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 Forschungen zum Alten Testament

Edited by

Corinna Körting (Hamburg) ∙ Konrad Schmid (Zürich)

Mark S. Smith (Princeton) ∙ Andrew Teeter (Harvard)

167
 Social Groups behind
Biblical Traditions
Identity Perspectives from Egypt, Transjordan,
Mesopotamia, and Israel in the Second Temple Period

Edited by
Benedikt Hensel, Bartosz Adamczewski,
and Dany Nocquet

Mohr Siebeck
Benedikt Hensel is Full-Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Ol-
denburg (Germany).
orcid.org/0000-0001-6608-2676
Bartosz Adamczewski is Associate Professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in War-
saw (Poland).
orcid.org/0000-0001-7847-0203
Dany Nocquet is Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew in the Institut Protestant de Théo-
logie – Faculté de Montpellier.

ISBN 978-3-16-161887-1/ eISBN 978-3-16-162351-6

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-162351-6
ISSN 0940-4155 / eISSN 2568-8359 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament)
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliogra-
phie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2023 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by
copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to repro-
ductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems.
The book was typeset by epline in Bodelshausen using Minion typeface, printed on non-aging
paper by Gulde Druck in Tübingen, and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier.
Printed in Germany.
 Preface

Is the Hebrew Bible purely a product of Jerusalem or were there various social
groups who each played a role in its development during the Second Temple
period? This is the guiding question of the present volume, which fills a crucial
gap in recent research by combining current literary-historical, redactional and
text-historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible with the latest results pertaining to
the pluriform social and religious shape of early Judaism.
This volume’s journey to publication began in the year 2017 with the joint
meeting of EABS and ISBL in Berlin, during which the three editors of the
present volume independently presented their findings on the Samaritans and
their influence on the Hebrew Bible. This was followed in 2018 by a jointly or-
ganized conference in Montpellier, France on “Samaria and Diaspora in the Per-
sian and Hellenistic Period: Influence, Significance and Contributions to the
Pentateuch and the Prophets.” There, the focus was deliberately limited to the
possible influences by Samarian groups on the biblical texts, since they were the
most historically accessible at the time. The volume Yahwistic Diversity and the
Hebrew Bible: Tracing Perspectives of Group Identity from Judah, Samaria, and
the Diaspora in Biblical Traditions (Mohr Siebeck, FAT II) published in 2020,
presents the individual contributions from this conference while also already
widening the perspective for subsequent publications that look not only at Sa-
maria itself but to a broader perspective on the phenomenon of Yahwistic diver-
sity. The present volume can thus be understood as a sequel to the aforemen-
tioned broadened view on Yahwistic diversity as a phenomenon. It takes into
consideration perspectives not only of the Judeans and Samarians but also the
groups from Egypt, Transjordan, Babylonia and Persia, as well as “the Diaspora”
in general.
More specifically, the volume is a result of a three-years research unit initiated
and conducted by the three editors at the EABS conferences from 2019 through
2022. The volume is a collection of select contributions from the various re-
search unit sessions, supplemented by some solicited contributions in order to
cover the full panorama of currently known social groups of Yahwistic character
and the impact of this phenomenon on the making of the Hebrew Bible – from
the Persian period down to the time of Qumran.
As a result, this volume – for the first time in recent research history – ad-
dresses the phenomenon of religious plurality by bringing together archaeolog-
ical, (religious-)historical, and literary-critical approaches. It goes without say-
ing that this volume is not intended to be an exhaustive repository of all known
VI Preface

groups and their corresponding representations in the biblical texts. Rather, this
volume seeks to enable a panoramic view on the (possible) influences by various
social groups from various Yahwistic contexts on the genesis of the biblical texts
and their theological and ideological profiles.
We would like to offer our thanks to all contributors to the volume for their
excellent essays and further stimulating the conversation – be it during the ses-
sions of the Research Unit or in discussion with the editors and contributors
while writing and finalizing their papers. We also hope that this volume will en-
courage (the much needed) further discussion.
We wish to extend our gratitude towards the editors of this series, Corinna
Körting, Konrad Schmid, Mark S. Smith und Andrew Teeter, for accepting the
volume for publication. We want to express our sincere appreciation for the edi-
torial staff at Mohr Siebeck for their help in preparing this volume, for their pro-
fessionalism and for the support they have provided us. Finally, we want to thank
my assistant to the chair of Hebrew Bible, in Oldenburg Dr. Jordan Davis, as well
as my student assistants Maite Benn, Sophie Dierks, Julia Klose, and Miriam
­Ostermann for helping editing the volume.

Oldenburg, March 2023

Benedikt Hensel,
on behalf of the co-editors Bartosz Adamczewski and Dany Nocquet
 Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

Benedikt Hensel
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I: Emerging Judaism, Yahwistic Plurality, and the

Making of the Hebrew Bible: A Classification of the Phenomena
in the Overall Context of Hebrew Bible Studies

Benedikt Hensel
Who Wrote the Bible? Understanding Redactors and Social Groups
behind Biblical Traditions in the Context of Plurality within
Emerging Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Part II: “Inside the Land of Israel”:

Different Perspectives in Handling Diversity
Inside Judah and Samaria

Yigal Levin
What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages? . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Charlotte Hempel
Yahwistic Diversity in the Land of Israel:
The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Dalit Regev and Uzi Greenfeld

The Persian Pottery from Salvage Excavations at
Har Gerizim (2019–2021): Preliminary Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Dany Nocquet
1 Kgs 20 and 22, a Writing by a Prophetic Narrator? A Reconsideration . . . 89

Magnar Kartveit
The Attitude towards the Northerners in the Book of Chronicles . . . . . . . . . 105
VIII Table of Contents

Bartosz Adamczewski
Othniel and the Unfaithful Concubine:
Two Images of the Judean Yahwism from a Northern Perspective . . . . . . . . . 117

Wolfgang Schütte
The “Scroll of David” – a Samaritan Name of the Book of Samuel?
2 Sam 24 and the Text History of the Jewish Books of Samuel and Kings . . 131

Part III: “Diaspora Perspectives”:

Biblical Reflections on Historical Realities in Egypt,
Transjordan, Babylon, and Persia

Ann-Kristin Wigand
The Judean Group of Elephantine:
Reading Aramaic Literature in the Service of Achaemenid Rule . . . . . . . . . . 155

Stephen Germany
Gilead in 2 Samuel and the Discourse on Diaspora
during the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

C. L. Crouch
Involuntary Migration, Strategies of Identity Construction, and
Religious Diversity after 586 BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Kishiya Hidaka
Leviticus 26 and the Pro-Babylonian-Golah and Pro-Diaspora
Redactions in the Context of Identity Formation and Conflict of
Yahwistic Groups in the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Vjatscheslav Dreier
The Theological Profile of the Masoretic Book of Esther
in the Context of Diverse Yhwh Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
 Introduction
Benedikt Hensel

The Persian and early Hellenistic periods are widely recognized as the so-
called formative period for the Hebrew scriptures and emerging Judaism. This
realization goes hand in hand with the latest research, which in its historical
description of the periods in question highlights the religious diversity of this
“early Judaism.”1
Against this background, the question of which groups were responsible
for bearing the different biblical traditions during this very period needs to be
asked anew. There has been a long tradition in research of identifying biblical
redactors and redactor groups as well as the groups of biblical tradents of this
period with the social groups of Judea (and especially those of Jerusalem). This
is also still the case for the majority of the biblical texts: the Hebrew Bible seems
to be, in the end, clearly a Judean-dominated tradition. The historical aspect of
the “Yahwistic diversity” is mostly ignored.
The present volume closes this research gap. The guiding question of this vol-
ume is: to what extent did the Yahwistic diversity of this period make its way into
the formational processes of the Hebrew Bible? It seems clear that, even if most
of the traditions at the surface of the text were shaped from a Judean perspective,
this diversity is still reflected in certain biblical traditions or redactional material.
In this regard, another question arises: which social groups or redactor groups
(Judean as well as “non-Judean”) stand behind the processes that produced the
Hebrew Bible? Are the various groups from not only Yehud and Samaria but
also from Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, Idumea and Transjordan, all of which have
up to now been well-known and well-documented, reflected within in the latest
biblical traditions, and if so, how are these groups represented in the biblical
texts?2
For the first time, the present volume will address these and related questions
by bringing together different disciplines, thereby combining archaeological,
(religious-)historical, literary-critical, redaction-historical and textual-historical
approaches. This has resulted in a volume that aims at complete coverage of
the phenomenon of Yahwistic diversity as it is known to us up to the present. It

1 On this matter, see the research overview in this volume: Hensel, “Who Wrote the Bible?”
2 On the different concepts and forms of representation of the various Yahwistic groups, see
Hensel, “Who Wrote the Bible?” (in this volume).
2 Benedikt Hensel

is designed in such a way that the individual articles represent a panorama of

the currently known social groups of Yahwistic character – from within “Israel”
(i. e., Judah/Yehud and Samaria) as well as outside it (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and
Transjordan). In terms of its temporal range, the phenomenon of Yahwistic di-
versity will be traced from the Persian period to the time of Qumran.
It goes without saying that this volume is not intended to be an all-encom-
passing description of all known groups and their possible representations in the
biblical texts (this would call for a monograph; I am currently working on this
and hope to be able to finish it in the relatively near future). Instead, this volume
should enable a panoramic view on the (possible) influences by various social
groups from various Yahwistic contexts on the genesis of the biblical texts and
their theological and ideological profiles.

Yahwistic Diversity of the Hebrew Bible:

The “History” of the Present Volume within the Research Discussion

For the sake of better contextualization within the history of research, it may be
best to mention here the extensive process of how this volume came to be. Its be-
ginnings are in the 2017 Joint Meeting of EABS and ISBL in Berlin, during which
the three editors of the present volume independently presented their findings
on the Samaritans and their influence on the Hebrew Bible. This was followed
in 2018 by a jointly organized conference in Montpellier, France on “Samaria
and Diaspora in the Persian and Hellenistic Period: Influence, Significance and
Contributions to the Pentateuch and the Prophets.” There, the focus was de-
liberately limited to the possible influences by Samarian groups on the biblical
texts, since they were the most historically accessible at the time. The volume
Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible: Tracing Perspectives of Group Iden-
tity from Judah, Samaria, and the Diaspora in Biblical Traditions, published
in 2020, presents the individual contributions from this conference while also
already widening the perspective for subsequent publications that look not only
at Samaria itself but to a broader perspective on the phenomenon of Yahwistic
diversity.
The present volume can thus be understood as a sequel to the aforementioned
broadened view on Yahwistic diversity as a phenomenon. It takes into considera-
tion perspectives of not only the Judeans and Samarians but also the groups from
Egypt, Transjordan, Babylonia and Persia, as well as “the Diaspora” in general.
In terms of its temporal range, Charlotte Hempel’s contribution now also traces
the phenomenon to Qumran, filling a crucial gap in previous research.
The volume is also a result of a multiyear research unit initiated and con-
ducted by the three editors at the EABS conferences through 2022. The volume
is a collection of select contributions from the various research unit sessions and
 Introduction 3

is supplemented by solicited contributions from C. L. Crouch (Radboud Univer-

sity/University of Pretoria), Dalit Regev and Uzi Greenfeld (both affiliated with
the Israel Antiquities Authority), Ann-Kristin Wigand (Humboldt University of
Berlin) and Vjatscheslav Dreier (University of Heidelberg).

Structure of the Present Volume

The volume contains thirteen essays divided in three sections. The opening essay,
“Who Wrote the Bible? Understanding Redactors and Social Groups behind
Biblical Traditions in the Context of Plurality within Emerging Judaism,” is my
own contribution, which is part of the first section entitled Emerging Judaism,
Yahwistic Plurality, and the Making of the Hebrew Bible: A Classification of the
Phenomena in the Overall Context of Hebrew Bible Studies. My essay discusses
the different questions about the identification of redactor groups and social
groups behind the biblical traditions in the so-called formative phase of Judaism.
Here, I identify and detail two modes of representation of the different Yahwistic
and especially Diaspora groups. This results in the observation that the different
traditions and social groups behind the biblical texts establish differing concepts
of a “biblical Israel” under the question of who does and who does not (anymore)
belong. The formation of the biblical traditions thus comprises the counterpart
to the historical processes of the formation of Judaism within the “canon” of the
various Yahwistic groups.
Part II of the volume includes essays which explore social groups and per-
spectives of Yahwistic diversity from “inside the Land of Israel,” which broadly
references the various Judean and Samarian perspectives and voices represented
in certain textual strata.
The opening article of this section is authored by Yigal Levin: One of the cen-
tral issues in the book of Ezra-Nehemiah is that of the “intermarriage” of Judean
men to “foreign” women. To the author of Ezra-Nehemiah, and presumably to
the historical characters of Ezra the Scribe and of Nehemiah the Governor, such
marriages were a grave sin against God, and in both stories, the main character
brings about the “removal” of these women. Within modern scholarship,
however, there is no consensus as to the specific nature of this grave sin, nor of
the motivation of Ezra, Nehemiah or the author of the book in opposing such
marriages. Levin’s essay first surveys the various proposals and then analyses
the issue against the background of the information we have about the low
level of the Judeans’ maintenance of “identity boundaries” in Babylonia, Ele-
phantine, Idumea and other areas, proposing that Ezra-Nehemiah considered
such boundaries to be crucial in the constitution and preservation of the identity
of the Jews, as a minority group, in the early Second Temple Period.
4 Benedikt Hensel

