Final Summary of the Course

This course, the Fall and Rise of Jerusalem,

is based on my book with the same name.

The book was based on my PhD thesis, presented to the Senate of Tel Aviv

University in January 1997 under the supervision of my teacher Nadav Na'aman.

I can tell you that I submitted this thesis

only because it was the time to do it.

Most of my teachers were quite satisfied with it,

but I was not.

Even if the general picture was clear to me,

I saw the many problems and holes in the

picture of Judah in the sixth century BCE and

thought that many of them can and should be filled.

This is the reason why I was waiting with a Hebrew version

of my book until 2001, trying meanwhile to base more the archaeological and

geopolitical aspect as well as the biblical discussion.

I submitted the Hebrew version of the manuscript of my book to the publisher,

Yad Ben Zvi

in Jerusalem, in 2001 only because it was the right time to do it, and even if the

book was accepted for publication, it actually was published in April 2003.

I was not satisfied from the results.

I still saw the many problems and holes in this picture of Judah in

the sixth century BCE and thought that many of them can and should be filled.

This is why I was waiting with the English

edition of my book until 2004, trying meanwhile to

base more the biblical part of the book as

well as the historical sections and the demographic evaluations.

The overall picture was presented in the book, but even though I choose

to end the book with a series of questions on subjects that are

still open.

Some of them should be the subject of further research, and some

of them should probably wait for future developments and future finds.

This course presents another stage in my research of

Judah and the Judaeans in the sixth century BCE.

In the last ten years, I excavated at Ramat Rahel in order to gain

more information of the archeology and the history of Judah in the sixth century BCE.

Together with my colleague Professor David Vanderhooft of Boston College, we started

the Yehud Stamp Impressions and published a heavy book on this subject.

With my students and colleagues, I read a lot,

wrote a lot, discussed this subject on different occasions.

And especially taught many courses and seminars

on these subjects both in Tel Aviv University, my university, and at

Heidelberg University in Germany. I feel that I am ready to go one further

step in my long time connection with the sixth century BCE and prepare this course.

When I started to prepare my research for teaching in

this course with a main goal of presenting an overview synthesis

on the history of Judah and the Babylonian rule, I knew that I have two options;

to focus on the half empty cup or to focus on the half full cup.

Focus on the half empty cup means to show the gaps in our knowledge,

the caution we should treat the different archaeological and

historical details, and avoiding the over all synthesis because

of all this.

Focusing on the half full cup means to know all this.

And to treat separately each one of the different fields

of research, the biblical, archaeological, and historical material, and to

try to exhaustively study each one of them without letting

the other field affect the research of the other one.

But with a clear purpose to

get to a point when a positive summary can be done and then a synthesis.

And bear in mind that it can be

that I misunderstood some details, that I misinterpreted others.

That it can be that future discoveries will change our knowledge and perspective

of some of the parts in this big puzzle, and maybe even the way we should see

the entire picture.

However, I feel that we have enough information and we are in the right

time to try to go one step forward and present the synthesis.

I'm sure that if and when I will teach this material in two, five or ten years

from now with better understanding of the material,

with more knowledge, and even maybe with new finds,

the historical and archaeological reconstruction might be different.

However, this is the best I can do in this phase of my

understanding of this fascinating period in the history of Judah and the Judeans.

I would like to thank my student Ido Koch for

their enormous work invested in front of and behind the curtain.

I would also like to thank Nadav Stark for the forcing

power of this project in Tel Aviv University.

Pablo Arcuschin and Omri Roth made an amazing work

in filming and editing inside and even outside the studio.

I would like also to thank to my colleagues that took part

in this course, and agreed to lecture, each one on a special subject.

Dr Yuval Gadot, Professor Konrad Schmid, Dr Cynthia

Edenburg, Professor Yoram Cohen, and Professor David Vanderhooft.

Last but not least, I would like to thank each one of you, the students in

this course for going with me such a long way, crossing together hard times of

Assyrian-Babylonian conquest, surviving destructions and deportations.

Developing hopes for

return and finding

ourselves at the end in this

tiny province with many

hopes and expectations,

learning about the

glorious past, and

looking for a brighter future.

A Queda e a Restauração de Jerusalém

Avaliações

Ministrado por

Professor Oded Lipschits, Ph.D.

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