viii. THE JEWS OF THE DIASPORA.—As long as the existence of the post-exilic Jewish State in Palestine continued, the Jewish communities of the Diaspora were thrown into the shade by it. Nevertheless, developments and transformations took place amongst these, which were of the greatest significance both for Judaism itself and
* 2 Es 1287f. ‘Write all this in a book, and put it in a secret place, and teach the wise of thy people, of whom thou art sure that they are able to comprehend and keep these secrets,’
+ The Assumption of Moses appears to have originated in
| Zealot circles.
# Cf., among others, Dalman, Worte Jesu, 1898 [Eng. tr. 1902]; Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, vi. 225 ff. ; Baldensperger,
Das Judentwm als Vorstufe des Christentums, 1900.
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
for Christianity. At the time of Christ there were Jewish communities in every considerable town of the world. Originally, the Jews had been forcibly transported to foreign lands: by the Assyrians and Babylonians to the Euphrates districts, by Artaxerxes Ochus to Hyrcania, ete. ; or they had taken their flight abroad from fear of their enemies: so, for instance, those Jews who fled to Egypt after the murder of Gedaliah (2 K 25%, Jer 41"), But afterwards they migrated, in ever- increasing numbers, to various countries and settled there, partly, it may be, because they were dissatisfied with the conditions at home, partly because great material advantages were offered them in foreign parts. The chief centres were the Euphrates districts, Syria, and Egypt ; * but there were also many Jews settled in the other Mediterranean lands, and it may be presumed that in NT times there was a large Jewish community in Rome. Of all the cities inhabited by Jews the most important was Alexandria, for here they were not only*so numerous that two of the five districts of the city were called ‘the Jewish,’ but they came into contact here especially with the Hellenistic world of thought, and allowed them- selves to be strongly influenced by it.
An essential factor in the life of the Jews of the Diaspora was the free exercise of their religion, which was allowed them in the time of the Dia- _docht and under the Roman domination. Things went best with them in places where they lived as an independent body with State recognition, whereas, in those lands or cities where they simply enjoyed equal rights of citizenship with others, they readily came into collision and conflict with the heathen population. Amongst their privileges must be reckoned also the possession of a juris- diction and a coinage of theirown. The latter in particular was of importance, for thus alone were they in a position to pay the poll-tax to Jeru- salem. On other points the constitution and organization of Jewish communities differed in different countries.
The religious instruction of the Jews of the Diaspora was based, like that at home, upon the regular service of the synagogue, there being one or more synagogues wherever Jews were settled. In Hellenistic circles the Septuagint played the same part as the Hebrew text in the mother country, being without doubt used in the reading of the Scriptures, as acquaintance with Hebrew must have been rare on the part of Jews living abroad. See, further, art. DIASPORA in the pres- ent volume, p. 91 ff.
The Jewish - Hellenistic literature, owing not only to its being written in the Greek language, but to its being more or less interpenetrated with the Greek spirit, and its use of the Greek literary forms, has a different stamp from the Palestinian. Leaving out of account the Alexandrian expan- sions of some books of the OT, we may classify this literature under the three heads of History, Poetry, and Philosophy. ’ .
A number of writers treated the ancient Jewish history in a modernizing fashion, in order thereby to claim for it the interest of the foreign world of readers. In addition to some fragments, of which those of Eupolemus, owing to their peculiar syn- eretism, are the most notable, we have to mention here especially the Antiquities of Josephus, a work which for the reasons mentioned above must be assigned to the Hellenistic rather than to the Palestinian literature. Other authors made_the immediate past the subject of their narratives. Thus the so-called Second Book of Maccabees is an extract from the extensive work of Jason of
* Philo estimates the number of Jews in Egypt at about a million (ed. Mangey, ii. 523).
TALMUD 57
Cyrene on the Maccabeean rising. The most valu- able of these writings is Josephus’ account (BJ) of the great revolt of the Jews against the Romans to which are attached certain portions of his auto- biography. An ill-natured attack upon the Jews led Josephus, further, to compose an apologetic work (¢c. Apion.), having for its aim to exhibit the high antiquity of Judaism. To the class of literary forgeries belongs the so-called Letter of Aristeas, in which a Jewish author makes a heathen relate the story of the origin of the Septuagint. The same is the case with a ‘tendency’ recension of a work on the Jews by Hecatzeus, the reviser of which put forth his composition under the name of the Greek historian. : :
As regards the employment of poetry, we have, first of all, the remarkable attempts to transfer the forms of the epos and the drama to the realm of Jewish history. There are, for instance, frag- ments of an epic presentation of the history of Jerusalem by a Philo, and a drama by an Ezekiel, whose subject is the Exodus. To the same cate- gory belong also the verses put by Jewish poets into the mouth of the ancient oracle-giving Sibyls, and which mark the apocalyptic tendency that was so prominent in Palestinian, but less so in Hellenistic, circles. See below, p. 66 ff.