Interpretatio Ivdaica in the Achaemenid Period

Abstract

The Yahwistic community at Elephantine, whose document record covers almost the entire fifth century BCE, conserves the most direct, vibrant and authentic witness of Achaemenid-era Yahwism. This article focuses on the process of interpretatio iudaica through interactions with neighboring and reigning cults: Egyptian, Levantine and Achaemenid-Zoroastrian (AZ), comparing it to other Yahwistic settlements of its time. It shows that these communities behaved as normative citizens of the polytheistic/henotheistic world surrounding them. In what is an expected process of interpretatio of their day and age, they were in full dialogue with the philosophical/theological views and innovations of the cultures surrounding them. They translated their deity/ies with “host deities” when they came into contact with other cultures. Significantly, living in an Achaemenid imperial context, Ahuramazdā was translated with Yhw, and following Artaxerxes II’s reform, a new Yahwistic triad translated both the new AZ triad as well as the local Egyptian triad.