In my reading today of The Face of Old Testament Studies, I read H.G.M. Williamson’s article, “Exile and After: Historical Study.” I took notes over much of the chapter, but it got tiring near the end, and so I’ll feature in this post two of the points that I didn’t jot down in my notebook. They’re on pages 258-259.
1. Williamson refers to the view that parts of the Ezra narrative are a “midrash” on the edict of King Artaxerxes of Persia. Williamson notes that the text doesn’t mention Ezra carrying all of the edict out. Williamson then says: “if either the narrative had been based solely on the text of the edict, or indeed, if both had been written by the narrator from scratch, we should have expected a better fit.” Williamson appears to believe that the Ezra narrative is historically-accurate.
2. Williamson says that many scholars have attempted to explain Persia’s beneficent policy towards the Jews in light of the Megabyzos revolt in Greece: in this view, the Persians were trying to gain the Jews’ loyalty after that revolt, and so they let them return to their land and rebuild their temple and city. A scholar named Hoglund, however, concludes from his examination of Greek historical sources that there was no Megabyzos revolt. Rather, he says that the problem for Persia was that the Greeks were supporting a revolt in Egypt, which threatened Persian hegemony. That’s sort of what I heard in a class: the Persians were trying to appease the Jews so they (the Persians) would have their own buffer between themselves and Egypt. So Cyrus wasn’t just being Mr. Nice Guy!