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
Part 7: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
In the period following the Babylonian captivity, the Jews living in Judea, Babylonia and Egypt developed a peculiar genre of didactic legends called midrash. These are edifying stories with morality, which the people passed from mouth to mouth in order to maintain a patriotic spirit or to express any philosophical thought that disturbed the minds of that time.
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Thus, these legends belong to genuine folklore. The rabbis, in all likelihood, used them extensively in their teachings and biblical commentaries, so that with the help of the allegories they contain, it is easier to convince their listeners. Like any genuine folklore, these legends are distinguished by liveliness and drama of action, a wealth of images and an intense plot that does not recognize the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between sleep and reality.
To a certain extent, the Midrashim remind us of the famous Arabian fairy tale about Sinbad the Sailor or "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights." There is in them the same charm of the original poetry, the same longing for justice on earth, with the only difference that the Jewish legends, created by a people deeply religious and who have endured severe trials in their history, contain more significant philosophical thoughts related to the eternal problems of life and death, suffering and happiness, God and man. The plot of these legends develops against a conditionally historical background, they mention historical facts, countries, cities and persons known to us from other sources. For example, the cities of Nineveh and Babylon, the kings of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar and others.
Anonymous authors sometimes even reveal an undeniable familiarity with the situation, for example, at the court of the Babylonian king. However, in general, the picture recreated in these legends has nothing to do with real history and cannot be taken seriously. From the moment the documents of the Mesopotamian kings were deciphered, it became difficult to defend the view that the midrash contained authentic historical data, and today even the supporters of the most traditional views on the Bible refer these legends to a purely literary genre.
Take the Book of Judith as an example. It mentions the mythical Median king Arfaxad, the persecutor of the eastern peoples and the founder of the city of Ecbatana. The Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar is called the lord of Assyria, and his residence is allegedly in Nineveh, which was destroyed during his lifetime. Holofernes, being a Persian, of course, could not command the Assyrian army. In short, it would be naive to claim that this is a historical book. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that in this book there was an echo and true events.
Researchers tried to decipher the historical allusions hidden within its plot, and came to the conclusion that it should be attributed to the era of the Persian king Artaxerxes the third Och, who reigned in 359-338 BC, for it has been documented that his commander-in-chief was called Holofernes and that his assistant was the eunuch Bagoi. Both are featured in the Book of Judith.
Artaxerxes the third was a cruel and arrogant man. During his reign, the satraps, the rulers of the provinces, rebelled, and an uprising broke out in Egypt.
Artaxerxes' first expedition against the rebellious vassal ended in failure. With this news, Phenicia, Cyprus and part of Syria joined the rebellious Egypt. Having finally restored order in Asia, Artaxerxes hastened through Canaan to Egypt and in 341 BC again subdued it and turned it into a Persian province.
The church historian Eusebius, who lived in the fourth century, assures that
Artaxerxes, during a campaign in Egypt, took a large number of Jews from Canaan and settled them in Hyrcania, on the Caspian Sea. If the resettlement did take place, then it was probably of a punitive nature. The Jews, apparently, participated in the general uprising, and the siege of Bethulia is one of its episodes. The book of Judith was written on the basis of oral tradition, most likely during the rebellious struggle of the Maccabees. Fighting the superior forces of the Seleucids, the Jews created such legends, wanting to prove by historical examples that Yahweh does not leave his people at tragic and turning points. Consequently, it was a kind of propaganda literature, the purpose of which was to keep the spirit of the rebels and encourage staunch resistance.
Judith's feat, although heroic, aroused some moral doubts. In addition, the original Hebrew text has disappeared, and only the Greek and Latin translations have survived. For these reasons, Palestinian Jews did not recognize the Book of Judith as sacred. But the Catholic Church ranked it among the canonical writings and included it in the Bible.
The adventures of Esther and Mordecai at the court of the Persian king in Susa represent a typical example of an oriental tale. The author's wild imagination incredibly exaggerated all the episodes he described: the royal feast lasted one hundred and eighty days; Persian girls were “rubbed” with incense for twelve months before being shown to the king; Esther had been preparing for marriage for four whole years; the gallows on which Haman was hanged was fifty cubits high; finally, the Jews killed seventy-five thousand people out of revenge.
The action in this dramatic narrative refers to the reign of the Persian king Xerxes (486-465 BC), referred to in the Bible as Artaxerxes. A funny detail: the king's wife, Vashti, is, it seems, the first suffragette in history, who, with her disobedience, caused a lot of anxiety to the male part of the Persian aristocracy.
The author of the Book of Esther is unknown, but judging by the Persian layers in the Hebrew text and by a thorough acquaintance with the court life, this book was probably written by a Jew who lived in Susa at the same period when the Maccabean war was going on in Palestine. He was a writer endowed with literary talent. The style of legends is lively and colorful, the plot is full of dramatic tension, the richness of images, plastic and colorful, is striking.
