BIBLE HISTORY DAILY:
A Jewish Curse Text from Elephantine. Evidence of Yahweh worship from Late Period Egypt (Nathan Steinmeyer).
While the Hebrew Bible provides a great deal of information on ancient Israelite religion and Yahweh worship, there are very few extrabiblical texts that inform us about Israel’s religion prior to the Hellenistic period (c. 332–37 BCE). According to Gad Barnea, a scholar of biblical history at the University of Haifa, a new text from Elephantine might finally provide a glimpse of how Israelite religion developed after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
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The underlying article is open-access in the journal
Religions:
Justice at the House of Yhw(h): An Early Yahwistic Defixio in Furem
by Gad Barnea
Department of Jewish History and Bible, University of Haifa, Haifa 349883, Israel
Religions 2023, 14(10), 1324; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101324
Received: 2 July 2023 / Revised: 19 October 2023 / Accepted: 19 October 2023 / Published: 22 October 2023
Abstract
What was the nature of ritual in ancient Yahwism? Although biblical sources provide some information about various types of cultic activity, we have thus far lacked any extra-biblical ritual texts from Yahwistic circles prior to Greco–Roman times. This article presents such a text—one that has been hiding in plain sight for almost a century on a small ostracon found on the island of Elephantine. It has variously been interpreted as dealing with instructions regarding a tunic left at the “house of Yhw”—the temple to Yhw(h) that flourished on the island from the middle of the sixth to the end of the fourth century BCE. While there is little debate regarding the epigraphic reading of this text, it has hitherto failed to be correctly interpreted. I present an entirely new reading of this important document, revealing it to be written in poetic form and to match the characteristics of a “prayer for justice” curse ritual. It is, in fact, the oldest known example of this genre; its only known specimen in Aramaic, its unique witness in a Yahwistic context, and the sole record of any ritual performance at a temple to Yhw(h). Significantly, it is administered by a priestess.
This new interpretation of a long-known inscription is filled with cool things: The Temple of YHW (i.e., YHWH), an early Aramaic curse rite, YHWH as a lion, and even a Yahwistic priestess. That makes me wary.
I take it that everyone agrees that the Temple of YHWH appears in the text, and possibly some reference to a lion. But the rest is new.
I am reminded of the dictum of my teacher, Frank Moore Cross: "The more banal reading is to be preferred." Or, to put it another way, the more exciting the interpretation of an ancient text, the more cautious we should be.
Let's see what Northwest Semitic epigraphers like Christopher Rollston make of the new interpretation. I would be delighted if it turns out to be convincing and widely accepted.
This does sound rather early for an Aramaic curse amulet. See my reflections here on the supposed Mount Ebal Amulet.
On the question of Yahwistic priestesses in antiquity, see here, here, and here. There are no priestesses of YHWH in the Bible. Most of our very limited evidence for them comes from Egypt.
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