The Emergence of Yehud in The Persian Period

The Emergence of Yehud in The Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study

The biblical scholar wishing to reconstruct any aspect of life in Israel during the exilic and postexilic periods will find that he or she suffers from a decided lack of reliable sources. The biblical texts are ideological in nature and the archaeological record is sparse and inconclusive. Frequently, the type of data the biblical writers were interested in was different from that of modern scholars. They sought to validate their positions of power, to comfort or cajole a populace unsure of its place in the Persian empire or its deity's involvement in their affairs, to impose a particular religious perspective on the inhabitants of the province, or to challenge the status quo. But they had little—if any—interest in preserving a detailed portrait of either socio-political or socio-economic setting of their territory for posterity. Under these circumstances, to use Jacobsen's categories, one can at best hope to make 'reasonable presentation of the evidence of the social, political and economic setting of the province of Yehud.

This study, like most, has had its own history and is now somewhat removed from its original problem. I began intending to attempt a socioeconomic reconstruction of a particular biblical institution, the tithe, and in one particular period, the Persian (or early Second Temple) period. I soon realized that in order to reconstruct the tithe I would have first to understand the workings of the economy of the postexilic province of Judah (known as Yehud in the epigraphic sources). This would involve examining excavation and survey reports of sites that existed in that period, addressing such questions as the autonomy and size of the province, and how the province functioned in the larger Persian administrative unit known as Eber Nari (Aramaic: eber nahara)...