Ep 283: Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Birth of Judaism with Steven Bob

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In this episode I talk with Rabbi Steven Bob about his new book When Judaism Began: Exploring the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which examines the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah through an historical and theological framework, explaining how Judaism begins during that era of history. We talk about the neglect of Ezra and Nehemiah in both Jewish and Christian circles, the historical background of the period in which they were written, and how the geographical return from exile shaped Judaism. Rabbi Bob explains the ambiguous political relationship between the returned exiles and their Persian rulers, Jewish conflicts with the people of the land, the development of Torah, the Hebrew language, the temple, ritual, and sacrifice, and Ezra and Nehemiah as historical figures. We also explore how Judaism continued to develop between the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the first century CE, the impact of these works on modern Judaism and biblical interpretation, and the way in which it prefigures twentieth-century Zionism. 

Media Referenced:

When Judaism Began: https://a.co/d/03CQeIpL

Author bio: https://mycec.org/rabbi-steven-bob/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Our first project is almost 10 years will be held in the city study area like you almost said 2020 spots, and we want you to do that and interpretate Christians for 2020 status conference will be held as a village in the near order modern support and which is in the greater substantially area. There is conference with your defense speakers in the views and a panel with authors from our upcoming books. All these questions will be reported, and that means we'll be participating in the descriptions for liberty that podcasts.com. There's a copy of the speaker simply ordered the ebook version of the single version of the movement of compared to speakers in the Liberty Movement and build relationships another copy of freedom. And in many other earlier you order, the better the deal.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

I can go free to order the libertarian Christian Institute and part and liberty. I really hope that you guys enjoy today's show. All right, guys. Welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. My guest today is Rabbi Stephen Bob. Rabbi Bobb is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation at Shaim in Lombard, Illinois. He's a guest faculty member at Wheaton College and a professor at the Hebrew Seminary. He is the author of several books, including the brand new When Judaism Began: Exploring the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, out now I'm within stock, in which he examines what the works of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us about the formation and foundation of Jewish life and practice. We will be discussing this book on the show today. Rabbi Bob, welcome to the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you. So this is your first time on the show. So go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience. Tell us about yourself, your background, and your work.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Sure. So I'm a retired rabbi in the far western suburbs of Chicago. I've served Silly for 35 years in retirement. I've nested at Wheaton College, where I'm the unofficial campus rabbi. I'm a guest faculty member, and the Bible professors have me into their classes to discuss how Jews read the Bible.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Yeah, that's perfect. Well, I you're the you were the first rabbi I've ever interviewed. So I want to just talk to you about that real quick before we get in the book. At what point in your life did you decide to become a rabbi? And then like what does the what does the day-to-day life of a rabbi look like?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Right. When I was uh a senior in college, I had to answer the profound question of, what am I going to do now? It became clear that I was actually going to be able to graduate, and then I had to agree upon the next step. And um I had been at a conference where I met some rabbinic students, and I identified strongly with them. As a 22-year-old, I couldn't identify with rabbis who were in their 40s and 50s. I wasn't them. But the rabbinic students who were 25 and 26, I was like, oh, I'm like them. I have lots of shared interests, and um it was an appealing career. Part of what appealed to me was it wasn't going to be a big distinction between what I was doing because I wanted to do it, and what I was doing because it was my job. And that is how it has played out. That throughout my career I was taking care of the congregation, learning and teaching, and involved in pastoral work and uh funerals and weddings, and all things I found satisfying. Um and I was doing them because I was hired by the congregation, they paid me every month, and you know, I was able to pay my mortgage, all those good things. But it was also a sense of I was doing something important and fulfilling and satisfying. Um there was very little about it that made me feel I was working, and there were some things, but mostly it was uh satisfying, important work.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Yeah, I love that. Well, let's talk about your uh commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah here. So, what made you want to write a book about Ezra and Nehemiah? And one of the interesting things about your book is that it's not like a conventional commentary. A lot of conventional commentaries will start at the beginning of a work and then go straight through the end and just add their comments. Yours is a little bit different than that. So talk about the desire to write a book on these two works of the Bible, and then also why you chose the format that you did.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So I have for many, many years worked on the medieval commentaries to the book of Jonah and became well known as an expert in the medieval commentaries to the book of Jonah. But I would go to a meeting if somebody would say, where in the Bible does it say such and such, and I would raise my hand, and the leader would say, Okay, besides Jonah, where does it say I was too strongly identified as the Jonah guy? Um, and I was about to retire from my position at the synagogue, and it was clear to me I learned I needed to learn to sing a new song. I needed a new area of expertise. And um, in poking around, first of all, I had taught Ezra a little bit at the synagogue and enjoyed doing so. And in poking around, I found that very little had been written for that popular audience about Ezra and Nehemiah. So it gave me an opportunity. There was a I thought a need for a book on the subject, and I wasn't competing with existing books. I didn't this wasn't the new best book on Ezra and Nehemiah. I think my book was already the best-selling book on Ezra and Nehemiah. Certainly aimed at a popular audience because very few people have written on this.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

