Mount Zion, on the Sides of the North: The Syrian and Anatolian roots of the biblical story

By Davide Ventura

Some recent findings in the areas of Aleppo and Hama (Syria), dating back to the Neo-Hittite period (10th century BC), can be interpreted in a way that has the potential to shed a totally unexpected light upon the real sources of what the biblical story presents as the "United Monarchy" of David, Solomon and their purported successors.

In

• Language: English
• Publisher: Davide Ventura
• Release date: Jul 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9791220064095

Book preview

Introduction

At the time I am writing these lines, a cruel and apparently unstoppable war seems to have put to rest all archeological activities in Syria, while civil turmoil has ostensibly discouraged similar endeavors in the neighboring areas of south-eastern Anatolia. While it is true that the current human sufferings must take precedence, we must aver that the present forced archeological lull is not the least of the many woes that have beset this unfortunate region.

In 2003, after many seasons spent digging the ancient strata of the citadel towering above the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, the expedition led by Kay Kohlmeyer and Mohammad Miftah discovered the substantial ruins of a temple whose origin goes back to the third millennium BC at least; however, its last remake was dated to the 11th century BC, that odd period marking the beginning of the Iron age, and in which all our historical sources seem to fall silent. Actually, we know next to nothing about the Greeks between the Trojan war depicted by Homer and Homer himself, that is between the 12th and 8th centuries; and while the Middle East is slightly more forthcoming, only thin and sparse rays shed some light upon the couple of centuries straddling the year 1000 BC. We might almost say that the only significant and connected information that we have about that period is what the Bible has to say about the splendors of David’s kingdom—and this point will be of some significance in what follows.

That is the reason why the Aleppean discovery was very welcome; and even more so since not just reliefs and friezes emerged from the debris, but also a most precious kind of archeological finding: inscriptions. A long-frozen voice was speaking again after three millennia. And what that voice said was puzzling indeed.

The voice in the stones belonged to a king; his name was Daida, and he styled himself king of Phalastin. The biblical assonances did not end there: the shape of the temple itself, as far as it could be discerned, showed a striking resemblance with the proportions and ornamentation described in the Bible concerning the Jerusalem temple.

Aleppo, Bull-man

Fig. 1 - Relief in the Temple of the Storm-god, Aleppo.

Some time elapsed between the finding and the final edition of the results; and as soon as the new data was beginning to be assembled and compared with similar previous findings, all hell broke loose in Aleppo and in all Syria, and the human and material tragedy seemed to have also the effect of muting the scientific debate about the import of what had been found. It is iconic that the citadel itself upon which the temple had stood became, for years on end, a besieged stronghold.

Some lines have been written during the last years about the possible biblical bearings of the northern Syrian discoveries; but obviously, the geographic distance prevented the scholars from supposing a direct historical comparison. The parallels that were drawn concerned mostly issues of artistic and typological similarity, while the name Phalastin was considered a puzzling toponymic quirk.

And here we must go back to what the Bible says. With a caveat: this is not a book about the history of the Bible; rather, it is about some emerging historical facts that can also be construed as the prehistory of the Bible. Consequently, we will not deal with the studies about the various textual layers in the Bible, if not accidentally. The various Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and so on supposed layers will be left to the busy care of biblical scholars (even though what is said here will be somewhat relevant for their endeavor).

The last decades have been dominated by the clash of two opposing schools, the maximalists and minimalists. The former, more traditional school is inclined to consider the biblical accounts if not as outright primary historical documents at least as reliable sources of information—later traditions that still contain the gist and many useful details of ancient history. On the contrary, the minimalists have expressed ever increasing doubts about that credibility, lowering the purported age of the composition of the texts. There are extremists in both camps, the ones holding to literal inerrancy even in the details, the others sometimes stating that all the biblical texts were composed out of the blue at the times of Herod the Great. But even if we discount these equally untenable extremes, it is difficult to find a middle ground between the camps, and the debate is still quite polarized, with a division that sadly follows, in many cases, reasons of religious faith, or lack thereof.

As the decades unfold, the scales of the debate have begun to tip in favor of the minimalist view. Their main argument is actually of some weight: after centuries of digging, we have no direct proof whatsoever of the Exodus, of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, of the temple built by the latter. It can even be convincingly argued that Jerusalem, while it was a town of some importance during the Bronze age, had shrunk to become an unremarkable hamlet during the times of David and Solomon’s purported glory.

Since this archeological fact is increasingly difficult to deny, today the closest thing we have among the biblical scholars to a consensus view is that the Bible starts to be somewhat reliable, at least in the broad lines, in the 8th century BC, while the previous stories about Patriarchs, crossing of the Red Sea, conquest of the Promised Land and so on are either to be taken very cautiously, or just to be discarded.

Now, it is my intention here to show that both schools are wrong. The maximalists are obviously wrong in denying the evidence, namely, that their confidence in the historical authority of the Bible is not supported by the hard data of archeology. But the minimalists are also wrong. There is no progression of truthfulness in the Bible: the late stories of Ezra and Nehemiah do not contain any sounder history than those of Abraham or David. Some historical truths are to be found, surely (hence the confirmations that are sometimes proclaimed); some names, some facts do find external support in actual history. But this historical material is freely mixed with literary creations, and poured into molds that have simply nothing to do with history.

