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121-742: The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan , which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian , Aramaic , Koine Greek , Latin and Coptic , spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography , law, society, religion, language, and onomastics . The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents,

242-580: A Samaritan potentate, and his sons Delaiah and Shelemiah , as well as Johanan ben Eliashib . Both Sanballat and Johanan are mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah , 2:19 , 12:23 . There was a response of both governors (Bagoas and Delaiah) which gave the permission by decree to rebuild the temple written in the form of a memorandum: " 1 Memorandum of what Bagohi and Delaiah said 2 to me, saying: Memorandum: You may say in Egypt ... 8 to (re)build it on its site as it

363-507: A hypostatized aspect of Yahweh . The eight papyri contained at the Brooklyn Museum concern one particular Jewish family, providing specific information about the daily lives of a man called Ananiah, a Jewish temple official; his wife, Tamut, an Egyptian slave; and their children, over the course of forty-seven years. Egyptian farmers discovered the archive of Ananiah and Tamut on Elephantine Island in 1893, while digging for fertilizer in

484-457: A hypothesis continues to have adherents in Israel and North America. The majority of scholars today continue to recognize Deuteronomy as a source, with its origin in the law-code produced at the court of Josiah as described by De Wette, subsequently given a frame during the exile (the speeches and descriptions at the front and back of the code) to identify it as the words of Moses. However, since

605-406: A mummified ram of Khnum. A sizable population of Nubians live in three villages in the island's middle section. A large luxury hotel is at the island's northern end. The Aswan Botanical Garden is adjacent to the west on el Nabatat Island . Torah The Torah ( / ˈ t ɔːr ə / or / ˈ t oʊ r ə / ; Biblical Hebrew : תּוֹרָה Tōrā , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law")

726-463: A quill (or other permitted writing utensil) dipped in ink. Written entirely in Hebrew , a sefer Torah contains 304,805 letters, all of which must be duplicated precisely by a trained sofer ("scribe"), an effort that may take as long as approximately one and a half years. Most modern Sifrei Torah are written with forty-two lines of text per column ( Yemenite Jews use fifty), and very strict rules about

847-529: A war goddess and protector of this strategic region of Egypt. When seen as a fertility goddess , she personified the bountiful annual flooding of the Nile. The cult of Satis originated in Aswan. Later, when the triad was formed, Khnum became identified as her consort and, thereby, was thought of as the father of Anuket. His role in myths later changed; another deity was ascribed duties with the river. At that time, his role as

968-549: A community of Judean mercenaries and their families on Elephantine, starting in the 7th century BCE. The mercenaries guarded the frontier between Egypt and Nubia. Following the 587 BCE destruction of Jerusalem , some Judean refugees traveled south and, in what may be called an “ exodus in reverse,” settled on Elephantine. They maintained their own temple (the House of Yahweh ) in which sacrifices were offered , evincing polytheistic beliefs , which functioned alongside that of Khnum. It

1089-591: A demotic letter were presented by Belzoni to the Musei Civici di Padova in 1819 and three hieratic pieces from Drovetti – and the Turin Aramaic Papyrus – were deposited at the new Museo Egizio in Turin in 1824. Formal excavation of the mound at Elephantine Island began in 1904, and continued for the next seven years. Further finds were discovered through the first half of the 20th century. The mode of burial of

1210-430: A family, this gift was described as made "in love". Drawn up thirty years after the preceding papyrus, this document is one of several that gradually transferred ownership of Ananiah and Tamut's house to their daughter, Yehoishema, as payment on her dowry. The legal descriptions of the house preserve the names of Ananiah's neighbors. They included an Egyptian who held the post of gardener of the Egyptian god Khnum and, on

1331-645: A great number of tannaim , the oral tradition was written down around 200 CE by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi , who took up the compilation of a nominally written version of the Oral Law, the Mishnah ( משנה ). Other oral traditions from the same time period not entered into the Mishnah were recorded as Baraitot (external teaching), and the Tosefta . Other traditions were written down as Midrashim . After continued persecution more of

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1452-620: A new generation can grow up and carry out the task. The book ends with the new generation of Israelites in the " plains of Moab " ready for the crossing of the Jordan River . Numbers is the culmination of the story of Israel's exodus from oppression in Egypt and their journey to take possession of the land God promised their fathers . As such it draws to a conclusion the themes introduced in Genesis and played out in Exodus and Leviticus: God has promised

1573-459: A potter enabled him to be assigned a duty to create human bodies. Anuket was the goddess of the first cataract, and it is called the personification of the Nile. A cult was formed on the island for Anuket. The Elephantine papyri and ostraca are caches of legal documents and letters written in Imperial Aramaic dating to sometime in the 5th century BC. These papyri document the presence of

1694-523: A program of nationalist reform in the time of Josiah (late 7th century BCE), with the final form of the modern book emerging in the milieu of the return from the Babylonian captivity during the late 6th century BCE. Many scholars see the book as reflecting the economic needs and social status of the Levite caste, who are believed to have provided its authors; those likely authors are collectively referred to as

1815-611: A redactor: J, the Jahwist source, E, the Elohist source, P, the Priestly source , and D, the Deuteronomist source. The earliest of these sources, J, would have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE, with the latest source, P, being composed around the 5th century BCE. The consensus around the documentary hypothesis collapsed in the last decades of the 20th century. The groundwork

