LEITUNG: MARIANNE AWERBUCH, BERLIN
ON THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE JEWS
IN BABYLONIAN EXILE
By Israel Eph'-al, Tel Aviv
Since I am interested in exploring the present state of our knowledge of the
political and social organization of the Jews in Babylonian exile, I have decided to
range broadly upon the issue and narrow matters down during the question period
or in later discussion.
My comments will deal with two subjects: First, the small communities of exiles
in the rual surroundings of Nippur, where Jews are known to have dwelt; second,
the bodies which constituted the leadership of the Jews in Babylonia.
During the first crucial generations of Babylonian Exile, when the Jews were
torn from their homeland and living as a minority in a pagan culture, the tools for
the nation's survival were forged. The historical surveys tend to scotch this period, generally describing it as an epilogue to the First or a prologue to the Second Tem¬
ple period, with no comprehensive discussion. The studies concerned with it dwell
mainly on its spiritual aspects, expressed in the oracles of Ezekiel and Deutro-
Isaiah - prophets in Babylonia - and on the religious behaviour of the congrega¬
tion of exiles (_ niJiAn t'.lp ) who returned to Zion, recounted in the books
of Ezra and Nehemiah. This state of research derives essentially from the fact that, despite the considerable size of the Babylonian exile, ancient historiographical
sources, biblical and Babylonian alike, omit it: The books of Kings, Chronicles,
Ezra and Nehemiah vis-a-vis the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. focus on the land of
Israel and its settlement, and include only incidental detaUs about life in Babylonia (even the Edict of Cyrus was included in the books of Chronicles and Ezra in regard
to Judah); while the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions - unlike the Assyrian - do
not deal with deportation and deportees. The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel offer
some information about connections between Judah and the Jews in Babylonia be¬
tween the deportation of Jehoiachin and the final fall of Judah, and about the
status of prophets and "elders" during that period; but Ezekiel and Deutro-Isaiah
essentially mirror the stmggle, and spiritual and conceptual changes among the
exiles following the destmction of Jemsalem and the Temple, and life as a minority in exile.
The discovery of legal and economic documents in Babylonia added unportant
sources. Besides a few people designated laudaia, that is "Judaean", a Jew in the
The Jews in Babylonian Exile 107
extra-biblical sources is distinguished by the theophorous element in"' in his
name or that of his father, son or brother. Since we know from the Bible that the
names of many Jews had a West-Semitic stmcture, without the i ri ' component —
which could belong to such groups as Aramaeans or Phoenicians — or even were
purely Babylonian or Persian (such as , •'^Tin , ^13:3 , ."»l^:! ,i:i3üu;
n^j'Kiü, t?:i:3lT , "inOK etc.), it is clear that by adhering to the in' compo¬
nent we omit many Jews in the extra-biblical sources. Nevertheless, in order to
arrive at accurate conclusions, we must adhere to this methodological mle.
The names of Jews and other ethnic groups in Babylonia have been extensively
investigated. I shall content myself with mentioning only the studies of Jewish
names made by Daiches and Gry over fifty years ago, and by Zadok, Coogan, Stol-
per and Bickerman in the last decade. Of those deahng with non-Jews let me point
out Dandamayev and Ehers. These studies review more than a thousand people of
foreign origin in Babylonia and help to disclose economic conditions and certain
spiritual and cultural characteristics of minorities in that land. Political conclusions,
however, about their status and organization, are difficult to draw from these
studies because the people with Babylonian names are considered as individuals
and not as members of specific sections of ethnically-organized groups.
This caused Bickerman, when he asserted the historical value of the Edict of
Cyrus in the book of Ezra (in the 1976 revised version ofhis paper), to look for
supporting evidence in Greek Anatolia and Roman Palestine and Egypt, because,
as he said, "our investigation has a weak point. I cannot support it by cuneiform
evidence. The social structure of the countryside in Persian Babylonia remains un¬
known as yet." In my discussion of western minorities in Babylonia in the 6th and
5th centuries B.C., published in Orientalia 1978, I tried to answer this point by
bringing evidence relevant in time and place to the question.
