Biblical Archaeology From the Ground Down: Merodach-Baladin II: Babylonian King

Welcome to our episode of Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact and hosted by Dr. George Sparks. Today's special guest is experienced field archaeologist Dr. David E. Graves. Now let's explore the field of archaeology in today's episode. Good morning, good evening, and good afternoon wherever you're at in the time zone. My name is Dr. Sparks. Today I got with me Dr. David Graves. We got a really cool presentation today. I shouldn't say we, I should say he. And he told me how to pronounce this, Meridok Valadin II. And then you mentioned this other name like Meridok and it reminded me of the old comic strip of a dog called Marduk or something like that. I don't know if you have that in Canada. It is very, very popular in the United States. I'm already off subject, but that doesn't matter because this is going to be a lot of fun. Look at our new setup just for today. We want to see how this goes. If you like it, tell us. If you don't like it, just keep your mouth shut. We don't want to know. I'm just kidding. This is an interesting slide. So as we get going, hopefully Dr. Graves will tell us about the slide and why it's kind of like, it's really kind of symbolic of what he's going to be talking about. And it's really interesting. And this is going to be a fun program. Right now, I want to thank all our viewers and our subscribers. We're getting ready to turn 160,000 subscribers, and it's because of you, our listening audience, and we really appreciate that. And of course, we got all kinds of new stuff happening this coming year that we're going to share. It's going to be a lot of fun. So if you have others that want to subscribe, to be a part, to get to know this Bible Interact, which is, we are, we are, Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. Now we got that out of the way. Dr. Graves, tell us about this Merodach Baladan II. Okay. Good to be with you, George, as always. Well, the name Merodach is the English name in Babylonian, it's equivalent to Marduk. Yeah, we do have the comic up here, Marduk the dog, but Marduk was also the, the god of the Babylonians, one of the chief gods. And so they often would name their children after the name of their god. So that's where Merodach comes from, Baladan is another name that he was given. So this individual was actually mentioned in scripture, he's mentioned in the Bible, and in the ancient writings, it's called Marduk Apla Idina II. So that's what his name is in the ancient Babylonian, but we translate that in our English as Merodach Baladan II. And he reigned from 721 to 710, and then he reigned again in 703 BC, so two different times. Probably most Bible readers are not familiar with him much, kind of an obscure individual, but he is named in scripture. The material is found in my book on the archaeology of biblical people, and there, if you scan the QR code, it'll take you to Amazon where you can purchase the book. Well, in preparation for Christmas this year, I did a bunch of coloring books, each with about 30 plates, all based on archaeology, something quite unique. I've never seen any other comic book out there like it. There might be, but I've never come across them. So they have the New Testament, the Old Testament, and biblical people, and some fun stuff for the Keto's for Christmas, good stocking stuffers. Well, we're going to be talking, so this is sort of a mini-series. We're going to be speaking about the seven Babylonians that are named in the Bible. We're going to talk about Merodach Baladan II today, then we're going to look at Nebuchadnezzar II, and three of his officials that we have mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 39. And then we're going to be taking a look at evil Merodach, another Merodach, or another evil Marduk, and then we're going to take a look at Belshazzar, the son and co-regent of Nabonidus. Now, this image right here is actually Nabonidus, this would be Belshazzar's father, I couldn't find one of Belshazzar himself, but this is his father, one of the images from the British Museum. So these are the seven that we're going to look at, three of them are officials in Nebuchadnezzar's chamber, and then the rest of them are kings that reigned and ruled, and they're all mentioned in the Bible. So here's a list of them, a plate, this is the plate that I have in my book, the people in Babylonia, their reigns in the different time periods. We've looked at the Assyrian Empire, we just finished it up actually, and the kings that we have there, and we also looked at the Persian Empire, and now we're going to look at the empire in between. We're not doing this sort of in chronological order, but they'll all be up on the internet, if you can actually view them in chronological order if you wish. The thing I wanted to point out here is that Merodac, Meladon II, reigns in Babylon at the same