The whole Bible is a literary creation (and an astounding creation, at that), and an ideological one, whose main motives and reasons we will try to track. And one of the foremost literary devices that we will have to deal with is what I would suggest to call the Southward Shift: an intentional transfer of traditional historical, cultural and religious elements from the northern Syrian–southeastern Anatolian region to what is known today as Palestine / Israel—a transfer whose reasons we will inspect.

We will find that David and his realm, as well as the splinter kingdom of Israel, do have a historical base (contrary to what the minimalists believe). Only, they are not to be found anywhere near Jerusalem or Samaria. And much the same will hold true also in many other cases.

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The stories of the Bible, as they are written or in their Quranic version, are probably the best-known narrative of humankind. They are enticingly written, coherent, detailed. As such, they create a sort of gravitational field around them; they are so well ingrained, almost hardwired in our singular and collective memory, that it is very difficult to escape the subconscious bending effect they cause. It is conventional and literary reality, but so well written that the narrative creates its own level of reality. We will try to look at the historical reality without these ever-worn colored glasses (and without any pre-conceived hostility, either).

In order to do so, we will have to delve into fields that seem to be the sacred precinct of specialized scholars. We will have to deal with ancient and exotic languages, Akkadic, Egyptian, Aramaic; Hebrew, of course. Sometimes, we will have to cope with the original, ideographic writing systems in which some of these languages were encoded. Arguably, no living person is a specialist in all these subjects; this writer is a specialist in none of them. My academic training was in theoretical Physics and in Computer Science. I think that is just fine: if I could find some significant result, and I think I did, then the average, curious reader can come along. Since I had to work painstakingly on every subject, I have the uttermost respect for the need of the average reader to be carefully introduced into this research. The reader will get the real thing, and not a watered-down colloquial version. But he will get it on his own terms.

I fully expect that the specialists will have something to say, and to correct, about many particular issues. That contribution is totally welcome, and part of the concluding remarks will be dedicated to the hefty list of issues that this study leaves open, both for archeologists and for biblical scholars. But after years of research, I am completely confident about the merit of the big picture.

Every chapter will be introduced by a short story. A story where most of the details will be fantasy, or due to educated guesses. After all, we have to do with a narrative; and in order to get rid of the colored glasses we have been talking of, a counter-narrative is perhaps the best antidote. After that, the hard data and their analysis will be given, as plainly, yet as thoroughly as possible. The reader is warmly invited to check everything on his own, and to that purpose he will be provided with a full apparatus of references to scholarly articles and books. Since I do not assume that the average reader has access to a specialized library, internet links are given whenever possible (in case they will prove broken or incomplete, the printed editions are unfortunately the only fall-back option). Of course, the reader can just trust me and move on, but I expect the contrary.

A linguistic appendix is given as a reference in order to provide a general clue about the ancient Middle-eastern languages and the intricacies of their writing systems—there again, the hurried reader will be able to follow most of the book without resorting to that appendix.

Explicit Bible quotations will be given according to the time-honored King James Version; but any good translations will do. Whenever the Hebrew text is of consequence, it will be provided. Given the ready availability of the translated biblical text, no editions will be given. Lastly, a good acquaintance with the geographic features of ancient Middle East will be needed, especially as regards the so-called Neo-Hittite states of Iron age Syria. Therefore, maps will be provided, and I invite the reader to get somewhat familiar with them.

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This book was written with no political or religious agenda, and I wish I could consider it just an exercise in ancient historical and literary criticism. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that this exercise touches upon issues that are central in defining the current cultural, religious and often political identity in four and a half continents out of five. So yes, the themes that are treated here do bear on contemporary religious and even political issues. Nevertheless, I warmly invite the reader to set aside these matters, at least temporarily, and to judge this work on its merits (or demerits) within its own scope, which is a historical one.

No attempt is made here to belie the Bible. Dante had never visited the underworld when he wrote his Inferno, which is a literary construction and not a traveler’s report. But this does not take anything away from its poetical and even philosophical value. Similarly, the Bible is a literary construction, loosely based on some historical data; but I have nothing against the notion that it may contain sublime and transcendent teachings.

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One last item is given here to help with the aforementioned colored glasses (it is a spoiler of sorts, but it is worth it). This is a brief timeline of what the data tell us about the stages of formation of the biblical text:

800 BC. What is known in the Bible as kingdom of Israel is actually a small chiefdom known by the name of its capital, Samaria, or (especially by the Assyrians) Bit-Ḫumri. It is quite recent a polity, and in fact this Ḫumri, the biblical king Omri, is likely to be the first in its king-list. And the location of this tiny realm may not exactly be what a Bible reader would expect. Jerusalem is a tiny town on the hills of a backwater region called Judah; it is surrounded by much bigger city-states, and it is impossible to know whether it is a dependency of one of those states, or it is somewhat independent. If something called House of David exists, it has nothing to do with it. The god Yahweh (whatever the spelling under which He is known) is probably worshipped in the region, but this worship is by no means unique. The people of the region are totally unaware of the stories about Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, much less of Moses.

