| Liturgical Calendar 2010 The History of the Church of the East January The Jews of Babylonia A. Abraham & Mesopotamian Culture Even after acknowledging that the common history of all of humanity according to the Scriptures is Mesopotamia by means of the Garden of Eden, and after seeing that the root of the various languages throughout the world is the same place, via the Tower of Babylon, it is still remarkable that the earliest cultural self-identification of the Jews, to whom the revelation of God first came, was as Mesopotamians. Abraham, their “great father,” as his name implies, came from “Ur of the Chaldeans,” (Genesis 11:31). Not only was Ur, by that tradition, Abraham’s “hometown,” but the Jews as a people are identified precisely as “descended from the Chaldeans” (Judith 5:6). Whatever the nature of the historicity of such claims, it is clear that the Jews thought of themselves, in the depths of their self-understanding, as inheritors of Mesopotamian culture. Whatever comes later in their national or cultural feelings, including the enmity that often was found between Israel/Judea and the various nations and empires of Mesopotamia, the fact remains that looming behind the Jews, in the deepest roots of their psyche, were Abraham and his Mesopotamian forefathers. B. The "Exile/Return Home" This context sheds an interesting light on every interaction between the Jewish people and the nations of Mesopotamia. Indeed, whether they were warring with the Babylonians, Assyrians or Chaldeans, it cannot be forgotten that in the background of this fight was the inescapable memory that these were, in some sense, their cousins. It comes as no surprise, then, that the “Exile” enacted by King Nebuchadnezzar resulted a resurgence of Jewish culture. Indeed, what is now known as the “Hebrew Alphabet” is nothing other than the Aramaic alphabet of Babylon, and it was immediately after the Exile that the Scriptures were reorganized (cf. books of Ezra & Nehemiah). Most significantly, there is much evidence to show that the majority of the Jews in Babylon remained there even after Cyrus the Persian allowed them to return to Jerusalem! C. The Babylonian Talmud It was also in Babylon that the Jews composed the constitutive document of their post-temple faith: the Babylonian Talmud, or the “Bavli.” This collection of teachings and practical wisdom was compiled between 200-600 AD in Babylon, where the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in the world lived at that time. The enormity and significance of this Jewish population in Babylon will have, as we shall see, great ramifications for the establishment of the Church east of the Euphrates.
|
