Persian to Hellenistic Periods and the Jewish Experience

okay what I want to do here is talk about potentially talk about a time period which you may not be completely familiar with but it&#39;s very very important because there&#39;s a lot of different things that are going to go on during this time tree it&#39;s really going to kind of readjust things it certainly can become critical for our understanding of kind of the way things happen after the Exile and it really moves through the intertestamental theory and prepares us for what happens during first century Palestine you know time accuses we&#39;re going to be talking about the persian period we&#39;re gonna be talking about the end of the persian period and help things kind of move from there into the Hellenistic period a lot of different things are going to happen a lot of differences from what we&#39;re accustomed to in the Iron Ages things you&#39;re really going to change in a lot of ways but it can become very very influential and very very important it&#39;s a phase of global history at least from the standpoint of biblical studies that has only begun to kind of kind of become known here if you will within the past few decades again priority has always been given to the iron ages because you know that&#39;s the age of Israel and that&#39;s the time when they kind of come in grow into their own and establish themselves as an intensity with the Persian period there there are a lot of fascinating things that that happen implicate that have implications for our understanding of the developments the developments of Judaism as well as the growth and finalization of the biblical texts and those types of things so a lot of interesting stuff so let&#39;s let&#39;s get after it so this is a map what I want to do here before I get into the nuts and bolts of the Persian period and what that means we really do need to back up but in order to first back up this is a map I wanted to show you this is just kind of what it looks like these are this this is the path the general path that the Jewish exiles took one nebuchadnezzar sacked the city of jerusalem in 586 he deported a vast majority the population took him all the way back to Mesopotamia that&#39;s a long way from home folks and that exile lasted about seven years so about two generations generation being about 45 years or so needs moral so about two generations and so it was a very very traumatic thing so when you read those texts that lament over the destruction of the city and deportation of the Exile that&#39;s what we&#39;re dealing with here that&#39;s what we&#39;re dealing with it&#39;s a very very traumatic experience and there&#39;s a lot of literature that&#39;s developed that&#39;s devoted to it and there&#39;s a lot of literature that was written and developed and finalised and adjusted and adapted it was it&#39;s it was a historical event that still leaves lasting and that still has a lasting imprint on the Jewish psyche so let&#39;s get into a little bit of the rise of Persia in order to understand fully the rise of Persia we really have to back up and understand babylons what I call the deal with the devil because Babylon when they&#39;re in the midst of fighting Assyria which remember they were their mortal historical enemies with in Mesopotamia properly the Assyrians and the Babylonians were always kind of jockeying for position they go back and forth but during the neo-assyrian empire obviously Assyria has has the upper hand now I talked about in my Judy instate lecture that you know with the rise of the neo-babylonian empire beginning with naba blasts are in others that nuisance that has always been Babylon in South South Eastern Mesopotamia begins to take on some steam and begins to pick up some intensity and becomes something a little bit more significant and a little bit more formidable than what it has been in the past and when they make a deal with the Persian so the person who meets at the Persian and meaning Empire you know they pretty much hook their plough to this alliance and it occupies the Assyrians and when it&#39;s made it&#39;s made at the perfect time and eventually this alliance is going to be integral to seen the downfall the neo-assyrian empire what&#39;s interesting about it from what it appears to be from the contours of history is that initially Babylon gets the kind of rebel on the limelight if you will they&#39;re the ones that take the neo-assyrian empire place the neo-babylonian empire is the one that kind of inherits most of the land and then yet in the background we have the Persians and the Medes they&#39;re kind of just sitting there and if you didn&#39;t know about the alliance between the Babylonians and their persians during the wood during the twilight of the new assyrian empire then you may think that okay the Persians just kind of popped up no the reality is is that the Persians were there for a while it&#39;s just that the Babylonians took the front seat for a bit and Persia kind of basically sat there and bought their tongue what we have to understand about the neo-babylonian empire particularly when is juxtaposed to the longevity and the potency of the new assyrian empire and as well as the persian empire after it and generally speaking just just general ideas of world history the neo-babylonian empire was the flash of the pan which is something very very interesting it&#39;s it&#39;s when you stop and think about it it&#39;s something very very interesting from a theological standpoint and I mentioned that the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of Nebuchadnezzar and speaks of the Babylonian Empire as God&#39;s servant which is a very very profound theological statement to make is there are not very many people who are called Yahweh&#39;s servant yet Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian Empire or one of them and this is this is this is something that rises and is used by God but then it as soon as it rises up it implodes to almost just as fast and so it&#39;s really really interesting to think about a thing to think about theologically when we start pondering the ideas of God&#39;s sovereign control of history and how he orchestrates history in accordance with his perfect timing because I can&#39;t help but chuckle and think that the neo-babylonian empire was was another example of God&#39;s perfect timing and the utilization of the contours of history to accomplish his purposes after King Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar proved himself capable from the beginnings at the Battle of Carr kamesh and how he first started off as a general and then eventually became King and really saw the heyday of neo-babylonian culture near the neo-babylonian empire as much as he was capable and efficient and in a good Emperor from from that sort of perspective the people who come after him were just not and they lacked the charisma they lacked the ability to kind of deal with the internal and external pressures that came with trying to manage Empire in the ancient world and and it implodes rather quickly here&#39;s a map of the Babylonian Empire you can see it right there in the middle of the map and green I do want to point out that the Persian Empire in the media empire right there to it to the east Mesopotamian to the southeast of Mesopotamia but but yeah there&#39;s a little visual to kind of keep in the back of your mind on what the kind of globe of the ancient Near East look like the map of the ancient Near East look like during the exile period from from about 586 to about that black leaders from 520 BC I mentioned the lack of leadership that follows King Nebuchadnezzar there&#39;s a guy in particular named nabonidus and this guy was basically a train wreck from a political standpoint he decides that he is going to declare his loyalty to the moon-god I think that God&#39;s name is sin but don&#39;t don&#39;t look forward for it but it is the moon-god he&#39;s gonna declare his allegiance to the moon-god over and against Marv Duke who was the National God of the Babylonian Empire and in doing so it&#39;s actually going to dissolve the Marty priesthood he&#39;s gonna liquidate all the temple assets that are associated with Marduk the priests all their money he&#39;s gonna he&#39;s gonna seize it freeze their assets and those types of things and he&#39;s gonna transfer now think about that first you have an emperor that rises to power and says you know what for for all these years we&#39;ve been following you know the god Marvin he&#39;s been the religious system that kind of has to find us as a people but I&#39;m not I don&#39;t I don&#39;t like him I don&#39;t want to deal with him anymore and I think we really need to hook our plows to this other god named sin oh and then the process of doing and I&#39;m taking all of your assets I&#39;m taking all of your all of your finances and those types of things that you use to kind of wield your political power and I&#39;m going to take it away from you against your will and I&#39;m going to give it to this new found religion obviously that is not going to make people happy and King Nebuchadnezzar nidus made a big he made a big error there was a guy in Egypt several centuries before name Akhenaten and one of the things that Akhenaten did was something very very similar of the Egyptian the main deity of the Egyptian Pantheon is as raw the Sun guy well King Akhenaten is known as the Akhenaten actually is King Tut you guys probably already all heard of King Tut very very famous in popular culture but I believe Osteen otten is King Tut&#39;s father but Akhenaten decides that he wants to not necessarily hook his plough to raw and instead he hooks his plough to a different deity I believe it&#39;s also a moon deity but um but I&#39;m not entirely sure the important part though is that history has labeled often Naughton as the heretic king and the reason why he&#39;s called a heretic king is because he is he takes what he takes what the normal status quo was with the national with the national religion of Egypt any-any and he moves to the country against everybody else&#39;s wishes purely on his own will and he moves it in a different direction that&#39;s a very very powerful political statement to make in the ancient world and it&#39;s one that&#39;s often met with failure with Akhenaten it was met with failure and with nabonidus who was unable to understand this lesson of history or ignore this lesson history the same thing happens to him he&#39;s basically run out of Dodge and and and it goes very very badly for him Belshazzar is the final king belshazzar is is mentioned in Daniel and you can read about a very very comical episode in Daniel chapter 5 when Belshazzar sees the sees the handwriting on the wall and that handwriting declares very very creatively and but yet very very emphatically that his days are numbered and the Babylonian empires days are numbered and there is you know you have been waited and you have found you you&#39;ve been weighed and you&#39;ve been found wanting was this is the message you received all things considered though the infrastructure of the neo-babylonian empire was not there as I mentioned as I alluded to earlier the political leadership was lacking to deal with the internal and external pressures of the neo-babylonian period and this is the moment this is the time around Abin eyes during the time the Belshazzar where cyrus the great marvel his troops and basically walks into Babylon without much of a fight and just like that neo-babylonian empire is overrun and it&#39;s no longer in existence and now we are era we are ushered into a great a brand new era not only for God&#39;s people but it world history in general and we start to talk about the Persian Empire and the Persian Empire at its pinnacle is the greatest empire the ancient Near East has seen up until that point so we&#39;re dealing with a serious serious political force in a serious serious political entity that is going to take things to new heights now this is a map of Cyrus the Great Scott Quest I mentioned that you know he&#39;s the first great Persian King he starts in Persia appleís and then moves over to X putana and media he goes into Mesopotamian he goes all the way up to Asia Minor so he&#39;s