The Origins of the Second Temple

Persion Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem

Diana Vikander Edelman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317491620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Darius I, King of Persia, claims to have accomplished many deeds in the early years of his reign, but was one of them the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem? The editor who added the date to the books of Haggai and Zechariah thought so, and the author of Ezra 1-6 then relied on his dates when writing his account of the rebuilding process. The genealogical information contained in the book of Nehemiah, however, suggests otherwise; it indicates that Zerubbabel and Nehemiah were either contemporaries, or a generation apart in age, not some 65 years apart. Thus, either Zerubabbel and the temple rebuilding needs to be moved to the reign of Artaxerxes I, or Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the city walls needs to be moved to the reign of Darius I. In this ground-breaking volume, the argument is made that the temple was built during the reign of Artaxerxes I. The editor of Haggai and Zechariah mistakenly set the event under Darius I because he was influenced by both a desire to show the fulfillment of inherited prophecy and by Darius widely circulated autobiography of his rise to power. In light of the settlement patterns in Yehud during the Persian period, it is proposed that Artaxerxes I instituted a master plan to incorporate Yehud into the Persian road, postal, and military systems. The rebuilding of the temple was a minor part of the larger plan that provided soldiers stationed in the fortress in Jerusalem and civilians living in the new provincial seat with a place to worship their native god while also providing a place to store taxes and monies collected on behalf of the Persian administration.

Chapter 1

WHEN GENERATIONS REALLY COUNT: DATING ZERUBBABEL AND NEHEMIAH USING GENEALOGICAL INFORMATION IN THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH

Introduction

The genealogical material in Nehemiah and 1 Chronicles 1–9 closes the gap considerably between the missions of Zerubbabel and of Nehemiah as portrayed in the book of Ezra. Rather than being in power some sixty-five years apart, according to this material, the two were at most a generation apart in age. Nehemiah either succeeded Zerubbabel as governor in Yehud, or he worked as a special envoy during Zerubbabel’s governorship. Partial information about six generations is provided, beginning with the three generations who returned from exile to Yehud with Zerubbabel until or through the reign of Darius III (335–330 BCE) and the end of Persian rule (Neh. 12.22). But we need first to confirm the chronological end-point of the list.

While it is the case that the wording in Neh. 12.22 does not explicitly state that Yaddua was high priest through the reign of Darius III, it seems to imply that this was the situation, and the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37–96 BCE) places Yaddua in office at the time of Alexander’s conquest of the Levant (332 BCE), which ended the rule of Darius III (Ant. 10.8.7). The reference in v. 22 to ‘Darius the Persian’ is vague, leaving open the possibility that it was intended to refer to Darius II (424–404 BCE) rather than Darius III (335–330 BCE). This is the common view, based largely on the assumption that the first Darius had come to be mistakenly known in Jewish tradition as Darius ‘the Mede’ (Dan. 5.31 [6.1 Hebrew]; Daniel 6) so that the second Darius would have been distinguished from him by applying the contrasting geographical epithet, ‘the Persian’ (so, e.g., Wilson 1915: 193; Rudolph 1949: 193). However, as J.C. Vanderkam has pointed out, Josephus places Yohanan, Yaddua’s predecessor, still in office under Darius II’s successor, Artaxerxes II (405/404–359/358 BCE) (Ant. 11.7.1) so Yaddua could not have been in office under Darius II (2000: 196).

The suggestion by H.G.M. Williamson that the reference to the priests registered under Darius the Persian in v. 22b is a later scribal gloss intended to refer to an event that had taken place much earlier in the reign of Darius I does not clarify matters (1985: 364–64). Instead of linking the statement to what precedes in v. 22a, he is linking it to what follows. He proposes that it is intended to show that the priests had been recorded from the beginning of the temple, under Darius I, just as the Levites continued to be for generations. He could be correct that the phrase has been added secondarily; the reference to a registration by a king is slightly uncharacteristic; usually, such registrations are listed under the name of the high priest in office at the time. However, the statement seems to be either confirming or qualifying what precedes it rather than what follows, and the author or a later editor could equally have used it to clarify the latest king under whom the final high priest named in the first half of the verse had served. Williamson wants to remove Yaddua as a secondary addition to the first half of the list, which is not necessary (1985: 361).