Subsequently, other authors made their additions to the original text, and in this final form included it in the Bible.
Some researchers believe that the author borrowed the main thread of the narrative from Babylonian or Persian mythology, although no concrete evidence of this has yet been found. These researchers rely solely on the fact that the name Esther (Esther) originates from the goddess Ishtar, and the name Mordecai - from the Babylonian god Marduk. In addition, they suggest that the whole story is invented in order to dramatize the rituals of Purim, the origin and name of which have not yet been sufficiently explained.
The Book of Esther is difficult to classify as religious literature. The name of God is mentioned in it only once, and the massacre perpetrated against the enemies of the Jews grossly contradicts the principles proclaimed by the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel. Despite this, the priests ranked the Book of Esther among the didactic texts of the Bible, called ketubim. The reading of this legend is still the main part of the rituals of the Purim holiday. The early Christians rejected the story of Esther, but the Catholic Church later included it in the canonical texts of the Bible.
At the turn of the “historical” and didactic books of the Old Testament, there is also the Book of Tobit, named after the hero, whose adventures are presented in the Bible in an unusually colorful and figurative way. In the introduction, the author of the book acquaints the reader with the historical setting related to the action of the legend, and speaks about the reign of the Assyrian kings of Salmanassar (or rather, Sargon) and Sinaherib, and then names the Persian cities of Ragi and Yektabana, without worrying about reconciling the discrepancies in the chronological order of one hundred - two hundred years. Old Tobit gives his son advice, vividly reminiscent of the wisdom of life, which is saturated with the literature of the Semitic peoples. And the belief in angels, Satan, in unearthly beings is borrowed from the Persian religion, which the Jews faced in exile.
The Book of Job is considered the greatest masterpiece of biblical literature. The liveliness of descriptions and style, the dramatic growth of action, the courage of philosophical thought and the fervor of feelings - these are the merits of this work, which combines elements of a philosophical treatise, poem and drama at the same time. The name of God's passion-bearer has become a common synonym for any misfortune or catastrophe.
The book consists of three main parts: a prose prologue, a poetic dialogue, and a happy end epilogue.
As a result of linguistic studies of the text, the assumption arose that the central part, that is, the conversation of friends about the meaning of suffering, is of a later origin.
The legend in its final form probably dates back to the third century BC and, therefore, to the Hellenistic era. An unknown author or a Jewish compiler created, however, not an original work, but a version of one that already existed in Sumerian literature. We owe this amazing discovery to the American orientalist Samuel Kramer, author of History Begins in Sumer. Deciphering the cuneiform tablets known from the ruins of Nippur, he came across a poem about a certain Sumerian, who undoubtedly served as the prototype of the biblical Job. He was a rich, happy, wise and just man, surrounded by numerous family and friends. Suddenly all sorts of misfortunes fell on him - illness and suffering, but he did not blaspheme his God, did not take offense at him.
The unfortunate man obediently obeyed God's will and, amid tears and groans, prayed for pity. Moved by his humility and piety, the god eventually took mercy and restored his health. The coincidence in the presentation of the plot and the leading idea is so striking that it is difficult to doubt the direct dependence of both options. However, it should be remembered that they are separated by two or three millennia of development of religious ideas. Although the Jewish legend is based on the Sumerian plot, it is much more perfect in the literary sense and more mature in its philosophy.
We have already encountered the problem raised in the story of Job when we talked about the prophets. It is about the problem of human responsibility, about the interdependence of suffering and guilt. In the Pentateuch, this question is solved simply. It speaks of collective responsibility: sons must atone for the guilt of their fathers, even if they themselves are innocent. However, as ethical monotheism matured, this idea of fatal responsibility found itself in blatant conflict with the concept of divine justice. Jeremiah and Ezekiel taught that each person, on his own, individually, is responsible to God for his deeds, and thus these prophets opposed the main idea of the Pentateuch. In fact, it was a revolutionary step that meant tremendous progress in religious thinking.
However, he did not solve the problem of suffering and guilt that tormented a person, but rather even complicated it. For if each person is responsible for his own actions, why then do righteous and God-fearing people suffer? If God is just, then why does he doom them to illness, poverty and death of the closest and loved ones?
These are the questions posed in the Book of Job. After a long and fruitless argument between Job and his friends, young Elihu intervenes and offers his answer, which is essentially surrender:
God tests his devoted mortals to test their piety and to establish them in virtue. All the parties to the dispute agree with the young man, not noticing that such a cruel method of testing is just as contrary to the concept of justice, as well as unworthy illness, suffering, poverty and loss of loved ones.