dealing and notice notice to the right of the map he&#39;s going he&#39;s going east into the IO and over the Iranian Plateau and he&#39;s heading towards India that is a very very huge piece of land and it is very very important that the Persian Empire basically consumes all of the Babylonian Empire and then some and so it becomes this massive massive political entity here&#39;s another picture of the Persian Empire pretty much at its zenith remember this is the the conquests of Cyrus the Great this is him kind of establishing himself from the Persian Empire in the immediate wake of the Knapton the neo-babylonian pyres fall but this is this is how big we&#39;re going to get notice it reaches up to the caucus mountains note and goes notice it goes all the way over to Egypt it goes in domestic demand onea so when you talk about things in popular culture like the Battle of Marathon the Battle of Thermopylae which is memorialized in the movie 300 we are dealing with you know the historical realities of the advancement of the Persian Empire notice it goes all the way over the Indus Valley up towards the aerial sea and those types of things so we&#39;re dealing with a massive massive piece of land and you know you may ask yourself well if the Neo Syrians couldn&#39;t handle the way they ruled things how in the world can the Persian Empire ruled something rule something like this and that&#39;s a very very good question and it is a question that plagues the great empires of the world how can you organize and keep in line so much do you so much stuff this is an interesting little archaeological find that we that have been that&#39;s been unearthed this is what&#39;s called the Cyrus solos at the cylinder and this is the persian account of the sacking of babylon it&#39;s very very interesting in the way that it presents Cyrus as kind of a global liberator a person who comes to free the captains it&#39;s very very positive it&#39;s a very very positive impression that one gets of Cyrus but this is a neat little find because it recounts the sacking of Babylon so we know what we know from finds like that so diving into the Persian period a little with a little bit more detail it runs from about 539 to 332 BCE we know these dates fairly firmly there&#39;s not a whole lot of debate on on this stuff because like I said from the historical record and there&#39;s a white help consensus of what we&#39;re dealing with what we have to understand at least from the perspective of Old Testament studies is that we can no longer and we can no longer speak of the north if you remember in 722 the Assyrian the new Assyrian King Sargon the sargon ii i do believe is the individual who is responsible for he&#39;s the individual was over running the capital samaria and basically destroying the northern kingdom and from that point on 722 BCE from that point on we&#39;re really no longer speaking of the northern kingdom of israel it ceases to exist with the persian period you know we no longer you know again we don&#39;t have the northern kingdom we no longer have samaria in fact when you read through the books of like ezra and nehemiah when they talk about the end up in Samaria that&#39;s who they&#39;re talking about so by by by the by the post-exilic period there was a very very distinct and sharp cognitive distinction that was kept in the minds of the Jewish people we&#39;re down here we&#39;re down in Judah were down in Yahoo and up there up north are the Samaritans and we want no part of those people so this so the things that you see and you read about in your New Testament where Jesus talking about the Samaritan and the parable being beaten when he visits the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and all of that sentiment that sentiment that is feeding those parables and those narratives begins all the way back here but when we talk about settlement again everything is being centered on yehud and it&#39;s called Yahoo now as opposed to Judah everything is being sent is centralized everything is being centered on there and it&#39;s very much a Judean phenomenon when we talk about settlement patterns in the Persian period centralized around Jerusalem more more than realize the reason why is that it&#39;s because the the temple appears to have become a central part of society not only religiously but also secularly Town Planning another person developments are obscured in the long shadow of Hellenism this is an interesting phenomena we&#39;ve seen the persian period you know as I&#39;ve mentioned in the past one of the things that we look at when we go through and try to understand these specific historical eras is we want to know what&#39;s going on with the settlement patterns how are cities being made rules being settled for how long and then those types of things with the persian period when it comes to settlements we really don&#39;t have a lot the reason why we don&#39;t have a lot is because the pervasiveness of the Hellenistic imprint which we&#39;ll talk about later is so strong so powerful it&#39;s so potent that it drowns out everything before it and so it&#39;s an unfortunate phenomenon but it&#39;s a reality of the archaeological record during the persian period as far as the socio-economic means the period again everything becomes more and more centralized around the temple in Jerusalem and this seems to be the Kurd the Persian method of Opera is the method of operating operation they harness the traditions and they use their their indigenous religious systems in order to make sure that they could keep them in check and so forth taxation in true was given to the empire&#39;s and it was filtered through the temple the taxation was huge it was burdensome as this time period moves along as the persian period moves along and in the end the influence and the actions they influence but the the shadow and the pressing the pressures of egypt and the greeks as they become more and more the taxation increases as far as pottery goes an interesting phenomenon has we seen we that we can see with in the material culture there is a resurgence of indigenous iron age pottery types in the persian period there seems to be kind of a desire to kind of go back to the basics and in that makes sense because remember these people world has been rocked by the implications of Jerusalem&#39;s destruction ie the exile and so we see the resurgence in pottery types we see the resurgence of traditional motifs and decorations of those pottery types as kind of a we interpret that as kind of a call to get back to the olden days you know cannot repeat the same problems again so that we find ourselves in exile again juxtaposed with this traditionalist conservative movement is a very very progressive movement that you can see so while we have the return for basic iron age Israelite pottery types we also have the development of foreign motifs we have the development of certain pottery types that really are not indigenous to Israel or that region Greek pottery types become more and more prominent and this is going to become more and more potent as the Greeks begin to rise in power and let&#39;s say the fifth century the latter part of the fifth century in those types of things some of the miscellaneous issues the religious elements that mentioned in the Persian period or remarkably conservatively some of the US you know some of the classic idols that kind of have always been a part of Israelite society the pillar figurines and the Asherah poles and those types of things interesting that those all disappear there is literally no trace of those types of elements in the early Persian period and it speaks to the rise of conservatism the eyes of a traditional movement you know as I said as I mentioned just a few moments ago back in the olden days when everything was good so it was an era of revolution and religious consciousness there&#39;s also a boom and small fine you see a lot more seals coins Beulah and and and it&#39;s it&#39;s very very difficult it is a trying endeavor to try to determine the administrative system that is governing things it&#39;s it&#39;s very very layered it&#39;s very very complex and it&#39;s very very difficult there&#39;s also a boom and literary development during the Jewish community they come back from exile and one of the first things that they have to do is answer the question what are we going to do with these old traditions what are we gonna do with the things that we held closely to our heart that we thought we knew we understood obviously we didn&#39;t but what are we supposed to be jettison do we forget about them or do we go back and review them and try to figure out where we went wrong and as we figure out what we want where we went wrong do we do we come back with them and reincorporate them into our religious paradigm some of the historical issues there&#39;s a very very important one called Persian autonomy and this is essentially the way Persia rule now if you if you know anything about the neo-assyrian empire in the neo-babylonian empire they were very very authoritative authoritarian the Neo Syrians perfected the idea of forced exile for Geographic transplants if you will where they would come in conquer land and would take some of that or all of the indigenous people there and they would literally move them hundreds and hundreds miles away and they would force them to settle in the new foreign location against their will the near the Babylonians were also ruthless and so purchase sits back and says you know what all of this didn&#39;t really work ok so I&#39;m gonna try something new I want these people to be comfortable I want these people to do what they want to do within reason and yet they also need to understand that when I need them they need to come this is an idea called Persian control of autonomy it was giving them back their traditions giving them back what they wanted in a controlled manner don&#39;t think for a second that person did wasn&#39;t that Persia was not really controlling all of this they were and if they needed to they could come down like a hammer just like that but for the most part they wanted to extend a little bit of freedom they wanted to give the people some breathing room because they thought that okay if you give them some breathing room if you don&#39;t suffocate them and you allow them to see what we are offering the better chant there&#39;s a bone to be a better chance that they will stick with us and they won&#39;t overly rebel against us but interestingly enough purchase constantly dealing with rebellions it begins in Egypt and begins with Greece and there is a theory that the that the composition of the Pentateuch out there is associated with this imperial authorization control autonomy and in a sense it renders the the Pentateuch it renders elements of Scripture as kind of a controlling document that was sanctioned by the Persian by the Persian Empire now naturally I don&#39;t buy that argument I don&#39;t like that argument I think there are a lot of problems with that argument not only theologically but also methodological how we get that are you but it&#39;s out there and it&#39;s a very very popular one after Cyrus the Great we have a guy named Campisi&#39;s and he assumes throne but he dies and then he uh sure&#39;s in a time of significant turmoil and you we&#39;ve all seen this you know an ancient Near Eastern King dies everybody kind of goes haywire they try to figure out okay you is this our opportunity to rebel or is this just a matter of time before things shake out and we&#39;re dealing with another strong emperor so can be seized is dealing with the throne but he dies in ushers in a time of turmoil can be seized gives way to Darius the first and Darius the first is very very important because he systematically and effectively solidifies things politically and and administrative Lee so what do we mean by that well he basically reorganizes the empires in accordance with what are called sat tracks these are large government these are large regions that are governed by a governor yada yada yada it and so it Darius the second does is that he says basically we&#39;re going to divide everything up into these sections and some of these sections I am going to read abide in those types of things there