700 BC. The kingdom of Samaria has fallen to the Assyrians; we do have a kingdom of Judah with capital Jerusalem now, which has swollen to a considerable size, probably due to the inflow of refugees from the Assyrian-ravaged north. We are in the dark about the origin of its ruling dynasty, which may have come from outside, or may have evolved from a line of local chieftains. Polytheism is still unchallenged. Samaria has been heavily repopulated by a motley of deportees driven by the Assyrians, mostly from the Hama region in Syria. These populations have brought with themselves many of their traditions, including the Abraham story and the Jacob story, and they are in the process of recasting these traditions into a local mold (the Southward Shift). This process may have been encouraged by the Assyrian authorities, within a general ideology of loyalty and allegiance to the Assyrian king and to his tutelary deity Assur.

600 BC. The Assyrian empire has fallen, Egypt and Babylon are vying to fill the power vacuum, while local polities are trying to carve an independent role. The former client state of Judah has started an ideology that substitutes the allegiance to Assur with that to the local deity Yahweh (still without positively excluding the worship of other gods in the popular practice). A literary activity, mainly oral but maybe also in written form, has begun to work on the imported stories of Abraham, Jacob and David in order to forge a common origin story (no Exodus and Moses yet).

500 BC. The Persians have taken over the empire from the Chaldeans of Babylon. The proto-biblical literary activity is in full swing, both in southern Canaan and in the various areas of the empire where deported populations of Canaanite origin reside (mainly around Babylon itself). Babylonian myths, such as the creation and deluge narratives, are adapted into the growing proto-biblical corpus. The kernel of the Moses story is created as a counter-narrative in reaction to Egyptian royal propaganda accounts; later it will be welded to the Jacob cycle through the composition of the Joseph story.

400 BC. The Persian authorities are carrying through their policy of taking the various forms of worship within the empire as close as possible to their Zoroastrian belief. Monotheism (under the various names of local main deities), limitation and centralization of animal sacrifice and purity laws are strongly encouraged and, in some cases, enforced among the subject populations. The proto-biblical literature in the Canaanite language is therefore supplemented along these lines (we can by now speak of Bible and of Israelite religion). In spite of the localization of the origin story to southern Canaan, this religious complex is still universal enough to be adopted by large communities of descendants of Levantine deportees and colonists all over the Persian empire, with a broad variety of accepted texts and cultic centers.

300 BC. The Persian empire has been partitioned among Alexander the Great’s successors, the Diadochi. Jerusalem comes under the sphere of influence of Egypt’s Ptolemies, who find it fit to translate into Greek the version of the biblical corpus proper to Jerusalem itself. Also due to this translation, the Hierosolymitan variety of the Israelite religious complex (Judaism) gains a widespread influence throughout the Hellenistic world, where it gradually becomes a standard of sorts. The remaining varieties of the Israelite religion, more localized and less fertile in terms of literary activity, slowly dwindle during the following centuries, until most disappear. In our days, only a minute community of so-called Samaritans and a slightly more substantial group of Mandeans (an Israelite-derived religion strongly influenced by Zoroastrian beliefs) are still in existence.

Chapter 1

The Making of a Tradition

Adalia stretched his legs after dismounting from the horse. It had been a pleasant ride from Damascus, where his status as a royal scribe had given him the opportunity of receiving the bay mare from the city’s postmaster, but his thighs were still aching because of the less accommodating steeds he had to adapt to during his long journey from Babylon.

While a stable boy silently took the reins of the mare and led her away, a maid showed him into the low door of the white-washed house. Inside, the big room was already dimly lit by a twin set of candle holders. Night was approaching the city, with its customary swiftness. An older man, seated by a low table, stood slowly up and raised his hands.

Welcome back to Jerusalem, Adlai! I was told that you were coming, and my heart was hoping to see you before tomorrow.

I did my best, Malachiah! Dusk was rising from the desert, but I could not wait to be back to the city, at last.

Yes, it has been a long while. Let me see… the old man looked up to the wooden ceiling while he tried to remember. Two years and a half, isn’t it?

Quite so, master, said Adalia, taking his hands out of the water bowl that a young servant was holding.

You did well, my son! Now we can have a long time to talk. Come, sit down. Drink. Something to eat will be ready very soon. And you have so much to tell me. How is young Arsaces faring in Babylon, now that he is the King?

Adalia frowned, but then his brow relaxed in a smile. Do not call him that way anywhere near a Persian official, Malachiah! He is now Artaxerxes, son of Darius, son of Artaxerxes, Great King, King of kings, and so on... And he is not that young, too.

But you are a Persian official yourself, are you not? chuckled Malachiah.

So I am, master, but fear not, I will not arrest you for that! replied the younger man, still smiling.

