Ezra And Nehemiah: Jewish Religious Traditions And Reconstruction Of Jerusalem

The history of Jews in host cities often depict a story of success or of failure when it comes to relations between the Jews and the Christians in Europe. Historian Jonathan Elukin, author of Living Together, Living Apart, presents the integration as a success process with rare, and special cases, of failure. On the other side of the spectrum is historian Raymond P. Scheindlin. Scheindlin’s novel, A Short History of the Jewish People, presents many cases of integration between the Christians and Jews that led to massacres and brutal endings for the Jewish community. There are many monumental events that take place during the long span of time that oversees European Jewish history, and both historians study and evaluate the events, however, they do so through different lenses.

The Book of Ezekiel is and the man himself is in the midst of historical event associated with the demise of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem (587 B.C.E) Ezekiel, along with other Judahites were taken into exile in Babylon in 597. In effect there were two Judahs one in the land of Judah and one in exile. One king, Jehoiachin was in exile and Zedekiah in Jerusalem. Under Babylonian bonds and rejecting prophetic advice, they refused to pay their tribute. Within a few years, the temple, city walls, and homes of Jerusalem were burned and leveled. More citizens were carried away to Babylon, and those who remained soon fled to Egypt for security. Ezekiel was told to warn God’s people that there were consequences to their lack of fidelity. God cautioned them that refusal to live by the covenant would bring its own discipline. The people did not listen to the Prophet Ezekiel: he was disliked for his words, and alienated for his message. He told the people that God would allow them to live as orphans if they chose to be orphans—to live outside of God’s covenant. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian general Nebuzaraddan was sent to complete its destruction. Solomon 's Temple was destroyed. Most of the elite were taken into captivity in Babylon. Jerusalem was razed to the ground.

The Crusades were a series of wars over the holy lands such as Jerusalem between European Christians and the Ottoman Empire between the 11th and 15th centuries. They fought for many reasons such as control over religious sights, access to trade and protection of fellow christians.

The Book of Nehemiah is narrative that continues the history of the Israelites after they return from exile. Nehemiah prays to God about Jerusalem and God’s promises. Nehemiah is sent from Babylon to Jerusalem where he inspects Jerusalem’s walls. Different sections were rebuilt by different groups of people. Through prayer, they were able to complete the rebuilding even when there was opposition. Nehemiah helped the poor by summoning the priests to make the nobles and officials take an oath to follow God’s law. A genealogical record is listed of the exiles who returned. Ezra read The Book of the Law to the Israelites. The Israelites prayed to God and confessed their sins and signed the Law of God. The Levites were brought to

The Spoils of Jerusalem is a very interesting sculpture. This sculpture was constructed in c. AD.82 by Emperor Domitian after the death of his oldest brother Titus, to show off Titus' victory over the siege of Jerusalem (Khan, n.d). The relief sculpture is located within the "Arch of Titus" and it represents the victories of Domitian's father and his brother in the Jewish War (Cartwright, 2013).It is relief sculpture, which means that it is attached to a background and can only be viewed from one side (Sporre, 2015). The original sculpture is located within the Arch of Titus, in Rome, which is a beautiful piece of art in its self.

Before we can totally dive into how the Temple destruction changed Judaism, we must gain some knowledge of the Jewish faith itself, as well as Jewish terms. One of the first ideas many people may discover about the term “Jew” is its lack of use in the Old Testament scriptures.

