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Bible Dictionaries
Dispersion
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or (See CAPTIVITY.) Galuth (Jeremiah 24:5; Ezra 6:16). Literally, "the spoliation," those stripped of the temple and home of their fathers. Septuagint used diaspora , "dispersion," in Deuteronomy 28:25; compare Deuteronomy 30:4, "driven out unto the outermost parts of heaven"; Jeremiah 34:17; John 7:35, "the dispersed among the Gentiles." They became, in God's gracious providence, seed sown for a future harvest in the Gentile lands of their sojourn (1 Peter 1:1). The dispersion included all the twelve tribes, the ten tribes carried away by the Assyrians as well as Judah carried to Babylon, though Judah alone returned to Palestine (James 1:1; Acts 26:7).
"The pilgrim troops of the law became caravans of the gospel" (Wordsworth). The difficulties of literally observing the Mosaic ritual, while in Babylon and elsewhere, led them to see that they could be united by a common faith, though unable to meet at the same Jerusalem temple, and that the spirit of the law is the essential thing when the letter is providentially set aside. Still, connection with the temple was kept up by each Jew everywhere contributing the half shekel to its support (Matthew 17:24). The three great sections of the dispersion at Christ's coming were the Babylonian, the Syrian, and the Egyptian (including Alexandria where the Grecian element was strongest, and with African offshoots, Cyrene and N. Africa).
Pompey, upon occupying Jerusalem 63 B.C., took with him, and settled, many Jews in the trans-Tiberine quarter of Rome. The apostles in every city followed God's order, as Paul told the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, "it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken unto you" (Acts 3:26; Acts 13:46); so Romans 1:16, "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." In the assembly on Pentecost the several dispersions were represented:
(1) Parthians, Mesopotamia;
(2) Judaea (Syria), Pamphylia;
(3) Egypt, Greece;
(4) Romans. The converts from these pioneered the way for the subsequent labors of the apostles in their respective countries. Lucius of Cyrene and Simeon Niger (the black) from N. Africa were leading members of the church of Antioch. So we find Aquila from Pontus, Barnabas of Cyprus, Apollos of Alexandria, Clement probably of Rome. Besides the Jews, in the several cities there were the "devout" Gentiles who in some degree acknowledged the God of Israel. All these formed stepping stones for the ultimate entrance of the gospel among the idolatrous Gentiles. Forty years after Peter's martyrdom, Pliny, Roman governor of Pontus and Bithynia, writing to the emperor Trajan, says: "the contagion (Christianity) has seized not only cities, but the smaller towns and country, so that the temples are nearly forsaken and the sacred rites intermitted."
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Dispersion'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/d/dispersion.html. 1949.
