“An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Exile”

Criswell Theological Review, 2018

This article organizes the most helpful texts for understanding the idea of ongoing exile during the Second Temple period, and offers five ways in which the themes of exile and restoration matter for Biblical Theology.

2008

This paper analyses the identity and conditions of the Israelite community who did not go into the Babylonian exile. Their identity, religious background, and socioeconomic conditions are investigated. Despite the fact that they were the majority, they were left poor through the redistribution plan of the Babylonians. They continued to worship at the site of the temple, and the people who returned after the exile therefore had no right to exclude them from rebuilding the temple.

HeBAI 9, 2020

Vetus Testamentum, 2023

I argue that the Levitical Prayer offered in Neh 9:5–37 (LP) offers a version of Judean history that does not include the Babylonian exile. Instead, it narrates an unbroken chain of possession of Judean territory that spans from the conquest and settlement of Canaan to the post-monarchic context of the prayer’s composition. Drawing insights from the study of cultural trauma, I make the case that the interpretive importance of such a catastrophic event cannot be assumed for subsequent Judean communities who sought to form a sense of cultural identity through the retelling of a shared past. Potentially traumatic events like the Babylonian exile are not actualized naturally; communal trauma is instead the product of social processes in the present that serve the needs of present and future communities. An elision of the Babylonian exile from a piece of post-monarchic period literature like the LP does not, therefore, require the interpretative conclusion that the prayer was written by the descendants of Judeans who avoided exile and remained in Judea during the sixth century ʙᴄᴇ. Importantly, neither does it exclude the possibility that the LP was produced by a community whose ancestors were displaced and resettled in Babylonia during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. Through this analysis I invite scholars to explore a broader range of interpretative possibilities in their study of Ezra-Nehemiah as a composition and the understanding of the defining elements of Judean identity in the post- monarchic period.

The Babylonian Exile, a pivotal moment in Jewish history, profoundly reshaped Israel's national identity, religious practices, and social structures. It led to the emergence of new theological perspectives, including the rethinking of God's relationship with His people.

In this essay I argue that the development of the Israelite-Judean religion from a set of temple based rituals, laws and traditions to the conventional Judaism, is emerged after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE to the Babylonians. Based on my analyses when the life of the people of Israel came to an end, the history of Judaism began and the conventional Judaism was born.

Texts, Contexts and Readings in Postexilic Literature: Explorations into Historiography and Identity Negotiation in Hebrew Bible and Related Texts (ed. Louis C. Jonker; Forschungen zum Alten Testament II, 53; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2011) 29–61

More than that of any other nation, Jewish identity is based on the imaginaire of a collective memory rather than on a common territory. I intend to examine here the sources of one myth that has had critical infl uence on the establishment of Jewish collective memory and modern Israeli identity. In doing so, I fi nd myself treading a thin line. On the one hand, I am a Zionist loyal to awareness of the need for the existence of the State of Israel. On the other hand, I am deeply troubled by the price paid by the Palestinians for the fulfi llment of this dream. Like many others, I desperately seek a fair solution that will minimize the pain and suffering for both sides.