From Hadesh Vol.1, Issue No. 3
By: Jacob Levin
In the previous issue, I suggested that the Four Exiles not only influenced Israel, but influenced all the world, even with no contact. Here, I intend to support that claim by (1) submitting a skeletal mechanism by which the exile spiritually influences the other nations and (2) presenting several historical examples of distant nations experiencing similar social and intellectual developments as the dominant nation during roughly similar time periods.
First, the skeletal spiritual mechanism is the process by which the exilic ideas permeate distant nations. Each step can have infinitely more detail, but these are the bones of the process:
Israel surrenders its “tongue” to the dominant nation. The tongue is how one interacts with others and even with oneself. So the “national tongue” would include foreign policy, news, or common language.
Israel’s leadership is taken by the dominant nation, either physically or intellectually.
Israel’s exile is finalized through some action against the Temple.
Israel, being first among the nations, brings the other nations under the dominant nation as well.1
The Torah not only conveys the laws of Israel, but even the laws of the universe, through stories of the Israelite nation. Most of Kabbalah and Chassidut rely heavily on stories in the Torah to model spiritual realities. (Abraham is Hesed, etc.) The Torah’s archetype for exile is the Egyptian slavery. Thus, all exiles should follow the same pattern.
The exile progresses as follows: Joseph is sold by his brothers, and is brought to Egypt; the brothers all come with Jacob to settle in Egypt– however, Judah is sent ahead. Those who came to Egypt with Jacob were 70 souls.
The first step in the mechanism– the tongue– is the sale of Joseph. The second step– the leadership– is that of Judah, and the third step– the Temple– is Jacob. The fourth step is that Jacob brought 70 souls to Egypt. These 70 souls parallel the 70 nations. When Israel goes into exile, the other nations do, too.
The Babylonian exile begins with conquest, making King Jehoiakim into a vassal.2 This is the first step, that of Joseph, since the Kingdom of Judah’s foreign policy– and possibly its internal politics– was determined by the dominant nation, Babylon. After Jehoiakim, Babylon appoints his son, Jehoiachin, as king, and three months later abducts him (and most of the nobility), settling him in Babylon. This is the step of Judah; the leadership is brought into exile. Finally, the destruction of the First Temple exiles Jacob, bringing the 70 nations with him.
A major Babylonian idea that permeated the world is that the stars have profound impact on humanity, even to the point of them being mirrors of each other.3 For instance, the zodiac is completely Babylonian in origin. This idea of earth mirroring heaven is also present in China from around the same time period, though they had no contact with ancient Babylonia,4 as the Unity of Heaven and Humanity.5
The steps of the Persian exile are the most subtle, as this exile was the least oppressive. There are two reasonable options for the first step, which is Joseph’s descent: Ezra’s legislation that someone should translate the Torah into Aramaic as it is being read; or his legislation that all Torah scrolls should be written in Assyrian script. Either way, Israel sacrificed its tongue to a foreign power by adopting the lingua franca of the Achaemenid Empire. Then, Nehemiah the governor is recalled to the Persian capital. This is much more subtle than Babylon’s step of Judah. Nehemiah later returns to discover that the Temple’s sanctity had been violated by Tobiah the Ammonite. Though Nehemiah rectifies the situation, the exile nevertheless sets in. The Temple being desecrated in any way effects the step of Jacob.
A major Persian idea is that of interpreting traditional text from non-traditional viewpoints.
The period of the Persian exile lines up with what is called the Axial Age. During that time, China experienced the Hundred Schools of Thought, including Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Mo Di. In India, Buddhism and Jainism developed, and nearly all of the Upanishads, major Hindu texts, were written. Zoroaster6 roamed Persia along with Cyrus the Great. Among the most famous Greeks, only Thales and Solon precede this era– all subsequent Greek philosophy, statecraft, literature, and engineering belong to the Axial Age. In Israel, the Men of the Great Assembly edited and canonized the Tanakh, standardized the liturgy, and almost fully invented the religion of Judaism as we know it. All of these philosophies, works, and thinkers claimed to be reformatting traditional, ancient knowledge.7
The Book of Esther, set during this period, contains a major plot point of reinterpreting language. Though Haman was killed, his letter still prevails as legislation by royal edict. Mordechai brilliantly reinterprets the letter, codifying it as the official, royal interpretation of the law.8 Additionally, the Babylonian Talmud, though not composed during this time period, was composed under the Persian empire, and features much more argumentation and reinterpretation of Mishnaic text than its Jerusalem counterpart.