Of course, the Book of Daniel should be included in the category of literary fiction. The miracles, apocalyptic prophecies and historical realities described in it do not inspire any confidence in themselves. The authors of the legend at every step betray their unfamiliarity with the history of Babylonia and Persia, they confuse the Median kings with the Persians, and their Chaldeans, contrary to the historical accuracy, appear as a class of priests-magicians, and they call Daniel "the head of the mysteries." The information about the kings mentioned in the legend is especially fantastic.
Nebuchadnezzar erects a gigantic golden statue and demands that the people pay divine honors to this statue. Then he becomes a supporter of the god of Israel and decrees that anyone who speaks ill of this god should be put to death. Darius orders his subjects not to pray to any god for thirty days, and when Daniel comes out of the lion's den, the same Darius obliges all nations subject to him to accept the faith of Moses.
Of course, there is a lot of fairytale charm in the image of three young Jews who emerged unharmed from the burning furnace, or in the image of Daniel sitting in a ditch among meek lions, and these subjects have always found a response in folk fantasy and in painting. Still, the most popular is the miracle with a mysterious hand inscribed on the wall of the banquet hall three mysterious words: "mene, tekel, perez". The true meaning of these words is still the subject of scientific controversy. The difficulty lies in the fact that in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages only consonants are written, and vowels are not written. Depending on whether it is inserted between the consonants, for example, "a or" e ", the meaning of the words changes. In this regard, in general, the interpretation given in the Book of Daniel is accepted.
Despite the pile of all sorts of fables, we find in the legend about Daniel a mention of some facts directly or indirectly related to true events. This applies, for example, to the madness of Nebuchadnezzar. We know from other sources that the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, King Nabonidus, really suffered from some kind of mental illness for seven years. One more example. In Babylonia, such a measure of punishment was very often applied: they threw the guilty ones into a burning furnace. Or, for a long time, the mysterious mention of the fact that King Belshazzar made Daniel the third person in the city remained unclear.
Why third and not second? The question was clarified only by archeology.
It turned out that Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, became regent during his lifetime and ruled in Babylon. Thus, since Belshazzar (with his father alive) was the second person in the state, Daniel, as his chief minister, could only take third place in the hierarchy.
These details, of course, do not change the view of the “historicity” of the Book of Daniel, but they prove that the basis of the plot originated in the Babylonian environment. Recall that the Book of Daniel is divided into two parts, written by two different authors at different periods of time: a very popular narrative story and a prophecy in the style of an apocalyptic revelation. Like the Book of Job, the Book of Daniel also fed on the juices of alien mythology.
In the excavations of Ugarit, a poem has been found dating from the fourteenth century BC. It tells the story of a certain Daniel and his son Ahat. The hero was a wise and just judge who stood up for widows and orphans, and, apparently, Jewish writers borrowed from this poem the idea of the tale of Daniel. In its apocalyptic part, four successive kingdoms are predicted:
Babylonian, Persian, Median and Greek. Clear hints of the desecration of the Jerusalem temple dating back to the reign of Antiochus the fourth Epiphanes (167 BC) indicate that the Book of Daniel, in its final edition, originated in the late Hellenistic era. The proof of this, however, was the numerous Greek words scattered in the Aramaic-Hebrew text.
In Jewish history, these were difficult times of the struggle for religious independence, and Daniel's prophecies were supposed to cheer up the oppressed and support their hope of victory. In visions saturated with fervent patriotism, the book predicts the coming of the Son of Man to the Jews, who will save them from the rule of foreigners. Daniel also proclaims the coming of the kingdom of God on earth and the resurrection at the end of the world. But these messianic ideas are devoid of a deterministic character. The prophecy will be fulfilled only when people cleanse their souls from sin and become righteous.
As we can see. The Book of Daniel, like the books of other prophets and the Book of Job, emphasizes a person's personal responsibility to God. Her messianic ideas had a profound influence on early Christianity, and the Son of Man named in her became the title of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Book of Jonah belongs to the same group of allegorical folk tales.
The prophet's tumultuous and colorful adventures are a typical creation of Jewish folklore, but researchers suspect that the sources of this legend are hidden in an unknown Mesopotamian myth. The fish or sea monster that swallowed Iona is too vividly reminiscent of the mythical goddess of chaos Tiamat.
The book undoubtedly originated after the Babylonian captivity. Biblical commentators have tried to decipher its supposedly allegorical meaning. Israel, they said, had a special prophetic mission among other nations, but since he did not cope with it, by the will of Yahweh he was swallowed up by a monster - Nebuchadnezzar.
For us, however, much more important is the idea contained in the concluding part of the book. When Jonah became angry that Nineveh had survived, Yahweh gave him an object lesson in justice. If Jonah grieved over the fate of a withered plant, then shouldn't Yahweh have pity on the great city, where righteous people, innocent children and animals live next to sinners? How Yahweh's views have changed compared to the Books of Moses, Joshua, or the judges!
