The rediscovery of an ancient Judean/Jewish (yĕhûdāy) 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.Footnote ¹

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 yĕhûdayyā 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.Footnote ² Indeed, this book relies on van der Toorn's own edition of that twenty-three-column multicomposition text.Footnote 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,Footnote 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 yĕhûdāy as “Jew” rather than “Judean,” since Samarians shared similar traditions. In chapters 2 and 3, he examines the Aramean background to the yĕhûdayyā of Elephantine. The Jews of Elephantine spoke Aramaic, were trained in Aramaic scribal traditions, venerated Aramean gods, and referred to themselves as Aramean (ʔārāmāy, 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 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ⁶ Furthermore, the poem in xvii 1–6 describing the arrival of a “band of Samarians” into a new land is more obviously an idealized description of entry into Egypt (home to multiple military colonies in this period), rather than Palmyra, contra van der Toorn. In the poem, a speaker claims, “I come from Judah; my brother from Samaria has been brought; and now, a man is bringing up my sister from Jerusalem.”

In chapter 5, “A Military Colony and Its Religion,” van der Toorn puts forward some new proposals for religious views at Elephantine based on his understanding of the papyrus, not all of which will find agreement. For instance, he suggests that both Yahō and the deity Bethel had taken on the storm-god imagery of Baal as well as lunar imagery, and that Eshem was a god of fire, to be identified with Mesopotamian Ishum. He also claims that the divine name Ḥerem is related to both Semitic ḥrm, “sacred, taboo,” and ḫrm, “lover.” With regard to goddesses, the author suggests that Anat's epithet “Queen of Heaven” is applied to Nanay on the papyrus, but downplays the importance of the latter in the text and believes there are no clear differences between the roles of the two deities.Footnote ⁷

In chapter 6, “Becoming Diaspora Jews,” the author explains in detail his view of how Elephantinians of Samarian origin came to see themselves as yĕhûdāy. In short, after an influx of Judeans across Egypt, the colony with its Yahō temple became part of a “network of Jewish diaspora nodes” (142), which the Persians began to consider part of the “Jewish nation” in the late fifth century BCE (120–24). In this view, when community leaders in 407 BCE appealed to officials in Samaria and Judah to allow them to rebuild the Yahō temple, they were utilizing a Jewish identity that had been conferred partly by circumstance.

The book concludes with a short epilogue (143–47) followed by a translation of Papyrus Amherst 63 (148–87), abbreviations, endnotes, and two indices. The prose throughout the volume is generally clear and accessible (but note some infelicities on p. 127).

In conclusion, van der Toorn's book laudably brings new attention to both the Aramean background and the Samarian component of the Elephantine community, and thus contributes substantially to the ongoing discussion of ancient Jewish identity. On the other hand, many of the details in the volume will be debated, especially those that arise from his unique interpretations of the difficult Papyrus Amherst 63. Moreover, one might wish that the author had connected the issue of distinguishing Judeans from Samarians in Egypt in the Persian era to the situation in the Hellenistic. For instance, in the third-/second-century Greek documents from the town of Samareia in the Fayum, only the designation Ioudaios is used for the inhabitants with “Jewish” names and never Samareítēs, even though the town's name indicates a connection to Samaria.Footnote ⁸