1936-570: A temple to Ya'u (no other god is mentioned in the petition) and gave no suggestion that their temple could be heretical. Upon first examination, this appears to contradict commonly accepted models of the development of Jewish religion and the dating of the Hebrew scriptures, which posit that monotheism and the Torah should have already been well-established by the time these papyri were written. Most scholars explain this apparent discrepancy by theorizing that

2057-631: A temple would be in clear violation of Deuteronomic law, which stipulates that no Jewish temple may be constructed outside of Jerusalem. Furthermore, the papyri show that the Jews at Elephantine sent letters to the high priest in Jerusalem asking for his support in re-building their temple, which seems to suggest that the priests of the Jerusalem Temple were not enforcing Deuteronomic law at that time. Cowley notes that their petition expressed their pride at having

2178-529: A vast number of discoveries of papyri and ostraca. The documents have led to discoveries about Jewish presence and significance in Elephantine. French teams also set out to Elephantine where they discovered several hundred ostraca, but very few have been published thus far. The major findings from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century are found in these museums: Berlin, Brooklyn, Cairo, London, Munich, and Paris. Ongoing excavations by

2299-457: A world which is good and fit for mankind, but when man corrupts it with sin God decides to destroy his creation, using the flood, saving only the righteous Noah and his immediate family to reestablish the relationship between man and God. The Ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel, God's chosen people. At God's command Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his home into

2420-430: A young son when the document was drawn up. Because Tamut was a slave when she married Ananiah, the contract has special conditions: usually, it was the groom and his father-in-law who made Jewish marriage agreements, but Ananiah made this contract with Tamut's master, Meshullam, who legally was her father. In addition, special provision was made to free the couple's son, also a slave to Meshullam; perhaps Ananiah consented to

2541-479: Is Targum . The Encyclopaedia Judaica has: At an early period, it was customary to translate the Hebrew text into the vernacular at the time of the reading (e.g., in Palestine and Babylon the translation was into Aramaic). The targum ("translation") was done by a special synagogue official, called the meturgeman ... Eventually, the practice of translating into the vernacular was discontinued. However, there

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2662-949: Is also considered a sacred book outside Judaism; in Samaritanism , the Samaritan Pentateuch is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans ; the Torah is also common among all the different versions of the Christian Old Testament ; in Islam , the Tawrat ( Arabic : توراة‎ ) is the Arabic name for the Torah within its context as an Islamic holy book believed by Muslims to have been given by God to

2783-598: Is arguably the most important book in the Bible, as it presents the defining features of Israel's identity: memories of a past marked by hardship and escape, a binding covenant with God, who chooses Israel, and the establishment of the life of the community and the guidelines for sustaining it. The Book of Leviticus begins with instructions to the Israelites on how to use the Tabernacle , which they had just built (Leviticus 1–10). This

2904-437: Is called Upper Egypt because it is further up the Nile. The island may have received its name after its shape, which in aerial views is similar to that of an elephant tusk , or from the rounded rocks along the banks resembling elephants. Known to the ancient Egyptians as ꜣbw "Elephant" ( Middle Egyptian : /ˈʀuːbaw/ → Medio-Late Egyptian: /ˈjuːbəʔ/ → Coptic: (Ⲉ)ⲓⲏⲃ /ˈjeβ/ , preserved in its Hebrew name, יֵב Yēḇ ),

3025-534: Is called a Sefer Torah ("Book [of] Torah"). They are written using a painstakingly careful method by highly qualified scribes . It is believed that every word, or marking, has divine meaning and that not one part may be inadvertently changed lest it lead to error. The fidelity of the Hebrew text of the Tanakh, and the Torah in particular, is considered paramount, down to the last letter: translations or transcriptions are frowned upon for formal service use, and transcribing

3146-508: Is done with painstaking care. An error of a single letter, ornamentation, or symbol of the 304,805 stylized letters that make up the Hebrew Torah text renders a Torah scroll unfit for use, hence a special skill is required and a scroll takes considerable time to write and check. According to Jewish law, a sefer Torah (plural: Sifrei Torah ) is a copy of the formal Hebrew text handwritten on gevil or klaf (forms of parchment ) by using

3267-562: Is followed by rules of clean and unclean (Leviticus 11–15), which includes the laws of slaughter and animals permissible to eat (see also: Kashrut ), the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), and various moral and ritual laws sometimes called the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26). Leviticus 26 provides a detailed list of rewards for following God's commandments and a detailed list of punishments for not following them. Leviticus 17 establishes sacrifices at

3388-454: Is found neither in the Torah itself, nor in the works of the pre-Exilic literary prophets . It appears in Joshua and Kings , but it cannot be said to refer there to the entire corpus (according to academic Bible criticism). In contrast, there is every likelihood that its use in the post-Exilic works was intended to be comprehensive. Other early titles were "The Book of Moses" and "The Book of

3509-488: Is not clear when or why the Jewish community settled in Elephantine. The temple may have been built in reaction to Manasseh 's reinstitution of pagan worship or simply to serve the needs of the Jewish community. There is bias that surrounds the Jewish and Egyptian interactions that occurred on Elephantine, but the findings show that there was often culture interchange. Conflict began after an Egyptian precious stone turned up in

3630-416: Is punctuated by a series of covenants with God , successively narrowing in scope from all mankind (the covenant with Noah ) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Torah, immediately following Genesis. The book tells how the ancient Israelites leave slavery in Egypt through the strength of Yahweh ,