My study assumes that the Jews were part of the ethnic-group complex which
had been deported to that country, and therefore political and social aspects ofthe history of the Jews in Babylonian exile should be investigated vis-a-vis the general
framework of the minorities in that land. Analogy and cross-fertilization of infor¬
mation from the Neo-Babylonian documents and bibhcal study thus provide us
with respectable results.
Let us first examine the finds. Then see how they apply to the Jews.
The legal and economic documents of the Bh Murasn archive from Nippur,
extending over the second half of the fifth century B.C., refer to toponyms whose
western origin is clear. Among them, all in the vicinity of Nippur, are ^^Milidu, när Milidu (=the Milidu canal), ^^Tabalaia, ^^Bit Tabalaia referring to Asia Minor, ^^Bit
§urraia, referring to Phoenicia; Bit Ha(m) mataia and ^^Hattaia referring to Syria;
'^^I'sqalunu, ^^Uazatu and ^'ä7 Arsa' referring to Phihstia; Näm sa Misiraia (= the
Egyptians' canal); älu Sa Arbaia and ^^Qidari referring to Arabs. Another place-
name, ^^Galutu, meaning "exhe", testifies to the foreign origin of its inhabitants and the circumstances of their arrival in Babylonia.
Such toponyms as ^^Hazatum=Gaza and äiu sa Arbaia exist in earlier Nippur
documents from the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus.
These data flesh out the biblical references to the Jews who dwelt in that region since the deportation of Jehoiachin.Tel Aviv,among whose Jewish exiles Cil^^^'"!)
the prophet Ezekiel was sitting, was situated on 1^3 ini , the När Kabäru- canal which ran through or very close to the city of Nippur.
Although the historical sources for the Chaldaean empire are scanty, we know
of Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns against Tyre, Ashkelon, Judah, the district of Ha¬
math and the Arab Qedarites; campaigns in Chicia of Neriglissar and later of Nabo¬
nidus who also campaigned in northern Syria. This suggests that the peoples from
whose names the above-mentioned toponyms derived came to the Nippur region
during the period of the Chaldaean empire, and were settled there to rehabitate
the rural region which had suffered severely during the Assyro-Babylonian wars in
the seventh century B. C.
In my discussion, in Orientalia, of the Neo-Babylonian documents from Neirab,
near Aleppo, I maintained that the documents — whose reference to toponyms in
the vicinity of Nippur is clear — originated in Babylonia and belonged to a famhy
there who lived in a place called - like their home-town - *Neirab . When they re¬
turned to their home-town in North Syria they carried their documents with them.
The last Neirab document was written in the early years of Darius 1 (521—486
B. C). We might, therefore, date the transfer from Babylonia of the archive — and
the family - to a few years after the beginning of the Jewish return to Zion.
On such scanty evidence, of course, we cannot claim that other groups of exiles
returned to their homelands at the time that the Jews were restored to Zion. The
passage, however, in the Cyrus Cylinder about the many holy cities whose temples
had long been in ruins, says that "the gods whose abode is in the midst of them I
returned to their places and housed them in lasting abodes. 1 gathered together ah
their inhabitants and restored (to them) their dwellings." This passage — if indeed it is more than a purely stylistic stereotype — and the historical background of the
Edict of Cyrus, as it emerges from the studies of Tadmor and Bickerman, suggest
that the Edict implies a tendency to restore various groups of exiles, and not only the Jews (how far any real step was taken during the reign of Cyrus to implement his Edict cannot be discussed here).
That the exiles in Babylonia were grouped according to origin, whether they
were from a land or a nation — such as Urartu, Mehd, Tabal, Hatti = Syria, Egypt
and the Arabs — or from a city — such as Tyre, Gaza, Ashkelon, Bit Arsa' and
Neirab — is corroborated in the Bible. Ezra, Chap. 2 and Nehemiah, Chap. 7 list
"the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exUes whom
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylonia had carried captive to Babylonia, they re¬
turned to Jerusalem and Judah each to his own town". Then the hst directs us,
inter alia, to "the sons of Bethlehem ... the men of Netophah ... the men of
Anathot ... the men of Jericho etc.", covering the centers of Judah during the
Persian period. The name of and numbers in each group are given.