No, and and and I I think that comes across in the book. Why why um then embrace the the kind of the nonlinear format? Why in yeah, yeah. Why in your commentary do you not just go from beginning to end of Ezra and Nehemiah and call it a day?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I think it would not be engaging to do that.

unknown 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

First of all, the the the two books together have some length to them, and to write verse a verse-by-verse commentary, it would be too long. And secondly, you wouldn't we wouldn't get to the good parts until too late. Right. So I begin with the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, which is one of the good parts, and I want to engage the reader right off the top. And if I didn't get to the eighth chapter of Nehemiah until then until the last 10% of the book, I would be defeated before I started. Also, because the books kind of weave back and forth over different themes, I thought it was more helpful to approach the books thematically and deal with all the chapters and verses that deal with the with the theme of Jerusalem, and all the chapters and verses that deal with the theme of history, and go at it and and I thought in the way where people could um easily digest the material, and then we can move from material to be from so the uh early the leaders of the early return have to deal with other people, and then when Ezra comes, they have to deal with other people. And now Maya in his own term has to deal with other people. So it makes sense to group all those instances where they're dealing with the threatening foreign other all together in the same spot. And then I could explore the themes in a fuller and I think clearer way.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense and it is very effective. I think one of the last background questions I want to ask you before we start getting to some of the details of Ezra and Nehemiah themselves has to do with the fact that, as you pointed out in your book, Ezra and Nehemiah have been both kind of marginalized in Jewish and Christian circles. And I vividly remember um like there was one time when I was in high school, or maybe I was in early college, where the pastor at our church referenced Ezra in a sermon. And I remember my dad texting me a joke about that because he had no idea what it was, right? And so, and I've seen that over and over again. But uh, you know, when I was in college and I started reading through the Old Testament all the way through for the first time, I got to Ezra and Nehemiah, and even though I didn't really know exactly what was going on, I realized that they were both very important and they had a lot to say. So um, before we get into those books, what accounts for the neglect of these two books and both Jewish and Christian traditions?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Well, I think the dynamic is a difference in the Jewish community than in the Christian community. So in the Jewish community, we are very Torah-centered. We're very centered in the first five books of the Bible. Um, it's where the commandments are given, it's where the origins of the people are described. We read through the the Torah, we call Torah, the first five books, in sequence during the year. The Torah scrolls in the front of the synagogue in an ark. The Torah is really at the center of Jewish life. And the prophets are there in a secondary way, the writings, um, psalms occur during our in the in the liturgy a great deal. Um, but the the history books of the latter part of the Bible are in the corner, they don't occur during the religious year of the Jewish community. I think in the Christian world, the parts of the Hebrew Bible that Christians know the most are those that are understood to be pointing at Jesus. So that the gospel writers quote from uh Isaiah. Right. I'm giving or the rabbis now explaining the New Testament. I mean it's very it's very helpful. Um, but the the gospel writers don't never quote from Ezra or Nehemiah. Ezra and Nehemiah don't appear in the in the New Testament at all. So I think as a result, Christians don't look at them. I think the Ezra and Nehemiah in the Jewish community and in the Christian community are in the corner of the Bible library gathering dust.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. And and today, I'm really the goal of having this conversation with you is to try to shed some light on Ezra and Nehemiah so that we can learn to appreciate exactly what's going on there. And again, uh the the a part of the title of your book, or I mean the title of your book is When Judaism Began. And so obviously, this is very formative, a very formative period in time for Judaism itself. Now, I was fortunate enough when I started studying this in school. You know, I have a degree in biblical studies, and so I had professors that when I committed to reading through the Old Testament for the first time all the way through, gave me a couple of surveys of the Old Testament and read along with it. And that kind of helps orient you to the historical context of some of these works. But you start reading Ezra and Nehemiah and you hear about, you know, Cyrus and Artaxerxes and all of these other figures, and it can be very disorienting. So before, you know, talking about, you know, maybe this its significance with the relation to Judaism, what do we need to know about the historical context of the time period in which Ezra and Nehemiah were written? Just kind of orient us to what's going on in those works.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Great. So I fully understand that some people have a detailed understanding of the history of the ancient Near East, and most people don't. Right. I fully get that here. So in 586 BCE, 2500 years ago, 2600 years ago, the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar, conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried the people off into exile in Babylonia. Babylonia being what is today uh Iraq, in the Tiger Euphrates Valley near where the city of Baghdad is. Fifty years later, come the Persians from the east, who are familiar with what is today Iran. And the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great, conquer the Babylonian Empire. And they think they go on over the over the next years all to conquer all of the Near East and up to clashing with the Greeks. The clashing with the Greeks is another story for another time. Um then we get to Alexander the Great and all those things. But here, when the Babylonians conquer when the Persians conquer the Babylonians, Cyrus the Great, the Persian ruler, says to the Jews in exile in Babylonia, you can go home. You can go back to Jerusalem. And Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the return from exile. And the rebuilding of the destroyed temple, and the rebuilding of the mostly destroyed Jerusalem, and the creation of a new era in Jewish living, in Jewish life. And what we generally now think of is the Second Temple Period. So the first temple period ended with the destruction of the temple, and then about 50 years later begins the second temple period. And that's the period that we're looking at in Ezra and Nehemiah.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Yeah, and it's it's very, it's very um, I think there's so much going on in these texts. And so you're again the title of your book, going back to the title, When Judaism Began, uh, and in what sense are the books of Ezra and Nehemiah describing the beginnings of Judaism? And then we also have to deal with this terminological issue where there are a lot of Christians that assume that Israelite, Hebrew, and Jew all essentially mean the same thing. But Ezra and Nehemiah nuanced that perspective in some very important ways. So talk to us about how Judaism begins with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the time period that those two works recount, and what like what makes a Jew a Jew and how is that different from the pre-exilic identity of the people of God? There's a lot to that.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Well, we'll we will go through these questions one at a time. Yeah. And tomorrow we'll get to some new questions. So first in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, there's a description of a rededication ceremony. So it is in in the book of Joshua, there's a description of a dedication ceremony when the people enter the land. And Joshua gathers the uh the entire people on on the two mountains by Shechem, and there's a re there's a dedication ceremony. The eighth chapter of Nehemiah describes a rededication ceremony that we have now returned to the land. Now the temple has already been rebuilt. The altar was rebuilt, the temple is rebuilt, and this is some decades after those events, and it's now going to be a rededication ceremony. It's going to be led by an Ezra and Nehemiah together. It's the chapter eight of Nehemiah is the one chapter in which both characters appear together. When Ezra is introduced in the seventh chapter of the book of Ezra, Ezra is introduced as a priest, and there's a detailed, it includes a detailed genealogy explaining that Ezra is a direct descendant of Aaron, and that Sadak, who is the high priest during the time of King David, is also one of his ancestors. And Ezra is a fine and proper priest. He's also described as an expert in the Torah. So the entire in the eighth chapter of Namaya, the entire people gather on the first day of the seventh month, which is what the holiday that we now call in the Jewish community, Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the year. So it's the right day, it's the entire people. Now, where do they gather? Do they gather in the temple with Ezra offering a sacrifice? No. They gather outside the temple, and Ezra reads from the Torah. It's the first public reading of the Torah. This I think is an incredibly important moment. I think it's it's where I think it's where scripture-centered religion begins. You know, so as a rabbi, I I generally address the Jewish communities. I call the book when Judaism began, but I think I could have called the book when scripture-based religion began. It's a little it's not as sketchy, but uh, I I think that for Christians, there is also for Christians who have their whole life centered on scripture, this is also a very important moment. That is the I'm saying it differently. During the first temple period, the main way that people related with God was through the offering of the sacrifices in the temple. During the second temple period, a new way of relating to God emerges, and that is through the study of scripture. So that I think for many religious people today, Jews and Christians, we turn to the scripture to find the to find God. Our relationship to God is expressed in how we study and read the scripture. And I think that dynamic begins in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

