Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch.

• Author: Porten, Bezalel
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. Edited by JAMES W. WATTS. SBL Symposium Series, vol. 17. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2001. Pp. xi + 228. $39.95 (paper).

Twenty years ago the Swiss scholar, Peter Frei, gave a paper on Persian imperial authorization which evoked considerable discussion among French and German scholars. Two years ago the Society of Biblical Literature held a symposium on this theory at its Nashville meeting, at which papers were presented by six scholars. These have been brought together in this small but not inexpensive volume, prefaced by an English translation by James W. Watts of Frei's 1995 revision of his own paper. Concisely summarizing each of the presentations in a brief introduction, Watts tells us immediately that their findings "will not support Frei's comparison of Persian policy with modern federal arrangements governing the relationships between local and national governments." Though he tells us in his first sentence that Frei's argument is the revival of an "old theory," we have to wait until a page-long footnote in Ska's article toward the end of the book to find a notice that the "real 'ancestor' of the theory" is Eduard Meyer, who wrote Die Entstehung des Judenthums in 1896. (1)

While Meyer worked in imperial Germany, Frei takes as his models the Federal Republic of Germany and Switzerland. Drawing upon documents discovered only after 1896, such as the Elephantine Passover Letter (1911), the Demotic Chronicle (1914), the Pherendates correspondence (1928), the Trilingual Inscription from the Letoon (1973), and the Inscription of Udjahorresnet (1982), and combining them with Ezra 7:12-26, Neh. 10, 11:23, 13:30-31, Esther 1:12-22, and Dan. 6:7-10, he argues that the Persians responded to local petitions not in order to renew old prerogatives but to guarantee new norms. Fixed in writing, these became precedents, generalized abstract norms. This authorization procedure provided subordinates with legal security and the center with control.

Joseph Blenkinsopp formulates his title as a question: "Was the Pentateuch the Civic and Religious Constitution of the Jewish Ethnos in the Persian Period?" but his actual paper takes a somewhat different tack. At the end of the day, he responds to a different question: "there is no evidence that Jewish civil or religious authorities presented the laws for official approbation; this is not a case of imperial authorization...