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This chapter argues that Persian attitudes and practices with regard to idols and idol worship had a significant impact on Babylonia, constituting another respect in which Babylonia was more Persian than Roman during the period under discussion. Specifically, it is argued that the Babylonian Talmud attests to a distinction between Parthian and Sasanian Babylonia that corresponds to and provides a measure of confirmation of scholarly claims regarding the different policies of the Parthian and Sasanian dynasties with respect to idols.

This introductory chapter lays out the theoretical foundations of the book. Topics discussed include Judiasm and Christianity between Persia and eastern Roman provinces during the 4th century, Babylonian rabbis between Persia and Roman Palestine, dating and interpreting rabbinic traditions, and competing theories of the character of the Bavli.

After the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (587 BCE), most of the Judean elite (family of king Jehoiachin, civil and military servants, technicians) lived in Babylonia. New cuneiform tablets reveal that they mostly staid in Babylonian villages (al-Yāhūdu, Bît-Abīram, Našar); they were mainly holders of bow-fields but a few ones became dēkū officials. Some of these new documents present West Semitic labels and reveal that the deportees kept, at least for some time, their Hebrew culture even though they apparently used Aramaic and Neo-Babylonian deeds in their daily life. In Egypt, numerous Aramaic papyri and ostraca from Elephantine reveal that the Judean garrison staying there was strongly aramaicized even though they prayed and sacrificed in a Yaho temple and kept their Judean ethnicity. A few funerary stelae discovered in Ayios Georghiou at Larnaca-Kition (Cyprus) reveal the presence of Judean people there, apparently practicing mixed marriages.

This chapter examines the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. It explores the relationship of the Iranian rulers and the indigenous Babylonian urban upper class and analyses the effects of administrative change introduced by the Achaemenid rulers and their officials, especially in the realm of taxation. It suggests that Cyrus the Great and his administration had achieved continuity by securing the cooperation of the traditional Babylonian elite, specifically by honouring the long-standing claims of these families on important offices both in temple and state administration.

This chapter examines the impact of the relation between the Persian conquerors and the local Babylonians on the cultural continuity in Babylonia during the mid-first millennium BCE. It suggests that the evidence of Persian adoption of Babylonian traditions is manifest not only in administrative and social systems, but also in the visual arts and iconography. The analysis of corpora of seal impressions from Babylonian and Achaemenid archives reveal a complex and slowly evolving relationship between the two traditions, reflecting, but not temporally correlative with, political developments.

The winter of 317/16 BC witnessed what is arguably the most momentous campaign in the entire period after the death of Alexander the Great. Two massive coalition armies led by Eumenes and Antigonus the One-Eyed manoeuvred delicately and skilfully in the desolate terrain of central Iran, and the two great battles they fought were recorded by a participant (Hieronymus of Cardia) who was an intimate both of Eumenes and the Antigonids. That account was used by Diodorus, and his narrative of the campaign is one of the most detailed and colourful in his entire encyclopaedic history. This chapter revisits the campaign in Iran and addresses some of the critical issues which determined the strategy and outcome.

Seleucus' rise to power is perhaps the most spectacular event of the period of the Successors. Expelled from his satrapy by Antigonus in the summer of 316 BC, he was able to retrieve it four years later and did so with a force which was remarkably small by any standards. Not only did he regain Babylonia, but he beat off an attack by Nicanor, the general supervising the upper satrapies, and immediately took the offensive, extending his dominions to Susiana, Media, and perhaps even further afield. All that took place within a year of his entering Babylonia, and a year later, in the summer of 310 BC, he was coping with a full-scale invasion by Antigonus. He did not merely survive; he forced Antigonus out of his territories, never to resume the offensive, and by 305 BC he had penetrated to the Indus valley, placing almost all the satraps of the eastern empire under his sway. This chapter chronicles Seleucus' rise to power and attempts to explain his success.

Investigates why the rabbinic calendar may have developed in this way (see ch.4). Theories based on notions of anti‐Jewish persecution, Christian influence, or scientific progress are inadequate. Instead, it is proposed that as the Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic communities expanded from the third century, the need was perceived for a single, unanimous rabbinic calendar, which necessarily had to be calculated in advance and fixed. Babylonia played an important role in developing this calendar, culminating with the R. Saadya—Ben Meir controversy in the tenth century, when the Babylonian version of the fixed calendar ultimately prevailed.

This book examines how the ancient Babylonians approached the question of what true knowledge was. The ancient Babylonians left behind a monumental textual record that stretches in time from before 3000 BC to the first century AD. The system of reasoning the Babylonians followed was very unlike the Greek one, and thus that of western philosophy built upon the Greek achievements. It was rooted in the cuneiform writing system. The book focuses on one area and explores it in three structurally related corpora: epistemology as displayed in writings on language, the future, and law. This chapter considers the poem entitled Babylonian Creation Myth, which belongs “before philosophy,” the importance of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages to Babylonian hermeneutics, the Babylonian cosmopolis, the written and oral traditions of ancient Mesopotamian culture, and intertextuality of Babylonian texts.

This chapter focuses on the genre of law codes in ancient Mesopotamia. Hammurabi authored—or more likely commissioned—one of the earliest surviving law codes in world history. Hammurabi’s code is part of a small corpus of ancient Near East writings about law that was founded on the principles contained in lexical and omen lists. The law codes of the ancient Near East show how aspects of Babylonian epistemology could be imitated by others even if they did not employ the Babylonian writing system that lay at its core. The chapter first considers the historical context of the law codes before discussing the format of these laws. The composition of law codes flourished in Babylonia in the late third and early second millennia, when four kings commissioned them: Ur-Namma and Lipit-Eshtar in the Sumerian language, Dadusha and Hammurabi in Akkadian.

