From Assyria to Rome

We recently finished studying the book of Daniel in our Sunday evening Bible study. Daniel is a book that covers a lot of history in a roundabout way, and much of that history is probably unknown to a lot of Christians. The Old Testament story ends with the Jews returning from exile under Persian rule, but then when you get to the New Testament the Romans are in charge. Daniel's prophecies have a lot to do with that in-between time, a period of about four centuries I've often heard called the "400 Years of Silence," which is a completely ridiculous name. A lot happened in those 400 years, and there's a growing realization these days that many of the events in those 400 years were direct causes for what the world was like in Jesus' time.

In other words, those centuries we neatly skip over were very important, almost as though we were to study American history and just skip the period of 1850-1875.

At any rate, I put together a very general timeline as a visual aid to help people see some of the flow of the events leading up to and following the Babylonian exile. No, I didn't get every single important date on there, and yes, some scholars might argue that some dates should be nudged a year or two one way or the other, but the point is to give people a general idea of how things happened, broadly speaking, during those very important years.

Click here to view this timeline (.pdf).

Azatiwada and the Song of Deborah

Below I've included a link to a paper I wrote last year for a class I took at Asbury. I'm not really sure why I'm posting this, since it's fairly technical and I can't imagine anyone would be interested in reading it, but I suppose it's just possible that someone will someday find this paper in a Google search for research material and actually use it. The presenting reason I'm posting it, though, is because in my sermon titled "How to Go" I mentioned that in the ancient Near East, a ruler could be judged by the quality of the protection he or she offered on the roads under his or her control. That claim is actually based on research, believe it or not.

The paper in question compares some lines from the Song of Deborah with some claims made by a ruler named Azatiwada in an inscription bragging about how great he was. They're not explicitly connected in any way, of course, but they both make the assumption (or so I argue) that one standard way of judging a ruler's quality and right to brag is how well they take care of their roads. Nothing earth-shattering, I suppose, but it does shed some light on a variety of obscure passages throughout the Bible.

Click here to view this paper.