The Persian Empire was one of the most enlightened and tolerant
empires of the ancient world. In contrast, for example, to the Assyrians
and the Babylonians, the Persians allowed exiled peoples to return to
their homelands.
In 586 B.C., the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple,
ending the Old Testament period, or what is also known as the biblical
period of archaeology. Yet just 60 or 65 years later, the Second Temple
was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In the interval, the exiles from
Jerusalem dwelt in Babylon, where their response to their situation varied.
On the one hand, as we see in Psalm 137, these exiles yearned for their
homeland and Jerusalem. On the other hand, the prophet Jeremiah sent a
letter to the exiles, encouraging them to make a life for themselves in
Babylon and be content. In fact, the Jews who lived in exile became quite
well assimilated among the local people. Nevertheless, they retained their
separate identity, continuing to worship the God of Israel.
It wasn’t too long after the destruction of Jerusalem that another power,
Persia, became dominant in the ancient Near East. Immediately after
capturing Babylon, the Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great, issued an edict
in 539 B.C. allowing the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple
on the Temple Mount. The homeland they returned to was divided up into
Persian administrative units called medinot (singular: medinah). The district
around Jerusalem was a medinah called Yahud (i.e., Judah or Judea). To the
north was a medinah called Samaria, the heart of what had been the northern
kingdom of Israel. What had been the kingdom of Ammon was governed by
a Judean named Tobias. Into this political context, the Persians sent a man
named Nehemiah to govern the medinah called Yahud. Nehemiah was, in fact,
a Judean who had attained high office in the Persian administration and had
requested permission from the Persian king to be sent to Jerusalem to rebuild
the city. The city that he rebuilt is small in size and population, but it
included the Temple Mount with the Second Temple, consecrated in the year
516 B.C.
As Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem, Ezra the scribe arrived, sent by the Persian
king to implement Jewish law as the law of the land. The structure of the
society that he addressed was different from the one that had existed before
the destruction of the city. Instead of tribes, clans or families return from
exile in Babylon, and we note a new emphasis on genealogy. While in exile,
these families had documented their lineage. The scribe Ezra assembled all
the people together and proclaimed that anyone who had married a
non-Israelite wife had to leave her. This is the first time we see a prohibition
against intermarriage in Judaism.
In competition with the returning exiles in Jerusalem, the people living in
the north who had survived the earlier Assyrian conquest claimed to be the
true Israel. They were not allowed to participate in rebuilding the temple
in Jerusalem and worshiping the God of Israel in Jerusalem because the
purity of their bloodlines was suspect. Instead, they decided to worship the
God of Israel on a mountain located in the heart of the district of Samaria,
called Mount Gerizim. These northerners eventually became known as
the Samaritans. In the next lecture, we will examine the conquest of
Alexander the Great.
Important Terms
medinah (pl. medinot): Smaller administrative districts within
Persian satrapies.
Mount Gerizim: Sacred mountain of the Samaritans, overlooking biblical
Shechem (modem Nablus).
Samaritans: Descendants of the population of the former kingdom of Israel
who claimed descent Hom the old Joseph tribes (Ephraim and Manasseh).
Yahud: The Persian medinah of Judea.
Questions to Consider
1. Compare and contrast the policies toward conquered populations of
the Assyrians and Babylonians, on the one hand, and the policies of
the Persians, on the other. What do you think were the rationales that
motivated these policies, and which kind of policy do you think was
more effective in the long term?
2. What were the reasons behind and consequences of Ezra’s ban
on intermarriage?
Lecture 8--Transcript
Babylonian Exile and the Persian Restoration
In 586 B.C. the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple on
the Temple Mount bringing to an end the Old Testament period, what we
often refer to as the biblical period of archaeology in Palestine and the end
of the First Temple period. 586 BC therefore marks a cutoff point and marks
the beginning of a period that we refer to as the Babylonian exile in Jewish
history. Just 60 to 65 years later the Second Temple is built on the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem marking the beginning of the Second Temple period.
From this point on we’re going to be leaving the so-called biblical period
and entering what in Jewish terms is called the post-biblical period and the
Second Temple period which will occupy us now for a number of lectures.
The Hebrew Bible describes the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s
temple by the Babylonians as follows.
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month-this was inthe nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon-Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guard and a servant of the kingof Babylon, came to Jerusalem and burned the House of the Lordand the King’s House; and all the houses of Jerusalem.