And the term Jew itself, what distinguishes that from Israelite or Hebrew? Uh like how does that terminology how does that terminology shift in the post-exilic period?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

So uh in the first temple period, nobody is the term hardly appears. Um that um the the Bible generally talks about in Hebrew we say Bene Israel, the children of Israel. I mean Israel is the other name for Jacob. So the children of Israel are literally the descendants of Jacob, and the children of Israel is often translated as Israelites. Israelites just means children of Jacob, children of Israel. Um we know during the Second Temple to excuse me, during the first temple period, after the death of King Solomon, there's a division between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. And the northern kingdom is referred to as Israel, and the southern kingdom is referred to as Judah or in Hebrew, Yehuda. So Yehudim could be tribal Judahites. People, people who it could, it's a geographic term, it could be a tribal term or a geographic term. I mean if you would say to somebody, if you would say to Moses, you're a Yehudi Jew, he would say, No, no, no, I'm from the tribe of Levi. What are you saying? We're the priests, we're the Levites. Don't aren't you paying attention to what's going on? So in the early period, Yehudi or Jew would be a tribal term. I think that during the Second Temple period, the word is used in Nehemiah. Nehemiah speaks to the Yehudim. So Yehudim for Nehemiah is probably a geographic term. He's talking to so I grew up in Minnesota, so I can think of myself as a Minnesotan. Yeah. It's a geographic term. Um I think that in um in the book of Esther, where Mordechai is described as a Yuhudi, it's the first place where the term uh means what it means today. There's a verse in Esther introducing Mordechai. So Mordechai lives in Shushan in the Persian capital, so it's not a geographic term. And it describes him as from the tribe of Benjamin, so it can't be a tribal term. So there, when Mordecai is introduced as Yuhudi, I think it's more or less what it means today. It describes a peoplehood and a religion.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Yeah, all right, that makes a lot of sense. Um, I want to talk about the kind of some of the like the social and political ambiguities in Ezra and Nehemiah. So on the one hand, there's this presentation of the Persians. And if you look at the Hebrew prophets, they they have nothing but negative things to say about Assyria and Babylon. But with the Persians, you know, you have Isaiah and Isaiah 45.1 saying that Cyrus was anointed, and then Ezra and Nehemiah, they're kind of like um, it's almost like they're working with the returnees from Babylon, right, to help establish them in the land. But then you have Nehemiah 9, I think it's 933, where Nehemiah says that even though we've returned from exile, we're still slaves in our own land. So talk about how that dynamic is at play here. On the one hand, the Persians seem to be the ones that have helped the Jews return to their ancestral homeland. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like God's plans for his people have been fulfilled. So what's going on with that dynamic in Ezra and Nehemiah?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