Charlotte Hempel contributed the next essay, entitled “Yahwistic Diversity in

the Land of Israel: The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Her contribution
argues that the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls offers important contributions
to the scholarly debate on the question of Yahwistic diversity and group identity
from Judah and Israel addressed in this volume. In particular, Hempel high-
lights the sizeable contribution of current research on the Dead Sea Scrolls from
Qumran to our understanding and recovery of social and Yahwistic diversity in
the land of Israel.
The article “The Persian Pottery from Salvage Excavations at Har Gerizim
(2019–2021): Preliminary Findings,” authored by Dalit Regev and Uzi Greenfeld,
presents preliminary results from the first three seasons of the renewed excava-
tions on Mt. Gerizim. As indicated by the finds of the excavation, the town atop
Mt. Gerizim, or at least the neighborhood of the town recently excavated on the
northern slope, was quite humble in economic status. This may have been due
to external circumstances and the economic difficulties caused by many years of
war between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires or may have been due to the
religious adherence of the local population, who avoided imported vessels.
In his contribution “1 Kgs 20 and 22, a Writing by a Prophetic Narrator? A Re-
consideration,” Dany Nocquet deals with the intriguing question of a (possible)
Samarian redactional layer within the Book of Kings, thereby focusing on the
war accounts of 1 Kgs 20 and 22. These war accounts tell about the violent death
of King Ahab and are often interpreted as post-Deuteronomistic developments
or as a late writing coming from a “prophetic narrator.” In continuity with this,
the article points out the fact that the main goal of these stories focuses not on
the punishment of the king but on the presence of a true prophet comparable to
Jeremiah and living in Samaria. Enhancing the greatness and efficiency of the
prophecy of Samaria already during the time of King Ahab, these texts could
be understood as a contribution of the Samarian community nuancing the
Deuteronomistic History in the Persian period.
Magnar Kartveit’s study, entitled “The Attitude towards the Northerners in
the Book of Chronicles,” brings into discussion a long-standing open question
in traditional and modern scholarship. The attitude towards the Northerners
in the book of Chronicles has been described by scholars in various ways. After
Martin Noth’s influential 1943 theory of an anti-Samaritan polemic, scholars
have reassessed the texts and found an inclusive or welcoming stance towards
the North. In recent years, however, new material has emerged, which makes it
necessary to take a fresh look at this question. The most important material is
constituted by the results from the excavations on the summit of Mt. Gerizim
and inscriptions found there. Kartveit’s article suggests that the idea of a pu-
rified land is central to Chronicles’ attitude to the North, and the kings Hezekiah
and Josiah provide examples of how this status of the people and the land is
obtained.
 Introduction 5

Bartosz Adamczewski’s essay, “Othniel and the Unfaithful Concubine: Two

Images of the Judean Yahwism from a Northern Perspective,” explores possible
Samarian perspectives within the Book of Judges. The images of Judea and the
Judean Yahwism in the Israelite book of Judges are highly variegated. In the stories
of Othniel (Judg 3:8–11) and the unfaithful concubine (Judg 19:1–20:13c), the
image of Judahite civil leadership, inasmuch as it is theocratic and oriented
positively towards Ephraim, is positive (Judg 3:8–11; 19:3–9). On the other
hand, the image of the rival, separatist sanctuary of Yahweh in Jerusalem is very
negative (Judg 19:10–12). In order to analyze the variegated rhetorical impact
of both stories, which in two different ways illustrate the same Deuteronomic
blessing for Judah (Deut 33:7), this essay firstly explores their allusive features.
Subsequently, it then analyzes the different functions of both accounts in the
hypertextual rhetoric of the book of Judges. Finally, it investigates the extent to
which Yahwistic diversity in the Hebrew Bible can be regarded as an intentionally
shaped rhetorical phenomenon.
The final essay in the second section is authored by Wolfgang Schütte: “The
‘Scroll of David’ – a Samaritan Name of the Book of Samuel? 2 Sam 24 and the
Text History of the Jewish Books of Samuel and Kings.” The Kitāb at-Tārīḫ of Abū
l-Fatḥ embeds 2 Sam 24 within a Persian-era narrative, a setting comparable to
Jewish narratives from the Hasmonean period. Because of Abū l-Fatḥ’s unusual
reception of 2 Sam 24, this contribution traces the history of Samuel-Kings as
books and the textual history of the biblical narrative. Behind the concern of the
kaige recension, Schütte identifies a Torah-centric theological treatment, which
he holds responsible for connecting the books of Samuel and Kings and the
positioning of 2 Sam 24.
Part III of the volume is dedicated to a wide view of “diaspora perspectives,”
which includes social groups from Egypt, Babylonia, Persia and Transjordan.
This section opens with the article entitled “The Judean Group of Elephan-
tine: Reading Aramaic Literature in the Service of Achaemenid Rule,” authored
by Ann-Kristin Wigand: In Elephantine, various ethnic groups lived and worked
together in a very confined space during the Persian period. One of these groups
called themselves “Judean” and venerated the God Yaho in a proper temple. For
a long time, the Judeans of Elephantine were interpreted in view of the biblical
image of Yahwism in time of Ezra-Nehemiah and thus served as an assumed
representation of preexilic Yahwism. In her article, Wigand argues that this group
is better understood within the close context of the multiethnic cohabitation in
Egypt under Achaemenid rule. A closer look at the (Aramaic) literature available
at Elephantine, especially the Aramaic Ahiqar composition, and its function in
the Egyptian context elucidates this point.
“Gilead in 2 Samuel and the Discourse on Diaspora during the Persian
Period” by Stephen Germany addresses the question of Transjordanian realities
behind certain texts within the Book of Samuel. Although references to the
6 Benedikt Hensel

Transjordanian region of Gilead occur most frequently in biblical narratives set

prior to the end of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, there is good
reason to conclude that many of the biblical texts relating to Gilead were written
by Judean scribes long after the periods that they portray. This essay thus con-
siders what could have motivated later Judean authors to write about a region
that possibly had little historical connections to Judah at the time when many
of the texts in question were composed. Through its analysis of two case studies
from 2 Samuel (the site of Mahanaim and the figure of Barzillai the Gileadite),
the study concludes that certain references to Gilead in 2 Samuel serve a sym-
bolic function as part of a discourse on exile and life in the diaspora following
the end of the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE.
C. L. Crouch authored the following article, entitled “Involuntary Migration,
Strategies of Identity Construction, and Religious Diversity after 586 BCE.” Here,
Crouch discusses the consequences of Jerusalem’s destruction for the identity
concerns of those who once lived there. The fall of the city to the Babylonians –
not once, but twice – together with associated events left an indelible mark
on Israelite and Judahite identity. Her article examines the construction of Is-
raelite and Judahite identities in the wake of Judah’s downfall through the lens
of involuntary migration, paying particular attention to the way that the reasons
for this catastrophe were differently narrated by different involuntary migrant
communities. Crouch investigates the refugee communities in both Egypt and
Babylonia, from the perspective of the prophetic books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
She concludes that both of these migrant communities identify the cause of their
displacement as a matter of cultural practice, arguing that the disasters they have
experienced occurred because a defining practice of the group was abandoned.
The practices they identify as essential, however, are diametrically opposed:
whereas Ezekiel identifies exclusive Yahwism as the core of Israelite cultural
identity, the community in Egypt views it as an aberrant deviation from Judah’s
older cultural traditions.
In his essay “Leviticus 26 and the Pro-Babylonian-Golah and Pro-Diaspora
Redactions in the Context of Identity Formation and Conflict of Yahwistic
Groups in the Persian Period,” Kishiya Hidaka demonstrates that one of the
main stimuli for the literary developments in Lev 26* and Ezek 37*; 34* can be
seen in the concerns for the identity and theological pre-eminence between the
groups of the Babylonian Golah and the Diaspora. Close analysis of Lev 26*
reveals the existence of two different conceptions toward the Babylonian Golah.
Hidaka shows that the pro-Diaspora redaction in Ezek 34* receives several
influences from Lev 26* and the pro-Babylonian Golah redaction in Ezek 37*.
This approach can cast further light on the link between the formation of the
Pentateuch and the developments of the group identities in the Persian period.
In Vjatscheslav Dreier’s contribution, “The Theological Profile of the Ma-
soretic Book of Esther in the Context of Diverse Yhwh Communities,” Dreier
 Introduction 7

presents certain aspects of his PhD thesis tracing the theological profile of the
Masoretic version of the book of Esther in terms of the historical context in
which it originated. An initial task, therefore, is to provide such an historical
reconstruction. Dreier shows that Esther should be understood as a narrative
composed in dialogue with alternative visions advocated by differing groups of
the time, each of which produced their own literature. This interpretation pro-
vides the best model for situating the book of Esther within the complex context
of the diverse (Diaspora) Yhwh communities of the period.
 Part I

Emerging Judaism, Yahwistic Plurality,

and the Making of the Hebrew Bible:
A Classification of the Phenomena
in the Overall Context of Hebrew Bible Studies
 Who Wrote the Bible?
Understanding Redactors and Social Groups
behind Biblical Traditions in the Context of Plurality
within Emerging Judaism

Benedikt Hensel

1. A Formative Period

The Persian period (6th–4th centuries BCE) is now generally considered, and
rightly so, to be the formative phase of Judaism. This concerns not only early
Judaism as a religio-social entity but also the writings that shaped its identity,
specifically the Hebrew Bible.1 Only in the last few years has this come to be
taken firmly as the default view,2 not least also because the advancements in
the subdisciplines of literary history (especially concerning redaction history),
religious and social history, and archaeology of Israel – each through their own
respective methodologies – reached comparable conclusions and were equally
able to substantiate the Persian period as the cornerstone of Judaism – an era that
(and this is worth emphasizing) the field, up until a good two decades ago, still
widely considered to be a “dark age.”3
However, although the presentation thus far has depicted a broad consensus
on the matter, it must also be interjected that there is presently an increase of
voices (mine included) arguing that this formative phase should not be limited
to the Persian period but should rather be extended well into the Hellenistic
period. Particularly in the most recent research there are three advancements
that support this:
(1) In recent years, it has repeatedly been shown that the group-specific,
identity-forming processes that led to the formation of Judaism in antiquity, in-
cluding its specific identity markers (especially the practice and understanding

1 See, among many others, the current and comprehensive overview on the matter by
Schmid/Schröter, The Making of the Bible, 105–139 (the chapter “Emerging Judaism”).
2 See Schmid, “Textual, Historical, Sociological, and Ideological Cornerstones of the
Formation of the Pentateuch,” 29–51; Römer, “Zwischen Urkunden, Fragmenten und Ergän-
zungen,” 2–24; Kratz, “The Analysis of the Pentateuch: An Attempt to Overcome Barriers of
Thinking,” 529–561; Gertz et al. (ed.), The Formation of the Pentateuch.
3 See the exemplary assessment by Uehlinger from 1999: “The Persian period is still a very
poor parent in the archaeology of Palestine” (Uehlinger, “‘Powerful Persianisms,’” 136).
12 Benedikt Hensel

of the Torah, circumcision, food and purity laws,4 and monotheism), basically
only appear beginning in the Hasmonean/Maccabean period.5 In addition the
Samarians and the Judeans only experienced a “parting of the ways” as religious
groups in the late 2nd century BCE and only thereafter began to form their own
specific identity markers.6 Therefore, the anchoring of “early Judaism” should be
extended several centuries prior to this event: it is only from this point onwards
that we can speak of “Jews” and “Samaritans” in a proper sense, since Judaism
and Samaritanism each construct their own identities in relation to the other, so
to speak. Examples of the results of this process of group profile construction in-
clude the specific letter type of the Samarian script and the formation of group-
specific text forms of the Bible that later became the Samaritan and Masoretic
texts.
In any case, before this formation of Judaism, there was still much that was
“in flux”: the formational processes of early Judaism thus extend over the entire
so-called “Second Temple period” (or at least through the Persian period and
into the Hellenistic period).7
(2) Secondly, the importance of the Hellenistic period for the formation of
scripture has also gradually been cited more and more clearly concerning lit-
erary history. In the recently published volume Times of Transition: Judea in
the Early Hellenistic Period, edited by Sylvie Honigman, Christophe Nihan, and
Oded Lipschits, the individual exegetical contributions – and especially that by
Konrad Schmid – have succeeded in elaborating the fundamental importance
of the Ptolemaic period for essential strands of traditions and theological pos-
sibilities within the Hebrew Bible.8 To echo Schmid’s words, “this does not make
the Hebrew Bible a Hellenistic book, but it shows that its literary growth at
least extended into the Ptolemaic period.”9 It can also be added regarding the
thematic focus of the present volume that especially the perspective of and about
the “Yahwistic Diaspora” experienced both a specific shaping and, at the same
time, a diversification during the Hellenistic period (see below, § 3).
(3) Thirdly, the current methodological developments within literary
criticism and textual history also show that the production, reproduction, and
passing down of writings are not processes that can be strictly separated from
each other and that they instead go hand-in-hand. Accordingly, the formational

4 Especially for this aspect of the Diaspora, see Schöpf, Purity without Borders? Purity Con-
cerns in the Early Jewish Diaspora during the Second Temple Period Regarding the Case of Tall
Ziraʾa, Northern Jordan.
5 Cohen, The Beginning of Jewishness.
6 Schorch, “The Construction of Samari(t)an Identity from the Inside and from the Out-
side,” 135–149.
7 Hensel, “Yahwistic Diversity,” 16–21; see also, with different argumentation but compara-
ble results, Frevel, Geschichte Israels, 323–326.
8 Schmid, “How to Identify a Ptolemaic Period Text in the Hebrew Bible,” 281–292.
9 Schmid, “How to Identify a Ptolemaic Period Text in the Hebrew Bible,” 289.
 Who Wrote the Bible? 13

processes of the Hebrew Bible are thus to be extended well throughout the
Second Temple period (see especially the excellent methodological groundwork
by Reinhard Müller and Juha Pakkala titled Editorial Techniques in the Hebrew
Bible: Toward a Refined Literary Criticism [2022]).10