3751-448: Is regardless of whether that yod appears in the phrase "I am the LORD thy God" ( אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ , Exodus 20:2) or whether it appears in "And God spoke unto Moses saying" ( וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה; וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו, אֲנִי יְהוָה. Exodus 6:2). In a similar vein, Rabbi Akiva ( c.  50  – c.  135 CE ), is said to have learned a new law from every et ( את ) in

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3872-430: Is suitable for the purpose, while the well at Aswan is apparently lost. The Elephantine triad is between Khnum, Satis, and Anuket ; it is debated whether Anuket is the daughter of the two or the sister of Satis. Elephantine was the dwelling place of Khnum, the ram-headed god of the cataracts, who guarded and controlled the waters of the Nile from caves beneath the island. Satis was worshipped from very early times as

3993-474: Is the Arabic name for the Torah, which Muslims believe is an Islamic holy book given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel . The Torah starts with God creating the world , then describes the beginnings of the people of Israel , their descent into Egypt, and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai . It ends with the death of Moses , just before the people of Israel cross to

4114-656: Is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible , namely the books of Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy . In Christianity , the Torah is also known as the Pentateuch ( / ˈ p ɛ n t ə tj uː k / ) or the Five Books of Moses . In Rabbinical Jewish tradition it is also known as the Written Torah ( תּוֹרָה שֶׁבִּכְתָב , Tōrā šebbīḵṯāv ). If meant for liturgic purposes, it takes

4235-506: Is the fifth book of the Torah. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to the Israelites by Moses on the plains of Moab , shortly before they enter the Promised Land. The first sermon recounts the forty years of wilderness wanderings which had led to that moment, and ends with an exhortation to observe the law (or teachings), later referred to as the Law of Moses ;

4356-518: Is widely seen as a product of the Persian period (539–332 BCE, probably 450–350 BCE). This consensus echoes a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra , the leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation. Many theories have been advanced to explain the composition of the Torah, but two have been especially influential. The first of these, Persian Imperial authorisation, advanced by Peter Frei in 1985, holds that

4477-501: The parashot for the Torah on the Aleppo Codex . Conservative and Reform synagogues may read parashot on a triennial rather than annual schedule, On Saturday afternoons, Mondays, and Thursdays, the beginning of the following Saturday's portion is read. On Jewish holidays , the beginnings of each month, and fast days , special sections connected to the day are read. Jews observe an annual holiday, Simchat Torah , to celebrate

4598-672: The Deuteronomist . One of its most significant verses is Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema Yisrael , which has become the definitive statement of Jewish identity : "Hear, O Israel: the L ORD our God, the L ORD is one." Verses 6:4–5 were also quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:28–34 as part of the Great Commandment . The Talmud states that the Torah was written by Moses, with the exception of the last eight verses of Deuteronomy, describing his death and burial, being written by Joshua . According to

4719-669: The German Archaeological Institute at the town have uncovered many findings on display in the Aswan Museum located on the island, including a mummified ram of Khnum . Artifacts dating back to prehistoric Egypt have been found on Elephantine. A rare calendar , known as the Elephantine Calendar of Things , which dates to the reign of Thutmose III during the Eighteenth Dynasty , was found in fragments on

4840-663: The Jerusalem Talmud . Since the greater number of rabbis lived in Babylon, the Babylonian Talmud has precedence should the two be in conflict. Orthodox and Conservative branches of Judaism accept these texts as the basis for all subsequent halakha and codes of Jewish law, which are held to be normative. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism deny that these texts, or the Torah itself for that matter, may be used for determining normative law (laws accepted as binding) but accept them as

4961-589: The Middle Kingdom of Egypt mention the mother of Amenemhat I , founder of the Twelfth Dynasty , being from the Elephantine Egyptian nome Ta-Seti. Many scholars have argued that Amenemhat I's mother was of Nubian origin. Between 1893 and 1910, Aramaic papyri, consisting of Jewish achievements, were found and collected on Elephantine. There has been a large presence of German excavations, with

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5082-433: The Mishnah one of the essential tenets of Judaism is that God transmitted the text of the Torah to Moses over the span of the 40 years the Israelites were in the desert and Moses was like a scribe who was dictated to and wrote down all of the events, the stories and the commandments. According to Jewish tradition , the Torah was recompiled by Ezra during Second Temple period . The Talmud says that Ezra changed

5203-591: The Oral Torah which comprises the Mishnah , the Talmud , the Midrash and more. The inaccurate rendering of "Torah" as "Law" may be an obstacle to understanding the ideal that is summed up in the term talmud torah ( תלמוד תורה , "study of Torah"). The term "Torah" is also used to designate the entire Hebrew Bible . The earliest name for the first part of the Bible seems to have been "The Torah of Moses". This title, however,

5324-461: The Persian period , with possibly some later additions during the Hellenistic period. The words of the Torah are written on a scroll by a scribe ( sofer ) in Hebrew. A Torah portion is read every Monday morning and Thursday morning at a shul (synagogue) but only if there are ten males above the age of thirteen. Reading the Torah publicly is one of the bases of Jewish communal life. The Torah

5445-502: The Promised Land of Canaan . Interspersed in the narrative are the specific teachings (religious obligations and civil laws) given explicitly (i.e. Ten Commandments ) or implicitly embedded in the narrative (as in Exodus 12 and 13 laws of the celebration of Passover ). In Hebrew, the five books of the Torah are identified by the incipits in each book; and the common English names for

