Blue Cord

The Jerusalem Post reported last Wednesday that Eilat Mazar has found a new seal in Jerusalem. She dates the seal to 538–445. Although the Post does not explain her reasons for this date, it is presumably based on the stratum in which the seal was found.

Mazar reads the name on the inscription as Temech and connects it with a family mentioned in Nehemiah 7:55. But as several others have pointed out, she is reading the inscription backwards. Seal engravers normally wrote in mirror image, because they wanted the seal to leave a positive image when pressed into clay. A more likely reading is Shelomith, a name found in Ezra 8:10. Of course, the fact that both names appear in the Bible tell us nothing about the seal except that it contains a known name. There is no reason that the person on the seal has to be someone mentioned in the Bible.

Even if it is someone named in the Bible, Mazar overstates the importance of this find. She says,

The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archaeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible. . . . One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find.

This seal does nothing to establish the credibility of the Bible. Even if it shows that the Shelomith in Ezra 8:10 (or the Temech in Nehemiah 7:55) were actual people, this is not exactly something that anyone has doubted. But just because the Bible is accurate with regards to post–exilic names does not mean that it is accurate in other respects. One would have thought that by now we would have moved away from trying to “prove” the Bible through archaeology. After all, the biblical archaoelogy movement ended a couple of decades ago.

For fuller discussions of the seal, please see Chris Heard’s post at Higgaion and Jim West’s discussion on his eponymous blog.

I have been sitting in the San Diego airport for four hours so far and I still have four hours before the plane takes off. I have used the time to read the first essay in Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. This is a translation of Peter Frei’s article, “Die persische Reichsautorisation: Ein Uberblick.”¹ Frei was the first to propose the idea that the Torah was the officially authorized law of Yehud in the Persian period, and James Watts has done American scholars a great service by translating it for this volume.

The article consists of a catalogue of instances in the Persian period where the Persian authorities authorized local laws. Frei cites examples from Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor, including examples from Nehemiah, Daniel, Esther, and the letters from Elephantine.

The evidence falls in two different groups. First is the command under Darius to codify all the laws in Egypt. This is the example that seems to me to be parallel with Ezra’s work with the Torah. Yet even here it is not clear that Darius is authorizing the laws. He is the one who has them collected, but they are already the law of the land. He may be responsible for the laws as a collection, but I don’t know if I would say he authorized these laws to be the law of the land, unless we mean that in the sense of him reaffirming them.

The second group - that is, the rest of the examples - consists of the king authorizing individual laws or giving his approval to judicial decisions. These seem to me to bear little resemblance to what Ezra was doing.

That means we are looking at Darius’s codification of the laws in Egypt as the main parallel to Ezra’s work. It seems to me, however, that these two “law codes” are very different in nature. For one thing, the Torah is hardly a law code. Large sections contain laws, but there are also huge swaths, such as the entirety of Genesis, that are narrative. And taken as a whole, the laws in the Pentateuch would hardly constitute a complete law code. There are many areas of life that are simply not covered. It doesn’t really compare to the law collection of Darius or to other law codes such as that of Hammurabi.

In addition, I don’t think Ezra 7:12-26 presents a picture of the Persian king calling for the codification of Jewish law. What we see is Ezra deciding to return to Yehud and Artaxerxes giving him permission. Undoubtedly, Ezra could not have returned to Yehud and carried out his program without the permission of the Persian king, but passive permission seems different than the active authorization that Frei envisions.

Obviously, this post is not doing justice to the full range of evidence that Frei presents. But after an initial reading of his article, I have to say I am not even slightly convinced.

1. Originally published in Zeitschrift fur altorientalische und biblische Rechtgeschichte 1 (1995): 1-35. [back]

Last week I made reference to an article by Denis Prager in which he claimed that you could predict where someone would stand on certain political issues by knowing whether or not they accepted the authority of the Torah. One of the issues he mentioned was “the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people ‘evil’.”  This was the one issue from his list on which he and I agreed.

But it is always good to check yourself when quoting the Bible.  If you are going to claim that the Bible supports your position, you better make absolutely sure that you know what the Bible says on that issue.  And if you are going to use the Bible to attack others the way Prager did, your responsibility to do so is even higher.  So, I went to see what the Torah had to say about evil people and evil nations.¹Â Â  I am limiting myself to the Pentateuch because Prager makes his claim based on the Torah.

The word “evil” appears 30 times in the NIV translation of the Pentateuch.  Of these, not a single one refers to a person as evil.  Only once is a group referenced as evil, and that group is the people of Israel (Deut. 1:35) .  Nor are any nations or regimes called evil.  Instead, what the Torah labels as evil are actions and intentions.

In the rest of the OT, the story is pretty much the same.  The only place that a nation is called evil is in Jeremiah 8:3, where the nation is Judah.  People are called evil in a number of verses, usually in Wisdom Literature and in the Psalms.   But the vast majority of instances of the word evil refer to actions and intentions.

The Torah, therefore, does not support calling any people or nation evil except your own, and even in that case I would recommend not doing so unless you have divine revelation.  I am more than willing to call actions evil, but calling people evil seems to move into the realm of judging people.  It is God, not we, who will judge.