Notice according to this description, the Babylonians destroy the “House of
the Lord” which is Solomon’s temple, the King’s House, which is the palace
by the temple on the Temple Mount, and all the houses of Jerusalem. What
happens then is that the Babylonians capture the king of Judah, whose name
is Zedekiah trying to escape from Jerusalem under cover of night. What do
they do when they capture him and here is what the Bible says.
“Then they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at
Riblah; and they pronounced judgment against him. They also slew the sons
of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out his eyes and bound him in fetters and
carried him to Babylon.” So what happens here is that the king of Judah is
captured trying to escape and what do the Babylonians do? Before they blind
him they kill his sons before his very eyes so that’s the very last thing that he
sees and then he’s taken away into captivity in Babylon.
What happens then is that the Babylonians send the Judeans into exile in
Babylon. So the population of Judah is sent into exile in Babylon now
marking the beginning of the Babylonian exile. We have a number of
documents that describe this period of the Babylonian exile.
For example Psalm 137 which reads, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we
sat down, and wept, when we remembered Zion,” when we remembered
Jerusalem. “How could we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?”
How can we worship, in other words the God of Israel, in a foreign land?
“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand fail me! May my tongue
cleave to my palate, if I do not remember you; if I set not Jerusalem above
my highest joy!”
On the one hand we see here the yearning of these exiles in Babylonia for
their homeland and for the city of Jerusalem. On the other hand we have for
example a description in Jeremiah of the Babylonian exile as follows:
These are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sentfrom Jerusalem to the elders among the exiles, and to the priest,the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carriedinto exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Thus says the Lord ofHosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I carried into exilefrom Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses, and live in them; plantvineyards, and eat the fruit of them; take wives, and beget sonsand daughters.”
This passage from Jeremiah is very interesting because what it suggests is
that Jeremiah is encouraging the exiles to settle in Babylon to make a life
for themselves there and to be content. In fact that’s exactly what happened.
Many Jews did become very well-established in Babylonia, which was a
very wealthy place to live. It was an easy lifestyle. They got settled. They
began to buy houses, get jobs, and raise their children there. Basically what
we have then is a period when the Jews are living in exile in Babylonia, but
are really quite well assimilated among the local people.
What happens then with the Jews living in Babylonia is several interesting
things. On the one hand although they did settle down and assimilate and
build houses and get jobs and raise their children. They did nevertheless retain
their separate identity continuing to worship the God of Israel. We know
that the Jewish community in Babylonia was led by elders, apparently older
people with some authority and apparently the editing of the authoritative
text of the Hebrew Bible took place at this time; and by authoritative text of
the Hebrew Bible I mean the Pentateuch, that is the Five Books of Moses
and the books of the Former Prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
It is also in Babylonia that we might have the origin of the institution of
the synagogue, something that we will be talking about a little later in this
course. The synagogue basically might have originated in Babylonia because
it would’ve enabled these Jews living in exile to preserve their Jewish
identity and to continue worshiping the God of Israel as their national deity.
So many scholars think that perhaps the synagogue as an institution began to
develop during the period of the Babylonian exile.
The Babylonian Empire was the dominant empire in the ancient Near East in
the late 7th century and early 6th century B.C. But it wasn’t too long after that
that another that another power began to strengthen and that is Persia, the
area that corresponds with modern day Iran. Remember that Babylonia was
centered in the southern part of what is today Iraq or ancient Mesopotamia.
During the course of the 6” century B.C., Persia became stronger and
stronger until finally Persia became the dominant power in the ancient Near
East taking over Babylonia and also taking over many other countries as
well. Eventually the Persians established a vast empire that stretched all the
way from the area of southern Russia on the east through Asia Minor; that
is modern Turkey, and up to Greece on the west. In fact, many people are
familiar with the Persian Empire because in 490 and 480 BC the Persians
mounted invasions of mainland Greece in which they were beaten back by
the Greeks. It was in fact the defeat of the Persians by the Greeks that led
to the ascendency of Athens as the dominant city-state in Greece in the 5““
century B.C.
That actually lies a little bit outside of our story because the territory that we
are talking about, the area of the Holy Land, remained Under Persian rule
throughout this period. In the 5th century B.C. while We have the classical
period in Greece with the construction of the buildings on top of the acropolis
and so on, while all of that is going on in Greece, the Holy Land is under the
rule of the Persian Empire.
