by Peter Watson
Exile lasted from 586 to 538 BC, not even half a century. Yet its influence on Jewish ideas was profound. According to the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, most of the exiles were moved to the southern half of Mesopotamia, near Babylon itself. They were free to build houses and to run farms, and were free to practise their religion, though no Jewish temple has ever been found in Babylon. Many seem to have been successful traders and, in the commercial cuneiform tablets of the day, there is a growth of Jewish names.7
If exile itself was far from onerous, the situation of the Jews improved immeasurably when, in 539 BC, an alliance of Persians and Medes, put together by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid (greater Persian) empire, conquered the Babylonians. Besides being a Zoroastrian, Cyrus was very tolerant of other religions and had no desire to keep the Jews captive. In 538 they were released (though many refused to go, Babylon remaining a centre of Jewish culture for a millennium and a half).8
The Hebrew scriptures tell us that the return of the first batch of captives proved a great deal harder than exile. The descendants of the poorer Israelites, whom the Babylonians had not bothered to remove earlier, were scarcely welcoming and saw no need for the expense of new city walls. A second, larger group of exiles, left Babylon in 520, more than 42,000 we are told in the Bible, and perhaps twice the number that had originally been taken captive. This group had the support of Cyrus’ son, Darius, but even so the rebuilding of Jerusalem did not recommence until 445 BC. This was when Nehemiah arrived. He was a wealthy Jew, highly placed in the Persian court, who had heard about the sorry state of affairs in Jerusalem. He rebuilt the walls and the Temple, and he introduced changes that helped the poor. But, as Robin Lane Fox says, ‘although he appears to have assumed a broad awareness of Moses’ law among the people, nowhere does he allude to written scripture’.9
This first and all-important reference is generally agreed to have been made by Ezra, a priest well-connected in Babylon. He too had been an official at the Persian court in Mesopotamia and he arrived in Jerusalem in 398 BC, ‘with a royal letter of support, some splendid gifts for the Temple and a copy of the law of Moses’.10 It is only now, according to scholars like Lane Fox, that ‘we find for the first time “an appeal to what is written”’. We conclude from this that an unknown editor had begun to amalgamate all the different scrolls and scriptures into a single narrative and law. Whereas there was an agreed form of Homer in Greece by, roughly speaking, 300 BC, the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament for Christians) was not fully formed in Israel until about 200 BC, when figures such as Ben Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus and the first Jewish author that we know by name, refers to the ‘book of the covenant of the most high god, the law which Moses commanded’.11 As was mentioned earlier, the idea of a covenant with God, such a central element in Judaism, may have been adapted from Zoroastrian beliefs in Mesopotamia. After exile, the covenant that dominated Jewish life the most was with the book, which in turn meant that great effort was made to ensure there was strict agreement on what went into it and what was left out. The Jews had to establish a canon. So began the first steps toward the compilation of the Bible, arguably the most influential book of all time.
Originally, the word ‘canon’ was Sumerian–it meant ‘reed’, something straight and upright. Both the Akkadians and the Egyptians had canons. It was particularly important in Egypt where the Nile flooded regularly and inundated properties, changing the land and obliterating boundaries. Precise records were therefore invaluable, and this was the primary meaning of the canon. At the same time, the vizier, who was in charge of the archives, was also in charge of the judiciary–and this is how use of the word spread, to mean a traditional, unvariable standard.12 In Greek, the word kanon also meant a straight rod or ruler, and it too expanded, to mean an abstract standard (a ‘yardstick’, as we would say), and even the rules by which poetry or music should be composed.13 Plato’s ideas about ideal form easily lent themselves to the idea of a canon: great works enshrined these traditional rules. In classical Greece, therefore, canon could apply either to single works or entire collections. Polyclitus wrote a canon about the human form. But it was the Jews who first applied the word to scripture. To be included in their canon, writings must have been divinely inspired.
