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Bible Dictionaries
Dispersion (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or DISPERSION (διασπορά).—The word ( Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 of John 7:35, James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1) is a collective term denoting either the Jews resident outside their native country, or the lands in which they lived.
1. The Pharisees and chief priests sent officers to arrest our Lord, and He told them that in a little while He would go where they could not find Him or be able to come to Him. The Jews who were present asked where He could possibly go that they could not find Him. Would He go to the ‘dispersion among the Greeks’ (εἰς τὴν διασπορὰν τῶν Ἑλλήνων)* [Note: For the genitive, cf. 1 Peter 1:1.] and teach the Greeks? i.e. would He make the dispersed Jews a starting-point for teaching the Greeks? Narrow-minded Jews, distinct from ‘the people’ (ὁ ὄχλος) of John 7:31; John 7:40, they would not dream of defiling themselves by going out and mixing with Gentiles, and they sarcastically suggested that that was the only way in which Jesus could escape them.
2. It is unnecessary in this article to deal fully with the history and fortunes of the Dispersion; but a very brief sketch may be useful. In the time of Christ the Jews of the Dispersion were to be found in six main colonies: Babylonia, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome.
(a) Babylonia.—The Jews in the far East were the descendants of those who remained when small bodies returned under Zerubbabel and Ezra. And their numbers were afterwards increased by a transportation of Jews to Babylonia and Hyrcania under Artaxerxes III. Ochus (358–338). Many have thought that 1 Peter 5:13 refers to a community of Christians among the Jews in Babylon; but this is improbable (see Hort, 1 Peter, pp. 5 f., 167–170). From Babylon, Jews moved in many directions to Elam (cf. Isaiah 11:11), Persia, Media, Armenia, and Cappadocia. The Babylonian Jews were the only portion of the Diaspora which maintained its Judaism more or less untouched by the Hellenism which permeated the West. Their remoteness, however, did not prevent the loyal payment of the annual Temple-tax, which was collected at Nehardea and Nisibis and sent to Jerusalem (see below).
(b) Egypt.—Jews had migrated to Egypt as early as 586, when Johanan son of Kareah conducted a small body of them, including Jeremiah, to Tahpanhes (Jeremiah 42, 43). Jews also settled (Jeremiah 44:1) in Migdol, Noph (Memphis), and Pathros (Upper Egypt). The great majority of the colonists in Alexandria must have settled there early in the period of the Ptolemies, in which case they may have been among the earliest inhabitants of Alexander’s new city; and they undoubtedly received special privileges (Josephus circa (about) Apion. ii. 4; BJ ii. xviii. 7 f.). The kindness which they received in Palestine from Ptolemy I. Soter induced numbers of them to migrate to Egypt during his reign. And many more may have been transported as prisoners of war during the subsequent struggles between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. Philo (in Flace., ed. Mangey, ii. 525) less than ten years after our Lord’s death says that two entire quarters of Alexandria were known as ‘the Jewish,’ and many more Jews were sprinkled over the rest of the city. Another congregation of Jews was formed at Lcontopolis in the nome of Heliopolis on the Eastern border of the Nile delta. The high priest Onias, son of Simon the Just, was granted permission by Ptolemy VI. Philometor to settle there when he fled with some adherents in 173 or 170 from his enemies Antiochus IV. Epiphanes and the sons of Tobias. He built a fortress, and within it a temple where the worship of Jehovah was carried on. This continued till a.d. 73, when the temple was destroyed by order of Vespasian (Josephus Ant. xiii. iii. 2, xiv. viii. 1; BJ i. ix. 4, vii. x. 2–4).
(c) Syria.—The Egyptian Diaspora had been formed largely owing to the increased facilities for travel and intercourse resulting from Alexander’s conquests. And the same causes operated in Syria. Damascus had received Israelite colonists in very early times (1 Kings 20:34). In Nero’s reign there were, according to Josephus (BJ ii. xx. 2), no fewer than 10,000 Jews in the city. Antiochus IV. Epiphanes conceded to the Jews the right of free settlement in Antioch; and, owing to the successes and prestige of the Maccabees in Palestine, the neighbouring provinces of Syria received a larger admixture of Jews than any other country (BJ vii. iii. 3).
