Part 1: Amazing discoveries regarding the creation of the world, paradise, the flood and the Tower of Babel.
Part 2: Truth and Legend about the Patriarchs.
Part 3: Folk tradition or truth?
Part 4: Moses in a halo of myths
Part 5: The Age of Struggle and Heroism
Part 6: Truth and Legend about the Creators of the Kingdom of Israel
The split of the Davidic state into Israel and Judea turned out to be one of the greatest tragedies of the Jewish people. It is enough to cite a few facts to be convinced of this. Solomon died in 932 BC. Samaria fell in 721. So, the kingdom of Israel lasted only a little over two hundred years.
Judea, who called on Assyria to help in the struggle against the fraternal Israeli tribes, survived only because she became a vassal of her imaginary deliverer.
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Already twenty years after the fall of Samaria, the Assyrian king stood at the walls of Jerusalem, and the Jewish kingdom then retained its independence only thanks to a happy accident. It lasted another one hundred and fifteen years, until 586 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem.
There are very complex reasons for this tragedy. As you know, there has always been a deep ethnic and political antagonism between the northern and southern tribes. During the reign of David and Solomon, it was softened by common state interests and a common religious center - the Jerusalem Temple. In the aftermath of the split, Israel also broke this vital community by establishing its own religious centers at Bethel and Dan. This not only led to a complete spiritual break between the two Jewish kingdoms, but also affected their internal relationships in a disastrous way.
Let's try to analyze what happened in Israel. As for the composition of the population, the Israeli tribes were in the minority in the country. They were heavily influenced by various Canaanite tribes with a rich religious and cultural tradition. Jeroboam and other Israelite kings were forced to reckon with her, and therefore even the cult of Yahweh took on an idolatrous character there. This found expression in the establishment of the golden calf and the expulsion from the country of the orthodox representatives of Yahvism - the priests and Levites.
Weak Israel could not successfully defend itself against the influence of neighboring states - Phenicia and Damascus. Religious cults of these countries took ever deeper roots in Israel, and at times it seemed that Yahvism was doomed to extinction. During the reign of Ahab and his Phoenician wife Jezebel, the struggle against Yahvism took on a bloody character.
We learn from the Bible that the queen, a zealous worshiper of the Phoenician gods, persecuted and killed the prophets of Yahweh. True, then an uprising broke out under the leadership of the prophet Elijah, but judging by the fact that Elijah was forced to leave the country, it ended in failure. Only Jehu, the leader of the Yahvists, having become king, dealt with other people's cults. But the triumph of Yahvism did not last long. Soon Jehu himself, apparently seeking to gain popularity among most of his subjects, turned to idolatry. Even Israel's first king, Jeroboam, who came to power with the support of the Yahweh group of the prophet Ahijah, encouraged idolatry.
In general, if we look at the history of the Israelite kingdom from this angle, we are amazed to see that the Bible either accuses all kings of the cult of foreign gods, or passes over in silence their religious activities, which is also quite eloquent. In other words, among them there was not a single faithful Yahvist who would have won the approval of the compilers of the historical books of the Bible.
And what about the situation in Judea in this sense? It would seem that this country, protected from neighbors by mountain ranges, which kept a traditional object of worship - the Ark of the Covenant, a country in which the vast majority of the population were Jews, was to become a stronghold of the religion of Moses. And yet, even there, the cult of alien gods has always flourished. Eight Jewish kings are accused by the Bible of idolatry or persecution of the priestly class. Ahaz gave his own son as a burnt offering. Joash killed the priest Zechariah because he rebuked him for idolatry. Manasseh began a bloody pursuit of the Yahvists.
Despite all this, Yahvism in Judea was much stronger than in Israel.
Thanks to kings such as Asa, Jehoshaphat, Poram, Hezekiah, and Josiah, the religion of Moses was revived over and over again and eventually won out over other cults. This was mainly due to Josiah, who carried out fundamental religious reforms and restored the legal norms set forth in the book of Deuteronomy. Thus, a long and bitter religious struggle constantly tormented both states. Moreover, this struggle was linked by thousands of threads with the alignment of international political forces. Fighting groups in Samaria and Jerusalem sought support from Syria, then Assyria, or Egypt.
Thus, Israel and Judea became the target of political intrigue that ultimately led to their death. Social relations within both countries also deteriorated. As is usually the case, internecine wars, revolutions, palace coups and religious unrest not only led to anarchy, but also exacerbated class contradictions. The broad masses of the people, burdened with taxes and debt, became increasingly impoverished, while a small handful of the wealthy made huge fortunes.
Wise men appeared, like the prophets Amos, Jeremiah and Nehemiah, who condemned the exploitation, usury and cruelty of the rich, but, alas, the teachings, sermons and appeals were not able to turn the course of history. The above-mentioned letter from an Israeli peasant, found in 1960 in the area of the Palestinian town of Rishon Lezion, can serve as a vivid illustration of these relations.
The letter, according to scientists, was written in the seventh century BC and consists of fourteen lines of text carved on the fragments of a jug. The text is damaged and has spaces, but its content is clear. A peasant who has just finished collecting the harvest writes to his prince a complaint against the tax collector who, without any reason, took his cloak from him. If we consider that the cloak also served as a blanket for the Israeli poor, we understand the brutality of the tax system at the time. The cloak must have been the only possession of the offended peasant.