Prager may or may not be correct that someone’s position on calling people evil can be predicted by knowing that person’s position on the authority of the Torah, but the willingness to call people evil is not something people get from the Torah.

1. I am writing this while I am on lunch break at work, so I don’t have a Hebrew Bible handy.  I am relying on on-line copies of the NIV. [back]

I am at one of the definite low points in my life. After six years on the job market, I have yet to land a permanent teaching position. I have done adjunct teaching and one semester sabbatical replacements, while my one long term position did not come with a paycheck. I have been getting somewhat irate at God lately because of my situation.

A number of people have been telling me to be patient, that God will work things out in God’s time. Some have said that God is doing this so I will learn to trust God and others have urged me not to focus on the problem but count the blessings God has given me.

Fortunately, the daily lectionary reading for yesterday included Psalm 70, which had this wonderful line:

But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God!  You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay! (Psalm 70:5)

It is always conforting to read the psalms and know that the biblical authors had no problem telling God to hurry up when they needed help. They didn’t wait around and piously count their blessings. They knew they needed things and they needed them immediately! For instance, I have rent coming up at the end of this month. If I don’t get it, I am in trouble. I am poor and needy! Hasten to me, O God! Stop your stalling and help me out!

I think it is very telling that the most common form of psalms is the lament psalm, a prayer to God in time of need. God not only wants us to tell God about our needs. God’s own word even gives us permission to tell God to hurry up. The psalms are the prayer book of the Bible, and we can’t do any better than praying this words.

[N.B. This post is not intended to be taken as a plea for donations. I have found some temporary work, so it is likely that I will be able to earn my rent. The focus of this post is on the psalms, which provide us with the words to tell God that we can’t afford to wait sometimes. It is just nice when our situation and the words of Scripture line up so neatly.]

One the questions in the history of the priesthood is the reference of Ezekiel 44:10, which presents the Levites as going after idols when Israel went astray. On the basis of this sin, Ezekiel states that the Levites must be given a lower status in the cult and may no longer serve at the altar.

A number of scholars have seen this as a reference to Levites participating in the worship at high places prior to the reforms of Josiah. This doesn’t make much sense to me. After all, it was Deuteronomy that argued against worship at high places, and Deuteronomy seems to come from Levitical circles. Besides, Ezekiel does not seem to be particularly influenced by Deuteronomy, and I find it unlikely that he would have approved of Josiah’s reforms. After all, Josiah allowed Levites to be priests in Jerusalem, which would have meant Ezekiel’s priestly group would be forced to share the temple service with others.

Steve Cook did a great deal to further the discussion when he recognized that Ezekiel 44 is making explicit reference to the Levitical rebellion in Numbers 16-18.¹ It seems to me that Ezekiel is reading the situation in late preexilic Judah (c.620-586 BCE) through the lens of Numbers 16-18. The people of Judah are going astray, and the Levites — who have been granted leadership positions by Josiah — are participating in this idolatry. The Zadokites, on the other hand, did not participate in the idolatry (Ezek. 44:15). For more on my thoughts on the relationship between Numbers 16-18 and Ezekiel, see my post from last summer.

While Ezekiel creates the situation that we see in the postexilic period, with Zadokites serving at the altar and other Levites (both Aaronide and non-Aaronide?) serving as temple servants, what I am more interested in at this point is what the situation was before the exile. It seems to me that they had three groups: Levites that had come from the north, Aaronides who had always been in Judah, and Zadokites who are perhaps a subset of Aaronides. The question is, what were the Aaronides doing when Israel went astray?

It is interesting to note that already in Ezekiel the Zadokites are referred to as the “sons of Levi.” What I would like to know is whether Ezekiel was the first to apply this to the Zadokites. Would they have considered themselves Levites prior to the exile? The Levites as a priestly group seem to have very ancient origins, perhaps even going back to the pre-monarchic period. Would it have been necessary for the Zadokites to claim Levitical descendancy in order to be priests? At what point would this have been necessary?

I have to wonder whether the Zadokites came to ascendency because they were the main priestly group that was deported. Jehozadak was a priest taken into exile, and the formation of his name suggests a connection with Zadok. His son Joshua is the first high priest of the exilic period. If those exiled to Babylon were principally from Jerusalem and not the surrounding countryside, this would mean that it was the central priesthood that was exiled. Joshua 21 presents the Aaronides as living in the rest of Judah, and they may have made up only a small part of the priests in exile. The Levites, on the other hand, would have been serving in Jerusalem and some of them would have gone into exile as well. But it is instructive to note that the Chronicler’s history mentions a large amount of Zadokites returning from exile accompanied by a much smaller group of Levites.

If the Zadokites were the predominant group in exile, it is easy to see how they would have gained prominence over those left in Judah. Jeremiah had stated that the exiles in Babylon were the future of Israel, while those left in Judah were the bad fruit (Jer. 24). This could have led the Zadokites to see themselves as the future of the priesthood, especially with Ezekiel saying that they had remained faithful while the other priests had gone astray with Israel.

1. Stephen L. Cook, “Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44 and the History of Israelite Priesthood,” JBL 114 (1995), 193-208. [back]