95 THE BAAL PEOR EPISODE REVISITED and the Transjordanian region. The assumption has some support from epigraphic evidence from Persian period Aramaic ostraca, unprovenanced but believed to originate in Idumaean sites. Prosopographical study of this material is still in its early stages since only about half of the 1,600 ostraca have been published, but what there is suggests a high level of interethnicity together with little concern for maintaining ethnic boundaries among the Arab, Judaean, Phoenician and other West Semitic inhabitants of Idumea 15. A similar situation is suggested by the onomasticon of Persian-period Samaria, and confirmed by allusions in Ezra-Nehemiah and, at a later time, Josephus 16. Nehemiah visited his own form of spontaneous violence on those Judaean men who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab and whose children were no longer able to speak Hebrew (Neh 13,23-25). In addition to being roughed up, they were also obliged to swear an oath to observe the law in Deut 7,3-4. We are not told whether this involved coercive divorce from their wives, as happened during Ezra’s perhaps brief ascendancy. We have the impression that Nehemiah’s aim was to implement in the broader political sphere in which he operated the ideology attributed (irrespective of questions of historicity) to Ezra, namely, the creation of a self-segregating, ritually pure society. Stated in general terms, his aim was the application of ritual ethnicity to politics. The role of Phineas in the Baal Peor episode suggests that the most uncompromising exponent of this ideology, at least from that time, was the Aaronid branch of the priesthood. The history of this priestly family is almost impenetrably obscure, but it is at least clear that Ezra’s descent is traced from Aaron, and therefore also from Phineas (Ezra 7,1-5), and that the biblical profile of Ezra is the first of several embodiments of the zeal of Phineas 17. The basic principle of this 15 On the ostraca see Ian Stern, “The Population of Persian-Period Idumea According to the Ostraca: A Study of Ethnic Boundaries and Ethnogenesis”, A Time of Change. Judah and its Neighbours in the Persian and Early Hel- lenistic Periods (ed. Y. LEVIN) (London 2007) 205-238. For a broader survey of the region see A. LEMAIRE, “Populations et territoires de la Palestine à l’époque perse”, Transeuphratène 3 (1990) 45-54. 16 LEMAIRE, “Populations et territoires de la Palestine”, 64-67; F. MOORE CROSS, From Epic to Canon. History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore – Lon- don 1998) 152, n. 7, provides a list of his many publications on the Wadi Daliyeh papyri. See also D.M. GROPP – J. VANDERKAM – M. BRADY (eds.), Wadi Daliyeh II and Qumran Miscellanea. Part 2: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh (DJD XXVIII.2; Oxford 2002). Indications of marital alliances between Samarians, Am- monites and others in Neh 6,17-19; 13,4.28-29; Ant. 12:160-236. 17 Mattathias, burning with zeal for the law, assassinated an apostate Jew and Seleucid official (4 Macc 18,12). The mother of the seven martyred broth- ers reminds her sons of their father’s teaching about Phineas’ zeal (1 Macc 2,26). Ben Sira, though not himself conspicuously zealous, praises Phineas’