Over time, however, even the rich began to suffer from wars and political unrest. Hostile tribes tormented the country with constant raids, and the big tribute that had to be paid to neighboring states was covered from their pockets by those who still had gold and silver, as nothing could be squeezed out of the impoverished masses. The bloody usurper Manaim, despite the terrorist methods of government, had to rely on Assyria to stay in power.
Tiglatpalasar the third demanded a fantastic bribe for the service - a thousand talents of silver. Manaim collected this sum, collecting from each rich man fifty shekels of silver. Since each talent had three thousand, he paid three million shekels to his patron. This means that sixty thousand people (three million divided by fifty) had to pay a large tribute in order for the bloody usurper to remain on the throne.
In the light of these facts, the constant palace coups and regicides in Israel become understandable. In Judea, regicides and coups d'état also happened, but only one dynasty of the descendants of King David ruled there all the time, while in Israel, nine dynasties, founded by usurpers through violence and bloodshed, changed over two hundred years.
Dynastic strife between the rulers of Israel and Judea and the struggle of the priests for hegemony weakened both states and harmed the interests of the people. True, it happened that both tsars lived in peace with each other, but this rarely happened, and peaceful relations were rather in the nature of political maneuvers and were by no means dictated by considerations of patriotism. For the most part, both states waged devastating wars with each other and did not hesitate to turn to their worst primordial enemies for help.
Here are three examples that clearly illustrate the political myopia of the rulers of both countries. The culprit of the schism - Jeroboam was undoubtedly on the salary of the Egyptian Pharaoh. The immediate result of his rebellion was that, five years after the death of Solomon, Pharaoh Susakim was the first to destroy Canaan and take away all the treasures of the Jerusalem temple. The Israeli king Joash also robbed the Jerusalem temple and partially destroyed the city walls. King Pekah concluded an alliance with Damascus and, seeking to force Judea to join the anti-Assyrian coalition, marched together with his ally against King Ahaz, destroyed Judea and began a siege of Jerusalem.
Then King Ahaz invited the Assyrian troops to Canaan. This suicidal policy could not but lead sooner or later to the death of both states. While ten Israeli tribes disappeared without a trace in the motley conglomerate of the peoples of Mesopotamia, for the Jews the so-called Babylonian captivity was not captivity, but a simple resettlement, often very beneficial in material terms. In addition, historical events took a very favorable turn for them. Already in the first year of his reign, the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to return to their homeland.
The first group of repatriates set off in the spring of 537 BC, and, therefore, the exile lasted less than fifty years. But despite such a short period, many Jews got used to living in a foreign land and refused to return. These were people of various categories: merchants, farmers and artisans, who were kept in their new homeland by business considerations, as well as many representatives of the generation born in Babylonia, who were rather indifferent to the religion of the fathers.
All of them, however, retained a keen interest in their old homeland and generously contributed funds for the restoration of the temple. Living in a foreign land, they kept the old customs and rituals. There is no doubt that first of all the poor people, priests and Levites expressed their willingness to return. These were zealous admirers of Yahweh, representatives of the most conservative part of the adherents of the Mosaic religion, who were not afraid of the long journey and life in ruined Jerusalem. Thus, in Judea, there was an extremely strong concentration of Orthodox Yahvists. It is rightly said that the Jews left the country as a nation and returned as a religious community.
This fact explains almost everything we learn from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. They are striking above all the colossal influence of religion and priests in the new Jewish society. It was a theocratic regime of the purest water. At the head was the high priest, with him as an advisory body there was a council of elders, made up of representatives of the aristocracy. From this council arose subsequently a permanent body - the Sanhedrin. However, the theocratic system did not bring democratic equality to the people. The priests committed financial abuse, the masses were subjected to ruthless exploitation.
Nehemiah, who, despite his advanced age, undertook to restore order in the country, describes the relations existing there as follows:
“And there was a great murmur among the people and among their wives against their brothers the Jews. There were those who said: We, our sons and our daughters, are many; and we would like to get bread and feed and live. There were also those who said: Our fields, and our vineyards, and we plant our houses, in order to get bread from hunger. There were also those who said: we borrow money to give to the king on the security of our fields and our vineyards … behold, we must give our sons and our daughters as slaves, and some of our daughters are already in bondage.
There is no means of ransom in our hands; and our fields and our vineyards are with others. When I heard their murmur and such words, I became very angry. My heart was revolted, and I sternly reprimanded the most noble and rulers, and said to them: you are taking profit from your brothers … And I said:
you are doing wrong … Now give back to them their fields, their vineyards and olive orchards, and their houses, and the growth from silver and bread, and wine and oil, for which you lent them … But the former provinces, which were before me, weighed down the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver; even their servants ruled over the people”(Nehemiah, chapter 5, verses 1-7, 9, 11, 15).
Together with the exploitation and economic abuse of those in power, demoralization and indifference to national affairs grew. Men and women entered into marriage with representatives of neighboring, racially alien peoples; children born of these marriages often did not even know their native language; foreign speech was heard on the streets of Jerusalem. To top it all off, many of the repatriates used the Aramaic language that dominated Babylonia. In short, there was a threat that the Jews would cease to exist as a nation.
Ezra and Nehemiah's reaction to these phenomena was extremely violent. They established strict marriage laws. Jews married to foreigners were forced to send their wives and children or leave the state themselves. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius tells of a certain Manasse, a Jew of noble birth, who claimed the post of high priest, but was rejected because of his wife, a foreigner. Then the ruler of Samaria appointed him the chief priest of the temple built on Mount Garizim. There he was joined by a large number of priests and Levites who were expelled from Jerusalem for the same reasons.
