Davila marks a symposium coming to Haifa over midwinter. This deals with the communities of YHW(H) under the Achaemenids. It's in honor of the late Shaul Shaked but it might as well be in reaction to Russell Gmirkin.
We currently have the book of Ezra quoting - in Aramaic! - a royal proclamation by ?Ahlasueros I, Artaxerxes Longhand for fifth-century Hellenes. Or maybe it was his dad Xerxes. This is the lineage of Darius the Achaemenid. It turns out that "Ezra" was not the first Jew who transmitted an Achaemenid proclamation on religious affairs. TAD A4.1 records Darius' edict 419 BC. So how did that not get into our Bibles?
TAD A4.1 reads as if Darius - not Jerusalem - is the acknowledged legislator of Pesach halakha. I say deliberately "pesach" inasmuch as this has nothing to do with any problems in Egypt much less a "passover" or a "haggada"; which we might understand given the addressees who are Jews with their own temple at Yeb-Elephantine in, er... Egypt. (But upstream Egypt!) Also to the extent local Jews bear Egyptian names none of these names include those which Dr Freud (no less) called out: Aaron, Moses, Phinehas or Miriam.
Looking at a wider picture, I'm also tempted not to term an "Achaemenid Empire". This is Darius' propaganda. Cyrus never called himself a descendate of Achaemenes... his famed cylinder cites a genealogy from, instead, Teispes of the kings of Anshan. For more Achaemenist propaganda see also Herzfeld's gold tablet. Let us speak instead of a Teispid (or Anshan) Dynasty followed (and in many ways usurped) by an Achaemenid Dynasty.
Gmirkin and, lately, a motley of "counter-Jewish" ideologues in alliance with counter-biblical skeptics have been making much hay with TAD A4.1. In fact they're saying there was no Torah until the Ptolemies.
It is well that a conference is happening, to sort this out.
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