Was the Jewish Torah codified from its various sources at the behest of
the Persian imperial government? This is the question the present book
explores by engaging in the much acclaimed theory of Imperial
Authorization proposed by Peter Frei. It is a politico-historical
analysis of the bilateral relationship between the Achaemenid imperial
government and the province of Judah in order to assess the historical
plausibility of Ezra’s mission recorded in the Hebrew Bible. This study
turns to legislative documents from Achaemenid-era Egypt and Asia Minor
in order to appraise Frei’s theory, while taking a diachronic and
synchronic approach to the socio-political history of Judah under the
Persian rule. It examines the administrative value of the Jerusalem
Temple and the geopolitical significance of Judah from the standpoint of
the imperial government. The literary-critical evaluation of the
biblical record along with the insight garnered from the historical
circumstances reveals how imperial politics intervened in the emergence
of Torah.