The Persians get kind of a bad rap in western history because of the invasion
of Greece, but in fact the Persian Empire was one of the most enlightened
and tolerant empires of the ancient world. In contrast, for example, to the
Assyrians and the Babylonians who dealt with conquered peoples by forcing
them to go into exile, the Persians did just the opposite. They allowed exiled
peoples to return to their homelands, and this is actually a very interesting
difference here.
The idea or the goal of these different policies was the same, to create a way
of dealing with powerful local elites. The Assyrians and the Babylonians
dealt with native elites, native power bases, by forcing them to go into exile
thereby uprooting the native power bases and replacing them with their
own people.
The Persians did just the opposite. They allowed exiled peoples to return
to their homelands figuring that this would make them happy and content
and less likely to rebel. In fact that’s exactly what happened. That is during
the vast period and space of the Persian Empire there are almost no native
rebellions against Persian rule with the exception of a Greek rebellion that
was actually provoked by the mainland Greeks. So the rest of the peoples
living under Persian rule apparently were quite content, and it’s within
this context then that the Persians grant the exiled Judeans in Babylonia
permission to return to their homeland.
This occurs during the rule of a Persian king named Cyrus who issues an
edict in 539 B.C. allowing the Judeans to return to Jerusalem and rebuild
the temple on the Temple Mount. Here is how this edict appears in the book
of Ezra. “Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the
Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up
the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, to issue a proclamation throughout all his
kingdom and also to put it in writing, as follows” Very interesting by the
way, notice that the way that the Hebrew Bible puts it, it’s as though God,
the God of Israel caused Cyrus to issue this edict. It’s the act of God actually,
not the act of Cyrus.
This is what Ezra says, “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the
earth has the Lord, the God of the heavens, given me, and he has commissioned
me to build him a house in Jerusalem which is in Judah.” A house in Jerusalem
meaning a house dedicated to the God of Israel, i.e. a temple. “Whoever this is
among you of all his people who desires to go, his God be with him; let him go
up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the House of the Lord, the God
of Israel, since he is the God who is in Jerusalem.”
With this proclamation then the Judeans are allowed to return from exile
in Babylonia and build a new temple dedicated to the God of Israel on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Notice this passage describes the God of Israel as
the God who is in Jerusalem. This is specifically the God of Israel who dwells
in Jerusalem, recalling when we talked about Kuntillet Ajrud for example in
the last lecture, recalling the way that the God of Israel is variously described,
Yahweh is variously described, in different locations, Yahweh of Teman,
Yahweh of Samaria. Here we have the God who was in Jerusalem.
We actually have an extra biblical text which also describes edicts by Cyrus.
This extra biblical text happens to be a cylinder made of clay that is impressed
with cuneiform script, and it has an edict on it in which Cyrus grants various
peoples permission to return to their homelands. This is not specifically the
edict allowing the Judeans to return, but it is an edict which allows various
peoples to return to their homelands. It’s very interesting because this is an
edict that’s issued by Cyrus himself whereas in Ezra what we have is the
Hebrew Bible’s version of an edict by Cyrus.
What does this edict say?
I am Cyrus, king of the world from as far as the settlements on theother side of the Tigris, where their temples have long lain in ruin,I returned the gods who lived therein to their places and providedthem with permanent temples. I gathered all their inhabitants andreturned them to their homes.
He’s basically describing here how he then gathers together all of these
exiled peoples and all of these exiled gods and allows them to return to their
homes. “Daily, may all the gods whom I have brought back to their holy sites
speak on my behalf for long life and plead my favor before Bel and Nebo.”
Actually Cyrus apparently has a little bit of self-interest here in allowing
these temples to be built to their native gods in their homelands in seeking
the favor of these gods. He’s hoping well I allowed these peoples to return to
rebuild these temples to their gods and now hopefully these gods will grant
me favor; a little bit of self-interest there.
The Persian Empire was a vast empire, it’s a huge area and how do you
administer a kingdom, an empire that is this big. An analogy would be in the
United States today such a big place, of course it’s subdivided into smaller
administrative units. We have the subdivision of the 50 states, and then within
the states subdivisions and counties, and then within counties townships and
so on and so forth. So it was with the Persian Empire.
