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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Deportation of Judea and Samaria
  • Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:47:05 +0200

Yitzhak,

While I agree with most of what you have written in this thread, Lipschits seems to be minimizing the archaeological evidence. According to Avraham Faust (in several articles), based mostly on survey data, the population decline in Judah as a whole seems to have been much more severe, up to 60-70%.
This is, of course, part of an on-going debate in recent years, about how much of a "real" historical event the exile was, with a "minimalist" school it was mostly the urban elite that was deported and that biblical claims of an "empty land" were mostly fabricated in order to justify the "returnees" claim to that land, while a "maximalist" school claiming that the biblical accounts, while obviously ideologically motivated, do supply reliable information. The archaeological record, for the moment, has been used and interpreted by different scholars in different ways.

Yigal Levin

----- Original Message ----- From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>

Lipschitz also discusses, among many other things, the archaeological
evidence. Thus, the sites of a-Nasbe (identified with Mispeh), el-Ful
(identified with Gibeah), and Beitin (identified with Bet El), there
is continuous
habitation throughout the 6th century BCE. In el-Ful there is some (but not
complete) abandonment toward the end of the 6th century BCE, and a-
Nasbe shows building that suggests it had become an official center during the
Babylonian period, which is consistent with the Biblical evidence, as in, for
example, Jer 40:5-7. In Gibeon, we also have inscriptional evidence, and so we
can make a conclusion based on stratigraphy, paleography, and ceramics.

The picture that emerges is that some few thousand people representing
the elite of Judah were exiled. A few more that were captured by an
attempted revolt of around 10 people, ran away. But a large population
remained, with Mispah becoming the capital of the Babylonian province.

Yitzhak Sapir
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