Books Of Ezra And Nehemiah

In the mid-first millennium BCE, numerous groups arose, each with a different set of perspectives, worldviews, and attitudes: the Israelites, the Phoenicians, Neo-Assyrians, Persians and Greeks, and so on. For the Jews, they were held captive in Babylon, later returned to Jerusalem by Cyrus, the King of the Persians. Therefore, according to the first article, Cyrus was welcome within their society. These people were extremely religious, especially in regards to Marduk, and they all felt the need to help build their temple in Jerusalem. Everyone wanted to help for their beliefs and God, and gave gifts, money, and resources. “Even the Greeks, who later defeated the Persians, saw Cyrus as a model ruler” (textbook 132). Even more so, according to the Persian Customs article, most of the clans were made by Cyrus, and the rest, nomad tribes, heavily depended on Cyrus’ tribes.

According to Josephus, a Jewish historian, Cyrus is extremely respectful to the Jewish religion. Cyrus declared, “I have given leave to as many of the Jews that dwell in my country as please to return to their own country, and to rebuild their city, and to build the temple of God at Jerusalem on the same place where it was before.” Cyrus also sent his treasurer, Mithridates, and the governor of the Jews, Zorobabel, to “lay the foundations of the temple” and to help with the development of it. This would ensure that it gets done properly and under King Cyrus’s control (Document 2). King Ashoka used Edicts to keep his citizens properly informed and to make their lives easier. He used them to show how much he really valued his citizens loyalty. As an example of this, Edict five states that all religions were to be accepted, especially Dhamma. He believed that Dhamma would promote welfare and happiness to all whom were devoted to it. Ashoka worshiped Dhamma and believed it would be best for his citizens to as well (Document 6).

Cyrus had set himself apart from other rulers by compromising with his empire rather than forcing his entire will on them. He accomplished this by allowing people that had been moved from their homeland to return, most notably allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem after Nebuchadnezzar had them exiled and held captive in Babylon.⁴ On top of them returning, Cyrus also encouraged them to rebuild their temple, which was also one of his finer qualities.

After their exile, around fifty-thousand Jews returned to Jerusalem which was now called Judaea. The leader of Judea, the Persian King Cyrus, allowed the Jews to return and to build another place of worship (Fisher 251). The second temple was built in 515 BCE and according to the text Living Religions, became “the central symbol to a scattered Jewish nation” (Fisher). The temple became a place where the Torah was formed and where the religion prospered. However, Jewish prosperity was not going to last. After four centuries of Roman rule, that was domineering and dreadful, a group of Jews decided to rebel against their oppressors. This led to Jews being slaughtered by the Romans and to the second Temple being destroyed. All that is left of the Temple are foundation stones which are referred to as the Western Wall. The temple has never been rebuilt and the Western Wall has become a place for prayer and remembrance for Jews all over the world. Jewish people look at the Western Wall as a representation of the hardships and oppression that their religion and people have endured. According to the article, Mystical Secret of the Western Wall:

Under the headship of Zerubbabel who was a offspring from the House of David. Less than century later the Second journey would take place to Israel, with Ezra the Scribe being the leader. The subsequently four centuries also saw Jews of unstable degrees of self-rule under the Persians, and the Hellenistic over lordship (Ptolemaic and Seleucid). Under Ezra’s brilliant guidance they saw the repatriation of the people as they began the erection of the Second Temple on the same site as the First Temple. This would also include the refortification of the walls of Jerusalem a longer with the establishment of the Great Assembly known as Knessel Hagedolah as the judicial body and the ultimate religion of the Jewish people, which highlighted the Second Temple period. In the course of the rule of the Persian Empire, the leadership of the inhabitants of Judah was entrusted to the high priest, with the support of the ruling body of elders in Jerusalem. The Land also remained a Jewish theocracy under the Syrian-based Seleucid leaders, as it was a part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great of Greece

Cyrus let them return to their countries recover the gods, the statues, the temple vessels that had been confiscated. The story shares that all the peoples that the Babylonians had repressed and removed will go home, restore alters, worship their gods in their own way, in their own place. The importance of what occurred is that Cyrus recognized the rights of communities and people. This was grand for the Jew exiles.

Harris, R. L. (1999). 68 אָחַר. (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke, Eds.)Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press.

Some scholars, however, argue that each text had an independent author based on several perceived differences: the book of Chronicles honors David, prophecy is central to the text, Northerners are viewed positively, and has an hopeful view of history; whereas in Ezra-Nehemiah the emphasizes is on the Law of Moses, the Exodus. These texts

John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.

Our first discription of Ezra is very impressive; he was a brilliant scholar of the ‘Torah of Moses’, and his primary goal in Jerusalem was to ‘expound the Torah of Hashem and to fullfill and to teach its statute and law in Israel’. This man is clearly very honorable and a true servant of G-d, but despite his impressive intention,

Ezra and Nehemiah addressed the issue of foreign wives in different but like manners. When Ezra learned of the marriage of non-Jewish women, he reacted with grief and prayer (Tullock & McEntire, 2012). The issue was addressed and a solution was reached through Ezra’s prayer and fasting (Tullock & McEntire, 2012). He called a council meeting and declared that all those that married non-Jewish women would divorce those women and send them off, accompanied by any children born within the marriage (Tullock & McEntire, 2012). Nehemiah confronted the issue of non-Jewish marriage arrangements by beating the men who married non-Jewish women (Tullock & McEntire, 2012). He issued a proclamation prohibiting such marriages; foreign influences were excluded

Cyrus gains his knowledge of how to rule over human beings from several different sources from his early years. His first teacher was the justice school in Persia, second his experience with his grandfather in Media, and finally, and possibly his most important teacher, his father. First, as a boy, Cyrus learned about justice in Persia, where justice is the law. The boys in the school lean to “take vengeance on whomever they resolve to have done any of these injustices”, and they also lean “moderation” as well as “continence in food and drink” (1.2.6-8). Cyrus takes these Persian ideas and applies them to himself, then his army, and later his empire.

Studying the religion of the Ancient Israelite People must be done in a careful manner. The ways in which biblical scholars frame significant ideas can have a major effect on how their point is received. Today’s ideas about the religious lives of Canaanites have been drawn on primarily from The Hebrew Bible and archaeological evidence. In their respective works, biblical scholars Benjamin Sommer and Carol Meyers choose to interpret these pieces of religious evidence is varying ways; Meyers takes a more cultural approach while Sommer’s has a theological leaning. Recognizing these different perspectives, I prefer the approach that Meyers takes because of its focus in anthropology.

This perciope includes Ezra’s prayer and thought about interethnic marriage. Ezra and others had arrived from Babylon to find that many of the exiles had marry women who were foreign. Many of these exiles from Babylon who had returned were descendants of the people taken during the Babylonian captivity. Arthur Wolak expands on the statement above he says after the end of the Babylonian captivity and when a large of portion of the Jewish community were relocated to Jerusalem in the 5th century BCE, many years

The myth of the empty land is a widespread debate between biblical critics; the concerns of this debate lays within the construction of Judean territory during and after the destruction of Jerusalem leading to their (Babylonian) exile (586-538 BCE). The understanding of the empty land refers to the land left behind by its people, where the myth therein refers to the interpretation of certain texts and their beliefs of what the land of Israel was like during their exile. The works of Robert P. Carroll will be used as the primary basis of this interpretation.