Then his expression turned more somber. Anyway, seriously, do take care. The King’s men in Babylon are quite nervous, and even the governor here in Jerusalem might behave in a strange manner if something comes to his ears that might be construed as disparaging to the King. You know, things are not quite settled down...

So, it is Cyrus, the disappointed brother, am I right? I know that Cyrus was heading to Syria shortly before King Darius’ death.

That, yes, and more, Adalia went on. Cyrus has refrained from claiming the throne, so far. But he has not pledged allegiance to his brother Artaxerxes, either. And he is spreading the notion, or at least that is what I heard in Babylon, that the crown should go to the son that Darius begat as he was already the King, rather than to the eldest one. And rumor has it that he is hiring mercenaries. Greek ones, at that, and in droves.

Malachiah nodded to the young servant, who was carrying in a plate of roasted meat. He will not dare to rebel, he said.

He will, replied Adalia. He knows that it is that or death. Artaxerxes will not let him live, and he will find a way, either by poison or by dagger. It is either rebellion or death. And then there is Egypt.

Yes, Egypt, sighed the elder. We have had peace, at least, for many generations, and that is a good thing, even if it comes at the cost of our freedom. But now... this rebel Amurtis in Egypt, who styles himself king.

King? started Adalia. Now it seems you are the one who has news to tell!

Yes, king, replied Malachiah. King of Egypt, with all the ancient rites of the inauguration. It does not make sense. As long as he was a mere rebel, old King Darius almost did not react, even when Amurtis occupied some towns in the Delta of the Nile. But now it is as if he is asking for a massive expedition. Our new King will not suffer to leave a self-styled Pharaoh in Sais. We shall have war, and may the Eternal One grant us that the war will not spill over to Judea.

Adalia waved his hands as if to dispel the notion. We will have no war with Amurtis. Artaxerxes will leave him alone, Pharaoh or not!

How can you say that? Abrocomes, the satrap, has scores of thousands of soldiers under his command, ready to march to the Nile.

That I know. But he will not head to Egypt to quell the rebellion. He is needed where he is, in case Cyrus claims the throne and marches to Babylon.

Malachiah shrugged. How can you be sure?

Because I brought him orders to that effect myself.

Did you?

Yes, I saw him in Damascus, and the main reason of my journey was actually to carry to Abrocomes the King’s instructions to ignore the situation in Egypt, and to get ready to deal with Cyrus. Well, that was the official reason. Of course, I was very glad to accept the mission, because it gave me the opportunity of spending some weeks here in Jerusalem after it.

The older man pondered upon his guest’s words.

So, you mean we shall have a war, but not two. It is either Egypt or civil war with Cyrus, he said after a while.

Yes, replied Adalia, and I am quite sure it will be Cyrus. The news of Amurtis’ coronation will not change that. By the way, as far as I know the Persian garrison in Upper Egypt is still loyal to the King and ready to stop Amurtis from extending the rebellion to the South. Or is my information too old, there?

It is not, replied Malachiah. You know that many of the King’s troops posted there are our kin, although the commanders are Persians. I received a letter from one of them, an acquaintance of mine posted in Elephantine, not long ago. I do not know how the letter was smuggled to the north, since Amurtis is trying to disrupt any communications between southern Egypt and our land. In spite of that, it seeped through. Among other things related to the worship of the Lord, he wrote that life in Elephantine, and in all Upper Egypt, has not changed, and that all the districts are loyal to the Persian King.

That’s valuable news, said Adalia, and I will forward it to Abrocomes as soon as possible. He raised his eyebrows in thought. Elephantine... They had problems with their temple there, hadn’t they?

More than problems. Six years ago, the temple was almost razed to the ground; a sad story. Our governor Bagavahya had a hand in smoothing things out, however. They are now busy rebuilding it, as far as I know.

The two men paused the conversation, realizing that they had forgotten the meal that had been served. Malachiah gave thanks and began to eat, imitated by his guest. They sat awhile in silence, tasting the cooling meat and the flat pieces of bread.

Other details about the royal court in Babylon and the local problems of Judea were exchanged afterwards. You must be very tired, said Malachiah, as he saw his guest’s head sagging, and I am selfish to keep you awake, my son. Enough with kings and rebels, now.

You are not selfish, master, I wish I could go on talking all night long. But I think I really need some rest. I hope that tomorrow you will have some time for me. You know why I came to Jerusalem, other than for the pleasure of seeing you again.

The elder smiled broadly. You will have my undivided attention tomorrow, and if the Lord wills, for many more days after it. Have a good night!

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The new day came, and at the first light Adalia found Malachiah already waiting for him in a small room adjacent to the one where they had spent the evening, the day before. Sheets of parchment and of papyrus, as well as whole scrolls and some clay tablets were all over the place, in the shelves along the walls and even on the floor, and Adalia had to tread carefully to reach the seat that had been made ready for him.

He was staring at the overflowing collection of texts when the voice of Malachiah startled him out of his reverie. Did you take a look at the temple, Adlai, while you were heading to my house?

A cursory one, master, answered Adalia. It was almost dark already.

Well, we’ll have time to make a more proper visit. The refurbishing is almost finished now, with the Lord’s help.