The desire to completely isolate itself from the neighboring peoples had a great influence on the Jewish religion. She became an instrument of chauvinistic politics, fetters protecting the small Jewish people from outside influences. All life, down to the smallest details of everyday life, was regulated by detailed ritual rules. On Saturday, no one had the right to hit the road or pick a spike of bread if he was hungry. It was even considered a sin to pull out a pack donkey that fell into the pit.
Jewish writers list thirty-nine things that could not have been done on the Sabbath. Many residents who disagreed with the strictness of the ritual left Judea.
This fruitless religious formalism, close to fetishism, was used by the priests to strengthen their power over the people. The very same religion of Moiseev became soulless because of this, lost its ethical depth.
Fortunately, there was another religious movement in Judea, which was expressed by the prophets.
The Bible contains the books of sixteen prophets, the most significant of which are the books of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. From the fact that folk fantasy has endowed some of them with the supernatural ability to work miracles, it does not at all follow that these are legendary faces. But at the same time, there is no doubt that not all the texts that the Bible ascribes to them belong to them in fact. As a result of linguistic research, it has been clearly established that the books attributed to these prophets are just anthologies, compiled at best from genuine excerpts from their writings and from texts by unknown authors who lived in different eras.
So, we can say that the biblical books of the prophets are the common property of the Jewish people and express the ideas that possessed them since the eighth century BC. The prophets had nothing to do with itinerant soothsayers, although they were the highest, final form of the centuries-old tradition of religious divination. They differed primarily in that prophesying was not their profession and they did not make a living by predicting the future. They were sages, teachers of the people, public and political figures, exponents of a religious concept based on the principle of individual moral responsibility of a person before God.
Isaiah was a well-to-do farmer, Amos was a cattle-breeder, Jeremiah was a descendant of an aristocratic priestly family, and Ezekiel was a priest in the Jerusalem temple. They were all convinced that Yahweh had entrusted them with an important religious and social mission. To the fore, these prophets put forward the ethical content of the Jewish religion. The Prophet Amos, for example, directly stated that he was not interested in the issues of ritual and ceremonial in the cult of Yahweh, since only one thing is important: that people are just and keep God in their hearts.
Micah expressed this idea even more simply, saying that Yahweh requires first of all kindness, justice and mercy from a person. Isaiah finally made Yahweh the god of all mankind, giving him universal features. According to his teachings, the Jews were still the chosen people, but they were chosen only in order to bring the good news to all mankind and thus make the salvation of the world possible.
This messianic idea was completely new and subsequently had a fruitful influence on the ideology of the first Christian communities. It is curious that some scholars see the influence of the period of the Babylonian captivity in the profound monotheistic idea that comes through in the writings of the prophets. The Jews must have been sympathetic to the Persian followers of Zarathushtra, who taught that two forces hostile to each other operate in the world: the god of light Ormuzd and the god of evil Ahriman.
The cult of Ormuzd undoubtedly has a lot in common with Yahvism. The Persians, like the Jews, did not recognize the cult statues, which earned them the favor of the Yahvist iconoclasts. The main Christian dualistic concepts - god and devil, heaven and earth, light and darkness - date back to the Persian era: the Jews borrowed them during the period of Persian rule and in turn passed them on to early Christianity. So the ideas of the prophets were quite revolutionary.
Religion in their teachings has ceased to be a public institution and has become a private matter of each person. They argued that Yahweh values not the external forms of worship and ritual, but moral purity, honesty, kindness and justice.
Aristotle wrote that it would seem strange if someone declared that he loved God. And some prophets taught precisely the love of God and with this idea marked the beginning of a new era in the religious life of nations. The logical outcome of these moral principles was a sharp criticism of the social relations between Israel and Judea.
The prophets stigmatized fellow citizens for apostasy, moral degradation, corruption. They scourged the kings for their crimes and debauchery, and prophesied poverty and suffering to the entire people if he did not return to the true path. As we have repeatedly stressed, there were plenty of reasons for criticism. While the rich lived in luxury, the populace became increasingly impoverished. The kings drove the population to forced labor in the construction of temples, palaces and fortresses, and they themselves lived in magnificent palaces with many servants and concubines.
Slavery existed in Canaan from time immemorial, but debt slavery became widespread only in the era of kings and after the return from Babylonian captivity. Military expenditures with all their weight fell on the farmers and pastoralists and in the end ruined them. The exploitation and tyranny of the rich, taxes and debts increased the poverty of the working masses and increased the wealth of those in power. The prophet Isaiah exclaimed in despair: "Woe to you who add house to house, join field to field, so that there is no room for others, as if you were alone on the earth" (Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 8).
The prophets were also forward-thinking politicians. Isaiah, for example, discouraged King Ahaz from seeking help from the Assyrians against the Syrian-Israeli alliance.
Jeremiah, risking his life, angrily denounced the political fanatics who, hoping for the help of Egypt, incited Judah against the Chaldeans. Even when Nebuchadnezzar was already besieging Jerusalem, Jeremiah called for surrender. Events soon proved how correct and reasonable his position was.
These spiritual leaders, mentors, inspired prophets and great poets embodied the best characteristics of the Jewish people. Their moral principles, religious ideas and calls for social justice have left an indelible imprint on European culture for the next two millennia.