(d) Asia Minor.* [Note: It is convenient to use the term, although its first known occurrence is in Orosius (Hist. i. 2. 26), a.d. 417. He speaks as though it were his own coinage: ‘Asia regio vel, ut proprie dicam, Asia minor.’] —Through Syria Jews passed to Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands, Cyprus, Crete, etc., where from b.c. 130 and onwards they flourished under Roman protection. See Hort, 1 Peter, Add. note, pp. 157–184, and Acts 13-20.
(e) Greece.—It is related in 1 Maccabees 12:21 that the Spartans sent a letter to the high priest Onias saying ‘it hath been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham.’ This, though legendary, implies that there was at least an acquaintance between members of the two races. Jewish inscriptions, moreover, have been found in Greece; and there were firmly established Jewish communities in Thessalonica, Berœa, and Corinth when St. Paul visited them (Acts 17, 18).
(f) Rome.—The first contact of the Jews with Rome was in the time of the Maccabees; embassies were sent by Judas and Jonathan, and a formal alliance was concluded by Simon in b.c. 140 (1 Maccabees 14:24; 1 Maccabees 15:15-24). A few Jews probably reached Rome as traders; but the first large settlement dates from the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, b.c. 63. Julius and Augustus admitted them to a legal standing throughout the Empire (see the series of enactments in Josephus Ant. xiv. viii. 5, x. 1–8); the latter allowed them to form a colony on the further side of the Tiber; but they soon gained a footing within the city, and had synagogues of their own. Tiberius in a.d. 19 banished 4000 to Sardinia. In the early days of Claudius the Jewish cause was upheld at court by the two Agrippas; but before 52 ‘Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome’ (Acts 18:2)—‘impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes’ (Suet. Claud. 23). Under Nero the Jews in Rome once more gained ground.
3. The Jews dispersed in these various settlements did not entirely cut themselves off from their national centre, Jerusalem. Even the Jews at Leontopolis, though their worship was strictly speaking schismatical, did not allow their religious separateness to quench their national feeling. They embraced Caesar’s cause in Egypt, contrary to their first impulse, because of the injunctions of Hyrcanus the high, priest at Jerusalem, and Antipater the Jewish general (Josephus Ant. xiv. viii. 1; BJ i. ix. 4).
There were two important links which bound the Diaspora in all parts of the world to their mother city.
(a) The annual payment of the Temple-tax (the half-shekel or didrachm), and of other offerings. One of the privileges which they enjoyed under the Diadochi and afterwards under the Romans was that of coining their own money for sacred purposes. [It was this sacred coinage that foreign Jews were obliged to get from the money-changers in exchange for the ordinary civil money, when they came to Jerusalem for the festivals, Matthew 21:12, Mark 11:15, John 2:14 f. And it was this variety of coinage that enabled our Lord to give His absolutely simple but unanswerable decision on what the Jews thought was a dilemma; deep spiritual meaning, no doubt, underlay His words, but their surface meaning was sufficient to silence His opponents: ‘Render to Caesar the civil coin on which his image is stamped, and render to God the sacred coin which belongs to Him and His Temple worship,’ Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25]. The sacred money was collected at different centres (cf. Matthew 17:24 οἱ τὰ δίδραχμα λαμβάνοντες) and carried under safe escort to Jerusalem (Philo, de Monarch, ii. 3). Josephus relates (Ant. xvi. vi.) that the Jews in Asia and Cyrene were ill-treated, and that the Greeks took from them their sacred money; but that decrees were issued by Augustus, Agrippa, and two proconsuls to the effect that the sacred money of the Jews was to be untouched, and that they were to be given full liberty to send it to Jerusalem. The Babylonian Jews made use of the two strong cities Nehardea and Nisibis to store their sacred money till the time came to send it to Palestine. ‘The Jews, depending on the natural strength of these places, deposited in them the half-shekel which everyone, by the custom of our country, offers to God, and as many other dedicatory offerings (ἀναθήματα) as there were: for they made use of these cities as a treasury, whence at the proper time they were transmitted to Jerusalem’ (Ant. xviii. ix. 1). Sueh priestly dues as consisted of sacrificial flesh, which could not be sent to Jerusalem, were paid to any priest if there happened to be one at hand (Challa, iv. 7–9, 11; Yadaim, iv. 3; Chullin, x. 1; Terumoth, ii. 4).
