RELG 433 - Biblical Archaeology
Course Notes
Module 12
The Jews in Persia
As you look through the InterNet links for this week, it may seem strange that there are several relating to the Greek/Persian wars, with their battles and the eventual stand-off between the Greeks and the Persians.
How does this relate to the Jews and their history?
When Cyrus allowed the Jews to return from their Exile in Babylonia/Persia to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, not all the Jews did so. In fact, it was probably a minority of the Jewish population in Babylon/Persia who returned to Jerusalem.
During the seventy years of the Exile new generations of Jews had grown up who had no first-hand knowledge of Jerusalem and the land of Israel - which was by then referred to as Judah. They were more comfortable living as Jewish inhabitants of Persia, so remained there. The Jewish community of Babylon developed their own variation of Jewish culture, their own teachers, and their own literature.
When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, the Roman Empire did not include Babylon/Persia, so the Jewish communities of the East were spared the general dispersion of Jews which happened to those who lived in the Roman Empire.
To this day, there are several varieties and traditions of Jewish culture - some which developed in the West, and some which have their roots in the East.
In the West, there were communities in what became Spain and Portugal, who spoke a language which was a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish or Portuguese, called Ladino. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and any remaining Jews were eventually either forced to convert to Christianity (and were known as "conversos"), or else were killed by the Inquisition, or fled - often to America. The Jews from Spain-Portugal are known as Sephardic Jews or the Sephardim, and still speak Ladino.
The Jewish settlers in the Rhineland (Germany) spoke and wrote a mixed dialect of German and Hebrew, which became Yiddish - these were called Ashkenazi Jews, or the Ashkenazim.
Further East, communities of Jews settled in what became Poland and Russia.
The Jews were subject to murder and persecution by their nominally Christian neighbors, were forced to live in closed communities called Ghettos, and were blamed for any misfortunes which occurred, such as drought, floods, famine, illness, or the death of someone.
The "Pogroms" were murderous attacks by non-jews upon their Jewish neighbors, particularly in Poland and Russia, in which Jews were killed, their villages burned, and any survivors forced to flee.
Because of centuries of persecution, many of these Jews emigrated to America.
During World War II Hitler attempted to "solve the Jewish Problem" by trying to exterminate all Jews left in Germany and the invaded territories.
At the end of WWII there was added impetus to the call for re-establishing a homeland for Jews, and the modern State of Israel was established by the United Nations.
Survivors from Germany, Poland, Russia, and some of the Jews from America had already begun to move to Palestine (as the land was then called) even before the start of WWII, and formed the nucleus from which Israel has re-emerged as a nation.
So - back to our topic for this week :
The initial wide-spread dispersion of Jews away from Israel/Judah and into the rest of the world was started by the Assyrians, who deported the northern Israelites and settled them in scattered communities throughout the Assyrian Empire.
It was continued by the Babylonians, who deported Jewish leaders and nobility to Babylon - this included Ezra, and Daniel and his companions.
At the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian attacks, some Jews fled to Egypt, eg. Jeremiah 42:13-44:30, and settled there. One such settlement was at Elephantine, where many papyrus documents have been found - these relate mainly to the Hellenic Period.
In the Biblical Book of Esther, "Ahasuerus" was the Jewish version of the king's name.
"Xerxes" was the Greek version - but his Persian name was pronounced something like "Akhshavarsh" or "Khshayarsha" - remember, it would have been written in Cuneiform, which does not correspond to our western alphabet.
Xerxes' father was Darius (pronounced DRY-us), who had started the wars with Greece, and had lost the Battle of Marathon.
On his accession to the throne, Xerxes re-opened the wars, and built up a great navy to attack Greece. This navy was composed mainly of Phoenician ships - Phoenicia had been invaded by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and was assimilated into the Persian Empire by this time.
The Athenians, under the leadership of Themistocles (pronounced theh-MIS-toh-KLEEZ), tricked the Persian fleet into chasing them into the relatively shallow, confined, bay between the Attic mainland and the island of Salamis. The Persians had already lost some ships to storms in the Aegean, but still had between 700 and 800. The Greeks had only 200 to 300 smaller ships.
Xerxes was so sure that he would be victorious, that he pitched his royal tent and had his throne placed on top of a hill, and sat there to watch the battle.
The Greeks pretended to flee from the Persians, who followed them into the narrow straights between the island and the mainland. Then the Greek ships turned and attacked. The small Greek ships were better at maneuvering than the larger Persian ones, and in the melee which ensued many of the Persian ships were sunk or fled, pursued and attacked by the Greeks.
The Persian commanders were used to cavalry battles - they were totally unprepared for fighting with ships on the sea. The Greeks who were in the Athenian navy had spent their lives working with ships and were used to crewing together. They were able to ram into an enemy ship, and then back away quickly so that it did not take them with it when it sank. The Persians were so disorganized that at least one of their ships rammed one of their own fleet.
Realizing his defeat, Xerxes fled, leaving his possessions behind him. The Greeks took them and kept them on display - the display included gorgeous golden plates, which still exist and are kept in one of the Museums in Greece - unfortunately I cannot find any color photos of them. The Greeks also captured Xerxes' special white horses, which were used to draw the royal chariot.
Xerxes executed the admiral who had led his fleet to disaster, then left Greece and returned to Persia, leaving one of his generals to try to continue the war.
That is the setting for the beginning of the Book of Esther.
Xerxes had returned to Persia, to his palace at Shushan - Susa - and called for a "Victory Feast" to make it seem that he had actually won the wars. The Persian throne was too insecure for there to be any suspicion of weakness on the part of the king. Towards the end of the days of feasting and drinking Xerxes was no longer sober, and called for his chief Queen, Vashti, to show herself to the men at the feast.
The Bible says she was told to come wearing her crown (Esther 1:11) - it does not say whether she was supposed to be wearing any clothes, or whether she was supposed to come naked. However, in that culture, to show her face to men other than her husband would have been almost as bad as appearing totally without clothes.
The Queen was doomed whether she refused or whether she obeyed - if she obeyed, she would have been displayed to other men, so would be judged as unfit to come to the king again, and would have spent the rest of her life shut away in seclusion. If she refused - as she did - she would be judged to be disobedient to the king, and would either suffer the same penalty as before, or something even worse.
With that in mind, we can understand why Esther, after she had been appointed to be the next Queen, and was asked to go to the king to try to rescue the Jews from the plots of Haman, said "If I die, I die." (Esther 4:16). Xerxes by that time was probably paranoid and unpredictable, and Esther did indeed risk her life by going to him with her requests.
A further consequence of the Battle of Salamis was the breaking of the maritime power of the Phoenicians. They had contributed hundreds of ships to Xerxes' fleet, and lost nearly all of them either in storms in the Aegean, or at Salamis. Without their ships, they lost control of trade in the Mediterranean, and declined as a Sea power. However, the colony which the Phoenicians had founded at Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, was strong enough to survive and to continue their sailing and trading activities. So the Carthaginians took over control of maritime trade in the Mediterranean until they clashed with Rome and were eventually defeated in the Punic Wars of the third century BC.
Copyright © 1999 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