So certainly I think the general thrust of Jewish tradition is to see Persians as the good guys. Who are the good guys that were the bad? Who's on our side? Who's on their side? So the Persians are seen as allow accurately so as allowing the return of the people from exile. The Persians sponsor the rebuilding of the altar and the rebuilding of the temple. Now, the return from the exile did not include a return to sovereignty in the second temple period. There are no kings. The Davidic line ends at with the destruction of the first temple. And there in Ezra Nehemiah there is no mention whatsoever of a descendant of King David who's going to take the throne. Um so that life is going to be as a province in the Persian Empire. Generally seen as benevolent rulers, but as in the Namaya verse that you mentioned, nonetheless, we don't have political sovereignty. And in Hebrew, we say Kazazh. That's the way it was. You know, that the Persian Empire was. Mighty and powerful, and we were a small group of one of many nations. One of many nations under the rule of the Persian Empire. And at the time in that part of the world, everybody was under the rule of the Persian Empire. There wasn't much choice. Right. It seemed that the Persians ruled the world. And as often is the case, the current situation appears to be the way it's always going to be. So that what's going to be in the world a thousand years from now, we have no idea. That's already an ongoing conversation. But what's going to be here in a thousand years, we have no idea. And when the local population tried to stop the uh halted the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the Jews wrote back to the uh back to the emperor to get a new letter of endorsement, which they received. So that the Persian kings, Persian emperors are seen as positive figures.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Yeah, so I know I really appreciate that. I think that's very helpful. You've already talked about how Ezra is portrayed in these books as the sensor of the Levitical line, right? He's portrayed as kind of in that in that priestly class. But talk to us a little bit more about Ezra and Nehemiah, both as historical figures and as characters in their work. What do the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us about these two figures?

SPEAKER_00 23:43

So first of all, I want to say clearly, we have no other source for information about them other than the biblical books. Yeah. So my approach is to take the biblical books of face value. If someone said to me, okay, Rabbi, prove to me that Ezra was the way that the book of Ezra describes him, I have no other resource to go to. Yeah. I mean we don't have there's no videotape of Ezra walking around in Jerusalem. Even if you say to me, how tall was Ezra? We have no idea. There are certain things we just we have no idea. So we we have to take them at face value. And so I I read the books, accepting what the books say about Ezra and Nehemiah, and say that um what the book says is probably what really was. And I don't have any reason to believe otherwise.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah. So what so what do we learn about these two figures? Like obviously Nehemiah, kind of somewhat famously for people that know it, he was like the cupbearer of the emperor, but what else do we know about them from Nehemiah?

SPEAKER_00 24:54

No, so so we would say that Nehemiah is a so when we say cupbearer, sometimes people misunderstand that to under to imagine that he is a servant. Right. So he's he's not the butler. This is not Alfred and the Batman stories. That he is the cupbearer, is uh a member of the Persian court, so that he has status in the Persian um hierarchy. He is understood to be the governor when he's in Jerusalem, and we can we should see him as being very much uh a part of the Persian authority structure. Um Ezra, on the other hand, comes from the the priestly a priestly family and a scholarly um choice, let's say it. Being a master of the Torah is a personal choice, and so in one of the chapters of my book, I discuss what kind of hats they wore. Now I call the chapter he was wearing a hat, which is the punchline of an old joke. Now, the old joke I don't include in the book, but I'll tell you. Okay. A Jewish grandmother is walking along the beach in Florida with her grandson, and a giant wave comes and sweeps the boy into the ocean, and she raises her eyes heavenward and says, Oh God, oh God, please return my grandson. And another wave brings back the grandson, and he lands on the beach, and the grandmother looks at the grandson and looks up at the sky and says, He was wearing a hat. Which is it's a fine joke for a sermon about prayer. Uh and the self-centeredness of human prayer at times. But that's that's a that's a that's another podcast conversation. Um but I did so in my book, I speculate that Nehemiah dressed like officers of the Persian court and wore this cylinder-shaped hat that we see in art in Persian art. We have the Persians carved art into stone, so it has lasted. Paint on camps doesn't last as long as carved into stone. So we can so one can go to museums and um into Persia itself and see examples of Persian art and this these cylinder-shaped hats that the Persian court wore. Now the Bible describes a hat the head covering that the priests wore, which is very much like what like a turban. And um, so we can imagine that Ezra wore a turban and Nehemiah wore uh the garb of the Persian court, and that Nehemiah was more Persianized, let's say, that he understood how you speak to the emperor, how you act in the Persian court, and Ezra was more focused on the priestly responsibilities and the scholarly opportunities.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

