Seventy years Desolation- History or Myth

by scholar 33 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  scholar

  A new book has just been published on Judean history in the neo- Babylonian period. The title is Judah and the Judeans in the Neo -Babylonian Period by Obed Lipschitz Joseph Blenkinsopp, April, 2003. It is hardcover of over 600 pages and is published by Eisengraums. The ISBN is 1575060736 and can be purchased from Amazon Books.

  This book is based on a colloquim of international scholars who met at a conference at the University of Tel Aviv, May, 2001 and discussed the above subject. For thos who are interested in the subject of the seventy years, 606-539/7 and 586/7 debate will find this book an essential resource. The book in some of the essays discusses the 'Myth of the Empty Land ' and how this fits in contemporary biblical scholarship, this hypothesis is advocated by the Society that Judah lay desolate for sevent years. However, it directs supporters of this view to those recent scholars who advocate the desolation argument.

  The book does not support the Jonsson hypothesis in relation tho the date for the destruction of the First Temple. This recent scholarship supports 586 rather than 597. I recommend this book for Watchtower scholars and scholar who support current biblical chronology. The book highlights the importance in the historiography for this most critical period, a matter that I have mentioned to many on this board. If the history iand theology is not correct then ypu cannot get the chronology right.

  scholar

  BA MA Studies in Religion
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  qwerty

  Schoar

  Thanks for that, 607 date is one of the bigger reasons why I left the JW's.

  Qwerty
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  City Fan

  Hi there scholar!

  The book does not support the Jonsson hypothesis in relation tho the date for the destruction of the First Temple. This recent scholarship supports 586 rather than 597.

  Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Jonsson uses 587/586 as the date for the destruction of the First Temple.
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  TheOldHippie

  "However, it directs supporters of this view to those recent scholars who advocate the desolation argument."

  Excuse me, I am not trying to be funny, but being a foreigner, I did not quite understand this sentence?
• 

  cyberguy

  see https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_0ZP1FFM4H.HTM

  Description

  This volume is the outcome of an international conference held at Tel Aviv University, May 29-31, 2001. The idea for the conference germinated at the fifth Transeuphratene colloquy in Paris in March 2000. The Tel Aviv conference was organized in order to encourage investigation into the obscure five or six decades preceding the Persian conquests in the latter part of the 6th century. The essays here are organized in 5 parts: (1) The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited; (2) Cult, Priesthood, and Temple; (3) Military and Governmental Aspects; (4) Archaeological Perspectives on the 6th Century B.C.E.; and (5) Exiles and Foreigners in Egypt and Babylonia.

  Contributors: H. M. Barstad, B. Oded, L. S. Fried, S. Japhet, J. Blenkinsopp, G. N. Knoppers, Y. Amit, D. Edelman, Y. Hoffman, R. H. Sack, D. Vanderhooft, J. W. Betlyon, A. Lemaire, C. E. Carter, O. Lipschits, A. Zertal, J. R. Zorn, B. Porten, and R. Zadok.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction
  			 
   Part 1: The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited
  				
  
  				 After the “Myth of the Empty Land”: Major Challenges in the Study of Neo-Babylonian Judah - Hans M. Barstad
   The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East - Lisbeth S. Fried
   Where Is the “Myth of the Empty Land” To Be Found? History versus Myth - B. Oded
   Periodization: Between History and Ideology, The Neo-Babylonian Period in Biblical Historiography - Sara Japhet
  
   Part 2: Cult, Priesthood, and Temple
   Bethel in the Neo-Babylonian Period - Joseph Blenkinsopp
   The Relationship of the Priestly Genealogies to the History of the High Priesthood in Jerusalem - Gary N. Knoppers
   Epoch and Genre: The Sixth Century and the Growth of Hidden Polemics - Yairah Amit
   Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited - Diana Edelman
   The Fasts in the Book of Zechariah and the Fashioning of National Remembrance - Yair Hoffman
  
   Part 3: Military and Governmental Aspects
   Nebuchadnezzar II and the Old Testament: History versus Ideology - Ronald H. Sack
   Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West: Royal Practice and Rhetoric - David Vanderhooft
   Neo-Babylonian Military Operations Other Than War in Judah and Jerusalem - John W. Betlyon
   Nabonidus in Arabia and Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period - Andre Lemaire
  
