Writing a History of Yehud in the Persian Period: Creating Understanding

Modern and post-modern historiography is a recreation of the past that links together critically evaluated evidence in a chain of cause-and-effect. It is an interpretive act, the aim of which is to create understanding; it is idiosyncratic in that it reflects the creative genius of the individual historian (Edelman 1991; 1999). History-writing is not a science but an art; the same evidence can be construed differently in terms of causation and meaning. For this reason, we should not expect “the definitive” history of any subject; instead, we should accept and embrace the existence of a range of histories on a subject (Edelman 1996). We cannot complacently read one recreation and rest content that it is the final, undisputed “solution” or understanding. Rather, we have to become active participants in the creative process presented to us in different visions of the same topic and decide for ourselves which evidence we consider to be relevant and which interpretive framework we find most convincing. All historians of Yehud in the Persian period would agree in principle that their task is to identify primary and secondary artifactual and literary sources that might provide relevant evidence for various aspects and issues associated with the province in the years between 538 and 333 BCE and then to evaluate these sources to determine what evidence they think they actually contain.1 Once done, their next task is to create understanding by arranging their critically evaluated “data” in an interpretive framework that provides meaning by attributing cause and effect in order to suggest “why” something took place. Differences emerge between historians already in the carrying out of the first step in the historical enterprise. Depending, for example, on where the boundaries of the province are set and whether a person thinks that they remained stable or changed over time, the archaeological site data used to understand developments and policies will differ dramatically. A decision about whether a site that yields pottery from the Iron IIC period and the Persian period was