Judaism
Ezra and Nehemiah I.1
Abstract
If Moses had not preceded him, Ezra would have been worthy to bring Torah into the world.b Sanh 21b
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, February 26, 2001
Abstract
Ezra and Nehemiah
In the modern bible, Ezra and Nehemiah are presented as two separate books. Quite why is anybody’s guess because they are only a single book as everyone interested knows. Doubtless clerics will tell us it is tradition, but it is more likely to be dishonesty intended to fool religious innocents, because this is the key to the foundation of Judaism, and the clerics prefer it to be confused to keep their flocks confused. To make sure it is thoroughly confused and that no one can understand what is happening, even if they can be bothered to read it, the book has also been mixed up!
These two books together with the two books of Chronicles—also just one book really—are an attempt at a complete history of the Jews from Adam to the time it was written, seemingly the fifth century BC. The original material comprising it was written in the Persian period, but it was edited after the end of the 200 years of Persian rule rather than near its beginning as it pretends. 2 Chronicles ends with the same verses as the beginning of Ezra seemingly showing that they were part of the same work. Yet Ezra and Nehemiah was admitted into the Jewish canon before Chronicles, which is the last book in it, having been accepted last. They certainly seem to have been redacted by people with a similar outlook, but the connexion by repeating verses seems an obvious trick, so there might be no link other than through a school of editors.
John C H How, who was a scholar of Trinity College Cambridge, tells us that Ezra-Nehemiah is of great importance because it covers the years 537 BC to almost 300 BC, when “the real foundation of Judaism with its rigid exclusivism and its intense devotion to the Law of Moses were laid”. The genealogies at the end take us to Jaddua who was a High Priest only a few decades before Alexander conquered Persia. In fact, the events in Ezra-Nehemiah mainly take place in a 30 year period in the reigns of Artaxerxes I and Darius II, but How is right that this is the foundation of Judaism.
L E Browne, in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, has no doubt that the work of the priestly school called “The Chronicler” that wrote these books displays the same outlook as that of the authors of the Priestly Code (P) of Genesis. Elements of P are found in Ezra-Nehemiah but they are interpolations. The law that the book is concerned with is Deuteronomy. The emphasis of the Priestly Code on the priesthood, temple worship and on the paraphernalia of it, that plainly took a good length of time to evolve after Ezra and Nehemiah founded Judaism, puts P late, in Ptolemaic or Maccabaean times. 2 Maccabees 2:17 says what the Maccabees were up to:
God… delivered all his people and gave them all an heritage, and the kingdom, and the priesthood and the sanctuary…
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah are full of genealogies and this fondness for them, and more particularly the inclination to compile them and invent what was not known, was a habit of men of leisure—the temple priesthood of a much later time, again the time of the Ptolemies or the Maccabees—intent on giving an antiquity to their own profession and to the Jewish nation as a whole that had in reality just been founded. M E Meeker, studying Semitic tribes in Arabia, has shown that tribal genealogies reflected ideological beliefs not actual historical lines.
The early part of Chronicles is written as a genealogy to get the reader quickly to the time of David when the author wants to begin the tale proper. That is because the Hasmonaean scribes were intent on legitimizing the reign of the Hasmonaeans by showing that they were simply re-establishing the kingdom of David of old. There had been no kingdom of David, of course—they made it up as an ancient reflexion of the Hasmonaean kingdom!
Ezra-Nehemiah consists of three main parts based on content and style:
- Ezra 1-6, a history from the first year of Cyrus to the sixth year of Darius.
- Ezra 7-10, the story of Ezra told in a different style.
- Nehemiah, the story of Nehemiah.
1 Esdras
Unlike the Pentateuch that has to be analysed purely from its internal clues, Ezra-Nehemiah has an extra external source to help—1 Esdras, a book included in the Apocrypha. This Greek version of the combined Ezra-Nehemiah shows some of the redactional activity that has led to the two separate versions we now have. These revisions are from the mid-second century BC when the Jewish scriptures were compiled from what remained after the civil war, as 2 Maccabees 2:13-14 declares. It offers an acceptable explanation for the chronological mix up of the books, though it is hard to understand why those who were supposedly so familiar with them did not notice the blunders.
So, what we seem to have are two different attempts to put together the fragments of the works that remained or could be remembered. Neither is correct. The authors had forgotten the order of the Persian kings, just as the author of Daniel, writing at about the same time had. It shows that what we have today is not genuinely from the Persian period.
