Abstract

All those who have been occupied with and have written about the story of the ancient Hebrews are not historians by profession… almost without exception, they are all professors of theology.

Professor Giovanni Garbini

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, 07 June 2002

Abstract

Twin Statelets—Israel and Judah?

Believers in the bible think Israel and Judah were twin states with the same God and culture. Archaeology belies it. Pottery, architecture, landscape and climate were all substantially different, so the two states were far from identical twins, if they could be called twins at all. Israel was more prosperous and closer to the trade routes to Phœnicia, Syria and Egypt. Judah was poor, off the trade routes, in quite high hills, that no one would willingly climb without a good reason, in those days. The Egyptians planted a few watch towers in the mountains, but otherwise, they too were not interested in the almost empty hill country.

Trading countries are more likely to change because they are subject to invaders coming along the routes and because they were subject to foreign fashions and influences. Judah was conservative out of lack of these influences, and sheer poverty. Judah’s pottery and architecture were more standard whereas those of Israel were more varied and flamboyant. Architecture was meant to impress in places where merchants and potential invaders passed regularly, but there was no need to impress and few people to impress in the hills.

Israel emerged in history, as opposed to biblical history, about 850 BC. Judah did not emerge until after 750 BC. Pottery factories developed in Israel about 850 BC, but in Judah only after 750 BC. Wine and olive production rose rapidly in the eighth century in Israel, but followed only in the seventh in Judah. Trade records on ostraca, and then seals and seal impressions on pottery appear first in Israel, then in Judah.

Ahaz (732-715 BC) was formally recognized as king of Judah. It will have been Ahaz’s reward as a loyal soldier of the Assyrians. Ahaz introduced Assyrian religious practices into Judah, according to the bible (2 Kgs 16:10-16). So, Ahaz and then Hezekiah were set up as Assyrian puppets. Judah was created out of a rib of Israel in the 730s BC, surely from the machinations of Assyrian “prophets”, and took over as the local petty kingdom from 722 BC, apparently an independent rump of the former Israel. It seems likely that Judah had previously, for most of its history, been a part of Israel, and not independent, but with Assyrian encouragement seceded at about the time of the alliance. When Israel became a part of the Assyrian empire as its province of Samerina, Judah was all that remained of an independent Canaan. Judah was always a vassal of Assyria or Babylonia. It was never an independent country until the Maccabees.

Menehem of Israel (753-742 BC) and Ahaz of Judah (730-715 BC) paid tribute to the Assyrian ruler. The bible says Menehem paid a huge bribe to the Assyrians to keep his kingship, suggesting it was strongly threatened. His son, Pekahiah, lasted no time before he was assassinated by Pekah. Hosea was set up as the puppet king of Israel in 731 BC, immediately after the fall of Damascus. Hosea was deposed, according to convention in 722 BC, and Israel ceased to be. This was about the time that Judah was invented. In the reign of Esarhaddon (680-669 BC), it is Manasseh of Judah who provides forced labour for the Assyrians.

Israel disappeared from history as an independent country about 720 BC, the same time that Judah appeared, according to external records. Carchemesh followed because the Hittites of Carchemesh had formed an alliance of small states including the weakened Urartu, but after a six year war the allies were defeated and the king of Urartu, Ursa (Rusa), seems to have committed suicide. Judah was the worthless rump of Israel, and never anything other than a puppet of the Assyrians. For that reason, the Babylonians finished Judah off to complete the destruction of Samaria.

Albrecht Alt surmised that Samaria had ruled Judah until the time of Nehemiah, and that was the root of the bad feeling of Jews for Samaritans. The bad feeling probably came with the refusal of the transported “captives” in the fifth century to accept any help from the native people of the Palestinian hills, but James D Purvis says more recent discoveries have not invalidated Alt’s main conclusion. Who, one might ask are the kings of Judah before this time? The answer is that they are mythical, are city chiefs or are displaced characters from the northern state of Yauda.

Judah was all that remained of Israel when the valuable parts of the country were absorbed into Assyria, because Judah was too poor and unimportant for the Assyrians to bother to administer, though some refugees must have moved there from Israel to avoid Assyrian rule. It was left as wild and unadopted grazing for sheep with some encouragement from ateliers in the richer lowlands to grow cash crops of vine and olives. Making and distributing wine and olive oil was then in some ways like the petroleum industry today. It needed sophisticated co-ordination, production and distribution, and provided work for masses of people.

