Download this PDF file - University of Alberta - Journal Hosting

6JOURNAL OF HEBREW SCRIPTURESWhen I wrote my book, I was confronted with two extremelydivergent opinions: On the one hand, one suggested a total destructionof Judah and a high number of deportees, which significantly reducedthe population of Judah (W.F. Albright, D.L. Smith); on the other hand,others minimized the extent and impact of the deportations andstressed the continuity of life for the great majority in Judah (M. Noth,H. Barstad). Lipschits can now demonstrate that both opinions wereaccurate, but with regard to different parts of the country: Comparedwith the Judean settlements of the 7th century, there were dramaticpopulation losses in Jerusalem and its environs (nearly 90%), largelosses in the Southern Judean hills, the Shephelah, and the Negev(about 75%), a halving of the population in Benjamin, but very littlereduction in the northern Judean hills. Lipschits reckons with a totalloss of 60% and estimates the population of Babylonian Judah at about40,000 inhabitants, compared with some110,000 in the late Judaeankingdom (see table p. 269). Thus, according to him, the Babylonianinvasion had a severe impact on Judah. Judah lost a lot of peoplethrough death, starvation and flight; it lost most of its elite throughdeportation; and, although its new administrative centre was establishedin Benjamin, it lost its largest urban centre, Jerusalem. I am happy thatmy own calculations, which I performed based on more theoreticalconsiderations, are not too different from Lipschits’s results (cf. Israel inExile, 81-90).I am also pleased that Lipschits and I agree on many other details,for example the Babylonian origin of the exilic DeuteronomisticHistory, the Judaean origin of the Gedaliah account and the Jeremiahbiography, and the ideological conflict between these literary units. But,of course, I also differ with him over several points. I would like toname five of them.1. ASSYRIA, EGYPT AND JOSIAHAccording to Lipschits, Egypt immediately established its rule overPalestine and Syria when Assyria withdrew from the Levant (since 627B.C.E.). Following N. Na’aman, he regards Egypt as a “SuccessorState” of Assyria and its legal heir (p. 27). For some scholars such aview is reason enough to deny the possibility of a reform under kingJosiah (e.g., H. Niehr). Nevertheless, Lipschits assumes a “void in thepolitical arena” (p. 361), but stresses that “the ‘intermission’ granted toJudah was brief indeed” (p. 362). Thus, he still reckons with a cultic anda limited national reform under Josiah, but thinks that the king was “anEgyptian vassal in his final years” (p. 362). How can we reconcile bothviews? Were the Egyptians only interested in the coastal plain? If thiswas the case, when did they interfere in the hill country? How shouldsuch Egyptian rule be imaged? Lipschits admits: “It is not clear whatsteps were taken by Psametichus and Necho to solidify their rule incentral and southern Syria, but it seems that, after the finaldisappearance of Assyria, they did not have enough time to consolidatetheir control all the way along the Euphrates” (pp. 362-63). AfterNebuchadrezzar’s victory in Karkemish “Necho was forced towithdraw inside the borders of Egypt” (p. 363). Thus, can we really