In light of the above considerations, two explanations of the information in Neh. 12.22 can be given. In the first, the registration of the priests that lasted until the reign of ‘Darius the Persian’ is intended to cover the same period of time as the registration of the heads of the fathers’ houses of the Levites under the high priests Eliashiv, Yoiada, Yohanan and Yaddua. In this case, ‘Darius the Persian’ would refer to Darius III, under whom Yaddua would have served as high priest. He was in office in 332 BCE when Alexander ended the Persian empire, making Greece the new world ruler. In the second, the period during which the heads of the priestly houses were registered does not coincide with that in which the heads of the Levitical houses were recorded. Instead, for some reason, the priestly houses were only registered until the time of ‘Darius the Persian’ or Darius II and not until the end of the Persian era under Darius III (so, e.g., Vanderkam 2000: 190). In this case, the verse gives no indication of when Yaddua had served as high priest.

The first option makes more sense since it squares with the known historical data. Yaddua had been high priest under Darius III, and it would have been odd not to have recorded the heads of the priestly houses at the same time as the heads of the Levitical houses. This is particularly the case since the priests were classed as ‘Levites’ or administrative personnel, though afforded more status than those who did not officiate in the cult. While every priest was also considered a Levite, not every Levite was a priest. Since the priesthood was a specialized branch of the Levitical corps, any registration of Levitical leaders should have automatically included a listing of the heads of priestly houses at the time as well. Thus, it makes the most sense to assume that the registration of the priests lasted the same length of time as that of the Levites in general. As a corollary, it is logical to conclude that the final registration under Yaddua had been done during the reign of Darius III, prior to the demise of the Persian empire.

Genealogies had many uses in the ancient world beyond the familiar ones today of maintaining a family tree as proof of social privilege or inherited title and lands, or of tracing one’s ancestry out of curiosity about one’s roots. The former would have been important in ancient Yehud for purposes of taxation on land, army and corvée conscription, proving eligibility to a profession that was passed on from father to son like the priesthood, establishing marriage eligibility between families and defining status, rank, office, social rights and obligations. The idiom of kinship was also used in ancient genealogies to express various social, political and religious relationships even though there was no blood bond between the elements being presented as fathers, sons and brothers. In these cases, the genealogies would be setting up a hierarchy that expressed political relationships between nations, or status relationships within a given group, or economic, geographical, or cultic position (Wilson 1977; Johnson 1969).

In the book of Nehemiah, genealogies seem to function in a variety of ways. The reported enrollment of the people of the province in Nehemiah 7 creates an artificial, one-generation genealogy that defines who was considered a member of Israel. Constituents are listed either by their clan or by place of residence and a further distinction is made between the lay segment of the society and those associated with the temple (priests, Levites, Solomon’s servants and temple servants). The list of those who lived in Jerusalem in Nehemiah 11 serves a similar function for the provincial seat in vv. 1–24, but then goes on to create a second, geographical genealogy for the province in vv. 25–32. The priestly genealogy given in Neh. 12.10–11, on the other hand, is based on blood ties and functions to legitimate the line of the high priesthood that passed from father to son. Finally, we should note the custom of identifying an individual by his or her father’s name (patronymic) (i.e. Malkiyah the son of Rekav), creating a two-generation genealogy. In this way, one’s place in society was determined by the status of one’s immediate family in the community and the reputation that had been earned by one’s father.

The framework for the generations I will present is built from the list of high priests found in Neh. 12.1–26, who officiated from the repatriation under Zerubbabel until the end of the Persian empire under Darius III. Since this office was traditionally hereditary, the list should present a reliable detailing of successive generations that can serve as a skeleton that can be fleshed out by placing named individuals who are associated with the various high priests into their corresponding generational contexts.

