The Jewish Diaspora In The Hellenistic Age
from the Cambridge History of Judaism
>Political Life
The Beginnings: Alexander The Great
The Jewish Diaspora In Ptolemaic Egypt
The Other Territories
>Religious Life
The Synagogue
Jerusalem as the Centre
Mosaic Law In The Hellenistic Diaspora
>Legal and Social Conditions
Jewish self-governance (politeumata)
Participation in the Hellenistic Urban Culture
Social Conditions
Political Life
The Beginnings: Alexander The Great
Alexander's breath-takingly rapid campaign of conquest, which in the space of a few years made him master of all the most important territories of the huge Persian empire, is commonly held to have ushered in a new historical era, the Hellenistic age. Though this accepted view has recently been hotly disputed, it is still in fact correct. In this particular instance, what we see is not just the replacement of one ancient empire by another, but the introduction of something substantially new and different. Even though to begin with this transformation remained more of a vision than a reality and had not developed beyond the initial stages, the phenomenon is clearly recognizable: a community of nations inwardly united by the intellectual power of a transnational culture, the dawn of the Hellenistic era.
The origins of this development were not without paradox. To the Greeks proper, the Macedonians appeared a semi-barbaric people, for all that the ruling dynasty was acknowledged to be of Greek blood. Only by force of arms did King Philip of Macedonia prevail upon the Greek city states to unite in the Corinthian League (in 338 B.C.E., after his victory over them at Chaeronea). Only with reluctance did they accept him as their commander-in-chief and support his plans for a war of revenge against the Persians, which he saw as a means of forging national unity. When Philip was suddenly assassinated in 336 B.C.E., this plan took on new dimensions. The place of the fiftyish Philip who had already attained the summit of his ambition, the unification of Greece, was taken by Alexander, thirty years his junior. Alexander had been given a Greek education and had been schooled in philosophy by his tutor Aristotle. He was surrounded by friends who shared his interest in philosophy, among them Theophrastus, later Aristotle's successor as head of the school. Alexander had made his mark as an energetic ruler and military leader at an early age: when he was only eighteen years old, he had held a command at the battle of Chaeronea. While his entourage consisted of young, ambitious comrades in arms, sons of the Macedonian nobility, he also cultivated the friendship of his father's veteran generals. He had at his disposal a superb force in the form of the Macedonian cavalry and infantry which had been built up by his father. First, in a series of brief, hard-fought and astute campaigns, he 'pacified' (as he regarded it) his northern neighbours and the Greek cities.
Then in the spring of 334 he crossed the Dardanelles and embarked on the conquest of Asia Minor. The Persians were caught unprepared and Alexander defeated the Persian army on the Granikos in north-west Asia Minor; though numerically superior, the enemy had been hastily mobilized and were under poor leadership. Darius then mustered a great force but this too suffered defeat at Alexander's hands in a hard-fought battle near Issus on the Syrian border in 333 B.C.E. Before setting off in pursuit of the fleeing Persian king, Alexander first marched south. He seized the important coastal cities of Phoenicia, though it took seven months to capture Tyre and two months to capture Gaza. He thus defeated the Persian fleet without having to fight a single naval engagement, by the simple expedient of depriving it of its last and most important bases.
The Greek cities on the western seaboard of Asia Minor had surrendered to him mostly without a struggle, since he restored their erstwhile autonomy and democratic constitutions. This betokened far more than a policy of encouraging Greek nationalism, for even in the case of the Phoenician cities Alexander did not wish to appear as a conqueror. True, he smashed any resistance with utter ruthlessness, but his intentions were different in character.
This emerged more clearly during his invasion of Egypt, whither he rapidly proceeded in the late autumn of 332, after entrusting the occupation of Syria to his generals. In Egypt he did not need to use force. The Persian satrap offered no resistance. The Egyptian leadership hailed him as a liberator, the Egyptian priests in Memphis as a new pharaoh. Alexander visited the oracle and shrine of Amon in the oasis of Siwa, and there the priests addressed him by the ancient title of the pharaohs, 'son of Amon-Re'. Alexander's motives and experiences during this expedition will never be completely elucidated. In any case, we glimpse here aspirations which evidently transcend the limitations of power politics. The few short months of his stay in Egypt were enough to determine the whole of his future policy, and in consequence shaped the politics of this realm for centuries to come, in the sense that it was to be at once Hellenistic and Egyptian. Alexander treated the Egyptian gods with respect and sought the co-operation of Egyptian institutions. Yet his rule was based on Macedonian and Greek elements in the population. Drawing on the support of the numerous Greeks who had already settled in Egypt, especially in the Nile delta, Alexander founded a Greek city on the west coast of the delta and named it after himself Alexandria. He obviously planned to make this city the new maritime, mercantile and cultural centre of the Eastern Mediterranean. He set up a mixed Greek-Egyptian administration in Egypt and left behind small garrisons of occupation forces under Macedonian commanders. Then, in the spring of 331, he hastened back to Mesopotamia, where the struggle against the Persians still had to be decided. He defeated the Persian army for the third and final time on 1 October 33 1 B.C.E. at Gaugamela near Babylon. Babylon itself surrendered without resistance. In a bold, rapid thrust he occupied the heartland of the enemy, Persis, together with its royal capital Persepolis. With the destruction of Xerxes' palace the war of revenge waged by the Hellenic alliance came to an end and Alexander disbanded the troops of his Greek allies. The next goal was to complete the conquest of the Persian empire. Media, along with Ecbatana, was occupied. In the summer of 330 Darius was assassinated by his own officers while fleeing from Alexander, and left no successor. Thereafter Alexander cast himself in the role of the new Great King of the Persians.
He spent several laborious and dangerous years in the conquest of the eastern satrapies (330-325; he returned to Susa in the spring of 324). At the same time he made preparations to consolidate his hold on his enormous empire and to give it an appropriate political structure. It is clear that he deliberately chose to work through the existing framework. The kings of the Phoenician cities and the Jewish high priest continued to govern and the Persian administration was for the most part retained. What is more, Alexander obviously planned that the Persian ruling class should participate in the actual government and that Macedonians and Persians should be equal partners in the empire. In pursuit of this objective he made some dramatic gestures. His main opponent in the decisive battle at Gaugamela, Mazaios, former satrap of Syria, who had voluntarily surrendered to Alexander in Babylon, was made satrap of the city. Other satraps who yielded to him were allowed to remain in office. Alexander ordered 30,000 young Persians to be trained for his army and increasingly integrated Iranian cavalry units and archers with his own forces. Even his personal bodyguard opened its ranks to Persian noblemen. He married Roxana, the daughter of an Iranian prince, and forced all his friends along with the Macedonian officers and men to take Persian wives (a mass wedding took place in Susa in 324). He wanted to be king of both the Macedonians and the Persians in Persia. He began to mint a single imperial coinage to replace the myriad local currencies. He constructed new harbours in order to open up better trading routes between the various parts of his empire. He founded many Hellenistic cities, especially in the east, in order to consolidate Hellenistic supremacy. But before such measures could get properly under way, he died unexpectedly on 10 July 323, barely 33 years of age.
Alexander does not seem to have had any close contact with Jews. At all events, there is no mention of it in the important ancient sources. A number of Jewish traditions concerning Alexander need to be examined critically: (1) various reports of a confrontation between Alexander and the Jews in Palestine during his first visit to that land, at the time of the siege of Tyre and subsequently of Gaza in 332; (2) Josephus' testimony that Jewish mercenaries fought with Alexander's auxiliary forces; (3) another statement by Josephus to the effect that Alexander gave Jews equal rights as citizens with Greeks when he founded the city of Alexandria.
Let us deal with this third contention first. There is a widespread consensus of opinion among scholars that Josephus is here acting as the spokesman of a Jewish apologetic fiction which first arose in the early Roman period. It is certain that at that time Jewish circles in Alexandria had recently attempted to gain full citizenship. Claudius in his missive to the Alexandrians expressly commands the Jews 'not to strive constantly for more than they had enjoyed in the past...not to intrude themselves into the games held by the gymnasiarchs and kosmetai'. But the Jews were in fact trying to defend themselves against a recent deterioration in their civic status which itself went back to the very origins of the city. Josephus avers that Alexander himself bestowed upon them the title 'Macedonians' as a reward for the services of Jews in the war. A privilege of this nature had probably been enjoyed by some of the Jews of Alexandria for a very long time, though it is open to doubt whether it originated with Alexander himself. Moreover, in the light of reliable evidence that Jewish mercenaries served in Egypt both before and after the Persian conquest, and thereafter under Alexander's successors, we can accept that Jews did indeed fight in Alexander's army too. The fact is, however, that this tells us little about Alexander's relationship with the Jewish people as a whole.
The story which Josephus relates in Ant. xi.304-45, indicates that this relationship initially fluctuated but was in the end friendly. This tells first of all of the dangerous tension that prevailed between Alexander and the Jewish high priest. The latter had refused to comply with Alexander's demand for auxiliaries and provisions, on the grounds of his oath of loyalty to Darius. The Samaritan governor, Sanballat, on the other hand, placed 8,000 soldiers at the disposal of the Macedonians. Consequently, after the fall of Gaza, Alexander advanced on Jerusalem to exact retribution. The danger was, however, miraculously averted. The appearance of the high priest reminded Alexander of a vision in which the God of the Jews had promised him that he would rule over Asia. He was also shown a prophecy concerning him in the book of Daniel. Now the second half of this story is clearly legendary, a noteworthy Hellenistic Jewish Alexander tradition; interesting though it may be, the text cannot help us to establish the historical truth about Alexander's actions. But it is highly probable that the introductory section of the story, with its account of the differing attitudes of the Samaritans and the Jews towards Alexander, is based on historical fact. It is apparently contradicted by a report in Hecateus, again transmitted by Josephus, which states that Alexander in fact showed hostility to the Samaritans. However, this report must be viewed in connection with the new situation that arose when, as is reliably attested, the Samaritans rebelled against Alexander during his stay in Egypt; they seized the Macedonian governor of Samaria, Andrbmachus, and burnt him alive. On his return from Egypt Alexander launched a punitive action, razed the city of Samaria and established a Macedonian military colony within its boundaries.
