As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.

Returners or Colonists? 2

The Second Temple
Nehemiah the Fire Priest
Question from Al H

Abstract

The “return” could have been simple. Judah was not virgin land but belonged to the Persian king, and was doled out only on his orders. Those who “returned” were made to go. The need for it was likely to have been the Egyptian rebellion of the fifth century, and that of Megabyxos following it. The Jews were probably involved in them. The Persians decided to set up a new ruling class over them and deported them in. Yehud would be a buffer state against Egypt, and the colonists, called Jews, rewarded by being treasurers of Abarnahara. The temple and city, ravaged in the rebellions, had to be rebuilt. The chief minister of the Persian chancellery, Ezra, was sent to open the temple and city in about 417 BC in the reign of Darius II. Two centuries later, the biblical author thought there was only one Darius, the great one. Though obviously wrong, no one questions sacred texts!

The Second Temple

In 1 Kings 6:2, the first temple is given as 60 cubits long, 20 wide and 30 high, about 90 x 30 x 45, in feet. Cyrus apparently declared that the temple would be 60 cubits wide and 60 cubits high, but he forgot to say how long it was. If its length was the same as the first temple then the building was a 90 foot cube—quite a striking structure, one might think, but not striking enough for anyone in the scriptures to remark upon. It looks suspicious.

The most complete description of the second temple, also suspiciously, occurs in the supposed edict of Cyrus (Ezra 6:3-4), inclining the critical reader to think that the edict has been recast at a later date to highlight the temple. Persians at the time of Cyrus had no temples, other than possibly a few for keeping the sacred fire, and most worship was outdoors on grassy plains or bare hill tops. There is a largely hidden struggle in the scriptures between people who worshipped in “high places” and those who wanted a sanctuary. Those who worshipped in high places were identified as worshippers of Baal, but underlying this rationalization (or slander) might have been a dispute between those in the hill country who wanted al fresco Persian style worship and those who preferred enclosed Canaanite style worship—in a temple. The latter won.

Even if there had been a Solomon’s temple, it is quite likely that the site was not merely ruined but cleared. If there had never been a Solomon’s temple, but instead a high place (bamah) then no ruins would have been present merely a parched and well trodden hilltop, with an altar. The word translated “waste” and “ruins” (Hag 1:4,9) strictly means “dry” or “desolate” or “desert”. By extension it is read as “ruins”. The punning reference to the temple site in Haggai 1:10-11, is to barrenness from dryness and drought. The mountain upon which the temple was built was called “Horeb”, meaning “a dry place” but translated as ruins from the expectation of the translators that a previous temple had stood there. By one of those curiosities that God has chosen to dot all over his sacred works, the Akkadian for “dry” is “shalmu”, a word cognate with Solomon! Moreover, the mention of “ceiled” houses (Hag 1:4) might mean that God’s original “house” had no ceiling because it was an al fresco temple.

Though there is supposed to be no temple in Haggai, priests and Levites are being supported by tithes, sacrifices being offered and prayers said. If there was no built temple, all of this must have been done outdoors in the Persian fashion, at an altar under the sky. The story that the initial returners at the time of Cyrus set up an altar, with no mention of a temple (Ezra 3:2-3), suggests that here was a Persian style of temple—simply an altar open to the elements. This Persian “high place” type of sanctuary seems to have lasted for a hundred years. The acceptance of a demand for an enclosed temple points to the second—Babylonian—Darius, not the earlier—Persian one—as king. The second Darius, much more influenced by Babylonian practice than Persian, is more likely to have agreed to a built temple.

It seems a local governor allowed the local people to raise an altar on the dry hilltop overlooking Jerusalem, apparently a traditional Canaanite High Place. Thereafter nothing further significant happened for a hundred years, although groups of colonists were sent in by the Persians. If raising a temple was a part of their brief, it was not an important part, because they did not do it. In the mid-fifth century, the local people possibly showed too much favour to the Egyptians in a revolt, or perhaps it was Megabyxos that they favoured.

The Persian kings therefore decided to set up a temple state run by more determined or more pressurized colonists deported into the country and charged with the duty of raising revenue from Abarnahara for the shahansha, and defending a line of fortresses set up against Egypt. To do this they had to use the local Canaanites as labour and therefore had to persuade them that it was in their own interest to give support—support in the donkey work, but no input in the designing and building. The colonists were elements of the ruling classes of some other conquered and troublesome people, and were able but precarious in their elite situation.