is the first and the and the adjustment of the administrative system is the context of Haggai Zechariah and the Second Temple period in general in garius the first this context there appears to be another migration back to Judah this one has led the this is led by a guy names a rumble we get this information from the books of Habakkuk not sorry not Habakkuk Haggai and Zechariah there seems to have been an initial return that basically there it was led by a guy named shesh Badger and I would say that say that 10 times fast Shepherd and it basically felt like I said he came back and he was supposed to solidify things who supposed to he was supposed to re-establish things and we know from the book of Haggai from the opening chapter packet that he&#39;s essentially failed because how lives are in order the temples not an order and those types of things so it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s all a mess and it&#39;s so we know that it has basically failed along with along with hey guy there&#39;s a guy named zero bubble and Joshua Joshua was the high priest and the rumble is the governor of Yahoo and and what a bubble does is he kind of picks up or share strategy left off and he succeeds so it&#39;s a rumble with Joshua who are successful in rebuilding and rededicating the tech to the temple the robber will himself kind of rises to prominence does some really really important things gets the community back on track and then all of a sudden he&#39;s gone so we have a mysterious mysterious character that rises becomes a very very important player for a short period of time and then he is no longer visible in Scripture but he&#39;s a very very interesting and very very neat guy that poses that offers some really really neat implications for how were to understand the relevance and the importance of the Davidic covenant moving forward because rubble is the grandson of Jehovah can Jehovah King was the Gd and King ie descendant of King David who was who was exiled off to Babylon in 597 or yeah he was he was exiled off to Babylon in about 597 BCE this is a this is a map of the the returns from the Jewish exile and you can see the distinguishment between chefs Badger and zaraba bulls root it&#39;s a little bit different but then we have Azra and Nehemiah which is important so unpacking is that Haggai Zechariah just a little bit very very quickly Haggai Zechariah and the reason I do this though the reason I do this is because these are some prophetic books that are it&#39;s important that we understand there are some books out there that it&#39;s important that we understand the socio-historical framework backdrop if you will against which these books are set and so for Haggai in Zachariah you have to understand the significance of Darius&#39;s administrative adjustments and the fact that the temple is getting ready to be built and it&#39;s a part of the of an entire larger system of work these two prophets they are literally and historically linked what we mean by that from a historical standpoint they prophesied during the same time and if you read the book of Haggai in conjunction with first with Zechariah chapters 1 through 8 you will find there&#39;s a dating formula that links those Oracle those specific Oracle&#39;s within each other and these guys were prophesying at the same time and they were saying remarkably close things with Haggai he hounds the people that he hounds the people in Haggai chapter 1 that have decided to build up their homes at the expense of the temple and so he is very very much he is very concerned from the very very onset about what&#39;s happening to the temple what&#39;s the significance of the temple what&#39;s gonna happen to it and those types of things don&#39;t give me the idea is he sitting there saying don&#39;t give me the a don&#39;t give me the idea that you have to take care of yourself first no you need to take care of God first hey guys also concerned with the leadership of the community and these books are I should say not Haggai but these books in general are also consumed with the leadership of the of the of the community Haggai chapter 2 verses 20 through 23 is a specific oracle given to Zerubbabel who is a Davidic descendant and it talks about his role moving forward in terms in ideas that were traditionally associated with King David Zechariah chapter 3 also talked about the I believe a guys after exact attack Zachariah chapter 3 is the chapter in which we talk about the purification of Joshua the high priest having been in exile having been around pagan worship facilities in pagan worship sites you know he had to be cleansed he had to be purified in order to serve Yahweh and so zechariah chapter 3 begins to tease that out what&#39;s interesting about the book of zechariah is that in the second half at beginning with chapter 9 through the end of the book that the tone changes remarkably which was what was very very clear becomes very vague it becomes more symbolic verses more concrete and it anticipates it appears to have anticipate it appears to have anticipate good let me start over again it appears to be anticipating the next basically two generations and what&#39;s going to happen and how those events are going to affect the community now at the beginning of the fifth century BCE i mentioned this earlier there is an increased pressure that begins to mount upon persia and we see this through a number of channels egypt in greece of the two big ones alright and that&#39;s very very important as I mentioned talked about the Battle of Thermopylae and those types of things in the Battle of Marathon so what is going on between Persia and Egypt and Greek I should say Persia and Greece is is a is a is a well known phenomenon that that is very very important very very significant Egypt has always been there and they&#39;ve always been a problem and and we&#39;ve seen this throughout the Iron Age we&#39;ve seen this through the exilic period and when now we&#39;re seeing they begin in the Persian period there are some others as well but Greek and Egypt are the most important and they&#39;re the ones that caused the most headaches for the Greek for the Greek emperor for the Persian Empire by the middle of the fifth century things were getting really really intense so the conflict begins at the beginning and by you know just a few decades later this stuff is basically in full swing but yet interestingly enough this is also the context of Ezra and Nehemiah reforms and it&#39;s very very interesting to stop and think about this you know Ezra and Nehemiah both are given official sanction by the Persian Emperor and money to go back and do certain things forever it&#39;s too you know do is do things with the religious system and and those types of things with with Nehemiah it&#39;s more about construction of the GD n laws what if what if the reason why the Persian Emperor was so emphatic about giving Ezra and about giving me a my the resources that they need to to to reform their community what if that was associated with using Israel as a first-level point of the counter with any potential invasions from the Egyptians in other words what I&#39;m saying is that what if Persia is using this situation for their own good we have to think about this and we have to think about Ezra and Nehemiah and the backdrop of those books through a variety of angles and one of those angles is merely secular and is completely historical and it&#39;s completely socio-economic and there&#39;s nothing inherently Christian about it so so we have to start we have to we have to think about these things and so I pose to you what if at the very least what you don&#39;t see these as systems reforms in conjunction with kind of firming up the southeastern border of the of the Persian Empire in response to the movements of Egypt I took at the end if you don&#39;t if you hope if you don&#39;t hold that at the very least this is a very very tense time and there&#39;s a lot of stuff going on Ezra leads another group back to Jerusalem with the express sanctioning the king of Persia I&#39;ve talked about his goal is religious reforms there&#39;s no there there are serious concerns for keeping an identity now this is very very important as where it goes back to Jerusalem with what one of his specific tasks is to figure out how are we going to identify ourselves now that we have no country now that we have no king and now that we are under the dominance and the authority of the Persian Empire what is going to define us because previously the Exile one of the things that define God&#39;s people was it&#39;s kids it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s a status as a country and the status of its king though two things are no longer possible they&#39;re no longer available for the community you&#39;ve got to use as one of the sources of I bit of their identification religion is what they have the the scriptures is what they have and that is going to be a chief vehicle and a chief means of identifying themselves in a potentially turbulent and convoluted socio-political context it&#39;s interesting enough that they are on the verge of losing it as well and this kind of is reinforced by the gravity of some of Asura&#39;s reforms he basically forces people to get diverted a divorce which is a really really interesting comment you&#39;re forcing somebody to get divorced based on their that that person&#39;s ethnic the patient based based on the ethnicity of the person that that that is really like that that is a real like married but we have to understand this force divorced is in a specific context of Ezra&#39;s reforms there is a there is a very very important and powerful recognition of what syncretism can do remember that this they&#39;ve just been through the Exile a few hundred years ago and they&#39;re looking back on that time period and they&#39;re saying I do not want to go back there so what do we have to do in order to avoid another situation like this and one of the things that Ezra says this is quite frankly you&#39;ve got a divorce the women that have were the cause of the problems initially it&#39;s almost as if he&#39;s calling back to Solomon and he&#39;s saying remember all those foreign wives that Solomon had you got to get rid of your foreign wives it&#39;s because if you don&#39;t they&#39;re gonna do the same thing to you again as they as well as what they did to Solomon so his drastic measure must be seen in light of a desperate situation the reforms of Ezra the way Ezra talks about the community essentially being in isolation from everything else it is drastic and it&#39;s an in it&#39;s it&#39;s a bold bold statement in a powerful powerful statement that&#39;s open to criticism but regardless of whether you think that it&#39;s over-the-top regardless of the fact if you think that it&#39;s it wasn&#39;t necessary and it&#39;s too mean-spirited we have to assess what he did in the context of a desperate situation and that is a desperate sin that a desperate situation of the people no longer had a king no longer had a land that could call their own and yet was was facing a very turbulent and hard time Nehemiah when it comes to Nehemiah Nehemiah was a cup bear he had a great job because that means he tasted the meal he tasted the drink before the the emperor did and if it was poison Nehemiah was gonna be the one that died not the king he also feels the need to get back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall his reforms were physical and political and it was done and we see this in Nehemiah chapter four verse 16 where it essentially talks that they worked 1/2 the people work the other half people stay watch but everybody did everything that they did with a sidearm strapped to their belt a sword is what the word you is used in Scripture but basically the analogy would be you out there doing the work on something then you constantly had your gun with you because you didn&#39;t know who was gonna try to sneak up behind you or destroy the work that you were trying to do he was also concerned with the spiritual forms and then the spiritual reforms were him for him for Nehemiah took took the form of an economic crisis there was a huge amount of debt that burden the people in the region and Nehemiah