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Show BOOK OF N EH EM I AH VERIFI ED. Professor Clermont Ganneau of Paris has given the public advance sheets of the important discoveries discov-eries lately made by the German scientific mission, working under Ilerr Rubensohn side by side with the French, on the, island of Elephanta on the Nile. Latterly the sands of Egypt have been yielding up their treasures in lavish profusion. Last month it was a lost comedy of Menander, and not long before be-fore the "Logia" of Jesus, taking us back to the origins of Christianity. But while explorers were almost daily unearthing relics of the Greek and Egyptian era, it was seldom that any Jewish fragment frag-ment was turned up. Now, however, among some papyri found by the Germans within fifty yards jf Professor Ganneau's diggers, is an official document-of the seventeenth year of Darius, addressed to the Persian governor of Judea by the Jewish priests of the Temple of Elephanta. The document is long and interesting, but its inestimable value-lies value-lies in the fact that it calls up historical figures familiar in the Bible, such as Jehohanan, high priest of Jerusalem, and Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. This papyrus, which is in the Aramic character, has been deciphered by Professor Sachau of Berlin, and turns out to be an authentic page to be added to the Book of Xehemiah. This wonderful document docu-ment is a petition addressed by the Jewish inhabitants inhabi-tants of the island of Elephanta, speaking through the priest, Jeduyah, and his colleagues, to the Lord Gagohi, the Persian governor of Samaria in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Darius. The inestimable value of these new discoveries lies in their corroboration of the Biblical story, and besides the names of Jehohanan and Sanballat mentioned men-tioned in the Old Testament, the governor of Gagohi is to be found in the historian Flavius Jo-sephus, Jo-sephus, in the Greek form of Bagaos. Professor Clermont Ganneau, who gives the above details, has especial reason to be congratulated on this discovery, dis-covery, although not, actually made by himself, since it seems to place beyond all doubt the correctness cor-rectness of the belief that the old temple of Jehovah Je-hovah was on the island of Elephanta a belief that he was almost alone for a long time in holding against the majority, who located it at Syene, on the opposite shores of the Isile. At present he is in charge of a French mission subventioned by the Academy, by the ministry, and also by M. Edmond Rothschild, which is excavating on the island side by side with the German explorers, and the keenest rivalry exists between the two groups, who are working literally shoulder to shoulder within a few yards of each other, each, however, with a radius exactly defined and marked out by wire fences. The Idaho Scimitar. |