The biblical history of Israel and Judea boils down to listing the kings and evaluating their rule from the point of view of Yahvism. In most cases, we never know what incited the kings to do certain things, what were the political and psychological reasons for wars, treaties of friendship and various diplomatic events. The Bible only tells when a particular king ruled. In a word, biblical history is essentially a laconic list of facts, without any causal connection.
Fortunately, the history of Israel and Judea was linked to the history of the great powers of antiquity - Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Babylonia, Assyria, the New Babylonian kingdom of the Chaldeans and in Egypt, colossal archives have been preserved, as well as inscriptions on gravestones, in temples and on rocks. In the texts concerning the history of these states, there are many comments that shed a sensational light on the events in Israel and Judea.
Thanks to these discoveries, it was possible not only to find out the causal relationships of many biblical information, but also to establish that this information is usually reliable. Moreover, it was even possible to calculate the approximate years of reign of the Israeli and Jewish kings and to clarify the most important dates in the history of both states. Here is one example of such a refinement. The Bible says that Cyrus in the very first year after the conquest of Babylonia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem.
Thanks to calculations made on the basis of Persian documents, we know that this happened at the end of 539 BC. And since the settlers had been preparing for several months, the first group of repatriates set off not earlier than the spring of 537 BC It would be pointless in our presentation to strictly adhere to the vague and extremely laconic biblical text, without using the richest material provided to us by archeology.
Therefore, the chapter on Israel and Judea is a compilation from various historical sources. The presentation, based primarily on the Third and Fourth Books of Kingdoms, is supplemented with information gleaned from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, from the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as from documents preserved in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Archaeological discoveries made in Egypt and Mesopotamia surprisingly confirm the accuracy and reliability of the previously named biblical texts. There are so many of these discoveries that it is impossible to list them all. We will limit ourselves to just a few, the most important and interesting ones.
The Bible says that five years after the schism, Pharaoh Susakim invaded Judea and robbed the Jerusalem temple. And in a temple in the city of Karnak, a bas-relief with the image of this campaign was discovered. We see there the Egyptian god Amun leading a hundred and fifty-six Jewish captives on a rope. Each captive personifies one of the cities captured and plundered by the pharaoh. From the list of cities, we learn a curious detail that the Bible passes over in silence:
It turns out that Susakim, in the fervor of war, did not spare even his protégé, King Jeroboam, and also ravaged the territory of the newly formed Israeli kingdom.
The largest king of Israel, Omri, subjugated the Moabite kingdom and for forty years collected a huge tribute from his vassal - one hundred thousand rams a year.
During the reign of Joram, Mesa, king of Moab, rebelled and refused to pay tribute. Then Joram, in alliance with Edom and Judah, marched against Moab. The Bible reports that their combined forces defeated Mesa and devastated his country. In light of this, the biblical phrase that the conqueror “departed from him and returned to their own land” seemed somewhat strange (the fourth book of Kings, chapter 3, verse 27). Archeology explained this cryptic phrase. In 1868, German missionary F. A. Klein found a huge block of blue basalt with an inscription in Moabite to the east of the Dead Sea. Klein offered the Arabs forty dollars for this most valuable monument. But, before the deal took place, the French government found out about it and offered one thousand five hundred dollars. Then the Arabs came to the conclusion,that the basalt stone has some magical properties. They burned fire under it and poured water over it until they split it into small pieces, which they began to sell as talismans.
Only at the cost of great efforts and for a lot of money did the French archaeologists manage to redeem the fragments and reassemble the stone. It is currently kept in the Louvre.
From the inscription on the stone it follows that in the beginning Mesa really suffered defeats and, having locked himself in the fortress of Kir-Gasserof, sacrificed his little son to the god Chemos in order to win him over. In the following lines it is reported with glee that Mesa defeated the invaders and "Israel is lost forever."
So, as we can see, both sides boasted of victory. But since Jehoram failed to finally conquer Moab and he, as the Bible recognizes, “returned to his land,” we can conclude that the war was fierce, but no one was able to win the final victory. Nevertheless, Mesa really liberated his country from years of yoke.
The Bible tells of an incident that for a long time remained completely incomprehensible. King Ahab utterly defeated King Benadad II of Damascus and took him prisoner. But, contrary to the then custom, he did not kill him and did not destroy his capital.
On the contrary, Ahab treated Ben-hadad very humanely, put him on his chariot, called him brother, and even made an alliance with him and set him free.
One could only guess that behind this generosity unusual for Ahab and in general for that era, some kind of secret was hidden. The mystery was solved after the discovery of the inscription of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (859-825 BC).
Shalmaneser reports that he defeated a coalition of twelve kings, among whom were Ben-Hadad and Ahab. Having destroyed twenty-five thousand enemies, he laid siege to Damascus, but, obviously, was unable to occupy the city, since he returned to Nineveh and did not undertake new campaigns for five years. From the text of the inscription, we can conclude that the outcome of the war remained unresolved. Damascus managed to defend itself, and Ahab returned to his home badly injured, but undefeated. In light of these newly discovered facts, the biblical story becomes clear. Ahab, of course, was aware of the growing power of Assyria and was not interested in unduly weakening Syria, which lies on the route from Assyria to Israel. As a visionary statesman, he chose the only sensible policy:
an alliance with a defeated enemy. True, this alliance turned out to be fragile. As soon as the Assyrians got away, the old enmity between Syria and Israel immediately flared up with renewed vigor, and Ahab died in one of the many battles.