2. Emerging Judaism(s) and Yahwistic Diversity

in the Second Temple Period

A significant aspect of this formative period that has thus far been regularly
neglected is the following: the emerging Judaism of the Persian and early
Hellenistic periods was – unlike stated in earlier treatments of these periods –
not a quasi-”orthodox” monolith oriented towards Jerusalem but – quite to the
contrary – shaped by many different, regionally diverse “Judaisms.” The best
known and researched of these are, of course, the groups in Babylon (significant
here: āl-Yahudu11), on the island of Elephantine on the Nile,12 in Judea, and in
Samaria.13 For this volume, I am thankful that we have been given exclusive
insight into the new excavations on Mt. Gerizim (from the 2019–2021 seasons)
with the contribution by Dalit Regev and Uzi Greenfeld, confirming many
previous results but also providing corrections in details.14 Most importantly,
the authors finally present detailed studies of the pottery finds that have been
missing until now.
However, there is also evidence of Yahwistic groups in the multiethnic con-
texts of Idumea15 and in the regions of Transjordan.16
Fundamental methodological research in this area is connected above all
with the detailed historical studies of Christian Frevel,17 as well as with my own
10 Müller/Pakkala, Editorial Techniques in the Hebrew Bible. See also in the present volume
W. Schütte with a test case on this matter: Schütte, “The ‘Scroll of David’ – a Samaritan Name
of the Book of Samuel?”
11 See Alstola, Judeans in Babylonia: A Study of Deportees in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries
BCE; Berlejung, “A Sketch of the Life of the Golah in the Countryside of Babylonia,” 148–188,
and Wunsch/Pearce, Judeans by the Waters of Babylon: New Historical Evidence in Cuneiform
Sources from Rural Babylonia.
12 See (alongside the contribution in this volume by Wigand) Kratz/Schipper (ed.), Ele-
phantine in Context; Granerød, Dimensions of Yahwism; Rohrmoser, Götter, Tempel und Kult
der Judäo-Aramäer von Elephantine.
13 Kartveit, The Origin of the Samaritans; Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans; Pummer, The
Samaritans. A Profile; Hensel, Juda und Samaria.
14 Regev/Greenfeld, “The Persian Pottery from Salvage Excavations at Har Gerizim
(2019–2021): Preliminary Findings.”
15 See Levin, “The Formation of Idumean Identity,” 192–194, 196–198; Hensel, “Think
Positive!,” 348–355; and idem, “Was there an ‘Idumean Yahwism’? Material and Biblical Ev-
idence on Religion and Yahweh-Worship in Idumea.”
16 See Hensel, “Transjordan and Judah from the Babylonian to Hellenistic Periods.”
17 See Frevel, “Der Eine oder die Vielen?,” 238–265; idem, Geschichte Israels, 323–326;
14 Benedikt Hensel

studies on the history of religion that relate here to the intersection of history and
biblical reflections of exactly this diversity.18 Cynthia Edenburg has recently pub-
lished an article that likewise lays a methodological foundation for addressing
representations of the “Diaspora” in late biblical texts.19 Her study is noteworthy
primarily because it asks about how the scribes of various Judean, Samarian,
and Diasporic groups would have been in contact with each other and how they
would have exchanged traditions.20 This concretizing of the practice of the oft-
cited (also on my part) exchange between the scribal groups provides a very
helpful point of departure for further refinement of both the thesis of a “Yahwis-
tic diversity” that can actually also be found reflected in certain biblical texts (on
such reflections, see § 3 below, as well as my theory of early Judaism developing
only over the course of the Second Temple period through both convergence
with and differentiation from the other religious groups of Yahwistic provenance
(as different as the specific religious formations of each respective “Yahwism”
may have been).21 Of course, this process of identity formation clearly presup-
poses that the groups were in contact with each other. This is – when looking
at the biblical evidence (§ 3) – probable, in any case. Historically, these contacts
are immediately tangible at least in the correspondences of the Judeo-Arameans
with governors of Judah and Samaria (TAD A4.7–10). However, there is still only
little that can be deduced about the concrete “hows” of this contact between
social groups or specific scribes.
There has been an excellent debate over the naming of this phenomenon.
Christian Frevel has, with good argument, supported the designation “Judaism”
(in current publications) as a larger entity or (in earlier publications22) “Juda-
isms.” In my opinion, the phenomenon should, from the approach of religious
studies, be viewed as neutrally as possible: the different groupings exist alongside
each other in these periods, even if they display differences in detail regarding
religious practice and the sociology of religion. So, for example, monotheism
is a possible option during the Persian period (Judah and Samaria) but not an
exclusive option for faith in the God of Israel (so, e. g., Elephantine and Idumea).
Moreover, “Judaism” is only one single development within a wider entity. The
“Samaritans,” for example, would never call themselves (nor would they have in

idem/Pyschny, “A ‘Religious Revolution’ in Yehûd?,” 1–22; idem/Pyschny (ed.), A “Religious

Revolution” in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case.
18 See esp. Hensel, “Yahwistic Diversity,” 1–44.
19 Edenburg, “Messaging Brothers in Distant Lands,” 204–223.
20 Edenburg, “Messaging Brothers in Distant Lands,” 222–223.
21 See also Beyerle, “Intolerance in Early Judaism: Emic and Etic Descriptions of Jewish
Religions in the Second Temple Period,” 115–156.
22 Alongside the aforementioned texts from Frevel, see also idem, “Alte Stücke – Späte
Brücke?,” 270 (“Formationsprozesse der ‘Judentümer’”); Edelman has also used the term
“Judaisms” in a recent publication: Edelman, “Introduction,” 1–5 (in her volume Religion in the
Achaemenid Persian Empire).
 Who Wrote the Bible? 15

antiquity) “Jews.” I have thus suggested the neologism “Yahwisms” (not without
predecessors in the field23) or “Yahwistic diversity” for describing this phenome-
non.24 The “faith in Yhwh” therefore forms a religious constant common to
all of the groups under consideration here. Thus, it is possible to describe this
phenomenon without assigning it to one of the (assumed) main currents (like
“the Judaism,” so to speak). The term proves moreover to be connectable to the
term “Judaisms,” first introduced in 1987 by Neusner, Green and Frerichs and
used as a qualification of Rabbinic Judaism.25 In my opinion, early Judaism in
its Jerusalem instantiation is only one “branch” of a complex nexus of religious
options that can be related in this time period to the phenomenon of the God of
Israel, Yhwh.
In any case, and this terminological debate notwithstanding, the decisive
insight into this phenomenon lies in the fact that, in the approach of religious
studies, the “panorama” of all these regionally diversified groups must first be
observed and described in order to accurately capture the emergence of early Ju-
daism from this diversity of religious options and religiosociologial substantiations
of faith in Yhwh.

3. A Research Desideratum:
A Broader Perspective on Yahwistic Diversity of Social Groups
and Redactions behind Biblical Traditions

There is very much still a decisive desideratum in research, namely the one to
which this volume is dedicated: although the field now recognizes the formative
character of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods for the Hebrew scriptures,
and although the religious diversity of “early Judaism” is a well-established and
solidly founded research position, there is still a lack of detailed studies that
“bridge the gap,” so to speak, between redaction history and the historically
tangible groupings. There has been a long tradition in research of identifying
biblical redactors and redactor groups as well as the groups of biblical tradents
of this period with the social groups of Judea (and especially those of Jerusalem).
This is also still the case for the majority of the biblical texts: the Hebrew Bible
seems to be, in the end, clearly a Judean-dominated tradition.
However, this is not true for all texts. It seems clear that, even if most of the
traditions at the surface of the text were shaped from a Judean perspective, this
diversity is still reflected in certain biblical traditions or redactional material.
In this regard, another question arises: which social groups or redactor groups
23 See Edelman’s terminology from 1995: “Yahwisms”: Edelman, Triumph. In later pub-
lications, she speaks of “Judaisms” (cf. Edelman, “Introduction,” 1–5).
24 Hensel, Juda und Samaria, 152–162; idem, “Yahwistic Diversity,” 20–21.
25 See Neusner/Green/Frerichs, Judaisms.
16 Benedikt Hensel

(Judean as well as “non-Judean”) stand behind the Hebrew Bible’s productional

processes? Most fundamentally, the representations of the diverse social groups
within the biblical texts can be categorized into two groups which will be dis-
cussed in more detail in the following. It should be noted here that this research
question is complicated by the fact, that a widespread feature of biblical author-
ship was anonymity.26 The term “representation” here is chosen to give credit to
this feature; it bears in mind that we are not able in every case to exactly identify
the redactors, authors, or social groups behind the various biblical traditions.
(1) The first option involves active participation in shaping biblical traditions.
In addition to the diverse traditions of Judean scribal groups, the Samarians have
been identified and discussed as an influential group who helped shape (at least
parts of ) the Pentateuch. Here, this involves above all the thesis, oft-discussed
in recent years, of a “Samarian-Judean Pentateuch” (Bernd J. Diebner,27 Gary
Knoppers,28 Christophe Nihan,29 Benedikt Hensel30).
Diebner can here be regarded as the forefather of considerations of this
“Common Pentateuch,” which he – building upon on preliminary work – devel-
oped already in the 1980s. Problematic from today’s point of view is how he
dated the Torah very late (Hasmonean!), which is no longer tenable. On the
positive side, however, Diebner does need to be credited with having recognized
and described early the fundamental hermeneutic that sees the Common Torah
as a compromise document.
Regarding the Samarian participation in the Torah, it should be further em-
phasized that also – and especially – the Priestly Writing, which comes from the
Persian period, is not necessarily an exclusively Judean tradition but also rep-
resents Samarian interests, which has since been sufficiently proven;31 this may
also be applied, even if to be taken with a grain of salt, to the later redactional
additions to Deuteronomy (e. g., Deut 11:29–30 and Deut 27*; possibly already
for Deut 12:13–14 – the “unnamed maqom”32). The recent volume by Jaeyoung
Jeon, The Social Groups behind the Pentateuch, which documents the results of
a 2016 conference on the topic, opens up further perspectives on this phenome-
non. Additionally, the volume Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible (pub-
lished in 2021 by Benedikt Hensel, Dany Nocquet, and Bartosz Adamczewski)
shows via diverse detailed studies how important the historical recognition of
26See most recently on this Ben Zvi, “Matters of Authorship, Authority, and Power,”
93–113, esp. 102–105.
27 Diebner first in 1983 in idem, “Genesis als Buch der antik-jüdischen Bibel,” 81–98.
28 Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans.
29 Nihan, “The Torah Between Samaria and Judah,” 187–223.
30 Hensel, “Temple and Torah”; and idem, Juda und Samaria, 187–194 (with literature).
31 Rhyder, Centralizing the Cult.
32 See further my considerations in Hensel, “Debating Temple and Torah,” 35–38
(Deut 11:27) and 45–47 (Deut 12); for a different view on how Mt. Gerizim is represented with-
in Deuteronomy see also Otto, “Jerusalem und Garizim im nachexilischen Deuteronomium.”
 Who Wrote the Bible? 17

certain social groups, who need not necessarily be Judean, is for the redactional
history of the Pentateuch (and Hexateuch33).
Moving beyond the state of research to this point, the present volume Social
Groups behind Biblical Traditions explores the possibility of whether Samarian
participation in the production of scripture extended not only to certain areas
of the Pentateuch but also to redactional material outside of these that have
traditionally been considered purely Judean. Dany Nocquet’s thesis of a Samari-
an “prophetic” redaction of the books of Kings that he develops in his essay
“1 Kgs 20 and 22, a Writing by a Prophetic Narrator? A Reconsideration” would
have far-reaching consequences for current theories on the origin of these books
as well as other literary contexts (such as the DtrH).34
However, there is need in discussing other groups alongside the Judeans
and Samarians that also come into view as having possibly helped form bib-
lical traditions. It should be mentioned here that especially the traditions that
the field has identified as simply “Diaspora” redactions, which can be found in
material from many biblical traditions stemming from the exilic period onward
and across many literary genres, represent a particularly complex situation. The
perception of the Diaspora does not only oscillate between the poles of “critical”
vs. “positive” but is variegated to several degrees and with its own nuances: some-
times, Diaspora groups are simply rejected altogether, while there are also con-
ceptions that fundamentally appreciate the existence of groups “in the Diaspora”
(at least – but not exclusively – Mesopotamia, but possibly also Egypt). Cynthia
Edenburg, for example, points to the concept of “delocalized” [my term] worship
of Yhwh, which she sees represented in certain layers of Exodus and Leviticus:
What is particularly significant for the purpose of maintenance of Yahwistic identity
boundaries are the specific directives to be observed “wherever you reside,” and these are
the observance of Mazzot (Exod 12:20); Sabbath observance (Exod 35:3; Lev 23:3); re-
fraining from partaking of blood or the fat of meat (Lev 3:17; 7:26); observation of the fes-
tival calendar with regard to days requiring cessation from work (Lev 23:21); observation
of the Kippurim fast and cessation from work (Lev 23:31); and the laws pertaining to
homicide (Num 35:29).35

At issue here, Edenburg continues, is the preservation of “identity boundaries in

Diaspora through particular dietary regulations; observance of non-sacrificial
customs on festive days, such as Mazzot and the Kippurim fast; cessation from
work on the Sabbath and festive days; and adjudicating homicide within the
community.”36 Added to this is the concept of a “mobile central shrine” (the tent