The development of the scriptures had an effect on the Jews which set them apart from, say, the Greeks and, later, the Romans. In Greece, the fifth, fourth and third centuries BC saw the development, as we have seen, of philosophy, critical thinking, tragic drama, history writing, and a trend to less and less religious belief. In Israel it was the opposite: as people learned to read, and to take pleasure in the book, they made more and more of it. Since so much of it was prophecy, rather than mythology, or observation (as in Greece), there was huge scope for interpreting what, exactly, the prophets had meant. Bible commentaries proliferated and with them a general level of confusion as to the real meaning of the scriptures. Many scrolls of scripture were regarded as sacred, especially the early ones that contained the name of God, YHWH. Later texts excluded this name, for fear that gentiles might use it in spells. Not mentioning the name also implied that God could not be defined or limited.14
Josephus, a Jewish leader born around AD 37, who later became a Roman citizen, wrote two famous histories about the Jews, The Jewish War and The Jewish Antiquities. He identified twenty-two scriptural books, though there were many other non-canonical ones. These twenty-two, he said, ‘are justly accredited and contain the record of all time’. He identified five books of law, thirteen books of history, all written, he said, by prophets, and four ‘books of hymns to God and precepts for human conduct’ (Psalms, Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes).15 Twenty-two may have been chosen because it was the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet–numerology again. Yet, in Jesus’ lifetime, there appears to have been no idea that the canon of scriptures was closed, there was no ‘authorised version’ as we would say. The wording and the length could both vary (there were long and short versions of some books, such as Ezekiel), and great disagreement on what their meaning was.16
What Christians call the Old Testament is for Jews the Tanakh, actually an acronym which derives from the three types of holy writing: Torah (law), Neviim (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings). The five books that make up the Torah were known in early Greek versions of the Bible as the Pentateuch.17 The division of the scriptures into verses and chapters was not in the minds of the original authors, but were later innovations. Verses were introduced in the ninth century, and chapters in the thirteenth. The order of the books of the Hebrew Bible differs from that of the Christian Old Testament, while the Catholic OT has inter-testamental books and the Protestant OT does not.18
There is now an immense amount of scholarship relating to the writing of the Old Testament, analysis which has ‘revealed’, among other things, when the scriptures were first set down, by how many authors, and in some cases where they were written. For example, scholars now believe that the Torah was made up of four ‘layers’, compiled towards the end of the fourth century BC (i.e., post-exile). This is deduced because, although the book of Genesis comes first in the Bible’s scheme of things, the earliest books of the prophets, set in the mid- to late eighth century BC, although they describe many experiences of the early Israelites, make no mention whatsoever of the Creation, Adam and Eve or (for Christians) the Fall. Such evidence of writing as has been found, by archaeologists at seven sites in Judah and dating to earlier centuries, is invariably economic material (deliveries of wine or oil), or associated with government or administrative matters. In addition, the Theogony of Hesiod (c. 730–700 BC) contains some ideas that overlap broadly with Genesis. For example, in the Theogony, Pandora is the first woman, created out of man, just as Eve is in the Bible. In the 620s BC, in Athens, the first written law code in Greek was drawn up by Dracon. Did these elements inspire the Torah in Israel? The historicity (or otherwise) of the early parts of the Hebrew scriptures are also called into doubt by
the fact that there is no independent corroboration for any of the early figures, such as Moses, although people alive when he is supposed to have lived are well attested. For example, the Exodus, which he led, is variously dated to between 1400 and c. 1280 BC, at which time the names of Babylonian and Egyptian kings are firmly established, as are many of their actions. And many identifiable remains have been found. Yet, the earliest corroboration of a biblical figure is King Ahab, who battled the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in 853 BC.
We can go further. According to archaeologists working in Israel (some of whom are Israelis, some of whom are not), there is no archaeological evidence that any of the patriarchs–Abraham, Noah, Moses or Joshua–ever existed, there was no exile of the Jews in Egypt, no heroic Exodus and no violent conquest of Canaan. For most biblical scholars, the issue now is not whether such figures as Abraham existed, but whether the customs and institutions found in their stories are historical; and not whether the Exodus or Conquest happened as it says in the Bible, but what kind of Exodus and Conquest they were. In addition to all this, there was no covenant between the Jews and God and, most fundamental of all, Yahweh, the God of the Jews, was not to begin with a very different kind of supernatural being, as the Israelites always claimed, but just one of a variety of Middle Eastern deities who, until the seventh century BC at least, had a wife–Judaism was not always a monotheistic religion.19 In the very latest round of research, scholars have even cast doubt on the existence of David and Solomon and the ‘United Monarchy,’ that golden epoch of Jewish history when, according to the Bible, the twelve tribes lived under a king, beginning in the twelfth century BC, when such vast cities as Megiddo (Armageddon), Hazor and Jezreel were built. On this view, David and Solomon, if they were kings, were small-time rulers, not the great builders of palaces that dominated the region that is now Israel and are made so much of in the Bible.20 In particular, the ‘golden age of Solomon’ is a problem historically.
