Judaism
Ezra and Nehemiah III.3
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 09 August 2005
Abstract
The Root ZR (SR)
A glance at a list of the names of Hebrew monarchs shows no occurrences of ZR or SR except that Uzziah was sometimes also called Azariah. (Remember that written Hebrew had no vowels.) Look though at a list of Assyrian kings and ZR and SR appear often, a reflexion of the name of the national god, SR (Assur). It also appears often in the Babylonian king lists, presumably through Assyrian influence. Yet, the root ZR occurs surprisingly often in certain books of scripture. The Hebrew meaning is given as “help” but this merely justifies it being applied to the priestly class of God’s “helpers”, notably those helping to set up the temple and its new god.
Azur, Ashur or Assur appears (1 Chr 2:24;4:5; Jer 28:1; Ezek 11:1; Neh 10:17), and Sara (Sarah, Sarai) was the wife of Abraham, the mythical first “returner”, Asshur was the grandson of Noah (Gen 10:11,22) but the Asshurim are the descendants of Dedan, Abraham’s grandson (Gen 25:3).
Asher was the eighth son of Jacob by Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid (Gen 30:13). Asher was thus the father of one of the tribes, but little more is said about it in the scriptures, except that it was a large tribe at one time and that they dwelt in prosperity among the Phœnicians (Num 1:22-41). Yet supposedly at the time of David, it had become too insignificant to list. The tribe of Asher meant, to judge by this description, the Assyrians. Asher offered no heroes for Israel. Anna in the New Testament was supposed to have been of the tribe of Aser, proving that she is a fiction for gentile consumption (Lk 2:36-38).
The central example is the name Ezra—“the priest and ready scribe in the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6). Ezra was the son of Seraiah (2 Kings 25:18-21) itself an example of ZR but modified into SR, and grandson of Azariah, another example. Also in his genealogy were another Azariah, a Zerahiah and an Eleazar. Lord Arthur C Hervey, the Rector of Ickworth with Horringer, long ago wrote in William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible that Azariah, a common name of Hebrew priests is “often confounded with Ezra as well as Zerahiah and Seraiah”, but he offers no further comment or explanation. The sounds of Z, TZ, S and SH were either not clearly distinguished in writing, or they varied from place to place, as they still do.
One or other of the Persian kings called Artaxerxes (the X is pronounced KSH) commissioned Ezra to “return” to Yehud with material and money to build a temple. The Persian edict is given in Ezra 7. On arrival he found that previous “returners” had not followed the law of the “God of Heaven” and the “law of the king” and had married out of the religion—forbidden in Zoroastrianism. Ezra made them reject Canaanite wives—wives who were not worshippers of Yehouah. Thirteen years later Ezra again returned to read the full book of Moses to the people at the Feast of Booths. This was the start of Judaism, and ZR featured symbolically when Moses caught his distant sight of the Promised Land.
Now beside this famous Ezra, another Ezra apparently “returned” with the first “returners”, Zerubabel and Joshua (Neh 12:1), and another appears briefly in 1 Chronicles 4:17.
Another form of Ezra is Ezer which appears in names like Ebenezer, and is common in Assyrian names, suggesting that the returners came from Assyria. In the scriptures, Sharezer is an Assyrian prince who murdered his father, Sennacherib, the Assyrian king (2 Kings 19:37; Isa 37:38). (Another Sharezer appears in Zechariah 7:2.) The Assyrians had already profoundly influenced the Persians in the several hundred years they were migrating from the Caucusus to Fars. In this time they were on or within the eastern boundaries of Assyria, and probably served as soldiers in the Assyrian armies. The Persian god, Ahuramazda, came to be depicted much as the Assyrian God, Assur, had been. Ahura seems to be a word related to Ashur via the word “asura”, an Indo-European word for a sun god, perhaps transmitted by the Indo-European Mitanni. The fact that ZR has connotations of fertility also shows it is related to the sun.
That ZR was the name of a god is shown by the appearance of a place in the scriptures called Beth-Zur (Josh 15:58) whose inhabitants helped Nehemiah build the walls of Jerusalem (Neh 3:16)! Beth means “house” but in place names, the only house worthy of mention is that of the local god. So Beth-Zur is “the House of the God Assur”.
Ezer appears twice in Nehemiah, as a priest (Neh 12:42) and as a son of Jeshua (Neh 3:19). Three more instances appear in 1 Chronicles (1 Chr 4:4;7:21;12:9) and one in Genesis (36:21). An Ezri pops up in 1 Chronicles 27:26. The “Chronicler”, of course, stands for the school that wrote the two books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Ezrahites (also called the Zarathites, Zarhites and Izrahites), were a whole family of Ezras whose founding father was Zara (Zarah, Zerah) of the tribe of Yehudim (1 Chr 2:6). Zara was the younger of the twin sons of Judah and Tamar, the other being Perez (Pharez). Judah was born in Haran. The linking of Zara with Perez is plainly not coincidental, because Perez obviously stands for Persian in this context, as does Parosh. Peres means Persian in Daniel 5:28 where it means the Persian empire as successor to the Babylonian empire.
