Jeroboam makes two golden calves, and sets them up at Dan and Bethel. Post-exilic biblical scribes revised this archetypal act of apostasy by introducing a new version of the same sin set in a more ancient period: Aaron's Golden Calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Dr.
Nathan MacDonald
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Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue made of four metals in Daniel 2 was composed using Persian and Greek historiographic imagery. The crushing of the statue by a stone mountain alludes to the story of the golden calf, and is a message of hope to the Judeans that God will eventually crush their Greek oppressors.
Dr.
Naama Golan
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The real reason Persia’s King Darius II sent a letter to the governor of Egypt that Judean soldiers in Elephantine should keep the festival of Matzot.
Prof. Rabbi
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi
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Throughout the Bible, “Ishmaelite” is a collective term for eastern nomads. Why, then, does Genesis present their eponymous ancestor Ishmael as dwelling in the west? The answer can be found in the political realities of Persian period Yehud.
Prof.
Yairah Amit
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The Bible knows about many priestly families, including the Levites, the Mushites (descendants of Moses), and the Zadokites. By the time of Ezra and Chronicles, however, only Aaronide priests were legitimate, and other families either merged with them or were demoted.
Prof.
Mark Leuchter
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In the Persian period, the Torah, which is made up of various law collections, was ascribed to Moses as revealed by YHWH. A parallel development was taking place in Achaemenid Persia that sheds light on this process: The sacred texts called the Avesta, that contain the law (dāta) and tradition (daēnā) of Zoroastrianism, were being collectively ascribed to Zarathustra (Zoroaster) as revealed by Ahuramazdā.
Dr.
Yishai Kiel
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In the book of Esther, the name for the holiday Purim derives from Haman’s pūr (פּוּר, “lot”) to determine what day to attack the Jews. The name Purim predates the story of Haman’s lot, and may originate in a forgotten Assyrian calendrical celebration, when the new year was named with a pūru.
Dr.
Amitai Baruchi-Unna
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According to Ezra (3:4) and Nehemiah (8:14-15) the returnees celebrated the holiday of Sukkot according to the law as it “was written,” but differences between their celebrations and the prescriptions in the Torah suggest that the laws they had written were slightly different than ours. Was the Torah finalized by the time Ezra-Nehemiah was written?
Dr.
Lisbeth S. Fried
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Jews in the Persian Period dealt with the reality of the destruction of Judah in two different ways. Megillat Esther emphasized the diaspora while Ezra-Nehemiah emphasized the rebuilding. For most of Jewish history the Ezra-Nehemiah model was all but non-existent, but this changed with the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel.
Prof.
Sara Japhet
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Making sense from a redactional and historical perspective of the Torah’s two contradictory methods for how to divide the land among the tribes.
Dr.
Itamar Kislev
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A new look at the “Passover Papyrus” from Elephantine and the nature of the Hebrew calendar in the Achaemenid Empire.
Dr.
Idan Dershowitz
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An overview of Persian history starting from Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Media (549 B.C.E.) until Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334-329 B.C.E.), including related biblical references and Jewish texts.
Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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Two Problems In Parashat Bemidbar
Prof. Rabbi
Baruch A. Levine
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Egyptologists have long searched the details of the Joseph story for clues to when the story was written. Does the Jewish experience as a diaspora community in Egypt hold the clue to the story’s origin?
Dr.
Shirly Ben-Dor Evian
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