Transition

The twin Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were comprised of the different families, known as tribes who ascribed their common origin to a man known as both Jacob and Israel. After the death of King Solomon his son Rehoboam foolishly rebuffed a delegation from the northern tribes leading them to form their own kingdom. Even though these two kingdoms were separated politically there was still the recognition that they were related. This brought them into both allied alliances as well as war between them for domination. The kingdom of Israel went through a succession of different rulers until it was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Many of the chief citizens were exiled to Assyria and the land was repopulated by peoples from other lands. The kingdom of Judah, which might have included the tribes or part of the tribes of Benjamin and Simon, had a continuous reign of kings descended from David, the founder of the dynasty. Judah was the place of the Temple of Solomon to which during the reign of Josiah was established to be the only official place of sacrifice to the God of Israel thought to be about 622 BCE. The followers of Israel’s God to the north came south and brought their recollection of the shared history of the people in what most modern scholars believe to be the core of the Book of Deuteronomy. The political machinations of the kings of Judah brought about the final destruction of that kingdom. Not before was there an exile to Babylonia in the year 597 BCE and a final and more complete exile of the upper classes in 586 BCE with the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. It was now that this tribe should have disappeared from history! No other people have survived exile to return to their ancient homeland! The question must be asked how and why did this phenomenon occur?

The answer I believe is in the words and teaching of the “prophets”, who were better be recognized as moral teachers and national guides. From the prophet Amos on the idea that there was a very special relationship between those who followed YHVH as deity that made them special from all other people. And in that special relationship the prophets continually harangued the people that they would be punished for their sins. The prophets were not part of the governmental or ritual establishment. Their criticism knew no bounds as to whom they would fault for moral ineptitude. The prophets who lived at the time of the destruction of the Temple in 587 BCE, Jeremiah and Ezekiel did not accept that the bond between YHVH and His people would be broken by exile. Instead, the prophets held out the possibility of return with concomitant renewed allegiance by Israel to its God. What would become the fail-safe attitude of the Jewish religious authorities until the Holocaust would be that every act against the Jews was punishment for their sins. So, every horror that was visited upon these people was turned by those who spoke with religious authority that it was punishment for their sins, and they had to repent and sin no more! To this point when there was an earthquake in modern Israel one rabbi of orthodox persuasion attributed the destruction of houses to the fact that the scrolls (mezuzah) were not kosher! One salient fact not to be overlooked was that the prophet Jeremiah urged the people in Babylon to settle down and pray for the welfare of this kingdom.
Practice that was incorporated into the prayers of the people. The joke in “Fiddler on the Roof” what is the prayer for the Tsar was in effect not a joke at all because Jewish prayers have included prayers for rulers of the countries in which they reside from the time of Jeremiah! Truth be told the life in Babylonia was not that bad. The people of the kingdom of Judah were joined by the remnant of the northern kingdom. The prophet of the Exile Ezekiel bonds them together with two sticks becoming united. Despite the inference in Psalm 137 that they were taunted to sing the songs of Zion, the fact is that the musical ability of these people was well appreciated even in ancient times. The Assyrians had asked for tribute from the king of Israel for singers and dancers.

Renewal Emil Schurer is quoted as saying that Judaism is the creation of the High Priest in Jerusalem and the Persian Emperor. The remark of an antisemite whose understanding of the Tribe was limited to the still shot of what he believed the faith to be in the time of his messiah. True enough the Persian period was a halcyon time for the Tribe. The prophet known as the second Isaiah since his work occupies the final chapters of the book of that name, from chapter 40 to 66; could not be more ecstatic over the coming destruction of the Babylonian Regime by Cyrus King of the Medes and the Persians. In Chapter 45 verse one that I love to read in the Latin –“Haec dicit Domine Christo meus Cyro” -Thus the Lord says to My Christ Cyrus!” Sure, Cyrus allowed all those who had been exiled to Babylonia to return to their native lands. There is a cylinder with that decree in cuneiform now in the British Museum. Cyrus gave those who wished to return to their ancestral land in the area that was known as the province of Yehud articles that the Babylonians had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem as well as funds to rebuild their Temple. These inhabitants were to be known by their old/new residence as Yehudim- thus the iteration of the name of the Tribe henceforth to be known as Jews. The Persian period despite the fairy tale of the Book of Esther was a period of renewal for the tribe. The Temple was rebuilt by 514 BCE even though it was a poor replacement for the one that was so glorious in former times. Schurer was correct in his understanding of the support the Persian kings gave to the High Priest in Jerusalem. There is a letter from the Persian King to the Jewish garrison at Elephantine in Egypt commanding them to observe the Passover according to the instructions of the High Priest in Jerusalem. What is so interesting is that there were Jewish garrisons in the service of the Persian King and that the King would order them to observe their ritual practice according to the High Priest in Jerusalem.

This period known among Jews as the “Second Temple” and among Christians as the “Inter-Testamental’ was perhaps the most important period for the development of the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If the Jews had not returned and rebuilt their sacred service none of these religions would have come into being. Prophets like Zechariah and Haggai promoted the rebuilding of the Temple and the re-institution of the sacrificial offerings. The prophet Malachi predicted that the prophet Elijah (who according to the book of Kings II was transported up to heaven in a chariot) would be sent before the coming of the “Great and Awesome Day of the Lord!” All belief in a “Day of the Lord,” all belief in a “Messiah” to come with a forerunner before him begins now. The Jews who returned from Babylon brought back with them intellectual and spiritual baggage from their captivity. Satan now appears in Zechariah and the book of Job as a troublemaker who seems tolerated by the Deity. The first five books of the Bible have become connected into one scroll that has been made holy and assumed to be the word of YHVH. According to Nehemiah Chapter 8 Ezra read something to the people in Jerusalem at the Water Gate. If modern Biblical scholarship is to be believed ¹; the first five books of the Bible as one corpus did not exist before the Exile of 586 BCE. That calls into question the fact that the subsequent so-called founders of the religions that sprung off from the “Tribe” believed the words of the “Tribe’s Torah” to be the absolute word of God. As for the “Tribe” as of Ezra what was presented to them, they deemed Sacred.” See (The Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig). The reading of a portion from this scroll every Sabbath is a tradition assumed to be from Ezra. One cannot imagine any Jewish, Christian or Moslem prayer service without a reading from sacred scripture! Scribes are busy copying the text of the scrolls and interpreting them according to their circumstances of the day and age. The Temple in Jerusalem is outfitted not only with sacrifices of priests and their prayers but also with the musical accompaniment of Levites singing psalms. The Temple has become a place of daily gathering of visitors from other lands and the place of pilgrimage of the Jews from every place of their habitation. According to a tradition not completely verified by modern scholarship there was a “Great Assembly” consisting of one hundred and twenty members lead by the High Priest who governed the daily life of the people. The number to be duplicated in the establishment of the State of Isreal as to the number of members of its parliament the Knesset. The lack of reliable sources for this period of Persian domination speaks to the relative peace and lack of division among the inhabitants.

Footnotes

1. see for example: The Old Testament: An Introduction, Including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Also the Works of Similar Type from Qumran: The History of the Formation of the Old Testament, Otto Eissfeldt, Harper and Row, 1965) ↩