time that the Assyrians are in control further up in Mesopotamia. Sargon II was ruling from 722 to 705, which is the same time as Merodac is, and then it runs into the reign of Sennacherib. So that's probably one of the reasons why we don't have it highlighted so much in scripture, but he is mentioned there. It really is from the time period of the Assyrians, and then we will get into the Babylonians who ruled, Nebuchadnezzar, Emile Marduk, through to Glamish Marduk, and then Nabonidus and Belshazzar. So here we have the timeline, this puts Merodac, Meladon in the same time period. He becomes in control of Babylon the same time that Israel falls, and the prophets Micah and Isaiah are in around that same time period. So 722 to 710, and then again it's 703. And then we're going to take a look at, down here in the bottom, you see Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar II, and Nabonidus, so we're going to talk about them in this time period. This leads us into the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of Babylon, 539, when Cyrus defeats Belshazzar. So this is the seven years of captivity, and we're going to be talking, this is in the reign of Daniel, and this is in the reign of Jeremiah, and then we're a little bit earlier than that right at the moment. We do have a stelae with his image on it, and this is in the Near East Museum in Berlin. Then, Meredach is on the left, and his consort, I think, is on the right, and as I said, he was the king of Babylonia, and he was the son of Baladan, so that's why he's called Meredach Baladan II, and a contemporary of Hezekiah, King Hezekiah in 711 BC, with whom he cherished friendly relations, we read about that in Isaiah 39, 2 Kings 20, and 2 Chronicles 32. Kings and Chronicles recount the same information, basically, and just telling it in two different perspectives. It's written, as I said, Meredach Baladan, by an interchange of letters, he twice ruled as the king of Babylon, first in 722, 710, and then 703, for a short time, exerting significant power for that over 30 years. He's mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pallasar III, Sargon II, and Sennacherib. The Assyrian inscription at Khorsabad was deciphered by Hinx and Rawlinson, but it was according to which he was conquered by Sennacherib in the first year of the latter's reign. So Meredach Baladan is there called Qar Junayas, a city and country frequently mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions, and comprising the southernmost part of Babylonia, near the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, together with the district watered by those two rivers to the borders of Susanna. This king, with the help of his Susannian allies, had recently recovered Babylon, from which Sargon, Sennacherib's father, had expelled him in the twelfth year of his reign. The battle seems to have been fought considerably to the north of that city, and the result was that Sennacherib totally defeated Meredach Baladan, who fled to save his life, leaving behind him all of his military equipment. And in the cuneiform annals of the fourth year of Sennacherib's reign, Meredach Baladan is further mentioned as having escaped to an island. That's why the cover picture that he showed today has Meredach Baladan in water, and being taken captive by Sennacherib, and along with his entire family. Here's one of the annals. This one here is the Babylonian where he is mentioned, line 13 of it, this is in the British Museum. You can read it in the Ancient Near Eastern text. So Meredach Baladan is mentioned in the latter part of this particular Babylonian king's list. He's also mentioned in the Synchronistic king's list in the Ancient Near Eastern text. There is a picture of the Babylonian king's list A, close up of it, of the cuneiform that mentions his name. In fact, this can be read in Romans and translated. So that's sort of the quick overview of Meredach Baladan, who is one of the Babylonian kings who is mentioned in scripture. Okay, George? You know, that's very interesting, because he seems like an individual that's easily read right through. Like how many times has he actually mentioned in the, I'll just say Old Testament, once, maybe? Well, in three different texts, so Isaiah, 2 Chronicles, and 2 Kings, so the three references that I showed there. So again, he's actually mentioned more than some other more prominent kings, but yeah, we would gloss right over that, we wouldn't understand the significance of it, so I tried to put it in a little bit of a historical context, and one of the lesser kings, but from Babylon, Babylonian king, and this is going to lead us into the Babylonian Empire after the fall of Jerusalem, and we see the more prominent ones that are more important and quite significant, especially when we get into Belshazzar, and we get into the book of Daniel, and a lot of critical scholars that said that he never existed mentioned in