chapter 5 is largely an attempt to deal with the reality of the debt of the debt and and he basically forgives the debt he does a lot of generous things with the debt and this is a testament to his character it&#39;s really really interesting when you study the history of the reception of Ezra and Nehemiah it&#39;s Nehemiah who gets a majority of the reception it is me Amaya who is remembered more fondly than Ezra so it&#39;s a very very very very fascinating dynamic when you talk about the relationship between Ezra and Nehemiah on the one hand they were there they were they were associated with each other even if it&#39;s just indirectly and yet Nehemiah is is remembered way way more more positively than Ezra the book of Esther is a peculiar book it&#39;s what&#39;s interesting about the book of Esther is that it never mentions any classic traditions of the Jews it doesn&#39;t mention the x---two this tradition it doesn&#39;t mentioned the debated tradition doesn&#39;t even say the name Yahweh and it appears to be a secular event by all intents and purposes it&#39;s not really concerned with dealing with the with specific theological realities which is different than say first and second Kings first and second Samuel and I think that that the way this thing is prevented it presented is a part of the is a part of its intention it&#39;s a historical novel so it uses historical settings perhaps historical people to tell a story so when you talk about the spectrum of historical literature historiographical literature this is going to sit on one very very it&#39;s going to sit on one end of the spectrum its historical because it may but it is really concerned with telling a story not so much any sort of historical reality so so Esther and the characters can be seen as symbolic of realities that face the Jews they&#39;re always shunned to be on the outskirts of the society and their religion appears to be incompatible with Persian policies it very much creates the picture of a of a tense survival a tense picture where survival is the key for the Jewish people again they no longer have a land they no longer have the people and a king and the book of Esther really brings a lot of the implications forward you know what are we talking about when the Jews are hell-bent on worshiping their God in the way that their text proclaims what is what what is going to be the fallout from the Empire whoever it may be when Israel says no I am NOT going to do that and the reason why I&#39;m not going to do that is because our God tells us we should so a lot a lot of fascinating things with the book of Esther taken as a whole these texts and this is probably the most important point taken as a whole these texts tell the reader about the socio-political dynamics that face the Jews during the exilic period it&#39;s tense it&#39;s uncertain there&#39;s an issue of identity how are we going to identify ourselves as a people if we no longer have a land that&#39;s completely our alone our own we no longer have a king what about those religious convictions what are we going to do and you can read about this with Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in Daniel where their religious convictions are so powerful and so intense that it pits them against an empire what about them and how are we going to use them and what&#39;s going to happen and above all it shows that times are changing the Persian period may not be so great and it&#39;s really important to see this against the backdrop of say second Isaiah that&#39;s Isaiah chapters 40 through 66 when it talks about Cyrus the Great in glowing terms even refers to Cyrus the Great as a messiah a messianic type person and who God used who God used anointed him for a specific situation for a specific time and that&#39;s a very positive picture in Isaiah chapter 40 verses 66 that&#39;s that&#39;s painted of Cyrus the Great here in these books we&#39;re beginning to take a step back and say you know what I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s all puppies and unicorns like we thought it would after the Persians we have the Greeks and this represents the last era of any significance for Old Testament studies and even again you can make the argument of well how significant is it and I&#39;ll get into that and 333 or 332 give or take a year Alexander the Great defeats a guy named Darius the third at the Battle of Issus and this is the point when Alexander the Great defeats there is the third this institutes and inaugurates the Greek Empire and the Greek Empire is going to do some really really remarkable things it&#39;s going to take human civilization particularly ancient in the ancient Near East to new heights it is this culture it is this civilization that the Romans are going to adopt and spread it all over northern Africa all over the Middle East all over into Europe and those types of things so it&#39;s a very very important reality to talk about the rise of the Greeks Alexander the Great and his active spread of Greek culture which is Hellenism he as he moved to each area and he conquered and he when he brought more and more areas ended into control under Greek control it would also impose and impart the Greek culture he wouldn&#39;t adopt elements of indigenous culture rather he would take his culture Greek culture Hellenistic culture and say okay now that I&#39;m in charge this is the way that we&#39;re going to do things it was both good and bad too there was the Helen M Hellenism brought a incredible era of innovation and technology and sophistication and advancements there were new cities new elements to society democracy is linked to to to the Greeks in those types of things Travel became more and more prominent so there are a lot of good things that happen with the spread of Hellenism unfortunately there&#39;s the sword cuts both ways here is because along with those innovations would along with those sophistications remember what i talked about the the the element the traditional element within the post-exilic Society of the Jews this kind of bubbles to the surface again because there is essentially the traditionalist the Conservatives versus the progressives and the Jewish system had become very very conservative and very very traditional under the teachings of Ezra and Nehemiah it very much was a let&#39;s go back to our bread and butter let&#39;s go back to what made us who we are and that&#39;s the Scriptures because because because we have this book now that defines us we don&#39;t have a king we don&#39;t have a land but we have this book that really preserves who we are and this is who we are going to be and this is how we&#39;re gonna proclaim our identity that became very traditional it became very conservative and that is going to buck heads up against the developments and the desires of Hellenism and it&#39;s going to become so violent at times that the spread of Hellenism is going to be forced under certain rulers under certain Kings under certain governments the spread of Hellenism is going to become violent and then has direct implications for how we are to understand the development of Judaism it&#39;s not in your Canon it&#39;s not in your Bible but the book of first Maccabees is an interesting case it&#39;s an entire book built upon what happens to the Jewish people when they rebelled against an imposed force that when it rebels against the forcing of another culture upon them this is a map of the Greek Empire and again you can see its way all the way up in Macedonia you can see its way all the way into the Indus Valley into the into the Hindu Kush mountains and those types of things and it&#39;s it&#39;s very very large you have the city of Alexandria and northern Egypt which becomes a educational hotbed the scholastic Empire if you will of the ancient world so it&#39;s just something to kind of keep in mind Alexander&#39;s the root and Alexander&#39;s roots and everything like that now the Greek Empire is not going to last very long Alexander the Great is only going to be in charge for about a decade he&#39;s gonna do a lot of great things he&#39;s gonna be driven he&#39;s gonna be motivated he&#39;s gonna be obsessed but he&#39;s gonna get sick and he&#39;s gonna die without an heir so before that I think he dies when he&#39;s like 32 or something along those lines or 30 years old or something he dies at a very very young age and he dies and he dies in such a tragic fashion that he actually doesn&#39;t have any kids so what do you do with this world empire what do you do with this world empire in the wake of in the wake of no heirs you can&#39;t give it to his sons so what are you gonna do you&#39;re gonna let your generals fight over it and you&#39;re gonna let your generals shed a lot of blood know one of the things that Alexander does before he dies is he coordinates the division and a gifting of his empire he&#39;s essentially going to divide the Empire amongst his four generals now against his intention this of course produces decades and decades of fighting for biblical studies for Old Testament studies for New Testament studies there are two groups there are two generals that are going to become very very important for what happens there that&#39;s Ptolemais and solutions Ptolemy is going to be gifted Egypt and so lusus is going to be giving Mesopotamia and just as the the promised land has always been the center of fighting whether it&#39;s during the Late Bronze Age whether it&#39;s during the Iron Age that same thing is going to happen this is the Seleucids and the Tala mains are going to collapse or go to collide over and over and over again in Syria Palestine and so the people who have come back from the exile and who have resettled Canaan in ancient Israel in Syria Palestine proper they are going to be once again in the middle of a massive tug of war and so yeah who&#39;d is going to be on Yahoo it is going to be a government by the Greeks they&#39;re gonna be then govern the tommays then are gonna govern bites the Seleucids and this is going to become a constant back-and-forth reality that&#39;s really going to define the intertestamental period as a whole and it sets this interesting stage for judas maccabees and the Hasmonean dynasty and potentially Daniel as well so that&#39;s what we have here that&#39;s what we&#39;re dealing with we&#39;re dealing with the rise of the Persian Empire that moves into the Greek Empire and it&#39;s going to present an entirely different kind of flavor for our understanding it&#39;s going to adjust the paradigm of what it means to be God&#39;s people because again I can&#39;t emphasize this enough they no longer had a country to call their own they no longer have a king and so they are struggling particularly during the waning years of the Persian Empire how are we going to define ourselves how are we going to define ourselves as a people and this is going to be carried forward through the Hellenistic period and into the greco-roman period and the way that they&#39;re going to find themselves as a period as a people is not so much by a king is not so much by land but it&#39;s going to be they&#39;re gonna they&#39;re going to be identifying themselves as a people of the book and it&#39;s that movement that is going to feed the rise of the Pharisees it&#39;s gonna feed the ride of the sad the rise of the Sadducees so that when Jesus burst onto the scene he is not merely just fighting with people over what a book says he is fighting with people over what it means to be God&#39;s people