Zarathites are among the “returners” (Neh 11:24), and so are the descendants of Parosh (Ezra 2:3; Neh 7:8) and another such man (Ezra 8:3). A Parosh helped to build the wall (Neh 3:25) and the Paroshes were a family that sealed the covenant with Nehemiah (Neh 10:14). The family Perez proved to be an important group in Judah, being also called the Pharez, linking it directly with the appropriate pronunciation (Fars).
Zerah as it normally appears with its derivatives appears in the story of Esther, a manifestly Persian story that identifies the normal cases of ZR to be from the Persian Period. Zerah is the wife of Haman who advized him to set up a cross to crucify Mordecai but realized, when Mordecai was revealed as a Jew, that Haman would suffer that fate himself.
Zerubabel (Zorobabel in Matthew), conventionally, was the first Persian administrator to return, supposedly in the first year of Cyrus. Nehemiah is declared as Tirshatha (Neh 8:9;10:10), a governor below the rank of Satrap, and the priest is Ezra. Zerubabel must have had this title (Ezra 2:63; Neh 7:65,70) because he was not the priest, who was Jeshua, and yet was plainly in charge, so he was a Persian official and not simply a Jewish volunteer. Jeshua means “saviour” and Cyrus presented himself as the saviour of his conquered peoples, freely giving important appointees among his subjects this title as a reminder to them.
In this story, Zerubabel was not a success because the building work ceased for 16 years, presumably through opposition from the Am ha-Eretz, the native Israelites who were not allowed to participate in setting up the temple—not surprisingly because it was a temple to a god unfamiliar to the natives. Following the criticisms of Haggai and Zechariah the work was resumed and supposedly finished in the sixth year of Darius, about twenty years after the original edict.
There are other Zaras, Zeruahs, Zeruiahs, Zorahs or Zohars as it sometimes becomes (Gen 36:13,17;45:10; 1 Chr 1:37; 4:7,34; 6:31; 25:3,11; Neh 11:29; 1 Sam 9:1;26:6; 1 Kings 11:26). Zorah or Zoreah was the home of the hero Samson, an old sun god demoted to the level of a Jewish hero. It is still called Surah and is near the wadi Surar.
Curiously the word “zar” appears in Hebrew meaning an outsider. To the Am ha-Eretz, that is exactly what the “returners” were. Perhaps they used the “returners” own distinct word as a pejorative reference to them meaning foreigners, but by the time the two opposed groups had integrated a hundred years later, it simply meant a stranger in general.
ZR as a Priestly Title
The place where the Israelites entered the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan river was Zaretan (Josh 3:16), apparently the same place as Zartanah (1 Kg 4:12), Zarthan (1 Kg 7:46), Zaredah or Zeredathah (2 Chr 4:17) and Zerarah (Jg 7:22). Another Persian sounding place was Zereth-Shaher (Josh 3:19), a place near the Dead Sea. Nearby, if it was not the same place, was Zoar where Lot’s family took shelter. It was also noted as the place seen by Moses from Pisgah as a landmark in the Promised Land (Gen 13:10;19:22-23,30; Dt 34:3; Isa 15:5; Jer 48:34). Before it was given this new religious name, it had a previous religious name under the Canaanites, Bela (Baal) or Bel-el. It must have been a Canaanite shrine taken over by the “returners”.
The root ZR is combined in many names with El or Iah (Yeho) as in Azarael (Neh 12:36), a Levite musician, Azareel or Azarel (Ezra 10:41), a son of Bani who rejected his Canaanite wife as Ezra demanded, and the father of a “returner” who was another priest (Neh 11:13). Three others had the same name in Chronicles (1 Chr 12:6;25:18;27:22). Azarael is the same name as Eleazar with the two parts reversed. Azariah is a popular name in the descendants of Eleazar, showing that the original name favoured for the god of the “returners” was El, then it became Yehouah.
Azariah means “Our God is Yehouah”, taking ZR to mean god, from the Assyrian—or more directly, “Assur is Yehouah!” Interestingly, the very name, Israel, can be read in the same way as “Assur is El” or as “Our god is El”. Azariah was a favourite name for priests suggesting it was a priestly title or dynasty. The High Priest, Azariah was the grandson of Zadok. He supposedly officiated at the consecration of Solomon’s temple and was the first High Priest to serve in it. Zadok was the mythical founder priest of Jewish temple worship, and supposed founder of the dynasty of priests.
