NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 79, Issue 1, 2025

Biblical traditions provide evidence of the pervasiveness of displacement in ancient Israel and Judah. This paper focuses on migration in the sixth century BCE, when the Babylonians’ conquest of Jerusalem led to the deportation of many of its inhabitants to Mesopotamia, as well as to repeated mass displacements in the Levant. In particular, this article examines how Israelite and Judahite identities were affected by these experiences and how Judah’s destruction was explained in different ways by different migrant groups, as evidenced by passages in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Moving away from the idea of a monolithic Israelite/Judahite exilic experience, it highlights the diverse responses to population displacement in the narratives preserved in the Hebrew Bible and their impact on Judahite identity formation.

The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel describe their eponymous prophets experiencing undeserved pain caused by YHWH. Paradoxically, the texts repeatedly assert that YHWH is a fair god, who causes pain as a punishment on those who are unfaithful to him. Using pain studies from medicine and literature as well as comparisons with other biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, this article investigates the unexplained pain experienced by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. I argue that the divinely caused pain the two prophets are said to experience functions as literary “proof” of YHWH’s presence with them in a historical moment of doubt—the destruction of Jerusalem and displacement of its population—and ultimately of the deity’s own “migration” with a select group of his people.

This paper explores the religious identity and practices of the Jewish community in Elephantine during the Achaemenid period, focusing on the archaeological and textual evidence from the site itself, rather than the Hebrew Bible. It critiques previous scholarship’s reliance on biblical texts to interpret Elephantine Judaism, which often viewed it as either a deviation or a purer form of biblical Judaism. The study emphasizes a need for a fresh approach that considers Elephantine’s own cultural context and artifacts, highlighting the diversity of religious practices, including syncretic elements and unique customs, as distinct expressions of Elephantine’s community identity.

This article examines the portrayal of forced displacement in selected Greek-language Jewish prose texts. The selected narratives concern 1) the capture of slaves from Judea by Ptolemy I and their liberation by his son (Arist. 12-27); 2) Ptolemy IV’s forced mobilisation of Jews to the hippodrome of Schedia, near Alexandria (3 Macc. 4:4-11); and 3) Mary of Bethezuba, a refugee in Jerusalem during the Roman siege in 70 CE (Josephus, J.W. 6.199-219). I analyse the role of non-hegemonic social groups such as women, children, and the elderly in these narratives in terms of Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions of vivid representation (enargeia). Based on this analysis, I argue that the emphasis on these specific groups can be explained as rhetorical highlights designed to appeal to the imagination of ancient readers and listeners.