An incomparable interdisciplinary study of the history of Judah Experts from a variety of disciplines examine the history of Judah during the seventh century BCE, the last century of the kingdom’s existence. This important era is well defined historically and archaeologically beginning with the destruction layers left behind by Sennacherib’s Assyrian campaign (701 BCE) and ending with levels of destruction resulting from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian campaign (588-586 BCE). Eleven essays develop the current ongoing discussion about Judah during this period and extend the debate to include further important insights in the fields of archaeology, history, cult, and the interpretation of Old Testament texts. Features A new chronological frame for the Iron Age IIB-IIC Close examinations of archaeology, texts, and traditions related to the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah An evaluation of the religious, cultic, and political landscape /UL

Storage jars of many shapes and sizes were in widespread use in the ancient world, transporting and storing agricultural products such as wine and oil, crucial to agriculture, economy, trade and subsistence. From the late 8th to the 2nd century BCE, the oval storage jars typical of Judah were often stamped or otherwise marked: in the late 8th and early 7th century BCE with lmlk stamp impressions, later in the 7th century with concentric circle incisions or rosette stamp impressions, in the 6th century, after the fall of Jerusalem, with lion stamp impressions, and in the Persian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid periods (late 6th–late 2nd centuries BCE) with yhwd stamp impressions. At the same time, several ad hoc systems of stamp impressions appeared: “private” stamp impressions were used on the eve of Sennacherib’s campaign, mwṣh stamp impressions after the destruction of Jerusalem, and yršlm impressions after the establishment of the Hasmonean state. While administrative systems that stamped storage jars are known elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the phenomenon in Judah is unparalleled in its scale, variety and continuity, spanning a period of some 600 years without interruption. This is the first attempt to consider the phenomenon as a whole and to develop a unified theory that would explain the function of these stamp impressions and shed new light on the history of Judah during six centuries of subjugation to the empires that ruled the region—as a vassal kingdom in the age of the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Babylonian empires and as a province under successive Babylonian, Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid rule.

"Was there a difference in the portrayal of King Zedekiah in the Hebrew and Greek versions of Jeremiah? Shelley L. Birdsong analyses the two different depictions, highlights their unique characterizations and argues that the cruel and manipulative king in the Greek is edited into a more compassionate king in the Hebrew." -- back cover

During the past decade, the period from the 7th century B.C.E. and later has been a major focus because it is thought to be the era when much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was formed. As a result, there has also been much interest in the historical developments of that time and specifically in the status of Judah and its neighbors. Three conferences dealing roughly with a century each were organized, and the first conference was held in Tel Aviv in 2001; the proceedings of that conference were published as Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period. The second volume was published in early 2006, a report on the conference held in Heidelberg in July 2003: Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. is the publication of the proceedings of the third conference, which was held in Muenster, Germany, in August 2005; the essays in it focus on the century during which the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms came to the fore. Participants whose contributions are published here are: R. Achenbach, R. Albertz, B. Becking, E. Ben Zvi, J. Blenkinsopp, E. Eshel, H. Eshel, L. L. Grabbe, A. Kloner, G. N. Knoppers, I. Kottsieper, A. Lemaire, O. Lipschits, Y. Magen, K. Schmid, I. Stern., O. Tal, D. Vanderhooft, J. Wiesehöfer, J. L. Wright, and J. W. Wright.

The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Concise History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of Israel and Judah from the late second millennium BCE to the beginning of the Roman period. Considering archaeological material as well as biblical and extrabiblical texts, Schipper argues that the history of “Israel” in the preexilic period took place mostly in the hinterland of the Levant and should be understood in the context of the Neo-Assyrian expansion. He demonstrates that events in the exilic and postexilic periods also played out differently than they are recounted in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In contrast to previous scholarship, which focused heavily on Israel’s origins and the monarchic period, Schipper’s history gives equal attention to the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, providing confirmation that a wide variety of forms of YHWH religion existed in the Persian period and persisted into the Hellenistic age. Original and innovative, this brief history provides a new outline of the historical development of ancient Israel that will appeal to students, scholars, and lay readers who desire a concise overview.

The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles--all have been subjects of intense scrutiny during the last decade. Lipschits takes into account the biblical textual evidence, the results of archaeological research, and the reports of Babylonian and Egyptian sources and provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the evidence for the history of this 100-year-long era. He provides a lucid historical survey that will, no doubt, become the baseline for all future studies of this era.

The book explores what we know about eighth-century Judah from multiple angles, including a survey of what we know about Judah's neighbors, the land and its cities, daily life and material culture, religious beliefs and practices, and early forms of what are now biblical texts.