by Joseph M. Modrzejewski (Author), Joseph Meleze Modrezejewski (Author), Robert Cornman (Translator)
This is the story of the adventures and misadventures of the Jewish people in the land of Egypt - 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 the Ptolemies; and the Jewish community's rapid decline and catastrophic disappearance under Roman rule.
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Professor Joseph Meleze Modrzejewski, a papyrologist as well as a historian, uses the clear light of scientific analysis to illuminate the reality underlying our image of the past. The biblical account and Jewish and pagan literary texts are juxtaposed with the discoveries of a century of archaeological and papyrological research that unearthed the edicts of emperors as well as the humble correspondence of common people, inscriptions on shells in Aramaic and on tombstones in Greek. The author comments when necessary but, for the most part, lets the documents speak for themselves. In a tantalizing epilogue, Modrzejewski takes a long, probing, and provocative look at a turning point in Western civilization: the brief but crucial episode when budding Christianity and the Alexandrian Jews parted company.