The only identifiable references to the “second” temple in the scriptures are those of Zechariah and Haggai. There are detailed accounts in the scriptures of the Mosaic holy dwelling place of God, the temple of Solomon and the visionary temple of Ezekiel, but there is no description of the second temple, other than scraps that can be found by diligent reading, and these, unsurprisingly, are not too revealing. No mention of Solomon in Haggai, nor in Zechariah nor in Ezra, except in the genealogies that were added later, even suggest this was a second temple, and the solitary mention in Nehemiah, other than in genealogies, looks interpolated. Christians commentators talk without a blush about the second temple, and never seem to wonder about the peculiarity of its uncommonness in the text.

Elsewhere in the prophets, Yehouah lives in his “Holy Mountain” (Obad 16; Zeph 3:11; Joel 3:17; Isa 65:11,75). Isaiah mentions the “courts of my sanctuary” (Isa 62:9). The vision of Isaiah 6 is typical of romanticized visions of God in his abode, but might be based on sight of the interior of a temple. Jeremiah mentions the “chambers” of the house of Yehouah (Jer 35:2), and Baruch reads the scroll to the people in a temple “chamber”. Not a lot of information to work on about the second temple.

The local Israelites were utterly sullen and unco-operative, indeed disruptive and distraught when the temple was opened. Zechariah 4:6-10 describes a foundation laying ritual closely similar to the Mesopotamian Kalu festival, but, in Haggai 2:3 and Ezra 3:12, there are plenty of people who are not happy at the building of the foundation, excused as the tears of joy of those who could still remember the temple before it was destroyed.

But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy.

Remember this is a minimum of 70 years after the temple was destroyed, even by the bible’s own sequence of things, so these weeping old men were indeed ancient. In fact, it was another 100 years after that and the people were not weeping out of joy. It was despair that the future was more oppression for the native people of Yehud.

The locals had shown some interest in the new project at first, since the god to be honoured was, on the face of it, one of their own gods, but they had not seemed inclined to build much for him themselves, until the new Persian endeavour began. If they had really been waiting for a sign that Yehouah’s wrath was over, then the defeat of the Babylonians and Cyrus’s apparently liberal edicts ought to have been sufficient. They did not jump at the opportunity until someone else—the colonists sent in by the administration—began to build. Then they took their cue.

It will have needed all the prophetic propaganda that the Persian colonists could muster. The building of the temple was an eschatological act, it was to be accompanied by the submission of the nations to the king Yehouah, meaning the other nations of Abarnahara—the Hebrew nations. Yehouah was the “king” of these nations as well as the Jews. If the Canaanites were waiting for Yehouah to first announce himself as king before they built any temple to Him, then the propaganda of Haggai and Zechariah was to disillusion them. The building of the temple had to precede any kingship of Yehouah!

The accounts of the building of the first temple and the ceremonies associated with them have to be seen in the reverse way of convention. Conventionally, the bible is a true chronology. It is not. The similarities of the descriptions of the building and dedication of the second temple are seen as deliberate literary reflexions of the ancient original events in the ancient history of the Israelites in the United Monarchy. If there never was a united monarchy, all of this history is false. In fact, the mythical histories of the Deuteronomic Historian and the Chronicler are retrojected elaborations of the dedication of the so-called “second” temple. The second temple is the first temple of Yehouah, and the so-called first temple is a mythologized excuse for the second temple.

And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of Yehouah, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise Yehouah, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto Yehouah; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised Yehouah, because the foundation of the house of Yehouah was laid.
Ezra 3:10-12

And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course: Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets). It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking Yehouah; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised Yehouah, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of Yehouah; So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of Yehouah had filled the house of God.
2 Chr 5:11-14

These descriptions purport to be of different events 500 years apart in time! The authors can only have known the regalia and ceremonial of the temple of the time when they lived—the “second” temple!

There is widespread agreement that the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt under Achaemenid auspices, and some would even say it was mandated by the Persians.
Ehud Ben Zvi

Among the “some” is J Blenkinsopp whose belief is that the Persians were responsible for the foundation of the temple. They were therefore responsible for founding Judaism. There should be no doubt about this. The project could not have been undertaken without Persian preparation and planning, even transporting in a large numbner of colonists to undertake and complete it. The bible makes no bones about it, although biblicists, enchanted by Moses or Jesus never get as far as reading Ezra and Nehemiah. Although the Achaemenids were known to have restored temples in other countries they had conquered, it had the political purpose of strengthening the local nobility, and ensured that local rulers were dependant, obedient and loyal to the shahanshah in return. Bill Gates gives free PCs to the schools. He does not give them a donation in cash to spend on Apple Macs! Altruistic acts are rarely as selfless as they look, and the Persian kings did not restore temples for charity’s sake. The god worshipped in the temple and his priests acknowledged the Persian king as his Khalif on earth—no less than the god himself acting through his appointed or his anointed human being.

