Book Review: When is a Wall not a Wall?

Finkelstein published seven articles on Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah between 2008 and 2015. They are here reprinted together with a few notes at the end of each chapter to take account of any new relevant information and a brief summarizing chapter. Given that they are more or less all trying to advance the same case with respect to different parts of these books, it is helpful to have them all now easily accessible.

The argument is that archaeology can demonstrate that parts of these books, if not indeed the whole, should be dated to the Hasmonean period, probably during the rule of John Hyrcanus (134–104 bce). Finkelstein’s starting point is the list of wall-builders in Nehemiah 3. Surveys or excavations at all the places mentioned in that list have shown that a few were not inhabited during the Persian Period, when Nehemiah lived, but were more densely inhabited in the later period. Indeed, Jerusalem itself cannot have had more than a few hundred inhabitants in Nehemiah’s time, and there is no archaeological evidence that a wall was built in the Persian period. A similar conclusion emerges from a study of the place names in the list in Ezra 2 of those who returned from the Babylonian exile, while Nehemiah’s named enemies are said to be only representative figures of the enemies whom the Hasmoneans faced.

Having got the bit between his teeth, Finkelstein moves on to lists in Chronicles and eventually proposes that the books were in fact written precisely to justify Hyrcanus’s conquests.

Initially, Finkelstein thought that his work on Nehemiah 3 disposed of Nehemiah’s wall-building as a whole, but of course that enterprise is the main rationale for the whole of his first person account, which cannot easily be dated so much later. Conveniently, in the meantime he has with others adopted the view that Nehemiah’s walled city was located under what is now the temple mount, and so not open for excavation. This is extraordinary. Elsewhere Finkelstein’s case is that Biblical scholars have used circular argumentation: determining when a text must have been written and then supporting it with archaeological data from that same period. He does not seem to realize that inventing a non-verifiable location for Jerusalem is equally spurious.

His date for Chronicles is also difficult because Eupolemos is generally agreed to have cited its Greek translation in the Septuagint in about 150 bce, therefore making the Hebrew composition even earlier. Finkelstein’s attempt to get round this fixed point (see p. 134) will persuade only those already disposed to his extreme opinion.

Again, he dismisses earlier dates for the list of Rehoboam’s fortresses (2 Chron. 11:5–12) on the ground that some places he would expect to be mentioned are missing. He overlooks that precisely the same problem arises with what he advances as an explanation for the absence of forts to the north of Jerusalem—a clear case of pots and kettles.

The stimulus of this book is helpful and should make commentators take more seriously aspects of the text which they have rather sidelined in the past. For instance, Nehemiah’s complaint that hardly anyone lives in Jerusalem (Neh. 7:4) answers one of Finkelstein’s objections, the force of which arises only because this important datum has been underplayed in the past. For that and other similar points we should be grateful.

H. G. M. WilliamsonChrist Church, Oxford