Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period Negotiating Identity in an International Context

1. Judean Identity and Ecumenicity: The Political Theology of the Priestly Document
2. Torah and Identity in the Persian Period
3. The Absent Presence: Cultural Responses to Persian Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean
4. Ethnicity and Identity in Isaiah 56–66
5. Trito-Isaiah’s Intra- and Internationalization: Identity Markers in the Second Temple Period
6. From Ezekiel to Ezra–Nehemiah: Shifts of Group Identities within Babylonian Exilic Ideology
7. Israel’s Identity and the Threat of the Nations in the Persian Period
8. The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra–Nehemiah
9. The Holy Seed: The Signifiance of Endogamous Boundaries and Their Transgression in Ezra 9–10
10. What Do Priests and Kings Have in Common? Priestly and Royal Succession Narratives in the Achaemenid Era
11. Yahwistic Names in Light of Late Babylonian Onomastics
12. “Judean”: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian and Achemenid Babylonia?
13. Some Observations on the Traditions Surrounding “Israel in Egypt”
14. Judean Identity in Elephantine: Everyday Life according to the Ostraca
15. The Interaction of Egyptian and Aramaic Literature
16. Yehudite Identity in Elephantine
17. Judean Ambassadors and the Making of Jewish Identity: The Case of Hananiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah
18. Negotiating Identity in an International Context under Achaemenid Rule: The Indigenous Coinages of Persian-Period Palestine as an Allegory
19. Judaeans, Jews, Children of Abraham
20. The Controversy about Judean versus Israelite Identity and the Persian Government: A New Interpretation of the Bagoses Story (Jewish Antiquities XI.297–301)
21. Surviving in an Imperial Context: Foreign Military Service and Judean Identity
22. ʾel-mĕdînâ ûmĕdînâ kiktābāh: Scribes and Scripts in Yehud and in Achaemenid Transeuphratene
23. Jewish Identity in the Eastern Diaspora in Light of the Book of Tobit
24. The Identity of the Idumeans Based on the Archaeological Evidence from Maresha

In April, 2008, an international colloquium was held at the University of Heidelberg?the fourth convocation of a group of scholars (with some rotating members) who gathered to discuss the status of Judah and the Judeans in the exilic and postexilic periods. The goal of this gathering was specifically to address the question of national identity in the period when many now believe this very issue was in significant foment and development, the era of the Persian/Achaemenid domination of the ancient Near East.   This volume contains most of the papers delivered at the Heidelberg conference, considering the matter under two rubrics: (1) the biblical evidence (and the diversity of data from the Bible); and (2) the cultural, historical, social, and environmental factors affecting the formation of national identity.   Contributors: K. Schmid, J. Schaper, A. C. Hagedorn, C. Nihan, J. Middlemas, D. Rom-Shiloni, J. Wöhrle, Y. Dor, K. Southwood, D. N. Fulton, P.-A. Beaulieu, L. E. Pearce, D. Redford, A. Lemaire, J. F. Quack, B. Becking, R. G. Kratz, O. Tal, J. Blenkinsopp, R. Albertz, J. L. Wright, D. S. Vanderhooft, M. Oeming, and A. Kloner.   Earlier volumes in the series of conferences are: Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, and Judah and the Judeans in the in the Fourth Century B.C.E.