Word: jehoiakim
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Nebuchadnezzar's magnificent city required abundant cheap labor, much of it provided by Jewish captives. In 601 B.C., Jehoiakim, King of Judah, forged an alliance with Egypt, which was embroiled in ongoing skirmishes with Babylon; as retribution, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, raiding Solomon's Temple and seizing 10,000 Jews to help build his city. This brutal history would later color the portrayal of Babylon in the Bible. "In Christian culture, Babylon was quite deliberately developed as a broad symbol of the city of sin," says Michael Seymour, a curator of the British Museum's Middle Eastern collection. Indeed...
Though a lay reader may get lost amid the dense references--who knows the difference between Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin or the meaning of tohu-bohu?--the basic argument is clear. Each conquering faith must contend with the potent presence of its predecessors, and none have fully succeeded. Construction is ideology: building has always been employed, also unsuccessfully, to cement permanent ownership...
...documents. Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem identified the impressions stamped into one piece of clay as coming from the seal of Baruch, son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the doomsday proclamations of the prophet Jeremiah. Another bore the seal of Yerahme'el, son of King Jehoiakim's son, who the Book of Jeremiah says was sent on an unsuccessful mission to arrest both prophet and scribe - again confirming the existence of biblical characters...
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