The Phases of the Return

The ‘oaths’ or ‘promises’ of Yahweh to Abraham and then Moses correspond, at the mythical level, to the legal function of the edicts of the Persian emperors: they provide legitimation for the return and bestow entitlement of property to the land. But at the practical level, the actual return of exiles and their takeover of Palestine required another model. The patriarchal traditions could be used by the returnees as a prefiguration of their presence in the country; but the remainees could equally appeal to them as a model of coexistence between complementary groups. These stories offered the returnees a ‘weak’ yet realistic model of return: in small groups, without direct conflict, by agreement with the residents and surrounding peoples, sharing the land and its resources. The traditions of the conquest offer a ‘strong’ model, preferred by the supporters of violent confrontation and of the exclusion of ‘extraneous’ people. These were logically (or at least narratively) connected to the ‘exit from Egypt’ that marked the liberation of the people from slavery in a foreign land.

But did an actual return take place along these ‘strong’ lines? Though there are doubts about the historical reliability of Ezra and Nehemiah (written a couple of centuries after the events they describe and betraying a strong ideological influence), it is clear that the return did not happen all at once and did not involve any particularly violent military conflict.