The Jews of Egypt

by Modrzejewski, Joseph Meleze; Cornman, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780691015750
• ISBN10: 0691015759
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-10-27
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Hellenistic Egypt was the setting for perhaps the first Jewish Golden Age, a time "golden" in Jewish memory as an era of vibrant cultural interaction between the Jews and their gentile hosts. This is the story of the adventures and misadventures of the people of Israel in the land of Egypt the years shrouded in the mists of biblical history under the Pharaohs; the strange intermezzo of the Jewish mercenary detachment on the island of Elephantine on the upper Nile; the apogee of Jewish culture under Ptolemies; and finally, the Jewish community's rapid decline and catastrophic disappearance under Roman rule. Joseph Meacute;legrave;ze Modrzejewski uses scientific analysis to illuminate the reality underlying our image of the past. The biblical accounts and Jewish and pagan literary texts are juxtaposed with discoveries of a century of archaeological and papyrological research that has unearthed the edicts of emperors as well as the humble correspondence of common people. In a tantalizing epilogue, Modrzejewski probes a turning point in Western civilization: the brief but crucial episode when budding Christianity and the Alexandrian Jews parted company.

Author Biography

Joseph Meleze Modrzejewski is Professor of Ancient History at the Sorbonne as well as Professor of Papyrology and Ancient Legal History at the Ecole practiques des Hautes Etudes, Sciences historiques et philologiques and director of the program in Judaic Studies at the University of Paris

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi	(6)
Shaye J. D. Cohen
Introduction	xvii	(5)
Note to the Princeton Paperback Edition	xxii
THE DAWN: Pharaohs and Great Kings	5	(42)
1 Biblical Egypt	5	(16)
Joseph and His Brothers	5	(6)
Moses and the Pharaoh	11	(5)
The Desert Road	16	(5)
2 The Stronghold of Elephantine	21	(26)
A Judean Colony in Egypt	21	(5)
Mibtahiah and Her Husbands: A Family of Note during the Reign of Artaxerxes I	26	(10)
"God of Heaven" and God of the Floods	36	(11)
THE ZENITH: Ptolemaic Egypt	47	(114)
3 Alexandrian Judaism and Its Problems	47	(26)
Alexander and the Jews	47	(9)
Can One Be Both Jewish and Greek?	56	(9)
A Love Story	65	(8)
4 A New Diaspora	73	(26)
Among the "Hellenes"	73	(10)
Soldiers of the Ptolemies	83	(4)
"God the Most High" and "Splendor of Israel"	87	(12)
5 A Law for the Jews of Egypt	99	(22)
The Greek Torah and the Demotic Case Book	99	(8)
The Law of Moses and the Justice of the King	107	(5)
"The Law of the Land Is Law"	112	(9)
6 A Jewish Temple in Ptolemaic Egypt	121	(14)
The Echoes of the Maccabean Crisis	121	(3)
"An Altar of the Lord in the Midst of the Land of Egypt"	124	(5)
Images of the "Land of Onias"	129	(6)
7 At the Wellsprings of Pagan Anti-Semitism	135	(26)
Modern Fantasies and Ancient Myths	135	(6)
The Miracle at the Hippodrome	141	(12)
"They Loathe the Jews"	153	(8)
THE TWILIGHT: Egypt in the Roman Empire	161	(66)
8 The "Jewish Question" in Alexandria	161	(30)
The Decline	161	(4)
The Vile Deeds of Flaccus the Prefect	165	(8)
Jews, Alexandrians, and Claudius the Emperor	173	(18)
9 The Time of Misfortunes	191	(16)
The Service Record of a Brilliant Alexandrian	185	(6)
A Miracle in Rome	191	(7)
"A Spirit of Rebellion"	198	(9)
10 The Remembrance	207	(20)
Who Destroyed the Great Synagogue of Alexandria?	207	(7)
"Jewish Tax," "Jewish Accounts": The Tale of the Imperial Tax Records	214	(8)
A Day of Rejoicings in Oxyrhynchos	222	(5)
Epilogue	227	(6)
Chronological Table	233	(4)
Calendar	237	(2)
Monetary Units and Units of Measure	239	(2)
Glossary	241	(6)
Bibliography	247	(9)
Maps	256	(5)
Index of Persons and Places	261	(10)
Index of Sources	271