Azariah was the name of High Priests in the reigns of Abijah and Asa (1 Chr 6:10,11) and Uzziah (2 Chr 26:17-20). Azariah resisted the priestly ambitions of Uzziah (also called Azariah) who was blighted with leprosy for his presumption, a warning by the Persians against any ambitious local princes. An Azariah was High Priest in the time of Hezekiah (2 Chr 31:10-13). His concern was to find room in the temple to store the tithes and offerings made to the priests and Levites. Without them to support their comfortable lifestyle, the implication is that the House of God would be forsaken (Neh 10:35-39).
An Azariah actually accompanied Zerubabel from Mesopotamia (Neh 7:7), but in Ezra 2:2, the same man is called Seraiah, showing the equivalence of these names and Z with S, just as they are in the Babylonian king lists. Another Azariah was a priest who restored part of the wall (Neh 3:23-24), and another was a Levite who, with Ezra, taught the people the law of Moses (Neh 8:7).
Yet more priests were called Azariah. One sealed the covenant with Nehemiah (Neh 10:2) and helped in the dedication of the city wall (Neh 12:33), unless this was yet another one. Another was an Officer of Solomon, (1 Kg 4:5), another a son of Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 21:2), another a captain of Judah in the time of Ataliah (2 Chr 23:1), another a captain of Ephraim in the days of Ahaz who sent back the captives and spoil taken by Pekah in the invasion of Judah.
Abednego in Daniel 1, who refused to countenance idolatry and was thrown into the fiery furnace, was first called Azariah. Another Azariah was a prophet in the time of king Asa. He too was opposed to idolatry and persuaded the people of Judah and Benjamin to reject it and set up an altar to Yehouah before the porch of the temple, perhaps the occasion when the change was made from El to Yehouah because many of the converts were Israelites not apostatizing Jews, and the scale of the festivities was immense (2 Chr 15).
Azriel appears twice as the head of families (1 Chr 5:24;27:19) and also as the father of Seraiah, an officer of Jehoakim (Jer 36:26), showing once more Yehouah supplanting El. Asarael or Asarel and Asharelah or Jesharelah are other variants (1 Chr 4:16; 25:2,14). Several Azrikams appear mainly in Chronicles (1 Chr 3:23;8:38;9:14; 2 Chr 28:7; Neh 11:5). Izri, also called Zeri, is a Levite in the temple (1 Chr 25:11).
Seraiah is a scribe (2 Sam 8:17), a chief priest at Jerusalem (2 Kg 25:18; 1 Chr 6:14; Ezra 7:1; Jer 52:24), a priest who “returned” with Zerubabel (Ezra 2:2; Neh 10:2;12:1,12), also called Azariah (Neh 7:7), the “ruler of the House of God” after the “return” (Neh 11:11), a messenger of Jeremiah (Jer 51:59-61), and lesser known ones appear often (2 Kg 25:23; Jer 36:26;40:8; 1 Chr 4:13-14; 4:35). Sered also occurs (Gen 46:14; Num 26:26).
Baal-Perazim was supposedly named by David when he defeated the Philistines and burnt their idols. So, here the true god is called Baal. Perazim means Persians so the rededicated shrine is to the “Lord of the Persians”! The Lord of the Persians in heaven was the God of Heaven, Ahuramazda, and the Lord of the Persians on earth was the Shahanshah, the King of Kings. Angels are considered to be a Persian idea originally and the name of one of the types of angels is Seraphim!
Sherai and Shashai were sons of Bani in Ezra 10:40, and Bani is another Assyrian name, appearing in the king lists. Sherebiah was another Levite among the “returners” with Ezra who taught the new law to the people and sealed the covenant (Ezra 8:18,24; Neh 8:7;9:4-5;10:12;12:8,24).
Sur was the name of a gate in Jerusalem called “the Gate of the Foundation” suggesting it was associated with the beginnings of the temple and its cult by the “returners” (2 Kg 11:6; 2 Chr 23:5)
Several words appear like Jezreel, often taken as an alternative form of Israel, and Joash, a name that cannot be interpreted, is probably an abbreviated form of Joasher (“Yehouah is Assur”).
A case of ZR that seems not to come from the same immediate source as the others is the Zerah whose army of a million(!) men was defeated by king Asa. Zirrah is a known title of the Sabaean Arab princes and this prince seems likely to have been an Arab.
Moses as the Mythologized Ezra
Moses is a mythologised Ezra. The myth of his birth makes him an Hebrew but everything else shows he is Egyptian. Of course Ezra was not an Egyptian, the Egyptian phase of the myth being built to take Ezra away from his true origins, when the Jews were part of the Greek Ptolemaic empire of Egypt. He was described as growing up skilled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Ex 2:5-10). The point is that he was not a Hebrew at the root of the myth.
