Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction vii
4. Part 1 The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited
5. After the “Myth of the Empty Land”: Major Challenges in the Study of Neo-Babylonian Judah 1
6. The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East 21
7. Where Is the “Myth of the Empty Land” To Be Found? History versus Myth 55
8. Periodization: Between History and Ideology 75
9. Part 2 Cult, Priesthood, and Temple
10. Bethel in the Neo-Babylonian Period 93
11. The Relationship of the Priestly Genealogies to the History of the High Priesthood in Jerusalem 109
12. Epoch and Genre: The Sixth Century and the Growth of Hidden Polemics 135
13. Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited 153
14. The Fasts in the Book of Zechariah and the Fashioning of National Remembrance 169
15. Part 3 Military and Governmental Aspects
16. Nebuchadnezzar II and the Old Testament: History versus Ideology 221
17. Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West: Royal Practice and Rhetoric 235
18. Neo-Babylonian Military Operations Other Than War in Judah and Jerusalem 263
19. Nabonidus in Arabia and Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period 285
20. Part 4 The Sixth Century B.C.E.: Archaeological Perspectives
21. Ideology and Archaeology in the Neo-Babylonian Period: Excavating Text and Tell 301
22. Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the Fifth Centuries B.C.E. 323
23. The Province of Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) in the Late Iron Age (Iron Age III) 377
24. Tell en-Naṣbeh and the Problem of the Material Culture of the Sixth Century 413
25. Part 5 Exiles and Foreigners in Egypt and Babylonia
26. Settlement of the Jews at Elephantine and the Arameans at Syene 451
27. The Representation of Foreigners in Neo- and Late-Babylonian Legal Documents (Eighth through Second Centuries B.C.E.) 471
28. Index of Authors 591
29. Index of Scripture 600
30. Index of Sites 609