So, when Moses-- Or sorry, when Ezra and Nehemiah came along, they were under the rulership of the Persians, which was more to the east, modern Iran and so on. The Elephantine group received financial help and according to the papyri, the temple was still standing in 402 BC. 13:6). The hostility, however, did not cease, and measures were taken to ensure the safety of the city (vi. Even though this man occupied one of the highest positions in the Persian courts, he had not sacrificed his morality or religious principles. This Cyrus was apparently Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great) who ruled the Archaemenid Persian Empire from 539 to 530 BC. The smaller clay impression depicted images of two people along with Persian script. Reforms instituted by Ezra and Nehemiah addressed all of the following except. According to the IAA, the sealing instrument depicted “the image of a person sitting in a large chair with one or to two columns in front of him… The character is probably a king.”. Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, two Old Testament books that together with the books of Chronicles formed a single history of Israel from the time of Adam. Over 42,000 Jews initially returned to Jerusalem for this rebuilding (Nehemiah 7:66). In 539 BC, Babylon fell to Darius, the Mede, and the Persian reign began, (cf. Artaxerxes 1. Their father, Sanballat, had been governor of the area before Nehemiah’s arrival. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. One of the dominant theological themes in Ezra-Nehemiah is … Learn how your comment data is processed. Ezra was a priest, but Nehemiah was a man with great political influence and personal wealth. As such they provide instructive examples to us of how to be focused on God's purposes as they worked diligently, persistently, and patiently under difficult and distracting circumstances. Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah who built the Second Temple on the ruins of the First, and that of Ezra and Nehemiah, who instituted reforms -- religious, financial, and agrarian. Ezra and Nehemiah are a single book in the Jewish canon. Both Ezra and Nehemiah were offered military protection from the king. a. The Elephantine letters mentioned several people found in both Nehemiah and Ezra. ( Log Out /  ( Log Out /  “Author - Date”: Ezra is most likely the author of both Ezra and Nehemiah, which might have originally been one book. This information was gathered from nearly 200 papyri found on Elephantine that included letters being sent to Jerusalem. Susa. Ezra and Nehemiah came to Jerusalem during the region of king _____... Nehemiah undertook an initiative to do what in Jerusalem? These two books cover three different waves of returning exiles, from 538 to 433 BC. And battle he did — physical battle and political battle. This was the year that the Egyptians overthrew the Persians meaning they could not longer protect the Jewish colony on Elephantine from attack by the Egyptians. Some believe the Elephantine colony were surviving members of this group. READ: Rare artifacts discovered from the Persian period: Support Bible’s Ezra and Nehemiah AND A seal and a seal impression discovered in the City of David bears witness to the restoration of the city in the period of Ezra and Nehemiah, Elephantine Sources: Archaeology and Bible History by Dr. Joseph Free (Scripture Press: Wheaton, ILL) AND A History of Israel by John Bright (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY). The names of other influential persons who were associated in the conducting of the caravans are also mentioned, being extracted probably from the Persian archives, in which the register was preserved: conspicuous in the number are Jeshua, the high priest, and Nehemiah. The Book of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible; which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship as Ezra–Nehemiah.The two became separated with the first printed rabbinic bibles of the early 16th century, following late medieval Latin Christian tradition. Luke. Though these two seals provided evidence of Jerusalem’s role as a Persian administrative center, this is not the only archaeological evidence confirming the role Nehemiah and Ezra played in the rebuilding of the city. The letter to the sons suggested that Sanballat was either dead or very old. This included letters to the Jewish High Priest Johanan in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:1; 12:10-12; 12:22; Ezra 10:6), but it appears he would have nothing to do with this upstart temple and didn’t even bother to reply. And so the capital of the Empire was no longer in the city of Babylon. The Book of Nehemiah, in the Hebrew Bible, largely takes the form of a first-person memoir concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court, and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws ().Since the 16th century it has generally been treated as a separate book within the Bible. They (the Persians) knocked down all the temples of the gods of Egypt, but no one did damage to this temple.”. Archaeologists discovered both a larger Persian sealing instrument that suggests it was used for items such as pots that may have been transporting goods or collecting taxes and a smaller clay seal impression. Ezra apparently had official status as a commissioner of the Persian government, and his title, “scribe of the law of the God of heaven,” is best understood as “royal secretary for Jewish religious affairs,” or the like. For our next reading we are skipping over the rest of chapter 12 concerning the dedication of the city wall and skipping to 13:4, which begins a section that, as this verse states, came before the events surrounding the dedication. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. This is possible, and so no gap is needed. One of the dominant theological themes in Ezra-Nehemiah is covenant renewal in the postexilic community. Resolving the Differences in the Return Lists (Ezra 2; Nehemiah 7:5-72) April 16-18 Ezra 2 lists those Jews enrolled in the return to the Promised Land under the Davidic prince Zerubbabel (apparently the Persian-appointed governor referred to in Ezra 1 as Sheshbazzar) and Jeshua or Joshua, the high priest (see Haggai 1:1; Zechariah 3:1). Zerubbabel and Nehemiah both play a part in restoring God's Temple, while Zerubbabel takes charge over governing affairs, and Nehemiah rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem. A bit of Bible, A bit of Life, A bit of Politics. As archaeological work began on Elephantine, they discovered that they had actually built a Jewish Temple on the island, that was subsequently damaged when the Egyptians attacked the Jewish settlement and temple because they were sacrificing bulls, who the Egyptians considered to be gods. However, the Persians had also conquered Egypt, and they quickly came to the Jew’s aid quelling the attack. The author may have called him "the Persian" to distinguish him from Darius the Mede. But according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) that all changed over the summer when archaeologists found evidence of two Persian royal seals from this period in a dig in Old Jerusalem. Nehemiah undertook an initiative to do what in Jerusalem? Although Ezra never states his authorship, internal arguments favor him strongly. Though Sanballat was gentile, the names of his two son in the letter were Jewish, suggesting Sanballat had married a Jewish woman. 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