A second report tells, again with legendary accretions, of a Jewish delegation that appeared before Alexander to pay homage to him after the fall of Gaza. That something of the kind should have happened is of course historically quite plausible. The ruling class in Jerusalem doubtless soon abandoned their initial attempt to take a neutral position and tried to win Alexander's favour. By and large the picture is inconsistent, but probably the more historically correct for that. For, to begin with, the Jews had to take care not to antagonize the Persians - Alexander was not yet master of the Persian empire. It was some time before the outcome of the struggle became evident. Therefore it may be presumed that a Jewish delegation did indeed seek to make contact with Alexander even prior to his campaign in Egypt and tender the homage of the Jewish people. It is equally probable that Alexander assured the Jews on one such occasion that they could continue to live according to their traditional laws; this would have been consistent with the policy pursued by him elsewhere. The defection of the Samaritans and the retribution visited upon the city have been confirmed by the discovery of new documents. Moreover, the excavations at Shechem have thrown light on the far-reaching consequences of these events. It seems that at this time the former site of Shechem was resettled and the Samaritan temple erected at the foot of Mount Gerizim, symbolizing a rift between Samaritans and Jews which could no longer be healed.
Alexander's sudden death led to serious upheavals in Palestine; two decades of devastating warfare followed (323-301 B.C.E.). There is no need to set out here the details of the conflict between the 'satraps' of the various parts of the empire and Perdiccas, or of the quarrels that then ensued among the former. Alexander's heirs soon had no alternative but to acknowledge the centrifugal tendency of their separate provinces. Ptolemy in particular had quickly started to pursue a definitely Egyptian policy in the Egyptian kingdom which fell to his lot. In the west he annexed Cyrenaica along with five ancient Greek cities; he occupied the southern areas along the Nile as far as the Nubian frontier; and he robustly asserted his sovereignty over the strategically important territory of Palestine. However, not until the final defeat and death of Antigonus in the battle of Ipsus were his efforts crowned with lasting success. In the partitioning of the empire which followed (in 301), Palestine was actually allotted to Seleucus. Ptolemy, who had withdrawn from the campaign against Antigonus and had thus missed the negotiations after the battle of Ipsus, refused to surrender the territory and stationed troops along its borders. Thus the Jewish homeland remained from 300 to 198 under Ptolemaic rule and was politically united with the Jewish Diaspora in Egypt throughout the third century, a factor which contributed decisively to the rapid rise of the Egyptian Jews.
What was Alexander's character and what sort of influence did he have? Was he simply a political and military genius who was retrospectively endowed with a divine mission to reconcile the nations and civilize the barbarians? The problems of the historical Alexander need not be examined here - only those issues associated with the image of Alexander that continued to exert an influence in history, though of course the two are closely intertwined. It is evident that the following centuries though of themselves very much an epoch under Alexander's influence, dynastically, politically, culturally and in religious terms. This notion strongly influences the nature of Hellenism, and so the history of Hellenistic Jewry, especially in the Diaspora, is in part conditioned by the interpretation of the figure of Alexander. When in the Hellenistic period Alexander became a symbol of the universal obligation to strive for homonoia, the concert of nations, this concerned the Hellenistic Jews as well. When Alexandrian Jews claimed that their civic rights originated with Alexander himself,' when the Jewish synagogues were dedicated to successors of Alexander, when the Greek Bible was acquired for the mouseion at Alexandria, these could not be merely tactical ploys to mask ambition for power and wealth: it must also have betokened a deeper conviction. The same thing was true when, 150 years after Alexander's death, Jewish Hellenists in Jerusalem proclaimed' a programme of homonoia and to this end sought to establish a Hellenistic city in Jerusalem. According to Martin Hengel, it was in fact Plutarch who first depicted Alexander as a civilizing and conciliatory force - inspired by the Stoic ideal of world-citizenship and in the context of a Roman world which was increasingly informed by a synthesis of eastern and western influences. The presupposition for all this is the desire of the orientals for assimilation/' Hengel refers to the numerous pieces of evidence showing the continuing delimitation by-Greeks of non-Greeks in the Hellenistic cities. But should one not bear in mind here the cultural reinterpretation of the very concept 'Greek'? Not only did this change underlie Alexander's whole policy; it was also given its ideological justification from within Alexander's immediate entourage. Theory and practice are both connected with a revised conception of homonoia as it affected the ruler, which again was developed in intellectual circles very close to Alexander. We shall now examine some of the main features of the historical image of Alexander from this point of view.
(1) Alexander stood at the centre of a very interesting and lively philosophical debate which originated with his teacher Aristotle. The latter's disciple Theophrastus clearly took issue with his master over the crucial question of what the idea of homonoia should mean to a ruler. In Theophrastus we find a universalizing reinterpretation of the homonoia programme. This is paralleled in Alexander's political conduct. Isocrates had already developed an active political version of the homonoia idea and restricted this to the need to forge Greek national unity; he had imparted this to his pupil Philip of Macedonia. The king, as a new Hercules, had the task of leading the Greeks out of a state of disunity and strife, to homonoia by means of a war against the Persians. Alexander took over this mission and strove to fulfil it. In doing so, however, he went against Isocrates' stated understanding and the view of his own teacher Aristotle, in that he refused to treat the barbarians as born slaves or as born enemies. On the contrary he extended the homonoia mission of the ruler to encompass Persians and Eastern Iranians, and in a rather different sense even the Egyptians.
Theophrastus, like Alexander a pupil of Aristotle, formulated his new conception of the homonoia idea in his teaching of oiKEicoais: all men are related to one another and bound together by qnAioc through their common origin. It has been claimed that Thoephrastus derived his new conception from Alexander's new policy. But this cannot be proved - indeed, it is untenable, since we know of two other instances of the new mode of thought which originated in Theophratus' immediate circle but which had definitely no connection with Alexander. The philologist and Utopian thinker Alexarchos, son of one of Alexander's generals called Antipater, founded his ideal city Ouranopolis, a 'miniature world state', which had Ouranos as its supreme deity and where all men were called 'children of heaven' and were brothers one of another. The second example is that of Euhemeros,' a friend of Cassander and Theophrastus. Euhemeros likewise made Heaven the supreme ruler who unites all mankind in a world-state, joined together by friendship.
Thus alongside Alexander stand Theophrastus, Alexarchos and Euhemeros; each of them in his own way took the decisive step towards a vision of universal brotherhood for which the moment was opportune. It was to be further developed through the political legacy left by Alexander and the philosophical influence of Theophrastus and Euhemeros.
(2) To begin with, Alexander articulated his new interpretation of the homonoia concept in his political praxis. There are however traditions which attest that he also couched this new ideal in words heavy with meaning. Though these traditions cannot easily be authenticated, we must not overlook their distinctive claims.
According to Plutarch, an Egyptian philosopher called Psammon told Alexander in the oasis of Siwa that all men were ruled by God; Alexander, yet more philosophically than his interlocutor, concluded that all men had a common father in God, but that the latter chose the best and made them peculiarly his own. According to this tradition, then, Alexander without detriment to his own special relationship with the deity (which he enjoyed in common with other members of the elite) owned that all men were sons of God; compare the dream city of Alexarchos mentioned above. Plutarch's source cannot be reliably ascertained and the authenticity of the declaration attributed to Alexander cannot be proved; yet the testimony is striking; and at the very least it shows that Alexander was being interpreted in this light at a very early stage.
A similar tradition concerns Alexander's great feast of reconciliation. After putting down the mutiny in Opis Alexander gave a huge banquet. It ended with Alexander, surrounded by the dignitaries of the Macedonians, Greeks, Persians and other nations seated at his table, offering a prayer which Arrian summarizes in the words: 'He prayed however for general blessings and in particular for concord and partnership in government for both Macedonians and Persians'. may also mean the territory occupied by the two peoples. Plutarch expands on this: 'his intention was to bring about for all men Homonoia and peace and partnership with one another' (koinonia). Here is a second extremely significant scene involving the figure of Alexander; like the weddings in Susa, it expresses Alexander's homonoia programme, again supported by an ancient testimony concerning statements of Alexander. At an important point the tradition interprets Alexander's whole conduct explicitly as the fulfilment of a universal homonoa mission entrusted to him by God. Plutarch in the Alexandri Fortuna 1. cites Eratosthenes to the effect that Alexander, contrary to Aristotle's view, saw the real differences between men to lie not in their race or nationhood but in their moral natures; he believed 'that he had come from God as uniter and reconciler of the whole world , by bringing together peoples of diverse origin, by blending as though in a cup of friendship their lives and values and marriages and social manners. Thus Alexander was taken at a very early stage to be aware of a divine mission to establish a world-wide homonoia, and his conduct - for example, the recruiting of Persians for his bodyguard, the adoption of Persian habits in bis dress and court ceremonial, or the marriages with Persian women - was viewed in the light of this awareness. These pronouncements are cited in the oldest sources and even if they are not a verbatim record, they do in all probability convey Alexander's self-understanding accurately, at least as it was perceived by his friends and handed down by them as a solemn trust.
