The Governor’s Response
Compared to the official correspondence sent by Yedoniah, the directive
sent from Bagohi and Delaiah to Arsames fittingly deserves the name of
memorandum. The copy at Elephantine is riddled with sloppiness. There are
erasures in lines 2 and 8, an added line between lines 1 and 2 and an added
word in line 2. The document is addressed to no one; that the instructions are
to be relayed to Arsames is added. It tersely begins: “Memorandum from Bagohi
and Delaiah, they said to me ...” There is a hole in the papyrus that was
apparently there before it was used, since the scribe has written around it. It
agrees with the details of Yedoniah’s letter on every point but three:
1) It calls for the rebuilding of a house of offering; בית מדבחא, and
not a temple; אנורא (cf. A.P. 30:6,7,24 and A.P. 32:3).
2) The building is to be dedicated to the god of heaven; אלהא שמיא,
and not to יהו׳, who is not even named in the memorandum. K. Galling notes that
this absence “ist schwerlich Zufall,” while A. Vincent surmises, although
without any supporting evidence, that Bagohi was a Jew, and therefore, that
Yedoniah wrote to him using the proper name of the deity both men worshipped,
while in his response Bagohi, acting as a representative of the Persian empire,
employed the generic term. In fact, the omission of the proper name יהו in A.P.
32 bears significance only in light of the equation of the name with the title אלהא
שמוא in A.P. 30.
3) The new building will be for meal offering and incense but not for
sacrifices. This absence is made all the more intriguing by the fact that an
erasure has occurred on line 8 precisely where the permission for sacrifices
would have occurred. Yedoniah’s letter twice speaks of meal offerings, incense
and sacrifice in the same order (30:21,25). The memorandum speaks of meal
offering and incense in the same order, but omits sacrifice. B. Porten posits
the erased word to have been ועלותא, but the papyrus is too difficult to
decipher with certainty. However, apart from the erasure, it is clear that the
memorandum does not allow sacrifices. This prohibition is reinforced by A.P.
33, wherein Yedoniah and his colleagues offer a large bribe to an unknown
official for rebuilding the temple and promise that “sheep, oxen and goats are
not offered as burnt sacrifice there, but incense, meal offering and drink
offering.
It is unclear why Bagohi would have forbidden burnt offering (cf. Ezra
7:17 where the Persians appear to allow animal sacrifice at the Jerusalem
temple). Some have posited that the Egyptian priests of Khnum, who is
represented as a ram, were scandalized and that this was the cause of the
temple’s destruction. Indeed, K. Galling traces the destruction to the
so-called “Passover Papyrus,” (A.P. 21), dated 419, which directs the Jews of
Elephantine to observe the feast. For Galling, the Jewish garrison’s obedience
to the Passover Papyrus is the origin of ram sacrifice there. Others feel that
Bagohi, by virtue of being Persian, was a Zoroastrian and thus, would not want fire
defiled by animal remains. However, M. Boyce sees Bagohi’s assumed “Zoroastrian
observance of animal sacrifice” as signifying that he “had no religious
scruples about aiding those of other faiths to make similar offerings. It
should be remembered that, according to Josephus, Bagohi continued to allow
animal sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple after the murder of his candidate for
high priest but that he imposed a tribute for every lamb offered. Since
Yedoniah’s request, tendered with a bribe, is granted, the possibility that
Bagohi had no religious scruples whatsoever should not be ruled out. Others see
the destruction of the temple as entirely political and tied to the continued
loyalty of the Jews to Persia in the face of the Egyptian unrest that led to
the revolt of 404. The Jews suffer because they are soldiers in the service of
Persia, not because they are Jews. There are a myriad of reasons, both
political and religious, for Widranag and the Egyptian priests to have
destroyed the temple: they may have been outraged by the sacrifice of rams,
they may have been part of the Egyptian unrest with Persian rule that was to
lead to full-scale rebellion, or they may have been envious of the temple’s
economic influence. That it was rebuilt is made clear by Brooklyn papyrus 12,
dated 402, which makes reference to the אגורא זי יהו. (Thomas M. Bolin, “The Temple
of יהו at Elephantine and Persian Religious Policy,” in The Triumph of Elohim:
From Yahwisms to Judaisms, ed. Diana Vikander Edelman [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1995], 132-35)