This chapter examines how the entire text of the Babylonian law code was reworked under each king who commissioned them. The overall character of the law codes and the manner of formulation remained the same, but the authors felt free to change the order and selection of paragraphs. At the core of all the codes is a list. What we call paragraphs are statements phrased in a limited number of formats and strung together just like the entries of the lexical and omen lists. The chapter offers a structural analysis of the codes that looks at each entry as a syntagm and at the sequence of entries as a paradigm. It shows that the royal proclamations of laws guaranteed that there was a coherent system of justice in place, and even more, that it was grounded in wisdom.

This chapter discusses the important role of Babylonian epistemology in history. While the Babylonians shared the aims of modern philosophers, they never abandoned the primacy of the texts, and actually found in them an unparalleled power to create. It was not physical reality but writing, with its creative processes, that determined the parameters of what was possible and needed to be investigated. The chapter first considers the creativity of the ancient Babylonian texts, citing as examples the Babylonian science of lexicography and the law codes. It then examines empiricism vs. rationalism in Babylonian writings and concludes with an overview of three moments that were important for Babylonian intellectual history: the early second millennium in Babylonia and adjacent areas, later in that millennium across the entire Near East, and at the end of the first millennium, in the Babylonian heartland.

This chapter discusses the conceptual autonomy of Babylonian epistemology. Babylonian literate culture survived for a very long time and exerted an enormous influence on people with a multitude of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Although it was the creation of the Babylonian heartland and scholars there worked with it the longest, others outside that region actively participated in its preservation and elaboration. Babylonian literate culture was cosmopolitan, and at times, for example in the mid-second millennium non-Babylonians may have been the guardians of its traditions. The chapter argues that we need to consider the individuality of Babylonian intellectual history in areas other than language, with particular emphasis on the Babylonian use of script.

The Hebrew Bible is the classic example of a sacred text frozen in time which must satisfy the religious needs of succeeding generations of believers. Early on in its history, Judaism developed the concept of an oral tradition which expanded upon and interpreted the text of sacred scripture. The Jewish study of the Bible in the Middle Ages begins with the Geonim of Babylonia (9th–11th centuries), who under the influence of the Islamic sages of the Qurʼān began to subject the biblical text to the same kind of critical and textual analysis as was being applied to the Qurʼān by their Muslim compatriots. The best-known exegete of this period is Saadia Gaon, a polymath. Medieval Jewish exegesis maintains an important position in the canon of Judaism to this very day. Most of the major Torah commentaries are available in English editions aimed at a popular audience. This book advances the study of medieval Jewish biblical interpretation, opening up new areas of research and hopefully providing new insights into topics or exegetes already well researched.

This chapter provides contrasts in the terracotta imagery of Canaan, Israel and Judah. This is followed by an examination on the emergence of nude female images in early urban societies in Sumer, (c.3000–2100 bc). The chapter then investigates the ‘nude female’ in Babylonia (c.2100–1650 bc), the migration of the one-piece open-mould technology to Syria, terracotta imagery in Canaan and the Egyptian connection. Finally it looks at terracotta plaques in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age (c.1650–1150 bc) and the Canaanite terracotta legacy in the first millennium bc (Iron Age).

This chapter focuses on the Babylonian exile and on the book of Ezekiel as representative of the community which experienced that exile. Nebuchadnezzar's deportation of a large number of people from Judah to Babylonia in 597 BCE has long been recognized as one of the most important events in the formation of Judaism, since it set a pattern whereby those living away from the land of Israel could maintain a distinct religious and cultural identity. For Max Weber, this event was a highly important factor in the transformation of the Jews from a national group into a ‘pariah people’. The deportations to Babylonia have to be seen in the context of Judah's history over the preceding century and a half; this is, to a large extent, a history of relationship with the great regional empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. This chapter focuses on Ezekiel as a prophet of the Babylonian exile, the deportations from Judah, the life of the exiles in Babylonia, Babylonian ‘captivity’ and the maintenance of community, and the ethics of exile.

Of all the prophets, Ezekiel is most concerned with matters of cult, and his priestly background is often invoked as the source of numerous features of the book. In thinking about Ezekiel's ethical distinctiveness, it might be useful to apply the notion of a dual moral world. Ezekiel's audience in Babylonia are members of the Jerusalem political elite, who in the experience of exile are suffering a substantial loss of status and identity. These two moral worlds are ones in which substantially different kinds of moral decision are open to members of the community, and this is as true of cult as it is of the rest of life. It is highly significant that the language of cult and ritual dominates the prophet's analysis of past sin, present judgement, and future hope. This chapter examines cult and politics in Judah, cultic apostasy and the fall of Jerusalem, the four abominations shown to Ezekiel at the beginning of his visionary journey, and idolatry and cult centralization.

Thus far we have examined two ethical ‘strategies for survival’ in the book of Ezekiel which reflect the social situation of the Babylonian exiles. Both the ritualization and the domestication of sin and virtue can be seen as a response to their new and smaller moral world. In a situation where large-scale decisions of policy can no longer be taken, new rules for behaviour develop that enable the community to survive and maintain its distinctiveness and cohesion, and the old symbols are adapted to new circumstances. This chapter examines the place of hopes for salvation in Ezekiel's theology and ethics. In particular, it discusses the way in which hopes for the future in fact have a ‘cash value’ in the present, serving as another strategy for the survival of the community in exile. It also explores the shift from moral responsibility to moral passivity on the part of the people that accompanies the new note of hope in Ezekiel's prophecy.