33 Otto, Deuteronomium 12,1–23,15, 1132–1133.

34 See Nocquet, “1 Kgs 20 and 22, a Writing by a Prophetic Narrator? A Reconsideration.”
For another possible example of “Samaritan authorship” see Adamczewski, “Othniel and the
Unfaithful Concubine: Two Images of the Judean Yahwism from a Northern Perspective.”
35 Edenburg, “Messaging Brothers in Distant Lands,” 215.
36 Edenburg, “Messaging Brothers in Distant Lands,” 216.
18 Benedikt Hensel

of meeting) within the Priestly Writing, which decouples the Deuteronomistic

concept of cult centralization from a specific place (Jerusalem) and in principle
allows for a “central shrine” in the Diaspora. The redactional additions to the
original cult centralization law (Deut 12:12–14) also display a sense of Diasporic
realities from vv. 20 ff. onwards (v. 20a: …
ָ ‫) ִּד ֶּב‬.
‫ר־לְך‬
Some of these “Diaspora conceptions” understand the Diaspora in a positive
sense but only while based entirely on the expectation that they will, sooner
or later, return to the land of Israel. Other (possibly later) concepts, however,
also develop conceptions of diaspora that de facto or pragmatically decouple the
group identity from the land: Faith in Yhwh is also – and especially – possible
in the Diaspora. The goal of these groups is not to return, since group identity is
defined by Yhwh establishing his sanctuary “in their midst” (Ezek 37:26: ‫ְונָ ַת ִּתי‬
‫ﬠֹולם‬
ָ ‫תֹוכם ְל‬ ִ ‫ ;) ֶא‬such is the theological conception of, for example, the
ָ ‫ת־מ ְק ָּד ִׁשי ְּב‬
pro-Babylonian-Golah redaction in Ezekiel, with Ezek 37* as its centerpiece.
The theological conception of the vision in the book of Ezekiel can also be
viewed along these lines. The vision of Yhwh’s throne in Ezek 1*, the vision of
Yhwh’s departure from Jerusalem in Ezek 8–11*, and the vision of the temple
in Ezek 40–48* belong to one and the same thematic context, as Christoph
Koch has recently demonstrated.37 All of these visions serve the theological con-
ception that takes an exclusively positive stance towards the Babylonian Golah.
Thus, this also suggests that representatives of certain “Diaspora” groups were
bearers of certain traditions. This is the thesis of a doctoral project currently
being undertaken by Kishiya Hidaka, who presents one aspect of this in his ar-
ticle “Leviticus 26 and the Pro-Babylonian-Golah and Pro-Diaspora Redactions
in the Context of Identity Formation and Conflict of Yahwistic Groups in the
Persian Period.”
(2) Another option for the representation of these groups is what I would call
passive participation: certain redactional texts reflect not only Judean realities
but also aspects of the religious plurality of this period. Especially the con-
tributions authored by Yigal Levin,38 Magnar Kartveit,39 Charlotte Hempel,40
C. L. Crouch,41 Stephen Germany,42 Ann-Kristin Wigand,43 and Vjatscheslav

37Koch, Gottes himmlische Wohnstatt, esp. 133–189.

38Levin, “What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages?”
39 Kartveit, “The Attitude towards the Northerners in the Book of Chronicles.”
40 See Hempel, “Yahwistic Diversity in the Land of Israel: The Contribution of the Dead
Sea Scrolls.”
41 Crouch, “Involuntary Migration, Strategies of Identity Construction, and Religious Di-
versity after 586 BCE.”
42 Germany, “Gilead in 2 Samuel and the Discourse on Diaspora during the Persian Period.”
43 Wigand, “The Judean Group of Elephantine: Reading Aramaic Literature in the Service
of Achaemenid Rule.”
 Who Wrote the Bible? 19

Dreier44 in the present volume deal with various aspects of these representations.
It should also be mentioned here that exactly these Yahwistic groups, which
are attested materially in Idumea and in certain regions of Transjordan (all as
part of a complex, fluid, multi-ethnic society) are also evaluated thoroughly
ambivalently (but by no means entirely negatively). A nearly positive image of
“Edom” can be identified in certain Persian-period redactions that, at its core,
is in reference to the relations with certain Yahwist groups in “Edom-in-the-
Negev,” i. e., Idumea.45

4. Representation and Negotiation of Identity Perspectives

In any case, the findings of the various articles in this volume allow for the con-
clusion that the diverse redactor groups of the period in question were aware
of the multifaceted nature of Yahwistic groups. However, assessments of these
other groups are not homogenous; this representation of Yahwistic diversity
can be positive or negative, and with or without value judgment. However, this
representation of Yahwistic plurality in biblical texts of the Persian and Hellenis-
tic periods shows a shared, recognizable struggle for their own perspectives of
identity. In other words, the different traditions and social groups behind the
biblical texts establish differing concepts of a “biblical Israel” under the ques-
tion of who belongs and who does not (anymore). The formation of the biblical
traditions thus comprises the counterpart to the historical processes of the for-
mation of Judaism within the “canon” of the various Yahwistic groups. In regard
to the process of negotiating “Israelite” identity found in the Hebrew canon,
one can comfortably speak of “inner-Israelite processes of differentiation”46
that then also – and here, they function as a reflection of the diversity of this
period – stand in a juxtaposition of various conceptions of “Israel” (from being
exclusive to Jerusalem [so in Ezr/Neh] all the way to being fully inclusive of the
Diaspora47) in the context of later biblical traditions of the Hebrew canon.
44 Dreier, “The Theological Profile of the Masoretic Book of Esther in the Context of Di-
verse Yhwh Communities.”
45 See further Hensel, “Think Positive!,” 338–362, esp. 340–348. For the Transjordanian
areas (Moab, Ammon and Edom in traditional terminology), there are, in addition to Stephen
Germany’s contribution here in this volume, also considerations in Hensel, “Transjordan
and Judah from the Babylonian to Hellenistic Periods”; Artus, “Transjordan in the Book of
Numbers,” 273–287; (with divergent views) Davis, The End of the Book of Numbers: On
Pentateuchal Models and Compositional Issues.
46 Hensel, Juda und Samaria, 312 (for further details, see 302–349 in the same monograph).
47 Worth mentioning here is the Persian-period redaction of the Torah to only five books,
which also results in insinuations of “Israel” being a migratory society, since the exodus no
longer ends with the Eisodus but with the view of the land – from the outside. Observable
in this is how it emphasizes the Diaspora perspective theologically, which has become an es-
sential element of the Torah (as the foundational document of Judaism). For details, see Hensel,
“Grundelemente einer alttestamentlichen Theologie der Migration,” 19–31, esp. 24–27.
20 Benedikt Hensel

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22 Benedikt Hensel

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 Part II

“Inside the Land of Israel”:

Different Perspectives in Handling Diversity
Inside Judah and Samaria
 What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have
against Mixed Marriages?
Yigal Levin

The book of Ezra-Nehemiah depicts both of its main protagonists, Ezra the
scribe (in Ezra 9–10) and Nehemiah the governor (in Nehemiah 13), as dealing
with the “problem” of mixed marriages between men of Yehud and women from
neighboring nations. These episodes have been dealt with in numerous studies,
using many different approaches and with many different underlying basic as-
sumptions. Some treatments have been primarily textual, others primarily his-
torical.1 Some have taken the two episodes as reflecting more-or-less historical
events, and have gone on to discuss the relationship between the two protagonists
and their motives.2 Others have assumed that only one or the other of the two
reports is “historical” and have attempted to analyze that event within its his-
torical context, while treating the other as a literary construction and analyzing
it as such.3 Others have assumed the a-priori non-historicity of both reports, and
have treated both as literary constructs, composed in order to promote some
ideology or other.4 Some studies have focused on so-called “religious” issues,
while for others the main issues have been those of “identity,” while others have
considered religion and identity to be inseparable.5 Some writers have attempt-
ed a holistic approach, while others have focused on specific questions such as
the meaning of “holy seed” in Ezra 9 or of “Ashdodite” in Nehemiah 13.6 Some
scholars have treated the issue as being basically a local affair, while others have
1 For a recent combination of the two approaches see recently Moffat, Ezra’s Social Drama.
2 Dor, “The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah,” does not doubt
the basic historicity of the episodes, but considers them to have been “rituals” in which very few
women, if any, were actually sent away.
3 See, for example, Becking, Ezra-Nehemiah, 134–135, who describes his own shift in
thought: in the past he considered both accounts to refer to the same historical event, but later
he came to consider the Nehemiah account to be “a reference to events in the middle of the fifth
century BCE,” with the “pseudoepigraphic” Ezra account reflecting a later situation.
4 As does Rice, “The Diachronic Composition of the Shema Reports in Nehemiah 1–6,”
when discussing Nehemiah’s “enemies.”
5 For a short discussion see Hobson, “Were Persian-Period ‘Israelites’ Bound by Ethnicity
or Religious Affiliation?” See also Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women (Ezra 9–10):
The Legal Basis, Precedents, and Consequences for the Definition of Jewish Identity.”
6 For a discussion of the term “holy seed” in Ezra and its possible Isaianic roots, see Laato,
Message and Composition of the Book of Isaiah, 212–224. For “Ashdodite” see Southwood, “And
They Could Not Understand Jewish Speech,” 14–18 and references therein. See also Oeming,
28 Yigal Levin

gone looking for comparative material as far afield as Athens, Babylonia and
Elephantine.7 Some treatments have been synchronic, taking both reports as
dealing, whether historically or literarily, with the same issues and speaking
with more-or-less the same voice, while other approaches have been diachronic,
seeing the issue of mixed marriages within a broader development of Judaism in
the early Second Temple Period.8 And finally, some have taken the issues raised
by these episodes as a starting off point for discussions of a more contemporary
nature.9
Amongst the virtual jungle of books and articles that have appeared in recent
years, my goal in this essay is to analyze the “problem” presented by the text
within its historical context: why was the issue of “intermarriage” so important
to Ezra, Nehemiah and to the writer of the book which bears their names? In the
first section of this essay I will lay out my own brief analysis of the relevant bib-
lical texts. I will then go on to compare the relevant extra-biblical material, and
then I will attempt to synthesize all of that into an understanding of the social
situation of Yehud and of the Judeans within the relevant period.

1. Ezra and Nehemiah, or the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah?

I will start out by stating my primary working assumptions. The first of these is
that the text of Ezra-Nehemiah in general and of the relevant chapters in partic-
ular reflect, at least in some ways, the historical reality of Judah under Persian
rule, at some time in the fifth century BCE. As a working assumption, Ezra and
Nehemiah were real people, the former a Judean religious leader who received
some sort of royal firman, the latter a royally appointed peḥah, or governor. They

“The Spirit of the Book of Nehemiah and the ‘Language of Ashdod’: Nehemiah 13:23–24 as an
Anti-Hellenistic Polemic.”
7 For Athens see, for example, Fried, “From Xeno-Philia to -Phobia: Jewish Encounters with
the Other”; Oswald, “Foreign Marriages and Citizenship in Persian Period Judah.” Babylonia
and Elephantine will be discussed below.
8 See, for example, Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and
Nehemiah 13,” who distinguishes between Ezra’s “priestly perspective” of an internal conflict
between the exiles and those who were not in exile and Nehemiah’s “political considerations”
about an attempt by the nobles of Judah to advance themselves by “hypergamous” marriages to
Sanballat and Tobiah and to the priests in the Temple. Blenkinsopp, “The Social Context of the
‘Outsider Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” 460, distinguishes between Ezra’s opposition to exogamy
as “chosen deliberately to include elements both inside and outside of the province of Judah …
outsiders in respect to the golah-community,” while “by the time of Nehemiah, it seems that the
integration of the province had proceeded to the point where the chief danger was perceived to
come from outside Judah.” See also Schwartz, “Some Papyri and Josephus.”
9 For example Anderson, “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial
Marriage in Ezra,” 47, sets out “to explore the interpretive challenge posed by such a text to
Christian communities that happen to be African American,” while Ruiz, “They Could Not
Speak the Language of Judah,” reads it from a Hispanic-American perspective.
 What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages? 29

both served during the reign of Artaxerxes I (465–424 BCE), although the exact
chronological relationship between them is unclear.10
On the other hand, I recognize that the book of Ezra-Nehemiah is, ultimately,
a work of religious literature that has a history of composition and editing and
reflects, in the end, the messages and purposes of whoever put it together. From
this point of view, it does not really matter whether we are discussing the outlook
of Ezra and Nehemiah as historical characters, or as literary creations who parrot
the outlook of the writer of the book of Ezra-Nehemiah. Both the characters
and the writer were Judeans, living in Persian-Period Yehud, and reacting to the
reality of time as they understood it. I also recognize that the writer/editor of
Ezra-Nehemiah was dependent on the source-material available to him, at which
we can only guess. That said, I believe that we can consider the book of Ezra-
Nehemiah to be a reflection of the issues that were important to its writers, of
which “intermarriage” was certainly one.