I suggest that the biblical term for a group of exiles organized as a Landsmann¬
schaft is Dlpn a phrase in the somewhat ambiguous statement in the
Edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1:4, ,Qü IA Nin IBK ninipnn t>DD IKüJn
niiTin oy nnnniii üidi^i JintDi fiOD:i inipn >bik iniKüj»
.D>!?iyn>a -^m o-'nitJKn n^^t?
The Landsmannschaft frameworks and the preservation of toponyms and many
personal names of foreign origin through several generations, as reflected in the BTt
The Jews in Babylonian Exile 109
Murasü documents (referring to about 80 Jews, most of whose names contain the
theophorous 1 M > element) attests that — so far as the Nippur region is concerned — the Babylonian authorities tended not to assimilate the exiles. Beyond this, the very Return to Zion and the ability of the Jews to withstand the developed Babylonian
culture — followed by spiritual struggles which eventuated in emancipation from
syncretism, although they lived in a pagan society — point to conditions which
helped to maintain national identity in exile.
At this point I should like to call attention to the quality of information that we have about Nippur in terms of the exiles:
1. Nippur, situated in the center of Babylonia, was an Assyrian stronghold,
which absorbed exiles in the seventh century. A letter to Assurbanipal (ABL 238)
points out that "there are many foreign people (lit. many languages, lisämti mp- däti) in Nippur under the protection of the king, my lord". That the Babylonians
considered the Nippuraeans collaborators with Assyria is enunciated in another
letter, from the governor of Nippur to the king (ABL 327): "The king knows it:
all countries hate us on account of Assyria; we cannot set foot in any country.
Wherever we go we risk being killed, (for people say): "Why have you sworn alle¬
giance to Assyria'."
Nippur was one of the last cities in Babylonia to pass into the hands of Nabopo¬
lassar when he established his kingdom in the during several years' struggle against Assyria.
The exceptional position of Nippur is emphasized by the fact that none of the
approximately 200 Chaldaean royal inscriptions, dealing with restoration and buil¬
ding in various Babylonian cities, mentions such operations in Nippur.
2. The thousands of known Neo-Babylonian inscriptions offer evidence of orga¬
nization of exiles in Landsmannschaften only in the rural region of Nippur.
3. Finally: the Nippur documents yield a high percentage of foreign names (of
about 2500 people known from the BTt Murasü archive roughly one-third had non-
Babylonian names), a phenomenon found nowhere else in Babylonia.
Thus we ask whether our information about the Nippur region can be used as a
model for the political and social conditions of the Jews and other groups of exiles in Babylonia.
It should be pointed out that since our extra-biblical sources for Jews in Baby¬
lonia — mainly the Weidner Texts from Babylon about Jehoiachin and his sons in
the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and the BTt Murasü archive — touch only upon nar¬
row sectors, actually the edges of the social spectrum, of the Jews in Babylonia;
it would be irresponsible to consider them conclusive vis-a-vis the exiles as a whole.
Furthermore, the MurasCi documents may not provide information about the entire
Jewish community even in and near Nippur, but only about those connected with
the BTt Murasü firm by virtue of their low socio-economic condition.
11. Among the people deported from Judah with king Jehoiachin we find "his
mother, his courtiers and commanders and officers . . . and all the men of proper¬
ty, ten thousand .. . and all the artisans and smiths (lADnDI wmn) "(II
Kings 24:12,24). Other biblical passages indicate that among the exiles were priests
and prophets. These were the socio-economically advantaged, who absorbed later
waves of deportees from Judah and established the character of the Jewish exile in
Babylonia for the coining generations. They could hardly have been the ancestors
of those poor farmers mentioned in the Bit Muräsü documents, who were settled in
the Nippur region.
