BOOK REVIEW:

Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period
reviewed by Walter Brueggemann (The Christian Century)

Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period
edited by Jon L. Berquist
Society of Biblical Literature, 249 pp., $29.95 paperback
Berquist provides a series of specific studies concerning the recovery and interpretation of a colonial community that must maintain its distinct identity in the face of a seductive and insistent empire.
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Before considering the specific content of this book, it is useful to recognize the importance of its having been published at all. The word Yehud in the title is the term used in documents from the fifth century BCE to refer to the territory in and around Jerusalem that functioned as a colony of the Persian Empire. That colony became the venue for the construction of Jewish identity and the formation of a Judaism in which the inhabitants of the colony inescapably engaged in a high-wire act of accommodation and resistance to the empire. The book reflects an increasingly intense scholarly focus on the Persian period of Judaism as the generative period for the formation of the Hebrew Bible and the construction of Jewish identity.

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