Investigation: The Persian Empire, Yehud and the Second Temple

The Persian kings in Ezra

Timeline

The Cyrus Cylinder

A clay barrel inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, found at Babylon in 1879 (British Museum 1880,0617.1941). Cyrus says Marduk chose him; he returned the gods of cities east of the Tigris to their shrines and gathered their peoples to their homes. It shows a policy like the one in Ezra 1. It names no Jews, no Judah and no Jerusalem, and its god is Marduk, not the LORD. It is royal propaganda for Babylonian readers, not a charter of rights.

Yehud: the province

Hundreds of jar handles from the Persian and early Hellenistic periods are stamped YHD or YHWD ("Yehud") in Aramaic script, some with names and the title pḥw' ("governor"). Ramat Rahel, a royal or administrative site south of Jerusalem, has produced the largest number; an updated 2020 tabulation by Lipschits and Vanderhooft counts several hundred from that site alone. Small silver coins inscribed YHD were minted in the 4th century BC, some naming "Yehezqiyah the governor." These show a Persian province called Yehud with its own administration and taxation. They do not name Ezra, Zerubbabel or Nehemiah.

Jerusalem in the Persian period

Excavations in the City of David and on the Ophel show a small Persian-period settlement; estimates of its size range from a few hundred to a few thousand people, and of the whole province from roughly 15,000 to 30,000. The extent of the city wall before Nehemiah is debated. These figures come from limited excavation and surface survey and carry wide uncertainty.

Elephantine: another Jewish temple

On the island of Elephantine at Aswan, a Jewish military colony in Persian service kept a temple of YHW (the divine name) from before Cambyses' conquest of Egypt in 525 BC. In 410 BC it was destroyed at the instigation of the priests of the Egyptian god Khnum. The community wrote to Bagohi (Bagavahya), governor of Judah, and to the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria; they had earlier written to "Johanan the high priest" in Jerusalem and received no answer. A memorandum records permission to rebuild, mentioning meal offerings and incense (not burnt offerings). The papyri show Jewish worship outside Jerusalem, contact between Jerusalem, Samaria and Egypt, and Persian channels of religious authority. They do not mention Ezra or Nehemiah.

The language of empire

Aramaic was the administrative language from Egypt to Bactria. Letters from Elephantine, the leather letters of the satrap Arshama, an Aramaic copy of Darius' Behistun inscription found at Elephantine, and 4th-century documents from Bactria all share the formulas found in Ezra 4–7. Ezra's Aramaic sections belong to this world.

Persian religion and later Judaism

Some scholars propose that contact with Persian (Zoroastrian) religion influenced later Jewish ideas of angels and demons, resurrection and the end of history. Others point out that the dating of Zoroastrian texts is very uncertain (the Avesta was written down in the Sasanian period, centuries later), that the biblical ideas have roots in earlier Israelite thought, and that similarity is not influence. The Achaemenid kings themselves invoked Ahuramazda in their own inscriptions but Marduk in Babylon (Cyrus) and local gods elsewhere; Ezra's "God of heaven" is a title the Persians could recognize. The question is open; Ezra itself shows no sign of Persian religious ideas.

Evidence matrix