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There are much earlier archaeological artefacts including stone writing from much earlier than 457 B.C. This is the time after the destruction of the first temp
by golemiprague 9y ago
There are much earlier archaeological artefacts including stone writing from much earlier than 457 B.C. This is the time after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians who dispersed the Jews around the area. Since then there were Jewish communities all over the middle east including in Egypt. I don't understand why the writer of the article is so baffled about this.
Just as an example, the Merneptah Stele is the first to mention the name Israel and is dated to 1203 BC. Ahab and Omri the Israeli biblical kings are mentioned in the Kurkh Monoliths and the Mesha Stele from 850 BC so to start to research Jews just from 457 BC looks a bit too late in the game.
- jrumbut 9y agoFrom other things I've seen from Schama I think he starts the book there because he is fascinated with the episode, not because he thinks it's the first solid evidence of Jews. He sees Elephantine as countering widely held beliefs about ancient Jewish life (that it was all in Israel, homogenous, etc), containing interesting analogues to the present day, and being an altogether interesting story. It can be more difficult to spin a good yarn from the older material.
- golemiprague 9y agoI can understand why Schama start from there, it is the time where we have a lot of other sources except from the bible and archeological sights here and there. My grief was more with the article writer and the idea that anybody thought there were no Jewish life outside Israel at that time. It is pretty common knowledge, from the bible itself which mention the life of Jews in Persia in the book of Daniel to anybody who read the history of Jews. It is not news and not surprising, we all know that the Talmud was written in Babylon, that's why it is called the Babylonian Talmud. There is no "widely held belief" that Jews lived only in Israel after the destruction of the first temple.
- wslh 9y agoNot (known if) specifically Jewish but there is a semitic slave figure in the Hecht Museum [1] from 18-19 Century BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se...
- emmelaich 9y ago8th century BCE not 18th.