1. The nearest analogy is that of the settlements of foreigners, especially Orientals, in the great trading cities of the Greco-Roman world. In all the great seaports of the Mediterranean, during the era of Hellenism we meet with Egyptian, Pheenician, Syrian traders, who not only carry on their business in passing, but are permanently settled there in greater or smaller numbers, and have formed themselves into close corporations for the defence of their common interests. They built their temples, maintained their religious service, and supported one another in their material inter- ests. Settlements of this kind are known to us from inscriptions, particularly at Athens (Egyptians, Kirets from Cyprus, Sidonians), Delos (‘T'yrians, Berytenses, Egyptians), Puteoli (Tyrians, Bery- tenses). The members of the corporation lived in the city as strangers (non-citizens), but their society enjoyed toleration and recognition from the State authorities. To this class belonged, without any doubt, the oldest settlements of the Jews in many places. They formed a xarokia, 2.e. a colony of foreigners, separate from the political commune.
2. Another analogy is presented by the private societies which existed in enormous numbers and in a pera variety of forms throughout the whole of the
reeco-Roman world. Religious or commercial in- terests, or both together, led in ancient as in later times to the forming of a great many ‘unions’ (@iaco, épavot, collegia), which had their own administration of funds, and exercised a certain discipline over their members. In looking after their own affairs they occupied an independent position in relation to the political commune similar to that of the colonies of foreigners just described, but were distinguished from them by the circumstance that (at least as a rule and for the most part) they consisted of natives, whether citizens and freedmen, or non-citizens and slaves. To this class belong most of the Jewish communities in later times. For the more the Jews became assimilated to their surroundings, the more they passed from the position of foreigners to that of homeborn, particularly in instances where they possessed the rights of citizenship. With all this, however, they appear as a rule to have retained a
certain position of isolation, for the amount of jurisdiction which, with the consent of the city authorities, they exercised within their own circle was, so far as we know, for the most part greater than was conceded to other religious or trades unions. * :
3. A third analogue to the communities of the Jewish Diaspora is seen in the corporations of Greeks and Romans in non-Greek or non-Roman countries. The Greeks, in view of the wide diffu- sion of Hellenism, had less occasion for forming such corporations. These were much commoner where Romans were concerned. As the ruling nation, the Romans outside Italy everywhere laid claim to a unique position. They were subject neither to taxation by the communes nor to the jurisdiction of the city authorities, but formed in- dependent bodies alongside of the communal socie- ties of the particular cities in which they lived. Examples of this kind are to be met with in great numbers throughout the whole extent of the Roman Empire (Mommsen, CJL iii. Suppl. p. 1306, on No. 7240; Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den Ostlichen Provinzen des rimischen Kaiserreichs, 1891, pp. 143-158). It is with this entirely inde- pendent position which these associations held in or rather alongside the communes, that we may compare the position of the Jews in Alexandria and in the city of Cyrene as described by Strabo (ap. Jos. Ant. XIV. vil. 2). For here they were not subject, as would appear, to the rule of the com- munal authorities, but constituted an independent corporation side by side with the rest of the body of citizens. Their independence thus went beyond what was enjoyed by the first two classes above described. ;
A uniform presupposition in all these political regulations was State toleration of the Jewish cultus. This was enjoyed by the communes almost everywhere and at most periods of time. In the empires of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids the religious freedom of the Jews was a matter of course. But the early Ptolemies and Seleucids also conferred important political rights upon their Jewish subjects (see below, § iv.).+ Antiochus the Great protected the cultus at Jerusalem by royal statutes (Jos. Ant. XI. iii. 3,4). [The genuimeness of these is, indeed, disputed (see Biichler, Die Tobiaden und die Oniaden, 1899, pp. 143-171; Willrich, Judaica, 1900, pp. 48f., 58-60), but on what appear to the present writer insuffi- cient grounds. The genuineness is held, amongst others, by Ed. Meyer, Die Entstehung des Juden- thums, 1896, pp. 66, 68]. The persecution of the
*Mommsen (Histor. Zeitschrift, Ixiv. [1890] 421-426) has contended that it was only down to the fall of Jerusalem that the Jews were regarded as a people (gens, é6ves), and that after that event ‘the place of the privileged nation was taken by the privileged confession.’ That is to say, in the earlier period political privileges had been accorded to all who were Jews by birth, and to them alone, whereas in the later they belonged to all who professed the Jewish religion, and to them alone. But, in the opinion of the present writer, this is pushing an ob- servation which is correct in itself to far too sharp a point, when an actual juristic formula is thus arrived at. Even during the period of the late empire the Jews were still in many instances regarded as a ‘people’ (the inscription of Smyrna +a Over réiv "lovdeswy dates at the earliest from the 8rd cent. A.D., and even the inscriptions of Hierapolis must be placed sub- sequent to a.p. 70). And it was just the later emperors who sought to prevent the ‘confession’ from being extended beyond the circle of the Jewish nation; that is to say, they granted privileges only to the people, and not to the con- fession. Mommsen’s view, however, will be found correct to this extent, that the Jews, as time went on, advanced more and more from the first of the above two classes to the second.