   Part 4: The Sixth Century B.C.E.: Archaeological Perspectives
   Ideology and Archaeology in the Neo-Babylonian Period: Excavating Text and Tell - Charles E. Carter
   Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the Fifth Centuries B.C.E. - Oded Lipschits
   The Province of Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) in the Late Iron Age (Iron Age III) - Adam Zertal
   Tell en-Nasbeh and the Problem of the Material Culture of the Sixth Century - Jeffrey R. Zorn
  
  Part 5: Exiles and Foreigners in Egypt and Babylonia Settlement of the Jews at Elephantine and the Arameans at Syene - Bezalel Porten
   The Representation of Foreigners in Neo- and Late-Babylonian Legal Documents (Eighth through Second Centuries B.C.E.) - Ran Zadok
  
   Index of Authors
   Index of Scripture
   Index of Sites
• 

  cyberguy

  The Myth of the Empty Land

  Hans M. Barstad

  University of Oslo

  The period following the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E, commonly referred to as the ‘exilic age, has, in several respects, been regarded as the most important period in the history of ancient Israel. Scholars regard this age, as well as the time that followed it, the ‘post-exilic’, Persian period, as ‘formative’ epochs in Israel’s religious and cultural history.

  However, the very sharp distinction that is often made between ‘before and after 586’ has overshadowed the fact that we are after all dealing with a continuous culture in Palestine in this period. The history of the large majority of the population that actually remained in Judah, have hardly caught the interest of biblical scholars at all. This followed as a natural result of the belief in the ‘Empty Land’ that dominated 19th century scholarship. The repercussions of the view that the land of Judah was in ruins and uninhabited, and that nothing much went on during the Neo-Babylonian period, are, unfortunately influential even today.

  Obviously, we should not belittle the several deportations, and the catastrophic implications of the fall of Jerusalem. What we must renounce, however, is the claim that these deportations affected life in Palestine in the way that much scholarly consensus appears to believe. The Judah left behind by the Babylonians was not a desolate and empty country lying in ruins until the Jews miraculously arrived back under Cyrus. On the contrary, Neo-Babylonian Judah probably represented a society where life went on after 586 B.C.E. pretty much in the same way as it did before the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar’s armies, constituting yet another wheel in the much bigger economic machinery of the Neo-Babylonian empire.

  Clearly, this was a hard blow for the Judean state. We should not, however, think of an ancient pre-industrial society in such a static way that through the removal of certain social strata the nation would simply cease to exist. Those who stayed behind, would have to take up the tasks of those who left, and life would go on, obviously under harsh circumstances, and under new overlords.

  Archaeological excavations have demonstrated beyond doubt the continued existence of a considerable Israelite material culture in the Negev, and in particular in the area of Benjamin, but also in the Judean hills, and, possibly, in Jerusalem. One major challenge that we are facing now is to compare the most recent archaeological studies on changes in settlement patterns during the exilic period (Barkay, Ofer, Zorn, Lipschits, and others), in order to try to create a broader picture. Another important task would be to look into the agricultural and industrial production of the period in order to understand better the macroeconomics of Judah within the larger system of the Neo-Babylonian empire. A third project concerns the evaluation of the biblical sources. The historiographical sources of the Hebrew Bible are narrative and pre-modern, yet they do contain valuable historical information. In the future, we shall have to deal more critically with the question of how the texts of Jeremiah, the Deuteronomist, the Chronicler, and Ezra and Nehemiah can be used for historical reconstructions.

  Where is "The Myth of the Empty Land" to be found?

  History versus Myth

  B. Oded.

  The University of Haifa

  The theory of the "Myth of the Empty Land" is an offshoot of the main stem of a school dubbed ‘postmodernist’/ ‘minimalist’ etc. The basic attitude (with variations) of this school is that ‘Israel’ as a unique ethnic, national and religious entity with YHWH as the God of Israel, and Canaan as the Promised Land is just a propagandistic fabrication (a ‘myth’) of post-exilic Judaism. Exile and Restoration are myths. The large majority of the inhabitants of Judah, (disregarded by the biblical text), remained in the land and life went on ‘as usual’. A small group, centered in Jerusalem, whether returning exiles or non-Judaean/Israelite groups who had been deported to Jerusalem and Judah by the Persians, invented a myth according to which all the inhabitants of Judah were deported by the Babylonians; Judah lay desolate and empty, ‘tabula rasa’. The intention of the creating of the myth is to justify and legalize the seizure of lands belonged to the "indigenous Palestinians", by the "Jerusalemite aristocrats", "the Jewish sacred enclave". The "traditional scholars" collaborated with the fabricated biblical tradition in furthering the myth of the empty land.

