Judaean Sentence Examples

Lastly it should be recollected that the entire body of the fragments of tradition and literature belonging to northern Israel has come down to us through the channel of Judaean recensions.

The closing years of the Judaean kingdom and the final destruction of the temple (586 B.C.) shattered the Messianic ideals cherished in the evening of Isaiah's lifetime and again in the opening years of the reign of Josiah.

The writings are the result of a continued literary process, and the Israelite national history has come down to us through Judaean hands, with the result that much of it has been coloured by late Judaean feeling.

It is precisely in Saul's time that the account of the Judaean monarchy, or perhaps of the monarchy from the Judaean standpoint, now begins.

History saw in David the head of a lengthy line of kings, the founder of the Judaean monarchy, the psalmist and the priest-king who inaugurated religious institutions now recognized to be of a distinctly later character.

Judaean tradition dated the sanctity of Jerusalem from the installation of the ark, a sacred movable object which symbolized the presence of Yahweh.

When the narratives describe the life of the young David at the court of the first king of the northern kingdom, when the scenes cover the district which he took with the sword, and when the brave Saul is represented in an unfavourable light, one must allow for the popular tendency to idealize great figures, and for the Judaean origin of the compilation.

Gradually strengthening his position by alliance with Judaean clans, he became king at Hebron at the time when Israel suffered defeat in the north.

Yet again, Saul had been chosen by Yahweh to free his people from the Philistines; he had been rejected for his sins, and had suffered continuously from this enemy; Israel at his death was left in the unhappy state in which he had found it; it was the Judaean David, the faithful servant of Yahweh, who was now chosen to deliver Israel, and to the last the people gratefully remembered their debt.

The varied narratives, now due to Judaean editors, preserve distinct points of view, and it is extremely difficult to unravel the threads and to determine their relative position in the history.

In the former a separate history of the northern kingdom has been combined with Judaean history by means of synchronisms in accordance with a definite scheme.

Next, the Judaean compiler regularly finds in Israel's troubles the punishment for its schismatic idolatry; nor does he spare Judah, but judges its kings by a standard which agrees with the standpoint of Deuteronomy and is scarcely earlier than the end of the 7th century B.C. (§§ 16, 20).

Similarly the thread of the Judaean annals in Kings is also found in 2 Samuel, although the supplementary narratives in Kings are not so rich or varied as the more popular records in the preceding books.

The Judaean compiler, with his history of the two kingdoms, looks back upon the time when each laid the foundation of its subsequent fortunes.

Thus we may contrast the favourable Judaean view of Jehoshaphat with the condemnation passed upon Ahab and Jezebel, whose daughter Athaliah married Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat.

The Judaean annals then relate Hazael's advance to Gath; the city was captured and Jerusalem was saved only by using the Temple and palace treasure as a bribe.

Jehoash, it is said, turned away from Yahweh after the death of Jehoiada and gave heed to the Judaean nobles, " wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for their guilt," prophets were sent to bring them back but they turned a deaf ear.

The Judaean narratives do not allow us to fill the gap or to determine whether Judaean policy under the regent Jehoiada would be friendly or hostile to Israel, or whether Judaean nobles may have severed the earlier bond of union.

That the Judaean compiler has not given fuller information is not surprising; the wonder is that he should have given so much.

Moab was probably tributary; the position of Judah and Edom is involved with the chronological problems. According to the Judaean annals, the " people of Judah " set Azariah (Uzziah) upon his father's throne; and to his long reign of fifty-two years are ascribed conquests over Philistia and Edom, the fortification of Jerusalem and the reorganization of the army.

Tradition, in fact, is concentrated upon the rise of the Judaean dynasty under David, but there are significant periods before the rise of both Jehoash and Uzziah upon which the historical records maintain a perplexing silence.

If the impression left upon current thought can be estimated from certain of the utterances of the court-prophet Isaiah and the Judaean countryman Micah, the light which these throw upon internal conditions must also be used to gauge the real extent of the religious changes ascribed to Hezekiah.

In the long reign of his son Manasseh later writers saw the deathblow to the Judaean kingdom.

The book of Kings gives the standpoint of a later Judaean writer, but Josiah's authority over a much larger area than Judah alone is suggested by xxiii.