So I heard. And who knows when the next one will start.

Not in my lifetime, hopefully, chuckled Malachiah. The works first began before I was born, and the Lord knows that the whole thing has already taken too much time. Now I really hope it’s over. We have to concentrate on the hearts, not on the stones.

What about the hearts, then? inquired Adalia. You know that the court is quite interested about the state of the hearts, as we may call them.

Yes, the hearts, the elder went on. They are hard, hard indeed. You remember the last time you came here. It took a whole contingent of Persian troops, and the presence of the satrap, to remove from the temple all images not pertaining to the Lord. And that, after all our preparations.

I remember. That was two years ago. What about now?

Now the people keep sacrificing to Ashera, Betel, Baal and all the rest in every little town and farm. And even to the Lord.

Disregarding the orders not to sacrifice outside the temple, you mean?

Indeed, nodded Malachiah. Thank Heavens the great landowners are mostly unwilling to risk the governor’s displeasure, and they do come to the temple. Hopefully, they will set a standard for the peasantry, in the long run. But even they, well, we can say that they are less than enthusiastic. You would not believe what I saw a couple of months ago!

Please tell me, requested Adalia, looking intently at the older man.

A man, a very rich one, came to the temple with two sheep. They looked in such an ill shape that they almost couldn’t walk. Well, while the priest was making things ready for the sacrifice, one of them just collapsed and could not be raised again. Flaked out. In a minute, it was dead.

Adalia smiled wryly. Not too eager to offer sound beasts, are they? I don’t even ask about the tithes, then!

Malachiah shrugged. Yes, don’t ask!

That is really upsetting, said Adalia. It was not easy to convince the royal court to set the tribute for Jerusalem at the lowest rate in all the empire, and that in exchange for the maintenance of the temple. Even now there are powerful people at court who strongly disagree with this policy, and they could have their way with the new King. Nonetheless, the people here seem not to appreciate the privilege they have received.

It is understandable, Malachiah said softly. They resent the worship reforms as an alien imposition against their traditions. That’s why I don’t worry that much about the present situation.

Adalia frowned at the remark. Don’t you, master Malachiah?

Not at all, replied the elder. If something cannot be helped, it is pointless to worry, or even to care. The battle will not be won by Abrocomes’ armies, or by the governor’s guards. The true battlefield is this room.

Adalia looked around once again at the archive. He saw what Malachiah meant, and he nodded.

We must write, write and rewrite, went on the elder. The people tell stories, but that is not enough. Stories cannot be controlled; writings can. Stories are diverse, but writings can be made uniform. This is the true battle for us.

Adalia nodded again. True, he said, and I hope to depart this city with a good load of copies. You are not the only one known for his skill in rewriting the old stories, here in Jerusalem and in other cities. In Babylon we have a good deal of scribes trained in the old language of Beyond-the-River, too. But there is no comparison with what I carried with me from my last visit. And the new King has read!

Malachiah started at these words, and a few seconds passed before he regained his composure. Artaxerxes read my works? All of them? Just some? How come he knows Hebrew? How do you know?

Well, replied Adalia, it was not Artaxerxes who read the works. It was Arsaces. He smiled. Yes, he read them just before he became the King. All of them; and he thanked me personally for having brought them from Jerusalem. Actually, I think he must have read most of what has been put on a parchment in Babylon and Susa by now— as for Hebrew, he had strange words explained to him by a scribe while he was reading. And he remembers everything. When he summoned me to confirm the orders for this mission to Abrocomes, he also quoted some of the texts I had given him two years ago, word for word!

And he approves of them? asked the elder.

He does. Well, do not think that he said as much; but he seemed pleased. Which did wonders to appease the misgivings by some of his ministers, about the issues you know.

The older man nodded. Well, well, he said eventually, it looks as if the Almighty is giving us his rain from above. It remains now to let the soil absorb the rain, so to speak.

That was my concern about what you have just told me about the situation in Jerusalem, said Adalia. These writings can be spread among the literate class, one or two people out of sixty can read them of their own accord. A few more can be reached through the events of public reading that have been customary in the last years; but still—many people here do not know the language of Beyond-the-River any better than the King...

The language will remain what it is! interrupted Malachiah. The people of the land are already worried enough for what they perceive as innovations. At least, the language must be that of the ancestors; and too bad for the descendants of the deportees from the land between the two rivers if they find it difficult to understand. That adds to the prestige of the writings; and we have no dearth of scribes to translate what they do not understand, orally, into the language of the Assyrians, as you say it was the case for the King himself! Then, there are other ways to spread the words of the Lord.

If you mean the periodic public readings in the villages and in the districts of the city, retorted Adalia, yes, they might somewhat work. The late King Darius had already encouraged the practice to recite the approved literature to the people. It happens, here and there, from the Hellespont to the Indus river. But as far as I know, the practice is exceedingly slow to catch on.

Malachiah made a sweeping, dismissive gesture with his hand. Little wonder! The ravings of the Greeks, the fables of the Phrygians, the conceited vanities of the shaven-headed Gandharans! How can all that hold any interest for a shepherd or for a peasant?