5566-438: The Tabernacle , and all the teachings were written down by Moses , which resulted in the Torah that exists today. According to the Midrash, the Torah was created prior to the creation of the world , and was used as the blueprint for Creation. Though hotly debated, the general trend in biblical scholarship is to recognize the final form of the Torah as a literary and ideological unity, based on earlier sources, largely complete by

5687-487: The Tabernacle , the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to possess the land, and then give them peace. Traditionally ascribed to Moses himself, modern scholarship sees the book as initially a product of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), from earlier written and oral traditions, with final revisions in the Persian post-exilic period (5th century BCE). Carol Meyers , in her commentary on Exodus suggests that it

5808-409: The manumission of enslaved people, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents. Hundreds of these Elephantine papyri span 100 years, during the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. Legal documents and a cache of letters survived, turned up on the local " grey market " of antiquities starting in the late 19th century, and were scattered into several Western collections. A number of

5929-651: The prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel . The word "Torah" in Hebrew is derived from the root ירה , which in the hif'il conjugation means 'to guide' or 'to teach'. The meaning of the word is therefore "teaching", "doctrine", or "instruction"; the commonly accepted "law" gives a wrong impression. The Alexandrian Jews who translated the Septuagint used the Greek word nomos , meaning norm, standard, doctrine, and later "law". Greek and Latin Bibles then began

6050-484: The synagogue in the Ark known as the "Holy Ark" ( אֲרוֹן הקֹדשׁ aron hakodesh in Hebrew.) Aron in Hebrew means "cupboard" or "closet", and kodesh is derived from "kadosh", or "holy". The Book of Ezra refers to translations and commentaries of the Hebrew text into Aramaic , the more commonly understood language of the time. These translations would seem to date to the 6th century BCE. The Aramaic term for translation

6171-424: The 1990s, the biblical description of Josiah's reforms (including his court's production of a law-code) have become heavily debated among academics. Most scholars also agree that some form of Priestly source existed, although its extent, especially its end-point, is uncertain. The remainder is called collectively non-Priestly, a grouping which includes both pre-Priestly and post-Priestly material. The final Torah

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6292-406: The 19th and 20th centuries CE, new movements such as Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism have made adaptations to the practice of Torah reading, but the basic pattern of Torah reading has usually remained the same: As a part of the morning prayer services on certain days of the week, fast days, and holidays, as well as part of the afternoon prayer services of Shabbat, Yom Kippur, a section of

6413-573: The 19th century AD. Ninety steps that lead down to the river are marked with Arabic , Roman , and hieroglyphic numerals. At the water's edge are inscriptions carved deeply into the rock during the Seventeenth Dynasty . The other nilometer is a rectangular basin located at the island's southern tip, near the temple of Khnum and opposite the Old Cataract Hotel. It is probably the older of the two. The Greek historian Strabo mentions one of

6534-521: The Aramaic documents from Elephantine is the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt . Between 1815 and 1904, all discoveries were unprovenanced and came via informal discoveries and antiquities dealers; only later were they understood by scholars to have originated from Elephantine. The first known such papyri were bought by Giovanni Belzoni and Bernardino Drovetti ; a number of Aramaic letters and

6655-531: The Aramaic papyri document the Jewish community among soldiers stationed at Elephantine under Achaemenid rule, 495–399 BCE. The so-called "Passover Letter" of 419 BCE (discovered in 1907), which appears to give instructions for the observance of the Festival of Unleavened Bread (though Passover itself is not mentioned in the extant text), is in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin . The standard reference collection of

6776-533: The Berlin Museum await publication. Coptic Arabic Latin The Elephantine papyri pre-date all extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible , and thus give scholars a very important glimpse at how Judaism was practiced in Egypt during the fifth century BCE, as they seem to show evidence of the existence in c. 400 BCE of a polytheistic sect of Jews. It is widely agreed that this Elephantine community originated in

6897-476: The Elephantine Jews represented an isolated remnant of Jewish religious practices from earlier centuries, or that the Torah had only recently been promulgated at that time. Niels Peter Lemche , Philippe Wajdenbaum, Russell Gmirkin, and Thomas L. Thompson have argued that the Elephantine papyri demonstrate that monotheism and the Torah could not have been established in Jewish culture before 400 BCE, and that

7018-564: The Exodus story was composed to serve the needs of a post-exilic Jewish community organised around the Temple, which acted in effect as a bank for those who belonged to it. A minority of scholars would place the final formation of the Pentateuch somewhat later, in the Hellenistic (332–164 BCE) or even Hasmonean (140–37 BCE) periods. Russell Gmirkin, for instance, argues for a Hellenistic dating on

7139-427: The God who has chosen Israel as his people. Yahweh inflicts horrific harm on their captors via the legendary Plagues of Egypt . With the prophet Moses as their leader, they journey through the wilderness to Mount Sinai , where Yahweh promises them the land of Canaan (the " Promised Land ") in return for their faithfulness. Israel enters into a covenant with Yahweh who gives them their laws and instructions to build

7260-473: The God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus . The narrative

7381-420: The Israelites that they shall become a great (i.e. numerous) nation, that they will have a special relationship with Yahweh their god, and that they shall take possession of the land of Canaan. Numbers also demonstrates the importance of holiness, faithfulness and trust: despite God's presence and his priests , Israel lacks faith and the possession of the land is left to a new generation. The Book of Deuteronomy

