Elephantine Papyri: The Book of Nehemiah, 20+ Years Later

Found in the early 1900's on the remains of an island settlement in the Egyptian Nile, a number of documents show us what was happening in the years following Nehemiah's restoration of Jerusalem. Known as the Elephantine Papyri, this group of texts contains letters written by Jews on the Egyptian island settlement of Elephantine to a group of decision making diplomats and higher-ups in Judah and Samaria. They even tell a fascinating story in their own right!

A KIND OF SEQUEL TO NEHEMIAH
More than twenty years (407 BC) after the events of the book of Nehemiah, these documents show us a number of things that either confirm the events of Nehemiah or tell us more about what happened after the close of the book (430?):

• Nehemiah was gone and someone named Bagavahya/Bagohi(?) was serving as Governor of Judah.

• Jerusalem was sending out religious educators to teach Jewish exiles how to serve the Lord.

• Sanballat (Nehemiah's adversary) was still governing Samaria - a confirmation of this detail from Nehemiah. 

• "Delaiah and Shelemiah, sons of Sanballat" were at least helping to run things for their aging father.

• "Jehohanan the High Priest" (Neh. 12:23) had now inherited the role from his father Eliashib (Neh. 3:20).

• In two drafts, "nobles of the Jews" (1st) is changed to "nobles of Judah" (2nd), reflecting that this was the more proper title and agreeing with a detail in the Book of Nehemiah (Neh. 6:17, 13:17).[1]

There are many direct and incidental details that match up with -or expand upon- Nehemiah's account. In some ways reading these letters feels like watching a TV-spinoff to a beloved movie franchise, set a couple of decades after the plot of the main film. Some of the old characters return to complete their stories and add continuity, many of the details of the world are carried over to create a sense of familiarity, some of the plot lines that left off in the original are carried over and taken up again, and a whole new cast of characters with their own flaws and challenges rises up to tell a new story.

WHAT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN ELEPHANTINE WAS LIKE

Jeremiah describes the group of Jews that originally left Judah to flee to Egypt as... well, significantly less than devout  or religiously orthodox (Jer. 43:7, 44:8). This is reflected in the letters from the Egyptian Jewish community that we find in the Elephantine Papyri. They had built their own temple in contradiction to God's establishment of Jerusalem as the proper place of worship and pilgrimage. They had started intermarrying with non-Jews and taking on Persian and Egyptian names. They sometimes took oaths in the name of other gods and seem to have combined their worship of the God of Israel with the local gods: "Anat-YHW" is invoked in one letter, which combined God's name (YHWH) with the goddess Anat.[2]

THE STORY OF THE JEWS AT ELEPHANTINE

So keeping all that in mind, here's the story: In 419 BC, a religious teacher named Hananiah (probably from Jerusalem) sent a letter to the Jews at Elephantine, instructing them on how to observe Passover. Shortly after that he arrived in Egypt. His presence appears to have been divisive: whatever the cause was, shortly after he got there a conflict broke out between the priests of Khnum and the Jewish priests of the Elephantine temple of YHWH. We're not sure how fast things progressed or how much of it Hananiah was there for, but at some point the priests of Khnum "detained" a pair of Jews and started to steal from the Jewish community, leading the priests of the God of Israel to retaliate by breaking into their neighbors' homes to recover the stolen property! Jewish men and women were then seized as prisoners, fined, and forced to return what they had stolen (stolen back?). The priests of Khnum also stopped up a well that the Jewish community was using, and at some point a wall was constructed that cut through the middle of Elephantine ("this half is my half..."), and things progressed for almost a decade until in 410 BC the priests of Khnum and the Governor of Elephantine finally destroyed the Elephantine Temple of YHWH. Although the Governor and the priests were punished (and executed!) for this, the temple remained in ruins and they were not given permission to rebuild. A letter was sent to Jerusalem asking them for diplomatic help to rebuild their temple at Elephantine, but apparently Jerusalem didn't think very highly of that request and they didn't respond--for three years. [3]

Finally, in 407 BC the Jews at Elephantine sent another letter to Bagoas(?), the Persian Governor of Judah, and a similar letter to the sons of Sanballat at Samaria, and intentionally excluded the High Priest at Jerusalem and the nobles of Judah this time around. That letter got a reply. Bagoas and Delaiah the son of Sanballat wrote a shared letter endorsing the rebuilding of the temple at Elephantine, though on the condition that burnt offerings not be offered there, which the Elephantine Jews agreed to. After that a letter was sent offering a bribe to a high official to secure permission to build their temple. (It makes sense; these weren't your average Jews, these were the goddess worshiping, break-and-entering, bribing, neighbor fighting ones.) It seems to have worked: a letter dated five years after this in 402 BC casually mentions "the temple of YHW" as a location across from somebody's house.[4]

WHAT SHOULD WE TAKE FROM THIS?

The records in the Elephantine Papyri help to confirm parts of the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah (and possibly a few details in Jeremiah), and show us what life was like for Jews -faithful or otherwise- in the exile. They also give us an important opportunity to stop and examine how faithful we are being to the word of God: it seems like the Jews at Elephantine really felt like they were being faithful, or at least faithful enough. But even though the local population saw them as Jews and had conflicts with them, that didn't mean they weren't losing themselves to the local culture. They were taking on Persian and Egyptian names; they were taking oaths in the name of foreign gods (even though it was just a formality--at least for some of them I'm sure), and their actions did not consistently reflect the God they claimed to believe in. It's easy to look at them and to see how bit by bit we could also lose ourselves in the same way that the Elephantine Jews did: so slowly that they didn't even realize it. That's why it's good to read Christian authors from different places and times than the one we live in, and why it's good to have people who will speak difficult truths into our lives: so that each day, even if we are prone to wander, we have an opportunity to return to the Lord.

-Sean

[PS - For one more Nehemiah-related discovery, you should check out the discovery of Nehemiah's wall. It's incredible - he actually built a wall, and he made the Persians pay for it. https://watchjerusalem.co.il/793-discovered-nehemiahs-wall]

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[1] These examples are all taken from three letters: TAD A4.1, TAD A4.3, and TAD A4.7/8.

[2] From TAD B7.3. The Prophet Jeremiah also mentions (desparagingly) that Jews he interacted with worshiped "the queen of heaven", which could easily have been Anat. So this detail could reflect a bit of religious syncretism that carried over from the group that fled to Egypt in Jeremiah's time.

[3] Taken from TAD A4.1, TAD A4.3, TAD A4.4, TAD A4.7/8.

[4] Taken from TAD A4.7/8, TAD 14.9, TAD 14.10, TAD B3.12.