(3) Alexander's conduct clearly shows that he did not consistently pursue power-political aims. There is a strangely experimental quality about it. He tried to put proskunesis into effect, met with resistance and promptly abandoned the attempt. He began to install Persians as satraps, but on his return from India realized that this policy was proving an almost unmitigated disaster; he therefore revoked it, ordered executions to be carried out and installed Macedonians in office instead. In Bactria he stubbornly clung to his faith in the loyalty of the conquered tribes, despite an increasing number of warning signs which pointed to the likelihood of a national uprising; when he finally reversed his policy, it was almost too late. He then took ruthless, at times even savage counter-measures. Yet when it was all over he resorted once again to his old policy of rapprochement. What we see here is not simply a- volatile, tempestuous temperament or a political pragmatism responding merely to the demands of the hour. Rather, his conduct reveals a quite consistent programme which was constantly disrupted or which suffered grave setbacks, usually through external forces. The objective itself agrees with the sense of mission ascribed to him. The courageous manner in which he reinstated his vanquished enemies in positions of power was not without method. If driven to it, he could be hard and relentless: one thinks of the razing of Thebes and the enslavement of all the survivors, or of the destruction of Tyre and Gaza. But on each occasion he returned forthwith to a programme of friendship, peace and reconstruction. No sooner had he laboriously accomplished the defeat of his mortal enemy in Bactria than he commanded Seleucus to marry his daughter. Alexander overcame the resistance of another stubborn opponent by himself becoming his son-in-law.
Of course, it was Alexander's intimidating military power that made the greatest impression on his contemporaries, as is attested by the allusions to him in the book of Daniel and other sources. Nevertheless, the fact is that as in the Roman period powerful political ambition and military ruthlessness went hand in hand with a determined search for peace and a sense of dedication to a humanizing cultural mission. Certainly, the educating of young non-Greeks in the Greek manner was carried out with a view to giving them proper military training; but at the same time it was a means of integrating them into a Hellenistic culture. Alexander's new cities and his Hellenization of native towns were designed to consolidate his political, economic and military hold over the subject peoples, yet at the time they were to serve as places 'to promote the fusion of Europe and Asia on a basis of Greek culture'. Thus Alexander began to unite the peoples of his empire into a great 'community of culture'. In this he was guided by a sense of divine mission. He gave various tokens of his living faith in the gods. He believed in the significance of his descent from Hercules. He was assiduous in the observation of traditional religious rites and took cognizance of omens, as interpreted for him by seers who accompanied him on his campaigns. Thus too his visits to the oracles at Delphi and in the oasis of Siwa must be seen as having a serious religious motive. At Siwa in particular his sense of mission appears to have been decisively strengthened. This then is the Alexander who made such an ineradicable impression on his contemporaries and on the following centuries, not least upon certain groups among Hellenistic Judaism who saw him almost as a new Cyrus.
The Jewish Diaspora In Ptolemaic Egypt
The History of the Jewish Diaspora in the post-Alexander period can in this period be illuminated only with reference to Egypt (and even then not with complete clarity). We shall therefore examine this area in more detail.
The Jewish Diaspora in Egypt was already several centuries old. It was as old as that of the East, but not until the early Hellenistic period did it achieve comparable importance. Thereafter in fact its significance even outstripped that of its counterpart. The meagreness of the sources prevents us from tracing its development in detail, but the main features are discernible. We see that Jews increasingly met with a friendly reception in the land of the Ptolemies as its political and economic power expanded apace.
Our earliest accounts are admittedly ambiguous. On the one hand, Josephus transmits the statement by Hecateus that after the temporary victory of Ptolemy at Gaza in 31, many inhabitants of Syria decided in view of his 'generosity and humanity...to travel to Egypt with him and participate in (his) affairs'. Among them was a high priest called Ezekias, a highly respected man some 66 years of age. The emigres were of course at the same time seeking refuge in the security of Egypt from the impending counter-offensive by Antigonus. A short time later the same source relates: 'After Alexander's death...considerable numbers of people migrated to Egypt and Phoenicia on account of the troubled times. These reports sound reliable even if the texts themselves are of dubious authenticity. There was indeed a high priest by the name of Ezekias (Hezekiah) at this time. The attraction of Ptolemy was not his warm character but his political friendliness towards his Jewish sympathizers. This in turn resulted from his long-term ambition to bring the Jewish nation and homeland under his sway. In these circumstances a legitimate candidate for the office of high priest in Jerusalem was especially valuable to Ptolemy. He doubtless offered the Jews favourable terms to settle in his realm and perhaps also accepted the services of Jewish auxiliaries. On the other hand, however, we read in the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas that, in the course of a campaign in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, Ptolemy deported a large number of Jews to ligypt, the majority of them as slaves. The contradiction between these two sources may be resolved if we assume that in the first instance the Jews in question were supporters of Ptolemy, whereas in the second instance the reference is to Jews who had opposed him and been defeated. It is clear that on his third campaign in Syria in 302/301 Ptolemy was compelled to use force for the most part to subjugate territory occupied by the Jews: Jewish auxiliaries fought on the side of his enemy Antigonus, and the Jewish population offered active resistance. They had come to terms with the rule of the Antigonids after so many years. But the inhabitants of Jerusalem itself seem as before to have included many who sympathized with Ptolemy, since the city opened its gates to him voluntarily. The way the report in Pseudo-Aristeas is couched suggests the possibility that in 301 Ptolemy transported not only captives but also large numbers of his Jewish supporters to Egypt, in order to resettle them as military colonists and thus reinforce the defences of his realm. Jewish military colonists had played their part in Egypt even before the time of Alexander, as Pseudo-Aristeas informs us. Clearly the older Jewish colonies continued to exist into the early Hellenistic period. An Aramaic papyrus records that in about 310 B.C.E. there were ten Jewish settlements in the area between Migdol in the north-eastern corner of Egypt and the southern frontier at Syene (Assuan or Elephantine). The Ptolemaic kings built on and extended this Egyptian-Jewish military tradition.
On the whole the position of the Jews under Ptolemy I seems to have been quite favourable - not least because the leading Jewish families soon showed themselves receptive to the appeal of Hellenism, doubtless for more than just material advantage. For the first Ptolemy energetically pursued a policy of Hellenization, diligently following in Alexander's footsteps. Besides being a hard-headed political leader, he was in the last analysis guided by the desire to realize Alexander's vision of a commonwealth of nations, tailored to the demands of the situation prevailing in Egypt. Thus he strengthened the role of Alexandria as the centre of Hellenistic culture by attracting Greek luminaries such as Demetrius of Phaleron to his court and paving the way for the subsequent establishment of the famous mouseion under his successor. Alexandria's renown during the next few centuries as a metropolis of learning was begun by Ptolemy 1. Not only did he choose the Greek city of Alexandria as his new seat of government: he also introduced the cult of Sarapis that united Greeks and Egyptians. Both these measures were born 'of the spirit of Alexander'.
In the reign of the second Ptolemy the importance and influence of the Jewish element in Egypt increased noticeably, while at the same time the broad mass of Jewish settlers rapidly became imbued with the Hellenistic spirit. Evidence of this can be seen in the following developments: (1) the freeing of Jewish slaves under Ptolemy II; (2) the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek; (3) the acquisition of Greek names by Jews during this period; (4) references to Jewish Hellenists in non-Jewish sources of the period.
The details given in Pseudo-Aristeas about Ptolemy II's freeing of the slaves were usually dismissed without further ado by earlier scholars. Nowadays, however, they are widely believed to be true. It has been plausibly argued that the decree reproduced in Pseudo-Aristeas is based on an authentic document with certain unmistakable pro-Jewish revisions. The reported purchase price of twenty drachmas can be verified from contemporary documents. Admittedly, the numbers quoted by Pseudo-Aristeas are exaggerated, but a not inconsiderable number must have been affected by this action, which eloquently attests the political influence of the Jews in Egypt and their friendly relations with the royal house.
The translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, which is known as the translation of 'the seventy', was undertaken in the reign of Ptolemy II, according to Pseudo-Aristeas. The problems surrounding the origins of the Septuagint are discussed elsewhere. When we seek answers to these questions, the details given in the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas must be treated with caution. However, the evidence of Pseudo-Aristeas does serve to support an early dating for the compilation of the Septuagint (Pentateuch). It seems to me unlikely that the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas, which was written at some point during the second century, could have been composed in support of the introduction of a new, authorized translation. The history of the origins of the Septuagint is used by the author simply to illustrate the philosophical standing of the Jews and to confute their detractors. To this end he doubtless had recourse for the most part to familiar material. The period in which he claims it was written, the first half of the third century, is readily compatible with other historical evidence. Recent scholarship rightly considers it possible that Ptolemy II encouraged the idea of a translation and that it was acquired for the mouseion. This would demonstrate a notably open attitude towards the Jews. Nor can there be any doubt that the authorities in Jerusalem co-operated in the production and introduction of the Septuagint among the Egyptian Jews. This translation by its very nature is a profession of faith in the truth of the sacred tradition of Judaism, especially in the oldest parts in the Pentateuch. The actual task of translation was probably executed by the leading Jews of Alexandria itself, perhaps indeed by a specially commissioned team established on the island of Pharos. From this we may infer that even at this early stage leading orthodox Jews in Alexandria were well versed in the Greek language and culture. The introduction of Greek Bible texts for the use of Jewish congregations shows too the degree of Hellenization which the broad mass of Egyptian Jews had already undergone - a process which was of course given a fresh and decisive impetus by the new translation.