2. The Ezra Account

With all of this in mind, let us turn to Ezra 9–10. Chapter 9 presents itself as a
first-person account:
After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of
Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of
the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.11 For they have
taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons. Thus the holy
seed12 has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands, and in this faithlessness the officials
and leaders have led the way.” When I heard this, I tore my garment and my mantle, and
pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words
of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around

10 For which see Demsky, “Who came First, Ezra or Nehemiah?: The Synchronistic Ap-
proach.” Of course many scholars are much more skeptical. See for example Fried, Ezra and the
Law in History and Tradition, 8–27; idem, “Who Was Nehemiah ben Hacaliah?,” who sees both
as Persian officials, whose “historical” reality was far removed from the biblical characters who
are described in the book.
11 Eskenazi and Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 9–10,” 268, prefer the JPS translation
of this verse: “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves
from the peoples of the lands whose abhorrent practices are like those of the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the
Amorites” – in other words stating, not that “the peoples of the lands” are Canaanites, but that
they act like Canaanites. In their opinion, the passage does not tell us anything about the wom-
en’s actual identity. See also Becking, Ezra-Nehemiah, 140–141, for a range of opinions on the
identity of these peoples.
12 As Becking, “On the Identity of the ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra 9–10,” 32, has shown, the
term “holy seed” itself can be seen as a combination of two “traditional descriptions of Israel”:
“holy nation” and “seed of Abraham.”
30 Yigal Levin

me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. At the evening sacrifice I got up from
my fasting, with my garments and my mantle torn, and fell on my knees, spread out my
hands to the Lord my God. (Ezra 9:1–5)13

Ezra then prays to God, confesses the sins of the people compared to God’s
ongoing grace, and begs for God’s mercy.
At this point, several comments are in order. As many have pointed out, both
the language and content of the chapter are rather Deuteronomic, influenced
especially by Deut 7:1–4:
When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy,
and he clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites,
the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and
more numerous than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you
defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show
them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or
taking their daughters for your sons,14 for that would turn away your sons from following
me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he
would destroy you quickly.

However, since the seven Canaanite nations listed in Deut 7 no longer existed
at the time of Ezra, the list was “updated” by the addition of the Ammonites,
the Moabites, the Egyptians and the Edomites (as a probable correction of
“Amorites”), as listed in Deut 23:4 and 8 [ET 3 and 7], but with a twist: there,
Israel is instructed not to marry Ammonites and Moabites even to the tenth
generation, but not to abhor Edomites and Egyptians, who may be married after
three generations.15 Here, all four nations are clumped together as “the peoples
of the lands with their abominations.” What gets lost in the translation but is
obvious in the Hebrew, is that the words translated “abhor” there and “abom-
ination” here are the same word – tʿb: ‫ לא תתעב‬there and ‫ תועבותיהם‬here.16 An
additional point worth noting, is that while Deut 7:1–4 forbids intermarriage
with the “seven nations” specifically so that Israelites would not be seduced into

13 All biblical quotes are from NRSV unless otherwise stated.

14 Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era,” 36, states that
“it is important to remember that an opposition to foreign women … is at the same time an
affirmation of women who belong to the group … Ezra-Nehemiah considers foreign husbands
as abhorrent as foreign wives. Consequently, the Judahites solemnly pledge not only to keep
their sons from marrying outside the group but likewise to prevent their daughters from doing
so. The intermarriage prohibitions of Ezra-Nehemiah are consistently symmetrical … this dis-
missal of foreign wives is an opposition to some women in favor of others.”
15 Of course literally speaking, “no Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the
assembly” does not refer specifically to marriage, but this was certainly the way that it was
interpreted by the author of Ezra-Nehemiah. For the interpretation of this clause see Tigay,
Deuteronomy, 209–210, 477–480.
16 Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis,” 255, considers this term to be “late,”
appearing predominantly in Ezekiel (5:9, 11; 7:3, 8; 16:22, 36 and more) and in the Priestly
texts of the Pentateuch (Lev 18:24–30).
 What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages? 31

worshipping those nations’ gods, Ezra 9 actually does not mention the danger of
apostasy, but rather refers to the very act of mixing with the “unclean” nations of
the land as a grave sin in its own right.17
Chapter 10 of Ezra then goes on to tell, this time in the third person, how one
Shechaniah son of Jehiel encouraged Ezra to take action, which eventually, after
many months, led to the men of the community “putting out”18 their foreign
wives and their children, with the final section listing a total of 17 priests, 6
Levites, 4 other temple functionaries and 84 “Israelites,” meaning laity, who had
married these “foreign women.”19

3. The Nehemiah Narrative

The story in Nehemiah 13 is quite different. Here, coming right after the ded-
ication of the wall,
On that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it
was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God,
because they did not meet the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against
them to curse them. (Neh 13:1–2)

In other words, Deut 23:4 once again. But in this account, when the people
heard, they, without any resistance, “separated from Israel all those of foreign
descent” – without asking whether they were Moabite, Ammonite or something
else. The story then goes on to tell us that Eliashib the priest, who was related by
marriage to Tobiah, had taken advantage of Nehemiah’s absence and had com-
mandeered a chamber in the Temple complex for his kinsman’s use. Nehemiah
threw out Tobiah’s belongings and restored the chamber to its original function,
making some additional adjustments as well. We should note that Tobiah’s status
as a “foreigner” is not specified in this section, and Eliashib’s transgression seems
17 Although even the term “marriage” is not easy to define in this context. See Southwood,
“The Holy Seed: The Significance of Endogamous Boundaries and Their Transgression in
Ezra 9–10,” 190–196.
18 As noted by Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women,” 152, the verb that is gen-
erally translated “divorce” here is lehoṣiʾ rather than the usual šlḥ or grš; Japhet understands
this to mean that the marriages were “annulled” rather than terminated by divorce. This has
consequences for the legal status of the children.
19 Although, famously, the final verse of MT Ezra 10, which, if translated literally, would
read, “All of these had taken foreign women, among whom were women, and they placed sons,”
or, as rendered by KJV, “All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives by
whom they had children,” or NJPS, “All these had married foreign women, among whom were
some women who had borne children” (with a note: “Meaning of Heb. uncertain”), does not
actually state that the foreign women and their children had been sent away. This is “amended”
by 1 Esd 9:39, which ends with καὶ ἀπέλυσαν αὐτὰς σὺν τέκνοις, adopted by NRSV here as “and
they sent them away with their children.” See the discussion in Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah,
200–201.
32 Yigal Levin

to be one of administrative corruption, not specifically “religious.” He is also

not censured for intermarrying with Tobiah’s family. However, preceded as it is
by the reference to Deut 23:4, and with the readers’ foreknowledge that Tobiah
is an “Ammonite servant” (Neh 2:10, 19, “servant” apparently meaning a royal
official), the reader is obviously meant to be alert to the issue.20 But it is only
after the description of Nehemiah’s Sabbath enforcement, that the issue of mixed
marriages takes center stage:
In those days also I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab;
and half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod,21 and they did not know to speak
the language of Judah, but spoke the language of various peoples. And I contended with
them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair; and I made them
take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons,
or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not King Solomon of Israel
sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and
he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless, foreign
women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and
act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?” And one of the sons of
Jehoiada, son of the high priest Eliashib, was the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite;
I chased him away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the
priesthood, the covenant of the priests and the Levites. Thus I cleansed them from every-
thing foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; and
I provided for the wood offering, at appointed times, and for the first fruits. Remember
me, O my God, for good. (Neh 13:23–31)

A few comments here: First of all, not a few scholars have suggested that the
mention of Ammon and Moab is secondary, added due to the previous reference
to Deut 23, since the language issue pertains only to “Ashdodite.”22 Second, after
his tantrum Nehemiah also goes on to paraphrase Deut 7, adding to it the his-
torical example of Solomon, whose foreign wives turned him away from God.
And finally, as a counterbalance to the Eliashib-Tobiah affair at the beginning of
the chapter, Nehemiah also chases away a grandson of another Eliashib, this time
the high priest, who was married to the daughter of “Sanballat the Horonite.”
And while the chapter (and in fact the entire book) never states specifically that
Sanballat is a non-Israelite,23 by doing so, he “cleansed them from everything
foreign” and set the Temple back on the right path. However, like Ezra 9, Nehe-
miah 13 also does not specifically refer to the danger of apostasy, despite of its
use of the words ‫החטיאו‬, “made to sin” and ‫למעל‬, “act treacherously” and despite
20 See Edelman, “Seeing Double: Tobiah the Ammonite as an Encrypted Character.”
21 ‫ובניהם חצי מדבר אשדודית‬, literally, “and their sons half speak Ashdodite.” For a discussion
of the identity of this language see Berlejung, “Was ist eigentlich ‘A schdodisch’?”
22 See Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 362; see Becking, Ezra-Nehemiah, 327 and references
there.
23 Or a governor of Samaria, a detail which we know from Josephus and from the Ele-
phantine papyri. See, for example, Dušek, “Archaeology and Texts in the Persian Period: Focus
on Sanballat.”
 What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages? 33

the fact that according to 1 Kgs 11, what King Solomon’s foreign wives did was
to cause him to worship their gods. In other words, where in Deuteronomy the
problem with marrying Canaanite women was the threat of their gods, in Ezra-
Nehemiah the problem lies elsewhere.

4. Who were the Foreign Women?

An additional issue that has generated much discussion is the identity of the “for-
eign women” whom Ezra and Nehemiah wished to remove and whom the author
of the book wished to disqualify as marriage partners. In Ezra 9, they are defined
simply as “foreign,” daughters of “the peoples of the land.” Nehemiah 13:23 is
even more specific: “women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.” Traditionally, this
has been understood to mean that they were “non-Judeans,” members of the
various ethnicities with whom the Judeans shared the Land of Israel. This is
certainly the literal meaning of the text. However in recent years several scholars
have come to assume that behind the text lies an inner-Judean polemic over the
relationship of the golah group of returned exiles with the descendants of the
“remainers,” the Judeans who had not been exiled.24
Broadly speaking, the discourse of recent years has focused on the issues of
“identity.” Many scholars have come to see the ‫בני הגולה‬, the returnees, as a small
minority of exilic Jews that were forced upon a majority of unexiled “remainers.”25
According to this view, this minority golah group, with its exile-formed Torah,
did not consider the “remainers” to be legitimate Israelites, even if they did wor-
ship Yahweh in their own fashion. The same applied to the Yahweh-worshipping
inhabitants of Samaria and of Transjordan. And so while, over time, some of the
golah relaxed their self-imposed boundaries, Ezra and Nehemiah, both newly
arrived and in possession of renewed royal charters, reinforced the separationist
party.
But “identity,” as scholars have come to realize, is an ill-defined concept.
Recent work by Becking, Rom-Shiloni, Southwood and others, has emphasized
how the term “identity” is used differently in different circles; anthropologists,
religion scholars, political historians and philosophers each have their own

24 This position has been adopted by Eskenazi and Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in
Ezra 9–10,” 285; Grabbe, “The Reality of the Return: The Biblical Picture Versus Historical
Reconstruction,” 305. Washington, “The Strange Woman (‫נכריה‬/‫ )אשה זרה‬of Proverbs 1–9 and
Post-Exilic Judean Society,” 231–238, agrees that the women were unexiled Judeans, but thinks
that the threat was primarily economic: control of property.
25 As asserted by Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land. Despite the fact that from an archae-
ological perspective Barstad’s ideas have been largely discredited (for example, by Faust, Judah
in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation), they are still often cited. See, for
example. Barmash, “Success and Failure, Resistance and Submission: Nuanced Identities and
Relationships during the Return and Early Persian Period,” 19.
34 Yigal Levin

multiple definitions.26 One of the problems with the term is that “identity” seems
to work in many different but overlapping circles: personal, kinship, ethnicity,
religion, language, nationality, citizenship, class, gender and so on. Each of these
can be viewed through either an etic or an emic perspective. Which, in our case,
brings us back to the question of sources; since the biblical material has been
analyzed extensively, we should look for additional insights elsewhere.
“Elsewhere” in this case mostly means inscriptions, although we do have Jose-
phus’ intriguing story of the brother of the Jerusalem high priest who married
the daughter of Sanballat of Samaria (Ant 11.302–303).27 Fortunately, the known
corpus of Persian-period texts from both the Land of Israel and from the diaspo-
ra, which can supply us with information on the “identity” of ‫( יהודים‬the single
Hebrew term can be translated as Yehudites, Judahites, Judeans or Jews as the
occasion and conventional English usage warrant) and their neighbors seems
to be expanding continuously.28 These papyri, ostraca, stamp impressions and
clay tablets provide invaluable information on onomastica, religious affiliations,
marital choices and other identity-factors.29

5. Boundaries in the Diaspora: Babylonia

Beginning with the eastern diaspora, the collection of documents belonging to

the Murašû merchant family of Nippur in the fifth century BCE, roughly con-
temporaneous with Nehemiah and Ezra, has been known since 1893.30 In these
texts, Judeans, as defined by their Yahwistic names, make up no more than 3 %
of the population.31 More recently, these documents have been supplemented
by tablets from āl-Yahudu and neighboring settlements.32 These tablets date to