Curiously 1 Esdras does not mention Nehemiah. It might be a deliberate intention to ignore the Persian administrator in favour of the supposed Jewish priest, Ezra, but since 1 Esdras ends with the same Greek words as Nehemiah 8:13, words absent in the Hebrew texts, Nehemiah might have been meant to follow 1 Esdras, which is therefore itself incomplete. Whole sections of 1 Esdras can be seen in different parts of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The leader of the first “returners”, Zerubabel, was considered the messiah by Haggai and Zechariah who made him the grandson of Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) a man who went into captivity in 597 BC. Joshua, Zerubabel’s companion, is the son of Jehozadak, the High Priest in 587 BC who is also the son of Seraiah, the father of Ezra (Ezra 7:1-5, 1 Chr 6:14-15). Ezra then is the brother of the High Priest of 587 BC and the uncle of Joshua who returned about 520 BC, while he himself returned in 458 BC at the earliest. Doubtless Jews and Christians will see the hand of God in these miraculous relationships, but it really shows that whoever made up the chronologies had no clear idea of the times involved.
They had the idea that most of the people “returned” together just a few years after Cyrus issued his decree. The lists of “returners” in Ezra 2:1-67 and in Nehemiah 7:6-69 are essentially the same, but they purport to be the first “returners” under Sheshbazzar in Ezra and the contemporary “returners” in Nehemiah. They thought Seraiah and Jehozadak could have had children in captivity who returned about 536 BC, and had no idea that Ezra was returning much later still.
Bits of Ezra are in Aramaic (Ezra 5:1-6:18; Ezra 4:5; Ezra 4:6-23; Ezra 7:12-26) suggesting that an Aramaic book was a source of the original, or an attempt to imply that it was. All four bits of Aramaic refer to the actions of Persian kings in respect of the Jews, so seem to be a hint of genuine chancellery archive. Perhaps they were, but were destroyed when Nehemiah’s library was scattered, and all we have are later imperfect reconstructions. Or, perhaps, they were composed deliberately to give a false impression. Whether fraudulent or a sincere attempt at restoration of something lost, they are not genuine now.
Some scholars question the truth of these bits of Jewish history, and indeed, it is questionable whether the policy was implemented by Cyrus or by Darius. In the interest of creating a history for his colony, Darius might have applied the decree of Cyrus to the colonists who had no idea originally that it applied to them because, in truth, they were being deported. Evidence of this is that 1 Esdras has Darius where Ezra has Cyrus.
M Dandamaev and A Lukanin (The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran) state that there are “no grounds for speaking of a special benevolence toward Judaism on the part of the Persian king”. The supposed benevolence of the Persian kings to Judaism depends purely on the bible itself. The Persians have been considered as benevolent to the cults within the empire, the Cyrus Cylinder being an oft-cited example of this generosity. Yet what seems to be benevolence in these propagandist works actually was carefully calculated to give political advantage, as Amelie Kuhrt has shown for the Cyrus Cylinder itself.
Cyrus drew upon the form of Mesopotamian building texts to show himself as a pious monarch dedicated to restoring cults neglected and damaged by Nabonidus. He authorized the restoration of privileges to temples in Babylonia and Assyria. Kuhrt says he did it to restore the religious status quo ante to gain support from these areas and their priesthoods. The kings sought the favour of populations to give no basis for revolution, and they wanted a reliable and trusted organization for the collection of taxes. So whatever altruism the kings seemed to offer would be multiply repaid by a grateful people.
But the Persians destroyed the temples of people who resisted their power. Darius I destroyed the temple at Didyma involved in the Ionian revolt (Herodotus 6.18-20). The leaders of the temple in Elephantine claimed that by the power of Cambyses, “all the temples of the gods of Egypt were overthrown”.
Some say the story of the generosity of Cyrus was based on the stories of Hezekiah and Josiah. Yet no one knows anything about the domestic acts of these kings except what the bible tells us. The Deuteronomic history was written after Ezra and so the acts of the older kings were probably based on the acts of Artaxerxes, rather than the reverse. The objective of the history was to depict the Jews in the past as having been an apostate and ungrateful people who deserved God’s punishment because of their wickedness. This sort of propaganda suited the rulers, the Persians, rather than the Jews themselves, so their source ought to be evident.
The Book Restored
C C Torrey has, in careful research, that few would question, convincingly restored the correct order of the original work as:
- Ezra 1. Edict of Cyrus; Sheshbazzar brings the temple treasure.
- 1 Esdras 4:47-56; 62-5:6. Darius approves Zerubabel to return.
