Elephantine Revisited

Abstract

This chapter revisits the scholarship regarding the discovery of the Elephantine Jews. A full century has passed since Eduard Sachau's edition of the Elephantine papyri in 1911. The Elephantine papyri promised direct and unbiased access to a Jewish community as it had been in real life. Furthermore, the sheer number of publications on the papyri between 1905 and 1915 conveyed a sense of the excitement that characterized the early days of Elephantine studies. This chapter shows that Elephantine studies continue to flourish in the twenty-first century. Counting monographs only, the secondary literature is expanding by almost one book a year. An important impetus for the ongoing investigations is the time frame of Elephantine, which is crucial in the formation of ancient Judaism and warrants a reassessment of prevailing scholarship.