Persian period

The Israelite camp’s layout provides a double layer of protection for the Tabernacle and ensures an orderly march through the wilderness. But where does this organizational model come from? New evidence points not to Egypt—but to Persia.

In Persian Yehud, as Deuteronomy’s covenant with YHWH was championed as the new path to national security and blessing, the book of Ruth countered with a conservative vision—one in which the survival and well-being of two vulnerable widows are secured not through covenantal fidelity, but through traditional values and customary law.

Ezra-Nehemiah mentions only four of the twelve kings who ruled the Persian empire: Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. The book of Daniel also speaks of four Persian kings, and adds a fictional Darius the Mede as their precursor. Historically, the Achaemenid period lasted 220 years, but using only the kings mentioned in the Bible, rabbinic texts reconstruct a 52-year Persian period.

Israel’s deity becomes a universal God and the political power behind human affairs. This is just one of seven historical shifts in how the Bible conceives of “theocracy,” divine political power.

Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, is the ancestor of Edom, Israel’s southern neighbor. The Edomites worshiped the god Qos/Qaus, who emerged around the same time and place as YHWH in the Late Bronze Age, and who was very popular in Persian Period Yehud. And yet, unlike other foreign gods, the Bible never mentions the god Qos. Why?

God promises Abram that his descendants will be a great nation in Genesis 12, while in Genesis 17, Abraham and Sarah are to become the forebears of a multitude of nations. A postcolonial analysis highlights how each image reflects a different way that Judeans grappled with their place and future in a world ruled by the vast and powerful Persian Empire.

Leviticus 16 describes how the scapegoat ritual on Yom Kippur attains atonement for all of Israel’s sins, even acts of rebellion. Numbers 15, however, states that a person who sins unintentionally can bring an offering and be forgiven, but the person who sins intentionally is cut off from the people.

Abraham and Isaac’s sojourn in Gerar and Beersheba, and their covenants with the local ruler Abimelech, reflect the historical circumstances of Judea during the Persian period. They are living in the Promised Land, struggling with the local people, but they come to terms with the friendly and God-fearing ruler.

A luxury Persian import, famous for its medicinal qualities and lovely smell, the citron became Sukkot’s פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר “fruit of a splendid tree” in the first century C.E.

Post-exilic scribes challenged priestly authority by supplementing the Tabernacle texts with a second Ohel Moed, Tent of Meeting, where Moses appoints the 70 elders. In contrast to the Priestly Tabernacle, any Israelite can go to this Tent of Meeting to speak with God. 

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.

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.

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.

Throughout the Bible, “Ishmaelite” is a collective term for nomads living in the wilderness, east of Canaan. Why is their eponymous ancestor Ishmael, Abraham’s exiled son, presented as living in the wilderness region near Egypt, west of Canaan? The answer can be found in the political realities of Persian period Yehud.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Jews in the Persian Period dealt with the reality of the destruction of Judah in two different ways. The Book of 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.

The Torah’s two contradictory methods for how to divide the land among the tribes – a redactional and historical approach.

A new look at the “Passover Papyrus” from Elephantine and the nature of the Hebrew calendar in the Achaemenid Empire.

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.

Four Answers to One Question

Two Problems In Parashat Bemidbar 

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?