Neo-Babylonian documents disclose that people whose Egyptian names reveal
their origin dwelt in central cities in Babylonia (Babylon, Uruk, Sippar and Borsip¬
pa) in considerable numbers. Dated documents indicate that many of them lived
there during the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, kings of Assyria, who
conducted campaigns against Egypt and brought from there socially and professio¬
nally significant people (such as physicians, veterinarians, diviners, dream interpre¬
ters, snake charmers, singers, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, cartwrights, shipwrights, special carpet-makers (?), as well as various clerks and scribes), a compo¬
sition resembling that of the Jews who arrived in Babylonia with Jehoiachin. This
may perhaps offer an analogy for the Jews in Babylonian cities.
A legal document dated 529 B. C. (that is, four years before the conquest of
Egypt by Cambyses) mentions an "assembly of the elders of the Egyptians" (puhur sibutu ia Misiraia) in Babylon with presumably juridictional provenance — recogni¬
zed by the Achaemenid authorities — for people of Egyptian origin. Was such a
juridical autonomy granted only to the Egyptians because of their favoured status, or can there be an analogy with the Jewish elders, to whom we will return?
For groups in exile to maintain their national identity they surely had to pre¬
serve their cults. However, since the only documents relating to ethnic minorities in Babylonia except the Bible — the main source for the history of the Jews during
the period of exile and the Restoration to Zion — are legal and economic, we can¬
not pinpoint the tools which helped the non-Jewish exile groups to maintain them¬
selves, nor do we know the problems involved as we know, for instance, the dilem¬
ma confronting the Jews — especially after the centralization of the cult by Josiah
— of how to worship in an unclean land.
For the maintenance of a group cut-off from its homeland, regular commemo¬
rative acts and symbols are necessary. Such acts and symbols used by the Jews to
maintain their identity included circumcision and keeping of the Sabbath; the four
annual national fasts to memoralize the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple;
giving children Jewish names; keeping genealogical lists and traditions, and — above all — abjuring paganism (which should be considered not only a result, but a tool!);
developing a historiosophy and recording the period of the Monarchy in an attempt
to explain the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; producing other
literature (such as certain psalms) and, of course. Prophecy.
Although these were significant for the maintenance of a national identity in
exile, the Return to Zion, which was more than an abrupt awakening, required
active and participatory leadership. The nature of such leadership must be under¬
stood — not only in Babylonia but also in Judah during the Restoration and the
beginning of the Second Temple period — as well as the potency and character of
each leadership group. 1 shall discuss only three of these groups — the House of
David, the priesthood and the "elders" — and not the prophets, whose leadership —
without an institutionalized framework and with uncertain actual influence — can¬
not be properly evaluated.
The Jews in Babylonian Exile 111
The House of David: The Babylonian court was a weh-known repository of kings
and members of royal dynasties of vassal states and conquered lands, such as Judah,
Ashkelon, Gaza and Arvad. In fact, Josephus, quoting from the history of the
Phoenicians, notes that, when Belatoros king of Tyre died — during the reign of
Nabonidus — the Tyrians sent to Babylon for Maharbaal (to reign over them) and.
after his death, they sent for his brother Hiram.
The Weidner documents from Babylon designate Jehoiachin as "king" and "the king's son of Judah". He received, according to these documents, quantities of oU 6 to 60 fold greater than those of the others mentioned. Jehoiachin's status as head
of Jewish Exile in Babylonia is emphasized by his removal by Amel-Marduk from
prison 37 years after his deportation. The Bible gives no reason for his imprison¬
ment, but what we know about the function of prison, Hebrew nIjd n':! ,
Bab. bit kili suggests a political context. The Babylonian king spoke kindly to
Jehoiachin "and gave him a seat above the seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon ... so Jehoiachin dined regularly every day ofhis life on the king's table".
