Elephantine in Context: Studies on the History, Religion and Literature of the Judeans in Persian Period Egypt ed. by Reinhard G. Kratz and Bernd U. Schipper

Abstract

Reviewed by: Elephantine in Context: Studies on the History, Religion and Literature of the Judeans in Persian Period Egypt ed. by Reinhard G. Kratz and Bernd U. Schipper Craig E. Morrison reinhard g. kratz and bernd u. schipper (eds.) Elephantine in Context: Studies on the History, Religion and Literature of the Judeans in Persian Period Egypt (FAT 155; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022). Pp. xii + 385. Paper €144. The discoveries on Elephantine, a small island just over a kilometer long and four hundred meters wide and strategically located at the first cataract of the Nile, has generated two centuries of scholarly discussion. For the three millennia before the Common Era, Elephantine was a center for trade, as goods were portaged around the cataract. Between the mid-seventh century and the mid-sixth, Judeans arrived and scholars have wondered about the nature of their community. This volume is intended "to consciously break with a research tradition focusing on the Judeans (Jews) mentioned in the epigraphic evidence from Elephantine and instead investigate the military colony in a broader historical context" (p. v). The volume is divided into three sections. The first section, titled "Society and Administration" includes four articles: Gulia Francesca Grassi, "'Do We Know the Arameans?' (SAA 17,176): The Use of Ethnonyms in the Aramaic Documents from Egypt" (pp. 3–34); Holger Gzella, "The Scribal Habit of Achaemenid Administrators, Its Educational Underpinnings, and Its Reception in the Hebrew Bible" (pp. 35–53); Alexander Schütze, "The Legal Context of the Aramaic Legal Tradition on Elephantine Reconsidered" (pp. 55–73); and Sylvie Honigman, "Serving the Kings, Building Temples, and Paying the 'Jewish Tax': Aramaic-Speaking Judeans and Their Descendants in Upper Egypt from Persian to Early Imperial Times" (pp. 75–128). Grassi demonstrates that the ethnonym "Judean" is not synonymous with "Aramean," because the latter does not indicate origin but is a "cultural/linguistic/administrative/military label" (p. 20). She provides an appendix of ethnonyms that appear in the first-millennium Aramaic texts from Egypt to demonstrate the multicultural world of Elephantine. Gzella's article will be of interest to biblical scholars since it traces how Achaemenid Official Aramaic evolved into the local Aramaic in Palestine during the Hasmonean period. Judean scribes wrote their documents in the context of the Achaemenid administrative and literary world. G. employs his extensive knowledge of Aramaic to imagine the education of scribes: "Prudence, loyalty, and efficiency are the values that come to the fore in texts that plausibly formed part of the curriculum" (p. 47), and these learned scribes transmitted theology and religious practice as we see in the figures of Ezra and Daniel. Schütze's contribution presents examples of sale documents and other legal procedures to show how "Aramaic scribes integrated clauses from the Demotic legal tradition in an older Aramaic formulary" (p. 69), creating hybrid documents that were valid because they conformed to Egyptian law. This article successfully broadens our understanding of the world in which these documents were written and advances the purpose of this volume. Sylvie Honigman's article studies the Aramaic documents after Elephantine (third and early second centuries b.c.e.) mostly from Edfu. Judeans from southern Palestine settled there, and during the transition from Persian to Macedonian rule they continued to write and speak Aramaic. This detailed presentation of this evidence makes for fascinating reading about a group of Judeans who lived in this area for 450 years only to be destroyed during the Jewish Revolt of 115–117 c.e. [End Page 367] The second section, titled "Religion," comprises four articles: Alexandra von Lieven, "Spätägyptische Religion in und um Elephantine" (pp. 131–49); Collin Cornell/Brent A. Strawn, "Is Judean Religion at Elephantine a Pidgin? Reassessing Its Relationship to Its Antecedents and Congeners" (pp. 153–82); Bob Becking, "'That Evil Act': A Thick Description of the Crisis around the Demolition of the Temple of Yahô at Elephantine" (pp. 183–207); and Bernd U. Schipper, "The Judeans/Arameans of Elephantine and Their Religion – An Egyptological Perspective" (pp. 209–33). Biblical scholars will be interested in Cornell and Strawn's study of Judean religion. This article follows nicely after Alexandra von Lieven's review of the...