Amongst the most important obligations which the Law imposed upon the Jews was that of paying the manifold dues to the priests and to the temple at Jerusalem: firstfruits, heave - offering, tithe, firstlings, dues in connexion with baking and killing, offerings on divers occasions, and finally the two drachme tax. So far asa due levied on the products of the soil of the Holy Land was concerned (firstfruits, heave -offering, tithe), the Jews of the Diaspora were, as a matter of course, exempt. But there remained still enough of performances to which even a Jew living far from Jerusalem was bound, if he meant to be true to his religion. If the dues could not, owing to distance, be paid in kind, they had to
* Its situation is most precisely defined in Jos. Ant. xl. lil. 2: 76 éy Asovray wore: rod “HasoroAirou lepoy cuperer taxes . . . Tporn- yopevouevoy 08 ris c&ypias BovBéorews. In other passages Jose- phus says merely that the temple was situated ‘in the nome of Heliopolis’ (Ant. xu. ix. 7, xu. x. 4, xx. x. 83; BJ 1, i. 1, vil. x. 8). We have to do, then, not with the better-known Leontopolis, which formed a nome of its own, but with another, which was included in the nome of Heliopolis. The latter lay on the east side of the Delta. In this neighbourhood there are still two mounds, each bearing the name T’ell_el-Jehudiyeh (see N aville, ‘The Mound of the Jew and the City of Onias’ in Seventh Memoir of the Egypt. Explor. Fund, 1890). One of the two will be identical with the foundation of Onias. Naville fixes upon the one farthest south, on account of its being nearer to Heliopolis. The more northern one, however, seems to the present writer the likelier site, because there are evidences of the Bubastis cult at it. See also above, p. 96%.
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108 DIASPORA
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DIASPORA
be converted into money. All these obligations were, so far as we know, punctiliously and zeal- ously discharged by the far scattered Diaspora. The result of this was the accumulation of immense stores of wealth at the central sanctuary. Josephus (Ant, XIV. vii. 2) expressly accounts for these by pointing to the great extent of the Diaspora. Philo gives a detailed account of the collecting and delivery of the money (de Monarchia, ii. 3 [ed. Mangey, ii. 224]): ‘The temple derives its revenue not merely from a few pieces of land, but from other and much more copious sources, which can never be destroyed. For so long as the human race endures, the temple’s sources of revenue will also continue, since their permanence is bound up with that of the whole world. For it is prescribed that all Jews over twenty years of age shall pay annual dues... . But, as might be expected in the case of so numerous a people, the dues amount to an enormous sum. Jn almost every city there is a receiving office for the sacred funds, into which the dues are paid. And at fixed times men of noble birth are entrusted with the conveyance of the money to Jerusalem. ‘The noblest are chosen in every city, in order that the hope of every Jew may be transmitted unimpaired. For the hope of the pious is based upon the regular payment of the dues.’ In the Euphrates districts the principal treasuries were in the cities of Nisibis and Nehar- dea. In these the money was first collected and thence transmitted to Jerusalem at a fixed time, many thousands taking charge of its conveyance, in order to protect the sacred treasure from the plundering attacks of the Parthians (Jos. Amt. Xv ol)
The transmission of such large sums to Jerusalem repeatedly gave rise to collisions with the Roman and municipal authorities. Flaccus, during his administration of the Province of Asia, prevented the money being sent, and municipal authorities were constantly inclined to do the same. But the Roman legislation subsequent to the time of Cesar protected the religious liberty of the Jews in this as in other matters (see above, p. 103). After the destruction of the temple, the payment of sacred dues necessarily underwent transforma- tion. The two drachme tax was converted into a Roman tax ; other dues which depended upon the continued existence of the temple could not, in the nature of things, be paid any longer. But even under these circumstances the Jewish people, by voluntary self- taxation, continued to assert their unity. A new central authority, the Patri- archate, was created, to which at least a portion of the prescribed sacred dues was paid every year. The collecting of these was now accomplished by deputies of the Patriarchate, the so-called apostoli.
The principal means of maintaining an exchange of thought between the mother country and the Diaspora, and of furthering and maintaining a close fellowship between the two, was found in the frequent festival pilgrimages made by Jews from all parts of the world to Jerusalem. ‘Many thousands from many thousand cities journeyed to the temple at every festival, some by land and some by sea, from east and west, from north and south’ (Philo, de Monarchia, ii. 1 [ed. Mangey, ii. 223]). The number of Jews ordinarily present at Jerusalem at the feasts is reckoned by Josephus at 2,700,000, a number which, indeed, also in- cludes the permanent population of Jerusalem (BJ VI. ix. 3).