Lecture 8

       Persian Jerusalem was the period of the 2^nd Temple. There are no non-biblical texts dealing with Jerusalem for this entire period that have been discovered. Aramaic was now going to be the dominant spoken language for Jews coming back to Judah. Prophet Ezekiel had visions of a mobile ark, a journey to Jerusalem, and a temple. The Ark of the Covenant was a mobile shrine of god but Ezekiel had envisioned a different ark with wheels in Ezekiel 1:15. There is no mention of what ever happened to the Ark after the exile of the Jews, it just disappeared. Here we see Ezekiel replace it with a “mobile ark” vision. King Cyrus was the Persian king who opposed and conquered the Babylonian empire. He had wondered why the Jews were in Persia/Babylon, so he sent them home with money to rebuild the temple. Cyrus wanted to be seen as a liberator not a conqueror. In Isaiah 44 god says of cyrus , “he is my shepherd, he shall carry out all my plans.” So Cyrus wanted to build second temple for god. The only problem here is that Cyrus was not a son of David or a part of the Davidic line, so the covenant was technically still broken. Archeologists discovered the Cyrus cylinder which says Marduk seized Babylon with Cyrus, which gives proof of Cyrus. The Jerusalem temple was rebuilt between 520-515 BCE under Darius I. Other second temples were built as well such as the Utopian, Samaritan, Leontopolis, and Qumran. There is evidence of other temple building through the Elephantine letter, which was asking for permission to build temple for Yahu in elephantine. The Dead sea scrolls also mention the temple of Israel and call for the construction for another temple. Through all of this Jerusalem was largely depopulated because of heavy taxation by the Persian empire and conflicts with Samaritans.