinian parties and politics that shaped the Old Testament New York NY 1971.↩︎
2 Kings xviii,5.↩︎
M Weinfeld Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic school Oxford 1971, p162.↩︎
2 Kings xxi,3-7.↩︎
2 Kings xxiii,4-20.↩︎
I Finkelstein and NA Silberman The Bible unearthed: in search of the Bible’s sacred kings and the roots of the western tradition New York NY 2002, p280.↩︎
Though it ought to be pointed out that there is a school of biblical scholarship around Rudolf Smend, which argues that an exilic Bible was composed in Babylon. Then again, there are those who stress that the creation of Deuteronomistic history began before Joshua’s reign. See M Weinfeld Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic school Oxford 1992.↩︎
B Halpern The first historians: the Hebrew Bible and history Pennsylvania PA 1996, p220ff.↩︎
R Albertz A history of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period Vol 1, London 1994, p164.↩︎
II Kings xxiv,12-16.↩︎
O Lipschitz The fall and rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian rule Winona Lake MI 2005, p71.↩︎
Jeremiah xxxix,9.↩︎
DL Smith-Christopher, ‘Reassessing the historical and sociological impact of the Babylonian exile (579/587-539 BCE)’ in JM Scott (ed) Exile: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian conceptions Leiden 1997, p7.↩︎
JA Middlemas The troubles of templeless Judah Oxford 2005, p2.↩︎
DL Smith-Christopher, ‘Reassessing the historical and sociological impact of the Babylonian exile (579/587-539 BCE)’ in JM Scott (ed) Exile: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian conceptions Leiden 1997, p8.↩︎
Religiously Babylon had long ago abandoned geo-specific deities and was in all likelihood moving towards some kind of monotheism. Merodach, the sun god, came to be regarded not merely as the supreme deity. One inscription refers to the 13 main gods as nothing but forms in which Merodach manifests himself to humanity. Nebuchadnezzar addresses Merodach in prayer as “thou who art from everlasting, thou who art lord of all that exists”.↩︎
Some time about 700 BCE it is said that a prophet called Zoroaster developed a religion that closely approaches full monotheism. Ormazd is the heavenly divinity that is the maker and upholder of the universe. As the god of light and order, he is also the god of truth and purity. Against him and his attendant spirits stand the forces of darkness and sin, headed by the wicked Ahriman. These two rivals engage in a ceaseless struggle for domination. Humanity, by doing right and avoiding wrong, by loving truth and hating falsehood, can help god triumph over evil. In the end of days Ormazd will overcome Ahriman and will reign over a new and righteous world. Those who served him will be rewarded with a life of eternal blessedness; those who sided with Ahriman will be punished with endless misery. Zoroastrians can still be found scattered here and there in the Middle East. In India they are called the Parsees - descendants of those who fled from Persia with the onset of Islamic rule.↩︎
Kautsky was clearly mistaken when he says that the monotheism of the Jews, the Judeans, was the result not of a slowly evolving philosophical sophistication, but rather sudden contact with, and adoption of, a “higher urban culture” (K Kautsky Foundations of Christianity New York NY 1972, p202).↩︎
VH Matthews and JC Moyer The Old Testament: text and context Peabody MA 1977, pp213-14.↩︎
D Christopher-Smith The religion of the landless Bloomington IN 1989, p10.↩︎
B Becking, M Christina and A Korpel (eds) The crisis of Israelite religion Leiden 1999, p7.↩︎
See bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/MSmith_BiblicalMonotheism.↩︎
Isaiah xxxxiv,28; xxxxv,1.↩︎
. J McIntosh Ancient Mesopotamia: new perspectives Santa Barbara LA 2005, p157.↩︎
. H Donner ‘The separate states of Israel and Judah’ in JM Miller and JH Hayed (eds) Israel and Judean history Philadelphia PA 1986, pp421,423.↩︎
J Boardman (ed) The Assyrian and Babylonian empires and other states of the Near East Vol 3, part 2, Cambridge 2003, p269.↩︎
Ibid p266.↩︎
Ibid p269.↩︎
See MA Dandamaev, A Marvin, A Powell and DB Weisberg Slavery in Babylonia DeKalb IL 1984.↩︎
J Boardman (ed) The Assyrian and Babylonian empires and other states of the Near East Vol 3, part 2, Cambridge 2003, p272.↩︎
See DL Smith-Christopher, ‘Reassessing the historical and sociological impact of the Babylonian exile (579/587-539 BCE)’ in JM Scott (ed) Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian conceptions Leiden 1997, p23f.↩︎
See R Albertz, ‘The thwarted restoration’ in R Albertz and B Becking (eds) Yahwehism after exile Assen 2003.↩︎
See the translation of his key articles by DL Smith-Christopher in The citizen-temple community Sheffield 1992.↩︎
See PR Bedford Temple restoration in early Achaemenid Judah Leiden 2001, pp8-9.↩︎
M Smith Palestinian parties and politics that shapes the Old Testament New York NY 1971.↩︎
www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001/acref-9780192802903-e-6774.↩︎
Ezra vii,26.↩︎
See ME Stevens Temple, tithes and taxes Peabody MA 2006, p24.↩︎