Nehemiah the Fire Priest

According to 2 Maccabees 1:18, Nehemiah was a more influential man than even Nehemiah’s own book says he was. He rebuilt the temple, the altar and offered sacrifices, and even brought the fire, that the priests had secretly preserved from Solomon’s temple, back from its hiding place in the captivity! If this seems remarkable to you, it is. The worship of fire is a characteristic of Persian religion and when a sacred flame was brought back from Persia, supposedly preserved from an earlier Israelite flame, then there is good reason to smell a rat. Aryan herdsmen on the steppes preferred to keep their flames permanently lit because it was a tedious business lighting one afresh. The “thick water” that allowed the sacred flame to be ignited by a miracle (2 Macc 1:20-22) is obviously oil, of which there is no small amount around Babylon, and the story gave us words like naphthalene.

Nehemiah prays to God, calling him the “only and gracious king”. He thanks God for saving Israel from all trouble and for choosing the fathers and sanctifying them. The references are all to the acts of the Persian king in sending the colonists to Israel. All Jews and Christians will doubtless read “the fathers” as Abraham and his sons but they are obviously the colonists who were literally—like the men on the Mayflower—the founding fathers of Judaism.

The story in 2 Maccabees finishes with a common biblical trick, which is to attribute the holiness of something backward in time to the thing revered in Judaism. It is an aetiological explanation of a holy place in Persia where the sacred flame of the Jerusalem temple had been secretly kept. In fact, of course, the sacred flame of the Jerusalem altar was brought from a more original sacred flame kept burning somewhere in Persia. Thus was Jerusalem made the center of the world. The first temple for this flame, at least, was some temple in Persia.

It is the Achaemenid king who is the true founder of the temple not David. Ezra lists four of them (Ezra 6:14-15), Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes and Darius again, but scarcely a single commentator has deduced from this sequence that the second Darius cannot have been the first one, as they all assume. The sixth year of Darius II is meant. If David founded the temple, then David is a clumsy approximation for the name of the Persian king, Daryavahu.

The Samarians were the Canaanites of the northern hills. They had not been deported by the Babylonians and so could not have “returned”. They were not Israel even though Israel is the place where they lived. They had not been allowed any say in how the temple project was undertaken, but they could join Israel by accepting the colonists’ way of doing things. Many actually did and proof occurs in the Apocryphal books. Tobit is about an exiled Samarian of the tribe of Naphthali who attended Jerusalem for all its festivals and sent the appropriate tithes. Judith also describes a Samarian Jew. Coins, bullae and papyri show that in Persian times many Samarians worshipped Yehouah, and the Elephantine priests saw Samaria as just as important a place to seek help as Jerusalem. Curiously, the iconography of the bullae and coins, comprehensively described in the 90s, are Hellenized, even at such an early date, as they are too in Yehud, suggesting the possibility that there were Greeks among the colonists sent by the Persians into Abarnahara.

The Samaritan Pentateuch seemed not to differ from the Jewish one at this time, perhaps because they were little more than Deuteronomy. The scriptures of Samaritans and Jews seemed not to vary until the time of Hyrcanus who oppressed the Samaritans. They had chosen Gerizim as the site of their own temple, apparently being more orthodox than the Jerusalem Yehouists (Dt 11:29; 27:12; Josh 8:33).

These are fossils of the first colonists in Yehud who had not been directed to centralize worship in Jerusalem, and possibly did not even agree on whether El of Yehouah should have been designated as Ahuramazda. By the time Greek influence was pushing out the original Persian from the temple, it was the Samarians who had become defensive of the Persian traditions, aided apparently by the Essenes. Both rejected the Hellenized Sadducees.

By this stage the Samarians decided to reject the polemic against them in the scriptures and so rejected the Prophets and the Writings which were too propagandistic. Samarian coins bearing the name Jeroboam are found from the fourth century BC. It is a hint of when the fiction of the early Samarian king, Jeroboam, might have been written. It also suggests that some of this history might have begun as parody and been written up as serious history by someone without a sense of humour, or too far later on for them to understand the satirical allusions.

Ben Zvi points out that:

Even the most drastic reforms were presented as supported by tradition, and—because reforms break the actual continuity with the past—as a restoration of the “traditional” (often invented by the reformer’s propaganda).

So, breaking the continuity with the past to pursue imperial aims was presented to the people as a “restoration” of abandoned tradition.

