The book of Ezra–Nehemiah records Nehemiah’s mid-fifth-century B.C.E. attempts to enforce Shabbat, and for the first time in the Bible, the name שַׁבְּתַי, Shabbethai, appears. In this period, similar names derived from Shabbat are also first attested in Babylonian cuneiform tablets, as well as ostraca and papyri from Elephantine, suggesting that Shabbat became a recognized reference within the Judean community.
The book of Kings recounts how all Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrians and replaced by foreigners, and Ezra–Nehemiah rejects them as non-Israelites. Yet other biblical and Second Temple texts, along with the archaeological record, show that northern Israelites continued to live in Samaria well into the Second Temple period. Far from vanishing, the northern tribes maintained a temple and priesthood that cooperated with their southern neighbors and played a role in shaping the Pentateuch.
...but about the Israelites distinguishing their identity from the Egyptians.
Hate in ancient Near Eastern law, the Torah, and Elephantine ketubot is a legal term. If a man demotes his wife to second in rank for no fault, merely because he “hates” her, he cannot also take away her firstborn son’s right to inherit a double portion.
The real reason Persia’s King Darius II sent a letter to the governor of Egypt that Judean soldiers in Elephantine should keep the festival of Matzot.
Egyptologists have long searched the details of the Joseph story for clues to when the story was written. Does the Jewish experience as a diaspora community in Egypt hold the clue to the story’s origin?
A new look at the “Passover Papyrus” from Elephantine and the nature of the Hebrew calendar in the Achaemenid Empire.
An overview of Persian history starting from Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Media (549 B.C.E.) until Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334-329 B.C.E.), including related biblical references and Jewish texts.
When a Temple of Yahu Stood Near a Temple of Khnum
Two Problems In Parashat Bemidbar
As late as the Second Temple period, Passover and Chag HaMatzot were viewed as two separate holidays. What was the final impetus to concretize the synthesis of these holidays into one?
