When Wikipedia Gets It Wrong
Nehemiah ben Hushiel and the Strange Idea of Messiah ben Joseph
It is well known that you shouldn't rely uncritically on what you read on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a marvellous resource but its open, democratic ethos, allowing anybody to upload or edit an article, means that you cannot completely trust everything you read. I have always known this but only twice have I had reason to doubt something I read. The first time was when somebody, who clearly knew nothing about the subject, wrote something that was obviously wrong and was soon corrected. The second time was this week when I looked up the page on Nehemiah ben (i.e. son of) Hushiel, What I read about him sounded reasonable, until I investigated a little further and realised that Wikipedia’s statement that Nehemiah was “thought to be a historical figure” had no basis in fact.
The history that Nehemiah was said to figure in, was a Persian offensive in 611 CE against the neighbouring Byzantine Empire, based in Constantinople. The campaign lasted for seven or eight years. By the end the Persians had succeeded in conquering the major cities of Damascus and Antioch, the rest of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and much of Asia Minor. They seized Jerusalem in the year 614, making it the first time in three centuries that the city had not been under Christian rule.
The Persian occupation of Jerusalem did not last long. In 629 the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius took the city back. He held it for just ten years, before it fell to Mohammed’s armies who remained in control for nearly five centuries, until the first crusade in 1099.
When the Persians invaded Jerusalem, the Jews in the region supported them and fought alongside them. They had no love for their Byzantine rulers who kept them subdued and mocked their religion. In Persia however Jews were respected; they were a large, prominent community who played an important role in Persian trade. Jewish soldiers fought in the Persian army. According to the 12th century chronicler Michael the Syrian, they even persuaded the Persian generals to pause their campaigns on Jewish holidays.
According to the article I read on Wikipedia and a book by David C. Mitchell, when the Persian Emperor Khusrau decided to invade Jerusalem, he approached the Exilarch, the leader of Persia’s Jews, and offered to return the city to Jewish rule. All he wanted in return was the Exilarch’s military support during the invasion. The Exilarch responded positively and sent an army of 20,000 soldiers, led by his son, Nehemiah ben Hushiel, to join forces with the Persian invaders. When the city was conquered, the Emperor appointed Nehemiah ben Hushiel as its ruler.
The trouble with this account is that it is not based on any evidence. Although both Wikipedia and Mitchell’s book cite their sources, the sources do not do what they are supposed to do. They do not provide any evidence to support the fact that Nehemiah ben Hushiel led a Jewish force into Jerusalem, nor that he was appointed ruler of the city. Indeed they don’t even mention Nehemiah ben Hushiel. There is no evidence that he existed at all.
There is, however, one mention of Nehemiah ben Hushiel in the ancient literature that has come down to us. He appears in a strange, quasi-mystical, polemical work known as the Book of Zerubbabel. The book contains sufficient historical information to suggest that it was written around the year 630 CE, so just 16 years after the Persian conquest of Jerusalem.
The original Zerubbabel was a biblical character. He is mentioned in various biblical books, notably those of Zechariah and Ezra. He was a leader of the community of Jewish exiles who lived in Babylon in the 6th century BCE. He was instrumental in leading the first group of Jews who returned from Babylon to Israel, where they began rebuilding the Temple. The Temple that Zerubbabel and his fellow exiles rebuilt lasted for nearly six centuries, until it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70CE. The author of the Book of Zerubbabel made up a story about him, in which he has a vision of the Messiah, who tells him of events shortly to take place that will lead to the rebuilding of the destroyed Temple.
The story in the Book of Zerubbabel is complicated, mystical and highly polemical. It exists in different versions and has been explained at length by Martha Himmelfarb in her marvellous book Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire. Suffice to say that Zerubbabel is told in his vision that a man named Nehemiah ben Hushiel will gather the Jews to Jerusalem where they will live for 40 years and rebuild the Temple. After 40 years Nehemiah will be slain by a character known as Armilos, who is a son of Satan and probably represents the Byzantines. The Messiah will arrive, kill Armilos and join forces with the prophet Elijah to bring Nehemiah ben Hushiel back to life. The three of them will then preside over a general resurrection of the dead.
In this story Nehemiah ben Hushiel is not the Messiah but he does have certain messianic powers. He gathers the Jewish nation together and rebuilds the Temple but he is not powerful enough to usher in a utopian age; instead he is slain by a mightier enemy. It falls to the real Messiah to defeat the enemy and bring about a universal redemption. If that is so, we might ask, then what purpose does Nehemiah ben Hushiel serve in the story? Why didn’t the real Messiah gather the nation together by himself, without Nehemiah’s involvement?
The idea of the Messiah is a relatively late one in the development of Jewish thought. The word ‘Messiah’ means ‘anointed’, in the Bible it is applied only to a High Priest or a King. There is no mention in the Bible of a supernatural figure, the sort of person we might think of as a Messiah, who will save individuals from sin or redeem humanity from itself.
Some of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah and the author of the Book of Daniel, write about a lofty individual who will usher in an age of peace and harmony, but the idea of a Jesus-type figure who will bring salvation developed much later. The image of a Messiah in Jewish thought is generally assumed to have been influenced by Christianity, which had a far more developed and clearer idea of what the word represented. And it is Christianity which leads us back, possibly, to Nehemiah ben Hushiel.
Both Christianity and Judaism agree that the Messiah had to be a descendant of King David. But David’s descendants were not the only royal line in ancient Israel. At least half the nation professed loyalty, not to the children of David. but to the descendants of Joseph. When the Israelite kingdom split into two after the death of King Solomon, the southern kingdom was named after David’s ancestral tribe of Judah, while the northern kingdom gathered under the banner of Joseph’s son Ephraim. (In the book of Genesis, Joseph and Judah are half-brothers, they have different mothers). And as the idea of Messiah developed, each royal line claimed one. In the future there would be two Messiahs, a Davidic Messiah and a Messiah who was the descendant of Joseph, known as the Messiah ben Joseph.
Little is known about how these two competing figures entered the popular imagination or how important the Josephite Messiah was; he is only mentioned once in the Talmud whereas the Davidic Messiah is mentioned dozens of times. But during the early centuries CE the idea emerged that before the Davidic Messiah could come, the Josephite Messiah would appear and die in battle. It is this idea that explains why, in the book of Zerubbabel, Nehemiah ben Hushiel had to die. The author of the book used him to represent the Josephite Messiah.
It has been suggested that the death of the Josephite Messiah was an attempt to reconcile Christianity with Judaism. Both religions await the coming of their Messiah, but Christianity already knows of the Messiah’s death. The death and resurrection of the Josephite Messiah, who is most extravagantly portrayed in the personality of Nehemiah ben Hushiel, may have been an attempt to draw a parallel in Jewish myth with the death of Jesus. It would fit with some of the other polemical arguments in the Book of Zerubbabel, which we might revisit on another occasion.
Meanwhile however, I am going to amend Nehemiah’s Wikipedia page.