Suddenly, he stood up and opened a drawer, from which he took a hammer and a nail. Then he crouched down by the door’s threshold, holding the tools. He pointed the nail against the hard stone of the threshold itself.

What do you think will happen, he said, if I begin hammering with all my strength, Adlai?

The stone is too hard, and it will bend the nail, or even break it.

The elder started to strike the nail, but with weak, frequent hits. At first, nothing happened, but soon some puffs of dust showed that the nail’s tip was making some progress in creating tiny fractures in the stone. He continued hammering, and after a while a hole maybe a quarter of inch deep had formed in the stone.

Malachiah quit hitting the nail, and sat down again. I do not want to destroy my own house completely to make my point, he said, his breath slightly quickened by the exertion. Anyway, you can see that I could have pierced the stone if I wished, although it is maybe four inches thick. You see what I did there, don’t you, Adlai?

The younger man squinted his eyes, then he smiled. Yes, I think I see. The scrolls you are copying and rewriting are the nail. The King and his officials are the hammer; and the people are the stone. Frequent repetition and patience are the key to successfully forcing our words through their hearts.

Admirable! exclaimed the elder. Just one more meaning. The tip of the nail has to be very small. What do you make of it?

Adalia raised his hands. There you lose me, he said with a shrug of his shoulders. Please, explain that point.

The King, and you, are worried about the whole empire, replied Malachiah. I am not. If we succeed in Judea, I’ll be more than satisfied. Jerusalem is where the nail’s tip is placed upon.

And the other nations?

You are here to make copies and take them to Babylon, are you not? The other nations will have an opportunity to learn, when the time comes.

Adalia rose to his feet and slowly paced the room. Nothing was said for a while.

He looked through a small window, protected by a wooden lattice from the direct rays of the rising sun.

In Babylon, he said eventually, there are people who earn their living by forging wills. Sometimes I feel I am one of them.

What is wrong with you? frowned Malachiah.

Adalia turned and pointed to the scrolls scattered on the shelves. We have often spoken of the words of the Lord. But are these the words of the Lord, or are they just ours?

Malachiah stood up, slowly, and slowly he raised his hands. Both! he uttered.

The two men sat down again. These are not my stories or your stories, Malachiah resumed, or at least, they are not just that. Sometimes, you know, you stop your day’s work with a plan for the following day. Then you wake up, and you have a completely different story in your mind, word by single word. The only thing you have to do is to write it down, as if you were copying from a scroll. Sometimes, Adlai, you are almost forced to write something that you had never intended to put on the parchment. Something urges you; you must.

I see, master. But—

Look, Adlai, interrupted the elder, this is not about what I want, or what the King wants, or whatever. We are making a people. Heaven is making a people through us, a people where He can take his dwelling! Think of it. A people, out of scattered shards from all over the lands between the sea and the River, out of scattered stones, out of scattered memories. It will take time, generations maybe, think of the nail and the stone. But there will be a new people, with its ancestors, its laws, its temple, its God...

And its king, interjected Adalia.

Malachiah inhaled deeply. Yes, its king, he said.

Adalia gazed at the ground. That is what worries me. Let us say that whoever in the royal court happened to read about that point was, well, unimpressed. Yes, that raised many eyebrows, to say the least. And in a time when there are uprisings and potential rebellions all over the empire, you know...

Empires come and go, said Malachiah, cutting the air with his hand as if it were a sword. The Assyrians came and conquered everything. Then the Chaldeans destroyed them and took over. Now, it’s the time of these people from the East. They will be gone too, even though we don’t know when. I am not working against the King of the Persians, Adlai; nobody is. I have already said that we are not working for this generation. We will have our own king, but the Lord will decide the time, not us.

Even so the stories about king David are difficult to sell to the ministers in Babylon.

They are old stories, already, countered Malachiah. He pointed to the shelves. I have scrolls here that are more than two hundred years old. And some of them already speak of the old kingdom that stretched from river to river. In one of the scrolls, and quite an old one at that, the kingdom’s capital has already become Jerusalem instead of Hama! We had no hand in all that, except for copying, and for some embellishments.

Yes, indeed, Adalia replied, but now that land is exactly the region between an active rebel, Amurtis, and a potential one, Cyrus. Just what we need in order to make the court nervous!

Malachiah snorted. Have you received any official complaints?

I have, nodded Adalia. One of the King’s ministers told me bluntly that he holds the story as seditious; and he is powerful enough to push the matter through to the King.

What do you suggest?

Well, as you mentioned, the story is an old one by now, and it is so well known that it would be difficult to just delete it. But, maybe we could do something so that David and Solomon look less imposing, less ideal, less threatening to the court’s ears. I had a long ride from Babylon to Jerusalem, you know, and I had much time to think. I have a couple of ideas...

The elder nodded in encouragement. Let me hear your ideas, then.