26 For several examples of the complex ways in which “identity” can be defined, see Beck-
ing, “Yehudite Identity in Elephantine,” 403–404; Southwood, “The Holy Seed,” 195–197;
idem, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10, 19–72 (there focusing on the
definitions of “ethnicity”). Hobson, “Were Persian-Period ‘Israelites’ Bound by Ethnicity or
Religious Affiliation?,” 39–41, attempts to differentiate between “ethnicity” as defined by Sparks
(Ethnicity and Identity) and “religious affiliation.”
27 See Tammuz, “Will the Real Sanballat Please Stand Up?”
28 For example, see Dušek, “Archaeology and Texts in the Persian Period: Focus on
Sanballat.”
29 For comments on names as indications of Judean identity see Beaulieu, “Yahwistic
Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomastics.”
30 For the Murašû texts in general see Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû
Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia.
31 Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods According
to the Babylonian Sources, 23, 78; Pearce, “‘Judean’: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian and
Achemenid Babylonia?,” 270–271.
32 For preliminary publications see Pearce, “New Evidence for Judeans in Babylonia”;
Lambert, “A Document from a Community of Exiles in Babylonia”; Abraham, “An Inheritance
Division among Judeans in Babylonia from the Early Persian Period.”
 What Did Ezra and Nehemiah Have against Mixed Marriages? 35

the sixth century, and thus help us bridge the gap between the Neo-Babylonian
period and the Persian period. Studies by Zadok, Pearce and others have shown
that about 15–20 % of the names in these tablets are Yahwistic and presumably
Judean.33 However, since it is fairly common for immigrant minorities to adopt
local names, any number of the 50 % of Babylonian names could be those of
Judeans as well. This is comparable to such names as Mordechai, Sheshbazzar
and Zerubabbel of the Bible.34 There are also quite a few father-son pairs,
in which one is a Judean name and the other is Babylonian, including those
with such theophoric elements as Bēl and Šamaš. Again, not surprising; some
Judeans, following accepted practice, may well have adopted worship of the local
deities in addition to their own, while for others, such names that we identify
as “theophoric” may, to them, have been “just local names” with no particular
religious significance. But despite Beaulieu’s comments on the limitations of
theophoric names as indicators of identity,35 we should add, that names are
often a significant identity marker among minorities, such as the Judeans in
Babylonia undoubtedly were.36 Thus, when comparing the sixth-century āl-
Yahudu texts with the fifth-century Murašû tablets, we can see the percentage
of Judean-Yahwistic names getting smaller, as the status of the people mentioned
changed from serfs living on crown lands to independent merchants.37 Overall,
this indicates a process of acculturation or assimilation, although there is not
enough data for any real quantitative analysis.38 This, together with such biblical
evidence as the lists of returnees in Ezra-Nehemiah, which include a fairly large
number of non-Judean names,39 shows that at least from an onomastic point-
of-view, some Judeans in Babylon did not maintain strong identity-boundaries.
33 Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods; Pearce,
“New Evidence for Judeans in Babylonia”; idem, “‘Judean’: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian
and Achaemenid Babylonia?,” 267–277.
34 For which see Demsky, “Double Names in the Babylonian Exile and the Identity of
Sheshbazzar.”
35 Beaulieu, “Yahwistic Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomastics,” 247.
36 In fact, Beaulieu himself (“Yahwistic Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomastics,”
254–255) provides an interesting parallel: the existence of “Assyrian” names with the theo-
phoric element Aššur in Uruk, where a temple honoring this god may have been established
after the conquest of Assyria by the Neo-Babylonians. Another interesting parallel can be found
among Jews in third-century BCE Egypt, among whom, as pointed out by Hacham (“The Third
Century BCE: New Light on Egyptian Jewish History from the Papyri,” 133), “a typically Jewish
name corroborates Jewishness; on the other hand, a non-Jewish name means nothing and can-
not negate its bearer’s Jewishness … even if the spouses of Jews bear non-Jewish – Egyptian or
Greek – names, their Jewishness should be assumed unless otherwise stated.”
37 The status of the āl-Yahudu Judeans as dependents tied to the land is demonstrated by
use of ḫaṭru terminology such as šušānû, “individuals who are not quite chattel slaves nor fully
free.” See Pearce, “‘Judean’: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Babylonia?,”
270–274.
38 See also Bloch, “Judeans in Sippar and Susa during the First Century of the Babylonian
Exile,” who shows that naming patterns also depended on social status and other factors.
39 Becking, “On the Identity of the ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra 9–10,” 35–36, emphasizes the
36 Yigal Levin

6. Boundaries in the Diaspora: Elephantine

The Elephantine material, at least the papyri, are much better known and have
been studied much more intensively. In addition to the papyri, most of which
represent official correspondence, we also have ostraca, which give us a more
“everyday” look at the community.40 Very briefly, these materials represent a
community of ‫יהודיא‬, “Judahites,” who were part of a Persian military garrison
on the island. There is no agreement among scholars as to the time or circum-
stances of the founding of the colony.41 They lived in proximity to Arameans,
native Egyptians and others. They wrote, and presumably spoke, in Aramaic.
They worshiped in a temple of YHW, which was situated near a temple of the
Egyptian deity Khnum, and at least in the ostraca were known to bless and
swear in the name of both.42 They also apparently recognized gods of “Bethel,”
Eshembethel, Herembethel and Anathbethel, as well as an Anath-Yaho.43 They
knew of the Passover and the Sabbath, although we have no idea what form these
observances took.44 In Lemaire’s opinion, their “ethnicity was mainly apparent
as marked by religion and ritual.”45 They were in contact with officials in both
Yehud and Samaria. This, and the fact that in the so-called “Passover Letter,” a
certain official in the Persian administration whose name Hananiah can be seen
as an indication of his identity as a “Judean,” calls the Judeans of Elephantine
“my brothers,”46 showing a solidarity that assumed a shared identity of some
sort.
However, they also seem to have maintained rather flexible ethnic boundaries.
Many of them bore Yahwistic names, but some clearly did not. For example, in
one papyrus, a certain “Ananiah son of Azariah, a servitor (‫ )לחן‬of YHW the God
who is in Elephantine the Fortress” asks “Meshullam son of Zakkur, an Aramean
of Syene” to give him his maidservant Tamet (also called “Tapamet”) as a wife.
The name Tamet/Tapamet is Egyptian, and she is often assumed to have been

appearance of names with foreign theophoric elements such as Mordechai (Marduk), Bilshan
(Bel) and Barqos (Qos), while Beaulieu “Yahwistic Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomas-
tics,” 255–256, actually downplays their significance.
40 For a summary see Lemaire, “Judean Identity in Elephantine: Everyday Life according
to the Ostraca.”
41 For a summary see Becking, “Yehudite Identity in Elephantine,” 404–405.
42 Lemaire, “Judean Identity in Elephantine,” 366, 369. There are also three cases of swear-
ing “by the life of YHW Ṣebaʾot.”
43 Becking, “Yehudite Identity in Elephantine,” 413–414, although Porten, Archives from
Elephantine, 173–179, followed by Grabbe, “Elephantine and the Torah,” 127–128, believe that
these are “aspects of Yhw,” rather than actual deities.
44 Grabbe, “Elephantine and the Torah,” 129–132; Lemaire, “Judean Identity in Elephan-
tine,” 370; Becking, “Yehudite Identity in Elephantine,” 406–409.
45 Lemaire, “Judean Identity in Elephantine,” 372.
46 Kratz, “Judean Ambassadors and the Making of Jewish Identity: The case of Hananiah,
Ezra, and Nehemiah,” 424–426.
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such grateful return as usually falls to mortal mediators. The father
and son were at vulgar loggerheads on the vulgar but important
subject of money. Living together, each wished that the other should
contribute more towards keeping up the household in as much royal
state as could be had for the money. Each also wished the other to
send away the confidential servants that other most wished to keep,
and neither would yield. Subsequently, the London papers tell how
the Cardinal went off in a great huff and princely state, and how he
was received in the ‘Italian cities with guns, like a king’s son,’ as he
was held to be. The ‘King,’ his father, is described as ‘greatly
distressed, having always counted on the affection of his son.’ At
another time came one of those scraps of news which always kept
alive a feeling of hope in the bosoms of Jacobites. ‘The Grand
Pretender’ had been for two hours in conference with the Pope, ‘on
receipt of important despatches from his Eldest Son and Heir,
Edward. The despatches are at present kept a secret.’ They were
supposed to be favourable to something, for the younger son had
promised to return. Probably some tears fell from soft Jacobite eyes
in London, at reading that, as ‘the son tarried, the father stood
patiently waiting for him, in the Hall of his House, and wept over him
when he came.’ The good-natured Pope was almost as much
touched.
All the honours conferred on the Cardinal of York in
ROMAN NEWS
Rome, and all the royal and solemn ceremonies IN LONDON
which took place on the occasion, were duly reported PAPERS.
in the London papers. The father seems to have been
warmly desirous that dignities should be heaped on the younger
son’s head. The cardinal affected, perhaps felt, reluctance. On his
gracefully yielding, the ‘Grand Pretender’ made him a present of a
set of horses.
Reports of the death of Charles Edward had been ripe enough.
The suspense was relieved when, in March, 1753, news reached
London from Rome that the old Pretender had received letters from
his son, with the information that the writer was well; but, says the
‘Weekly Journal,’ ‘the Chevalier de St. George don’t absolutely
discover where his son is.’ That he had known of his son’s
whereabout, from the first, is most certain; but he didn’t absolutely
discover it to every enquirer.
A personage of some note was in London this
A SON OF
year, the eldest son of Rob Roy,—James Drummond ROB ROY.
Macgregor. He seems to have previously petitioned
Charles Edward for pecuniary help, on the ground of suffering from
the persecution of the Hanoverian government, and to have been
willing to serve that government on his own terms. In the introduction
to ‘Rob Roy,’ Sir Walter Scott says that James Drummond
Macgregor made use of a license he held to come to London, and
had an interview, as he avers, with Lord Holdernesse. ‘His lordship
and the Under-Secretary put many puzzling questions to him, and,
as he says, offered him a situation, which would bring him bread, in
the government’s service. This office was advantageous as to
emolument, but in the opinion of James Drummond, his acceptance
of it would have been a disgrace to his birth, and have rendered him
a scourge to his country. If such a tempting offer and sturdy rejection
had any foundation in fact, it probably related to some plan of
espionage on the Jacobites, which the government might hope to
carry on by means of a man who, in the matter of Allan Breck
Stewart, had shown no great nicety of feeling. Drummond Macgregor
was so far accommodating as to intimate his willingness to act in any
station in which other gentlemen of honour served, but not
otherwise; an answer which, compared with some passages of his
past life, may remind the reader of Ancient Pistol standing upon his
reputation. Having thus proved intractable, as he tells the story, to
the proposals of Lord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered
instantly to quit England.’
The son of Rob Roy, hated and suspected by the JACOBITE
Jacobites, got over to Dunkirk, but he was hunted PARAGRAPHS.
thence as a spy. He succeeded in reaching Paris,
‘with only the sum of thirteen livres for immediate subsistence, and
with absolute beggary staring him in the face.’
The hopes of the friends of the Stuarts were encouraged by a
paragraph in the London sheets of 1754 stating, that though the
Chevalier was suffering from sciatica, he was well enough to receive
a stranger (in June), ‘who, by the reception he met with, was
supposed to be a person of distinction. Two days later, the banker,
Belloni, had a long private conference with the Chevalier. What
passed was not known, but what followed was; namely, a large sum
of money was advanced by the banker.’ It is easy to imagine how
paragraphs like the above stirred the pulses at the Cocoa Tree and
at St. Alban’s coffee-house.
The Jacobite interest was kept up in 1755 by paragraphs which
showed that the family were well with such a civil potentate as the
King of Spain, and with such a religious one as the Pope. The King
of Spain, it was said, had conferred a benefice on Cardinal York,
worth 6,000 piastres yearly. In the autumn the London papers
announced that ‘The Chevalier de St. George, who enjoyed the
Grand Priory of England, of the Religion of Malta, which gave him an
active and passive voice in the election of Grand Master, had
resigned it, and conferred it on a Commander Altieri. The collation
has been confirmed by the Pope.’
In the same year London was stirred by the HUME’S
publication of Hume’s ‘History of England,’ which was ‘HISTORY.’
denounced as a Jacobite history by the Whigs, and it
was not warmly received by the Jacobites, as it did not sufficiently
laud their historical favourites. ‘It is called Jacobite,’ wrote Walpole to
Bentley, ‘but in my opinion it is only not George-abite. Where others
abuse the Stuarts, he laughs at them. I am sure he does not spare
their ministers.’
But it was still to the news sent from Rome that the Jacobites
looked most eagerly for indications of what might be doing there, and
the significance of it. Under date of January 3, 1756, the paragraph
of news from Rome, the Eternal City, in the ‘Weekly Journal,’
informed all who were interested, that an Irish officer had arrived
there with letters for the Chevalier de St. George, had received a
large sum of money, on a bill of exchange, from Belloni, and had set
out again with the answers to those letters. Again, on January 17th,
the Chevalier’s friends in London were told that two foreigners had
called on him with letters, but that he refused to receive either. ‘He
refused to yield to their most earnest entreaties for an interview.’
‘Read’ communicates a no less remarkable circumstance to the
Jacobite coffee-houses. ‘Tho’ people have talked to him very much
within the last two months of an expedition on Scotland or Ireland, he
has declared that those kind of subjects are no longer agreeable to
him, and that he should be better pleased to hear nothing said about
them.’ Then came news of the Chevalier being sick, and the Pope,
not only sending his own physician, but stopping his coach to
enquire after the exile’s health. Occasionally, the paragraph of news
is communicated by a ‘Papist,’ as, for instance, in an account of the
reception into the Church of Rome of the young son of the Pasha of
Scutari, where it is said that Cardinal York performed the ceremony
of receiving the dusky convert, who had abandoned a splendid
position ‘to come,’ says the writer, at Rome, ‘and embrace our holy
religion.’
For the purpose of reading such intelligence, the AT ROME.
Jacobites opened feverishly the sheet which oftenest
satisfied their curiosity. This had to be satisfied with little. Throughout
’56 and ’57 they learnt little more than that the Pope had been ill, and
that the Chevalier and the Cardinal drove daily from their villas to
leave their names at the dwelling of the Pontiff. Next, that the quaint
Jacobite, Sir William Stanhope, had actually had an audience of the
Pope, to whom he had presented a gold box full of rhubarb; and
reasons were assigned why the contents might prove more useful
than the casket. Then, clever English lords had established
themselves in great magnificence in Roman palaces, or in villas as
magnificent as palaces; and, still more encouraging news for the
Cocoa Tree and St. Alban’s coffee-house, the King of Spain had
increased the income of Cardinal York by 1,200 crowns yearly,
drawn from the revenue of the bishopric of Malaga. On the north side
of Pall Mall, and on the lower terrace of the west side of St. James’s
Street, or beneath the Walnut tree walk in Hyde Park,—places still
much affected by Jacobites, imagination may see them wearing
congratulatory looks on the English lords collecting near the
Chevalier, and the Spanish monarch contributing money to the
Cardinal. If these things were without significance, where should
they look for incidents that would bear cheerful interpretation?
 Then ensued long silence, broken only by brief
HOPES AND
announcements of archiepiscopal (and other) INTERESTS.
honours heaped upon Cardinal York, and of splendid
dinners in the Quirinal, with Pope and all the Cardinals, strong
enough to sit up, as the joyous host and guests. Not a word,
however, is to be traced with reference to Charles Edward; nor was it
looked for, at the time, by the ‘quality,’ who were contented with ‘the
happy establishment.’ On Christmas Day of this year, Walpole wrote:
‘Of the Pretenders family one never hears a word. Unless our
Protestant brethren, the Dutch, meddle in their affairs, they will be
totally forgotten; we have too numerous a breed of our own to need
princes from Italy. The old Chevalier ... is likely to precede his rival
(George II.), who, with care, may still last a few years; though I think
he will scarce appear again out of his own house.’
But the hopes and the interest of the London Jacobites had to be
maintained, and, through the London papers, the hopes and the
interest of the adherents of the Stuarts, in the country. The
aspirations of such sympathisers were hardly encouraged by an
incident of which Walpole made the following note, to Conway, in
January, 1759: ‘I forgot to tell you that the King has granted my Lord
Marischal’s pardon, at the request of M. de Knyphausen. I believe
the Pretender himself could get his attainder reversed, if he would
apply to the King of Prussia.’
In the Chatham Correspondence, it is stated that ILLNESS OF
the King of Prussia had said he should consider it a THE OLD
personal favour done to himself. The pardoning of CHEVALIER.
such an able military Jacobite as Keith, Earl
Marischal, indicated that the ‘Elector of Hanover’ considered
Jacobitism as dead, or at least powerless. At the same time, the
more mysteriously secluded Charles Edward kept himself, the more
curiosity there was among ‘curious’ people in London to learn
something about him and his designs, if he had any. The apparently
mortal illness of the Chevalier de St. George, in May 1760, caused
some of the London papers to publish a sort of exulting paragraph,
not over the supposed dying Chevalier, but over the fact, announced
in the words: ‘We shall soon know where the young Pretender is!’ Of
the father’s impending death no doubt was made. Was he not
seventy-two years of age? And had he not for thirty years of the time
been worn out with anxieties caused by his sons? One saucy
paragraph included the saucier remark:—‘He has left his estates,
which may be Nothing, to his eldest son, whom many think is
Nobody.’ But all this was premature. The old prince did not die this
year. George II. did. The grandson of the latter began to reign in
October. The Jacobites laughed at his new Majesty’s boast of being
born a Briton, for ‘James III.’ was more purely British than he; born in
London, and son of a father who was also born in this metropolis, he
was less of a foreigner than George III., whose parents were purely
German. The Jacobites made the most of this difference; and when
such of them as were in Hyde Park saw the king’s horse nearly
break his rider’s neck by suddenly flinging him out of the saddle,
those spectators probably thought of the results of King William’s fall
from horseback, and hoped that heaven was on their side. The
newspapers admiringly recorded the presence of mind of the young
king, who, though shaken, went to the play the same night, to calm
the supposed anxieties of his faithful people.
Much as Jacobites had railed at the late ‘Elector of ACCESSION
Hanover and his bloody son,’ and had devoted both OF GEORGE
of them to eternal perdition in hell, a sort of serio- III.
comic assurance that their malice was ineffective
seems to have been insinuated in the first words of the anthem, set
to music by Boyce, for the king’s (or the elector’s) funeral; namely,
‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall
be no torment touch them.’ On the first occasion of George III. going
to the Chapel Royal (Sunday, November 17th), the Rev. Dr. Wilson
took his text from Malachi i. 6, where the prophet speaks of the
rebellious spirit and irreligiousness of Israel, a text which Nonjurors,
and especially the Nonjuring clergy, might well take to themselves.
After ‘Chapel’ there was a ‘Court.’ Of the latter, the
KING AND
papers say: ‘By the insolence of the soldiers many PEOPLE.
persons were not suffered to go into the Gallery. All
those that paid for seeing his Majesty were admitted, a practice, it is
hoped, will soon be put a stop to.’ The price of admission is not
stated; but among those who had gathered about the Park were
nearly a thousand tailors, who, rather than stoop to work for five
shillings a day, refused to work at all. The newspapers protested that
it was a thousand pities a press-gang or two had not been in the
Park to sweep these fellows into the ships that lacked men. If they
would not work for themselves on liberal wages, they ought to be
compelled to serve their country on less. There was no doubt about
their bravery, for the London tailors had, not long before, brilliantly
distinguished themselves under Elliot, at Gibraltar. The hint of the
amiable journalists was acted on, on the Coronation day, in 1761.
While the British-born king of a free people, over whom, he said, he
was proud to reign, was being crowned (with his young queen) in the
Abbey, ruffianly press-gangs were making very free with that people
all around the sacred edifice; seizing whom they would; knocking on
the head all who resisted; flinging them into vessels on the river, and
so despatching them to Gravesend, the Nore, and thence to men-of-
war on various stations!
One visitor is alleged to have been present at this CHARLES
coronation, who certainly was not an invited, nor EDWARD AT
would he have been a welcome, guest. This visitor is WESTMINSTE
said to have been Charles Edward himself! As he is R.
also credited with two or three earlier visits to London, the question
as to the truth of the reports may be conveniently considered here.
We will only remark that, in the closing years of the reign of
George II., Jacobites, who had neither been harmless nor intended
to remain so if opportunity favoured them, were allowed to live
undisturbed. As Justice Foxley remarked to Ingoldsby, they attended
markets, horse-races, cock-fights, fairs, hunts, and such like, without
molestation. While they were good companions in the field and over
a bottle, bygones were bygones.
 CHAPTER XIV.