Concomitantly, it must be pointed out that on palaeographical and archaeologi¬
cal grounds the seal pi > Dp'»t?Kb , "belonging to Eliakim steward of
Jaukin", from which Albright, Weidner and their fohowers deduced that Jehoia¬
chin, wiule being in exhe, was considered kingde jure in Judah, antedated hun by a
century. We know nothing, then, about his status in Judah.
Zerubabel, the son of Jehoiachin's first-born, was one of the leaders of the
returnees and active in rebuilding the Temple during the early years of Darius 1. His
title "governor of Judah" (Hag. 1:1, 14;2: 14, miiT nriQ ) indicates that
Cyrus and his successors in the first years of estabhshing their empire recognized the status of the House of David.
From the time of the oracle of Haggai 2:20-23 - issued during or shortly after
the rebellions and the internal struggles in the Persian empire in the early years of Darius' reign — an oracle suggesting that Messianic hopes were placed in Zerubabel,
we hear nothing about him nor do we know the reasons for his disappearance. The
names — in the Bible and epigraphical sources — of subsequent governors of Judah
- Nehemiah son of Hacaliah (445-433), Bagohi (408) and Jehizkiah (around 330)
— indicate no membership in the House of David. The Achaemenid authorities were
apparently not ready to risk their control in Judah by giving the governorship to
scions of the House of David, whose importance may, nonetheless, have obtained in
Babylonia.
We come now to the Priestly class about whom it must be recognized that even
without a temple, it maintained its structure and its link to Jerusalem and the Tem¬
ple for fifty years.
Jeshua son of Jehozadok, whose father "went into exile when the Lord sent
Judah and Jerusalem into exile by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar" and whose grand¬
father, Seraiah, had been executed by order of the king of Babylonia after the fah
of Jerusalem, was one of the leaders of the returnees from exhe. He is mentioned
as High Priest, beside Zerubabel the governor, in the context of negotiations about and the process of rebuilding the Temple and renewing its cult.
Beginning with the history of the province of Judah, and especially of the Hel¬
lenistic period the priesthood advanced beyond their cultic and religious functions
toward leadership of the nation, in contrast with the diminution in power of the House of David.
The "eWm" constitute the third class. Their authority, originaOy based on
patriarchal-tribal foundations decreased during the Monarchy, when new classes
rose and assumed authority under the aegis of the newly formed kingship. The
institution of the "elders" did not, however, disappear but their activity was re¬
stricted to municipal matters.
The immediate change in the status of the "elders" in exile is apparent in the list
of those whom Jeremiah addressed in a letter from Jerusalem, sometime after
Jehoiachin's deportation: "to the elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the pro¬
phets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jeru¬
salem to Babylon". The "elders' " name lead all the rest.
The "elders of Judah" came before Ezekiel to enquire of the Lord's words through him.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah signal the perpetuation of the "elders'" leader¬
ship in Exile and during the Restoration. With the representatives of the House of
David and the High Priesthood, the "elders" took active part in the national revival
in Babylonia and the return to Zion, in helping to implement the rebuilding of the
Temple, and in negotiating with "Judah's adversaries" and the Persian authorities about this matter. In short, during the Exile and Restoration they were revitalized
as an active body, once again glowing brightly, with the extinction of the army and
administration, the light of whose authority dimmed when the kingdom of Judah
was destroyed.
In sum: All the leading groups which existed during the Exile were extant in the
kingdom of Judah. However, the centers of leadership balance sifted: the House of
David declined, the priesthood strengthened, and the power ofthe "elders" increased.
These changes stemmed mainly from the liquidation of the Judaean state, and part¬
ly from political interests outside of purely Jewish ones, like those of the Babylo¬
nian and Persian authorities.
Recognition of the prime movers during the Exile and Restoration forges, then,
a significant link in a straight chain of the development of Jewish leadership from the end ofthe First to the beginning of the Second Temple period.
WARUM IST DER TOR UNFÄHIG, BÖSE ZU HANDELN? (KOH 4,17)
Von Norbert Lohfink SJ, Frankfurt
1.
