Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period

Abstract

Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, edited by Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003. Pp. xii + 612. $49.50 (hardcover). ISBN 1575060736. This inspiring collection of essays is the fruit of a coincidental cooperation. The essays were read at an international conference held at the University of Tel Aviv in May 2001. The idea to organize this conference rose at the Transeuphratene colloquy at Paris, 2000, where the two editors of the present volume met and discussed the assumed "gap of the exile." Their decision to organize the Tel Aviv meeting and to publish the papers needs to be applauded for two reasons: (1) biblical scholars tend to treat the exilic period as an empty hole about which little can be said, and this turns out not to be the case; and (2) the volume is the fruit of a real encounter of scholars from different branches, such as biblical scholars, historians, and archaeologists. I am of the opinion that this kind of interdisciplinary research can be very fruitful for biblical studies. The volume contains five parts that are interrelated; the reader can easily observe discussion between the sections. The first section is entitled "The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited" and focuses on the intriguing ideas developed by Hans M. Barstad. Barstad opens the discussion ("After the 'Myth of the Empty Land': Major Challenges in the Study of Neo-Babyloniari Judah" [pp. 3-20]) with a comprehensive summary of his 1996 monograph. His position is challenged by Lisbeth S. Fried ("The Land lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East" [pp. 21-54]). She agrees with Barstad that Judah was not a space empty of people during the "exilic" period but argues that Judah was empty of its God. Bustenay Oded ("Where Is the 'Myth of the Empty Land' to be Found? History versus Myth" [pp. 55-74]), on the other hand, defends the thesis of radical discontinuity. His argument, however, is rather weak and far from convincing. Quite different is the approach in the essay by Sara Japhet ("Periodization: Between History and Ideology. The Neo-Babylonian Period in Historiography" [pp. 75-89]), who studies the view on the period under consideration in four historiographic works-the book of Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah,'the book of Chronicles and 1 Esdras. She concludes that although these four works narrate different views on the past, they share a lack of interest in Judah's fate in the Babylonian period. The second part deals with "Cult, Priesthood, and Temple," or phrased otherwise: What do we know about the cult in the time that the Jerusalem temple laid waste? On the basis of archaeological and biblical data, Joseph Blenkinsopp ("Bethel in the NeoBabylonian Period" [pp. 93-107]) argues that for most of the "exilic" period Bethel served as the alternative sanctuary. Bethel seems to have been sponsored by the Babylonians, especially since the administrative center Mizpah was nearby. Gary Knoppers ("The Relationship of the Priestly Genealogies to the History of the High Priesthood in Jerusalem" [pp. 109-33]) discusses the priestly genealogies in the book of Chronicles. In his opinion these lists are not archival notes but reflections of conflicts, trade-offs, and compromises between priestly families in and around Jerusalem in the Persian period. A close reading of the genealogies reveals several inner-Judean polemics. In a strictly literary analysis, Yairah Amit ("Epoch and Genre: The Sixth Century and the Growth of Hidden Polemics" [pp. 135-51]) argues that several texts that can be read as a reflection of inner-Judean polemics. In her view, narrators chose this genre because they may not have been in a position to address these polemics in the open. A nice example of such a polemic is produced by Diana Vikander Edelman ("Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited" [pp. 153-67]), who reads stories about the Gibeonites against the background of an assumed conflict in the Babylonian-Persian period regarding power over and possession of the Israelite heartland. …