The Evil One

Point of history. How did the Jewish diaspora come to be? As spin points out in a recent thread, we can explain how Jews became spread out across Mesopotamia, for isntance, by reference to the exile. But obviously this doesn't explain communities in the Med. ie. Alexandria, etc.

At what point were these sorts of communities established, and were they the result of specific historical events (wars? political changes?) or were they just an example of general trends of migration in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds?

premjan

Did the Romans' breakup of Israel contribute?

neilgodfrey

Perhaps the cosmopolitan features of this "diaspora" suggests another, non-ethnic, origin. In the "Copenhagen School" we find the hypothesis that being a Jew was a religious identity, a Hellenistic philosophical-religious development, which had its origins no further back than the Persian period.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Malachi151

From my understanding, Jews didn't all originate in Judea and then fan out from there, they had always been dispersed across the region, or at least for hundreds of years prior to their being conquered by Alexander the Great. There were various moves out of Judea as well, but that was never their exclusive point of origin.

spin

The language of the Jews firmly places them as Canaanite, in the geographical sense of where all Canaanite speakers lived, ie on either side of the Jordan.

Think about these as stops in the process of dispersal:

1. The last Assyrians removed the Israelite upper classes to Mesopotamia.
2. Nebuchadnezzar removed the Jerusalem upper classes to Mesopotamia.
3. Some Judahites fled to Egypt to escape Nebuchadnezzar.
4. Cambyses installed Jewish mercenaries in southern Egypt.
5. The Mesopotamian Hebrews spread around Mesopotamia.
6. Jewish mercenaries fought for both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, settling in the respective countries.
7. Jewish slaves were traded under the Ptolemies and Jewish votive markers have been found in various parts of Greece.
8. Pompey flooded the Mediterranean slave markets with Jewish slaves after he besieged Jerusalem. This included the first sizable presence of Jews in Rome.
9. The Jewish War supplied more Jewish slaves to the world.
10. The aftermath of the Bar Kochba rebellion saw the banning of Jews from Jerusalem which led to further spread, as their was no temple to act as the central focus of the culture.

spin

The Evil One

Thanks spin. Points 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 were especially what I was interested in hearing about. So, no single event, but a series of events with a similar effect in terms of the spread of the people around the region.

spin

To add a few more to Egypt,

7a. When the Seleucids took control of southern Palestine, many of those who supported the Ptolemies moved to Egypt, perhaps including Ben Sira.
7b. When the Oniad family had come to terms with losing the high priesthood -- which had been removed from Onias III in 175 BCE -- they migrated with their dependents to Heliopolis in Egypt and built another temple.


spin

RED DAVE

Wrong. All wrong. The key to the secret is that all these places are on the Mediterranean.

The truth is that prior to the Roman expulsion, all of these were actually Jewish vacation and retirement spots similar to Miami.



RED DAVE

neilgodfrey

There is no doubt Canaan was the central ideological focus of the Jews and this land no doubt had historical 'geo-political-settlement' significance for "Jews" at the least from Persian times. But what was "the language of the Jews"? I'm not disputing it was or became Canaanite in Canaan, but what evidence do we have from the early Persian (or earlier?) times that Jews in, say, Egypt, also spoke that language? The literary evidence most well known was certainly Greek. There is of course the later legend told about finding translators to create the LXX but I don't think there is undisputed agreement that that story has any historical basis.

I stressed the "early Persian (or earlier) times" because it is unlikely "the Jews" who were originally deported to Canaan would be the same cultural or linguistic group as those whom later Persian administrations took to Egypt as mercenaries. (The romantic story of Jews strengthening their original culture in captivity defies all that is known about the purposes, methods and impacts of real-world deportations.) We can accept that those who had been deported to Canaan from early Persian times began to adapt the religious culture and languages of the Canaanites there with whom they had to relate, while maintaining some separateness from the earlier inhabitants. So "the Jews" of the second generation from the "original" deportees would more likely be much more "Canaanite" than than their parents.

It's been a while since I've read in this area and no doubt I have much to catch up on.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com