okay what I want to do here is talk about potentially talk about a time period which you may not be completely familiar with but it&amp;#39;s very very important because there&amp;#39;s a lot of different things that are going to go on during this time tree it&amp;#39;s really going to kind of readjust things it certainly can become critical for our understanding of kind of the way things happen after the Exile and it really moves through the intertestamental theory and prepares us for what happens during first century Palestine you know time accuses we&amp;#39;re going to be talking about the persian period we&amp;#39;re gonna be talking about the end of the persian period and help things kind of move from there into the Hellenistic period a lot of different things are going to happen a lot of differences from what we&amp;#39;re accustomed to in the Iron Ages things you&amp;#39;re really going to change in a lot of ways but it can become very very influential and very very important it&amp;#39;s a phase of global history at least from the standpoint of biblical studies that has only begun to kind of kind of become known here if you will within the past few decades again priority has always been given to the iron ages because you know that&amp;#39;s the age of Israel and that&amp;#39;s the time when they kind of come in grow into their own and establish themselves as an intensity with the Persian period there there are a lot of fascinating things that that happen implicate that have implications for our understanding of the developments the developments of Judaism as well as the growth and finalization of the biblical texts and those types of things so a lot of interesting stuff so let&amp;#39;s let&amp;#39;s get after it so this is a map what I want to do here before I get into the nuts and bolts of the Persian period and what that means we really do need to back up but in order to first back up this is a map I wanted to show you this is just kind of what it looks like these are this this is the path the general path that the Jewish exiles took one nebuchadnezzar sacked the city of jerusalem in 586 he deported a vast majority the population took him all the way back to Mesopotamia that&amp;#39;s a long way from home folks and that exile lasted about seven years so about two generations generation being about 45 years or so needs moral so about two generations and so it was a very very traumatic thing so when you read those texts that lament over the destruction of the city and deportation of the Exile that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re dealing with here that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re dealing with it&amp;#39;s a very very traumatic experience and there&amp;#39;s a lot of literature that&amp;#39;s developed that&amp;#39;s devoted to it and there&amp;#39;s a lot of literature that was written and developed and finalised and adjusted and adapted it was it&amp;#39;s it was a historical event that still leaves lasting and that still has a lasting imprint on the Jewish psyche so let&amp;#39;s get into a little bit of the rise of Persia in order to understand fully the rise of Persia we really have to back up and understand babylons what I call the deal with the devil because Babylon when they&amp;#39;re in the midst of fighting Assyria which remember they were their mortal historical enemies with in Mesopotamia properly the Assyrians and the Babylonians were always kind of jockeying for position they go back and forth but during the neo-assyrian empire obviously Assyria has has the upper hand now I talked about in my Judy instate lecture that you know with the rise of the neo-babylonian empire beginning with naba blasts are in others that nuisance that has always been Babylon in South South Eastern Mesopotamia begins to take on some steam and begins to pick up some intensity and becomes something a little bit more significant and a little bit more formidable than what it has been in the past and when they make a deal with the Persian so the person who meets at the Persian and meaning Empire you know they pretty much hook their plough to this alliance and it occupies the Assyrians and when it&amp;#39;s made it&amp;#39;s made at the perfect time and eventually this alliance is going to be integral to seen the downfall the neo-assyrian empire what&amp;#39;s interesting about it from what it appears to be from the contours of history is that initially Babylon gets the kind of rebel on the limelight if you will they&amp;#39;re the ones that take the neo-assyrian empire place the neo-babylonian empire is the one that kind of inherits most of the land and then yet in the background we have the Persians and the Medes they&amp;#39;re kind of just sitting there and if you didn&amp;#39;t know about the alliance between the Babylonians and their persians during the wood during the twilight of the new assyrian empire then you may think that okay the Persians just kind of popped up no the reality is is that the Persians were there for a while it&amp;#39;s just that the Babylonians took the front seat for a bit and Persia kind of basically sat there and bought their tongue what we have to understand about the neo-babylonian empire particularly when is juxtaposed to the longevity and the potency of the new assyrian empire and as well as the persian empire after it and generally speaking just just general ideas of world history the neo-babylonian empire was the flash of the pan which is something very very interesting it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s when you stop and think about it it&amp;#39;s something very very interesting from a theological standpoint and I mentioned that the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of Nebuchadnezzar and speaks of the Babylonian Empire as God&amp;#39;s servant which is a very very profound theological statement to make is there are not very many people who are called Yahweh&amp;#39;s servant yet Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian Empire or one of them and this is this is this is something that rises and is used by God but then it as soon as it rises up it implodes to almost just as fast and so it&amp;#39;s really really interesting to think about a thing to think about theologically when we start pondering the ideas of God&amp;#39;s sovereign control of history and how he orchestrates history in accordance with his perfect timing because I can&amp;#39;t help but chuckle and think that the neo-babylonian empire was was another example of God&amp;#39;s perfect timing and the utilization of the contours of history to accomplish his purposes after King Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar proved himself capable from the beginnings at the Battle of Carr kamesh and how he first started off as a general and then eventually became King and really saw the heyday of neo-babylonian culture near the neo-babylonian empire as much as he was capable and efficient and in a good Emperor from from that sort of perspective the people who come after him were just not and they lacked the charisma they lacked the ability to kind of deal with the internal and external pressures that came with trying to manage Empire in the ancient world and and it implodes rather quickly here&amp;#39;s a map of the Babylonian Empire you can see it right there in the middle of the map and green I do want to point out that the Persian Empire in the media empire right there to it to the east Mesopotamian to the southeast of Mesopotamia but but yeah there&amp;#39;s a little visual to kind of keep in the back of your mind on what the kind of globe of the ancient Near East look like the map of the ancient Near East look like during the exile period from from about 586 to about that black leaders from 520 BC I mentioned the lack of leadership that follows King Nebuchadnezzar there&amp;#39;s a guy in particular named nabonidus and this guy was basically a train wreck from a political standpoint he decides that he is going to declare his loyalty to the moon-god I think that God&amp;#39;s name is sin but don&amp;#39;t don&amp;#39;t look forward for it but it is the moon-god he&amp;#39;s gonna declare his allegiance to the moon-god over and against Marv Duke who was the National God of the Babylonian Empire and in doing so it&amp;#39;s actually going to dissolve the Marty priesthood he&amp;#39;s gonna liquidate all the temple assets that are associated with Marduk the priests all their money he&amp;#39;s gonna he&amp;#39;s gonna seize it freeze their assets and those types of things and he&amp;#39;s gonna transfer now think about that first you have an emperor that rises to power and says you know what for for all these years we&amp;#39;ve been following you know the god Marvin he&amp;#39;s been the religious system that kind of has to find us as a people but I&amp;#39;m not I don&amp;#39;t I don&amp;#39;t like him I don&amp;#39;t want to deal with him anymore and I think we really need to hook our plows to this other god named sin oh and then the process of doing and I&amp;#39;m taking all of your assets I&amp;#39;m taking all of your all of your finances and those types of things that you use to kind of wield your political power and I&amp;#39;m going to take it away from you against your will and I&amp;#39;m going to give it to this new found religion obviously that is not going to make people happy and King Nebuchadnezzar nidus made a big he made a big error there was a guy in Egypt several centuries before name Akhenaten and one of the things that Akhenaten did was something very very similar of the Egyptian the main deity of the Egyptian Pantheon is as raw the Sun guy well King Akhenaten is known as the Akhenaten actually is King Tut you guys probably already all heard of King Tut very very famous in popular culture but I believe Osteen otten is King Tut&amp;#39;s father but Akhenaten decides that he wants to not necessarily hook his plough to raw and instead he hooks his plough to a different deity I believe it&amp;#39;s also a moon deity but um but I&amp;#39;m not entirely sure the important part though is that history has labeled often Naughton as the heretic king and the reason why he&amp;#39;s called a heretic king is because he is he takes what he takes what the normal status quo was with the national with the national religion of Egypt any-any and he moves to the country against everybody else&amp;#39;s wishes purely on his own will and he moves it in a different direction that&amp;#39;s a very very powerful political statement to make in the ancient world and it&amp;#39;s one that&amp;#39;s often met with failure with Akhenaten it was met with failure and with nabonidus who was unable to understand this lesson of history or ignore this lesson history the same thing happens to him he&amp;#39;s basically run out of Dodge and and and it goes very very badly for him Belshazzar is the final king belshazzar is is mentioned in Daniel and you can read about a very very comical episode in Daniel chapter 5 when Belshazzar sees the sees the handwriting on the wall and that handwriting declares very very creatively and but yet very very emphatically that his days are numbered and the Babylonian empires days are numbered and there is you know you have been waited and you have found you you&amp;#39;ve been weighed and you&amp;#39;ve been found wanting was this is the message you received all things considered though the infrastructure of the neo-babylonian empire was not there as I mentioned as I alluded to earlier the political leadership was lacking to deal with the internal and external pressures of the neo-babylonian period and this is the moment this is the time around Abin eyes during the time the Belshazzar where cyrus the great marvel his troops and basically walks into Babylon without much of a fight and just like that neo-babylonian empire is overrun and it&amp;#39;s no longer in existence and now we are era we are ushered into a great a brand new era not only for God&amp;#39;s people but it world history in general and we start to talk about the Persian Empire and the Persian Empire at its pinnacle is the greatest empire the ancient Near East has seen up until that point so we&amp;#39;re dealing with a serious serious political force in a serious serious political entity that is going to take things to new heights now this is a map of Cyrus the Great Scott Quest I mentioned that you know he&amp;#39;s the first great Persian King he starts in Persia appleís and then moves over to X putana and media he goes into Mesopotamian he goes all the way up to Asia Minor so he&amp;#39;s dealing and notice notice to the right of the map he&amp;#39;s going he&amp;#39;s going east into the IO and over the Iranian Plateau and he&amp;#39;s heading towards India that is a very very huge piece of land and it is very very important that the Persian Empire basically consumes all of the Babylonian Empire and then some and so it becomes this massive massive political entity here&amp;#39;s another picture