Because it was so big it was subdivided into smaller administrative units
for the purposes of effective government. The largest subdivisions of
the Persian Empire analogous to the states in the United States, but much
bigger geographically speaking were called satrapies, and each one of these
satrapies was governed by a satrap. The area that we’re talking about, the
Holy Land, was part of a very large satrapy, which was called Ebernari. It’s
an Aramaic word, which means the land beyond the river. Why the land
beyond the river? Because from the point of view of the Persians who were
over in Iran, the area of Judea is the land beyond the Tigress and Euphrates
Rivers to the west of the river, so we’re the land beyond the river.
Each one of these satrapies then was subdivided into smaller units called
medinot, singular medinah, which might be analogous to like a county within
a state, and the area that we’re talking about, the area of ancient Palestine,
then was divided into a number of these sort of cotmties or medinot. I’d
like to take a look at these medinot because the subdivisions that we have
here are going to remain in effect for centuries afterwards even though the
governments will change. The basic subdivisions will more or less remain
the same and in fact many of these subdivisions go back to the Iron Age as
we’ll see.
What happens then with the subdivision of Palestine? The area that had been
the core of the Kingdom of Judah before 5 86 B.C., that is the district around
Jerusalem becomes known as a medinah called Yahud, which is basically
Judah or Judea. To the north of Yahud, to the north of Judea, is a medinah
called Samaria, which is of course the core, the heart of what had been the
biblical kingdom of Israel, the northern Kingdom of Israel before 722 B.C.
What we have now, notice by the way, is a district called Samaria which is
centered on a city called Samaria, the city of Samaria had been the capital
of the ancient biblical Kingdom of Israel, so we have two Samarias, the
city of Samaria and that city then gives its name to the surrounding district
or medinah.
The area that had been biblical Edom, before 586 B.C., Edom had been a
kingdom on the southeast side of the Dead Sea, the area near Petra today
in Jordan. What happens after 586 B.C. is that some of the inhabitants of
the biblical kingdom of Edom, that is some of those Edomites, cross the
area around the southern end of the Dead Sea and settle in the southern part
of what had been the Kingdom of Judah. These people are now known as
Idumaeans and this district becomes known as Idumaea. So the district to the
south of Judea is now known as Idumaea. The area of the biblical Kingdom
of Ammon, around modern day Amman, is now a district that is governed
by a Jewish, that is Judean, dynasty called the Tobiads, that is governed by a
Judean named Tobias and his descendents who were called the Tobiads.
If you look at the map you will see that the coastal plane is not part of any
of the districts. Instead it is divided into a series of narrow strips, and this is
actually a very interesting story too. These strips of the coastal plane were
under the rule of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians are still up there to the
north in the area of modem Lebanon. Because the Persians were a landlocked
power, they needed the Phoenician naval power in order to fight the Greeks
because the Greeks were also a naval power.
What the Persians did was to grant the Phoenician cities a degree of semi-
autonomy, semi-independence, and allowed them to rule over the coastal
plain of Palestine. The coastal plain is divided administratively between
Phoenician cities. What happens now in Jerusalem? What happens is that
under the Persians a man is sent to Jerusalem to govern the district of Judea,
to govern Yahud, and this man is named Nehemiah.
Nehemiah was, in fact, a Judean who attained a very high office in the
Persian administration, and was sent by the Persian king to be governor of
Judea or Yahud. The book of Nehemiah describes Nehemiah being sent to
Jerusalem as governor and it says as follows: “And I said to the king, ‘If it
please the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight that you
would send me to Judah, to the city of the graves of my ancestors, that I may
rebuild it.’ ”
So Nehemiah requests permission from the Persian king to be sent to
Jerusalem and to rebuild the city. So he is sent to Jerusalem and basically in
the middle of the 5“‘ century B.C. Nehemiah serves as governor of Yahud,
and it’s under him that the city of Jerusalem is rebuilt. When we look at a
plan of Jerusalem what we see is that the city is now rebuilt, but it’s very
small in size. It looks pretty much like it did under David and Solomon
consisting only of the City of David and the Second Temple on the Temple
Mount, which is consecrated in the year 516 B.C.
The western hill is not part of the Persian city of Jerusalem. There’s nobody
living on it. Why is the population so small? Because most of the Jews
preferred to remain in Babylonia where they had already settled down rather
than return to Judea and try and rebuild their lives from scratch. So the
population that returned to Judea to rebuild was actually quite small, and so
the city of Jerusalem in the Persian period is small as well.
