Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E

Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e. Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e. edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2007 ç Copyright 2007 by Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com Cataloging in Publication Data Judah and the Judeans in the fourth century b.c.e. / edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-1-57506-130-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Judaea (Region)—History—Congresses. 2. Yehud (Persian province)—Congresses. 3. Jews—History—586 b.c.–70 a.d.— Congresses. 4. Judaism—History—Post-exilic period, 586 b.c.–210 a.d.—Congresses. 5. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.— Congresses. I. Lipschits, Oded. II. Knoppers, Gary N., 1956– III. Albertz, Rainer, 1943– DS110.J78J82 2007 933—dc22 2007028004 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.†‰ Contents Abbreviations . ix Introduction . 1 Gary N. Knoppers, Oded Lipschits, and Rainer Albertz Part 1 The History of the Fourth Century: A View from the Center The Achaemenid Empire in the Fourth Century b.c.e.: A Period of Decline? . 11 Josef Wiesehöfer Part 2 Judah in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah: A Case Study . 33 Oded Lipschits and Oren Tal Administration in Fourth-Century b.c.e. Judah in Light of Epigraphy and Numismatics . 53 André Lemaire Yehud Stamp Impressions in the Fourth Century b.c.e.: A Time of Administrative Consolidation? . 75 Oded Lipschits and David Vanderhooft “And They Did Not Care to Speak Yehudit”: On Linguistic Change in Judah during the Late Persian Era . 95 Ingo Kottsieper Archaeology and Archaiologias: Relating Excavations to History in Fourth-Century b.c.e. Palestine . 125 Lester L. Grabbe v vi Contents Part 3 Edom and Samaria: Judah’s Neighbors in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods Idumea in the Late Persian Period (Fourth Century b.c.e.) . 139 Amos Kloner and Ian Stern The Onomasticon of Mareshah in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods . 145 Esther Eshel The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence . 157 Yitzhak Magen Do the Earliest Samaritan Inscriptions Already Indicate a Parting of the Ways? . 213 Bob Becking The Governors of Samaria in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c.e. 223 Hanan Eshel Part 4 Biblical Literature in the Late Persian and Hellenistic Periods The Late Persian Formation of the Torah: Observations on Deuteronomy 34 . 237 Konrad Schmid The Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Torah in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c.e. 253 Reinhard Achenbach The Canonical Alignment of the Book of Joshua . 287 Rainer Albertz Nehemiah and Sanballat: The Enemy Without or Within? . 305 Gary N. Knoppers A New Model for the Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah . 333 Jacob L. Wright Contents vii Who Knew What? The Construction of the Monarchic Past in Chronicles and Implications for the Intellectual Setting of Chronicles . 349 Ehud Ben Zvi “Those Doing the Work for the Service in the House of the Lord”: 1 Chronicles 23:6–24:31 and the Sociohistorical Context of the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem in the Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Period . 361 John W. Wright The Development of Jewish Sectarianism from Nehemiah to the Hasidim . 385 Joseph Blenkinsopp Indexes Index of Authors . 405 Index of Scripture . 410 Index of Sites . 421 The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah: A Case Study Oded Lipschits and Oren Tal Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology This essay assesses changes in settlement archaeology in the “heart” of the province of Judah (Yehud) under Achaemenid and Ptolemaic rule. Using the results of archaeological excavations and surveys, we will try to reconstruct settlement changes between the end of the Per- sian period and the Hasmonean period (fourth to mid-second centuries b.c.e.), with a focus on the contribution of the fourth century to the process. Judah and especially Jerusalem, owing to their role in biblical literature and their religious impact on Western civilizations, have long been important in archaeological research. However, the research directed at the region’s first-millennium b.c.e. history was mostly focused on the periods that preceded and succeeded the one under discussion—that is, it was mostly focused on the First Temple period and the latter part of the Second Temple period—times when the country was a small but independent political entity. In the last few years, there has been growing interest in the settlement archaeology of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian (Achaemenid) periods. The early Helle- nistic period, however, has largely been ignored, partly because of the methodological problems that we will discuss below and partly because of its intermediate nature as a transitional period between the domination of the region by Eastern and Western powers. The available data seem at first glance to be sufficient to tackle the problem at hand. However, they are actually quite problematic. In many of the large-scale excavations carried out in archaeological sites in Judah, the strata pertaining to the late Persian and early Hellenistic (Ptolemaic and Seleucid) periods were meager; some revealed few ar- chitectural remains with unclear building plans or pits (silos, refuse, etc.), while others yielded pottery at best, which was in some cases not classified by strata and did not represent proper occupation layers. 33 34 Oded Lipschits and Oren Tal Suffice it here to mention sites such as Bethel, Tell en-Naßbeh (biblical Mizpah), Gibeon, Tell el-Fûl (biblical Gibeah of Saul), Nabi Samwil, Anathoth, Bethany, Ramat Ra˙el, and Jericho.1 In the case of Jerusa- lem, the Persian period city shrank back to its pre-eighth-century b.c.e. size, and the western hill was empty until the second century b.c.e. (Geva 2003: 521–24; Lipschits and Vanderhooft forthcoming).2 Even this small city was apparently sparsely settled and mostly confined to the southern part of the City of David near the Pool of Siloam (Reich and Shukron 2007: 64–65). The most impressive building plan of the period under discussion in Judah was discovered at En Gedi (Building 234) and dated to the Persian period (see now Stern 2007). The strati- graphic relationship of the first fortress at Beth-zur to occupational layers of Persian date is questionable, and therefore we cannot assign its building plan to the Persian period with certainty (cf. Stern 1982: 31– 40; 2001: 428–43, for a review of these sites). Other late Persian and early Hellenistic buildings were documented in non-urban sites. Wor- thy of mention are the fortress and agricultural estate of Har Adar (Da- don 1997) and the agricultural estates of Qalandya (Magen 2004) and Aderet (Yogev 1982).3 Methodological Notes Using the results of archaeological excavations and surveys, we will compare the number and character of settlements in three areas that can safely be considered within the borders of the province of Judah during the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods.4 These include the hill country of Benjamin, the area around the Old City of Jerusa- lem, and the area south of Jerusalem—west of Bethlehem and Ramat Ra˙el. In the hill country of Benjamin, 59 sites were attributed to the Persian period and 123 to the Hellenistic (Finkelstein and Magen 1993; fig. 3 below). In Jerusalem, 15 sites were attributed to the Persian period and 37 to the early Hellenistic period (Kloner 2000–2003; fig. 4 below). In the survey map of Nes Harim, 12 sites were attributed to the Persian period and and 35 to the Hellenistic period (Weiss, Zissu, and 1. See Stern 2001: 428–43; Betlyon 2005: 20–26; Lipschits 2005: 154–81; Tal 2006: 15– 163 (and index). 2. We find it difficult to accept the renewed “maximalist opinion” recently advanced by Ussishkin (2006), in which “Nehemiah’s wall” follows the line of the late Iron Age wall, even though most of the delimited area remained unoccupied. 3. For a list of sites of early Hellenistic date, see Tal 2006: 125–29, 145–54. 4. For a recent survey of the borders of Judah between the end of the seventh century and the second century b.c.e., see Lipschits 2005: 154–81. The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah 35 Solimany 2004; fig. 5 below); and in the survey map of Deir Mar Saba, only 1 site was attributed to the Persian period and 10 to the Hellenis- tic period (Patrich 1994; fig. 6 below). Another reason for focusing on these areas is the similar method of surveying and publishing the different maps within the Israel Antiq- uities Authority series entitled Archaeological Survey of Israel. For the purpose of this essay, we did not include the data of survey-oriented Ph.D. dissertations on the region under discussion (for example, A. Ofer’s 1993 survey of the Judean Hills) or outside the region under discussion (Y. Dagan’s 2000 survey of the Judean Shephelah). We also took no notice of the data given in the so-called “emergency survey” carried out in 1968 as an outcome of the Six-Day War. The reasons for excluding these sources were mainly because of the overlapping that these data produce with the Archaeological Survey of Israel, the different methods of surveying, the absence of some of the main periods from the publications (Ph.D.

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