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587 BC: Siege of Jerusalem

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Nebuchadnezzar II

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culminated in the destruction of the city

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after Siege of 597, Nebuchadnezzar installed Zedekiah as tributary king of Judah at the age of twenty-one

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revolted against Babylon, and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt

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Nebuchadnezzar responded by invading Judah

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siege lasted 30 months

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"every worst woe befell the city, which drank the cup of God's fury to the dregs"

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after seeing his sons killed, Zedekiah was blinded, bound, and taken captive to Babylon, where he remained a prisoner until his death

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Babylonian general Nebuzaraddan was sent to complete its destruction

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Jerusalem was plundered and Solomon's Temple was destroyed

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most of the elite were taken into captivity in Babylon

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Gedaliah was assassinated two months later, and the population that had remained and those who had returned then fled to Egypt for safety

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after the siege: Judahite Communities in Mesopotamia

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we have no large body of evidence like the archive of Elephantine that describes daily life

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Ran Zadok (Tel Aviv University)

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"The Cuneiform Text"

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database of cuneiform texts that mention any Judahites or Israelis

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Laurie Pearce (Berkeley)

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Cornelia Wunsch (Leipzig)

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Kathleen Abraham (Tel Aviv)

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Caroline Waerzeggers (Leiden)

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most of the research is being done on cuneiform documents and using them to try to reconstruct life of exiled Judahites in the Mesopotamian region around Babylon

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kinds of texts

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Weidner Texts

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relate to King Jehoiachin of Judah

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a king of Judah who was dethroned by the King of Babylon in the 6th century BC and was taken into captivity

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in these texts he is presented as receiving rations from the royal palace

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also know of him from the end of the Book of Kings

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was probably understood to be the heir to the Davidic throne

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Sippar Texts

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mention Judahite individuals in a market town

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Murasha Archive

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a firm whose task was the management of royal fiefs and estates

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land leasing

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tax collection

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texts from Uruk, Nippur, Marad, and Isin

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suggest that some Judean individuals lived among Babylonians not only in rural but also in an urban contexts

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Al Yahudu Texts

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the most exciting body of texts

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translated as "Judahville" or "Jew Town" or in German "Judenstadt"

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we have only 5% published so far

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only the tip of the iceberg

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it remains to be seen what new information we can get from these texts

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scholarly work on networking e.g. by Caroline Waerzeggers

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how it can be shown that there was three degrees of separation between rural Judahite and a high-ranking priestly official

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Judahites were settled in regions which the palace wanted to develop

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to increase the agricultural production

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placed on lands on the Tigris owned by the crown

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their job it to develop these lands and pay their taxes

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Judahites resides in new and old villages with foreigners

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they are not being settled alone, they are not separated from others

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they have contact with foreigners

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many of these foreigners are Phoenicians and Philistines

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spoke dialects which were similar to each other

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the problems of oral communication became less acute as the next generation of children were raised

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involved in daily affairs

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working for business firms, doing tax collection

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social organization and religion

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organized in clans

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seem to be clan divisions, e.g. certain individuals do business with some clans but not other clans

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none of the documents were issued on a Saturday or high holiday

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seems to point to their keeping the Sabbath holy

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this is different to the Elephantine records where they were unloading ships on Saturday

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temple and sanctuaries

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the Elephantine records refer to a temple to Anat-Yahu

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Anat-Yahu: either the wife, sacred consort of Yahweh, or as a hypostatized aspect of Yahweh

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there is no reference to a temple in the Babylonian documents

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although it's probable that they have some sort of sanctuaries in each of their villages

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in order to practice religious life, they needed something, since they were not part of the temples in the Babylonian cities

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they continued to live separately for generations

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near a million Judahites

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into the Roman times

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a question is why the small population at the beginning is not merging with the Babylonian population society

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the Babylonian elites did not want to mix with others

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they may have taken daughters of other nationalities for their own sons

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but they would never give their own daughters to other nationalities

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when these communities return to Judah, they continue this tradition of remaining separate