The greatest interest in the scientific world was aroused by the so-called "black obelisk", found in 1846 by the English archaeologist Layard among the ruins of the Assyrian city on the Tel Nimrud hill. The tetrahedral pillar of black basalt is covered on all sides with bas-reliefs and cuneiform texts. On one side is King Shalmaneser III with his retinue. A round dance of slaves brings him valuable gifts: ivory, fabrics, jugs and baskets, and elsewhere they bring animals on leashes: elephants, camels, antelopes, monkeys, bulls and the legendary unicorn.
Another bas-relief depicts Shalmaneser again. He stands proudly erect, and some nobleman in a luxuriously embroidered cloak hits him with his forehead. Only a few years later, the Englishman Rawlinson was able to decipher the inscription. And then it turned out that the beating figure is the Israelite king Jehu who killed Ahab and Jezebel. The inscription under the bas-relief reads: "A tribute to King Jehu from Beth-Umri (that is, from the royal family of Omri): silver, gold, a golden bowl, golden dishes, golden glasses, golden buckets, tin, a scepter for the king and the balsam tree received from him" …
From another text, it follows that Jehu brought this tribute in the eighteenth year of the reign of Shalmaneser, that is, around 842 BC, the Bible passes over in silence the fact that Jehu was a vassal of the Assyrian king. The Assyrian inscription explains why the king of Damascus invaded Israel and destroyed its cities. It was revenge for Jehu's betrayal of the anti-Assyrian alliance concluded with Syria, and when a new war broke out with Shalmaneser, he surrendered Assyria without a fight, paying a huge tribute in gold and silver. This cowardly policy had fatal consequences. After long and fierce battles with Damascus, Israel in the reign of Jehoahaz suffered a complete defeat, and its powerful army was forcibly reduced to fifty horsemen, ten war chariots and ten thousand infantry.
The Black Obelisk showed us how shortsighted and pernicious the policy of the Israeli usurpers was. Syria, abandoned by its ally to the mercy of fate, was forced to fight alone against the mighty Assyria and was defeated.
Israel, weakened by wars with its natural ally, was eventually conquered by Sargon II. Samaria was destroyed, and ten tribes of Israel were driven into Mesopotamia, where they disappeared without a trace. Sargon is named only once in the Bible, in connection with the restoration of the city of Azot. The conqueror of Samaria appears there anonymously, as "the king of Assyria." It was difficult to suppose that it was Sargon, especially since King Shalmaneser was mentioned three lines above.
Only the inscription found on the wall of the royal palace in Khorsabad resolved all doubts. It turned out that Shalmaneser began a siege of Samaria, but died a year later. Only his successor, Sargon, who besieged him for two more years, managed to occupy the city. So, the total siege lasted three years, and Samaria fell in 721 BC. In an inscription discovered by archaeologists, Sargon reports:
“I besieged and subjugated Samaria, and took away twenty-seven thousand two hundred and ninety inhabitants as spoils of war. I formed from them a royal corps, consisting of fifty war chariots … I rebuilt the city and made it more beautiful than before. I settled it with people from the countries I conquered. He appointed a governor over them and ordered them to pay the same tribute that all other citizens of Assyria pay. " The Bible mentions three times the luxury that distinguished the royal palace in Samaria. In the Third Book of Kingdoms (chapter 22, verse 39), it is said that Ahab built a house of ivory. Amos (chapter 3, verse 15) prophesies: "And I will smite the winter house together with the summer house, and the houses with ivory decorations will disappear, and many houses will disappear, says the Lord."
Finally, the forty-fourth psalm, which scholars believe was written as a wedding hymn to Ahab and Jezebel, mentions "palaces of ivory." Naturally, these fantastic messages were considered just one of the many examples of rich fantasy so typical of the peoples of the East.
And only archaeological excavations on the ruins of Samaria proved that this is not entirely fiction. In 1931-1935, a group of English and American archaeologists carried out extensive excavations there. The foundations of the fortress walls, a tower and a cistern for storing rainwater were found under the ruins. But the main find was the palace of Ahab and Jezebel. It stood on the western edge of a ridge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. In the courtyard, stone-lined banks and the bottom of a pond mentioned in the Bible were discovered, in which Ahab's bloodied chariot was washed.
As the archaeologists began to sift through the debris, they were amazed: among the bricks, stones and ash lay thousands of fragments of ivory tiles. They were covered with bas-reliefs depicting lotuses, lilies, papyri, palms, lions, bulls, chamois, sphinxes and Phoenician gods. The palace, of course, was not built of ivory, but its walls and furniture were decorated with such a huge number of these tiles that it really could seem as if it was all built of ivory. Now let's leave Israel and go to
Judea. Immediately, at the very beginning, we are faced with an intriguing mystery concerning the wise and unfortunate king of Azaria. In the Fourth Book of Kingdoms (chapter 15, verse 5) we read: "And the Lord smote the king, and he was a leper until the day of his death, and lived in a separate house."
Biblical scholars and archaeologists assumed that Azariah lived in the dungeon of his palace, while his son Jotham and grandson Ahaz ruled in his name.