  The paper focuses on the question: is there in the biblical literature a myth of the empty land in order to justify the possession of land of the ‘other people’? The aim is to demonstrate that (a) there is no unequivocal proof, biblical or extra biblical, to the claim that during the exilic period (586-538 BCE) a "silent majority" remained in Judah and life continued as usual; (b) the evidence that we do have, albeit scanty, points to the opposite, i.e., that the deportations and the massive destructions of the land and the capital by the Babylonians exerted a significant destructive effect on the land of Judah and its inhabitants during the Neo-Babylonian period; (c) the term ‘exilic period’ allegedly ‘invented’ by the traditional scholarly (i.e., the so-called maximalists) is justified; (d) the "myth of the empty land" is the invention of the ‘pan-mythic’ scholars rather than the Bible (or the "traditional scholars"), with the implicit or explicit aim of substantiating their theory that biblical Israel is a fallacy.

  The paper surveys (a) the biblical evidence (II Kings; prophecies; Ezra-Nehemiah; II Chronicles; Lamentations), (b) the archaeological finds in Judah proper during the exilic period, (c) evidence from epigraphic material relating to the exilic period.

  The paper ends with several observations that lead to the conclusion that "The Myth of the Empty Land" is an unproven theory.

  ------------------------------

  More can be found at http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/jewishhistory/confer/conference.doc
• 

  Gamaliel

  http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/jewishhistory/confer/conference.doc

  Wow! I just pasted in the exact same post as cyberguy. It wasn't there when I started this post but, when I scrolled down to see something in the last post I thought I had accidentally hit return.

  There is apparently a pro-religious bias in this new book that will be a very welcome challenge, for Jews and Christians, against the position of a lot of modern scholarship concerning the "desolation" issue. Jews and Christians would welcome the idea that something closer to a true "desolation" is being supported again, rather than the claim that the idea of true desolation was more a propaganda tool of Jewish nationalists anxious to repatriate under their own rules and appointed governors, and not those of the then-current inhabitants.

  An earlier use of the exact same thesis against the so-called "myth of desolation" was used to try to fight against the proposal of most modern scholarship that Isaiah I (Chapter 1 - 39) and Isaiah II (Chapter 40 on) are from two different venues (Palestine then Babylonia). It seems obvious to scholars when they note that Isaiah II's Messiah is Cyrus, by name! (whereas Isaiah I's Messiah was Hezekiah, whereas Jeremiah's pre-captivity Messiah was Nebuchadnezzar, whereas the Chronicles post-Davidic Messiah was clearly Josiah).

  Problem is that JWs won't be able to take advantage of the new book. They have already admitted to partial desolation for their own reasons, and can't afford to try to define the term more closely. More importantly, they have dug in their heels on 607 BCE for so long that they can't honestly point to a book that promotes 586/7.

  Notwithstanding "scholar's" comments, it appears, so far, that the book actually comes much closer to supporting Jonsson than JWs.

  Gamaliel
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  VM44

  ARGHHH! Another book to read!

  Of the making of many books there is no end, and in much study there is weariness
  for the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

  --VM44
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  JCanon

  This is very interesting, but it won't fly for the informed.

  For one thing, of note, Biblical Archaeology Review did a main article on "Ashkelon" and confirmed that it was in total ruins for 70-80 years, being revived by the Persians. Thus there is ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence of what the Bible described as the land of Israel and the surrounding nations drinking the bitter cup of Nebuchadnezzar, only Jerusalem was to drink first.

  THE BASICS: The basics are that Jerusalem was to be desolated for 70 years but that they would be the first to drink this bitter cup of Nebuchadnezzar's total desolation. Thus the critical chronology, directly supported by JOSEPHUS (whom apparently the above researchers are unaware of or are dismissing as folkloric) is that the actual 70 years of total desolation didn't begin until the LAST DEPORTATION anyway. This is a very clear sign that this group of researchers are propagandistic or amateurs with respect to Jewish traditional history as well as the Bible. That is, they are focussing on the 70 years beginning at the destruction of Jerusalem and not the last deportation. Anyway, after Jerusalem was destroyed, then the other nations listed, including Tyre, Sidon, Ashkelon and others that bordered the Northern and Southern kingdoms were to be desolated for 70 years. Thus the actual 70 years for those nations would have begun in the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar where Josephus records a final campaign by Nebuchadnezzar into the land going all the way down to Egypt to depart the remaining Jews who had ran down there. The Bible says they were to return to Judah "few in number" (Jeremiah 44;14,28).

