Now the interesting thing about Egypt is that we have extra Biblical evidence related to a community that lives in Egypt. Actually we have lots of archives from various periods but for the early period for the Persian period, that is the Persian Empire, that takes the, replaces the Babylonians we have an archive from way down on the borders of the empire in a place called Elephantina. It's actually called [UNKNOWN] at the time, and it's an island in the Nile. The Nile River has an island in it, and this island here has a garrison on it garrison of Persian troops, and the Persian troops come from various places in the empire and one of them is from Judah, Judah Heights, and they live together, and there's this tight-knit community. We have a body of papyri that stem from this period that relate to a lot of different things but many of them relate to the Jewish communal life there. And they range from the dates are from 495 to 399 B.C.E. and they really give us a lot of information, not about military operations that these Judahites were engaged in. It's a question whether they even were engaged in military operations. But they give us a really fascinating insights into the way the Judahites lived the together among the families, the business operations, all of the struggles they had with other ethnicities that were in the Persian Empire and within that garrison itself. And I want to share with you just briefly why this is so important. So the biblical text presents one view of how Judahites should live, and also present a way, how Judahites were living at the period of time, EzraâNehemiah, we'll get to that later. And this Elephantine papyri, they present a very unorthodox way of living. Things that are banned most drastically, most concretely by the Biblical authors are being performed and done at will, in these archives. So one of the things is that Sabbath observance for example, we have one letter where a guy says I'll meet you down by the docks to unload a boat on the Sabbath, and Sabbath of course being the day where no work is to be done. Another aspect has to do with intermarriage. Intermarriage is clearly proscribed. It's not something that is allowed. Especially at this time where Ezra-Nehemiah are preaching very vehemently against mixed marriages. We find in these letters and even temple officials who marry Egyptian women. And we have, in one case, Ananiah, an official of the temple, The temple, I'm going to get to that, of Yahou, of Yahweh, of Yahou, and she marries - he marries - a woman named Tamut. And Tamut used to be a slave to another Judahite official living there. But we won't get into that. And so here is mixed marriages. Not mixed marriages just among the hoi polloi, among the average people [FOREIGN], but rather among the priestly, the, the officials, the temple personnel. It's very strange. Now, what about this temple, this temple to Yahou, Yahou being the same name as Yahweh. Yahweh, YHVH, it's missing the final letter. And Yahou is the central deity for the Egyptian community there of the Elephantine community of Egyptian Judites I mean. And there's another temple of course among the Egyptian's community, Tatu Khnum to the god the god Khnum, but to the God Yahou for the Judites, they have their temple. Now this temple had been destroyed and apparently by the Egyptians at some point in time we don't know exactly what circumstances lead to the destruction, but they write these letters, the Judahite communities, they write these letters seeking support for it to be rebuilt and they say this temple to Yahou, to their god had been standing there for many generations. And now it's been destroyed and and they kind of lay out all the politics behind the destruction. It's fun to read and you can read them. We'll post the letters for you to read; I encourage you to do so. But then what they are doing is they're writing these letters and sending them back to the communities in Judah, and Jerusalem, and in Samaria. Samaria has a governor there appointed by the Persian government, Sanballat, we know him from the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, and then we have another governor in Jerusalem, we don't know him from the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, we know Nehemiah, but the successor to this guy Bagoi, receives the letter and then we have responses and the responses seem to indicate that they are all okay with the temple being rebuilt. The one caveat is that the temple probably should not be used for meat sacrifices, which is the most, the highest form of sacrifices but the temple is okay, it's fully fine with the officials within Jerusalem and within Samaria. Now, why is that strange? According to biblical law, there should be only one temple and that temple is where God chooses to place God's name. And that's understood, within this time, to be Jerusalem. And the Jerusalemite communities are speaking out very harshly against all the other temples that are being built elsewhere. But there is only one place for the temple and that is in Jerusalem. Now here is, that's according to the biblical depiction, but we know from these extra-biblical evidences, this archive of letters, that that's not actually how the Jerusalem community was behaving, that they were actually quite fine with temples outside of Jerusalem, and that they write a letter and say fine, rebuild the temple on the place where it once stood. On the place where it once stood is actually the same kind of formulation we find within the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, where Darius writes and says, the temple of Jerusalem can be built on the place where it once stood. So very similar kind of formulations, and here we have a very authentic historical witness to a Jerusalemite community. Priest and governor allowing a temple outside of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. Now, this temple is to Yahuw, it's not to another god. But this Yahuw has a consort, a wife and something that is extremely prohibited according to the biblical text. Only the pagan or only the opponents of the profits are abiding by this. Here we have a Judahite community that has no problem with this deity and we have in addition to that, addition to the deity and not Yahuw, this female deity, we have letters coming from officials in Jerusalem with expressions, with salutations, such as, may the gods seek your welfare. They don't even say, may Yahuw seek your welfare, may the Yahweh or God seek your welfare, but may the gods seek your welfare. It's, something that is fully, open and, nothing of the sort that we would imagine from a community at this advanced stage in Jewish history where they should be very monotheistic. Now in the letter that where they, where this Judahite official sends this greeting, may the gods seek your welfare. It's in response to a question about how to keep a festival. And that festival is one of the most important in the bible. Passover. And the community in in the Elephantine, the Judahite community, Judahite community does not appear to know how to observe the laws of Passover and they write and they find out and the response comes from a guy named Hananiah, and he begins by saying, may the God seek you welfare, but then he lays out all the prescriptions of how Passover should be, performed. And the question arises well why didn't the Judahite community just check the Torah scroll? Open the Torah scroll and read it, and there they would have had exact prescription for it. They do not seem to have a Torah scroll there. And in the response coming from Hananiah, he's not citing the Torah scroll. He's citing something we see tradition, a legal tradition, but it's where it's coming from, it's not said. The one authorization that is, mentioned is the authorization not of the Torah itself but of the Persian Empire. Darius, let these things be done in keeping with the laws of Darius, the King of Persia, so very strange consolation of facts here. We have in Judahite community living on the far outskirts of the Persian Empire. Protecting, serving the Persian Empire. Being good Persian subjects. They are living with other communities, ethnicities who do not get along with them, who may have wiped them out. After the Persian Empire fell, who probably hated them in some ways, we don't know why they hated, but there is this, this is the the beginnings of a kind of phobia of Judahites maybe, perhaps. But here is a Judahite community that does not observe all the laws of Moses, that does not have a text of the Torah that they can consult. That writes letters to Judah and to Samaria and asks them for help to understand most basic things, and the responses to them being not in keeping with Biblical law. So, this is a fascinating archive of evidence. I hope you guys will all do, spend a little bit more time of your own on it because I think it's one of the most important, eye opening witnesses to how drastically different life was on the ground compared to life as described in the Biblical text.