Lecture 10: Feb 7

Today professor started class by discussing some historical background of the persian period. Some of the books we can find the persian period are the book of Chronicles, Minor Prophets, Books of Ezra and Nehemiah and Second Isaiah. There Re no non-biblical text dealing with this period, it just goes black.We then talked about he prophet Ezekiels. We want to deal with the begining and end of ezekiels Vision. He has a vision that we see as a mobil throne of God. It basically is a new picture of Jerusalem.In Ezekiel 1, we see how his vision was basically like a mobil throne of God. He saw a thing, with four faces, four wings, with straight legs and the sole of a calfs foot. The faces were the human face, a lion, an ox and an eagle. The idea is that we see things that we used to have in the temple, like the protective beasts or divine protectors. And then he goes on the describe this box or throne, which we could see as the Ark of the Covenant. When they descirve it, it has poles which was very important when it came to the Ark. The vision of the ark is important because It is saying that god is still here, and that he is once again mobil, he is not tied to any particualr place.But what happened to the Ark?? It was brought to Jerusalem by David, put in the temple by Solomon, but in 2 kings 24:13-14 and 25:13-17, it is missing in the temple lists.  It basically just disappeared! Professor thinks that it was already gone, and destroyed during Hezikiahs rein. But then, it is replaced by the "mobil ark" vision seen in Ezekiel 1.
We then moved on to what happened after the Exile. It was said that the Persians were in control, and that the King didnt want the Jews there anymore. He gave them money and told them to go home. They could rebuild their temple with the money they gave them. But this is not the exact story we are given in the Bible. However, we believe the story becasue of the Cyrus Cylinder. It was a cylinder announcing a general return to homelands.
So, we look at Cyrus, the persian king who opposed and conquered the Babylonian empire. They saw him as a good person becasue they whiped our their enemy, the Babylonians. We can see that they thought he was a good person becasue is Isaiah 44:24,28 and 45:1,5. However, they called him the anointed one, which was a problem becasue he was not part of the dividic line. This became a problem, and changed the way people described the king in future. They are no longer part of the dividic line.then on a side note, the porfessor wanted to compair the similarites between Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
Now, we have to ask what happened to them once they came back to the city. The Jerusalem temple was rebuilt between 520 and 515 BCE under Darius 1.We have evidence of this outside of the bible. We see it in the Yehud coins. It is the persion province of Judah. Judah then becomes known as the land "beyond the river".Professor then asked the question, now that they had a religion that was not based on having a place to be or somewhere to worship, do we really need a temple? Do you need it to be Jewish? the answer for most Jews is no, we can be Jewish by things like praying, holidays, etc. The Jews are the ones that are arguing whether or not they need a temple or not. In Haggai 1, we see this quesiton.
But what do we really know about the rebuilding of hte second temple? It was said to be built in the second month. It was almost like the creation of the first temple. So it interesting because the construction of the first and second temple were on the same days as well as the destruciton of both temples.But now we are confused because we see multiple temples. We have the utopian temple, samaitan temple, the request to build a temple in elephantine letter, the leontopolis temple, or the umran or "temple by Gods hand" .In the coin Neapolis coin, we can see the construciton of Mt. Gerizim. You can see the Temple, the Altar and the stairs leading to the temple.
Professor then showed us a picture of the dead sea. and the qumran, which is close to where the dead sea scrolls were found.We saw the Biblical text that show us the Dead Sea Scrolls.
We are then presented the question is it really necessary to build a new temple. He showed us the size of Post-exilic Jerusalem. before there was a population of 40,000 after there were the population of 1,500 and then once they went back there were 35,000. THis shows that they really dont need it they have pretty much the same amount of people.
We ended class by looking at Nehemiah 4: 16-23. We see that people dont want the temple to be rebuilt.