The scantiness of historical tradition makes a final solution impossible, but the study of these years has an important bearing on the history of the later Judaean state, which has been characteristically treated from the standpoint of exiles who returned from Babylonia and regard them selves as the kernel of " Israel."

It would certainly be unwise to draw a sharp boundary line between the two districts; kings of Judah could be tempted to restore the kingdom of their traditional founder, or Assyria might be complaisant towards a faithful Judaean vassal.

But Israel after the fall of Samaria is artificially excluded from the Judaean horizon, and lies as a foreign land, although Judah itself had suffered from the intrusion of foreigners in the preceding centuries of war and turmoil, and strangers had settled in her midst, had formed part of the royal guard, or had even served as janissaries (§ 15, end).

To this catastrophe may be due the fragmentary character of old Judaean historical traditions.

Although the records preserve complete silence upon the period now under review, it is necessary to free oneself from the narrow outlook of the later Judaean compilers.

But the history which the Judaean writers have handed down is influenced by the later hostility between Judah and Samaria.

In 561 B.C. the captive Judaean king, Jehoiachin, had received special marks of favour from Nebuchadrezzar's son Amilmarduk.

The Judaean Sheshbazzar (a corruption of some Babylonian name) brought back the Temple vessels which Nebuchadrezzar had carried away and prepared to undertake the work at the expense of the royal purse.

Tobiah and his son Johanan were related by marriage to Judaean secular and priestly families, and active intrigues resulted, in which nobles and prophets took their part.

Nevertheless the undaunted Judaean pressed on unmoved by the threatening letters which were sent around, and succeeded in completing the walls within fifty-two days.2 In the next place, Nehemiah appears as governor of the small district of Judah and Benjamin.

Jerusalem had suffered some serious catastrophe before Nehemiah's return; a body of exiles returned, and in spite of interference the work of rebuilding was completed; through their influence the Judaean community underwent reorganization, and separated itself from its so-called heathen neighbours.

Bibilical history ends with the triumph of the Judaean community, the true " Israel," the right to which title is found in the distant past.

It is from this narrower standpoint of an exclusive and confined Judah (and Benjamin) that the traditions as incorporated in the late recensions gain fresh force, and in Israel's renunciation of the Judaean yoke the later hostility between the two may be read between the lines.

It is replaced by Chronicles, which, confining itself to Judaean history from a later standpoint (after the Persian age), includes new characteristic traditions wherein some recollection of more recent events may be recognized.

The post-exilic priestly spirit represents a tendency which is absent from the Judaean Deuteronomic book of Kings but is fully mature in the later, and to some extent parallel, book of Chronicles (q.v.).

He is related by marriage with south Judaean clans of Caleb, Jezreel, and probably Geshur.

On the other hand, the first collection of " Davidic " psalms taken as a whole would be perfectly appropriate in the worship of a Judaean community of Hasidim in the Maccabaean period.

In thus assigning the first collection of psalms to some Judaean community of Hasidim in the earlier Maccabaean period we need not conclude that all the psalms contained in this collection were first composed at this time.

It is possible that these last-mentioned psalms were originally an appendix to the Judaean collection and have been removed from their original place to after the other Levitical psalms.

Further, while on the one side the institution of the monarchy is subsequently regarded as hostile to the preeminence of Yahweh, Samuel's connexion with the history of David belongs to a relatively late stage in the history of the written traditions where events are viewed from a specifically Judaean aspect.

That Micah lived in the Shephelah or Judaean lowland near the Philistine country is clear from the local colouring of i.

In the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (445 B.C.), Nehemiah the royal cup-bearer at Shushan (Susa, the royal winter palace) was visited by friends from Judah and was overcome with grief at the tidings of the miserable condition of Jerusalem and the pitiful state of the Judaean remnant which had escaped the captivity.

Between the central Judaean plateau and the latter lay the " lowlands (Shephelah), a district open equally to Judaeans and Philistines alike.

Jesus withdraws to the Judaean desert, but soon returns, six days before Passover, to Bethany; Mary anoints Him, a crowd comes to see Him and Lazarus, and the hierarchs then plan the killing of Lazarus also.

But the document has intricate textual peculiarities and may be the Judaean adaptation of a list originally written from the standpoint of the north-Israelite monarchy.