Important confirmation of this view may be derived from the prosopography of this period. Whereas in about 310 B.C.E., in papyrus no. 81 of the Cowley edition, only one Jew bears a Greek name, the papyri of the third century begin to reveal a majority of Jews with Greek names. This is not the case with lower class Jews: there we find mostly Hebrew or even Egyptian names. Significantly the Hellenized Egyptian Jews preferred theophorous Greek names, which they substituted for Hebrew names of a confessional character, for example Theodotos (for Yehonathan) or Dositheos (for Matathyahu)." It was still possible that a Jew bearing a name of this kind might in fact become an apostate from the faith of his fathers in order to further his career at court (see below, p. 139, the instance of Dositheos, son of Drimylos).
Finally, it is significant that precisely in this early Hellenistic period Gentile writers judge the Jews to be true Greeks and a nation of philosophers. Thus Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle, invents a meeting between his master and a Jewish sage who surpasses him in wisdom; he characterizes the Jew as follows, 'He was a Greek not only in his language but also in his soul. This judgement is extended in the same context to the whole of the Jewish people: he considers them all to be 'descendants of the philosophers of India' and holds them to be the philosophers among the Syrians. A similar estimation can be found shortly after in Megasthenes. More important, however, is the detailed testimony of Hecateus of Abdera, which was based on firsthand knowledge and included in his book on Egypt, written about 300 B.C.E. Hecateus, working from his knowledge of contemporary Jewish political life where the high priest was the acknowledged leader of the people, presented the Jewish state established by Moses after the Exodus as the perfect realization of the Hellenistic model of the state. In addition, Hecateus provided an unreservedly approving account of Jewish monotheism, such as we also encounter in Theophrastus, to whom several references have already been made. Clearly this represents the influence of Aristotle's philosophical monotheism to which subsequently Hellenistic Jewish philosophers in their turn often hark back. In the second half of the third century Hermippus' testimony is to be added.
These early testimonies to the existence of a truly Hellenistic Jewish population are the more remarkable if they are viewed in conjunction with the continuing fidelity to traditional Judaism which finds expression, for example, in the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek.
It is against this background that we must evaluate the subsequent movement for reform among Jewish Hellenists in Jerusalem. After the failure of this endeavour and after the Maccabees had adopted a critical attitude towards Hellenism, opinions about the Jews underwent a radical change - because, in Posidonius' view, they had abandoned the faith of Moses in favour of superstition, ritualism and political ambition. Yet we should not overlook the fact that certain aspects of the Jewish religion were already felt to give offence even in the early Hellenistic period. The relationship with Judaism was never entirely free from friction and contained latent dangers of one kind or another. Already in the reign of Ptolemy II, Manetho wrote about the Jews in an extremely hostile fashion; in his history of Egypt he offered a counter-account as it were to the Exodus story as related in the Septuagint, drawing on stories already current in Egypt. These were at first a specifically Egyptian creation, but fell on fruitful soil elsewhere as well. The history of the Jews in Egypt proceeded to develop along similar lines under the later Ptolemaic rulers. Numerous papyri, ostraca' and inscriptions attest the steady expansion of the Jewish community in Egypt. Towards the end of the third century the Jewish historian Demetrius became the first of a number of Hellenistic Jewish writers whose work, though preserved only in fragments, illuminates their ever-increasing assimilation to Hellenistic language and culture.
The earliest surviving inscriptions from Jewish houses of prayer (proseucbai) date back to the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes. The fact that they bear a dedication to the ruling monarchs and that conversely Jewish houses of prayer enjoyed rights of sanctuary similar to those of classical temples, shows the good relations that obtained between the congregations and the ruler. Two sets of sources merit particular attention - the Zenon papyri and the story of the Tobiads, both primarily of relevance to the Jewish homeland. Yet the situation in the Egyptian Diaspora too is illuminated by them: witness the close ties, indeed the firm economic integration, of Palestine with the Ptolemaic kingdom ruled from Alexandria, and the friendly relations which existed between the royal court and the leaders of the Jewish community.
In 259 B.C.E., in the twenty-seventh year of Ptolemy II's reign, Zenon, a chief official of the finance minister Apollonius in Alexandria, journeyed throughout Palestine, inspecting at his lord's behest economic enterprises and government officials, strengthening commercial links and forging new ones, and in general seeking ways of increasing the economic exploitation of this province by the royal court at Alexandria. This tour, and the correspondence engendered by it, have left their mark in numerous documents in Zenon's archive. From these numerous documents we get a vivid impression of the zeal with which the Alexandrian court administered the Jewish homeland and fostered its economic development for their own purposes. At the same time we meet a representative of the Jewish upper class who aided them in their efforts, the Jewish landowner Tobias from Eastern Jordan, whose name occurs six times in the Zenon papyri. Josephus recounts the story of this man's family. His two letters to Apollonius show Tobias as a self-confident partner, a man who regarded himself as the minister's equal and who was fully conversant with Hellenistic social and linguistic conventions. He also maintained a friendly though respectful relationship with the king himself, as is revealed by the letter he wrote to accompany a number of precious gifts to the ruler. Tobias was in command of a contingent of Ptolemaic military colonists on the Nabatean border. A brother-in-law of the ruling high priest, Onias II, and the scion of an old, respected family, he was probably the second most important man in the Jewish nation after the high priest. His son Joseph and his grandson Hyrcanus occupied positions of the highest authority under the two succeeding Ptolemies.
Soon after his journey to Palestine, Zenon left the court to take up an important post in the Fayum. His archive furnishes a second, very different set of insights into Jewish life at that time, deriving from his activities in his new office. The Jews whom he now had to deal with were not those at court, nor the relatively prosperous Jewish military colonists, but poor peasants, a shepherd, two leasers of vineyards, and other such people. Clearly in Ptolemaic Egypt Jews were to be found in the lower social strata as well. For Jews of this kind it was essential to gain access to the Greek language and culture, if they were not to be swallowed up among the Egyptian peasantry. On the other hand, wholehearted Hellenization inevitably led to the renunciation of Judaism. Even in the case of Tobias and Joseph we can discern signs of a perilous dilution of their Jewish identity. Dositheos, the son of Drimylos, pursued this course consistently. In about 240 B.C.E. he held one of the highest administrative offices. By 222 B.C.E. he appears in documents from the Fayum as chief priest of an Egyptian cult, as a priest of the apotheosized Alexander and the deified Ptolemaic kings.
At this time radical changes occurred in the political sphere. On the one hand, Ptolemaic sovereignty over the Jewish homeland, in which the Seleucids had never really acquiesced, was finally forfeited to the Seleucids under Ptolemy IV and his successor. In the battle of Raphia in 217 B.C.E. Ptolemy IV Philopator managed in dramatic circumstances to defeat the young, energetic Antiochus III. An attempt on his life was foiled by Dositheos, the son of Drimylos,' and he owed his victory to the Egyptian infantry, a group recently admitted into his army. Yet he failed to make the most of this opportunity to consolidate his rule by military means. Increasingly too he faced difficulties with his Egyptian subjects who, once they had secured a place in the king's army, began to rebel against their growing economic exploitation and the harsh alien rule of the governing Greeks. In Jerusalem more and more Jews supported the Seleucids. Antiochus III strengthened his position by a successful campaign - similar to Alexander's - in the eastern provinces as far as Bactria and India. When Ptolemy IV died and was succeeded by Ptolemy V, who was a five-year-old boy, Antiochus III again invaded Palestine. Though he was once more driven back by the Ptolemaic general Scopas, he finally defeated the latter in 200 B.C.E. at Paneas by the sources of the Jordan. The inhabitants of Jerusalem had given substantial assistance to the Seleucids, especially during the storming of the Ptolemaic citadel within the city, while many supporters of the Ptolemies fled to Egypt.
Antiochus rewarded the Jewish people by reducing taxes and renewing their right to live according to the laws of their fathers. He also complied with the wishes of the priesthood for a ban on strangers entering the temple at Jerusalem and a further ban on the importing of unclean animals and unclean meat into the city. All this demonstrates a policy of rapprochement on both sides, although at the same time the leaders of the pro-Seleucid upper class resolutely opposed the ever-increasing influence of Hellenism in favour of a faithful fulfilment of the Law. Then a new situation arose with the intervention of Rome. In 190 Antiochus was defeated by the Romans at Magnesia in Lydia and was permanently weakened by the terms of the dictated peace of Apameia in 188. He was forced to surrender large amounts of territory, for example almost the whole of Asia Minor; he lost his entire fleet and faced enormous reparation payments of 12,000 talents which compelled him to levy heavy taxes in the remainder of his dominions and to confiscate the treasure amassed in the numerous temples. During an attempt to 'plunder' one such temple Antiochus III was slain by the enraged inhabitants (187 B.C.E.). These events led to an undermining of the position of the Seleucids in Jerusalem, and Jewish nationalist tendencies acquired a fresh impetus. Jewish nationalism was not, however, a united force. The new, anti-Hellenist circles among the upper class, who were zealous adherents of the Law, were opposed by the majority of the upper class who were still sympathetic towards Hellenism and were also for the most part pro-Ptolemaic. It was in this situation that Jason, the brother of the ruling high priest, Onias III, attempted to introduce Hellenistic reforms in Jerusalem, an endeavour corrupted by Menelaus and his friends. There followed the looting of the Temple by Antiochus IV, Jason's desperate resort to violence, the ruthless intervention of the Syrian king, the desecration of the Temple in conjunction with the pagan Jewish polis in the Akra in Jerusalem, religious persecution and the revolt of the Maccabees. These developments cannot be discussed here,' but they form the background to significant events in the Diaspora.
