REDATING THE SECOND TEMPLE? Diana Edelman summarizes her new book on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Redating the Building of the 'Second' Temple
It is hard see what benefit would have accrued from rebuilding the temple under either Cyrus or Darius while Jerusalem remained unoccupied and in ruins. How would either king have benefited from a pilgrimage site in a destroyed city in an underdeveloped, distant province?

A summary of the main arguments made in D. Edelman, The Origins of the 'Second' Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Yehud (London: Equinox, 2005).

By Diana Edelman
University of Sheffield
November 2005

If I'm reading her right, she thinks the Second Temple was actually built in the reign of Artaxerxes I (c. 464-423 BCE), sometime after the 21st year of his reign. It's very difficult to evaluate this sort of argument on the basis only of a summary of a book, but a few thoughts occur to me.

• First, the only hard datum about the date of building of the Second Temple I can find is the reference in an Elephantine papyrus dated 407 BCE to the high priest and the priests in Jerusalem, which certainly seems to imply a Temple there and then. See here for discussion. This does not conflict with Edelman's interpretation.
  
• Second, she also should take into account the evidence of the Enochic Animal Apocalypse (see link just cited). In fact, 1 Enoch 89:72 could be used to support her argument. One reading says that two "sheep" (Zerubbabel and Joshua?) started rebuilding Jerusalem (the "House"), after which the Temple (the "Tower") was rebuilt (v. 73). But another reading of v. 72 says three sheep, which would include either Sheshbazzar or Nehemiah. If the latter is intended, the text could be read to say that the Temple was rebuilt in his time. This would be especially interesting, because the Animal Apocalypse rejects the validity of the Second Temple and thus is witness to a different propaganda tradition and possibily a different line of historical memory about the Second Temple. But it's a very difficult passage and any interpretation of it is speculative.
  
• Third and sed contra, I don't find it incoherent that the exiles might have put more work sooner into rebuilding the Temple than into rebuilding the city. Religious people have their own priorities that don't necessarily make sense from a modern secular perspective. Look at all the time, money, and effort Europeans put into building cathedrals in the Middle Ages. So I don't see a problem in principle with the biblical accounts.

In brief, Edelman's theory seems to involve a lot of speculation and extrapolation, but I wouldn't rule the possibility out. I'll be interested in reading her book.

Bibliography

Patrick A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of I Enoch (SBLEJL 4; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1993), 336-40

George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36, 81-108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 387-95

UPDATE (12 November): Regarding my point #3, reader Robert Schwartz e-mails:

Of course they would have. The Temple was the attraction that would jumps start the city's economy by requiring the people to make their tri-annual pilgrimages.