Yeah, that's a really helpful distinction. And you you've already mentioned before how um in Ezra Nehemiah the Persian court is portrayed, they're they're portrayed as kind of the good guys. They're benevolent towards the Jewish people, but there is a large conflict between the Jews who return home from exile and the people of the land, and that dominates the narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah. So talk to us about that conflict. What were some of the challenges that the returning exiles faced when they made it back to their homeland?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

First of all, whenever people arrive in a land, there's always somebody else there. Right. I mean, when the Vikings got to Iceland, they found Iceland empty. But other than that, I know of no other example in human history of the movement of one people from some place to some new land without somebody else being there. Right. I mean, there was before the Middle Ages, nobody in what's currently Turkey spoke Turkish. The Turks came from Asia and came and conquered and drove out the Greeks. Now, the Turkish-Greek conflict continues on to our day. It's only a thousand years old. Um, so I mentioned already the northern kingdom. So the northern kingdom was was conquered earlier than the southern kingdom. The southern king of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians. The northern kingdom was conquered earlier by the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire was camp, the capital of the Assyrian Empire was Nineveh, which is the up the river from Baghdad, near what's today is Mosul in northern Iraq. And the the Assyrians had a different way of doing empire than did the Babylonians or did the Romans. The Assyrian way of doing empire was removing the population entirely. So the Assyrians removed all the, they removed the ten tribes and redistributed them among other provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Often people speak of the ten tribes as the lost ten tribes. No, I don't like the term. The lost ten tribes suggest that they're out there wandering away and if they would just stop and ask for directions, they could find their way home. So they're not lost. People have written speculative books about who are the where do the ten lost tribes end up. Somebody says they're Navo Indians. I mean, there are people have written all sorts of wonderfully imaginative work. Um, but I think in truth, the ten tribes were distributed throughout the Assyrian Empire and they became assimilated into those populations into which they were deposited. Then the Assyrians brought other peoples and settled them in the northern part of the land of Israel. This is described in the second book of Kings. So in the second book of Kings, the people who were settled in the northern area have trouble there because the land seems hostile to them. They're worshiping the gods that they worship in their old homelands, and they say to the Assyrian authorities, bring us some Israelite priests so we can learn to worship the god of this land. So this is based on the idea that each land has its had its own had its own national god. So the Assyrians do that, and the people of the northern area, the area we call Samaria, added in the worship of the one god of Israel to the group of gods they were already worshiping. So when the people of Judah began to return from exile, there were people who we're going to call Samaritans. Now, the term Samaritans has lots of different meanings and lots of different situations and time periods. But I'm using it here as a geographic term. I could call them Samarians, but nobody uses that term. So I should use terms that are used conventionally. So the Samaritans come and say to the leaders of the first wave of return, we want to help you build the temple. And the Zerubbabel and Shesh Bazaar say, No, you're not members of our people. And they say, No, no, we worship your God. And Zerubbabel and Shesh Bazar say, no, no, but you also worship all these other gods. This would not be kosher. You're not us. And that's a that's a point of conflict. So there's there's always a question of who is us and who is them. And this is a question that all religions face. And um in lots of religious communities, there are different there are different factions and different churches and different denominations.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

If I say, okay, how many Protestant denominations are there in North America? One more than there was yesterday. It's uh when I first became a rabbi, I wanted to learn to try to map the Protestant world. I was like, ah, it's impossible. It's impossible, yes, yes. The Jewish world has simple divisions and the Protestant world is just more permutations. And um so there's always a question of who are we and who are we, who is not we. And um, so the Samaritans were judged to be not us. And over this question of idol worship.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