The growth in numbers and influence of the Egyptian Diaspora continued unabated during the reigns of the third, fourth and fifth Ptolemies. Though according to the third book of the Maccabees the ]ews were persecuted under Ptolemy IV, this must have occurred at a later period, in the reign of Ptolemy VIII liuergetes II, for which there is corresponding evidence in Josephus. Under Ptolemy VI (181 - 145 B.C.E.) the Jewish influence in Egypt clearly reached a zenith. These decades witnessed the following far-reaching developments: (1) the building of a temple at Leontopolis; (2) the political and military-leadership of Onias and his friend Dositheos; (3) the work of the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus.
The story of the founding of the temple at Leontopolis raises many questions. Josephus' information is contradictory. It is best to begin with his later account of events in the Antiquities. Here we learn that the temple was the brainchild of the high priest, Onias IV. After the victory of the Maccabees and the reconsecration of the Temple, Onias initially hoped to succeed his father who had been murdered at the instigation of the high priest, Menelaus. When however on Menelaus' death the succession fell instead upon Alcimus, Onias withdrew to Egypt. The temple at Leontopolis was built in part because Onias wanted to make a name for himself, but also 'so that the Jews in Egypt might be able to pray for the prosperity of the king, when they gathered together in this temple with a feeling of mutual harmony'. The temple was thus to serve as a centre for the Egyptian Jews and to be a pledge of their allegiance both to Onias and to the Ptolemaic royal house. Only a limited proportion of the Jewish population could have been drawn to the remote village of Leontopolis. There is not a single reference in Alexandrian Jewish literature to the Leontopolis temple: on the contrary, it is the pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem which are in vogue. According to Josephus, Onias erected a fortification in that same area, which was called Onias' land. Many years previously the region had indeed contained a certain location known as the 'Jewish camp'; for it was militarily a very important frontier zone. It is therefore probable that Onias IV built his temple in connection with the establishment of a Jewish military colony at Leontopolis, to cater for the religious needs of these Jewish inhabitants but at the same time to satisfy Onias' aspirations to the office of high priest, which he based upon his high-priestly descent. Behind the royal approval we glimpse the old claims of the Ptolemies to be masters of southern Syria and Palestine. A legitimate claimant to the office of high priest in Jerusalem could even now in certain circumstances be extremely useful to the Ptolemies.
In Egypt a situation had developed which was conducive to a closer relationship between the Jews and the court. The young king, Ptolemy VI Philometor, needed the support of the Jews. He had to struggle against • growing hostility' on the part of the Egyptian population towards all foreigners, particularly Greeks and Macedonians. His power was further threatened by his brother and his adherents among the Greeks of Alexandria. He had to retreat twice in the face of the advance of Antiochus IV, who in effect conquered Egypt and would have delivered the final blow to the Ptolemaic monarchy, if the Romans had not insisted that he withdraw from Egypt. The Jews represented a third force beside the Egyptians and the Greeks. Their numbers were swollen by the influx of members of the Ptolemaic party from Palestine who sought help and asylum from the king. The Jews were thus his natural allies. Now, for the first time, we come across a purely Jewish military unit in Egypt, under the command of a Jewish general Onias, who is undoubtedly identical with the aforementioned Onias IV. Josephus reports that the king placed Onias and his compatriot Dositheos in supreme command of all his forces; but this must be an exaggeration. On the death of the king, however, Onias did intervene on behalf of the queen in the contest over the succession and entered Alexandria at the head of an army.
This loyalty earned him little reward when Cleopatra was overthrown by her rival Physcon. The new king, Ptolemy VII Euergetes II, seems to have initiated a savage persecution of the Jews in Alexandria and the rest of Egypt. According to Josephus, he ordered all the Jews of Alexandria, together with their wives and children, to be cast before drunken elephants. But the animals, so the story goes, turned away from the Jews and attacked the king's servants instead, trampling many of them to death. Thereupon the king called off the campaign of persecution. Many aspects of this account are doubtless pure fabrication. Yet in later years an annual festival was held in Alexandria to commemorate a deliverance of the Jews in the reign of Euergetes II, from which we may assume that there must have been, some historical basis for Josephus' tale. It may, for example, have been a turning-point in the military situation during the hostilities which undoubtedly ensued after Onias' intervention. On the other hand, we can also perceive a political turning-point: the new king made peace with Cleopatra soon after capturing the city and married her. This probably put a rapid end to the newly begun persecution of the Jews.
Apart from its tension-filled beginnings, the reign of the seventh Ptolemy (145-116 B.C.E.) was again a favourable period for the Jews. It was among the Greek citizens of Alexandria that the king's opponents were to be found, and these were dealt with harshly. In addition he had to quell numerous rebellions among the Egyptian population. We have no direct information about the fortunes of the Jews. But it appears that the antagonism which is found in the early Roman period between the Greek citizens of Alexandria and the Jewish inhabitants had its origins in these decades, at a time when the Jews remained loyal to the king, while the Greeks were being treated harshly and without mercy. There must have been many Jews among the large numbers of foreigners who were accorded Alexandrian citizenship during these years.
This interpretation is confirmed by events after the death of the king. Once again Jewish generals, Helkias and Hananias, intervened on the side of the queen in the struggle for the succession. Josephus tells us that the queen held them in high esteem. In the course of her campaign in Palestine some of her advisers suggested that they should annex the aspiring Hasmonean state under the young Alexander Janneus. Hananias prevented this by arguing that such a step would antagonize all the Jews of Egypt towards the queen. At the same time the episode shows that the Jews had influential enemies even at court. However, they were kept in check, thanks to the good relations between the Jews and the ruling house.
The considerable political and military importance of the Jews in Egypt and particularly in Alexandria was matched by their energetic participation in economic activity, in civic administration and in the Greek cultural life of Alexandria. We have already met the leading civil servant Dositheos, the son of Drimylos, and the chief tax farmer, Joseph, as examples of Jews who held high office in the administrative and financial hierarchy of Ptolemaic Egypt. In the reign of Ptolemy VI we encounter the first known Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Aristobulus, who was descended from the high priestly line. Besides the early reference in 2 Macc. 1:10 - where he is indeed described as Philometor's teacher - we have several fragments of a didactic work by Aristobulus written, it is thought, between 175 and 170 B.C.E. and dedicated to the young king Ptolemy VI. The authenticity of these fragments, which are nowadays accepted as genuine, and the main tenets of Aristobulus' philosophy are discussed elsewhere. What needs to be pointed out here is that the case of Aristobulus illustrates the respected status enjoyed in the reign of Ptolemy VI by Alexandrian Jews who had acquired a Greek education; it also reveals the depth of their Hellenism.
As with the Septuagint, we see a remarkable reconciliation of the Jewish religion on the one hand and Hellenistic philosphy on the other, an achievement moreover that is contemporary with Jason's attempt to introduce Hellenistic reforms in Jerusalem and the preceding anti-Hellenistic campaign. Aristobulus attacks both conservative Jews for clinging to the letter of the Torah and rejecting allegorizing, and also Greek critics of Mosaic Law for pouring scorn on the anthropomorphisms and other objectionable details in the text of the Septuagint, even though the Greeks were concerned to interpret the myths of their own religious tradition in an allegorical way. Aristobulus picks up the old Greek notion of the superiority of ancient oriental wisdom; he views Plato's teaching on creation in the Timaeus and Pythagoras' number symbolism as having been derived from Moses. The great importance that Aristobulus attaches to the Sabbath as the expression of a cosmic wisdom based on the significance of the number seven' shows him to be a practising Jewish believer. The Jewish principle of keeping holy the Sabbath day was after all one of the most familiar aspects of the Jewish way of life. And, as one might expect, Aristobulus' primary philosophical concern is with the purity of the idea of God and the appropriateness of the concepts applied to the divinity. Here he has no choice but to correct the Greek philosophers, but he also seeks to bring a discriminating gaze to bear on his own Jewish traditions. Behind Aristobulus there must have been a whole school of Jewish philosophy, as we see a short time later from the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas and the book entitled 'The Wisdom of Solomon'. A broad tradition of Alexandrian Jewish philosophy and Torah exegesis extends from Aristobulus down to Philo of Alexandria.
The last decades of Ptolemaic rule were turbulent. Rome, which had already aided the Ptolemies against Antiochus IV, went on supporting them to the end. The Jews too gave assistance. In 55 B.C.E. they allowed Gabinius, the Roman proconsul of Syria, to march through their territory on his way to Alexandria to restore Ptolemy XI Auletes to the throne. Similarly the Jews co-operated with the Romans when Julius Caesar intervened on Cleopatra's behalf in 48 B.C.E. Thus the loyalty shown by the Alexandrian and Egyptian Jews to the Ptolemies found its natural extension in their good relations with the new Roman rulers. Their participation in Hellenistic culture reached its climax in the early Roman period, as the works of Philo of Alexandria testify. The latter's nephew, Tiberius Alexander, even became the Roman prefect of Egypt, albeit after forswearing his Jewish faith. However, the majority of Hellenistic Jews in Alexandria and Egypt remained as always true to the religion of their forefathers.
The Diaspora in Other Territories
The sparse information that exists about the eastern Diaspora in the Hellenistic age suggests that the situation there was by and large the same as it was in Egypt. As in the west, Jews figured in the armies of the Seleucid empire. We have in addition a noteworthy reference in Josephus to the trouble which Alexander experienced with Jewish auxiliaries in Babylon. The second book of Maccabees (2 Macc. 8:20) contains an inserted reference to 8,000 Jewish soldiers who supposedly in the reign of Antiochus I were instrumental in deciding a battle against the Galatians. In the reign of Antiochus III we know that 2,000 Jewish families from Babylonia were resettled as military colonists in Lydia and Phrygia. All this indicates a long tradition of recruiting Jews into the Seleucid armies, just as in Egypt. This continued under the Parthian empire.