(Jerusalem, 402 or 401 BC)

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A Contested Succession

We will let Adalia’s designs about David and Solomon rest until the next chapter, where we will begin to deal in detail about the extensive activity of story-writing that had been going on for some centuries before the date of the Jerusalem dialogue that we imagined in the lines above. Here, we will analyze what was going on during the time of the dialogue in that peripheral, restive province of the Persian empire that the dialogue itself has only touched upon—Egypt. Because it is there that the first rays of documented history shine on something that we can begin to call the Israelite religion.

Some common historical settings might be in order to better understand what was happening in the Near East at the time of our fictive dialogue, the end of the 5th century BC. The Persian empire, established one and a half centuries before by Cyrus the Great, stretched from the mouth of the Danube to the Indus; a common, standardized administrative language, Aramaic, and a sprawling network of roads had helped to balance the obvious centrifugal forces at work in such a vast expanse of land. Delegates of the Great King, the satraps, ruled over regions as vast as large kingdoms of yore, regions of which the empire comprised more than two dozen.

In 404 BC, Arsames was satrap of Egypt, while Abrocomes ruled the satrapy of Abar Nahara. The latter was the official name of the lands between the Euphrates and Egypt (the term actually means Beyond the River in Aramaic, where the River par excellence is the Euphrates itself). More or less, it was composed of the modern states of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria (with the south-eastern territories of Turkey bordering with the latter). In Roman times, the same region was often broadly called Syria, or just Oriens, place of the rising sun; from which came the modern denomination of Levant, which we will normally employ. Derivative terms of the Aramaic word Abar, beyond, were widely used in Mesopotamia to denote the Levantine region, its inhabitants and their original language, Canaanite (a language that was on its way to be superseded by Aramaic itself, the official language of the empire, in the common use of the inhabitants). The term, through the mediation of Greek and Latin, eventually became our word Hebrew.

With all its military clout, and its administrative success, the empire was at a point of crisis in the year 404 BC. The Great King, Darius II, great-grandson of the king of the same name who failed to conquer the Greeks at Marathon, had died, in his nineteenth year of reign. It happened quite often with eastern monarchies that royal successions were made a risky affair because of the many sons that a sovereign usually had by his various official wives (and sometimes even scores of bastards could play a role—a fact of which Darius II himself was proof, since he was his father’s illegitimate son). A sort of primogeniture right did exist, but it was by no means without exception, since it was considered a right of the reigning king to change the order of succession according to his preferences. That almost inevitably led to civil turmoil in the occasion of the king’s passing away.

In 404 BC, at the news of Darius’ death, his firstborn legitimate son Arsaces was hastily crowned as the new Great King,1 and his name was changed according to his grandfather’s one, Artaxerxes. Unfortunately, Arsaces’ younger brother Cyrus—the same name as the founder of the empire—found reasons to disagree: Arsaces was his elder, but he was born when Darius, their father, was not yet the king. Flimsy as it was, this reason was effectively strengthened by the fact that Cyrus had been put in charge of all the territories of Anatolia, more-or-less modern Turkey, which gave him vast resources in terms of troops and wealth. He liberally used the latter to hire mercenary hoplites from Greece, the formidable heavy infantry that had once repulsed his ancestors’ attempts to subdue Athens and Sparta. At the time of our dialogue, Cyrus was looming menacingly in Anatolia; he would soon claim the throne and go on to attack his brother. In 401 BC the rivals met at Cunaxa, near Babylon, and Cyrus was struck dead during the battle. His ten thousand Greek mercenaries, who had been close to winning the day for him, retreated toward their fatherland, an epic journey that was narrated by one of them, Xenophon.2

Another crisis that the empire faced in 404 BC was the rebellion of Egypt. The long-seething aversion against the Persian conquerors had coalesced into an uprising led by the descendant of a line of Libyan chieftains, a man who is called Amyrtaios in the Greek sources, Amurtis in the Aramaic documents and Amunirdes in the Egyptian inscriptions. The rebellion, at the beginning circumscribed to the regions bordering the Libyan desert, had spread to the entire Delta, so that the garrisons in Upper (that is, southern) Egypt, still loyal to the Persians, had been cut off from the rest of the empire. The resistance of these troops would last few years, and at the end of the century Amurtis ruled a unified, independent Egypt.

It is to one of these Persian garrisons that we now turn our attention.

Elephantine

The southernmost city of Egypt proper, and the last one that could be reached by boat following the Nile against its stream, was called Syene by the Greek historians, and Aswan by its modern inhabitants. Its position made it the natural site for the army that garrisoned the southern border of the country; and a substantial part of that army was posted, during the period of the Persian occupation, in a fortress-island that Nature had placed in the middle of the Nile, in sight of the city itself. The Persian officers had there under their command a division whose soldiers came from every corner of the empire, but mostly from the Levant. The name of the island was, in the official Aramaic language, Yeb; the Greeks called it Elephantine, which is the name we will use.

