geography, on one point there was clear agreement: India and Ethiopia repre-
sented the two edges of the world, “back to back next to each other.”^37
The notion of Ethiopia as the end of the world is as old as Homer, for
whom the Ethiopians wereeschatoi andro ̄n(“the furthest of men”).^38 This
image is fixed in Herodotus’s narrative of the Persian conquest of Egypt by
Cambyses, who established Ethiopia as the outer limit of the Persian Empire.^39
Centuries later, for the Roman Pliny the Elder ( 23 – 79 CE), the Ethiopians were
almost a miracle. “Who ever believed in the Ethiopians before he actually saw
them?” he exclaimed.^40 On the other hand, Alexander’s conquests had stabi-
lized India as the other end of the world. This idea was carried further by
the Greek geographer Strabo ( 65 bce– 24 CE) and the Roman Pliny.^41 For the
reader in late antiquity, the Persians in the book of Ezra did indeed rule
the entire world, and their empire touched its edges.
This perception was not entirely false. To rule over the entire world, the
Persians utilized a land communication system that covered much of the “four
rims” of the known world of the time, “from Sardis [in Asia Minor] to India.” It
stretched from the Indus Valley in the southeast to southern Egypt and Yemen in
the southwestern corners of the empire and from Sogdiana to western Asia
Minor in the northern corners.^42 This system was uniquely effective. In the
book of Ezra, we find mentioned no fewer than six exchanges between the
Persian court and the province in Yehud. Famously, Esther details this commu-
nication process and describes how a decree allowing the slaughtering of the Jews
of the empire reached every locale in the “ 127 nations” of the empire “from India
unto Ethiopia [Cush]... every province according to its script and every nationali-
ty according to its tongue” (Esther 8 : 9 ). The decree authorizing Jewish resistance
and the slaughter of gentiles also reached every locale with even greater speed, or
so we read.^43 Is it possible, then, that Cyrus’s edict did not reach the ten tribes?
Ostensibly, it should have, reaching as it did all the edges of the world.
Thus, postbiblical times—that is, the times that begin after Ezra’s career
ends—inherited a series of nagging questions concerning the ten tribes.
Josephus, a near-contemporary of Esdras, the apocryphal Ezra, seems to be
struggling with them and to be doing so in direct relation to Ezra. When Ezra
received the Persian imperial order, says Josephus:
He sent a copy of it to all those of his own nation that were in Media.
And when these Jews had understood what piety the king had towards
God, and what kindness he had for Ezra, they were all greatly pleased;
nay, many of them took their effects with them, and came to Babylon,
as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem; but then the entire body
of the people of Israel remained in that country, wherefore there are