This action of Antiochus III is mentioned in a letter from the king to Zeuxis, the king's friend and strategos in Babylon and/or Lydia, which is quoted by Josephus. The letter is nowadays rightly regarded as genuine. Antiochus was in the middle of his great campaign in the eastern provinces when he learnt of disturbances in Lydia and Phrygia, and he commissioned Zeuxis to resettle 2,000 Jewish families there to pacify these areas. The text of the letter reveals the good relations between the Jews and the king, and at the same time their fidelity to their own Judaism; the practice of it is placed under royal protection. We may also infer that the proportion of Jews in the population of Babylon was quite large. Furthermore, the subsequent presence of large numbers of Jews in Lydia and Phrygia shows that the resettlement did indeed occur.
Over the next two or three centuries the Jews spread throughout Asia Minor as far as Bithynia and Pontus on the Black Sea. In Syria, in the time of Josephus, there were more Jews than in any other country. However, these particular numbers probably did not become large until after the annexation of the Jewish homeland to the Seleucid empire - and the increase was doubtless due in part to the civil war that prevailed from time to time in Palestine. In the reign of the High Priest Jonathan, exclusively Jewish military units served in the Seleucid armies (1 Macc. 10:36; n:43f) and likewise under John Hyrcanus, as Josephus records. We may presume that such Jewish units existed in the pre-Maccabean period as well. Finally, it is worth noting that the Seleucid rulers who succeeded Antiochus IV donated valuable oblations to the main synagogue at Antioch and returned the bronze vessels plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem." This indicates a pro-Jewish policy, in spite of the conflicts of the Maccabean period. The persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes was in any case confined to Palestine.
As far as Cyrenaica is concerned, Ptolemy I is said to have settled Jewish mercenaries there when he conquered the provinces Strabo writes of the state of affairs in Cyrene in 88 B.C.E.: 'There were four classes in the city of the Cyreneans - that of citizens, that of husbandmen, the third of metoikoi and the fourth of Jews'. He relates too that like Egypt Cyrenaica was the scene of a massive influx of Jewish immigrants. Later, in the reign of Trajan, a Jewish uprising took place here (in n 5-117 C.E.) of devastating extent; it was crushed by the Romans in a ferocious campaign and resulted in the complete extermination of the Jewish community in this area.
In Greece the presence of Jews is attested perhaps as far back as the fourth century. There is a third century inscription concerning the manumission of a Jewish slave at Oropos in Attica, and we have several such pieces of evidence dating from the second century B.C.E. In Rome the Jews had already become a strong and influential ethnic group by 62 B.C.E.; this is clearly implied in a speech of that time by Cicero. The same text also records that in preceding years Jews had taken munificent donations of gold to Jerusalem 'from Italy and every province' and that Roman officials had taken steps to prohibit this, or at: least Flaccus had done so in Asia Minor.
At the outset of the Roman era there is a prevailing impression that the Jews are to be found all over the world. 'There is no part of the earth that has not admitted this people or been possessed by them' (thus Strabo in Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae xiv.7.2). 'Land and sea are full of them' (the Sibylline Oracles, circa 140 B.C.E.).s It is impossible to provide precise figures. The various estimates have not produced usable approximate estimates, especially since the data available in the ancient sources are of little value. Philo for example estimates the number of Jews living in the Egypt of his day at a million. Yet it is unlikely that there was ever an official census of the Egyptian Jews. The figure given by Philo is clearly meant as a rough total, with a certain inherent tendency towards exaggeration. The same is true of the figures in Pseudo-Aristeas? mentioned above and of the details which Josephus gives of the number of victims of the various pogroms in the early Roman period. What is certain is that in some cities, such as Alexandria and Antioch, Jews made up a considerable proportion of the total population. In Alexandria two out of the five districts of the city were almost entirely inhabited by Jews." The city certainly contained more Jews at this time than Jerusalem itself. The proportion of Jews in the Diaspora in relation to the size of the nation as a whole increased steadily throughout the Hellenistic era and reached astonishing dimensions in the early Roman period. It was not least for this reason that the Jewish people became a major political factor, especially since the Jews in the diaspora, notwithstanding strong cultural, social and religious tensions, remained firmly united with their homeland.
Religious Life
The Synagogue
The Jews in the 'dispersion' possessed an excellent unifying bond in the form of their meeting houses, known in the Hellenistic period as places of prayer. Jewish proseuchai are attested in Egypt from the mid-third century onwards: as far as the Delta and Lower Egypt are concerned, not only in Alexandria but also in Schedia, Xenephyris, Athribis and Nitriai, all in the third to the second century B.C.E.; in the Fayum we know of examples in Crocodilopolis-Arsinoe and Alexandrou-Nesos, both of the third century; besides these there is an unnamed location in Upper Egypt and two other sites for which we do not have names. The two oldest inscriptions are the ones in Schedia near Alexandria and in Crocodilopolis-Arsinoe in the Fayum. In Philo's day every district of Alexandria contained numerous proseuchai; the same was presumably true of the Hellenistic period. The proseuchai fulfilled a double purpose. In the first place, as the name implies, they were religious meeting places. In addition, however, they had a socio-political function similar to pagan temples and sacrificial sites. In Alexandrou-Nesos an alleged thief, Dorotheos, fled into a proseuché with his spoil, a cloak. The disputed garment was then placed in the safe keeping of the synagogue attendant, Nikomachos, until the affair could be investigated. Perhaps the fleeing thief was seeking sanctuary in the synagogue. The civic status of the proseuchai also finds expression in the dedicatory inscriptions. The two earliest inscriptions read: 'to King Ptolemy and Queen Berenice the sister and spouse and to the children the Jews (dedicate) the proseuché'; 'to King Ptolemy (son) of Ptolemy and Queen Berenice the spouse and sister and to the children the Jews in the city of Crocodilopolis (dedicate) the proseuché'. The evidence for Jewish houses of prayer in Egypt is the earliest record we have of such institutions. It documents an important development in Jewish life in which the Diaspora appears to have given the lead. In the Persian period the Jewish military colonists in Elephantine had a temple with sacrificial rituals, not without syncretistic features. It is presumed that several such regional temples existed at that time. In the second century we do indeed find temple buildings both in Leontopolis and in the capital of the Tobiads in Eastern Jordan -but in both instances they are exceptions, established to meet specific local needs. As a rule, from the third century onwards the Jews built a new kind of holy place. The term Trpoasuxil points to a group of people assembled together primarily for the purpose of prayer, whether spoken or sung - for a service of the word, in other words, whose individual elements had long been known in Jewish worship but which now made an appearance on their own, shorn of any association with sacrificial ceremonies. The language of worship in Egypt from the beginning of the third century was undoubtedly Greek and the same must have been true of other areas of the western Diaspora. It is not possible to reconstruct in detail the history of this service of the word. Information dating from the rabbinical or even from the early Roman period ought not to be read into the earliest beginnings unless this can be substantiated. There is an almost total dearth of ancient literary evidence. The Alexandrian historian Agatharchides of Cnidos, born around 200 B.C.E., writes that the Jews 'pray...in their holy places with outstretched hands until evening'. But whether he is describing the custom in the Diaspora remains uncertain. We can draw more reliable conclusions where features of Diaspora worship contrast, sharply with the rabbinical conventions in Palestine. Philo of Alexandria emphasizes the important role of the hymn. A valuable Talmudic testimony concerning the form of service used in the great synagogue of Alexandria shows that prayer was of central significance, with the whole congregation joining in the amen; because of the size of the gathering, men were placed on a podium to give a visible signal to the worshippers when it was time to pronounce the amen. It is hard to say when readings from the scriptures and an address were introduced into the form of service used in the Diaspora. Both were firmly established by Philo's day and had been for a long time. Perhaps the assembly of the people referred to in Neh. 7:73 to 9:37 represents a precursor of the new prayer service.7-
It soon became the practice in the synagogues of the Diaspora to celebrate the Jewish new moons and annual festivals. Above all, the Sabbath was marked everywhere by services of worship. In this connection ceremonial meals were also arranged. At all events, permission to hold religious feasts was one of the privileges granted to the Jews of Paros in the middle of the first century B.C.E. The Jews of Alexandria were expressly committed to commemorating the consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Macc. 1 to 2). They also observed special Alexandrian festivals, namely, to mark the composition of the Septua-gint! and their deliverance from persecution under Ptolemy VII.
It is unlikely that these prayer services were inspired by non-Jewish models: rather, we are dealing with an internal Jewish development which derived its impulse from the systematic centralization of worship in the Diaspora along the lines laid down in Deuteronomy. For the new institution of the proseuchai is closely connected with the firm orientation of Jews throughout the Diaspora towards the one most holy Temple in Jerusalem, the only place of cultic worship. (It must be. said, however, that pilgrimages to the Temple were none too frequent in earlier times.7) The proseucbe is not a cultic place. Anyone can enter it and it is used as much for teaching and legal matters as for prayer and hymnsinging. The original proseuchai were probably simple, unsophisticated structures unadorned by any religious symbolism. Later they became splendid edifices. The main synagogues in Antioch and Alexandria were particularly renowned.
It is clear that from the outset women sat or stood apart from the men, and from an early date the leader of the assembly had a special seat. Perhaps it was not long before vestibules were attached to some of the larger proseuchai where votive offerings and inscriptions could be displayed as in the ancient temples. However, this is specifically attested only in the. case of the principal cities of Alexandria and Antioch and may in fact have been confined to them.
