Introduction

036

Perhaps the greatest disaster to befall ancient Israel was the conquest, at the end of the sixth century B.C.E. and start of the fifth, by the Babylonian empire. The fall of Judah to this new regional superpower occurred in two stages: Major strongholds like the Philistine cities of Ashkelon and Ekron fell to the armies of Nebuchadrezzar (Biblical Nebuchadnezzar) in 604 B.C.E. Jerusalem was besieged in 597 B.C.E. and capitulated to the Babylonians. Under the leadership of the puppet king Zedekiah, the Judahite capital survived another decade. But when Nebuchadrezzar learned that Zedekiah had conspired with other local powers to revolt, he laid siege to Jerusalem again, wearing the people out through starvation and finally breaking through the city walls in 586 B.C.E. The city was burned to the ground and the Temple destroyed. This brought an end to Judah as an independent kingdom, and Babylon expressed its dominion over the defeated Israelites by forcibly relocating them.

Archaeology vividly verifies much of what the Bible records about the Babylonian destruction of cities like Jerusalem and Ashkelon, but it is somewhat less clear—at least to some scholars—just how total the destruction was and how all-encompassing was the dispersion of the Israelites. Were all Israelite cities destroyed, or did some survive? How extensive was the forced migration?

In our November/December 2000 issue, Professor Ephraim Stern of Hebrew University published an important article, “The Babylonian Gap,” BAR 26:06, arguing that the Babylonian destruction of Judah was massive and complete, and that there was no significant cultural or political presence in the region afterwards, until the end of the Babylonian exile under the Persians. Stern is one of Israel’s most prominent archaeologists, the excavator of Tel Dor, editor of the four-volume New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land^a and author of the recently-published volume in the Archaeology of the Land of the Bible series covering the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Periods (732–332 B.C.E.). Stern’s BAR article focuses on the contrast between what he calls the “Babylonian Gap” and the period that followed the Assyrian conquest about a century earlier (late eighth century B.C.E.): “After their conquest, the Assyrians established several provinces in Palestine,” he writes; there is enormous evidence of their presence and influence. The Babylonian destruction was a different story: “The only indications of a Babylonian presence in Palestine are the massive destruction levels the Babylonians left behind,” Stern writes. “The Assyrians 037rebuilt almost every destroyed town … The Babylonians, by contrast, did nothing to reverse the damage … they systematically deported those inhabitants of the region whom they did not kill … In archaeological parlance there is no clearly defined period called ‘Babylonian.’ The [Babylonian] destruction of Judah is followed by the Persian period.”

Professor Joseph Blenkinsopp, a distinguished Biblical scholar recently retired from Notre Dame University, has now written a rebuttal to Stern, questioning the evidence for the totality of the Babylonian destruction of Judah and the idea that the aftermath was really a “gap” in Judahite history and culture. Blenkinsopp is the author of A History of Prophecy in Israel, the recently published Anchor Bible Commentary on Isaiah 1–39, as well as commentaries on Ezekiel and Ezra-Nehemiah. The Babylonian destruction, he says, was not nearly as widespread as Stern claims. Some cities in Philistia and Judah (like Jerusalem and Lachish) were indeed destroyed by the Babylonians, but little else has been archaeologically proven; life went on much as before, he says, when the Assyrians had ruled the roost.

In his response, Stern explains why Blenkinsopp’s reply leaves him thoroughly unconvinced.