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7502-592: The Oral Law was committed to writing. A great many more lessons, lectures and traditions only alluded to in the few hundred pages of Mishnah, became the thousands of pages now called the Gemara . Gemara is written in Aramaic (specifically Jewish Babylonian Aramaic ), having been compiled in Babylon. The Mishnah and Gemara together are called the Talmud. The rabbis in the Land of Israel also collected their traditions and compiled them into

7623-460: The Oral and the written Torah were transmitted in parallel with each other. Where the Torah leaves words and concepts undefined, and mentions procedures without explanation or instructions, the reader is required to seek out the missing details from supplemental sources known as the Oral Law or Oral Torah. Some of the Torah's most prominent commandments needing further explanation are: According to classical rabbinic texts this parallel set of material

7744-489: The Pentateuch is read from a Torah scroll. On Shabbat (Saturday) mornings, a weekly section (" parashah ") is read, selected so that the entire Pentateuch is read consecutively each year. The division of parashot found in the modern-day Torah scrolls of all Jewish communities (Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Yemenite) is based upon the systematic list provided by Maimonides in Mishneh Torah , Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and Torah Scrolls , chapter 8. Maimonides based his division of

7865-442: The Persian authorities required the Jews of Jerusalem to present a single body of law as the price of local autonomy. Frei's theory was, according to Eskenazi, "systematically dismantled" at an interdisciplinary symposium held in 2000, but the relationship between the Persian authorities and Jerusalem remains a crucial question. The second theory, associated with Joel P. Weinberg and called the "Citizen-Temple Community", proposes that

7986-434: The Tabernacle as an everlasting ordinance, but this ordinance is altered in later books with the Temple being the only place in which sacrifices are allowed. The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Torah. The book has a long and complex history, but its final form is probably due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic source made some time in the early Persian period (5th century BCE). The name of

8107-430: The Torah (Talmud, tractate Pesachim 22b); the particle et is meaningless by itself, and serves only to mark the direct object . In other words, the Orthodox belief is that even apparently contextual text such as "And God spoke unto Moses saying ..." is no less holy and sacred than the actual statement. Manuscript Torah scrolls are still scribed and used for ritual purposes (i.e., religious services ); this

8228-401: The Torah and its laws first emerged in 444 BCE when, according to the biblical account provided in the Book of Nehemiah (chapter 8), a priestly scribe named Ezra read a copy of the Mosaic Torah before the populace of Judea assembled in a central Jerusalem square. Wellhausen believed that this narrative should be accepted as historical because it sounds plausible, noting: "The credibility of

8349-405: The Torah has multiple authors and that its composition took place over centuries. The precise process by which the Torah was composed, the number of authors involved, and the date of each author are hotly contested. Throughout most of the 20th century, there was a scholarly consensus surrounding the documentary hypothesis , which posits four independent sources, which were later compiled together by

8470-418: The Torah was introduced by Ezra the Scribe after the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity ( c.  537 BCE ), as described in the Book of Nehemiah . In the modern era, adherents of Orthodox Judaism practice Torah-reading according to a set procedure they believe has remained unchanged in the two thousand years since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE). In

8591-444: The Torah was therefore likely written in the Hellenistic period , in the third or fourth centuries BCE. The Jews had their own temple to Yahweh which functioned alongside that of the Egyptian god Khnum . Along with Yahweh, other deities – ʿ Anat Betel and Asham Bethel – seem to have been worshiped by these Jews, evincing polytheistic beliefs. Other scholars argue that these theonyms are merely hypostases of Yahweh, and dispute

8712-400: The Torah") is a Jewish religious ritual that involves the public reading of a set of passages from a Torah scroll . The term often refers to the entire ceremony of removing the Torah scroll (or scrolls) from the ark , chanting the appropriate excerpt with traditional cantillation , and returning the scroll(s) to the ark. It is distinct from academic Torah study . Regular public reading of

8833-518: The Torah", which seems to be a contraction of a fuller name, "The Book of the Torah of God". Christian scholars usually refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as the 'Pentateuch' ( / ˈ p ɛ n . t ə ˌ t juː k / , PEN -tə-tewk ; Ancient Greek : πεντάτευχος , pentáteukhos , 'five scrolls'), a term first used in the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria . The " Tawrat " (also Tawrah or Taurat; Arabic : توراة‎ )

8954-458: The Torah, should be the source for Jewish behavior and ethics. Kabbalists hold that not only do the words of Torah give a divine message, but they also indicate a far greater message that extends beyond them. Thus they hold that even as small a mark as a kotso shel yod ( קוצו של יוד ), the serif of the Hebrew letter yod (י), the smallest letter, or decorative markings, or repeated words, were put there by God to teach scores of lessons. This

9075-412: The authentic and only Jewish version for understanding the Torah and its development throughout history. Humanistic Judaism holds that the Torah is a historical, political, and sociological text, but does not believe that every word of the Torah is true, or even morally correct. Humanistic Judaism is willing to question the Torah and to disagree with it, believing that the entire Jewish experience, not just

9196-467: The basis that the Elephantine papyri , the records of a Jewish colony in Egypt dating from the last quarter of the 5th century BCE, make no reference to a written Torah, the Exodus , or to any other biblical event, though it does mention the festival of Passover . In his seminal Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels , Julius Wellhausen argued that Judaism as a religion based on widespread observance of