All right, everybody. I wanted to take a quick break from the show to let you all know that my brand new book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation, where I argue definitively that the New Testament does not endorse modern authoritarian socialism, is now available for pre-order. The release date is going to be Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. And you can go to libertarianchristians.com, click on the book tab at the top of the page, and then select my book. You can pre-order the physical copy through libertarianchristians.com, and you can go to Amazon and pre-order the ebook version, the Kindle version of that book over there. And of course, on September 15th, you will be able to find the physical copy on Amazon and in many other places where books are sold. I'm extremely excited about this book. This is the culmination of my life's work. I know that many of you guys have asked me about it over the last several months, and I'm so ready to get into your hands. Let's go ahead and make this a big hit, get these ideas out there. Again, go and pre-order the book at libertarianchristians.com or at Amazon.com. You can search my name or the title of the book. Thank you guys very much. Yeah. No, then that makes a lot of sense. Um, along this time, too, talking about, you know, something that is distinctively Jewish in nature. You've already mentioned that the foundations of scripture-based religion can trace its roots back to this time period. So talk to us about the formation of the Torah during this time. And then also, and this is another kind of surprising aspect of this that I think a lot of people uh don't appreciate that you discussed in your book, also the development of the Hebrew language, or I guess maybe the rediscover, I don't know what the best way to phrase that is, but you have both the Torah on the one hand and Hebrew on the other. Talk to us about how those things are developed during this time.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

So as I mentioned, this Ezra reads from the Torah publicly is described in Nehemiah chapter eight. And this is the first place in the Hebrew Bible in which somebody reads from the Torah. There's lots of scholarly discussion over exactly how the Torah came to reach be written in the form that we have it today, but the general scholarly consensus is that what Ezra read from is the Torah as we have it now. That the Torah was in its final form by the time of Ezra. Going through all the theories of this is probably well beyond what we're going to get to this in this conversation. But that Ezra Ezra had the Torah more or less as we have it today. I mean, over the centuries there are manuscript variations, and the manuscript variations have to be worked out because things are copied by scribes by hand, and little differences arise. But I I believe fully that the Torah that Ezra read from is the Torah as we have with today. And I think it's likely that Ezra himself or other people in his circle were responsible for the redaction or the final formation of the scroll that Ezra read from. The fact that no one read from the scroll before Ezra suggests to me that perhaps it didn't exist in its final form before the time of Ezra. I'm not certain of that, but that's my that's my opinion. Right. Um now, the language. What we call Hebrew letters, we today call it Hebrew letters, but are not really Hebrew letters. They're Aramaic letters. The Hebrew during the first temple period was written in a different alphabet than those written from the second temple period on. There are there's an alphabet that we now refer to as Paleo-Hebrew that very few people know. Um if you would go to my synagogue and say, all right, what's Paleo-Hebrew? People wouldn't know what you're talking about. It's a topic for scholars, not for regular folks. So Paleo Hebrew was the letters of the it was the letters in which Hebrew was written before the exile. So early on, Hebrew is written in clay tablets using a stick. So if you're writing in a clay tablet with a stick, straight lines are really helpful. Right. We don't think about the technology in writing in our own generation, but it's not the first change in technology. Going from writing with a pencil to writing on a computer is not the first time writing changed. So here in the ancient world, it changed from writing on clay tablets with a stick to writing on parchment with a quilt. So if you're writing on a parchment or papyrus with a quilt, you can make more ornate letters. You can do fancier things. And the Aramaic alphabet is more attractive, let's say, than Paleo-Hebrew. And that and in exile, the people began writing Hebrew in Aramaic letters. And what we now think of as Hebrew letters are actually Aramaic letters. It's not a suppressed idea, it's just that people don't pay attention to it. There's no conspiracy here. It's just that because this change was made 2,500 years ago, it's sort of just become hardwired in. And yeah, we have a Hebrew school and we teach Hebrew. At Wheaton College, my my professor, my faculty friends teach Hebrew, and they don't stop to say these are Aramaic letters. No, we they're generally called Hebrew letters. And um the number of Aramaic speakers now is small and in the West almost non-existent. So that they they refer to as Hebrew letters.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We also refer to this period uh in Jewish history as Second Temple Judaism, and that title itself would suggest that the temple plays a very prominent role in that time period. So talk to us, and you see this in Ezra and Nehemiah too. Uh, talk to us about the development of the temple, the rituals, and the sacrifice during that time.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

