The contrast between this text, this inscription of Mesha, King Mesha of Moab on the one hand and the Biblical accounts of the devastation of Judah on the other hand are quite striking. Well, the Mesha inscription constructs a memory of defeat in order to legitimate a war. The latter, the biblical writings, are composed in a time when the king and his army were no longer present to execute revenge against Israel's enemies. Both remembrances, memories, are future oriented, yet Mesha's stela portrays the devastation as unprovoked and thus deserving of military retaliation. In contrast, the biblical memories depict the devastation as the consequence of the nation's failures and thus theologically justified. This depiction with which the account concludes, not begins, is meant to provoke sustained reflection on the identity of the nation and its deity, its God, rather than simply to incite anger and antipathy for its enemies. Consequently, the ultimate conquest of Israel and Judah are recounted in 16th terms relative to the very lengthy account of it prior history, of the whole nation's story until that point. Defeat is the perspective from which this history is narrated. Yet in order to set forth the consequences of defeat and the strategies for coping with it, the authors focused their attention not too much on the final catastrophe itself, as on the preceding history, and on Israel's codigal laws that the narrative contextualizes. The differences between biblical literature on the one hand and extra-biblical texts that I just discussed do not, I would argue, coincide with some cultural, theological chasms separating Israel from its neighbors. Israel itself was not all that unique in the world of the ancient [INAUDIBLE]. The differences should rather be viewed as contrast between representations of state or monarchic ideology on the one side, and the literature that affirms a national identity of peoplehood capable of surmounting the loss of statehood on the other hand. That Israelite and Judah high courts produced state inscriptions similar to that of Mesha seems quite likely. And some of these state-sponsored texts may even be found in the Bible themselves. But they have been amplified and redacted with the defeat of these states in view. Thanks to these new layers of meaning, they set forth various and sometimes competing roadmaps, what I call roadmaps, for the survival of the people and the eventual restoration of territorial sovereignty, return to statehood. The point I am here attempting to delineate relates to the difference between state and nation whereas the defeating conquest bring about the end of the states of Israel and Judah, they bolster and in many ways gave birth to the nation of Israel, the people in a more complex way. The biblical authors were, as I noted before, were writing under very changed conditions. They had restored their ruins, their communities were beginning to thrive again. And in the Hellenistic period, the Maccabees had reestablished a monarchy in an independent kingdom. So why didn't the Biblical authors just update the history, tell the sequel, the events to the more recent history that relate to rebirth and restoration? And closely related to this question is another one. Why does so much of the literature of the Second Temple period, the late biblical literature and extra-biblical literature that you find in things called pseudepigrapha and apocrypha give increasing attention to defeat, even embellishing it beyond what may have been the historical facts. The reason I think is the biblical authors want their audiences to focus on defeat. Their history tell us about great triumphs at the beginning. But in contrast to those monarchic state inscriptions, like the Mesha stela and other things, the biblical narrative culminates with defeat and the authors want their audiences to think about it. The biblical authors are writing during times of political ups and downs. They want to ensure that if the state that they are now starting to rebuild, the new society, whether it'd be the province of Judah or the kingdom that the Maccabees established, or what have you after that. If that society were to be destroyed again, their people would survive to see another day. They don't want their communities to throw all their cards in with the prospect of statehood and military triumph. And thus, many of the strategies for building a nation that we find in the Bible crystallize in the period of the Second Temple. Eventually, their work would pay off, and history would prove the real life-giving and community-sustaining potential of these strategies. And I'm referring here to the destruction of the Second Temple, the Second Temple that they had rebuilt after the destruction of 587 when the Judeans came back. And in the Persian period, they rebuilt the temple, but that temple was also destroyed, namely in 70 AD or CE, 600 years after the destruction of the first temple. Then later, the Roman wars with Judah, in the Bar Kokhba revolt, which is about 132 to 136 CE or AD, it only brings about great suffering and disappointment for the Judean communities. So what happens? The rabbis react, and when they react, they have all kinds of innovations that they bring in to the communities. For example, we have the story of Johanan ben Zakai. He is in the besieged city of Jerusalem and we are told in a legend of how he comes out to the Emperor of Vespasian who is standing before the walls of Jerusalem. And he bids from the Emperor Vespasian a place where he could build a school. And that was in Yavne. And through other parts of the Rabbinic writings we have all kinds of emphasis about, on Torah study, on the study of the law, on the study of the scripture, on prayer and all kinds of other things. But here's the point. The Rabbis are doing innovation, yes, but they're also drawing directly on something that had already been laid down. Laid down when? After the destruction of the first temple. So that without the work of the biblical authors during the Period of the Second Temple as things are starting to improve. If it were not for the biblical authors' attempt to find a way to create the people that could sustain the loss of statehood, that could sustain another defeat, the rabbis would have been left without a road map that they could pick up and embellish. So the history of Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the second temple only goes to show how powerful and how effective the work of the biblical authors was as they responded to the defeat. First, in 722 with Israel, but especially in 586, laying out a road map that the rabbis could pick up and use to their advantage in building a new form of community that could sustain the loss of the second temple.