In summary:

The Persian kings transported Babylonian immigrants into Yehud to set up the temple and community in Jerusalem.
The temple and community was based on Babylonian models showing it was not early in the lifetime of the Persian empire, but when it had transferred its capital to Babylon.
Other worshippers, even of Yehouah were not admitted unless they accepted the leadership of the temple community.
The temple community provided administrative, social, economic, and political leadership as well as religious leadership to the nations of the region it served—called “Beyond the River” (Abarnahara), subject to imperial commands.
The temple community collected revenue and acted as a treasury for the Persian exchequer.

From Al H

I have read and read your articles. I think they are really great but, could you just simply tell me the basics of who they were (I am confused as to if they are just priests or everyone or what) and when and why they got placed? I am sure I have other questions but my main thing is that after reading everything of yours I am not clear on the very basics. It seems some articles say something a bit different than others.

I am glad you enjoyed them. When you say that some articles say something a bit different from others, you do not say what you mean or give an example, because the story is meant to be the same one. However, we are a long way from it, and the religions that came out of it have hidden the truth for a long time, so the details are, true enough, not perfectly clear. Perhaps this is what you mean.

What seems clear to me is that the rulers of the time had a policy of pacification, as the Americans called it in Vietnam. They habitually moved the ruling elite from one country and put them in charge of another. There they were the rulers and skilled classes, as they had been before, but were now in charge of a surly and resentful people. The new rulers therefore could not depend upon the people to rise in response to a call to defy the empire, and in fact depended utterly on the empire for their security, such as it was. Both lands in the exchange were pacified. The story told to these people was consistently that they had been returned to their original home because their ancestors, an untold number of years before had themselves been deported by some ancient ruler to the place they had been uprooted from. This was the story of the Jews. They said they had been exiled by the Babylonians 200 years before and had been returned by the Persians because the first Persian king of kings, Cyrus, had ordained it. This is still the story of the Jews until this day, and it is enshrined in the bible, which is propaganda initiated by the Persians and then continued by successive rulers of Yehud, the Prolemies, the Seleucids, the Maccabees and possible even the Herodians.

So, what of your specific questions. Were they priests? Before the return, doubtless some were and others were princes, administrators and craftsmen, but they were sent with the above story to back them, and instructions to restore the worship of the local god, Yehouah, which they were told had decayed into idolatry. That is all it ever was, of course, but the colonists had to tell the locals it was not ever thus, and the proper worship of the god was something else—something close to Zoroastrian monotheism, as the Persians believed. In the absence of their deported rulers, the locals had apostatised into their old ways of polytheism and bull worship. They had to return to proper monotheism or the same punishment of exile would again face them, whereas, if they remained true to God, they would be rulers of the world. So, the returners were described as a nation of priests. The temple state would be a theocracy with the priesthood the ruling class, and the local Canaanites the hewers and drawers. The priests would collect tithes and taxes for the emperor, the Persian king, and so would get rich themselves. They became priests in the temple state.

When and why they got placed? This is even more difficult to be sure about. The biblicists always say the “return” began in the time of Darius the Great about 520 BC, but even from the biblical stories that is hard to believe. It is really based on the edict of Cyrus reported in the bible, and an assumption that expatriot Jews reacted favourably to this edict within a few years. In fact, any Jews deported by Nebuchadrezzer would have settled in as the rulers of their new country, and their descendants several generations on, would have thought it insane to return voluntarily to a bleak dry hillside they knew nothing about. Those who “returned” were made to go. In fact, the cause of the deportation of colonists into Yehud was likely to have been the big Egyptian rebellion of the fifth century, and the rebellion of Megabyxos that followed it. The Jews were probably involved in these, and that was the reason why the Persians decided to set up a new ruling class over them and deported in a new set of colonists. Yehud would become a buffer state against Egypt, and would be rewarded by making it the treasury of Abarnahara, the satrapy that covered Syria and the Levant. Thus the “return”, and the rebuilding of the temple and city—they had again been ravaged in the rebellions—occurred between about 440 BC and 420 BC, the chief minister of the Persian chancellery, Ezra, being sent to officially open the temple and city in about 417 BC in the reign, not of Darius I, the Great, but in the reign of Darius II. When all this was written up in about the second century BC, the fact that there had been two Dariuses (actually three) had been forgotten, and so the biblical account thinks there was only one, and he was the great one.

So, the beginning of the bible was at this time, about 417, the law that Ezra read being Deuteronomy, later called the law of Moses. Only about 80 years later, the Persian empire (Darius III) was defeated by Alexander, and the Jewish priests were left in charge of the temple and the Jewish state. They found it extemely lucrative, and co-operated with the Egyptian Greek kings, the Ptolemies in having their laws written up in Greek. In fact, much of it including Exodus and Numbers, and Leviticus was newly written. No one ever heard of the exodus that Moses led before the third century BC in Egypt! Hope that is clearer.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.