And so too it is not through the material organization of the Judaean kingdom that Isaiah looks for deliverance from Assyria.

There is sufficient evidence that down to the last age of the Judaean monarchy practices not essentially different from divination were current in all classes of society, and were often in the hands of men who claimed to speak as prophets in the name of Yahweh.

If Cain is the eponym of the Kenites it is quite possible that Abel was originally a South Judaean demigod or hero; on this, see Winckler, Gesch.

The Biblical usage appears to show that the terms "Canaanites" and "Amorites" were used synonymously, the former being characteristic of Judaean, the latter of Ephraimite and Deuteronomic writers.

The Judaean David, for his part, sought to cultivate friendly relations with Ammon, and tradition connects him closely with Moab.

They include the rugged bare mass of Gerizim (2849 ft.), the smoother cactus-clad cone of Ebal (3077), and farther south Tell `Asur (3318) at which point begins the Judaean range.

To the south of it begins the subdivision of the Judaean mountains now known as Jebel el-Khalil, from Hebron (el-Khalil), which stands in an elevated basin some 500 ft.

The dependence of Judaean sovereignty upon these districts was inevitable; the resources of Jerusalem obviously did not rely upon the small district of Judah alone.

But the Judaean historians have successfully concealed the course of events, although, as has long been recognized, there was some movement upwards from the south of Judah of groups closely tion of related to Edomite and kindred peoples of South New Palestine and Northern Arabia.

Old tradition suggests the " schools of the prophets " at Jericho, Gilgal and Bethel, and in fact the proximity of these places, especially Bethel, to Judaean soil may be connected with the friendly and sometimes markedly favourable attitude to Judah in these narratives.

The interest of the narratives clings around north Judah and Benjamin, and more attention is given to the rise of the Judaean dynasty, the hostility of Saul, and the romantic friendship between his son Jonathan and the young David of Bethlehem.

The oldest nucleus of historical tradition appears to belong to Samaria, but it has been adjusted to other standpoints or interests, which are apparently connected partly with the half-Edomite and partly with the old indigenous Judaean stock.'

Its standpoint, too, varies, the phases being now northern or wider Israelite, now half -Edomite or Judaean, and now anti-Samarian.

That the pre-Deuteronomic sources are to be identified with the Judaean (J, or Yahwist) and Ephraimite (E, or Elohist) strands of the Hexateuch is, however, not certain.

To this succeeds a noteworthy example of the Deuteronomic treatment of tradition in the achievement of Othniel the only Judaean "judge," The bareness of detail, not to speak of the improbability of the situation, renders its genuineness doubtful, and the passage is one of the indications of a secondary Deuteronomic redaction.

After the destruction of Jerusalem the Judaean Rabbinic schools took refuge in the Galilee they had heretofore despised.

That the older sources (which often prove to be composite) are actually identical with the Yahwist or Judaean (J) and the Elohist or Ephraimite (E) narratives (on which see Genesis) is not improbable, though, especially as regards the former, still very uncertain.

But points of resemblance between Joshua the invader and Saul the founder of the (north) Israelite monarchy gain in weight when the traditions of both recognize the inclusion or possession of Judah, and thus stand upon quite another plane as compared with those of David the founder of the Judaean dynasty.

Jacob is otherwise known as Israel and becomes the father of the tribes of Israel; Joseph is the father of Ephraim and Manasseh, and incidents in the life of Judah lead to the birth of Perez and Zerah, Judaean clans.

It The sympathies of these traditions are as suggestive as their presence in the canonical history, which, it must be remembered, ultimately passed through the hands of Judaean compilers.

The movement from the south, which seems to account for a considerable cycle of the patriarchal traditions, belongs to the age after the downfall of the Israelite and(later)the Judaean monarchies when there were vital political and social changes.

The interest is then transferred to David, the founder of the Judaean dynasty, and his early life is narrated with great wealth of detail.

But the incident was evidently unknown to the author of chap. xv., and in this subordination of the history of Saul to that of David, in the reshaping of writings by specifically Judaean hands, we have a preliminary clue to the literary growth of the book.