True, according to biblical law, lepers were not allowed to remain in Jerusalem, but an exception could be made for the king. However, this assumption was refuted when the ruins of a fortress were found in the Rama area, which is not mentioned by any historical source. It was surrounded by a wall almost three meters thick, and the gate, as far as can be judged from the surviving traces, was cast of copper or bronze. There were three buildings in the vast courtyard.
One of them had a secret door at the back, allowing one to leave the fortress unnoticed. Who and why built the fortress so close to the capital? Everything speaks for the fact that Azaria built it for himself. A huge number of statuettes of Astarte were found among the ruins, namely, the king Azaria was accused by the prophets of the cult of the Phoenician goddess. In addition, one of the shards depicts the figure of a seated bearded man. And since only gods and kings were depicted as seated, there is no doubt that the fortress was the royal residence. It is now clear why the Bible calls Azariah's residence "a separate house," "a free house," or "a house of freedom." The unfortunate king was not imprisoned like other lepers, and enjoyed relative freedom in his secluded palace, from where, thanks to his proximity to the capital, he could monitor the affairs of the state.
After the decline of Samaria, Judea realized the danger threatening her from Assyria. King Hezekiah feverishly fortified the walls of Jerusalem and collected weapons in the arsenal. He also took care of the constant water supply to the city. The old Jebusite canal, through which David's troops entered the city, fell into disrepair and was, in all likelihood, filled up, as it posed a danger to the city.
The Bible says that Hezekiah ordered a new channel to be made in the rock, through which water from the source went directly to Jerusalem, where it was collected in a cistern. As is often the case, Hezekiah's canal was discovered by accident. In 1800, a group of Arab boys played over the Siloe pond. One of them fell into the water and, swimming to the opposite bank, found a narrow passage in the rock. It was a half-kilometer long canal that led in a roundabout way across the limestone cliff to the west of the city. At first it seemed strange that, in spite of the haste, they did not lay a canal directly, which would make it possible to reduce it by almost two hundred meters.
However, after careful study of the topography of the area, it turned out that it was necessary to bypass the tombs of David and Solomon carved into the rock. Only in 1880 was it possible to obtain irrefutable proof that it was in fact Hezekiah's canal. Several young German architects set out to explore the canal. Moving knee-deep in mud and water, they barely made it to the middle. Suddenly one of them slipped and, falling into the water, noticed some mysterious inscription on the wall. Upon learning of the discovery, the English orientalist Archibald Seis arrived in Jerusalem to make a copy of the inscription. The work was extremely hard. Seis sat for hours in mud and water, and with a candle in his hand copied letter by letter. But the inscription was worth the effort: it turned out to be extremely interesting. The text contained a dramatic story abouthow the workers hollowed out a rock from two sides and, approaching each other at a distance of three cubits, heard each other's voices. When they finally made the tunnel and the water first flowed from the source into the city, there was no end to their exultation. The Hebrew language in which the inscription is made undoubtedly belongs to the era of Hezekiah.
The Assyrian king Sinacherib himself indirectly admits in one of his inscriptions that he did not conquer Jerusalem. True, he boasts that he ruined Judea and received from Hezekiah a tribute of thirty talents of gold and three hundred talents of silver, but he says that he locked the Jewish king in the capital, "like a bird in a cage." Of course, he does not indicate the reasons why he had to lift the siege. The Bible portrays his apostasy as a miracle. An angel sent by Yahweh passed through the enemy camp and killed one hundred eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers. Scientists have tried to figure out what, in fact, lies behind this miracle. The explanation of this riddle is supposedly given by the Greek historian Herodotus.
One Egyptian priest told him that the army of Sinaherib, breaking the siege of Jerusalem for a time, moved against Egypt. Then the field mice attacked the Assyrian camp and so gnawed the bowstrings and leather parts of military equipment that the defenseless soldiers were forced to give up the fight. Mice very often appeared in ancient legends as a symbol of the epidemic. We find them in the Bible, in the texts of Egypt and Mesopotamia. On this basis, it can be assumed that Sinacherib was forced to lift the siege of Jerusalem, since his army was struck by some kind of terrible epidemic. This hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that the English archaeologist Strechey discovered a mass grave in the area of the city of Lachis, in which there were two thousand male skeletons.
As you know, in the battle of Carchemish, Pharaoh Necho was utterly defeated by the Chaldeans.
The great English archaeologist Woolley was excavating the ruins of this city and came across dramatic traces of the great battle. The floor of one of the suburban houses was covered in ash, and beneath the ash lay hundreds of arrowheads, broken stakes, and broken sword fragments. Most of the arrowheads lay at the entrance to individual rooms. They were twisted from impacts against stone cornices and metal door trim. From the position of the wreckage, it is clear that the attackers pushed the defenders from room to room, offering fierce resistance. In the end, the attackers won and destroyed the house. Other findings shed light on the political intrigues of the time. Cuneiform tablets with Assyrian texts prove that the Hittite Karchemish was a vassal of Assyria.
On the other hand, statuettes of Egyptian gods, a ring with the name of Pharaoh Psammetichus the first embossed and the seals of his son Necho prove how strong the Egyptian influence was in these areas. Obviously, Carchemish, like Jerusalem, hesitated in loyalty between Egypt and Assyria, and this ultimately led to his death. Pharaoh Necho basely betrayed his supporters and came out in defense of Assyria against Nebuchadnezzar. At the same time, it is worth telling here about another interesting discovery. Among the weapons, Woolley found a Greek shield covered with a bronze leaf. It featured a high relief of a Gorgon surrounded by a ring of animals:
horses, dogs, deer and rabbits. Where does the Greek shield come from in Carchemish?