Philo never uses any other designation save proseuché. But from the early Roman period onwards the term auvayooyf) begins to occur in the Diaspora, probably under the influence of developments in Palestine. Initially it is applied to the assembly but then it comes to mean the building itself. Its Hebrew equivalent is firmly established in Palestinian Judaism by the first century, as can be seen from the New Testament. At what point exactly houses of assembly and prayer appeared in the Jewish homeland, alongside the Jerusalem Temple, is a contentious issue. It was probably in the second century B.C.E. that Palestinian Jews adopted an institution which had originally developed and proved its worth in the Diaspora.
Jerusalem as the Centre
In many respects Jerusalem was the focal point of all Jewish life. Every male Jew, wherever he might be, paid his annual tax of half a shekel to the Jerusalem Temple. This was a question of moral duty and was zealously adhered to. Wealthy Jews often contributed several times the appointed sum. Other dues prescribed by the Torah were also paid in the Diaspora. The right to transfer to Jerusalem the monies owing to the Temple had sometimes to be asserted in the face of strong opposition. Apparently the payments to the Temple were approved from the start by the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid kings. Philo informs us that there were treasuries in almost every town into which the taxes were paid; at certain times the monies thus collected would be transported to Palestine by large delegations headed by leading dignitaries. The Jerusalem Temple attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims each year in the early Roman period." Hellenistic Jewish literature shows many traces of the fascination exerted by the Temple. Thus the Temple in Jerusalem united Jews throughout the world into a universal community.
Similarly the high priest was a powerful force for integration, far beyond his political authority and influence. The ceremonial robes of the high priest, repeatedly vaunted in Hellenistic Jewish literature and interpreted in terms of cosmic symbolism, endowed him with transcendent glory. His religious duties in the cult, especially those performed on the great Day of Atonement, were viewed as a universal saving-event, particularly by Jews in the Diaspora.
Thirdly, in the Hellenistic period, the Diaspora was perceptibly under the influence of the teaching authorities in Jerusalem. Even for a writer as explicitly sympathetic towards Hellenism as Pseudo-Aristeas, the Jerusalem authorities were the guarantors of the canonical validity of the Greek translation of the Torah. The events of the Maccabean uprising soon became the subject of a committed, pro-Maccabean historical account by Jason of Cyrene and his epitomator, likewise a member of the Hellenistic Jewish community in Egypt. Before that the continuing translation of new prophetic-apocalyptic and Wisdom books from Palestine shows that intensive links were maintained with the homeland. As far as the translation and dissemination of Ecclesias-ticus and the book of Esther are concerned, we have some details of the process. They reveal that the authorities in Jerusalem exerted a strong influence over what went on in the Diaspora and that in the post-Maccabean period they even voiced wholesale criticisms of pro-Hellenistic attitudes, as in the additions to the book of Esther.
Despite the fluctuating fortunes and the divisions within Palestinian Judaism up to 70 C.E., Jews in the Diaspora continued to take their bearings from the religious authorities in Jerusalem.
The Mosaic Law In The Hellenistic Diaspora
The impression of pious observance and study of the Torah which we gain from the Roman period ought not to colour our reading of the evidence from the Hellenistic epoch without further examination. By and large it is true to say that in the Hellenistic period the figure of Moses as law-giver, wise man and prophet took precedence over the Torah as a sacred text. Moses was considered one of the great sages of ancient times, towering above his rivals. The great Greek philosophers in particular were said to have derived many valuable lessons from him. In thus stressing the link with Moses, the Hellenistic Jews were not retreating into sectarian isolation but rather taking their place in the vanguard of the intellectual and religious life of their age. They tried to justify this claim through the medium of contemporary cultural and philosophical discourse. The Hellenistic Jewish disciples of Moses whom we can identify from Aristobulus onwards did not shrink from trying to convince the Hellenistic world of the superiority, profundity and beauty of Moses' wisdom, and in particular of the pre-eminence and self-evident truth of his legislation which elevated the Jews above all other nations. Conversely they also undertook the task of providing a rationalist interpretation of Moses with the aid, for instance, of allegorical rules first developed for expounding Homer.! Anything in the holy scriptures which ostensibly appeared objectionable was given' a deeper meaning, sometimes with excessive sophistry. The apparently disordered multiplicity of admonitions was plausibly systematized, in that every Mosaic injunction was shown to be derived from the two basic requirements of pure worship and righteousness. In Pseudo-Aristeas this occurs only occasionally and without any system but in Philo it is carried out systematically according to a preconceived design. The main features of the traditional laws and customs of the Jews are fully preserved. These writers aver that true Judaism is consonant with the best Greek traditions. Pseudo-Aristeas presents the Hellenistic monarch and the Jewish sages in an idealized light and in perfect harmony with one another. Enlightened tolerance towards Hellenistic kingship existed in Palestine too, as is attested by the court tales in the books of Daniel and Esther and in other writings. On the other hand, the critical attitude towards Hellenism which prevailed in the homeland after the failure of the Hellenistic reform movement under Jason and the victory of the Maccabees soon made itself felt in the Diaspora as well, though here it did not become dominant.
Moses was consistently depicted not as a uniquely Jewish figure but. as a unique teacher of true wisdom and righteousness who is authoritative for all true disciples of philosophy. The Mosaic teachings which Aristobulus and later Pseudo-Aristeas expounded before the king were directed at all who aspired to true piety, virtue and order, Jews and Gentiles alike. Philo's works addressed themselves explicitly to all those who sought wisdom and godliness.
The reverberations of this universalism, at once Jewish and Hellenistic, can be discerned in the widespread adherence to Moses by non-Jews at this time. Not until the early Roman period can one speak of conversions and proselytes proper. The older form of Gentile commitment to Moses is represented in the Roman period by the 'God-fearers' who embrace Jewish monotheism and adopt the Jewish moral Law, without however accepting circumcision. A worldwide movement to profess the truth of Mosaic teaching is seen by Philo as the great opportunity for the nations of the earth. This attitude must have been even more pronounced among his predecessors in the Hellenistic period.
However, the anti-Hellenistic campaign in Palestine, with its zealous emphasis on the Law, had an unmistakable and growing impact in the Diaspora. Initially some of the Jews of Alexandria lived together, while others were scattered at random in every quarter of the city. Later, this freedom to choose one's place of residence is inconceivable, and a systematic segregation of the Jews inthe interests of greater solidarity is backdated by Josephus to earlier times. In the middle of the first century B.C.E. this became a definite programme. The Jews of Sardis requested and were granted at that time a residential district to themselves 'in order that they might gather together there with their wives and children and pray and worship God in the traditional manner'. Jewish monotheism had always prevented the complete integration of Jews into Hellenistic society. A dangerous friction was clearly inherent in this situation from the start. In the multinational Hellenistic culture the Jews were the only group who consistently had to refuse to participate in pagan rituals. Yet in the earlier period the offensive sections of the Mosaic Torah were damped down and adapted to a liberal practice acceptable to the Gentile milieu. Direct participation in pagan worship was always out of the question. Anyone who aspired to high office in the state or who simply desired complete cultural assimilation had to pay the price of apostasy (e.g. Dositheos, son of Drimylos). Rules about food and cleanliness, and certain details of Sabbath observance do not appear to have caused any serious problems in the early Hellenistic period. But a new era is indicated when Jewish inhabitants fight successfully for the privilege of not having to attend courts or carry weapons or march or even receive their apportionment of oil on the Sabbath. This step implies an intensified observance of the Torah which, to name only one consequence among several, inevitably led to the permanent debarring of Jews from military service.
Legal and Social Conditions
1. Jewish politeumata
The social status of the Jews varied widely. Under the Ptolemies it ranged from the highest ranks of the political, economic and cultural elite down to small tenant farmers, labourers and slaves. And even within the urban communities there were many different ranks and privileges. If we consider the matter of civic rights, an equally diverse picture emerges. Families who were residents of long-standing might possess civic rights which were denied to more recent arrivals. When a kind of aristocratic upper class developed in the large Jewish communities of the Hellenistic period, it enjoyed civic privileges beyond the reach of ordinary Jews. Yet such matters were of less moment than the freedoms that were essential to the fulfilment of the basic admonitions of the Mosaic Torah and which were thus of vital significance to every Jew.
The Jews were not always organized into a corporation of their own. In Alexandria, and for example in the city of Berenice in Cyrenaica, we find the Jewish inhabitants organized as a politeuma. The Jews of Hierapolis are designated in inscriptions as a katoikia. This was the normal term for colonies of aliens in a particular locality. Thus there were at an early stage katoikiai of Macedonian military settlers. An organization of this kind always involved a measure of self-government but not originally civic rights as a city, even though such communities might develop into cities. Other designations for communities of aliens are laos, synodos and synagoge. What we must not forget is that as far as their civic rights were concerned, the Jews constituted less of an exception in the ancient world than we might assume. The Hellenistic world with its busy international trade and its political openness developed means of integrating foreigners into the social and legal structure of city and country quite independently of the particular problem posed by the Jews.
The term politeuma can denote an ordinary urban settlement or itsinhabitants, but it more often means a community of aliens who have acquired privileges analogous to civic rights. In Egypt we thus encounter politeumata of Idumcans, Phrygians and Cilicians, as well as of Jews. Such ethnic groups always possessed their own religious identity as well.