The architecture of cities like Samaria, Megiddo, Jezreel and Hazor have many common features, even to mason’s factory or individual marks in the buildings of Samaria and Megiddo. Towns like these were hilltop palaces built of ashlar stone blocks with a prominent gate, courtyard and place for administration. The ordinary people lived outside this administrative center, the design of which seems to be like that of the cities to the north in Phœnicia. Similar structures have never been found in Judah.

Only with the takeover of Samaria and the spoiling of Lachish by the Assyrians did Jerusalem become important. The bible says nothing much about Lachish even though it was an important town only thirty miles from Jerusalem. Its destruction by the Assyrians, in 701 BC, left an opportunity for Jerusalem to grow from an unimportant small town to replace Lachish as a center for the trade in olives and wine—in short, as the local market town.

The seventh century is always considered a time of religious and cultural revival in the ancient near east with noble monarchs like Assurbanipal, Nebuchadrezzar and Nabonidus collecting together ancient materials. Care is needed however, because the Persians a couple of centuries later surreptitiously enforced cultural and religious unity often attributing it to earlier times through pseudo-histories, psudepigraphs and legal and religious codification. Thus the Deuteronomic law was introduced in fifth century Yehud but an accompanying pseudo-history attributes it to the seventh century reforms of Josiah. So what is said by scholars to have been an example of Israelite religious zeal of the seventh century is a myth written in the fifth.

Soggin, refering to the supposed religious reforms of Hezekiah, says they have “every appearance of being a projection of later attempts on the past in order to give them greater authority”. If this is true, it is even more true of the reforms of Josiah, a few decades later. These reforms are all described with the unmistakeable stylistic stamp of the Deuteronomistic historian—the justification for setting up the temple state of Jerusalem, Yehud, in the Persian period and to restore the worship of Yehouah in the way that the Persians wanted it to be.

Hezekiah and Sennacherib

Hezekiah was king of Judah, of that there is no doubt. He was mentioned by Sargon II and by Sennacherib. Sargon listed Judah as paying tribute alongside Philistia, Edom and Moab. He actually fought three campaigns against Philistia but also called himself the “subduer of the kingdom of Judah”.

It seems Hezekiah was at first a faithful vassal of the Assyrians whom he assisted. An anti-Assyrian alliance of about 720 BC, consisting of Gaza, Hamath and the Samarians, supported by Egypt, seemed not to include Judah. The Assyrians defeated the alliance and imposed harsh reprisals.

Later, though, in 713-711 BC, Hezekiah was in alliance with the Philistines of Ashdod and other cities, Edom, Moab and Babylon against Assyria, again supported by Egypt. The allies lost again, but Hezekiah seems to have stepped back in time to avoid serious reprisals. Sargon defeated Babylon in 710 BC. Merodach-Baladan was chased into Bit Yadin in the marshes and its conquered citizens were transported in chains to Nineveh. Sargon put down the Elamites, then returned to Hamath which had revolted under a king called Yehubihdi or Ilubihdi, an hypocoristic name that shows he worshipped Yehouah, and that Yehouah and El were even then being equated, and that Yehouah was not, as biblicists insist only the god of Israel. Hamath was a country to the north, inland from Phœnicia, and even there Yehouah was an object of worship. Hamath was defeated and 4,300 people were transported.

Sargon was murdered in 705 BC by his troops and Sennacherib succeeded. By 705 BC, Hezekiah is depicted as the leader of an alliance and takes the king of Ekron, who seems to oppose it, as a prisoner. Merodach-Baladan, now pretender to the throne of Babylonia, was not finished. He had also again seceded in Babylon and supported the allies. He sent ambassadors to form alliances, and the bible mentions them in Hezekiah’s Jerusalem. Hezekiah expected to be part of a large confederacy, but Sennacherib was up to the challenge of the allies, cleaned up Babylonia, then came west with a strong punitive force to settle the Egyptians at Elteqeh. Sennacherib wrote after the battle of Elteqeh:

Trusting in Assur, My Lord, I fought with them and overthrew them.

A will, written by Sennacherib, ends with the prayer:

Thine is the kingdom, O Nebo, Our Light.

These show that the Assyrian king regarded his god just as the believers in Yehouah in the scriptures regarded theirs, and even used the same phrases. Having disposed of Lachish by seige, he seiged Jerusalem. Jerusalem was apparently not defeated, but, in both the bible and the Assyrian annals, Hezekiah decided to abandon the alliance and pay tribute for the Assyrians to desist. The tribute recorded in Assyrian archives is 30 talents (a tonne) of gold and 800 talents (24 tonnes) of silver (300 in the bible). Again, this seems a huge charge to place on a small country.

