Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period

Between the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the Persian conquests of the later sixth century BCE lie five or six decades that the biblical record leaves strikingly dim. The essays collected here, first presented at a 2001 conference at Tel Aviv University, set out to light them. The opening section revisits the myth of the empty land, asking what Judah really looked like once its elite had gone into exile. Later parts turn to cult, priesthood and temple, to military and governmental questions, to the archaeology of the period, and to exiles and foreigners in Egypt and Babylonia.

The contributors include Joseph Blenkinsopp, Sara Japhet, Hans Barstad, André Lemaire, Bezalel Porten and Lipschits himself. This is a scholarly volume for students of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East who want the evidence, argued closely, rather than the received story.