At any given time, there is a three-generational span of people interacting: the elders, aged fifty and up, who are ending their political and public careers, their children, the middle-aged, perhaps ages twenty-five to forty-nine, who are entering and then peaking in their careers, and the grandchildren, aged birth to twenty-four, who are learning the ways of the world and being groomed to follow in the footsteps of the two older generations.¹ These figures reflect the life spans of the well-to-do who did not engage regularly in physical labor and who had an adequate diet. Commoners, on the other hand, were thought only to have lived on average into their fifties (Roth 1987: 747). The individuals named in the genealogies in Nehemiah were all in privileged positions, serving as priests, Levites, scribes, and influential heads of local families. As a result, they are likely to have lived longer than their lower-status contemporaries. The age boundaries for each generation can be adjusted, however, without negating the underlying insight that three generations tended to be alive simultaneously at any given time.

Bearing in mind the three-generation span alive at any time, the reader might object that it is difficult to know how to situate an individual age-wise, and this is certainly the case in a number of instances. For this reason, only individuals about whom there are enough textual details supplied that allow them to be assigned to a particular generation with a reasonable degree of confidence will be discussed.

There is no simple way to wade through the mass of data that is about to be discussed. This may account in part for why this analysis has never been tackled before, to my knowledge. Genealogies are famous for bringing a certain glaze to the reader’s or listener’s eyes, often prompting them to ‘tune out’ and let their mind wander to thoughts about things of more personal interest or simply to skip over these ‘dull bits’ to the place where the story line resumes. There is a huge ‘payload’ at the end for those who persevere, however.

In order to try to assist you, I have taken the following measures. First, I have placed a chart at the beginning of each of the six generational sections that gives the names of the individuals I think belong to that generation and the relevant biblical passages that provide information about them. In the case of generations 3, 4, and 5, I supply a second chart detailing contemporaries who were not members of the Jewish community in Yehud but who had relationships with it, nonetheless.

Then, I systematically work down each chart, discussing what is known about each individual, why they have been assigned to this particular generation, what extra-biblical evidence might exist for him or her, and how it might help provide a firm dating peg for that particular individual and, by extension, the others assigned to the same generation. I am well aware that your heads will begin to ache after a while as you wade through this material and you will experience a sense of being overwhelmed by ‘too much data’ whose significance is not immediately clear. Please do not despair.

After this initial run-through generation by generation, I will address the chronological implications of the various observations made in the preceding discussions of individuals in the seven generations. Here I will specifically have as a goal the determination of the generation to which Nehemiah is to be assigned and the relative dates that can be associated with various generations from extra-biblical correlations. As will become clear, the book of Nehemiah portrays Nehemiah to have had personal dealings with members of generations 2, 3, 4, and 5. This is possible, since during a person’s lifetime, he or she will have contact with four generations, even though only three would have been alive at a given time. I will...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Illustrations and Maps
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 When Generations Really Count: Dating Zerubbabel and Nehemiah Using Genealogical Information in the Book of Nehemiah
• Chapter 2 What's in a Date? The Unreliable Nature of the Dates in Haggai and Zechariah
• Chapter 3 It's All in the Sources: The Historicity of the Account of Temple-Rebuilding in Ezra 1–6
• Chapter 4 Setting the Bounds: The Territory Comprising Yehud Under Artaxerxes I in the Mid-Fifth Century bce
• Chapter 5 Excavating the Past: Settlement Patterns and Military Installations in Persian-Era Yehud
• Chapter 6 Piety or Pragmatism? The Policy of Artaxerxes I for the Development of Yehud
• A List of Persian Kings and their Dates
• Appendix I: The Old Persian Text of the Behistun Inscription
• Appendix II: The Cyrus Cylinder
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors and Individuals Cited
• Index of Biblical, Classical and Patristic Works Cited
• Index of Geographical Names
• Index of Personal Names
• Index of Subjects