the Bible, and we find him mentioned in a whole dispute as to whether he was a king or not, and we'll wait until that presentation to discuss that, but here's one of the lesser known, but still significant. I think a point in the lesson is that even some of these lesser known to us individuals were known to the ancient writers of Scripture, I think that's the important part, you know, if they just made up these stories and fabricated, they wouldn't know this rather insignificant individual, placing him in the proper historical context and time period, but the biblical writers wrote with detail, and they were historically accurate, they were also geographically accurate, and so we can trust those facts as reliable in the biblical text, so that's I think the lesson for the day. You gave the time of Baladan as what, 701, around there, the last part of the 8th century, later part of the 8th century? 722. Okay, still the latter part. So when Sennacherib is laying siege to Jerusalem and the cities in Judea, this individual is ruling in Babylon, would that be correct? We got Hezekiah, and then Baladan II, and I can understand how Baladan the Babylonian king plays really third fiddle, because there's so much going on with Sennacherib, and I don't want to get into that, because we already discussed it. Yeah, here we have the timeline, George, so we have Baladan, and the dates are down under his name here, 722 to 710, so it's just at the fall of Israel in 722, and then he takes control of Babylon, and then after his capture on the island, he comes back in 703 to rule again for a short period of time, only a few months. Yeah, puts it in the time period of King Hezekiah, who is reigning now, the prophet Micah, right there. So there's a lot going on in the political sphere in the Near East, 2700 years ago, just like there is today, and somebody takes over, or somebody's gone, and he hides on an island, when you think he's gone, done, over with, there he comes back and rules again, the craziness of it all, you know, who knows? But like you said, in the biblical narrative, it does catch these, what might be on the timeline, what is just a blip on the radar screen, but yet in the biblical narrative, it does pay attention to these details. I do find that amazing, I do find that amazing. Hey, I wanted to ask you a question, because these Babylonian names that you're mentioning right now, and it made me wonder, you know, when we talk about, let's say like, this would be in the Late Bronze Age, so now we went from Iron Age, around 8th century, and now we're going to go back to the Late Bronze Age, Moses, Moses, the conquest, that time period, Moses' exodus, wandering in the wilderness, and he ends up on this place called Mount Nebo. Is Nebo a Babylonian name? Do you know? Nebo? I don't know. Because you've got Nebunidus, and I'm just thinking, somewhere, did that mountain rename during maybe a time period where the Babylonians were controlling, you could say, the Levant. That's a fancy name for, let's say, if you want to say Israel territory. Well, it's actually a Moabite territory, so... Oh, on that side, yeah. Part of Moab, so up on the mountain there, so it would be controlling that territory. Okay, we went archaeology here. Moabites. I'm not certain as to the etymology of the word Nebo. Something maybe our listeners can do a little bit of research on. I'm going to look that up, because I was just thinking about that. I thought, you know, that would be interesting. Was it ever renamed? Because we got anachronisms in the Bible, like you read the events, for interest, and the narrative does tell us, like it mentions Laish, and they say, well, now it's called Dan. Yeah. And then in the narrative of Abraham being separated from Lot, it names a territory where Lot is captive, and it says that he's found up at Dan. So that would be, in my opinion, anachronism, because Dan doesn't show up until much, much later. But for the current reader, you know, if I said Laish, what would that be, you know? Something that our readers need to understand is that we have names that are mentioned for cities and places in the Bible from that time period, and sometimes the name of the place changes over time. And then also, sometimes we have a Tel in modern times. So sometimes it's given an Israeli name for the Tel, or if we're in Jordan, it's given an Arabic name for the Tel. So it can be confusing, because you have, for example, Tel el-Hammam has had a number of names that are associated with it, depending on the time period. The late Bronze time period, it was Abel Shittim. Right, okay, yeah. Prior to that, you had, called Sodom. We don't know the name of the place in the time of Solomon, where it was an administrative city mentioned in Scripture, there was a large administration there under Solomon, but there's no name of the city mentioned, given, so we don't know what it was called. Then we move on into the Roman time