The Authority and Authorization of the Torah in the Persian Period.

AuthorNogalski, James D.
PositionBook review

The Authority and Authorization of the Torah in the Persian Period. By KYONG-JIN LEE. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology, vol. 64. Leuven: PEETERS, 2011. Pp. x + 296. [euro]46 (paper).

Kyong-Jin Lee offers a serious, engaging, and synthetic assessment of the historical probabilities that Persian imperial forces played a significant role in authorizing the Torah in Judah. The work represents a partial revision of the author's 2010 Yale University dissertation directed by John J. Collins.

Lee launches her study with an assessment of the work of Peter Frei that has set the stage for discussions of Persian imperial authorization of law codes over the last thirty years. Frei postulates how Persia systematically authorized indigenous legal codes in certain vassal states. After Lee introduces Frei's work, she also narrates scholarly reactions (from Blenkinsopp, Redford, Knoppers, Fried, and Grabbe) that have focused upon both extra-biblical and biblical texts (especially as these relate to Ezra 7).

The next two chapters evaluate textual evidence from Persian vassal states that contains data relevant to the task of evaluating examples of Persian imperial authorization of indigenous law. In chapter 2 Lee focuses upon Egyptian legislative action while chapter 3 evaluates documents from Asia Minor. Her goals in looking at these materials are 1) to ascertain the extent to which the central imperial government allowed the local government to determine its own course, and 2) to investigate whether and how the local governing apparatus influenced the content of the legal material which the Achaemenid rulers finally authorized. Further, she situates her own discussions in comparison to two streams of scholarship concerning how to approach the relative tolerance of the Persian empire toward its subject nations: one that looks primarily to presumed Persian religious convictions while the other focuses upon economic and political evidence. She finds the former to be largely conjectural, because it bases its claims on the relationship of Achaemenid monarchs to later forms of Zoroastrianism that cannot be substantiated as early as the Persian period. Instead, Lee draws upon the work of Lisbeth Fried, who has dealt extensively with the economic motivations and the implications of political policies forged between the Achaemenids and local elites.

The bulk of chapter 2 explores three Egyptian documents: the legislation of Darius, the Udjahor-essnet...

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