After the destruction of the temple, Judaism was forced to modify several of their traditions and rituals, specifically due to transitioning from a temple and ceremonial centric community into a bible centric religion. We now call this new form of the faith

Ludicrous. Torturous. Appalling. The unthinkable prophetic acts that God commanded for Ezekiel to perform throughout his ministry were meant to be sensational scenes that demonstrated what was to come for the Israelites. Ezekiel, illustrating the siege of Jerusalem was one of the first prophetic acts God required Ezekiel to complete. God commanded Ezekiel to create a miniature version of an invading army camped around Jerusalem and then place an iron plate between himself and Jerusalem. Ezekiel, while lying on the left side of his body for three hundred ninety days, represented the number of years that Israel was punished, and then lying on his right side for forty days, represented the number of years that Judah was punished. Ezekiel had to portion out water and grain cake, which he was supposed to cook on human manure to demonstrate the unclean bread that Israel would soon eat, but Ezekiel refused as cooking on human manure disobeyed God’s dietary laws. Therefore, God compromised with Ezekiel and allowed him to prepare the food on animal manure instead. Ezekiel, portraying the siege of Jerusalem was just the beginning of what God required Ezekiel to do in order to illustrate the suffering that the Israelites were about to experience due to their unfaithfulness. Not only did God use Ezekiel to perform extraordinary prophetic acts in order to get His message across to the Israelites, but God also allowed for Ezekiel to have visions that reached beyond history and

The Greek poet Hesiod once said that “A man wins nothing better than a good wife, and then again nothing deadlier than a bad one.” This proved to be especially true for Israel, for they suffered many things because of their intermarriage with foreign women. In doing so, they not only afflicted Ezra, but the Lord of heaven and earth. They, therefore, stood condemned. However, the Lord, being full of mercy, did not punish the Israelite nation as severely as He could have. Ezra acknowledges this in his prayer, as well as the guilt of his people, and then concludes chapter nine by proclaiming the righteousness of God.

Grabbe (2007, P.54) conducted a study under the title “The Kingdom of Israel From Omri To The Fall Of Samaria: If We Only Had the Bible...” According the author there was a heated debate on whether the Bible is a problematic source of information about the settlement of central Palestine. The debate evolved to focus on the period of the first part of the monarchy the early period of ‘nationhood’ (Grabbe, p. 54). Consequently, the author conducted a study with four objectives and a main objective of identifying ways of assessing Biblical stories that cannot be checked with supplementary sources of information. The author arrived at five main conclusions, which indicated that the Bible provides both accurate and misleading information on the topic in question. This paper is an objective critique to Grabbe’s (2007) publication because it analyzes the main debate, methods used, and evidence provided by the author.

Throughout the history of Judaism, Jewish people have faced ongoing persecution and discrimination. Despite these conflicts, the faith remains alive, strong, and continuously growing. Like many religions faced with adversity, Judaism has had to assimilate its faith to survive in an ever-changing world. One significant moment of change in the Jewish history, the fall of the Second Temple, had the opportunity to destroy Judaism, but the Jewish people bonded together and reformulated their religion in order to save their faith. The falling of the Second Temple marks a distinct change in the Jewish faith through the modification of ritual practices to accommodate their new mobile lifestyle. This change would forever impact the Jewish

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.

Whereas, Ahaz tended to ignore the counsel of Isaiah when Hezekiah became king he valued Isaiah’s advice (Tullock, & McEntire, 2012). Although Judah was still paying tribute to Assyria, they focused on other areas allowing Hezekiah to implement changes in Judah. The first of these changes was to do away with the worship of false gods, and as part of this reform, Hezekiah destroyed any altars or shrines dedicated to the worship of false gods. Subsequently, there is possible physical proof regarding Hezekiah’s religious reformation in the form of two demolished altars within the country of Israel. The first remains were found in Arad within the Negev province, while the second was located in Beersheba where the materials were repurposed (Tullock,

Saladin (born in Tikrīt, Iraq) rose to power during the time of the Second and Third Crusades. He gained a reputation as a superior general, and was nicknamed the merciful by Arabic sources because of his merciness and Kindness towards everyone. His name is most widely recognized among Westerners for his military wars with King Richard I during the Third Crusade. Among Muslims, he has often been viewed as a hero of Islam for his efforts to unite the Islamic states and protecting the capture of Jerusalem in 1187. Saladin has also been cast as a man of mercy and this is with particular reference to his refusal to slaughter the Christians in Jerusalem when he won it back in

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