At around the same time as Nehemiah rebuilds Jerusalem, Ezra arrives in
Jerusalem as well. Who is Ezra? Ezra is sent as a scribe skilled in the law of
Moses. Ezra is not a governor of the district of Jerusalem. What he is instead
is a scribe, and he is actually sent by the Persian king to implement Jewish
law as the law of the land. That is by the degree of the Persian king, the
inhabitants of Judah were to observe Jewish law as their everyday law, the
law of their lives.
This is actually a very interesting turning point that we have here. Before 586
B.C. the religion of the 12 tribes had been called Israelite religion. It was the
religion of the 12 Israelite tribes. Now with Ezra coming to Jerusalem what
we have is the beginning of what we call early Judaism, the beginning of the
Jewish religion, referring to the religion of the Judean families who returned
to Judea and who now come back from exile in Babylonia. We have to make
a distinction between Israelite religion before 586 B.C. and Judaism, early
Judaism after 596 B.C.
The structure of society is now different, instead of tribes what we have now
are clans or families returning from exile in Babylonia. We see this emphasis
on families and on genealogy reflected in the book of Ezra where we have
a chapter that begins, “Now these are the heads of families and this is the
genealogy of those who came up with me from Babylon in the reign of
Artaxerxes the king.” What had happened is that while the Jews, the Judeans
were in exile in Babylonia, these families kept genealogies documenting
their lineage.
This is going to become important because what happens is when Ezra gets
to Jerusalem he assembles all of the people together and he tells them as
follows: “Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled in Jerusalem
Within the three days, and all the people sat in an open square in front of the
House of God, trembling on account of the occasion itself and also because
of the pouring rain.” It’s a wonderful sentence by the way because you can
just imagine they’re out there and they’re shivering because of the cold and
the rain and they’re waiting to hear what Ezra is going to say. Ezra of course
is now going to tell them well this is the law that you have to observe as the
law of the land.
Thereupon Ezra the priest arose and said to them: “You have brokenfaith and have married foreign women to increase the guilt of Israel.Now therefore make your confession to the Lord, the God of yourfathers, and do his will and separate yourselves from the peoples ofthe land and from the foreign wives.”
This is very interesting because up until this point there was no prohibition
in Judaism or in Israelite religion against intermarriage. This is the first time
intermarriage is prohibited. Remember even King Solomon had many foreign
wives. One of these ideals that these returning Judean exiles bring back with
them is a very aristocratic notion that lineage and purity of bloodlines matter.
One of the things that Ezra does is he assembles all of the people together
and he says anyone who is intermarried, anyone who has married a non-
Jewish, a non-Israelite wife has to leave their wives.
This is the first time that we see something like this. Probably some of those
people did follow Ezra’s orders, but not everybody was very happy with this
new injunction, and remember Ezra is instituting here the law of the land on
behalf of the Persian king.
Who does this create difficulties for? It creates difficulties actually not for the
returning Judean exiles because they’re the aristocratic, upper class people
who had preserved the records of their bloodlines. Instead it creates problems
for the lower class people who had not been sent into exile, because when
we talk about the Assyrian exile and the Babylonian exile, it’s not that the
Assyrians and Babylonians forced everyone to leave the country and to go
into exile. No, they uprooted the elite, the upper classes, because they were
the ones who were in control and so the idea was to destroy the power base.
The poorer people, the farmers and so on, they were left behind.
In the interim those poorer people who had been left behind, at least some of
them, had intermarried with non-Jews or non-Israelites. This had happened
to a much larger degree in what had been the northern Kingdom of Israel,
the northern part of the country, which remember had fallen to the Assyrians
in 722 B.C. So there’s a very long interim here. In the meantime many of
those remaining Israelites from the northern kingdom had intermarried, and
when they come along and say well we’re descendents of the Israelites, we
want to participate in rebuilding the temple, Ezra says well no you have to
divorce your foreign wives and you’ve intermarried and your bloodlines are
no longer pure.
What happens now is that a schism is created between those people with
pure bloodlines and those people who do not have pure bloodlines. A lot
of this actually is based on class, upper class versus lower class, but it also
goes back to the old north versus south dichotomy that we talked about that
comes to the surface after the death of Solomon when the United Monarchy
splits into two. This now leads us then into talking about what happens to
those inhabitants of what had been the northern Kingdom of Israel when
Ezra comes in and implements these laws.