  Now the article in BAR which addresses this 70-80 years of complete desolation of Ashkelon was influenced by the popular dating and so end the 80 years at the time of Cyrus, of course, but begin it pre destruction of Jerusalem. But this is subjective to the reorganizing of the popular chronology.

  THE OTHER MAJOR PROBLEM, VAT4956: Is that the ASTRONOMICAL evidence now found in the VAT4956 which double-dates the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar to both 568BCE and 511BCE proves that the current records we have were altered for the reign of Nebuchadnezzar by 57 years! Thus attempting to use the popular dating which was completely revised during the Seleucid Period is now old news and simply incompetent. That is, the text will preempt the 587BCE dating quite easily.

  So "it's not over until the fat lady sings" so they say. I can't argue against the archaeological claims they are making regarding Jerusalem being inhabited all that time, but I also know interpretations of archaeological data is very subjective, and in fact, some things cannot be confirmed by archaeology.

  Finally, the Jews themselves have long known about the conspiracy and understand precisely what the correct chronology is based upon their own records and timelines. For there to be a continued ignorance of the conspiracy during the Seleucid and latter Greco-Persian Period, or a complete ignoring of the possibility is not acceptable and thus one must presume that part of the purpose of this conference and examination has to do with anti-Christian propaganda, likely somehow connected with the Illuminati and Freemasonry since this is their style of reference.

  So I find this "interest" in the 70 years timely since I suspect at some point someone will "betray" this age-old secret or something will surface that will force them to deal with the true chronology for this period which dates the fall of Jerusalem in 529BCE, a date you can establish DIRECTLY by pagan astronomical text, the same text that dismisses as fake the 586BCE dating. When you combine that with other evidence of 80 years of desolation ending with the Persian period in places like Ashkelon, then the above is sort of amateur night as far as any serious reference to dismissing the 70 years. Of course, those who believe the Bible as being the true source of historical reference have no choice but to date the 70 years of desolation from the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar to the 1st of Cyrus, including a 6-year rule of Darius, the Mede (who was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar) which immediately followed by the fall of Babylon.

  Now I know everybody knows I basically have my own fantasy world, but on a truly academic level, the above is disappointing and almost laughable.

  CRITICAL NOTE: By the way, Olof Jonsson does promote the fall of Jerusalem in 587/586BCE per popular chronology, but does not dismiss the 70 years of exile or "servitude", making that application to a quasi-70-year period beginning with the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar over the surrounding territories. I think someone got confused over this presuming all applications of the 70 years began with the destruction of Jerusalem and ended with the 1st of Cyrus. Even the witnesses claim that in error, contradicting Josephus who correctly dates the 70 years beginning with the LAST DEPORTATION, not in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, the year Jerusalem was destroyed, but 4 years later in his 23rd year (Compare Josephus, <i>Antiquities</i> 11.1.1 with Jeremiah 52:30)

  JCanon
• 

  JCanon

  Sorry, after re-reading my post I realized I didn't give the 70-year reference for the VAT4956, which in brief is as follows:

  The VAT4956 which double-dates the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar to 511BCE, thus preempting the 568BCE dating as fake, would date his 23rd year in 525BCE where Josephus begins the 70 years. That means the 70 years would end in 455BCE which is a critical prophetic beginnin of the "70 weeks" which shows Jesus showing up for baptism in 29CE.

  Of critical note, again:

  1. The 70 years is total desolation per Bible and Josephus.

  2. The 70 years does not begin with the destruction of Jerusalem but with the last deportation in the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, 4 years after the destruction of Jerualem.

  3. It includes a 6-year rule of Darius, the Mede who was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar during whose reign the Jews were still in exile (compare Zechariah 1 and 7).

  4. The VAT4956 conclusively proves the current chronology was revised and fake and gives us the original dating for the rule of Nebuchadnezzar.

  Thus the BIBLICAL and advanced ARCHAEOASTRONOMICAL dating are the same which would date the 70 years from 525BCE to 455BCE.

  Again, it's my opinion, and this is just my opinion, that this is more Jewish-based anti-Christian Freemasonry propaganda trying to get pseudo-science to disqualify the Bible as a book of true history or truth and thus dismiss in some logical or scientific way that the Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Claiming Jerusalem was never completely desolate is the latest attempt at contradicting the Bible and is either incompetently based or just more desperate propaganda, which doesn't even address Josephus' history regarding when the 70 years were. The superficiality of this presentation with respect to Jewish or Biblical history causes them not to be taken seriously. I would say "nice try" here but it's not even that, I'm afraid.

  JCanon