Woolley recalled a passage from Herodotus, where it is said that in the temple of Apollo in Branhida, near Ephesus, a ceremony was held to consecrate the war booty of Pharaoh Necho, taken in Gaza, which used Ionian mercenaries. The shield probably belonged to a Greek mercenary who, after the destruction of Gaza, went into the service of the pharaoh and died in Karchemish, far from his homeland. The Babylonian documents also found confirmation of the biblical story about the Jewish king Jeconiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar took captive to Babylon. When Evilmerodach came to the Assyrian throne, he released Jeconiah from prison and settled in the royal palace.
In the Fourth Book of Kingdoms it is said (chapter 25, verses 28-29): “And he spoke to him in a friendly manner, and made his throne higher than the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon. And he changed his prison clothes, and he always had food with him, all the days of his life. And his content, the constant content, was given to him from the king, from day to day, all the days of his life. In 1933, notes from the manager of the palace were found in the Babylonian archives about the issuance of allowances to various residents who were dependent on the king. The list includes the king of Judah, Jeconiah, his five sons and eight servicemen. It follows from these documents that a whole group of captive kings lived in Babylon.
Each received a daily food ration, had his own throne and his own rooms in the palace. Among these royal shadows, the unfortunate king Jeconiah lived out his life. Thanks to archaeological discoveries, we also became convinced that Godoliah, mentioned in the Bible, whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed governor of Judea and who was killed by his fellow tribesmen as a renegade, is a historical person. Among the ruins of the city of Lachish, a seal was found with the inscription: "Property of Godolia, set over Judea." Talking about the Babylonian captivity, we noted that many Jewish settlers made great fortunes in a foreign land.
This was fully confirmed by archaeological data. For example, one American expedition found in the city of Nippur a part of the archive of a kind of banking firm, Murashu and Sons. One hundred and fifty documents inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets reflect the extensive international ties of this Jewish family. We find there contracts for the lease of land, canals, orchards and sheep, transactions for the purchase and sale, loan agreements, receipts of bail for arrested debtors. The firm received a high remuneration established at that time for mediation - twenty percent. There are many Jewish names among the signatures on the documents; this proves that many immigrants lived in great prosperity.
The Bible passes over in silence a huge period of Jewish history spanning two hundred and sixty-five years: from the restoration of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah in 433 BC to the start of the Maccabean revolt in 168 BC In all likelihood, nothing worthy of attention happened during this time. Judea was a small, backwater province of the vast Persian empire.
With the consent of the Persian kings, the government of Judea was carried out by the priests, and it was, in essence, not a state, but a small religious community. The Jews, cut off from the rest of the world, were busy exclusively with their internal affairs. It must have been during this era that the Old Testament was created as it is today. Priests and learned people analyzed the past and collected documents that could explain the causes of national disasters. They came to the conviction that the Jews constantly departed from Yahweh, violated his covenants, and for this they were punished.
As a result, the Bible became a great indictment against kings and people, a document that was supposed to prove that the only way to salvation and well-being was faithfulness to the Mosaic religion. In 333 BC, major events took place in the world. The Macedonian king Alexander in the battle near the city of Issa won the largest victory over the army of Darius the third. Persia ceased to exist. A great Greek empire arose on its territory.
The young conqueror hastened to Egypt and occupied it without resistance.
An unverified legend says that on the way he entered Jerusalem to worship Yahweh. The Bible is silent about all these events. The inhabitants of the mountainous secluded Judea did not understand that they were entering a new era of human history. In 332-331 BC, the new ruler of the world founded the city of Alexandria on one of the capes in the Nile delta, the future center of science and art.
To the Jews, descendants of the refugees of the Babylonian era, he grants the same rights as the Greeks and Egyptians. This step later had major consequences. Alexander the Great died in 323 BC. His empire was divided among themselves by his military leaders, the so-called diadochi. Thus, after the bloody war, three states arose: Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemies, Syria under the rule of the Seleucids, and the Macedonian kingdom under the rule of the Antigonids.
In 320 BC, Ptolemy was the first to annex Judea to his state. A completely new, much more dangerous threat looms over the Jewish people than oppression and violence. The era of Hellenism began, the era of tolerance, freedom of spirit, fresh philosophical trends, the flourishing of science, literature and art. Alexandria became the center of this enlightenment and humanism. Ptolemy II produced a magnificent collection of manuscripts containing the intellectual heritage of generations past. Thanks to him, a Greek translation of the Bible, the so-called Septuagint, was made. Many Jews could not resist the beneficial influence of Hellenism. Those who lived in Alexandria especially succumbed to it. Gradually they became so Hellenized that they forgot their mother tongue and spoke only Greek. Scientists, historians and poets emerged from among them,which have gained worldwide fame.
The Greek influence also reached Jerusalem. The younger generation of Jews was fond of Greek philosophy, literature, and language. It got to the point that an arena was built in the very center of the city, where, following the example of Greek athletes, Jewish youth competed in agility. The cult of a healthy and beautiful body, the music of Greek poetry and the power of fresh and bright philosophical ideas prevailed over the singing of psalms and ritual prohibitions.
But there was also a powerful group of orthodox worshipers of Yahweh in Jerusalem, who with all their might resisted alien influences.
