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• W4313194013 abstract "Reviewed by: Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine by Karel van der Toorn Tawny L. Holm Karel van der Toorn . Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine . The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press , 2019 . 288 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000525 The rediscovery of an ancient Judean/Jewish ( y ĕ hûdāy ) community on the island of Elephantine in Egypt began over a century ago. Letters and other documents on Aramaic papyri and ostraca revealed a fifth-century BCE military colony under Persian control whose members observed Passover and Sabbath and worshiped the deity Yahō (the local form of biblical Yahweh), who had a temple there. The same documents, however, show that the community acknowledged other deities in oaths, salutations, and cultic donations. The Yahō temple itself, destroyed in 410 BCE but rebuilt a few years later, was uncovered by Swiss-German excavations in 1996. 1 [End Page 179] In the book under review, Karel van der Toorn, a renowned scholar of ancient Near Eastern religions, seeks to give a new answer to the question of who these y ĕ hûdayyā were. The author's work goes beyond other studies by considering the new evidence provided by Papyrus Amherst 63, a text written in the Aramaic language but using the Demotic Egyptian script, which dates to the fourth century BCE, not long after the floruit of the Elephantine community. 2 Indeed, this book relies on van der Toorn's own edition of that twenty-three-column multicomposition text. 3 Scholars of ancient Judaism and Aramaic studies, as well as the public interested in early Judaism and Jewish Diaspora, will welcome this new contribution to the discussion, in spite of some significant issues. The basic premise of the book is easy to summarize. While other scholars have also noted Samarian aspects to Elephantine religion, 4 van der Toorn takes this further. In his view, the ancestors of most Elephantine Jews were Samarians who had fled to Judah after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BCE. Around 700 BCE they moved to the oasis of Palmyra (Aramaic Tadmor) in Syria, where they lived in a mixed community that included Babylonian and Syrian Arameans. At the end of the seventh century BCE the entire community emigrated to Elephantine. It was in Egypt that these Samarians became Jews during the Persian period (525–404 BCE), when Persian authorities recognized the special status of Jews in the empire. Thus, the Elephantine Jews, an iconic Diaspora community, did not leave their home as Jews but became Jews abroad. In chapter 1, Elephantine Revisited, the author reviews the discovery of Aramaic documents and earlier theories of religion at Elephantine. Van der Toorn advocates translating the term y ĕ hûdāy as Jew rather than Judean, since Samarians shared similar traditions. In chapters 2 and 3, he examines the Aramean background to the y ĕ hûdayyā of Elephantine. The Jews of Elephantine spoke Aramaic, were trained in Aramaic scribal traditions, venerated Aramean gods, and referred to themselves as Aramean (ʔ ārāmāy , defined by the author as a term for all Syrians). With regard to Syene, the Aramean town nearby that was part of the same garrison, the author sees two groups on the basis of their chief deities: a Bethel group of Arameans originally from Hamath in Syria, and a Nabû group from Mesopotamia. The author also argues that Yahō was often identified with Bethel. In the fourth chapter, The Origins of the Elephantine Jews, van der Toorn explains his interpretation of the unprovenanced Papyrus Amherst 63 with regard [End Page 180] to understanding Elephantine. Among the most problematic results of his analysis is the view that Palmyra served as a seventh-century BCE way station for a mixed Babylonian-Syrian-Samarian group who later came to Elephantine. There is a total historical and archaeological hiatus of evidence for Palmyra between the twelfth century BCE and the Hellenistic period. 5 Moreover, the Aramaic name Tadmor is not found on the papyrus, and the author's discovery of descriptions of an oasis are largely based on misunderstandings of the Demotic script. 6 Furthermore, the poem in xvii 1–6..." @default.
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• W4313194013 date "2021-04-01" @default.
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• W4313194013 title "Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine by Karel van der Toorn" @default.
• W4313194013 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/ajs.2021.0015" @default.
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