In the story about Sennacherib’s attack on Jerusalem in 701 BC, the scriptures say that, in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And king Hezekiah behaved well in the eyes of the Lord, revolted against the Assyrians and smote the Philistines, but when the Assyrian king is at Lachish, Hezekiah surrendered to the Assyrians and paid tribute to his overlord.

Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which you puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

2 Kings 18:13-16

But then, the Assyrian king sent his general, Rabshakeh—really the Assyrian High Cup-Bearer ( = Rabshakeh), a ministerial position—to Jerusalem, where, in front of the gates of Jerusalem, he delivered an aggressive speech. Hezekiah, in great distress, turned to the prophet Isaiah who promised the assistance of God against the Assyrians. The Assyrian general returned to his master now about to confront an Egyptian army trying to outflank them. Rabshakeh sent a letter to Hezekiah repeating many of the threats against Judah already delivered in his speech. Hezekiah asked the Lord to help him against the Assyrian army. He obliges by sending His nasty angel to kill 185,000 Assyrian soldiers during the night, forcing Sennacherib to withdraw in dismay. Herodotus records the different story that the army was overcome by the Egyptians because mice ate the cords of their bows. The bible then says Sennacherib was murdered. Biblicists claim the biblical account is contemporaneous even though the death of Sennacherib was twenty years later. It also calls the Egyptian general a pharaoh, Tirhakah (Taharqa), which he did not become for another decade. Knowing the Assyrian minister’s title as Rabshakeh implies Mesopotamian knowledge, and the dead Assyrians is the same number as those killed by Narum-Sin, the Sargonid king, legendary even then.

The narrative in these chapters is not a homogenous description of the events of 701 BC. The Rabshakeh incident is superfluous. Hezekiah had already surrendered and paid his tribute to the king of Assyria. The Assyrian king had already achieved his goal, to stop the rebellion in southwestern Palestine. The modern historian would try to distinguish between the historical and the mythological, looking for historical information in the short description of Sennacherib’s campaign at the beginning of the narrative in 2 Kings 18-19, rather than in the expansion that follows.

In the seige of Jerusalem, Rabshakeh, according to the Jewish scriptures, addressed the besieged Jerusalemites in Hebrew instead of Aramaic, so that the ordinary people watching from the walls could understand him. He was invited to speak in Aramaic, the court and diplomatic language, but it seems the people only understood Hebrew. Aramaic became the international language—“Imperial Aramaic”, but that was in Persian times. Biblicists conclude that Hebrew was such an important language that High Assyrian officials must have known it, though skeptical historians think it as likely as George W Bush being able to address the Iraqis fluently in Arabic.

The expression, “eat faeces and drink urine”, thought to have meant the threat of the consequences of resistance, has been traced to the Egyptian Book of the Dead where it simply means death. Copying the Book of the Dead was an industry in Egypt in Persian times, as Herodotus says, so the source of the expressions in both books could have been Persian. If it appears in the Pyramid Texts, its Egyptian provenance is confirmed. Even so, the literary matrix of the story could have been Egypt in Ptolemaic times when the Egyptian rulers favoured the Jerusalem priesthood.

The Rabshakeh (2 Kg 18:22) knew that Hezekiah had started a religious reform, but thought he had done the one remarkable thing that he had not done—removed the altars and high places. Josiah only did it, in the bible, a century later.

Archaeologists have found Sennacherib’s royal annals of the campaign. It opened with a diversion to Phœnicia, to Sidon, to clear obstacles behind the front line and to safeguard the retreat. In Palestine, the “Judaean” Hezekiah had interfered with loyal Assyrian vassals including Padi, the king of Ekron, who Hezekiah held prisoner. Hezekiah and his allies had also approached the king of Egypt. The Egyptian army had arrived and prepared for battle at Elteqeh. Sennacherib conquered the cities of Elteqeh and Timnah, and and occupied Ekron. Hezekiah had to set Padi of Ekron free and he was reinstalled as an Assyrian vassal. Hezekiah did not yield any further but Sennacherib devastated his country, destroyed 46 fortified cities and trapped Hezekiah in Jerusalem. The devastated parts of Hezekiah’s kingdom were handed over to the Philistines. Hezekiah paid a heavy tribute, delivered by his envoys to the Assyrian king in Nineveh. In his own words…

I drew nigh to Ekron and I slew the governors and princes that had transgressed, and I hung upon poles, round about the city, their dead bodies. The people of the city who had done wickedly and had committed offences, I counted as spoil, but those who had not done these things and who were not taken in inquity, I pardoned. I brought their king Padi forth from Jerusalem and I stablished him upon the throne of dominion over them, and I laid tribute upon him.