period, even in the Roman, the first century, it was called Livius, but then there's also another name given to it in Josephus. So places can have various different names, and so it can be confusing when you're trying to look things up on maps, and so there's the ancient city, and there's the Tel, the archaeological site, modern one, it's given a name in modern times, and those are connected sometimes with traditions and history, the modern names that are given. So keep in mind that just because your map has a different name on it than what you think it is, you may be being led down the garden path and misinformed, so just keep that in mind. Well, let me bring it more up to date for folks. Let's say that in the 1960s and early 1970s, there were probably very few, if any, streets named Martin Luther King Boulevard, but I believe in the 1970s, later on, early 1980s, streets were renamed in honor of Martin Luther King. So if I was reading about an event in the 1960s, but the newspaper or the book is contemporary, the name of that street would be Martin Luther King, right, even though the event happened much, much earlier. That's what we're talking about. So we can have it today. Yeah, we do, and the ancient city of Amman in Jordan used to be called Philadelphia. We got one of those here in the United States, too, you know. And then, of course, Jerusalem, early on, was called Jebus, Jebus, so cities had different names depending on which time period you're looking at, so keep that in mind, and the Romans would often come in, and if the ruler wanted to bow down and give some commemoration to one of the emperors, often they would change the name to something that would appease the Roman emperor at the time. And that's very true, because we had Dr. Rami Aravi, he's been at Trinity Southwest for a number of different lectures, I've had him on my program, and he's excavating at a location which we would refer to as Bethsaida, right? But in the Roman period, they actually renamed it Julius, is that right? So there's a name change there. And if we go back to the, I'm going to say the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, there's a name there where the son of David, Absalom, he was from, his parents were there, right, his grandparents. So in the Biblical narrative, when Absalom rebels against his father, and then he loses, he takes off and goes back up to the territory to live with grandma and grandpa. Early on, this is where he goes up to the early name for Bethsaida, he marries the daughter of the king and queen up in that area, and that is, okay, the mother of Absalom, whose grandparents live in that location, that's why he runs up that way. Very interesting. I'll look it up in my book on the cities of the New Testament, I know it's in there, I just can't remember the name. Another thing you'd mentioned, Julius, Tel-el-Hammam was called Julius in the Roman period before it was called Livius, so. I think our discussion where we had the three discoveries, which is doing quite well, I think it's up to around 2,000 views already, which is cool for academics, and I think Dr. Stripling mentioned that in that program. Yeah, when we were doing our research together, we were able to trace it back, so again, it became difficult sometimes to know what you're talking about, because it mentioned Julius, Beth-Ramtha, that was another name that was given, Beth-Ramtha, for Livius, but then they changed it to Livius because it was named after the Roman emperor's wife, who was deified as a god, Livia, so it's called Livius, and there's a number of cities called Livius, so that can be confusing. So again, places had different names, and you have to keep that all sorted out in your mind, and it can be confusing at times. Which Livius are you talking about, and which Beth-Ramtha are you talking about, and good point, George. Well, so we started with this right through your question, and I said, is Mount Nebo, the Nebo, a Babylonian name for that mountain, and if it is, which we don't know, that'll be an assignment. I'm going to look that up myself and find out when it might have made a name change, if any, and that led us into the discussions of locations having different names, comparing to who was ruling at that time, whether it be the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Hellenistic Greeks, the Romans, what have you. That's where we led to. That's the discussion for the moment, but it all stemmed from your discussion today about the Babylonian king. Well, I thought I was going to say, the rabbit trail that we went on does lead back to, sometimes we do a bit of wandering. But anyway, it's a fun thing. Sometimes it's fun to take that little side journey, because I think it'd be interesting. I want to find out. It's like in the biblical narrative, like we already discussed, and like Dan changes his name. It was Laish, and then it's Dan, and that goes on and on. So for Mount