Summary: Cyrus the Great of Persia allows Jews to return to Jerusalem so that they can rebuild the Temple that Solomon built and that was later destroyed. The construction spans multiple emperors, work is eventually completed and the temple is dedicated. People resume worship and trying to live by God’s law.
I’m well aware that the Bible isn’t the best or most unbiased source for someone who wants to know about historical events. But I trust Ezra (and Nehemiah, the next book, with reservations I will discuss in a couple days) to be reasonably accurate. Why? Because there’s very little God in them.
Okay, sure, at the beginning, God supposedly tells Cyrus to send the Jews back to Jerusalem. But this was the pattern of Persian rule. They actively encouraged conquered nations to keep their own leaders, culture, and religion, solely to keep the newly subjugated people happy. So I think that God probably didn’t reach into Cyrus’ heart, fool around a bit, and let him emerge a kinder more Jewish guy. Cyrus was just continuing with the brilliant tradition that he started (I think), which made his enormous empire much easier to govern. And Darius, who ordered the resumption of construction after there were some protests, was Zoroastrian (That’s a completely different monotheistic religion, for those of you who might not know). Like Cyrus, he knew that regardless of theistic implications, rebuilding the Temple would keep the Jews busy and happy.
And in Chapter 7, when Emperor Artaxerxes (son of Xerxes, for all you 300 fans) trusts Ezra, that fits too. In The Histories, Herodotus (and I take every opportunity to mention The Histories because it’s the one really old book that I’ve actually read, though there are some obvious caveats to believing every word in it) tells the story of Croesus, who was king of Lydia, a region located in what is now eastern Turkey. When Cyrus conquered Lydia, Croesus became one of his closest and most trusted advisors. So when I look at that, and at the fairly unremarkable story (unremarkable in the absence of any obvious Godly intervention), the book seems pretty plausible.
But that does not mean that I should trust that book. In chapter 2, there is a footnotes passage (and these kinds of footnotes are all over the book) in 2.70: “The priests, the Levites, and some of the people settled in or near Jerusalem.” The footnote says this: “One ancient translation in or near Jerusalem; Hebrew does not have these words.”
What does that say to you? To me, it says that the translation is a lie. But there have been a lot of translations over the years. The original books of the Bible were written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The ones that were in Hebrew were then translated into Aramaic. The Aramaic was then translated into Greek. And that Greek is what was translated into English. So that’s 2 or 3 translations to get to where we are now. And that’s 2 or 3 opportunities to clarify the language, or edit the language, or slightly alter the story so it’s more like what you think it should be. Anyone who’s ever taken any foreign language classes knows that translations are tricky. You never really get the full meaning, but you get close. So in Genesis (for example), that happened three times. The book was reinterpreted three times, each one losing a little meaning. And I’m supposed to believe that’s the literal word of God?
And that’s discounting minor factual errors, too. Ezra 6.14 reads, in part “The Jewish leaders…completed the Temple as they had been commanded by the God of Israel and by Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, emperors of Persia.” Fine, right? Except Ezra 6.15 says, “They finished the Temple on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Darius.” The problem here is that Artaxerxes came long after Darius, and he got credit. So why was that?
Because Artaxerxes helped out Ezra, of course. And Ezra, who wrote the book and who went to Israel to govern it, probably wanted to show that he appreciated the trust Artaxerxes has placed in him. So he gave him credit for something that had been accomplished 50 years before he even took power. Sure, it’s a little thing, but it’s clear and it’s wrong, and it’s the problem with viewing any source as gospel (for lack of a better word). People are people, and their motives in writing a history might be to glorify someone who doesn’t deserve it, be it himself, his emperor, or his god.
So do I trust this book somewhat? If I do, I only trust the parts that fit in with what I already knew about the Persians. Of course, Ezra would have known the same things and, if he were just inventing things, would have probably kept them in mind. It’s a tricky line to stand on. If I’m wrong, oh well. All I can do is take my best guess.
Some other notes…
- So when Ezra goes to Jerusalem, he discovers that there are many Jews who intermarried and had children with foreigners, which is a sin against God because it contaminates his chosen people. Now, a couple things: First, Ezra got there like 80 years after the first wave of people did. How long did it take for some devout Jew to notice this? You would think God would care enough to tell someone to cut that shit out. But second, Ezra’s solution is to deport all the foreign women and their children. So, the solution to this problem (to be clear) was to take a bunch of happily married women, send them to another country with their children, and have the men who married them never talk to them again. This led to a bunch of divorces and single mothers, who, like the Canaanites who originally lived in Israel, never did anything wrong (I know I keep harping on that point, but it keeps pissing me off). They were given a bad lot in life, dealt with it the best way they could, and moved on. Then they got fucked over.
- Seriously, what’s up with that?