These people living in the north actually claim to be the true Israel. We are
in fact the original Israelites, they claimed. We have been here all along.
We’re descended from the old Joseph tribes in the north, from Ephraim and
Manasseh. We are the true Israel, and yet they were not being allowed to
participate in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem and worshipping the God of
Israel in Jerusalem because according to Ezra their bloodlines were not pure.
So what do they do? They decide that they are going to worship the God of
Israel on their own sacred mountain, a mountain that is located in the heart of
the district of Samaria, a mountain called Mount Gerizim. This population of
the descendents of the northern Kingdom of Israel become known eventually
as the Samaritans, and their major city then is a city that is at the foot of
Mount Gerizim, a city that is called Shechem in the biblical period or in
Hebrew Shechem, which is actually modern Neapolis in the heart of the
West Bank today.
One of the main opponents of Nehemiah was the governor of Samaria
whose name was Sanballat. In fact one of the things that happens is when
Nehemiah comes to Jerusalem and starts to rebuild the walls, all of the other
neighboring governors around start to get nervous because they didn’t want
Jerusalem and Judea to be more powerful than them. If you read the book of
Nehemiah you see that one of his main opponents is this Sanballat who was
the governor of Samaria.
Another one of his opponents was Tobiah who was the governor of Ammon.
This is that Judean who was the governor of Ammon. In the book of
Nehemiah then we have a description of the conflict between these various
governors over the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. We see that they tried
to stop Nehemiah from rebuilding the walls, and there’s a passage where it
says Sanballat, Tobiah, and the Ashdodites, the people of Ashdod, hear that
Nehemiah is trying to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and they go forward
and try to stop him from rebuilding the walls.
Nehemiah’s opponent Sanballat was actually Sanballat I. Why do I say this?
Because there were several Sanballats. There’s another Sanballat, Sanballat
III who is the grandson of Sanballat I and who lived at the time of Alexander
the Great’s conquest in 332 B.C. Why is this important? It’s important
because eventually at the time of Alexander the Great, during the time of
Sanballat III the Samaritans then built a temple dedicated to the God of Israel
on top of Mount Gerizim.
The high priest who officiated in this temple was actually the brother
of the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem. Why is this all so important? It’s
because the Samaritans and the Judeans were extremely closely related.
They’re all descendents of the 12 tribes to one degree or another. They are
all worshipping the same God, the god of Israel, but on different sacred
mountains and eventually in different temples. As is typical with siblings,
the closer you are the more vicious the lights can be. This was the case with
the Judeans and the Samaritans.
The Judeans always viewed the Samaritans as schismatics, condemned
them as schismatics. These two peoples who were so closely related fought
bitterly throughout antiquity. Therefore it is not a surprise when we look at
the Story of the Good Samaritan and understand it in this light which is of
course reported in Luke, and here is the story.
A man was on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when hefell into the hands of robbers, and they stripped him and beat himand went off leaving him half dead. Now a priest happened to begoing that way, and when he saw him, he went by on the other sideof the road. And a Levite also came to the place, and when he sawhim, he went by on the other side of the road. But a Samaritan whowas traveling that way came upon him, and when he saw him hepitied him, and went up to him and dressed his wounds with oil andwine and bound them up.
This story which most people take at face value today seems to make it look
like the Jewish priest and the Levite are bad people and the Samaritan is
the good guy because he saves this guy who is lying by the side of the road
beaten and left for dead. But actually what it reflects is this Judean Samaritan
schism. There’s a reason why the priest and the Levite cross the other side of
the road. It’s because according to Jewish purity laws, they could not serve
in the Jerusalem temple if they had come into contact with a corpse.
The man lying by the side of the road looked like a corpse. They didn’t know
that he was alive. They didn’t know if he was alive or dead. They couldn’t
take the chance. Had they come into contact with that man and if he was
dead, they would not have been able to officiate; they would not have been
able to perform the sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple. They were actually
following biblical Jewish law and circumvented what looked like a corpse.
The point of the story is to make the Samaritan here look like the good guy.
There’s actually a real dig here in making a Samaritan, not someone else, but
a Samaritan, the most schismatic, despised people in the eyes of the Judean,
look like a good guy. We’re going to wrap up here and we will now be
continuing on with what happens after this with the conquest of Alexander
the Great.