So there isn't a so, first of all, we call it the second temple. The people during the time didn't think of it as the second temple. Um the people who lived in the United States before the Civil War didn't think of it as the pre-Civil War period. Later experts divide time periods differently than the people who were actually living through them. Um so the people who rebuilt the temple, it was important to them to see the new temple as a continuation of the old temple. So the book of Ezra carefully describes the altar being built on the foundations of the destroyed altar, and the temple being built on the foundations of the destroyed temple, that it was a restoration of that which had been destroyed, so it was a renewal of the temple. So I'm quite certain that the people during the what we think of as the Second Temple period saw their temple as a continuation of Solomon's temple. That there is one, there's one Jerusalem, there's one people, there's one temple, and we have the honor and privilege of bringing sacrifices to the to the temple, just as it describes in the book of in the book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus tells us what to bring, and we're doing what God's asking us to do. Yeah, and trying to do it in the best way we can. So I think for them there was a real sense of um authenticity and continuation. Oh, the second temple was not the same as the first temple. So in the first temple, in the Holy of Holies in the first temple, the Holy of Holies in the first temple contained the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tablets of the commandments. So during the first temple period, the general population could be comforted that they were living in the presence of God because the tablets of the covenant were in the temple in Jerusalem. When the people returned and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, they no longer had the ark. The ark wasn't there. What happened to the ark? We're not sure. My own personal opinion, it was destroyed when the first temple was destroyed. But people have put together elaborate stories, including one that was carried off. No, Stephen Spielberg's movie, the Raiders of the Lost Ark, I mean, is based on a possibility. There is some possibility that the Ark of the Covenant was taken to Egypt. That um the biblical story and Egyptian sources both agree that Pharaoh Shishak raided Jerusalem during the first temple period and took away temple treasures. So the Raiders of the Lost Ark is based on the premise that Pharaoh Shishak took the Ark of the Covenant and hid it in Egypt. I'm not a big fan of that theory. I do like the movie a great deal. That's a good one. As movies go, it's a fine movie. As biblical history goes, hmm, we have better sources. So the point for me is that in the second temple period, the Holy of Holies is an empty space. So I think that the public reading of the Torah takes the place of the Ark of the Covenant. That in the first temple period, the Ark of the Covenant assured people that God is present in the temple. And in the second temple period, the reading of the scripture reminds people that they are living in the presence of God. I think that in churches and synagogues today, when we read from scripture, we're reminded that we're living in the presence of God.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

Yeah. No, I I I love that. Well, I want to talk to you about the way that Judaism continues to develop during this time period up until we get to Jesus in the first century CE. So if if Nehemiah and Ezra are kind of the foundation of Judaism, what changes or developments take place between that time in the 5th and 6th centuries BCE and the first century CE?

SPEAKER_00 44:31

So we know a lot about Judaism at the end of the first Temple period. So usually when people say, I mean, in the Second Temple period, excuse me. So usually when people talk about Second Temple Judaism, they're talking about the end of Second Temple Judaism at the during the during the time of uh during the Roman period. What happens between Ezra and Hamiah and the Roman period? We have we have limited sources. So there is sometime during this period, there is a development of a group of sages who are devoted to the study of the Torah text. So people who we now call the rabbis. The ancient rabbis. The rabbis of the first century traced themselves back to Ezra and the Hemaya. So if we look at rabbinic literature, we will see rabbinic literature written in the first and second century describing Ezra and the Hemaya as the first rabbis. This is probably a wee bit imaginative. Right. But oftentimes people want to look back at their predecessors and um and connect up. I mean, we we it happens in American politics that Democrats want to trace themselves back to President Kennedy and Republicans want to trace themselves back to President Reagan, and that you know we want to see that we are the we are the new, we're the continuation of the authentic tradition, whatever tradition we're in. Right. So um so the rabbis want to give themselves, want to imagine for themselves a glorious beginning, so they see Ezra in Nehemiah. But we know in Nehemiah, in this famous chapter 8 of Nehemiah, as soon as they read, as soon as Ezra reads from the text, people want to know what does it mean. They want to start interpreting the text. And I I believe that this process of interpreting the text begins at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and develops over the next 300 years. And it becomes more and more formalized as time goes on, and academies develop. And people, the rise of scholars who have devoted themselves to studying the text builds over time. So that by the time of the by the time of the first century, there's a significant portion of people, um, the people that Josephus describes as the Pharisees who are devoted to interpreting the text. And then when the temple is destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans, that the Judaism that continues on is the Pharisaic Judaism. One of my professors at Rabbinic School said that they wrote a book called The Heirs of the Pharisees, and he's saying he would say that the rabbis of today are the descendants of the Pharisees. Um it's poetic language. Um I wouldn't introduce myself to somebody who said I'm a Pharisee. Right. But I I would see the I would see a connection between 21st century rabbis and ancient Pharisees. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

That's really important. Um, I want to ask you just a couple more questions about this. Um, as you said earlier on in this interview, Ezra and Nehemiah are never quoted by the writers of the New Testament. It's not like uh, you know, Genesis, Exodus, uh, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah. They're constantly being referred to by the writers of the New Testament. We don't get any references to Ezra and Nehemiah. So my question to you is this: what impact should Ezra and Nehemiah have on our reading of the New Testament, if any? Like what light can it shine on our reading of the New Testament? All right, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