I then beseiged Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, and I captured forty six of his strong cities and fortresses, and innumerable small cities which were round about them, with the battering rams and the assault of engines, and the attack of foot soldiers, and by mines and breaches. I brought out therefrom two hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty people, both small and great, male and female, and horses, and mules, and asses, and camels, and oxen, and innumerable sheep I counted as spoil. Himself, like a caged bird, I shut up within Jerusalem, his royal city. I threw up mounds against him, and I took vengeance upon any man who came forth from the city.

His cities, which I had captured, I took from him and gave to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, and Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bel, king of Gaza, and I reduced his land. I added to their former yearly tribute, and increased the gifts which they paid unto me. The fear of the majesty of my sovereignty overwhelmed Hezekiah, and the Urbi and his trusty warriors, whom he had brought into his royal city of Jerusalem to protect it, deserted. And he despatched after me his messenger to my royal city Nineveh to pay tribute and to make submission with thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, eye-paint, … ivory couches and thrones, hides and tusks, precious woods, and divers objects, a heavy treasure, together with his daughters, and the women of his palace, and male and female musicians.

The biblical narrative and Sennacherib’s annals are two reflexions of the campaign of Sennacherib that ended when Hezekiah gave in and paid the tribute the Assyrians demanded. The two versions agree that Hezekiah rebelled against the Assyrians, Sennacherib attacked his country and destroyed many cities, at the end Hezekiah paid a tribute, but Jerusalem remained in his hand unharmed. 2 Kings is correct that the Assyrians did not conquer Jerusalem. Hezekiah did not willingly “centralize” the cult at Jerusalem, the Assyrians did it for him by destroying the other cult centers of Israel, leaving only that at Jerusalem. Differences are chronological details such as when and where Hezekiah sent his tribute and how big it was.

Only the siege of Jerusalem in the bible is historical, and the rest is a romance written not before the fifth century—when Aramaic became the Persian lingua Franca—and possibly not until the third century when the Greek Egyptian kings commissioned the Jewish scriptures in Greek. Besides the appearance of an Egyptian army in Palestine at this time, nothing else is historical about the Rabshakeh incident. The author of 2 Kings had proper history to work from but invented the Rabshakeh incident to show the God of Heaven saving Jerusalem. The biblical narrative that follows the payment of the tribute is simply propaganda. After the paying of Hezekiah’s tribute, an event that the Persian scribes had found in the annals of Sennacherib’s campaign, the rest is added to introduce the God of Heaven propaganda that the Persians wanted to be accepted.

The word used in 2 Kings 18 and translated as “Hebrew” is actually “Yehudit”. It implies that the country was a well established Yehud where the people were Yehudim and they spoke Yehudit. None of this is likely to have been true until Yehud was a temple state, and built up a national pride that reflected itself in the national language that the author could depict an Assyrian government minister as knowing.

The letter of Sennacherib in 2 Kings 19:10-13 includes a list of nations destroyed by the Assyrians, but it includes Haran that had never been destroyed by the Assyrians in about 600 years, since it was last captured by Shalmaneser I in the thirteenth century BC. It was an Assyrian province by 814 BC, was never attacked during the lifetime of the neo-Assyrian empire, and was evidently a city favoured by the Assyrians for its strategic position on the road to the West, and for its cult of the god Sin whom they also favoured. It makes the letter look suspicious.

The list of conquered nations repeats 2 Kings 18:34 implying that the fate of Judah would be the same as that of the other cities, and Samaria. Moreover some of them are the names of the people deported into Samaria from their defeated cities, as we may assume (2 Kg 17:24). Lair was a known city between the lower Zab and Diyala. All seem to be cities frome these middle and higher reaches of the Euphrates and its tributaries, though none of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah seem to have been major centers or countries, and would probably not have been listed had the author not needed them for his purpose, and lacked anything else.

The city of Haran was attacked shortly after this period described in the scriptures, namely by the Medes and the Babylonians attacking Assyria in 610 BC. An author writing some time after this will remember this battle for Haran rather than any earlier one. It offers the possibility that the seige of Jerusalem described as in the time of Sennacherib is really the seige by the Babylonians retrojected into the earlier period. No reader would have known the difference by the time this was being written. Since 1 Kings 11:11-13, 32-36, 38-39 speak of part of the kingdom being taken away from the wicked kings’ sons, it must have been written after the fall of Samaria, which can hardly have survived the fall of the more powerful city of Damascus in 732 BC for too long. About this same time Judah begins to appear in history.

After the withdrawal of Sennacherib from Jerusalem the scriptures say nothing about the next ninety years.

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