of the Persian Empire pretty much at its zenith remember this is the the conquests of Cyrus the Great this is him kind of establishing himself from the Persian Empire in the immediate wake of the Knapton the neo-babylonian pyres fall but this is this is how big we&amp;#39;re going to get notice it reaches up to the caucus mountains note and goes notice it goes all the way over to Egypt it goes in domestic demand onea so when you talk about things in popular culture like the Battle of Marathon the Battle of Thermopylae which is memorialized in the movie 300 we are dealing with you know the historical realities of the advancement of the Persian Empire notice it goes all the way over the Indus Valley up towards the aerial sea and those types of things so we&amp;#39;re dealing with a massive massive piece of land and you know you may ask yourself well if the Neo Syrians couldn&amp;#39;t handle the way they ruled things how in the world can the Persian Empire ruled something rule something like this and that&amp;#39;s a very very good question and it is a question that plagues the great empires of the world how can you organize and keep in line so much do you so much stuff this is an interesting little archaeological find that we that have been that&amp;#39;s been unearthed this is what&amp;#39;s called the Cyrus solos at the cylinder and this is the persian account of the sacking of babylon it&amp;#39;s very very interesting in the way that it presents Cyrus as kind of a global liberator a person who comes to free the captains it&amp;#39;s very very positive it&amp;#39;s a very very positive impression that one gets of Cyrus but this is a neat little find because it recounts the sacking of Babylon so we know what we know from finds like that so diving into the Persian period a little with a little bit more detail it runs from about 539 to 332 BCE we know these dates fairly firmly there&amp;#39;s not a whole lot of debate on on this stuff because like I said from the historical record and there&amp;#39;s a white help consensus of what we&amp;#39;re dealing with what we have to understand at least from the perspective of Old Testament studies is that we can no longer and we can no longer speak of the north if you remember in 722 the Assyrian the new Assyrian King Sargon the sargon ii i do believe is the individual who is responsible for he&amp;#39;s the individual was over running the capital samaria and basically destroying the northern kingdom and from that point on 722 BCE from that point on we&amp;#39;re really no longer speaking of the northern kingdom of israel it ceases to exist with the persian period you know we no longer you know again we don&amp;#39;t have the northern kingdom we no longer have samaria in fact when you read through the books of like ezra and nehemiah when they talk about the end up in Samaria that&amp;#39;s who they&amp;#39;re talking about so by by by the by the post-exilic period there was a very very distinct and sharp cognitive distinction that was kept in the minds of the Jewish people we&amp;#39;re down here we&amp;#39;re down in Judah were down in Yahoo and up there up north are the Samaritans and we want no part of those people so this so the things that you see and you read about in your New Testament where Jesus talking about the Samaritan and the parable being beaten when he visits the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and all of that sentiment that sentiment that is feeding those parables and those narratives begins all the way back here but when we talk about settlement again everything is being centered on yehud and it&amp;#39;s called Yahoo now as opposed to Judah everything is being sent is centralized everything is being centered on there and it&amp;#39;s very much a Judean phenomenon when we talk about settlement patterns in the Persian period centralized around Jerusalem more more than realize the reason why is that it&amp;#39;s because the the temple appears to have become a central part of society not only religiously but also secularly Town Planning another person developments are obscured in the long shadow of Hellenism this is an interesting phenomena we&amp;#39;ve seen the persian period you know as I&amp;#39;ve mentioned in the past one of the things that we look at when we go through and try to understand these specific historical eras is we want to know what&amp;#39;s going on with the settlement patterns how are cities being made rules being settled for how long and then those types of things with the persian period when it comes to settlements we really don&amp;#39;t have a lot the reason why we don&amp;#39;t have a lot is because the pervasiveness of the Hellenistic imprint which we&amp;#39;ll talk about later is so strong so powerful it&amp;#39;s so potent that it drowns out everything before it and so it&amp;#39;s an unfortunate phenomenon but it&amp;#39;s a reality of the archaeological record during the persian period as far as the socio-economic means the period again everything becomes more and more centralized around the temple in Jerusalem and this seems to be the Kurd the Persian method of Opera is the method of operating operation they harness the traditions and they use their their indigenous religious systems in order to make sure that they could keep them in check and so forth taxation in true was given to the empire&amp;#39;s and it was filtered through the temple the taxation was huge it was burdensome as this time period moves along as the persian period moves along and in the end the influence and the actions they influence but the the shadow and the pressing the pressures of egypt and the greeks as they become more and more the taxation increases as far as pottery goes an interesting phenomenon has we seen we that we can see with in the material culture there is a resurgence of indigenous iron age pottery types in the persian period there seems to be kind of a desire to kind of go back to the basics and in that makes sense because remember these people world has been rocked by the implications of Jerusalem&amp;#39;s destruction ie the exile and so we see the resurgence in pottery types we see the resurgence of traditional motifs and decorations of those pottery types as kind of a we interpret that as kind of a call to get back to the olden days you know cannot repeat the same problems again so that we find ourselves in exile again juxtaposed with this traditionalist conservative movement is a very very progressive movement that you can see so while we have the return for basic iron age Israelite pottery types we also have the development of foreign motifs we have the development of certain pottery types that really are not indigenous to Israel or that region Greek pottery types become more and more prominent and this is going to become more and more potent as the Greeks begin to rise in power and let&amp;#39;s say the fifth century the latter part of the fifth century in those types of things some of the miscellaneous issues the religious elements that mentioned in the Persian period or remarkably conservatively some of the US you know some of the classic idols that kind of have always been a part of Israelite society the pillar figurines and the Asherah poles and those types of things interesting that those all disappear there is literally no trace of those types of elements in the early Persian period and it speaks to the rise of conservatism the eyes of a traditional movement you know as I said as I mentioned just a few moments ago back in the olden days when everything was good so it was an era of revolution and religious consciousness there&amp;#39;s also a boom and small fine you see a lot more seals coins Beulah and and and it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s very very difficult it is a trying endeavor to try to determine the administrative system that is governing things it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s very very layered it&amp;#39;s very very complex and it&amp;#39;s very very difficult there&amp;#39;s also a boom and literary development during the Jewish community they come back from exile and one of the first things that they have to do is answer the question what are we going to do with these old traditions what are we gonna do with the things that we held closely to our heart that we thought we knew we understood obviously we didn&amp;#39;t but what are we supposed to be jettison do we forget about them or do we go back and review them and try to figure out where we went wrong and as we figure out what we want where we went wrong do we do we come back with them and reincorporate them into our religious paradigm some of the historical issues there&amp;#39;s a very very important one called Persian autonomy and this is essentially the way Persia rule now if you if you know anything about the neo-assyrian empire in the neo-babylonian empire they were very very authoritative authoritarian the Neo Syrians perfected the idea of forced exile for Geographic transplants if you will where they would come in conquer land and would take some of that or all of the indigenous people there and they would literally move them hundreds and hundreds miles away and they would force them to settle in the new foreign location against their will the near the Babylonians were also ruthless and so purchase sits back and says you know what all of this didn&amp;#39;t really work ok so I&amp;#39;m gonna try something new I want these people to be comfortable I want these people to do what they want to do within reason and yet they also need to understand that when I need them they need to come this is an idea called Persian control of autonomy it was giving them back their traditions giving them back what they wanted in a controlled manner don&amp;#39;t think for a second that person did wasn&amp;#39;t that Persia was not really controlling all of this they were and if they needed to they could come down like a hammer just like that but for the most part they wanted to extend a little bit of freedom they wanted to give the people some breathing room because they thought that okay if you give them some breathing room if you don&amp;#39;t suffocate them and you allow them to see what we are offering the better chant there&amp;#39;s a bone to be a better chance that they will stick with us and they won&amp;#39;t overly rebel against us but interestingly enough purchase constantly dealing with rebellions it begins in Egypt and begins with Greece and there is a theory that the that the composition of the Pentateuch out there is associated with this imperial authorization control autonomy and in a sense it renders the the Pentateuch it renders elements of Scripture as kind of a controlling document that was sanctioned by the Persian by the Persian Empire now naturally I don&amp;#39;t buy that argument I don&amp;#39;t like that argument I think there are a lot of problems with that argument not only theologically but also methodological how we get that are you but it&amp;#39;s out there and it&amp;#39;s a very very popular one after Cyrus the Great we have a guy named Campisi&amp;#39;s and he assumes throne but he dies and then he uh sure&amp;#39;s in a time of significant turmoil and you we&amp;#39;ve all seen this you know an ancient Near Eastern King dies everybody kind of goes haywire they try to figure out okay you is this our opportunity to rebel or is this just a matter of time before things shake out and we&amp;#39;re dealing with another strong emperor so can be seized is dealing with the throne but he dies in ushers in a time of turmoil can be seized gives way to Darius the first and Darius the first is very very important because he systematically and effectively solidifies things politically and and administrative Lee so what do we mean by that well he basically reorganizes the empires in accordance with what are called sat tracks these are large government these are large regions that are governed by a governor yada yada yada it and so it Darius the second does is that he says basically we&amp;#39;re going to divide everything up into these sections and some of these sections I am going to read abide in those types of things there is the first and the and the adjustment of the administrative system is the context of Haggai