(b) The pilgrimages made to Jerusalem by immense numbers of foreign Jews at the three annual festivals—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Josephus says that Cestius Gallus had a censns made during the Passover, and the priests reckoned 2,700,000 people (BJ vi. ix. 3), in round numbers three millions (id. ii. xiv. 3).
In reading the Acts it is evident that, had there been no foreign dispersion of the Jews, the rapid progress of Christianity could not have been what it was. At the feast of Pentecost there were gathered Jews from the four quarters of the Diaspora—the far and near East, Europe, and Africa; and soon afterwards Jews received Apostolic teaching at many centres, and when converted helped to spread it throughout the known world. But it is important to remember that before that time One greater than the Apostles came, more than once, into immediate contact with the masses of pilgrims who visited Jerusalem for the festivals. As a boy of twelve He first met them (Luke 2:42), and He probably attended many festivals in the 18 years which intervened before His ministry (see Luke 2:41). At a Passover He displayed to them His Divine indignation at the desecration of God’s sanctuary (John 2:13-17), and many believed on Him when they saw His miracles (John 2:23). It would seem as though the longing seized Him to bring all these thousands of foreigners to His allegiance at one stroke, by revealing to them His true nature. If we may say it reverently, it must have been a temptation to Him to send them back over many countries to tell all men that God had become man. But His own Divine intuition restrained Him (John 2:24 f.). Immediately before another Passover He saw the crowds moving along the road on their way to Jerusalem; and they came to Him, and He fed them (John 6:4-18). Here, again, the temptation offered itself in their wish to make Him king; but He resisted it, and was able to persuade them to leave Him (John 6:14 f.). At a feast of Pentecost (so Westcott) He suddenly appeared in their midst at Jerusalem, and many believed Him to be the Messiah when they heard His preaching (John 7:2; John 7:10-31; John 7:40 f.). Yet again at a Passover the crowds of pilgrims gave Him another opportunity of becoming king (Matthew 21:1-9, Mark 11:1-10, Luke 19:35-38, John 12:12-15), but He chose rather to gain His kingdom through death. It was for their benefit that the inscription upon the cross was trilingual—Aramaic, Greek, and Latin (John 19:20). A Jew from Africa, on his way into the city, was forced to perform an office which few envied him at the time, but which has never been forgotten by the Christian Church (Mark 15:21). Thus time after time the accounts of His miracles and preaching, and finally of His patient suffering and His death, and perhaps also reports of His resurrection, would be carried back by wandering Jews into ‘every nation under heaven.’
4. One colony of the Diaspora possesses a special importance in connexion with Christianity. Among the Alexandrian Jews originated the Greek translation of the OT—the version used by our Lord, the Apostles, and the great majority of the early Church. It remained in almost complete supremacy among Christians until it was superseded by the Vulgate. See art. Septuagint. The importance of Alexandria in connexion with the Fourth Gospel would be enormous if the contention of some writers were true, that St. John derived his doctrine of the Logos from Alexandrian philosophy. The doctrine, however, has affinities rather with Jewish than with Alexandrian thought. The most that can be said is that St. John may have employed the term because it already had a wide currency among both Jews and Greeks (see Westcott, Gospel of St. John, pp. xv–xviii, and art. ‘Logos’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible).
Literature.—Besides the authorities cited in the article, see artt. ‘Diaspora’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (Extra Vol.), ‘Dispersion’ in Encyc. Bibl. (with the literature there), and in Smith’s DB [Note: Dictionary of the Bible.] . Much illustrative matter may be gathered from Jewish histories, especially Schurer, HJP [Note: JP History of the Jewish People.] . See also E. R. Bevan, The House of Seleucus; J. P. Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptolemies.
A. H. M‘Neile.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Dispersion (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/d/dispersion-2.html. 1906-1918.