(1744 to 1761.)
subject of great interest in the life of Charles Edward
presents itself to consideration in the alleged romantic,
but particularly absurd, incidents of his various
appearances in London, or England. These doubtful
visits commence with the year 1744, and close with the
no longer young Chevalier’s supposed presence at the coronation of
George III., 1761.
In the former year, there was residing at Ancoats, near
Manchester, Sir Oswald Mosley, who had been created a baronet by
the Hanoverian king, George I., in 1720. At the end of nearly a
quarter of a century, if common report do not lie, he seems to have
been a thorough Jacobite, with Charles Edward for his guest, in
disguise! The ‘fact’ is first recorded in Aston’s ‘Metrical Records of
Manchester,’ in the following doggrel lines:—
In the year ’44, a Royal Visitor came,
Tho’ few knew the Prince, or his rank, or his name—
To sound the opinions and gather the strength
Of the party of Stuart, his house, ere the length
Then in petto to which he aspired
If he found the High Tories sufficient inspired
With notions of right, indefeasive, divine,
In favour of his Royal Sire and his line.
No doubt, he was promis’d an army, a host!
But he found to his cost, it was all a vain boast;
For when he return’d in the year ’45,
For the crown of his father, in person to strive,
When in Scottish costume at the head of the clans
He marched to Mancunium to perfect his plans,
The hope he had cherish’d, from promises made,
 Remains to this day as a debt that’s unpaid.
A foot-note states that the prince was the guest of CHARLES
Sir Oswald for several weeks, ‘no doubt, to see the EDWARD IN
MANCHESTER
inhabitants of Manchester and its vicinity, who were .
attached to the interests of his family.’
At that time, a girl was living in Manchester, who was about
fourteen years of age. For seventy succeeding years she used to
relate that in 1744, a handsome young gentleman used to come
from Ancoats Hall into Manchester, every post day, to the inn and
post house of her father, Bradbury, for letters or to read the papers
from London, in which papers, as he sat apart, he seemed to take
unusual interest. The girl admired his handsome countenance, his
genteel deportment, and the generous spirit which led him to give
her half-a-crown for some trivial chamber-maid service. In the
following year, when Charles Edward marched past her father’s
house at the head of his troops, the girl made outspoken recognition
of him as the liberal donor of the welcome half-crown. The father, ill-
pleased at her demonstration, drove her in, and silenced her with
threats; but when all danger had ceased to exist, he acknowledged
that the handsome young fellow with the genteel deportment and the
young Chevalier were one and the same.—Such is the substance of
a corroborative story told by a later Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart., in
‘Family Memoirs,’ printed in 1849 for private circulation.
In Miss Beppy Byrom’s Diary, she narrates an MISS
interview which some of the leading Jacobites of BYROM’S
Manchester had with the prince when he was there in DIARY.
the ’45 rebellion. These included her celebrated
father, John Byrom, Deacon, the father of the unlucky young captain
who was afterwards executed on Kennington Common, Clayton, and
others. The day was St. Andrew’s Day, Saturday, November 30th.
Many ladies were making crosses of St. Andrew; Miss Byrom
dressed in white to go and see the prince, who witched her with his
noble horsemanship. The horse seemed self-conscious of bearing a
king’s son. After the review, the lady and others went to church. ‘Mr.
Skrigley read prayers. He prayed for the King and Prince of Wales,
but named no names.’ There was much mild dissipation afterwards,
with too much restlessness to partake of settled meals, but infinite
sipping of wine to Jacobite healths. In the evening, after having seen
the prince at table, the lady and many companions drank more
healths in the officers’ room. ‘They were all exceeding civil,’ she
says, ‘and almost made us fuddled with drinking the P.’s health, for
we had had no dinner. We sat there till Secretary Murray came to let
us know the P. was at leisure, and had done supper; so we all had
the honour to kiss his hand. My papa was fetched prisoner to do the
same, so was Dr. Deacon. Mr. Cattell and Mr. Clayton did it without.
The latter said grace for him. Then we went out and drank his health
in another room,’ &c., &c. This record is quoted in ‘Notes and
Queries,’ May 1, 1869, and as it makes no reference to the alleged
visit of 1744 (only one year before), it may be taken as demolishing
the earliest legend of the legendary visits of Charles Edward to
England.
The next in order of date is a very undefined visit THE VISIT IN
of 1748. In support of it there appears that 1748.
exceedingly, questionable witness, namely,
Thicknesse.
Crazy Philip Thicknesse, in his crazy Memoirs, on the title-page of
which he crazily announced that he had the misfortune to be the
father of George Thicknesse Tuchet. Lord Audley (the son George
had succeeded to the ancient barony, through his deceased mother)
was the man who, on his son refusing to supply him with money, set
up a cobbler’s stall, opposite the son’s house, with a board on which
was painted, ‘Boots and shoes mended in the best and cheapest
manner, by Philip Thicknesse, father of Lord Audley.’ This had the
desired effect. In the farrago, called his Memoirs, Thicknesse says
he knew ‘an Irish officer who had only one arm.’ In a note, the name
Segrave is given as that of the officer; but this editorial addition has
been transferred to the text by all writers who have quoted crazy
Philip’s account. The officer with only one arm assured Thicknesse
that he had been with the Prince in England, between the years
1745 and 1756, and that ‘they,’ Prince and one-armed officer, ‘had
laid a plan of seizing the person of the King, George II., as he
returned from the play, by a body of Irish chairmen, fifteen hundred
of whom were to begin a revolution, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ Philip,
however, with a return of sense, remarks: ‘I cannot vouch for the
truth of this story.’ Yet out of this unfounded story grew a report that
Charles Edward was in London in 1748, which was between the
years above named. Philip Thicknesse was in his 70th year when he
began to put together his book, which was published in 1788. He
reminds his readers, that he ‘never pretended to be an accurate
writer.’ The reminder was hardly necessary.
The next witness, in chronological order, is Dr. THE VISIT IN
King, the Chevalier’s great agent, who gives the year 1750.
1750, as that in which Charles Edward came to
London. This information was first furnished in a book which was
published in 1818, under the title, ‘Political and Literary Anecdotes of
his own time.’
The editor is anonymous. He gives this account of how he came
in possession of the MS. ‘A Friend’ (no name given) ‘who was a long
time a prisoner in France, met with the following work in the
possession of two ladies’ (not named, but who are described as)
‘relations of the writer, Dr. King. From the interesting passages which
he was permitted to extract, the Editor’ (as destitute of name as the
others) ‘conceived that the original might be well worthy of
publication, he therefore desired his friend to procure it, and found,
on a comparison of the hand-writing with that which is well
ascertained to be Dr. King’s, in the account books of St. Mary Hall, in
Oxford,—that there is every reason to suppose this MS. to have
been written by Dr. King himself.’ Four nameless persons, and only
‘a reason to suppose’ among them.
Dr. King’s life extended from 1685 to 1763; and it DR. KING AND
was towards the close of his life, that he collected the THE
anecdotes from the manuscript of which the editor CHEVALIER.
(1818) was permitted to take extracts. Where the
original manuscript is to be found is not mentioned. The only
reference to the young Chevalier of any importance is in the
paragraph in which the writer leads us to infer that the prince was in
England in September, 1750, at Lady Primrose’s house. ‘Lady
Primrose,’ he says, ‘presented me to ——’ Why this mysterious
dash, when frequent mention is made of Charles Edward, in
description of character, as ‘the Prince’ or ‘Prince Charles?’ It is also
stated that the prince was King’s guest, and was recognised by
King’s servants. For a Jacobite, the doctor is as severe a dissector of
the young Chevalier as the bitterest Whig could desire. He speaks ill
of the illustrious visitor, morally and intellectually. As to his religion,
King says he was quite ready to ‘conform’ to the religion of the
country; that he was a Catholic with the Catholics, and with the
Protestants, a Protestant. This was exactly what Lord Kilmarnock
said before he was executed. King further states that Charles
Edward would exhibit an English Common Prayer Book to Protestant
friends; to the Catholics he could not have afforded much pleasure
by letting Gordon, the Nonjuror, christen his first child, of which Miss
Walkenshawe was the mother. Such an easy shifting of livery, from
Peter’s to Martin’s, and back again to Peter’s, was natural enough in
the case of a man, who had been brought up at Rome, but who was
placed under the care of a Protestant tutor, who of express purpose
neglected his education, and who, if King’s surmise be correct, made
a merit of his baseness, to the Government in London, and was
probably rewarded for it by a pension. Dr. King speaks of the prince’s
agents in London, as men of fortune and distinction, and many of the
first nobility, who looked to him as ‘the saviour of their country.’
This visit to London in 1750, if it really was ever
MEMORANDA.
made, is supposed to be referred to, in one of several
memoranda for a letter in the prince’s handwriting, preserved with
other Stuart papers, in Windsor Castle; and first published by Mr.
Woodward, Queen’s Librarian, in 1864. It runs thus: ‘8thly. To
mention my religion (which is) of the Church of England as by law
established, as I have declared myself when in London, the year
1750.’ This memorandum is at the end of a commission from the
writer’s father dated 1743, to which commission is appended a copy
of the ‘Manifesto’ addressed by the prince to Scotland, in 1745. At
what date the memorandum was written there is no possibility of
knowing. If the prince, as was his custom, used only the initial of the
name of the city, it is possible that Liége was meant; and, after the
word ‘when,’ the writer may have omitted the name of one of his
many agents of ‘fortune and distinction,’ who looked to him as the
saviour of their country.
There are other memoranda for letters, supposed
FURTHER
to refer to the above visit. For example:—‘Parted, ye MEMORANDA.
2nd Sept. Arrived to A, ye 6th, parted from thence, ye
12th Sept. E, ye 14th, and at L, ye 16th. Parted from L, ye 22nd, and
arrived at P. ye 24th. From P, parted ye 28th, arrived here ye 30th
Sept.’ In this memorandum the initials are supposed to stand for
Antwerp, England, London, and Paris. There is nothing to prove that
they do; and, it may be said that A and L quite as aptly represent
Avignon and Liége. However this may be, dates and supposed
places are entirely at variance from other dates and places which are
taken as referring to this identical visit of the young Chevalier to
London, in 1750. ‘Ye 5th Sept. O.S. 1750, arrived; ye 11th parted to
D, ye 12th in the morning parted and arrived at B, and ye 13th at P.
R. S. ye 16th Sept. ye 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.’ Here, D and B are
interpreted as signifying Dover and Boulogne, P. is Paris. R. S. have
received no interpretation. It is certain that one of the two records
must be incorrect; and both of them may be.
But, something more definite is reached in a CHARLES
despatch from the British Minister at Florence (Mann), EDWARD’S
which Lord Stanhope published in his ‘Decline of the STATEMENT.
Stuarts.’ The minister, who writes in 1783, describes a
conversation which took place at Florence, between Charles Edward