Zechariah and the Second Temple period in general in garius the first this context there appears to be another migration back to Judah this one has led the this is led by a guy names a rumble we get this information from the books of Habakkuk not sorry not Habakkuk Haggai and Zechariah there seems to have been an initial return that basically there it was led by a guy named shesh Badger and I would say that say that 10 times fast Shepherd and it basically felt like I said he came back and he was supposed to solidify things who supposed to he was supposed to re-establish things and we know from the book of Haggai from the opening chapter packet that he&amp;#39;s essentially failed because how lives are in order the temples not an order and those types of things so it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s all a mess and it&amp;#39;s so we know that it has basically failed along with along with hey guy there&amp;#39;s a guy named zero bubble and Joshua Joshua was the high priest and the rumble is the governor of Yahoo and and what a bubble does is he kind of picks up or share strategy left off and he succeeds so it&amp;#39;s a rumble with Joshua who are successful in rebuilding and rededicating the tech to the temple the robber will himself kind of rises to prominence does some really really important things gets the community back on track and then all of a sudden he&amp;#39;s gone so we have a mysterious mysterious character that rises becomes a very very important player for a short period of time and then he is no longer visible in Scripture but he&amp;#39;s a very very interesting and very very neat guy that poses that offers some really really neat implications for how were to understand the relevance and the importance of the Davidic covenant moving forward because rubble is the grandson of Jehovah can Jehovah King was the Gd and King ie descendant of King David who was who was exiled off to Babylon in 597 or yeah he was he was exiled off to Babylon in about 597 BCE this is a this is a map of the the returns from the Jewish exile and you can see the distinguishment between chefs Badger and zaraba bulls root it&amp;#39;s a little bit different but then we have Azra and Nehemiah which is important so unpacking is that Haggai Zechariah just a little bit very very quickly Haggai Zechariah and the reason I do this though the reason I do this is because these are some prophetic books that are it&amp;#39;s important that we understand there are some books out there that it&amp;#39;s important that we understand the socio-historical framework backdrop if you will against which these books are set and so for Haggai in Zachariah you have to understand the significance of Darius&amp;#39;s administrative adjustments and the fact that the temple is getting ready to be built and it&amp;#39;s a part of the of an entire larger system of work these two prophets they are literally and historically linked what we mean by that from a historical standpoint they prophesied during the same time and if you read the book of Haggai in conjunction with first with Zechariah chapters 1 through 8 you will find there&amp;#39;s a dating formula that links those Oracle those specific Oracle&amp;#39;s within each other and these guys were prophesying at the same time and they were saying remarkably close things with Haggai he hounds the people that he hounds the people in Haggai chapter 1 that have decided to build up their homes at the expense of the temple and so he is very very much he is very concerned from the very very onset about what&amp;#39;s happening to the temple what&amp;#39;s the significance of the temple what&amp;#39;s gonna happen to it and those types of things don&amp;#39;t give me the idea is he sitting there saying don&amp;#39;t give me the a don&amp;#39;t give me the idea that you have to take care of yourself first no you need to take care of God first hey guys also concerned with the leadership of the community and these books are I should say not Haggai but these books in general are also consumed with the leadership of the of the of the community Haggai chapter 2 verses 20 through 23 is a specific oracle given to Zerubbabel who is a Davidic descendant and it talks about his role moving forward in terms in ideas that were traditionally associated with King David Zechariah chapter 3 also talked about the I believe a guys after exact attack Zachariah chapter 3 is the chapter in which we talk about the purification of Joshua the high priest having been in exile having been around pagan worship facilities in pagan worship sites you know he had to be cleansed he had to be purified in order to serve Yahweh and so zechariah chapter 3 begins to tease that out what&amp;#39;s interesting about the book of zechariah is that in the second half at beginning with chapter 9 through the end of the book that the tone changes remarkably which was what was very very clear becomes very vague it becomes more symbolic verses more concrete and it anticipates it appears to have anticipate it appears to have anticipate good let me start over again it appears to be anticipating the next basically two generations and what&amp;#39;s going to happen and how those events are going to affect the community now at the beginning of the fifth century BCE i mentioned this earlier there is an increased pressure that begins to mount upon persia and we see this through a number of channels egypt in greece of the two big ones alright and that&amp;#39;s very very important as I mentioned talked about the Battle of Thermopylae and those types of things in the Battle of Marathon so what is going on between Persia and Egypt and Greek I should say Persia and Greece is is a is a is a well known phenomenon that that is very very important very very significant Egypt has always been there and they&amp;#39;ve always been a problem and and we&amp;#39;ve seen this throughout the Iron Age we&amp;#39;ve seen this through the exilic period and when now we&amp;#39;re seeing they begin in the Persian period there are some others as well but Greek and Egypt are the most important and they&amp;#39;re the ones that caused the most headaches for the Greek for the Greek emperor for the Persian Empire by the middle of the fifth century things were getting really really intense so the conflict begins at the beginning and by you know just a few decades later this stuff is basically in full swing but yet interestingly enough this is also the context of Ezra and Nehemiah reforms and it&amp;#39;s very very interesting to stop and think about this you know Ezra and Nehemiah both are given official sanction by the Persian Emperor and money to go back and do certain things forever it&amp;#39;s too you know do is do things with the religious system and and those types of things with with Nehemiah it&amp;#39;s more about construction of the GD n laws what if what if the reason why the Persian Emperor was so emphatic about giving Ezra and about giving me a my the resources that they need to to to reform their community what if that was associated with using Israel as a first-level point of the counter with any potential invasions from the Egyptians in other words what I&amp;#39;m saying is that what if Persia is using this situation for their own good we have to think about this and we have to think about Ezra and Nehemiah and the backdrop of those books through a variety of angles and one of those angles is merely secular and is completely historical and it&amp;#39;s completely socio-economic and there&amp;#39;s nothing inherently Christian about it so so we have to start we have to we have to think about these things and so I pose to you what if at the very least what you don&amp;#39;t see these as systems reforms in conjunction with kind of firming up the southeastern border of the of the Persian Empire in response to the movements of Egypt I took at the end if you don&amp;#39;t if you hope if you don&amp;#39;t hold that at the very least this is a very very tense time and there&amp;#39;s a lot of stuff going on Ezra leads another group back to Jerusalem with the express sanctioning the king of Persia I&amp;#39;ve talked about his goal is religious reforms there&amp;#39;s no there there are serious concerns for keeping an identity now this is very very important as where it goes back to Jerusalem with what one of his specific tasks is to figure out how are we going to identify ourselves now that we have no country now that we have no king and now that we are under the dominance and the authority of the Persian Empire what is going to define us because previously the Exile one of the things that define God&amp;#39;s people was it&amp;#39;s kids it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a status as a country and the status of its king though two things are no longer possible they&amp;#39;re no longer available for the community you&amp;#39;ve got to use as one of the sources of I bit of their identification religion is what they have the the scriptures is what they have and that is going to be a chief vehicle and a chief means of identifying themselves in a potentially turbulent and convoluted socio-political context it&amp;#39;s interesting enough that they are on the verge of losing it as well and this kind of is reinforced by the gravity of some of Asura&amp;#39;s reforms he basically forces people to get diverted a divorce which is a really really interesting comment you&amp;#39;re forcing somebody to get divorced based on their that that person&amp;#39;s ethnic the patient based based on the ethnicity of the person that that that is really like that that is a real like married but we have to understand this force divorced is in a specific context of Ezra&amp;#39;s reforms there is a there is a very very important and powerful recognition of what syncretism can do remember that this they&amp;#39;ve just been through the Exile a few hundred years ago and they&amp;#39;re looking back on that time period and they&amp;#39;re saying I do not want to go back there so what do we have to do in order to avoid another situation like this and one of the things that Ezra says this is quite frankly you&amp;#39;ve got a divorce the women that have were the cause of the problems initially it&amp;#39;s almost as if he&amp;#39;s calling back to Solomon and he&amp;#39;s saying remember all those foreign wives that Solomon had you got to get rid of your foreign wives it&amp;#39;s because if you don&amp;#39;t they&amp;#39;re gonna do the same thing to you again as they as well as what they did to Solomon so his drastic measure must be seen in light of a desperate situation the reforms of Ezra the way Ezra talks about the community essentially being in isolation from everything else it is drastic and it&amp;#39;s an in it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a bold bold statement in a powerful powerful statement that&amp;#39;s open to criticism but regardless of whether you think that it&amp;#39;s over-the-top regardless of the fact if you think that it&amp;#39;s it wasn&amp;#39;t necessary and it&amp;#39;s too mean-spirited we have to assess what he did in the context of a desperate situation and that is a desperate sin that a desperate situation of the people no longer had a king no longer had a land that could call their own and yet was was facing a very turbulent and hard time Nehemiah when it comes to Nehemiah Nehemiah was a cup bear he had a great job because that means he tasted the meal he tasted the drink before the the emperor did and if it was poison Nehemiah was gonna be the one that died not the king he also feels the need to get back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall his reforms were physical and political and it was done and we see this in Nehemiah chapter four verse 16 where it essentially talks that they worked 1/2 the people work the other half people stay watch but everybody did everything that they did with a sidearm strapped to their belt a sword is what the word you is used in Scripture but basically the analogy would be you out there doing the work on something then you constantly had your gun with you because you didn&amp;#39;t know who was gonna try to sneak up behind you or destroy the work that you were trying to do he was also concerned with