9317-424: The book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites. Numbers begins at Mount Sinai , where the Israelites have received their laws and covenant from God and God has taken up residence among them in the sanctuary . The task before them is to take possession of the Promised Land. The people are counted and preparations are made for resuming their march. The Israelites begin the journey, but they "murmur" at

9438-583: The books are derived from the Greek Septuagint and reflect the essential theme of each book: The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Torah. It is divisible into two parts, the Primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the Ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's (or authors') concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates

9559-742: The clients were dissatisfied with something the scribe had written, at one point the text of the document breaks off and then starts over again, repeating what has gone on before with some additions. The boundary description included here refers to the Temple of Yauh in Elephantine, now rebuilt eight years after its destruction in 410 BCE during a civil war conflict that arose out of a land dispute. Image of document in gallery below. Sometime in December 402 BCE, Ananiah son of Haggai borrowed two monthly rations of grain from Pakhnum son of Besa, an Aramean with an Egyptian name. This receipt would have been held by Pakhnum and returned to Ananiah son of Haggai when he repaid

9680-431: The completion and new start of the year's cycle of readings. Torah scrolls are often dressed with a sash, a special Torah cover, various ornaments, and a keter (crown), although such customs vary among synagogues. Congregants traditionally stand in respect when the Torah is brought out of the ark to be read, while it is being carried, and lifted, and likewise while it is returned to the ark, although they may sit during

9801-449: The custom of calling the Pentateuch (five books of Moses) The Law. Other translational contexts in the English language include custom , theory , guidance , or system . The term "Torah" is used in the general sense to include both Rabbinic Judaism 's written and oral law , serving to encompass the entire spectrum of authoritative Jewish religious teachings throughout history, including

9922-532: The documents remains unknown, but they are thought to have been stored laterally and horizontally in close proximity to each other. The major Elephantine collections consist of discoveries from the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century, and these collections are now in museums in Berlin, Brooklyn, Cairo, London, Munich, and Paris. The largest collection is in the Berlin State Museums with texts in each of

10043-425: The entire Hebrew Bible . The Oral Torah consists of interpretations and amplifications which according to rabbinic tradition have been handed down from generation to generation and are now embodied in the Talmud and Midrash . Rabbinic tradition's understanding is that all of the teachings found in the Torah (both written and oral) were given by God through the prophet Moses , some at Mount Sinai and others at

10164-534: The following forty years, though many non-Orthodox Jewish scholars affirm the modern scholarly consensus that the Written Torah has multiple authors and was written over centuries. All classical rabbinic views hold that the Torah was entirely Mosaic and of divine origin. Present-day Reform and Liberal Jewish movements all reject Mosaic authorship, as do most shades of Conservative Judaism . Torah reading ( Hebrew : קריאת התורה , K'riat HaTorah , "Reading [of]

10285-465: The form of a Torah scroll ( Hebrew : ספר תורה Sefer Torah ). If in bound book form , it is called Chumash , and is usually printed with the rabbinic commentaries ( perushim ). In rabbinic literature , the word Torah denotes both the five books ( תורה שבכתב "Torah that is written") and the Oral Torah ( תורה שבעל פה , "Torah that is spoken"). It has also been used, however, to designate

10406-580: The hands of the Jews. The earliest recount of the Jewish temple is from 525 BC. In 410 BC, the Jewish temple, the House of Yahweh, was burned down by a Persian military commander after he was bribed by Khnum priests. While no explicit reasoning has been given for this lash out, it has been suspected that the priests did this because of the Jewish rituals of sacrificing of sheep, especially during Passover . Papyri records that have been collected from this time show Jewish letters asking Bagoas for help rebuilding

10527-449: The hardships along the way, and about the authority of Moses and Aaron . For these acts, God destroys approximately 15,000 of them through various means. They arrive at the borders of Canaan and send spies into the land. Upon hearing the spies' fearful report concerning the conditions in Canaan, the Israelites refuse to take possession of it. God condemns them to death in the wilderness until

10648-518: The house and its gradual transfers to family members are the central concerns of the next several documents in Ananiah's family archive. Three years after purchasing the house from Bagazust and Ubil, Ananiah transferred ownership of an apartment within the now renovated house to his wife, Tamut. Although Tamut thereafter owned the apartment, Ananiah required that at her death it pass to their children, Palti and Yehoishema. As with all property transfers within

10769-467: The idea that the Elephantine Jews were polytheists. Excavation work done in 1967 revealed the remains of the Jewish colony centered on a small temple. The "Petition to Bagoas" (Sayce-Cowley collection) is a letter written in 407 BCE to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Judea, appealing for assistance in rebuilding the Jewish temple in Elephantine, which had recently been badly damaged by an anti-Jewish rampage on

10890-450: The interfaith couple of Ananiah, an official at the temple of Yahou (a.k.a. Yahweh), and his wife, Tamut, who was previously an Egyptian slave owned by an Aramean master, Meshullam. Some related exhibition didactics of 2002 included comments about significant structural similarities between Judaism and the ancient Egyptian religion and how they easily coexisted and blended at Elephantine. The papyri suggest that, "Even in exile and beyond,

11011-714: The island as early as the Third Dynasty . This temple was completely rebuilt in the Late Period, during the Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt , just before the foreign rule that followed in the Graeco-Roman Period. The Greeks formed the Ptolemaic dynasty during their 300-year rule over Egypt (305–30 BC) and maintained the ancient religious customs and traditions while often associating the Egyptian deities with their own. Most of