(then known as Count d’Albany) and Gustavus, King of Sweden, in
the course of which the count told the king that, in September, 1750,
he arrived secretly in London with a Colonel Brett; that together they
examined the outer parts of the Tower, and came to the conclusion
that one of the gates might be blown in by a petard. After which, at a
lodging in Pall Mall, where fifty Jacobites were assembled, including
the Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Westmoreland, the prince said
to these Jacobites, or rather to Gustavus, that if they could have
assembled only 4,000 men, he would have publicly put himself at
their head. He added that he stayed a fortnight in London, and that
the Government were ignorant of his presence there.
 It is to be remembered that this story was told three and thirty
years after the alleged occurrence. The narrator was then an aged
man, whose brains and memory and general health were so
damaged by ‘the drink, the drink, dear Hamlet!’ that not the slightest
trust could be placed in any single word that he uttered in respect to
his past history. He may have dreamed it all, but that any two
gentlemen, the face of one of whom was familiar, from prints and
busts publicly sold, could have so carefully examined the Tower as to
find out where it was vulnerable, without the sentinels having
discovered the same part in the explorers, is surely incredible. The
vaunt of the secret visitor publicly placing himself at the head of an
army of Jacobites, was just such a boast as the brainless drunkard
of 1783 would be likely to make. There is as little reliance to be put
on the statement of the Duke of Beaufort and Earl of Westmoreland
being present at a Jacobite meeting in Pall Mall. The really Jacobite
duke died in 1746. His successor, and also the Earl of Westmoreland
(of the year 1750), may have been often in opposition to the
Government, but no act of their lives would warrant the belief that
they could be insane enough to attend a meeting of half a hundred
Jacobites in Pall Mall, to listen to a project for blowing up the Tower
and pulling down the throne.
Two years after 1750, however, according to the THE VISIT IN
MS. Journal of Lord Elcho, Charles Edward was 1752-3.
again in London, secretly at the house of the very
outspoken Jacobite lady, Lady Primrose. Hume, the historian, says,
in a letter to Sir John Pringle (dated 1773), that he knew with the
greatest certainty that Charles Edward was in London in 1753; his
authority was Lord Marischal, ‘who said it consisted with his certain
knowledge.’ The knowledge was derived from a lady—whom my
Lord refused to name, and whom Hume imagined to be Lady
Primrose. Now, Lady Primrose was the Protestant daughter of the
Dean of Armagh, of Huguenot descent, bearing the name of
Drelincourt. She was the widow of Viscount Primrose who had been
an officer of distinction in the king’s service. Lady Primrose, herself,
was a warm-hearted Jacobite who had given a temporary home in
Essex Street, Strand, to Flora Macdonald, during part of her brief
sojourn in London in 1747. According to this legendary visit of 1753,
Charles Edward, unexpectedly, entered her room, when she was
entertaining a company at cards. He was there unannounced, yet
Lady Primrose called him by a name he assumed! Her object was to
keep him undetected by her friends; but his portrait hung in the
room, and the company identified the visitor. Lord Marischal told
Hume (he thinks, ‘from the authority of the same lady,’ whom Lord
Marischal had refused to name), that the Prince went about the
streets and parks, with no other disguise than not wearing ‘his blue
ribband and star.’ Some years after, Hume spoke of this visit, to Lord
Holdernesse (who in 1753 was Secretary of State). This minister
stated that he received the first intelligence of Charles Edward’s
presence in London from George II.; who may have been
misinformed, and who is reported to have said, ‘When he is tired of
England, he will go abroad again!’ A very unlikely remark. Another
story resembled that of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields’ chairmen, namely,
that in 1753, Lord Elibank, his brother Alexander Murray, and five
dozen associates, were to be employed in carrying off this very
good-natured monarch!
As to the credibility of this story, it is only CREDIBILITY
necessary to remark that, in 1753, Dr. Archibald OF THE
Cameron was hanged in London for being present in STORIES.
Scotland, where mischief was intended; and that, if
the Ministry were so well served by their spies, such as Sam
Cameron was, through whom the Doctor was arrested and executed,
Charles Edward could not possibly have escaped; and his capture
was of great importance at the moment. Moreover, the king was
powerless. It belonged to the Administration to decide whether the
undisguised Prince should be captured or allowed to go free.
Assuming that he was so allowed, he is again CONFLICTING
found in London in 1754. At least, crazy Thicknesse STATEMENTS.
says: ‘that this unfortunate man was in London, about
the year 1754, I can positively assert. He was “at a lady’s house, in
Essex Street;” was recognised in the Park, by a Jacobite gentleman
who attempted to kneel to him, and this so alarmed the lady in Essex
Street, that a boat was procured the same night, in which he was
forthwith despatched to France. Tonnage of boat and captain’s name
not registered.
Later, the date of this last visit is given in a letter, addressed by
Lord Albemarle, British ambassador in Paris, to Sir Thomas
Robinson, namely, May 1754. The writer, in August, 1754, states that
he had been ‘positively’ assured by a discontented Jacobite, that ‘no
longer ago than about three months,’ Charles Edward had been in
London, ‘in a great disguise as may be imagined;’ that the prince had
received friendly notice, at Nottingham, that he was in danger of
being seized, and that he immediately fled. As to the authority, Lord
Albemarle writes:—‘The person from whom I have this, is as likely to
have been informed of it as any of the party, and could have had no
particular reason to have imposed such a story upon me, which
could have served no purpose.’ The ambassador is mistaken. The
purpose of such stories was to keep warm the hopes—fading hopes
—of the Jacobites, and it was not the last story invented with that
purpose in view.
Lastly, there is the story of the prince’s presence at AT THE
the coronation festival of George III., in 1761. CORONATION.
According to some authorities, it was without any
stirring incident. Others say, that very stirring matter indeed sprang
from it, and that much confusion was the consequence.
Walpole, describing the illustrious people, state officers, and
others at the coronation-banquet of George III., September 1761,
pauses at sight of the son of the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock. ‘One
there was ... the noblest figure I ever saw, the High Constable of
Scotland, Lord Errol’ (he had succeeded to this title through his
mother), ‘as one saw him in a place capable of containing him, one
admired him. At the wedding, dressed in tissue, he looked like one of
the Giants in Guildhall, new gilt. It added to the energy of his person
—that one considered him acting so considerable a part in that very
Hall, where, so few years ago, one saw his father, Lord Kilmarnock,
condemned to the block.’ In 1746, Lord Errol, then Lord Boyd, had
fought at Culloden, against his father.
 They who were still of that father’s way of thinking
AT THE
were for long afterwards comforted by a story that BANQUET.
when the King’s Champion proclaimed George III.
king, and challenged all who questioned the right of him so
proclaimed, by throwing down his glove, a Champion of James III.
boldly stept forward, took up the glove, and retired with it
unmolested. The story, so to speak, got crystalised. It is still partially
believed in. It may have arisen out of an incident chronicled in
‘Burke’s Peerage.’ It is there said that, officiating at the coronation as
Constable of Scotland, Lord Errol, by accident, neglected to doff his
cap when the king entered; but on his respectfully apologising for his
negligence, his majesty entreated him to be covered, for he looked
on his presence at the ceremony as a very particular honour.’ This
wears an air of absurdity. However that may be, Scott has made use
of the alleged challenge of the king’s right to his crown.
It occurs in ‘Redgauntlet,’ where Lilias swiftly passes through the
covering lines of Jacobites, takes up the gauntlet, and leaves a
pledge of battle in its stead. But contemporary accounts take no note
of any such occurrence. Walpole, an eye-witness, merely records:
‘The Champion acted his part admirably, and dashed down his
gauntlet with proud defiance. His associates, Lord Talbot, Lord
Effingham, and the Duke of Bedford were woful. Lord Talbot [the
Lord High Steward] piqued himself on backing his horse down the
hall and not turning its rump towards the king; but he had taken such
pains to address it to that duty, that it entered backwards; and, at his
retreat, the spectators clapped, a terrible indecorum.’ This
indecorous clapping, as the Champion (Dymoke) and his knights
backed out of the hall may have been taken by those who were not
aware of the cause as some party expression. Out of
GEORGE AND
it the story of the Jacobite taker-up of the glove may CHARLES
have arisen. The story was told with a difference. A EDWARD.
friend (who is anonymous) informed the Earl
Marischal that he had recognised Charles Edward among the
spectators at the coronation banquet, and had spoken to him. The
prince is said to have replied: ‘I came only out of curiosity; and the
person who is the object of all this magnificence is the one I envy the
least.’ Scott, in a note to the incident in ‘Redgauntlet,’ remarks,
—‘The story is probably one of the numerous fictions that were
circulated to keep up the spirits of a sinking faction. The incident
was, however, possible, if it could be supposed to be attended by
any motive adequate to the risk.... George III., it is said, had a police
of his own, whose agency was so efficient that the Sovereign was
able to tell his Prime Minister, on one occasion, to his great surprize,
that the Pretender was in London. The Prime Minister began
immediately to talk of measures to be taken, warrants to be
procured, messengers and guards to be got in readiness. “Pooh!
pooh!” said the good-natured Sovereign, “since I have found him out,
leave me alone to deal with him.” “And what,” said the Minister, “is
your Majesty’s purpose in so serious a case?” “To leave the young
man to himself,” said George III., “and when he tires, he will go back
again.” The truth of this story does not depend on that of the lifting of
the gauntlet, and while the latter could be but an idle bravado, the
former expresses George III.’s goodness of heart and soundness of
policy.’
Altogether it is very clear that dates, persons, and A
places have been inextricably mixed up in the DISQUALIFICATIO
Jacobite legends of the Chevalier’s visit to London. At N.
the same time there seems to be but one opinion
among all writers, without exception, who have dealt with this subject
hitherto, namely, that the alleged visit of 1750 actually occurred.
Perhaps the best evidence is furnished in the ‘Diary of a Lady of
Quality’ (Mrs. Wynne). The writer’s grandson states that his
grandmother had frequently told him that she had had, from Lady
Primrose herself, full particulars of the visit of Charles Edward to
London in 1750. A few questions, however, might easily break down
even this assertion. After all, the decision must be left to the reader’s
judgment.
Although no overt act answered the Champion’s challenge in
Westminster Hall, the right of George III. to succeed to the crown
was vigorously denied in very High Church coteries. Soon after the
king’s birth, in 1738, he was baptised by Secker, Bishop of Oxford.
Now, Secker was born and bred a dissenter, and did not enter the
Church till after he had been a medical student, and had run a not