An even more serious undermining of the Bible’s authority has come, however, from the general realisation, as archaeology has developed, that a world that is supposed to be set in the Bronze Age–say, c. 1800 BC–is in fact set in the Iron Age, i.e., after 1200 BC. Place names in the Bible are Iron Age names, the Philistines (Palestinians) are not mentioned in other, extra-biblical texts, until around 1200 BC, and domesticated camels, though mentioned in the Bible as early as chapter 24 of Genesis, were not brought under human control until the end of the second millennium BC.21
Then there is the work of Israel Finkelstein. Professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, he is possibly the most charismatic and controversial archaeologist of his generation. His contribution is two-fold. Traditionally–that is, according to the Bible–the Israelites came into the land of Canaan from outside and, aided by their God Yahweh, conquered the Philistines (or Palestinians) in the thirteenth–twelfth century BC, subsequently establishing the glorious empire of David and Solomon in the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC. This ‘United Monarchy’ of Samaria in the north and Judea in the south then lasted until the sixth century BC when the Babylonians conquered Israel, and took the Jews into their ‘second exile’, in Mesopotamia as slaves. Yet it now appears that there is virtually no archaeological evidence whatsoever to support such a view. There is no evidence of a short military campaign of conquest by Joshua, and no evidence of any cities in the area being sacked or burned. Indeed, many of the cities said by the Bible to have been conquered by Joshua–for instance, Arud, Ai and Gibeon–are now known not to have existed then. At the same time there is good evidence that life continued unchanged, much as it always had done. Early archaeologists claimed that the sudden appearance of a certain type of pottery–vases with a distinctive collar–and the four-room house, indicated a sudden influx into the region by outsiders–i.e., the Israelites. Subsequent research, however, has shown that these developments took about 150 years to mature, in different places, and in many cases pre-date when the Israelite outsiders were supposed to have arrived. If this view is correct, then of course it means that the Bible is wrong in a very important respect, namely, in seeking to show how different the Jews were from everyone else in the region. On this most recent scenario, the Jews did not arrive from outside Canaan and subdue the indigenous people, as the Bible says, but were just a local tribe, like many others, who gradually separated out, with their own gods (in the plural).22
The significance of this is that it supports the view that the Bible was first assembled by Jews returning from the ‘second exile’ in Babylon (the ‘first’ being in Egypt), who compiled a narrative which was designed to do two things. In the first place, it purported to show that there was a precedent in ancient history for Jews to arrive from outside and take over the land; and second, in order to justify the claims to the land, the Covenant with God was invented, meaning that the Israelites needed a special God for this to happen, an entity very different from any other deity in the region.23
And it is in this light that the recent work of Dr Raz Kletter comes in. Dr Kletter, of the Israeli Archaeological Service, has recently completed an examination of no fewer than 850 figurines excavated over the past decades. These figurines, usually small, made of wood or moulded from clay, have exaggerated breasts and are generally meant to be viewed only from the front. Many are broken, perhaps in a ritual, and many are discarded, found in refuse dumps. Others are found in bamot, open sacred places. All date from the eighth to sixth centuries BC. No one knows why these figurines are found where they are found, or take the form that they do. There are also a number of male figures, either heads alone, or whole bodies, seated on horses. According to Dr Kletter, and Ephraim Stern in his magisterial survey, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (volume 2), the figurines represent Yahweh and his consort, Astarte. (The female figure of ‘Wisdom’ is presented as a consort for the biblical God in Proverbs 8.) Professor Stern says that these Israelite figurines and bamot are not so different from those in neighbouring countries and he concludes that they represent an intermediate stage in the development of Judaism, between paganism and monotheism, which he calls ‘pagan Yahwehism’. The significance of these figurines lies in their date and the fact that there is no substantial difference between them and figurines in other countries. They appear to support the idea that full-blown Judaism did not emerge until the Babylonian exile. In short, the Israelites of the ‘second exile’ period converted Yahweh into a special, single God to justify their claims to the land.24
There is of course an opposing argument, which is argued equally robustly. If Tel Aviv University may be said to be the centre of the radical camp in these matters, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is the conservative centre. Amihai Mazaris professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University and author of Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (volume 1). He admits that many of the early books of the Hebrew scriptures, particularly where they concern the patriarchs, cannot be treated as reliable. But beyond that he won’t go. In the first place, he points to the Meneptah stele in Cairo Museum. A stele is a slab of stone bearing inscriptions and Meneptah was an Egyptian pharaoh. This stele is dated to 1204 BC and describes the conquest, by the Egyptians, of several cities in the area that is now Israel, including Ashkelon and Gezer. But the stele also describes the destruction of ‘the people of Israel’. Mazar further cites the discovery of the Tel Dan stele in 1993 which carries an inscription in Aramaic referring to ‘Beit David’, or the House of David, as in ‘David’s dynasty’. Dated to the ninth century BC, Professor Mazar argues that this stele supports the traditional view as given in the Bible.25 And whatever revisions to the biblical chronology, and meaning, are necessary, as William Foxwell Albright has remarked, no one questions the fact that monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East.
The first part of the Hebrew Tanakh, the five books from Genesis through to the end of Numbers, covers the period from the Creation to the Hebrews’ arrival in the Promised Land. It is held by scholars to have b
een taken from four sources and put together by a fifth, an editor who tried to impose unity, some time between 520 and 400 BC. The next segment comprises eight books, from Deuteronomy to the second book of Kings. There is an ‘underlying unity’ to these books that make most scholars think that, save for Ruth, they were written by one author, the so-called Deuteronomist, or D. The unifying theme in these books is a focus on the prophets and their concern that Israel would one day be driven from the land, and this makes scholars think that the books must have been written after that calamitous event had already happened: in other words, these books were written in exile in the mid-sixth century BC.26 The third section runs from Chronicles to Ezra and Nehemiah and these books tell of the return from exile and the re-establishment of the Law in the land. This author is generally called the Chronicler and his books were composed and edited about 350 BC. The remainder of the Hebrew Bible was written by several authors at various dates, ranging from around 450 down to the most recent, the book of Daniel, composed c. 160 BC.27