Abraham's conversation with God on the same topic, no doubt, was added later, after the Babylonian captivity, when the problem of justice was very urgent. The ideas laid down in the prophecies of Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel and in the didactic legends, of course, were supposed to creatively influence the further development of religious concepts. How this interesting process proceeded, we are helped to understand the scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea. In 1947, shepherds from the Bedouin Taamire tribe stopped to rest in a rocky area near the source of Ain Feshha. And then a young man, looking for a lost kid, discovered in one of the many caves large clay jugs with mysterious scrolls.
Later it turned out that these were long strips of lamb skin, covered with archaic Hebrew letters.
At first, no one understood the value of this find. It was only after some of the scrolls reached the United States and the other into the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark that the eyes of scholars were opened. William F. Albright did not hesitate to call the discovered manuscripts "the greatest discovery of our century."
The essence of the matter is that the scrolls contain texts of the Old Testament, written in the third or second century BC Since the oldest copy that has been discovered so far was made in the ninth century AD these scrolls are undoubtedly of invaluable value for comparative philological research and to clarify controversial biblical passages.
Rumors about what a fuss about the scrolls and what huge sums of money are being paid for them (the Americans paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the six scrolls) eventually reached the Arabian Desert. On the uninhabited rocky coast of the Dead Sea, many Bedouin seekers appeared who ransacked caves and crevices. The result was extraordinarily successful. In twenty-five caves, the Bedouins found several hundred scrolls and thousands of scraps and scraps with Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek writing. Further searches, already carried out systematically by scientific and archaeological expeditions, bring more and more new discoveries.
At the moment, there are so many accumulated materials that, according to scientists, at least fifty years will pass before the texts are put in order and scientifically processed. But now it is already known that among them is the Book of Isaiah, a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, as well as the apocalyptic work "The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness."
Of course, an intriguing question arose: how did these scriptures end up in the desert caves on the shores of the Dead Sea? A special archaeological expedition took up this problem in 1951 and soon reported on the results of their searches.
A short distance from the caves there are ruins that for many years were considered the remains of a Roman fortress. The Arabs called them Khirbet-Qumran. These ruins were once a complex of buildings erected from blocks of hewn stone and roofed from trunks of palm trees, reeds and silt. Archaeologists easily established that the ruins were in the past living quarters, artisan workshops, bathing pools for ritual purposes, warehouses, etc.
However, the most important discovery was a hall called "scriptorium" where scribes made lists of sacred books. There are preserved stone tables with benches and, above all, several inkpots made of bronze and clay, in which traces of ink remained. In underground warehouses, among the heaps of ceramic shards, the same cylindrical vessels were found intact, in which the scrolls discovered in the caves were kept. Therefore, there is no doubt that the owners of the scrolls were the inhabitants of the structures found.
In addition, many coins were recovered from the ruins. The oldest dates back to 125 BC, and the youngest is from 68 AD. In the same year, a fire destroyed the now discovered structures of Khirbet Qumran. Archaeologists came to the conclusion that there was a community of the Jewish sect of the Essenes who fled from Jerusalem from the persecution of the Sanhedrin.
They built their hypothesis not only on convincing archaeological finds, but also on the information contained in the writings of ancient travelers and historians. For example, the Roman Pliny the Elder says that during his stay in Palestine he visited a large Essenes settlement on the shores of the Dead Sea. In all likelihood, this was the same settlement, the ruins of which were found in Khirbet Qumran. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius and Philo of Alexandria also write about the Essenes.
A 68 AD coin found in the ruins allows us to speculate about the fate that befell the Qumran community. An uprising of the Jewish people broke out in Jerusalem. The X Roman legion, known for its cruelty, was sent against the rebels. After the burning of the temple in Jerusalem and the bloody suppression of the revolt, the Essenes harbored no illusions about their fate. The soldier plundered the country, the danger gradually approached the community.
The Essenes were primarily concerned with the salvation of the sacred books. Valuable scrolls were hidden in earthen vessels and hidden in hiding places; The Essenes apparently hoped that as soon as the military confusion passed, they would be able to resume their activities.
Among the documents found in the caves, a very valuable antiquity is a scroll containing ritual rules, beliefs, moral teachings and organizational principles of the Qumran community. From this document we learn that the Essenes held firmly to the property community. Every day at sunset, members of the sect wore a festive dress, received daily baptism in the pool and sat down to a communal supper, during which the abbot blessed bread and wine.
The Essenes preached love for one's neighbor, poverty, the obligation to give alms, condemned slavery and believed in the coming of the anointed of God - the great righteous man who would establish peace and justice on earth. Why did the ancient scroll provoke such passionate controversy? The fact is that the Essenes are strikingly similar in all respects to the early Christians. On this basis, a group of orientalists led by Dupont-Sommer expressed the opinion that the Essenes form that link between Judaism and Christianity, the absence of which was sensitively felt in science.
Author: Zenon Kosidovsky