He married a Midianite woman. No one is sure whether the mysterious Midianites ever existed, althouh no biblicist will let on. Midianites are mentioned nowhere outside the bible. Assyrian sources say Tiglath-pileser III made one of the Arab tribes near Egypt, the Idib’el tribe, the official “Guardians of the Gates of Egypt”, and among these Arab tribes was one called the Meonites, not the Midianites. No one knows if they are the same. Moreover, Moses married the daughter, Zipporah, of a Midianite priest, variously called Jethro, Jether, Reuel and Hobab. The unknown people called Midianites are always presented as being Bedouin—transhumant or nomadic Arabs—but the unsettled Bedouin never had priests.
Midianites are most likely the bible’s mythologising of the Medes, and therefore the Persians. Moses lived with the Midianites before he became the saviour of the Hebrews. He was a Midianite—a Persian—so his wisdom was really Persian wisdom. The Midianites, if they were really the Persians, certainly did have priests. Moreover, the priest was a slave of the true God, none other, one presumes, than Yehouah Himself. The Persians sent Ezra to set up the religion of the true God Ahuramazda in Yehud, but under the local name Yehouah. So Ezra as Moses did fit these criteria, and no doubt had a Persian wife, who was a member of the same priestly caste as himself—the Magi.
What was the point of having Moses born as an Israelite boy, then adopted by an Egyptian princess, then made to run away from Egypt so that he returned as if he were a Midianite? The answer is that Moses was Ezra and was known to be a Mede (Persian), but the Ptolemies wanted to make him into an Egyptian. They could not just ditch the story about Ezra that had been passed down for 150 years, because it was too well known, so they did what revisers of myths always do. They say the whole story is not known. It has not been told. Then they tell the new story, but it must encompass enough of the old one to be convincing. So, Moses ceased to be a Mede and instead became a Midianite—a silly but simple error—and it was as a Midianite that he received his commission from God to save the Israelites. He received his commission from a burning bush, and the Persians were fire worshippers.
God, having given Moses the commission then tries to kill him and only Zipporah’s quick thinking saves him. She circumcises her young son and smears Moses with the blood, and God’s anger is appeased. It seems that someone had noticed that Ezra, as a Mede or Persian, could not have been circumcised, and this incident was to have him bloodied by his son’s blood to serve as it. Of course, Egyptians were circumcised, but the point for Jews was not the act of circumcising, but doing it as a symbol of the covenant with God, so even if Moses had been circumcised as an Egyptian noble, as it seems he must have been, it did not suffice, and his son’s covenant blood had to do for Moses.
The name Ahura Mazda of the Persian god had been divided, partly by ignorance and partly by deliberate intent of the mythologizers. They had invented two people Aaron and Moses, who turn out to be brothers, though separated at birth and brought up quite differently. Again, it is the ruse of telling people that they were mistaken to think Ahura Mazda was one, but it was just because they had misunderstood the proper story. It turns out that God has chosen Moses even though he is tongue tied and cannot speak well enough to persuade anyone. Sop Aaron serves as his mouthpiece. Here is the mythologising of the incident in Ezra when the Persian priests reads out the law to the uncomprehending people. They are uncomprehending because Ezra is not speaking in the local lingo, and has translators to explain what he is saying. The explanatory myth was not that Moses was foreign, but that he had a stutter or some defect of speech that required his words to be translated.
Moses is described as the most “meek” man there could be, but the word means less “mild” than “determined” but “disinterested”, as an official of a foreign power given a task would be. He would get on with it with all determination, but without seeming concerned at all in the matters in hand. ezra was a good and efficient civil servant. Striking water from a rock was a Zoroastrian miracle, attributed here to Moses.
The name of the law that Moses carried down from his meeting with God was the Torah, and means more than law but rather the teaching of the law, as well as the letter of it. Torah is a neologism in Hebrew, the word being one brought in with the law when Ezra brought it. It is a mishearing by the people hearing the “law of Ahuramazda”—where the Persian word for law (“dat”) is carried over into Hebrew—being spoken of in a foreign tongue with which they were not familiar, and part of which had no translation anyway, namely the name of the Persian God. So, they heard “dat Ahura Mazda” as if it were “torah Moisha”, the Persian consonant “d” virtually lisped or softened into an “h”.
Finally, Moses never was admitted to the land of plenty, and his grave was never known. That is how Ezra must have been. He was a Persian priest and minister, and having delivered the law and inaugurated the temple, he will have returned to Susa or Babylon. He was, of course, one of the Magi, and Moses was one of the Levites. The Levites were the caste of the Magi transliterated into Yehud. It is as a Magian that the allegation of magic was passed to him in his mythival disguise as Moses. Moses had the reputation of being a Magician. Magian is meant, though the root meaning of both is the same, from “magus”.
