Bücher von Scriptural Research Institute

The origin of the Book of Judith has been debated for thousands of years, and is often assumed to have been written in Greek as anti-Hellenic propaganda during the Maccabean Revolt. It isn't clear why an anti-Hellenic book would have been written in Greek by an Aramaic-speaking people, however, no ancient copies of it survive in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Phoenician (Samaritan / Judahite). There are Hebrew translations, however, they are dated to the middle ages, 1000 years after the oldest surviving copies of the Judith found in the Septuagint. The Greek translations are remarkably consistent compared to the radically different versions of the Book of Tobit in the surviving copies of the Septuagint.The name of the king in the book of Judith is named Nebuchadnezzar, which was the name of the king of Babylon, between 605 and 562 BC. However, other than the name of the king, no other elements of the story indicate the story originated with the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar did not fight the Medes, and could not have killed the king of Media, as the two countries were close allies at the time, and under King Cyaxares the Median Empire reached its peak. Nebuchadnezzar didn't launch a war against the Elamites, who in fact fell under the control of Cyaxares's Median Empire. As the name Nebuchadnezzar was used to replace Achiacharos in the book of Tobit, when the Sinaiticus version was simplified into the Vaticanus version, it's likely that the name Nebuchadnezzar was simply used to replaces an older name as well.There are several indicators in the book that point to the original king being Ashurbanipal, the king of Assyria between 668 and 627 BC. Ashurbanipal did fight two wars against Elam, and virtually annihilated the Elamites in the second war. Ashurbanipal also invaded Media, and during the fighting the Median king Phraortes was killed, allowing Ashurbanipal to claim victory, even though he didn't consolidate his victory and integrate Media back into the Assyrian Empire. When Ashurbanipal had launched the invasion of Media, in his 17th year, he ordered the local kings from across his empire to send troops to the war, but almost all refused, which was a general insurrection. Therefore, while committed to the war against Media, after defeating the Medians, he was eager to return to Assyria, and restore order to his empire.

The Amarna Letters are a collection of clay tablets found in the ruins of El Amarna, Egypt, in the 1880s. The city of El Amarna was built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, during his religious reforms in the 1340s BC, but was then abandoned after he died and Egypt reverted to worshiping the old gods. These letters provide a unique glimpse into a period of Egyptian history, that the Egyptians themselves attempted to erase. After Akhenaten's heir Tutankhamen died, his successor Ay was only able to hold the throne for a few years before Horemheb seized it, and attempted to reunited the Egyptians by erasing all records of Akhenaten's reforms, which included erasing Akhenaten's name from almost every record in Egypt. By this period, El Amarna appears to have already been mostly abandoned, and therefore Egyptologists were able to reconstruct the strange story of Akhenaten's reign, in the middle of the New Kingdom era.The Amarna letters were recovered from the royal archives in El Amarna, where they appear to have been archived after having been translated for the royal court. The letters are inscribed on clay tablets in Cuneiform, the dominant form of writing in Mesopotamia, Canaan, and the neighboring cultures in Anatolia and Cyprus at the time. The shape of the Cuneiform logograms used are Akkadian, the parent form of the later Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Ugaritic forms of Cuneiform, however, the language used in the Letters is not pure Akkadian. The Letters are between various members of the Egyptian royal court, and many different cities and nations across the Middle East, including Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, and Cyprus, and therefore the language within the Letters is not consistent. Within the letters from Canaanite cities, all of which were subject to Egypt at the time, several transliterated names are also used, which appears to be a direct precursor to the later development of Ugaritic Cuneiform by 1200 BC, which was an abjad similar to the Canaanite script that was developed by 1000 BC, however, used Cuneiform logograms instead of alphabet-like letters.The surviving letters were mostly about trade and diplomacy, however, do include a great deal of information about what was happening in the Middle East at the time. In particular, they demonstrate how limited Egypt's actual control of its Canaanite holdings were, where the governors of cities were constantly requesting military help to defend themselves against each other, the marauding Habirus, and the Hittite-backed Amorites in northern Canaan. The Amarna Letters were written during the mid-1330s BC, during the reigns of the Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, although it is not always clear when in their respective reigns the letters were written, or even which pharaoh was on the throne at the time.