The Babylonian Exile – 3 / A Temple in Babylon

This raises the question of cultic or religious activities among the exiles in Babylonia. From a hoard of papyri known as the Elephantine papyri, we know that a Jewish temple existed in Egypt at Elephantine (Yeb) during the fifth century BCE From Josephus we know that in the Hellenistic period another Jewish temple was built in Egypt at Leontopolis. We also learn from Josephus of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim. The Deuteronomic restriction on multiple shrines and the command to make pilgrimage to and perform cultic rites at only one place (Deuteronomy 12) was interpreted as applying only to worship in the land of Canaan, not outside. It thus leaves open the question of worship in the Diaspora.

It is sometimes suggested that the synagogue (as a substitute for the temple) came into being at this time. But there is no specific evidence for this, and the question has been debated with no clear resolution. Part of the difficulty stems from the lack of agreement on exactly what is meant by synagogue: Is it the institution known from later times, with clearly defined functions relating to the reading of the law and prayers, or is it simply a meeting place for community activities? Whichever, the origins of the synagogue are obscure. Nor is it clear that its original purpose, functionally speaking, was to provide a place of worship for those who either did not have a temple or found it inconvenient to get to a temple. There were, for example, synagogues in Jerusalem during the Roman period, before the destruction of the Second Temple; such synagogues clearly were not needed as substitutes for the nearby Temple and its rituals. Hence, many of the functions associated with later synagogues (dating after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE), such as Torah study, law, charity and hostelry, may also be associated with the Second Temple equivalent. From the earliest periods (the sixth century BCE to the Hellenistic period), typical gathering places around city gates and other open areas could well have served as models for the later closed and architecturally discrete entity known as the synagogue.
 
The question of how and where Jews may have worshiped in Babylonia needs to be addressed in the context of the communal character of Jewish prayer. Prayer may be offered in solitude, as was the case with Daniel in Babylon; Daniel prayed three times daily in his chamber, facing a window that opened toward Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10–11). But the experience of prayer in Israel was rooted in community worship. It is through the shared experience of worship that one becomes accustomed to a specific number of daily prayers (the reference in Daniel is the earliest to the thrice-daily practice that later became standard in Judaism), and it is through group conditioning that prayers come to have a standard form: in the case of Daniel’s prayer, thanksgiving, petition and supplication (Daniel 6:11).

A shared experience similarly influences religious rites of fasting. It inculcates the custom of observance, determines the dates on which one fasts and sets the standards of what is appropriate for fasting (from what one abstains, conditions of sorrow and mortification, penitential prayers, personal adornment, etc.). We learn from Zechariah 7:1–6 that it had become the custom during the 70 years of the Exile to fast in the fifth and seventh months, that is, in the month in which the Temple had been burned (the seventh day of the fifth month, according to 2 Kings 25:8, although in Jeremiah 52:12 it is the tenth day of the fifth month) and the month in which Gedaliah had been assassinated (the seventh month [2 Kings 25:25; Jeremiah 41:1–2]). A longer catalogue of fast days appears in Zechariah 8:18–19. It includes fasts in the fourth and tenth months, that is, in those months in which the wall of Jerusalem had first been breached by the Chaldeans/Babylonians (the ninth day of the fourth month [2 Kings 25:3–4; Jeremiah 52:6]) and during the previous year, in the month in which the siege of Jerusalem had begun (the tenth day of the tenth month [2 Kings 25:1; Jeremiah 52:4]). Zechariah’s consideration of fast days was clearly inspired by a delegation from Beth El, which questioned the appropriateness of fasting during the time of joy and celebration signaled by Cyrus’s Edict of Return and the imminence of the rededication of the Second Temple; but the fact that some Judahites were concerned about the continuation of fast days indicates that fast days were observed in many quarters of Judahite society on the eve of the restoration of the Temple.

If Jews in Babylonia observed these fasts, they must have had some place to convene. Esther 4:16 indicates that fasting was a communal phenomenon among Jews in the Exile: “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do.” But neither a temple with sacred precincts nor a public house of prayer would have been necessary for such gatherings; any open place with adequate space would have sufficed. “The place (maqôm) Casiphia,” with its concentration of Levites and temple servants, skilled in liturgy, could have been such a place of gathering; if so, it was certainly not the only place. In this connection, Psalm 137 speaks of weeping (rites of mourning) beside the waters (that is, water canals) of Babylon. Ezekiel 1:1–3:15 mentions the banks of the river Chebar (the canal nâru kabari) as the place of the prophet’s “visions of God” (appropriately so, if it was a place of community worship). Later texts dealing with the Jewish Diaspora of the Greco-Roman world testify to the existence of public places of prayer by the seaside or beside rivers. One such witness comes from the New Testament, in the story of Paul in Philippi:

We remained in this city some days; and on the Sabbaths day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer. (Acts 16:12–13)

Assimilation

We may assume that not all Jews were faithful to the religion of their parents; some may have assimilated into Babylonian culture. But of this we have no direct evidence. We do know that Ezekiel was concerned with Jews adopting Babylonian cults (Ezekiel 8:14). But his concern was directed primarily at the situation in the Jewish homeland rather than in the Exile. Deutero-Isaiah’s oracles against idol worship (Isaiah 44:9–17, 46:1–13), Zechariah’s vision of the Woman in the Ephah (Zechariah 5:5–11) and the oracles on the End of False Prophecy (Zechariah 13:2–6) all point to the lure of paganism during the period of the Exile and the severe threat to Yahwism that it represented. The attraction of idols was, and remained, a problem for spiritual leaders in the Jewish Diaspora, as may be seen from later writings, including the letter of Jeremiah and the Wisdom of Solomon 13–15 (from the Apocrypha). In addition, we know that some Jews adopted Babylonian names. Others, while using Hebrew/Aramaic names, replaced the more traditional Israelite/Jewish element yahu (a form of Yahweh) with the more general divine element el. This indicates a degree of assimilation, but not an abandonment of traditional Jewish religion.

Members of the house of Jehoiachin had Babylonian names, probably out of deference to their royal patrons. Nahman Avigad has published a seal of a woman who had a traditional Jewish name, but whose father bore a Babylonian name, perhaps reflecting the renewal of national aspirations among Babylonian Jews of the second generation in Exile—to which the oracles of Deutero-Isaiah also bear witness. Most notable in this connection are the names of Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:8, 5:14) and Zerubbabel (Haggai 1:1, 14; Zechariah 4:6–10a), both members of the Davidic family and governors of Judah, whose names clearly reflect the pagan milieu of Babylonia.

In short, the Jewish deportees were settled in Babylonia as land-tenants of royal estates in undeveloped areas. As such, they joined other ethnic minorities in the Mesopotamian/Babylonian region, including some previously settled Israelite communities. With the exception of some members of the royal family, the Judahites were not imprisoned or held as captives. They were free to engage in agriculture and commerce and to accumulate wealth, although on a modest scale. They were not coerced to abandon their traditional cultural ways or social organization. The imprisoned (and later freed) king Jehoiachin was their titular head, although de facto leadership was in the hands of elders, priests and/or heads of families. Their major pragmatic challenge was compiling their sacred writings, the Torah and the Former Prophets. Their corporate life included religious observances of prayer and public fasting. We have no evidence that they erected public buildings for such communal activities. Some Jews were assimilated into Babylonian culture; others were not. When the opportunity arose, a number of Jewish families returned to their homeland to reconstruct a national life there. Many, however, remained in Babylonia, where the Jewish Diaspora continued as an important cultural phenomenon for more than two millennia.