So I don't have an authoritative position on this. I'm I I teach at a well-respected evangelical college. Um and I try, I want to be modest, and I can speak for Jewish tradition to Christians, but it's hard for me to speak to Christians about Christianity. Right. I want to be a little a wee bit humble here. Um I do think that um it's helpful for Christians to understand where scripture-based religion came from. I think that's that's helpful. I think it's also helpful for Christians to understand the importance of the land of Israel to Jews. So that the book of Ezra and Miah talk about the return from exile and that the the land is a religious category for Jews. So in in Christianity, I don't think that the land of Israel is a religious category at all. I mean, it's just not a topic. Right. But for the Jewish community, we see we see it as home. I live in Chicago. Uh um but I also live in Jerusalem. Not physically, but that it's in um in Genesis 12, God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave their land, everything they know, their family, and go to the new land that I will show you, and you will be a blessing. We take that seriously. I'm not looking to uh climb here into political, contemporary political and military issues. Right. But uh I will simply and I will I will simply say that that it is the land of Israel is a religious category for Jews. And I think um so that's a I think that's something that's helpful helpful for Christians to understand. And also that as Jews we think of ourselves as being members of the Jewish people. So that oftentimes people want to think of other religions in terms of their own religion. So people will tell will speak to me, Christians will speak to me about the Jewish faith, which is a really Christian term. Right. Yeah. You know, so you know, I've I understand that when someone says I'm a Christian, that's a faith claim. And to say that if if uh again, my in my evangelical setting, to say for someone to say I'm a secular evangelical, that does not make any sense whatsoever. Right. But in the Jewish community, somebody could say, I'm a secular Jew. And they could say that I am not a participant in the religious life of the Jewish community, but I'm a member of the Jewish people. I'm in favor of Jewish religious life. Right, right. As a rabbi, I'm fully in favor of Jewish religious life. But I recognize there are some Jews who are not have not yet been taken up by the beauty of Jewish religious life, but still are members of the Jewish people. And so that this question of Jewish peoplehood for us is an important category. And the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are testimony to the existence of the Jewish people, the centrality of the Jewish people.

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Yeah. Well, the final question that I want to ask you about has to do with modern-day Zionism. And I think that as you kind of alluded to before, it's obviously a very hot and controversial topic, and a lot of people have a lot of opinions on it. In your book, you stray away from uh Zionism of the last 20 or 30 years and focus more on Zionism as a movement in the 20th century. So, to that extent, just kind of thinking about the phenomenon of Jews returning to the homeland, um, what light does Ezra and or do Ezra and Nehemiah shed on kind of contemporary forms of Zionism?

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Well, so I would say when I first started working on this project, I thought I would be writing about the ancient return to the land and the 20th century return to the land. And my first working topic of the title for the book was an ever returning people. As I climbed more into it, I was taken by all the Torah issues that we'd been discussing. And I saw this as a more central point. But I do believe that there is a parallel, there are parallels between the return from the first exile as described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the return from the second exile as took place in the time of the 19th and 20th century. Um Israel is a sovereign political state run by sovereign political people who have the opportunity to be right and the opportunity to be to be wrong. And there's no religious category of affirming any prime minister of the state of Israel at any moment in any time. And so I'm not arguing for affirmation of uh of sovereignty or allegiance to the government of the state of Israel. That's not the point at all. But the the point is that the return of the people to the land is a religious category. And also, I would I would say that just as in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, they had to come to grips with the people who were already there, the returning Zionists in the 19th and 20th century had to come to grips with the people who were already there. The Christian and Muslim Palestinians are are and were living there and they have to be accommodated in the narrative. And I think that's an that's an important lesson as well. Um so I I'm not presenting a triumphalist point of view, but I am preventing presenting a religious point of view and saying that there is a sense of returning to the land is a sense of responding to God's call. That Iran Masera went to the land as a part of God's call. When I identify myself as a member of the Jewish people, I celebrate the Jewish return to the land. And I see the people, these uh 19th and 20th century Zionists as heroic figures. And um in the book I include stories of members of my own family that I see as people that I admire. Um I dedicate the book to the memory of my father-in-law, who's one of the founders in his own modest way of the state of Israel before the Israel's War of Independence. Um I I see this as an important event, an important, positive event in the history of the Jewish people. Um But in no way do I want to discount the rights of other peoples to live. My own opinion is that there's room for both peoples to live on a divided, divided land. There's part there's room for a Jewish state and room for a Palestinian state. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:41

Well, I I I really love and appreciate that nuance. And uh so, Rabbi Stephen Bob, I really, I really thank you for your time today. This has been a great conversation, a lot to think about. Again, I just want to encourage everyone in my audience. If you've never read Ezra and Nehemiah, just do it. Uh, they're they're great books, there's a lot to learn from them. Um, and so thank you so much for guiding us through those works today. Before I let you go, uh you've you've written several other books um and you're you're involved in teaching in a lot of different places. For people that want to find your work uh in in and get in contact with your work, where can they go to do that?

SPEAKER_00 56:09

So I am blessed with a very unusual name. Yeah. The fact that my last name is Bob makes me really easy to find. So if you look up Steve and Bob on a website named after a major South American River, you you will find my books easily. It's easy to find my books. And um, if you go, you can go to the Whiff and Stock. Whip and Stock is my publisher for this new book. You can find my this book on the Whip and Stock website, or you can find it on Amazon. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure discussing this with you.

SPEAKER_03 56:47

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at the Protestant Libertarian.com. You can also find me on Twitter. You can follow me at an atrolibert prolibert.