- Ezra 2:1-4:5. Zerubabel returns and begins the work opposed by adversaries.
- Ezra 5-6. A letter is sent to Darius and the decree of Cyrus found; the temple is built and dedicated on the 3rd of the twelfth month in the sixth year of Darius.
- Ezra 4:6. An objection is raised in the time of Xerxes.
- Ezra 7-8. In the 7th year of Artaxerxes, Ezra comes to Jerusalem with a letter of authority from the king and men gathered on route.
- Nehemiah 7:70-8. In the seventh month Ezra read the law and introduced the festival of booths.
- Ezra 9-10. Ezra stops mixed marriages.
- Nehemiah 9-10. Mixing ceases on the 24th; the author gives Ezra a long composed speech; a covenant is sealed by Nehemiah and others; spearation is again confirmed and a pledge to give a third of a shekel followed by an added justification of it.
- Ezra 4:6-23. Adversaries demand a letter to Artaxerxes and he stops any further work on the walls until the time of Darius.
- Nehemiah 1-7:69. In the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah comes as governor and repairs the walls of Jerusalem against opposition; he implements social and economic reform.
- Nehemiah 11-13. Lists of people are followed by a retrospective look by Nehemiah at his second tour of duty during which the walls were dedicated, apparently in the reign of Darius II.
The reordering assumes that the correct sequence of Persian kings was known in the original, but had been forgotten by the time attempts were made to reconstruct it by the Jewish priests after the war, but the logic of the unfolding story also confirms this order. A confusion is apparent immediately and that is that there seem to be two Dariuses in the unfolding tale. Usually the references to Darius II are assumed to be anachronistic references to Darius I. In fact the Darius referred to could be Darius II Nothus. Sir H Howorth, a century ago vigorously argued this was the case, but needless to say believers were no more interested then in scholarship than they are now, but only apologetics.
Sara Japhet of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, notes in Second Temple Studies II that the Persian emperors are mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah, as it stands, in close to the right order, allowing for three Dariuses and two Artaxerxes who are not distinguished. The Darius of Ezra 4:5 is Darius I, that of Ezra 4:24 is Darius II while that of Nehemiah 12:22 is Darius III. The Artaxerxes of Ezra 4:7ff is Artaxerxes I while that of Ezra 7:1 is Artaxerxes II. In Ezra 1-6, the order of kings is Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus (Xerxes), Artaxerxes, Darius, the latter being Darius II, and the story looks straightforward. This passage almost says it all:
And they built, and finished, according to the commandment of the God of Israel and according to the command of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes the king of Persia. And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.Ezra 6:14-15 Lit
Cyrus allows the temple to be rebuilt, some people return and begin (538 BC) but there is opposition and the work is interrupted for the reigns of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, until it is resumed in the second year of Darius II and completed in his sixth year (418 BC). It suggests that the chronology and therefore the order of the books is correct.
Taking the order and chronology to continue true, the return of Ezra and Nehemiah is in the reign of Artaxerxes II, and the last king of Persia, Darius III is mentioned in Nehemiah 12:22. The greatest problem with such a simple and uncluttered scheme is that Nehemiah could hardly have been as late as the twentieth year of Artaxerxes II (384 BC) and fit in with the Elephantine papyri which are about thirty years earlier and already look to an established temple in Jerusalem.
The conventional idea that Nehemiah returned in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I looks hard to refute but, to minimize arbitrary changes in order, would mean that Ezra returned in year seven of the same king. The whole reconstructed composition is curious in the way that it puts Ezra ahead of Nehemiah when the internal clues are that Ezra’s reforms presuppose Nehemiah’s:
- In Ezra 9:9, the walls of Jerusalem were already built, so Nehemiah went before Ezra to build them (or they must, as his story perhaps implies, have been knocked over again in the meantime).
- Jerusalem is derelict in Nehemiah (Neh 7:4; 11:1-2) but is healthily populated in Ezra (Ezra 10:1,13). (Had it been sacked again by Megabyxos or the Egyptians, or were the two restorers in the wrong order?)
We take the two men to be discussed in the wrong order, the Chronicler not knowing what the order was and choosing to put Ezra, the most important, because the most senior, first. The two facts noted that might explain the biblical order does not stop the reverse. Jerusalem might have been restored to some degree and populated in the time of Darius the Great, but was later sacked in the troubled time at the start of the reign of Artaxerxes. Other evidence for the reversal of the biblical order is given in the section on Ezra.
