Documentary Culture and Empire in the Southern Levant: The Case of Early Judaism

DOC-CULT investigates how Persian and Hellenistic empires shaped local life by examining imperial communication and its representation by subject communities in the Southern Levant (c. 538–64 BCE). Centring Jewish communities and the uniquely rich dossier of imperial documents embedded in the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, and ancient Jewish historiography, DOC-CULT sets these literary witnesses alongside inscriptions, papyri, and the material remains of archives across the Levant and Near East. It shows that imperial documents were not just records of subject-ruler interactions, but instruments through which local communities negotiated and conceptualized power, articulated identities, and modelled relations with rulers, each other, and even God. DOC-CULT’s interdisciplinary methodology treats “texts without context” alongside archaeological contexts that lack texts, creating a new and comprehensive picture of imperial documentality. Its novel approach to documents embedded into literary writings moves beyond scholarly stalemates that reduce the scope of investigation to simple dichotomies (authentic vs. fake; pro- vs. anti-imperial). The project will demonstrate (1) that changes in communication practices shaped local perceptions of identity and power; (2) that the literary re-framing of imperial documents mediated between imperial authority and local audiences; and (3) that textualized prayers and supplications to God share features with imperial communications, reflecting deep entanglement of religious and administrative discourse. DOC-CULT is thus set to advance our understanding of the relationship between political structures and the information technologies they sustain, and between media and their impact on peoples’ perceptions of their social relations. It illuminates not only the ancient past but present human conditions, at a time when media and the social sphere are inseparably entangled.