11132-572: The island of Elephantine stood at the border between Egypt and Nubia . Trade routes would stop on Elephantine to deliver ivory, a precious good in ancient Egypt. It was an excellent defensive site for a fort, making it a natural cargo transfer point for river trade. During the Second Intermediate Period (1650–1550 BC), the fort marked the southern border of Egypt. The island was also a vital stone quarry , providing granite for monuments and buildings all over Egypt. Historical texts from

11253-459: The island. Before 1822, there were temples to Thutmose III and Amenhotep III on the island. In 1822, they were destroyed during the campaign of Muhammad Ali , who had taken power in Egypt, to conquer Sudan . The main two temples of the island were for Satet and Khnum. The first temple was the temple of Satet , founded around 3000 BC and enlarged and renovated over the next 3,000 years. There are records of an Egyptian temple to Khnum on

11374-400: The languages. Numerous smaller finds have been attributed to Elephantine: The publication of the documents from Elephantine discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, took many years, and is still ongoing. The Aramaic and Demotic texts have received the greatest and most complete focus from scholars. Aramaic Demotic Greek Hieratic Another forty catalogued hieratic fragments in

11495-628: The loan. No interest is charged but there is a penalty for failing to repay the loan by the agreed date. The receipt demonstrates that friendly business relations continued between Egyptians and Jews in Elephantine after the expulsion of the Persians by Amyrtaeus , the only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of Egypt . Image of document is in gallery below. Elephantine The island has been studied through excavation sites. Aramaic papyri and ostraca have been collected to study what life

11616-464: The mid-seventh or mid-sixth centuries BCE, likely as a result of Judean and Samaritan refugees fleeing into Egypt during the times of Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. They seem to have had no knowledge of a written Torah or the narratives described therein. Also important is the fact that the papyri document the existence of a small Jewish temple at Elephantine, which possessed altars for incense offerings and animal sacrifices, as late as 411 BCE. Such

11737-637: The middle of the 2nd century BCE. Adler explored the likelihhood that Judaism, as the widespread practice of Torah law by Jewish society at large, first emerged in Judea during the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty , centuries after the putative time of Ezra. By contrast, John J. Collins has argued that the observance of the Torah started in Persian Yehud when the Judeans who returned from exile understood its normativity as

11858-431: The narrative appears on the face of it." Following Wellhausen, most scholars throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries have accepted that widespread Torah observance began sometime around the middle of the 5th century BCE. More recently, Yonatan Adler has argued that in fact there is no surviving evidence to support the notion that the Torah was widely known, regarded as authoritative, and put into practice prior to

11979-501: The nilometers, though it is not certain which. Many sources claim that the fabled "Well of Eratosthenes", famous in connection with Eratosthenes ' presumed calculation of the Earth's circumference , was located on the island. Strabo mentions a well used to observe that Aswan lies on the Tropic of Cancer , but the reference is to a well at Aswan, not at Elephantine. Neither nilometer at Elephantine

12100-464: The observance of selected, ancestral laws of high symbolic value, while during the Maccabean revolt Jews started a much more detailed observance of its precepts. Rabbinic writings state that the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai , which, according to the tradition of Orthodox Judaism , occurred in 1312 BCE. The Orthodox rabbinic tradition holds that the Written Torah was recorded during

12221-484: The other side, two Persian boatmen. Image of document in gallery. For his daughter Yehoishema's dowry, Ananiah had transferred to her partial ownership of the house he shared with Tamut. After making more repairs to the building, Ananiah transferred a further section of the house, described in this document, to the dowry. Image of document in gallery. This papyrus records the sale of the remaining portion of Ananiah and Tamut's house to Yehoishema's husband. Possibly because

12342-552: The part of a segment of the Elephantine community. In the course of this appeal, the Jewish inhabitants of Elephantine speak of the antiquity of the damaged temple: Now our forefathers built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine back in the days of the kingdom of Egypt, and when Cambyses came to Egypt he found it built. They (the Persians) knocked down all the temples of the gods of Egypt, but no one did any damage to this temple. The community also appealed for aid to Sanballat I ,

12463-514: The passing of the mantle of leadership from Moses to Joshua and, finally, the death of Moses on Mount Nebo . Presented as the words of Moses delivered before the conquest of Canaan, a broad consensus of modern scholars see its origin in traditions from Israel (the northern kingdom) brought south to the Kingdom of Judah in the wake of the Assyrian conquest of Aram (8th century BCE) and then adapted to

12584-531: The position and appearance of the Hebrew letters are observed. See for example the Mishnah Berurah on the subject. Any of several Hebrew scripts may be used, most of which are fairly ornate and exacting. The completion of the Sefer Torah is a cause for great celebration, and it is a mitzvah for every Jew to either write or have written for him a Sefer Torah. Torah scrolls are stored in the holiest part of

12705-528: The present-day southern tip of the island is taken up by the ruins of the temple of Khnum. These, the oldest ruins still standing on the island, are composed of a granite step pyramid from the Third Dynasty and a small temple built for the local Sixth Dynasty nomarch , Heqaib . In the Middle Kingdom, many officials, such as the local governors Sarenput I or Heqaib III , dedicated statues and shrines to

12826-409: The reading itself. The Torah contains narratives, statements of law, and statements of ethics. Collectively these laws, usually called biblical law or commandments, are sometimes referred to as the Law of Moses ( Torat Moshɛ תּוֹרַת־מֹשֶׁה ), Mosaic Law , or Sinaitic Law . Rabbinic tradition holds that Moses learned the whole Torah while he lived on Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights and both