In Koh 4,17 ist die Rede von den k^silim — sagen wir in traditioneher Manier:
von den „Toren"' . Über sie wird am Ende des Verses gesagt: 'enäm jod^^im la^^söt
rä'-^ . Jemand, der nicht weiß, in welchem Zusammenhang der Satz steht und wer
ihn gesagt haben soh, wird ihn mit tödlicher Sicherheit übersetzen: „Sie verstehen es nicht. Böses zu tun", oder freier: „Sie sind zu bösem Handeln unfähig"' . Hat er
ein Gefühl für diachronische Verhältnisse innerhalb des biblischen Hebräisch, dann
wird er den Satz eher einer späten als einer frühen Schrift zuordnen. Denn in die¬
sem Vier-Worte-Satz kumulieren sich zwei syntaktische Phänomene, die zwar nicht
exklusiv, wohl aber statistisch eher schon in die Nähe des Mischna-Hebräisch führen:
einmal die Partizipialkonstruktion, zum andern die Konstruktion der von jd^ abhän¬
gigen Infinitiv-Phrase mit Lamed (im klassischen Hebräisch wäre hier einfacher
Infinitiv das Normale)'* . Bei dieser sprachgeschiehtlichen Annahme, die - da der
Satz bei Kohelet steht - ja voll zutrifft, ist die Übersetzung „Sie verstehen es nicht.
Böses zu tun", eigentlich die einzige, die in Frage kommt.
Würde jemand sagen: Nein, hier ist zu übersetzen „Sie wissen nicht, daß sie Böses tun" oder „Sie sind Unwissende, so daß sie Böses tun", dann würde unser imaginärer,
den Autor nicht kennender Hebraist mit Sicherheit sagen: Ich verstehe schon, wie
man diese Übersetzungen rechtfertigen könnte' , aber sie sind nicht das Nahelie-
1 Hier kann offenbleiben: 1. die Konstruktion des Satzes (hat qäröb Imperativfunktion oder ist es Subjekt?); 2. die Bedeutung von zaebah (Opfergabe, die man spendet, oder Opfermahl, das man „gibt" = veranstaltet?); 3. die rechte Nuance von lilmcr'^ (zuhören oder gehor¬
chen?).
2 Von vornherein .seien syntaktisch waghalsige Auswege aus den im folgenden zu besprechen¬
den Problemen beiseitegeschoben: 1. die Theorie eines parenthetisch in den fortlaufenden Satz eingeschobenen kt 'enäm jöcf-im (Glaser); 2. die Annahme, das Subjekt des Satzes seien nicht die k^stlim, sondern diejenigen, die „hören" (Ginsburg).
3 Vgl. die entlarvende Bemerkung von G. A. Barton: „It naturally seems to mean ,they do not know (how) to do evil,' whieh is obviously contrary to Q.'s thought" (ICC z. St.).
4 Beispiele fiir einfachen Infinitiv in älteren Texten: 1 Sam 16,18; 1 Kön 3 7; Jes 47,11;
56,11.11; Jer 1,6;6,15. Infinitivus absolutus: Jes 7,15f. Infinitiv mit Lamed findet sich in älteren Texten seltener: vgl. Jes 50,4; Jer 4,22.
5 Bei der Übersetzung mit „so daß" wäre jöd^^im als abgeschlossener Ausdruck ohne weitere Ergänzung zu nehmen, wie etwa in Jes 1,3; 56,10; Ps 82,5; Ijob 34,2; Koh 9,11. Allerdings formuliert in einem solchen Fall Jes 44,9: bal jed^^ü f ma'dan jebösü „sie erkennen nicht, sodaß sie zuschanden werden". Ein Beleg fiir geschlossenes jd'- mit kon.sekutiver Fort¬
setzung durch -^ Infinitiv ist mir nieht bekannt, wenn natürlich auch grundsätzlich klar ist, daß + Infinitiv konsekutive Bedeutung haben kann. Da das Objekt des Erkennens bei jd'- auch mit l^ eingefiihrt werden kann, ist es abstrakt auch nicht ausschließbar, dd& jd'-