Elephantine has provided to the archeologist an incredible trove of ancient documents, most of which were papyri; and the bulk of the trove can be dated to the very period we are writing about.3 The texts are well known among the scholars of the ancient Middle East, but strangely enough they are virtually unknown by the broad public. In spite of that, they are of devastating importance; they are the first documents of undisputed authenticity where we can find substantial hints to the fact that a cultural complex that we can call Israelite religion was emerging as something distinct from the general polytheistic background of the Canaanite cults. Of course, if somebody reads them through the colored glasses of the Bible, he will find confirmation of what is found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, along with some easily dismissed pagan admixtures, quirks that can be put down to the multiethnic character of the military garrison—a reading that is common in the literature. But we have no evidence whatsoever that any such thing as a monotheistic Israelite religion existed before the texts—to the contrary, what we can glean from the Mesopotamian texts and from the Canaanite archeology is proof to the opposite view. What we are witnessing in the Elephantine texts is not a corruption of ancient Israelite beliefs, but rather the uncertain act of birth of them. And we will see that this birth has a quite unexpected midwife.

Many of the people we find mentioned in the papyri came from Judah, then a subdivision of the satrapy of Abar Nahara or Beyond-the-River. It wasn’t a recent presence, and many of them had doubtless been born in Egypt. Still they retained memory of their origin, and the various ethnic components of the garrison tended not to mix.

A distinctive trait of their culture was the worship of the god YHW (a couple of times written YHH). Since the vowels are not given in Aramaic, we are left in doubt about the correct pronunciation of what was becoming the name of the biblical God, Yahweh. The polytheistic environment of the garrison seems to make no particular problems for the Judean colonists, and pagan expressions do make their appearance in the texts,4 nevertheless, the worship of YHW seems to be exclusive among the Judean community itself. Many of the personal names bear the short form of the divine name, -iah.

YHW has his temple in Elephantine, and priests are appointed for the worship. Their chief seems to be a Yedoniah, whose mailing archive will be the main object of our analysis. This temple stands almost door to door with another temple, dedicated to the worship of the native Egyptian deity Khnum. The cohabitation within the island-fortress is not exactly peaceful, as we will see. Relationships with other cultic communities of Syrian origin seem to be smoother; we have a document where Yedoniah works as the accountant not only for the temple of YHW, but also for the temples of other two Levantine deities:

On the 3rd of Phamenoth, year 5. 5 This is (sic!) the names of the Jewish6 garrison which (sic!) gave money to the God Yaho,7 [2 shekels] each. (Lines 2-119, 126-135 name 123 contributors of both sexes). (120-125) Cash on hand with Yedoniah the son of Gemariah on the said day of the month of Phamenoth: 31 karash, 8 shekels. Comprising: for Yaho 12 k., 6 sh.; for Ishumbethel 7 k.; for Anathbethel 12 k. 8

Note that 1 karash = 20 shekels, so that the 12 k. and 6 sh. are 246 shekels, exactly 2 sh. each for the 123 Judean subscribers, the offerings to the other gods coming from other ethnic groups. The quoted account is a good example of the attitude of the Judean component of the garrison about the worship of other gods: YHW is the group’s own deity, and the sole recipient of offerings; despite this, the head priest of YHW’s temple finds nothing against keeping the account for the offerings to other deities on behalf of the other components of the garrison.

How biblical is this group of expatriated Judeans, according to the data we have discussed so far? What we do have is the divine name (with three letters instead of the four ones, YHWH, that we find in the biblical texts). And the worship of this deity is performed by professional clergy in a temple. Then, this temple worship seems to know no associates to YHW himself; now, this is quite notable, given that archeological and epigraphic data coming from pre-exilic (that is, 8th and 7th century BC) Canaan consistently present us with the worship of a divine couple, normally YHW(H) and the goddess Ashera.9 This deity, who plays a prominent role in Phoenician mythology, where she is variously associated to the gods El and Baal, is one example of the ubiquitous feature of ancient polytheistic systems to associate a female deity to a male one as his projection, his power and force. As such, the name Ashera could even be the hypostatization of a common name, since the term comes from the Semitic root ˀṯr, meaning footprint, trace; this can explain expressions such as Yahweh and his Ashera of the inscription found in Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai peninsula10 and in Khirbet al-Qom in Palestine.11 Interestingly, Ashera is often associated with a tree of life, and as such she was represented in an iconic way by a pole (the Ashera poles often found in the Bible) or by a sacred grove (in the King James Bible version, Ashera is consistently translated as grove).12

Getting back to Elephantine, not only we do not find the local Judeans engaged in other cults, but there is no consistent trace of Ashera in the cult of YHW himself.13 Apparently, that community was well on its way toward monotheism (even though some lingering pagan elements, some of which we have shown, demonstrate that the evolution was still far from reaching its final stage).

One thing is decidedly not biblical among the Elephantine Judeans. Their names, while good Hebrew ones, never include the famous patriarchal figures of the Bible: "... no one named Amram, Benjamin, Bezalel, Daniel, Eleazar, Eliezer, Gershom, Ishmael, Joseph, Judah, Manasseh, Phinehas, Simeon, to say nothing of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." 14 This is actually noteworthy. But it is not unique; if one checks the onomastic lists of the Bible, for instance those in Chronicles or Nehemiah, the patriarchal names do not fare much