Of course, there were frequent and violent clashes between such different parts of the population. The city became for a long time the arena of intrigue, unrest and political struggle. More than a hundred years later, Judea came under the rule of the Seleucids.
In 195 BC, Antiochus the third defeated Ptolemy the fifth and captured all of Palestine. Greek colonies arose near Jerusalem, Samaria became an important administrative center of the new ruler. In the sacred city of Yahweh, Greek customs became so widespread that, as the author of the Second Book of the Maccabees (chapter 4, verse 14) says, “the priests ceased to be zealous for serving the altar and, despising the temple and neglecting the sacrifices, rushed to take part in the games of the Palestine that were contrary to the law. at the call of a thrown disc …”Even the pious and conscientious priest Jason was declared an atheist sympathizing with the new heresy.
Antiochus the fourth Epiphanes came to the throne. He was a fanatical admirer of Greek culture, who decided to eradicate all other customs and religions in his state. In 168 BC, he robbed the Jerusalem temple, taking all the treasures from there. And when riots broke out because of this, he sent his commander, who destroyed the city with fire and sword, destroyed the fortress walls, and took many inhabitants into captivity. The time has come for terror and persecution.
The cult of Olympian Zeus was forced into the temple; under threat of death, sacrifices in honor of Yahweh, the celebration of the Sabbath and circumcision of children were prohibited. Those who violated the prohibitions were sentenced to torture and martyrdom. Finally, the Jews, led by the priest Mattathias, raised a revolt, which was led alternately in 165-135 BC by the sons of Mattathias - Judas, Jonathan and Simon, called Maccabees. The heroic struggle of the rebels was so fierce that the Seleucid troops were forced to leave many Palestinian cities, and in 164 BC the leader of the revolt, Judah, entered Jerusalem, restoring the cult of Yahweh in the temple.
Epiphanes' son, Antiochus the fifth Eupator, arrived with a large army to crush the rebellion. Not far from Bethlehem, the Maccabees surrendered, yielding to the superior forces of the Greek cavalry and troops of war elephants. The terms of surrender were unexpectedly favorable. The new king, seeing the futility of his father's efforts, returned the freedom of religion to the Jews and even granted them a certain autonomy; but the Maccabees were not satisfied with this semblance of independence. The brothers of Judas - Jonathan and Simon resumed the struggle, which ended in 142 BC with the restoration of full political independence. The history of this heroic struggle is set forth in two books by the Maccabees.
The first was written in Hebrew by an unknown Jewish author, but only its Greek translation has come down to us. The second, by another Jewish author, is written in beautiful Classical Greek. The Jews did not recognize these books as sacred, but the Catholic Church included them in the number of canonical books. Since then, the Maccabean dynasty reigned in Judea, called the Hasmonean dynasty by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, after one of the ancestors of Mattathia, Hasmoneus.
In 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey invaded Palestine and, after a three-month siege, occupied Jerusalem. The independence of the Jews came to an end. Palestine became a Roman province. Over time, the oppression and arbitrariness of the Roman officials became so unbearable that an uprising broke out again in Palestine. In 70 AD, the emperor Titus, with a huge army, began a siege of Jerusalem.
The inhabitants of the city defended themselves with extraordinary courage and fortitude, but in the end they were forced to surrender. A stunning description of the tragedy experienced by Jerusalem, we find in Josephus. People, exhausted by hunger and disease, fell and died right in the streets. There were times when mothers ate their babies. Roman legionaries stabbed and crucified thousands of Jewish prisoners on crosses. After capturing the city, Titus ordered the remaining areas to be razed to the ground, and the Jews and worshipers of Jesus Christ could not enter the city under threat of death. For sixty years, the X Roman Legion, famous for its cruelty, stood in destroyed Jerusalem.
In 117-138 AD, the emperor Hadrian built the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina there. A statue of Jupiter was erected in the place where the temple was located. The desecration of the holy place and the prohibition of circumcision of children raised the Jews in 132 to a new war. Simon Bar-Kokhba was at the head of the rebels, whose number in a short time reached half a million people. He liberated Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian territory in a short time.
The sage Rabbi Akiba greeted him as the messiah and persuaded him to declare himself the king of Israel. The new state did not last long. Adrian summoned his general Julius Severus from Britain, who again occupied Palestine and in 136 captured the last rebel fortress, Vetar. Bar-Kokhba died or committed suicide in Betar. The surviving rebels were sold into slavery or fled to Babylonia.
In 1961, an expedition of Israeli archaeologists found bones and documents of the last insurgents killed there in one of the caves on the shores of the Dead Sea. Already the Babylonian captivity and the flight of the murderers of Godolia laid the foundation for the so-called diaspora, that is, the dispersal of Jews around the world. During the Persian and Greek eras, forced exile turned into voluntary emigration. The first center of the diaspora in Babylonia lasted until the late Middle Ages. In Egypt, a Jewish colony arose on the island of Elephantine and in Alexandria. After the Maccabean and Bar Kokhba uprisings, new waves of refugees poured into the foreign land, increasing the previously formed Jewish emigrant communities.
Gradually, the diaspora covered Cyrenaica, Greece and Asia Minor. The largest Jewish colony, numbering about one hundred thousand people, was in Alexandria. Another major emigre center was Rome.
Conclusion: "Instructive folk tales"
Author: Zenon Kosidovsky
