1. Introductory Considerations

This examination of a key ideological theme in ancient Yehud, at least among the literati who produced and for whom much of the literature that eventually became included in the Hebrew Bible elite was produced, contributes to the study of the history of common worldviews held among the ideological elite of Yehud, and as such to the history of Yehud.

Certainly, the literati of Achaemenid period Jerusalem were well aware that not all ‘Israel’ (hereafter, Israel) lived in Yehud. How did they explain this obvious fact of their lives in acceptable ideological terms? What kind of conceptual, discursive maps emerged out of the acknowledgment of a reality in which there was Yehudite and non-Yehudite Israel? Although I will focus here on the light that the book of Chronicles sheds on these questions, some crucial, general observations about the ideological milieu of Achaemenid Yehud are in order.

The fact that Israel existed in Yehud and outside its borders led by necessity to ideological constructions in Jerusalem of (a) a self-perceived center, namely Yehud along with the central attributes associated uniquely with it such as Jerusalem, Zion, Jerusalemite temple, and sociologically, the Jerusalemite literati themselves, and (b) non-Yehud, that is, by definition a periphery devoid of such ideological attributes and institutions. Moreover, since the discourse/s of the Yehudite literati included, at its core, a deeply embedded image and main meta-narrative of ‘exile and return’, the pair of center and periphery often, but not necessarily fully overlapped that of center/diaspora or exile.