Nebo, did it happen for Mount Nebo? Sometimes the biblical text will tell us, hey, this used to be called this, and now it's called that. Sometimes it doesn't. So there you have it. You know, the name Mereduk, and then Meredak in English, Mereduk was the god, so there's a whole lot of significance there to the naming. And then Baladan was his father's name, so the son inherits the father's name. I've actually got my middle name as my father's name, so we have the same tradition today. Another thing that's interesting within names, and when we're looking at whether it be the Syrians or the Babylonians or even the Hebrews, that names contain theophoric names, theophoric deity names. So you can get an idea of the deities that individuals worshiped within Babylon or within the Syrians or the Egyptians or even the Hebrews by, you could say, sometimes the suffix of a name. I'll just put it that way. Is there a theophoric name being used? You have it actually with the name of Daniel, El, the Hebrew god of El picked up in Daniel and many other examples of that. And then sometimes in Scripture you have God changing their names. That's very true too. So here we go again, change the names of cities, change the names of individuals, like Abram to Abraham, and on with Saul to Paul, and then when the reason God changes the name is because their character changes, they change their names. You have Jacob, Israel, a lot of examples you find in the biblical narrative of names being changed. My name changed. I had a name changed too. It was, I went to a new location and my name went from George to Hey, you. That's right. Oh, you know, another one that's kind of interesting, that individual in the Bible that just shows up and then kind of vanishes. Melchizedek. Yeah. I'm just saying that it becomes fun. People want to look that up and find out if there's different deities being mentioned within theophoric names. You could tell sometimes whether it be a northern kingdom or a southern kingdom. That's interesting too. And then you got people like Jezebel, right? Yeah. So all this stemmed from this lecture. I have a section in my book on the key themes of the Old Testament on the significance of biblical names. I have a whole section and a chapter on it where I explore this, the theology behind it and why God changes names and the relevance of it. So for all those that want to dig a little deeper, I do explore that in my book on the key themes of the Old Testament. So there we go. So you have a book on importance of different names, but also for the season, you'll have your coloring book. Yes. Which if you want to teach, your kids want to learn about the biblical artifacts, it's a coloring book and they have to learn at the same time. You just don't tell them they're learning, just tell them they're coloring. So it's kind of tricky. But be careful. Your kids end up learning more than you just by coloring. Well, there's a nice description of each of the artifacts there for the children and a good project for anybody who's doing homeschooling or anybody just on a Sunday afternoon or wants to have an activity with their children. They can pull out the coloring book and they can color to their heart's content. You can read your favorite book, one of mine. You could look at the artifacts in your coloring book because you do describe the artifacts and also a timeline that goes probably with them, right? When they were discovered or with what period in history they are represented and go to the biblical narrative and maybe just read a little chapter of the Bible that has to deal with that time period of the artifact. It could be really interesting to tie it both together just out of a coloring book and how much not only your kids will learn, come on parents, I'm talking about myself too. How much I learn by tying in the biblical narrative with the artifact, which I do in our little advertisements and it's only like 40 seconds long, 45 seconds long. So we take a biblical artifact such as the melech candle, melech, king, the inscription of King Hezekiah. Then we go back to the biblical narrative and talk about Sennacherib, Hezekiah, digging of the water tunnel, and there we go. That's how quick it can flow from one to the other. And Merodach, Baladan II. Tie it all together for you today, George. That's right. So we did a roundabout and we actually promoted our ads. We promoted your books. We did a podcast. Today, people had a lot of fun. Once again, thanks for joining us today, for subscribing. It's been a great year and we're going to do a lot of fun things next year. Stick with us and we're going to sign off. Thank you very much. Doctor, thank you for being with us and sharing your PowerPoint and some interesting topics today. A lot of them. Remember to look up Mount Nebo, folks, and in the comments section, tell us what you found out. Hopefully you'll get there before me. All right. So everybody have a great day.