The persistent emphasis upon such features as the rejection of Saul, his enmity towards David, the latter's chivalry, and his friendship for Jonathan, will partly account for the present literary intricacies; and, on general grounds, traditions of quite distinct origin (Calebite or Jerahmeelite; indigenous Judaean; North Israelite or Benjamite) are to be expected in a work now in post-exilic form.'

In general, it appears that those narratives wherein the histories of Saul and David are combined-very much in the favour of the latterwere originally distinct from those where (a) Saul's figure is more in accord with the old poem from the Book of Jashar, and (b) where David's victories over prehistoric giants and his war like movements to Jerusalem pave the way for the foundation-from a particular Judaean standpoint-of his remarkably long dynasty.

The first step is the recognition of a specific Deuteronomic redaction in Joshua-Kings, an intricate process which extended into the post-exilic age.4 Certain phenomena suggest that the first compilation was made outside Judah-in Israel, whereas others represent a Judaean and anti-Israelite feeling.

Jericho is the only considerable settlement in the lower valley, and it lies some distance west of the stream on the lower slopes of the Judaean heights.

And though there was positive gain in the removal of idolatrous and corrupt modes of worship, there was also positive loss in the disappearance of this old genial phase of Hebrew social life and worship. It involved a vast difference to many a Judaean village when the festival pilgrimage was no longer made to the familiar local sanctuary with its hoary associations of ancient heroic or patriarchal story, but to a distant and comparatively unfamiliar city with its stately shrine and priesthood.

But the specific independent Judaean standpoint treats the unification of the two divisions as the work of David who leaves the heritage to Solomon.

The striking differences between Samuel and Kings are due to differences in the writing of the history; independent Israelite records having been incorporated with those of Judah and supplemented (with revision) from the Judaean standpoint (see Chronicles; Kings; Samuel).

The Judaean records have obscured the history since the days of Omri's dynasty, when Israel and Judah were as one, when they were moved by common aims and by a single reforming zeal, and only Israel's vengeance gives the measure of the injuries she had received.

It needs little reflection to perceive that the position of Jerusalem and Judah was now hardly one of independence, and the conflicting chronological notices betray the attempt to maintain intact the thread of Judaean history.

But the Judaean records do not allow us to trace its independent history with confidence, and our estimate can scarcely base itself solely upon the accidental fulness or scantiness of political details.

In the subsequent disasters of Israel (§ 15) we may perceive the growing supremacy of Judah, and the Assyrian inscriptions clearly indicate the dependence of Judaean politics upon its relations with Edom and Arab tribes on the south-east and with Philistia on the west.

It is naturally uncertain how far the traditions of David can be utilized; but they illustrate Judaean situations when they depict intrigues with Israelite officials, vassalage under Philistia, and friendly relations with Moab, or when they suggest how enmity between Israel and Ammon could be turned to useful account.

But the curtain is raised for too brief an interval to allow of more than a passing glimpse at the restoration of Judaean fortunes; not until the time of Nehemiah, about 140 years after the fall of Jerusalem, does the historical material become less imperfect.

The Judaean view pervades the present sources, and whilst its David and Solomon ruled over a united land, the separation under Jeroboam is viewed as one of calf-worshipping northern tribes from Jerusalem with its one central temple and the legitimate priesthood of the Zadokites.

Thus, the south Judaean or south Palestinian element shows itself in Judaean genealogies and lists; there are circumstantial stories of the rehabilitation of the Temple and the reorganization of cultus; there are fuller traditions of inroads upon Judah by southern peoples and their allies.

The language employed in the Targum of Onkelos is, admittedly, Palestinian or Judaean, and since language and thought are ever closely allied, we may conjecture that the current Judaean exegesis, which, in part at least, must go back to the 2nd century A.D., was not without its influence on the Babylonian translation.

According to one view (Stade, Wellhausen, Guthe, &c.) only the Joseph tribes were in Egypt, and separate tribal movements (see JuDAH) have been incorporated in the growth of the tradition; the probability that the specific traditions of the Joseph tribes have been excised or subordinated finds support in the manner in which the Judaean P has abridged and confused the tribal lists of Ephraim and Manasseh.

This is analogous to the Judaean adaptation of the prophetical treatment of Saul's life, and it also reflects certain priestly rivalries (see Levites).