The Greek exile began with Alexander’s conquest. According to legend, Simon the Just came out to greet Alexander, and promised that all Jewish boys born during that year would carry the new emperor’s name, thus ensuring his support of the Jews.9 This would be the step of Joseph. For those who do not accept this legend, there is an alternative, which is very well established historically: the composition of the Septuagint. The Torah was translated by about seventy elders into Greek, and it had been used by the Jews of Alexandria since.10 By submitting to the foreign language, the Jews were surrendering their tongue. This occurred on the 8th day of the 10th month, which is Tebet, and many would fast on this day in commemoration.11
The step of Judah is similarly varied. In about a five year period, three High Priests all entered Greek society one way or another. Onias and Jason vied for the High Priesthood. Onias won, becoming Onias III, but when threatened by a Hellenizing official in the Temple, he fled to Antioch, the capital of Greek Syria.12 His son Onias IV fled to Alexandria, the capital of Greek Egypt (where he would found the Oniad Temple);13 and Jason, who remained in Jerusalem as High Priest, was an ardent Hellenizer.14 The desecration of the Temple by Antiochus IV Epiphanes is the step of Jacob. Greece is more subtle than Babylon and Rome, but less subtle than Persia, in accordance with the principle that the more severe the exile, the less subtle the steps.
An idea from the Greek exile is that of purity. Greek art, architecture, music, and even philosophy are based on the concept of purity. Their statues are idealized versions of real things. Their architecture and music are heavily mathematical and geometrical. The concept of the Platonic ideal has its origins in Greece. In Israel, this manifested in the Hellenized Sadducees being very strict on taharah.15 Literally, taharah means purity, as in “zahav tahor”, pure gold, as opposed to a gold alloy.
The Roman, or Edomite, exile is possibly the least subtle. Pompey enters Jerusalem in 63 BCE, making Judea a vassal of Rome and dictating Judea’s succession laws. Herod becomes king in 37 BCE– the king himself is Edomite. And in 70 CE, the Second Temple is destroyed.
It is most difficult to identify a Roman idea, since we are surrounded by it, much like a fish in water. Nevertheless, I submit that a major Roman idea is that of empiricism. If the Romans saw a foreign practice succeed, they would adopt it, whether it be military, social, legal, or even religious. Many foreign deities were adopted by the Romans, and Roman prayers even accounted for uncertainty about the god’s name, or even whether the god existed.16 Atheism is only possible in this exile because to the Romans, an idea (even a god) is only real if it accurately describes physical reality. This is exactly the scientific method: the physical observation comes first– any ideas come later to justify the occurrence.
These foreign ideas– empiricism, purity, textual interpretation, microcosms– aren’t bad. To varying degrees, all of them exist natively in Israel. But this Tisha b’Av, we should at the very least be mindful of foreign influence and ponder how redemption might affect Israelite thought.
II Kings 24:1
Jean Bottéro, Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods, trans. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 141. Also, cf. the original Greek terms of macrocosm and microcosm.
By virtue of Chinese astrology, zodiac, and calendar (~600 BCE) being entirely different from the Babylonian zodiac, astrology, and calendar (early 1st millennium BCE), it is extremely unlikely they had any significant contact.
Yao, Xinzhong (2000). An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press. p. 140-141.
Though recent scholarship has questioned the traditional dating of Zoroaster to this time period, it is far from conclusive.
Analects 7.1; SN 12.65; Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads (London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Harper & Row, 1953), 24.; cf. the Platonic concept of anamnesis.
Malbim on Esther 8:11-12
Yoma 69a. Interestingly, Josephus quotes the legend for a different High Priest (Antiquities 11:8:5).
Malka Z. Simkovich, Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 109.
Shulchan Aruch OC 580:2
II Maccabees 4:29-39
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Onias IV.”
Antiquities 12:5:1
Eyal Regev, “The Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Sacred: Meaning and Ideology in the Halakhic Controversies between the Sadducees and Pharisees,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 9 (2006): 128.
Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid, Book 2, line 351. In addition, I highly recommend the series of videos by Portable Orange on this topic.