01_VanSeters_copiaaaa_01_25 28/04/15 11:15 Pagina 24 24 JOHN VAN SETERS What I hope has become clear in this brief essay is that the Yah- wist and Second Isaiah were contemporaries, living among the ex- iles in Babylonia and very likely in very close contact with each other. The dating and provenance of Second Isaiah has been quite secure for a long time with only a few dissenters, and this same judgment should now apply to the Yahwist as well. When the two works are read in tandem, with the Yahwist providing the “biblical” text as a basis for much of the prophet’s message, this gives us re- markable insight into the new world of the diaspora community in Babylonia and the radical reshaping of their religion within a wider world view. Under the influence of the Babylonian universalistic religion of Marduk, the creator deity, or Nabonidus’s supreme deity, the god Sîn, both Second Isaiah and the Yahwist present their deity YHWH not just as a national god but as creator of heaven and earth and the God of all humanity. Such a religion is not under the control of a priesthood or temple in a particular place, and neither author makes any mention of priests or the Jerusalem Temple 40. The form of worship of YHWH used by the patriarchs may be practiced in any place and is open to all without restriction. Once one dates the Yahwistic corpus in the latter part of the Babylonian exile, then other things begin to fall into place as well. Recently I have suggested that the origin of the synagogue likewise belongs to this same time and place 41. This represents a lay mode of worship in Judaism that had no need of temple or priesthood. It allowed for the preservation of Jewish identity, for simple forms of worship and the meticulous preservation of their traditions and cul- ture in written texts. The Yahwist seems to reflect the etiology of just such an institution when he has Moses set up a “Tent of Meet- ing” during the wilderness journey (Exod 33,7), whose primary function is as a “place of prayer”, which is a designation used in later times for the synagogue. The Tent of Meeting was also closely associated with the elders of the people (Num 11,16-18), but it has no priestly function in J. As I have suggested above, it is to just such a lay community in their common meeting place that the peo- 40 The reference in Isa 44,28 to the edict of Cyrus ordering the rebuilding of the temple is an obvious late addition, cf. Ezra 6,3-5. See J.L. MCKENZIE, Second Isaiah (AB 20; New York 1967) 74. 41 J. VAN SETERS, “The Tent of Meeting in the Yahwist and the Origin of the Synagogue”, forthcoming.