By taking Ezra to return in the seventh year of Darius specifically to inaugurate the city walls and the temple, and to deliver the law, the problems of chronology are minimized with only the assumption that an editor tried to correct what he thought was an error—that year seven of Darius (I) was impossible and it must have meant year seven of Artaxerxes, because Nehemiah and Ezra were contemporaries.
Initial Considerations
Jeremiah 25:12; 29:10 says the exile would last seventy years—a lifetime—meaning that no one who returned would remember the country and its temple as it was. The exile would be longer than anyone could remember. No one could remember either, but that was because they had never been exiled in the first place—they were being deported to Yehud but the propaganda was they had no memory of being exiled initially because it was over a lifetime ago.
Cyrus had issued a general decree that people could return to their homes, but it was a cover for deporting colonists, just as the Assyrians and Babylonians had done. Cyrus was simply cleverer about it. There are few historians today, as opposed to theologians, who cannot see the declarations of Cyrus as propaganda. On the Babylonian cylinder seals Cyrus was the chosen king of Marduk, the Babylonian god. On the clay tablets of Nippur, Cyrus was the chosen king of the local god Sin. In the Jewish scriptures, Cyrus was the chosen king of the local god Yehouah. Cyrus proclaimed himself as the king chosen by the god of each nation. Curiously, ANET records that Cyrus ordered “as far as Ashur and Susa, Agade, Eshunna, the towns Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der as well as the regions of the Gutians, I… established for me permanent sanctuaries”. Nothing is mentioned of a permanent sanctuary at Jerusalem.
The bible is clear that, despite any decree, no Jews did “return”. Haggai and Zechariah highlight the failure of Jews to return, but their purpose will have been to justify the forcible colonization that was to follow. W K Lowther Clarke, in the Concise Bible Commentary, admits that few took advantage of Cyrus’s edict, but the ones who did enforced their “policy on the apathetic ’people of the land.’” Racist? Since the “returners” were so few, these “apathetic” people must ultimately have provided the main body of the ancestry of modern Jews. As thick as two short planks, Lowther Clarke tells us:
There was no deliberate settlement of foreigners, as in North Israel after 721.
He has to say this because the integrity of the bible depends upon the ethnic group called in it the Israelites being continuous from Abraham to the time of Jesus. To admit that the people who “returned” were not the people who went rather spoils the picture.
In Ezra 8:36,
And they delivered the king’s commissions unto the king’s lieutenants, and to the governors on this side the river, and they furthered the people, and the house of God”,
Ezra’s orders are delivered to the “satraps and governors of Abaranahara”, the correct translation. How many satraps were there in Yehud? The whole of Abarnahara was one satrapy. Perhaps this is a simple infelicity or an exaggeration to magnify Judah, but it gels better with Ezra being sent to inaugurate a temple for the whole of Abarnahara, not just to Judah itself.
The insertion from 1 Esdras makes it clear that the Jerusalem temple was meant to be the temple of the whole of Abarnahara not just a small part of it—it really was the temple of the Hebrews, the population of Abarnahara, not merely the Jews. Syrians, Phœnicians and Canaanites had to help financially in building and maintaining the temple in its period of inception. The sums required were substantial—20 talents a year for building, 10 talents a year for sacrifices and unspecified support for the colonists is commanded, proving that they were privileged. The privileged class of people called Jews were divided into several castes whose duty was to mind the temple, and who had been given a small state of their own, rather akin to the Vatican. This province, Yehud, was obviously carved out of the Arab state of Idumaea (Edom) leading to a long lasting hatred between Jews and Idumaeans.
The myth is that they went up on the first day of the year in the second year of Darius (or Cyrus), presumably meaning that the new state was declared on that day, making the Persian New Year a famous day to remember in Jewish history.
Ezra 2:1-67 gives the list of 42,000 returned exiles, pretending that they all returned at once.
From the first day of the seventh month, the altar was consecrated, but nothing else seems to have been done and the foundation, supposedly laid by Sheshbazzar, had to be laid again. Sheshbazzar is unlikely to be Zerubabel unless it is a title or nickname, but both names are not Jewish but Persian. 1 Esdras says the foundation was laid at the new moon of the second month of the second year of the new colony. This concern with lunar associations suggests that the colonists considered Yehouah as the god Sin. Some people were weeping. It was not from joy but because they realized they were being enslaved (the Jews called themselves “the Captivity”) by a new ruling class with a different god from their own, even if it had the same name. Not surprisingly we hear immediately (Ezra 4:1-5) that hatred between the Jews and the Samarians had begun.
