Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors by Margaretha Folmer

Author:Margaretha Folmer
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2022-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

In its present form, this essay is adapted from the volume Elephantine in Context, ed. R. G. Kratz and B. U. Schipper (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming).

1. AP 204–48 (Aḥiqar), 248–71 (Bisitun); TAD C1.1 (Aḥiqar); C2.1 (Bisitun). If not otherwise stated, text and translation are quoted according to TAD. A further edition of the Bisitun inscription can be found in Greenfield and Porten 1982; on Aḥiqar, see Ginsberg 1955, 427–30; Lindenberger 1983; Kottsieper 1991, 320–47; Niehr 2007, 1–55.

2. Sachau 1911; cf. Ungnad 1911. The text in question is Sachau 1911, no. 60 (= AP no. 69 = TAD B8.5). See Sachau 1911, 183–84, with pl. 52; Ungnad 1911, 82–83.

3. AP xiv. Cowley does not specify “three pieces” here; he may have had—besides Aḥiqar and Bisitun—the rest of the tale in mind (see AP no. 71 = TAD C1.2).

4. Porten 1968, 263, with regard to Yedanyah son of Gemaryah, who was a leader of the Jewish colony at Elephantine; see also Porten 1968, 146. This seems to be the basis for the suggestion that the Aḥiqar text was found in the house of Yedanyah, see Knauf 2002, 180.

5. See Niehr 2007, 2–4; Weigl 2010, 19–22. On the excavations, see Honroth, Rubensohn, and Zucker 1910, 14–61; Müller 1980, 75–88; 1982; 1984; on the recent archaeological campaigns on Elephantine, see von Pilgrim 1998, 485–97; 2002, 192–97; 2003; Porten 2003, 51–54, 73–84.

6. On the historical background, see Primavesi 1996, 173–87.

7. AP xiv–xv.

8. Schmitt 1991; von Voigtlander 1978; German edition in Borger and Hinz 1984, 419–50.

9. See Kottsieper 1990, and more recently, Weigl 2010.

10. It seems likely that the name is genuine to the narrative portion of the composition. This argument is bolstered by the fact that, throughout the course of the tradition’s transmission, up to to the late oriental versions, the narrative remains stable; the proverbs, by contrast, are much more variable and were changed and adapted according to one’s own tradition. On the other hand, it is equally possible that the narrative was created in response to an existing collection of proverbs and that both parts were then received differently. It is highly likely that both narrative and proverbs were subjected to extensive redaction and numerous recensions before the Elephantine version; this aspect of the composition can, however, be neglected here. On this problem, see the discussion in Kottsieper 1991; 2009, 145–67; Weigl 2010, 691–722. It is not yet certain, and is still to be evaluated, whether the composition history of the Aḥiqar material is best explained by assuming a source- or a supplementary hypothesis (or even a combination of both).

11. See Weigl 2010, 699–701. Despite the arguments in Küchler (1979, 175), the heading mly ʾḥyqr šmh (“The words of one named Aḥiqar”) does not necessarily have to refer solely to the collection of proverbs; as the examples in Neh 1:1 or 4Q242 (Prayer of Nabonidus) show, such a heading might refer equally to a first person narrative; the same has to be said of the formulation “before his words” in col. i:2, a reading that is not certain (see Kottsieper 1991, 324; Niehr 2007, 38).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.