Elephantine and the History of Judaism

The name elephantine is the name of an island in the Nile at the very southernmost order of both ancient and modern Egypt. The reason it's of interest to folks like us is because there was a community garrison, a military outpost. Among the Aramaic speaking peoples who populated the community were Jews or Judeans. And so they were kind of caught up in the crossfire as it were between native Egyptians trying to throw off Persian rule and the nearest people they can reach are the Judeans,. So that's what they arranged to do.