The establishment of politeumata certainly required official permission in each instance. In the case of the settlement under Ptolemy I of the High Priest Hezekiah and the Jews who accompanied him - the earliest known settlement of Jews in Hellenistic Egypt - the appropriate royal warrant is explicitly mentioned:3 it was probably a short royal decree, the contents of which would be comparable to the letter from Antiochus III to Zeuxis. Apart from the requisite details concerning the founding of the settlement, including an initial tax exemption, we find there above all a guarantee of the right of the. Jewish colonists to live according to their traditional laws and to apply their own laws within their community. A similar right extended to other colonists. In view of the highly detailed admonitions of the written Torah together with the interpretations enshrined in the oral tradition, it becomes clear that such guarantees in effect granted the Jews wide-ranging control over their own affairs, naturally within the limits determined by the political sovereignty of the king and the authority of the laws promulgated by him. The measure of autonomy enjoyed by Jewish politeumata of this kind could easily stand comparison with that accorded to Greek cities at the time. These Jewish communities had their own law courts and their own schools, they appointed their own civic officials, and so on. Writing of the great Jewish politeumata in Alexandria, Strabo apprises us that there an ethnarch 'ruled the people, judged its cases and supervised the implementation of contracts and orders like the ruler of an independent state'. This quasi-monarchical structure did not last for long. Pseudo-Aristeas does not mention an ethnarch but rather a group of leaders of the politeuma (§310), in effect probably a gerousia such as Augustus was later to re-establish. The customary title for the individual leaders of the community was archon. The name was derived from the terminology of the Greek cities, though no corresponding democratic constitution existed. On the contrary, we must assume a thoroughly oligarchic structure. The question whether the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria possessed full citizenship has been widely discussed. Tcherikover's detailed examination of this issue has definitively shown that this was not the case as far as the Alexandrian Jews as a whole were concerned.
The Jewish inhabitants of the city were never granted full citizenship as a body. Moreover, to begin with, this did not create any difficulties in view of the generous privileges enjoyed by the Jews of Alexandria in the Hellenistic period, some of which even exceeded those of mere citizenship. However, when the antagonism between the Greeks and the Jews came to a head in the early Roman period and at the same time Augustus introduced a poll-tax on all non-citizens, an acute problem arose. In order to preserve the status quo the Jews had to try to acquire Alexandrian citizenship for the whole Jewish community. Their efforts did not meet with success. On the other hand, individual Jewish families and groups had obtained Alexandrian citizenship over the years - of this we have indisputable proof.
2. The Participation of the Diaspora Jews in the Hellenistic Urban Culture
The fascination with Hellenistic culture which increasingly permeated the Near East in the centuries after Alexander made itself felt among the Jewish ruling class as well, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora. It had been Alexander's declared aim to bring Greeks and Persians together through the unifying power of a universal culture. To this end Hellenistic cities were founded with their elementary schools and their gymnasia as centres of Greek paideia. They exerted a powerful attraction particularly on the younger members of the native upper class, who were inspired as much by down-to-earth political and economic self-interest as by the desire for education, good fellowship and a schooling in the new humanism. Those who mastered the Greek language and.adopted the values of Hellenistic urban culture could expect a ready entrance into the service of the Greco-Macedonian rulers and appointment to diverse posts in the army, in business or in the financial administration. So once Jews in Palestine and in the Diaspora learnt Greek - in Palestine, alongside their mother tongue, in Alexandria and Egypt, before long instead of it - many opportunities were open to them. But did they fully participate in Hellenistic culture? Did Jewish youngsters attend the gymnasium, did they take part in the athletic contests like the sons of other citizens? They certainly did so in the Jerusalem of Jason during the brief period of his Hellenistic reforms. But this was a special case, a polis composed entirely of Hellenistic Jews. In Alexandria by contrast, and elsewhere, Hellenistic Jews did not as a rule attend the gymnasia or participate in the ephebeia, except where they had renounced their ancestral faith. Philo found it quite natural that Greek culture and philosophy should for so long have been taught and discussed in the proseuchai. None the less a small elite, such as the sons of the most distinguished Jews in Alexandria, may well have had access to the city's gymnasia up to the early imperial period. The polytheism that informed life in the gymnasium could be tolerated up to a certain point and in part defused by compromises; Jews in exile were familiar with this sort of problem in every sphere of life. At all events, as late as the Roman period a gymnasium education seems to have been regarded as the normal course for the sons of the leading families even by an observant Hellenistic Jew like Philo. In Seleucid Antioch, Jews were clearly entitled to a share in the official distribution of oil by the gymnasiarchs, which indicates a similar state of affairs. It was a grave setback when in the early Roman period young men from old-established, leading Jewish families, for whom gymnasium and ephebeia had become a tradition, began to be excluded from both.
What sort of relationship prevailed between the small Jewish upper class and the broad mass of Jewish inhabitants? Participation in Hellenistic culture became steadily more widespread, while the quality of the Jewish contribution improved all the time. In the documents of Hellenistic Judaism we find evidence of notable literary and linguistic attainment, side by side with texts of inferior standard, such as the writings of the historian Demetrius (circa 200 B.C.E.), the novelist: Artapanus and the Jewish dramatist Demetrius. They provide interesting illustrations of various stages in this process of assimilation. Jewish education could not remain elitist. A Jewish teacher like Philo desired to reach all Jews, indeed if possible all men everywhere. Early Hellenistic Christianity was later able to draw on this pedagogic tradition and to benefit from the intellectual resources created by it. The situation is rather different when we look at the economic and social spheres.
Social Conditions
Information about the social circumstances of the Jews in the dispersion during the Hellenistic period is meagre, and what little evidence we have refers mainly to Egypt. Most of it has already been mentioned briefly: it reveals a complex picture which may be amplified and corroborated if we work back from our knowledge of conditions in the Roman era. On the whole, we can conclude that there existed a small upper class of very wealthy and influential Jews, and a broad mass of people living in much poorer circumstances. There were relatively few Jewish slaves. At certain times, indeed, there must have been large numbers of them, such as in the aftermath of the numerous wars, but this state of affairs did not last long since the Jews always showed commendable solidarity in pressing for the release of their enslaved compatriots. Philo maintains that the majority of Jews in Rome were former captives who were now freedmen.
The great majority of the Jewish upper class remained loyal to Moses, as did the Jews of the Diaspora as a whole. Men such as Dositheos, who was discussed earlier, or the T'obiad Joseph or Tiberius Alexander were exceptions. We can see this in the early Roman period from the example of Philo's family: his father was a Roman citizen, his elder brother Gaius Julius Alexander was a very rich man who managed the estates of Claudius' mother Antonia; for all that, Tiberius Alexander was the sole apostate. The family were effortlessly integrated into the culture of their environment and were loyal to the king, yet retained firm roots in the proseuché community. Philo reveals that many of the leaders of the Jewish community were very prosperous. Their wealth was primarily derived from great maritime trading enterprises, as we might expect in a commercial capital like Alexandria. This is confirmed when Philo refers to Jewish ship-owners, whom he distinguishes from the mass of small merchants and tradespeople. But Jews also had a significant share in the banking institutions which flourished in Alexandria. In addition they occupied high posts in the state treasury and the customs. It is legitimate to assume that a similar situation existed in Alexandria in the pre-Roman period-there is verification of this in the history of the Tobiads. Of course, conditions in the rich metropolis of Alexandria would have been very different from those in provincial towns, let alone in the countryside.
Even there, however, we find the occasional rich merchant and tax farmer, such as a certain Sabbataios who collected the taxes from the Nile ferries, or Simon, the son of Iazarus, who paid several talents in fishermen's taxes into a royal bank. Both are known to us from ostraka found in Upper Egypt. For the rest, the Jewish military colonists were also relatively well off. These comprised either former mercenaries or active frontier defence troops who were given land, sometimes extensive estates, and who leased it out to tenant farmers. Apart from the colonists, there were also large numbers of Jewish mercenaries, some of them officers, serving in cavalry and infantry units of both the regular army and the auxiliary forces.
The majority of Jews in the Diaspora were farmers, farmworkers and craftsmen, just like the Jews in Palestine. To the above-mentioned evidence from Egyptian papyri can be added two pieces of literary evidence relating to Alexandria in the early Roman period. The rabbinical account of the great proseuché in Alexandria mentioned earlier tells us that in the assembly members of the various guilds sat together: 'People did not sit in indiscriminate confusion but the goldsmiths all sat together as did the silversmiths, the blacksmiths and the coppersmiths; and if someone needy arrived, he would recognize his fellow craftsmen and turn to them for help and he would thus find succour both for himself and his household'. Philo confirms the existence of Jewish artisans in Alexandria in his own day when he writes of the pogrom of 38 C.E. under the prefect Flaccus. The anti-Jewish mob broke into and looted the workshops of the Jews which happened to be closed because the court was observing a day of mourning. At the end Philo enumerates some of the occupations pursued by the Alexandrian Jews and specifies in addition to shipowners and merchants the craftsmen and farmers.
If we may generalize from this picture, we see that on the one hand the social structure of the Jews of the Diaspora, like their economic circumstances, differed little from that of their non-Jewish neighbours. The marked variations between town and country, the glaring contrast of ostentatious wealth and crushing poverty existed within the Jewish community and in the Gentile milieu alike. However much the Torah of Moses led to the religious segregation of the Jews in the ancient world, it did not give rise to any radical social innovations. But social hardship was considerably alleviated: Jewish slaves quickly had their freedom purchased by their families or even by the community, each local congregation had its poor-relief, the guilds provided protection for their members. Wherever there was a Jewish community, the individual Jew was assured of help and support. There is another factor that deserves mention, a question of social ethics. Philo once emphasizes that it was characteristic of the Jews, with their strong sense of family obligation, to work hard for their living. This was doubtless true of the pre-Roman period as well. Every opportunity was seized to attain material security by hard work. The Roman inscriptions mention not only tradesmen and businessmen but also Jewish tailors, butchers, painters and smiths, and even singers and actors. |
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