12947-470: The remains of ancient mud-brick houses. They found at least eight papyrus rolls which were purchased by Charles Edwin Wilbour . He was the first person to find Aramaic papyri. The papyri have been grouped here by topic, such as marriage contract, real estate transaction, or loan agreement. Ancient marriage documents generally formalized already existing relationships. In this case, Ananiah and Tamut already had

13068-507: The right describes a property purchased by Ananiah, twelve years after his marriage, from a Persian soldier named Bagazust and his wife, Ubil. The property, in a town on Elephantine Island, named for the god Khnum , was located across the street from the Temple of Yauh and adjacent to the Persian family of Ubil's father. As such proximity might suggest, the Egyptians, Jews, and Persians in Elephantine all lived among one another. The renovation of

13189-496: The script used to write the Torah from the older Hebrew script to Assyrian script, so called according to the Talmud, because they brought it with them from Assyria. Maharsha says that Ezra made no changes to the actual text of the Torah based on the Torah's prohibition of making any additions or deletions to the Torah in Deuteronomy 12:32 . By contrast, the modern scholarly consensus rejects Mosaic authorship, and affirms that

13310-451: The second Priestly. By contrast, John Van Seters advocates a supplementary hypothesis , which posits that the Torah was derived from a series of direct additions to an existing corpus of work. A "neo-documentarian" hypothesis, which responds to the criticism of the original hypothesis and updates the methodology used to determine which text comes from which sources, has been advocated by biblical historian Joel S. Baden, among others. Such

13431-500: The second reminds the Israelites of the need to follow Yahweh and the laws (or teachings) he has given them, on which their possession of the land depends; and the third offers the comfort that even should Israel prove unfaithful and so lose the land, with repentance all can be restored. The final four chapters (31–34) contain the Song of Moses , the Blessing of Moses , and narratives recounting

13552-426: The small dowry of either 7 or 15 shekels (the text is ambiguous) in order to obtain his son's freedom. Future children, however, would still be born slaves. In contrast to Jewish documents like this one, contemporaneous Egyptian marriage documents were negotiated between a husband and wife. Nearly twenty-two years after her marriage to Ananiah, Tamut's master released her and her daughter, Yehoishema, from slavery. It

13673-461: The temple. The standard reference collection of the Aramaic documents of the Elephantine papyri and ostraca is the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt . The Aswan Museum is located at the southern end of the island. Ongoing excavations by the German Archaeological Institute at the island's ancient town site have uncovered many findings that are now on display in the museum, including

13794-505: The temple. A nilometer was a structure for measuring the Nile River's clarity and the water level during the annual flood season. Elephantine has two nilometers. The more famous is a corridor nilometer associated with the temple of Satis, with a stone staircase that descends the corridor. It is one of the oldest nilometers in Egypt, last reconstructed in Roman times and still in use as late as

13915-524: The uppermost part of the Nile river that is a part of Aswan . Elephantine had the first nome of the northern part of Egypt. Elephantine is 1,600 metres from north to south and 450 metres across at its widest point. The layout of this and other nearby islands in Aswan can be seen from west bank hillsides along the Nile. The island is located just downstream of the First Cataract , at the southern border of Upper Egypt with Lower Nubia . This region above

14036-529: The veneration of a female deity endured." The texts were written by a group of Jews living at Elephantine near the Nubian border, whose religion has been described as "nearly identical to Iron Age II Judahite religion". The papyri describe the Jews as worshiping Anat-Yahu (mentioned in the document AP 44, line 3, in Cowley's numbering). Anat-Yahu is described as either the wife (or paredra, sacred consort) of Yahweh or as

14157-578: Was formerly...". By the middle of the 4th century BCE, the temple at Elephantine had ceased to function. There is evidence from excavations that the rebuilding and enlargement of the Khnum temple under Nectanebo II (360–343) took the place of the former temple of YHWH. In 2004, the Brooklyn Museum created a display entitled "Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive From the Nile Valley," which featured

14278-417: Was laid with the investigation of the origins of the written sources in oral compositions, implying that the creators of J and E were collectors and editors and not authors and historians. Rolf Rendtorff , building on this insight, argued that the basis of the Pentateuch lay in short, independent narratives, gradually formed into larger units and brought together in two editorial phases, the first Deuteronomic,

14399-574: Was like on Elephantine during the time of ancient Egypt . There have been studies about the Elephantine Triad and the Jewish presence that formulated on the island. The standard reference collection of the Aramaic documents of the Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca is the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt . Elephantine, or what ancient Egyptians called Yebu or Abu is located at

14520-435: Was originally transmitted to Moses at Sinai, and then from Moses to Israel. At that time it was forbidden to write and publish the oral law, as any writing would be incomplete and subject to misinterpretation and abuse. However, after exile, dispersion, and persecution, this tradition was lifted when it became apparent that in writing was the only way to ensure that the Oral Law could be preserved. After many years of effort by

14641-546: Was rare for a slave to be freed. And though a slave could marry a free person, their children usually belonged to the master. As an institution, slavery in Egypt at that time differed in notable ways from the practice in some other cultures: Egyptian slaves retained control over personal property, had professions, and were entitled to compensation. During the Persian Period in Egypt, it was not uncommon to sell children, or even oneself, into slavery to pay debts. This document to

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