the spiritual forms and then the spiritual reforms were him for him for Nehemiah took took the form of an economic crisis there was a huge amount of debt that burden the people in the region and Nehemiah chapter 5 is largely an attempt to deal with the reality of the debt of the debt and and he basically forgives the debt he does a lot of generous things with the debt and this is a testament to his character it&amp;#39;s really really interesting when you study the history of the reception of Ezra and Nehemiah it&amp;#39;s Nehemiah who gets a majority of the reception it is me Amaya who is remembered more fondly than Ezra so it&amp;#39;s a very very very very fascinating dynamic when you talk about the relationship between Ezra and Nehemiah on the one hand they were there they were they were associated with each other even if it&amp;#39;s just indirectly and yet Nehemiah is is remembered way way more more positively than Ezra the book of Esther is a peculiar book it&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting about the book of Esther is that it never mentions any classic traditions of the Jews it doesn&amp;#39;t mention the x---two this tradition it doesn&amp;#39;t mentioned the debated tradition doesn&amp;#39;t even say the name Yahweh and it appears to be a secular event by all intents and purposes it&amp;#39;s not really concerned with dealing with the with specific theological realities which is different than say first and second Kings first and second Samuel and I think that that the way this thing is prevented it presented is a part of the is a part of its intention it&amp;#39;s a historical novel so it uses historical settings perhaps historical people to tell a story so when you talk about the spectrum of historical literature historiographical literature this is going to sit on one very very it&amp;#39;s going to sit on one end of the spectrum its historical because it may but it is really concerned with telling a story not so much any sort of historical reality so so Esther and the characters can be seen as symbolic of realities that face the Jews they&amp;#39;re always shunned to be on the outskirts of the society and their religion appears to be incompatible with Persian policies it very much creates the picture of a of a tense survival a tense picture where survival is the key for the Jewish people again they no longer have a land they no longer have the people and a king and the book of Esther really brings a lot of the implications forward you know what are we talking about when the Jews are hell-bent on worshiping their God in the way that their text proclaims what is what what is going to be the fallout from the Empire whoever it may be when Israel says no I am NOT going to do that and the reason why I&amp;#39;m not going to do that is because our God tells us we should so a lot a lot of fascinating things with the book of Esther taken as a whole these texts and this is probably the most important point taken as a whole these texts tell the reader about the socio-political dynamics that face the Jews during the exilic period it&amp;#39;s tense it&amp;#39;s uncertain there&amp;#39;s an issue of identity how are we going to identify ourselves as a people if we no longer have a land that&amp;#39;s completely our alone our own we no longer have a king what about those religious convictions what are we going to do and you can read about this with Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in Daniel where their religious convictions are so powerful and so intense that it pits them against an empire what about them and how are we going to use them and what&amp;#39;s going to happen and above all it shows that times are changing the Persian period may not be so great and it&amp;#39;s really important to see this against the backdrop of say second Isaiah that&amp;#39;s Isaiah chapters 40 through 66 when it talks about Cyrus the Great in glowing terms even refers to Cyrus the Great as a messiah a messianic type person and who God used who God used anointed him for a specific situation for a specific time and that&amp;#39;s a very positive picture in Isaiah chapter 40 verses 66 that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s painted of Cyrus the Great here in these books we&amp;#39;re beginning to take a step back and say you know what I don&amp;#39;t know if it&amp;#39;s all puppies and unicorns like we thought it would after the Persians we have the Greeks and this represents the last era of any significance for Old Testament studies and even again you can make the argument of well how significant is it and I&amp;#39;ll get into that and 333 or 332 give or take a year Alexander the Great defeats a guy named Darius the third at the Battle of Issus and this is the point when Alexander the Great defeats there is the third this institutes and inaugurates the Greek Empire and the Greek Empire is going to do some really really remarkable things it&amp;#39;s going to take human civilization particularly ancient in the ancient Near East to new heights it is this culture it is this civilization that the Romans are going to adopt and spread it all over northern Africa all over the Middle East all over into Europe and those types of things so it&amp;#39;s a very very important reality to talk about the rise of the Greeks Alexander the Great and his active spread of Greek culture which is Hellenism he as he moved to each area and he conquered and he when he brought more and more areas ended into control under Greek control it would also impose and impart the Greek culture he wouldn&amp;#39;t adopt elements of indigenous culture rather he would take his culture Greek culture Hellenistic culture and say okay now that I&amp;#39;m in charge this is the way that we&amp;#39;re going to do things it was both good and bad too there was the Helen M Hellenism brought a incredible era of innovation and technology and sophistication and advancements there were new cities new elements to society democracy is linked to to to the Greeks in those types of things Travel became more and more prominent so there are a lot of good things that happen with the spread of Hellenism unfortunately there&amp;#39;s the sword cuts both ways here is because along with those innovations would along with those sophistications remember what i talked about the the the element the traditional element within the post-exilic Society of the Jews this kind of bubbles to the surface again because there is essentially the traditionalist the Conservatives versus the progressives and the Jewish system had become very very conservative and very very traditional under the teachings of Ezra and Nehemiah it very much was a let&amp;#39;s go back to our bread and butter let&amp;#39;s go back to what made us who we are and that&amp;#39;s the Scriptures because because because we have this book now that defines us we don&amp;#39;t have a king we don&amp;#39;t have a land but we have this book that really preserves who we are and this is who we are going to be and this is how we&amp;#39;re gonna proclaim our identity that became very traditional it became very conservative and that is going to buck heads up against the developments and the desires of Hellenism and it&amp;#39;s going to become so violent at times that the spread of Hellenism is going to be forced under certain rulers under certain Kings under certain governments the spread of Hellenism is going to become violent and then has direct implications for how we are to understand the development of Judaism it&amp;#39;s not in your Canon it&amp;#39;s not in your Bible but the book of first Maccabees is an interesting case it&amp;#39;s an entire book built upon what happens to the Jewish people when they rebelled against an imposed force that when it rebels against the forcing of another culture upon them this is a map of the Greek Empire and again you can see its way all the way up in Macedonia you can see its way all the way into the Indus Valley into the into the Hindu Kush mountains and those types of things and it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s very very large you have the city of Alexandria and northern Egypt which becomes a educational hotbed the scholastic Empire if you will of the ancient world so it&amp;#39;s just something to kind of keep in mind Alexander&amp;#39;s the root and Alexander&amp;#39;s roots and everything like that now the Greek Empire is not going to last very long Alexander the Great is only going to be in charge for about a decade he&amp;#39;s gonna do a lot of great things he&amp;#39;s gonna be driven he&amp;#39;s gonna be motivated he&amp;#39;s gonna be obsessed but he&amp;#39;s gonna get sick and he&amp;#39;s gonna die without an heir so before that I think he dies when he&amp;#39;s like 32 or something along those lines or 30 years old or something he dies at a very very young age and he dies and he dies in such a tragic fashion that he actually doesn&amp;#39;t have any kids so what do you do with this world empire what do you do with this world empire in the wake of in the wake of no heirs you can&amp;#39;t give it to his sons so what are you gonna do you&amp;#39;re gonna let your generals fight over it and you&amp;#39;re gonna let your generals shed a lot of blood know one of the things that Alexander does before he dies is he coordinates the division and a gifting of his empire he&amp;#39;s essentially going to divide the Empire amongst his four generals now against his intention this of course produces decades and decades of fighting for biblical studies for Old Testament studies for New Testament studies there are two groups there are two generals that are going to become very very important for what happens there that&amp;#39;s Ptolemais and solutions Ptolemy is going to be gifted Egypt and so lusus is going to be giving Mesopotamia and just as the the promised land has always been the center of fighting whether it&amp;#39;s during the Late Bronze Age whether it&amp;#39;s during the Iron Age that same thing is going to happen this is the Seleucids and the Tala mains are going to collapse or go to collide over and over and over again in Syria Palestine and so the people who have come back from the exile and who have resettled Canaan in ancient Israel in Syria Palestine proper they are going to be once again in the middle of a massive tug of war and so yeah who&amp;#39;d is going to be on Yahoo it is going to be a government by the Greeks they&amp;#39;re gonna be then govern the tommays then are gonna govern bites the Seleucids and this is going to become a constant back-and-forth reality that&amp;#39;s really going to define the intertestamental period as a whole and it sets this interesting stage for judas maccabees and the Hasmonean dynasty and potentially Daniel as well so that&amp;#39;s what we have here that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re dealing with we&amp;#39;re dealing with the rise of the Persian Empire that moves into the Greek Empire and it&amp;#39;s going to present an entirely different kind of flavor for our understanding it&amp;#39;s going to adjust the paradigm of what it means to be God&amp;#39;s people because again I can&amp;#39;t emphasize this enough they no longer had a country to call their own they no longer have a king and so they are struggling particularly during the waning years of the Persian Empire how are we going to define ourselves how are we going to define ourselves as a people and this is going to be carried forward through the Hellenistic period and into the greco-roman period and the way that they&amp;#39;re going to find themselves as a period as a people is not so much by a king is not so much by land but it&amp;#39;s going to be they&amp;#39;re gonna they&amp;#39;re going to be identifying themselves as a people of the book and it&amp;#39;s that movement that is going to feed the rise of the Pharisees it&amp;#39;s gonna feed the ride of the sad the rise of the Sadducees so that when Jesus burst onto the scene he is not merely just fighting with people over what a book says he is fighting with people over what it means to be God&amp;#39;s people

Transcript for:Persian to Hellenistic Periods and the Jewish Experience

Transcript for:
Persian to Hellenistic Periods and the Jewish Experience