Dispersion, The:
dis-pur'-shun, (diaspora):
1. Golah and Dispersion
2. Purpose of Dispersion
3. Causes of Dispersion
4. Extent of Dispersion
5. The Eastern Dispersion
6. The Egyptian Dispersion
7. Testimony of Aramaic Papyri
8. Jewish Temple at Syene
9. Theories of the Syene Settlement
10. Importance of the Discovery
11. A New Chapter of Old Testament History
12. Alexandrian Judaism
13. The Jews and Hellenism
14. The Septuagint
15. Early Evidence of a Jewish Community
16. The Dispersion in Syria
17. In Arabia
18. In Asia Minor
19. Among Greeks Proper
20. The Roman Dispersion
21. Jews and Pompey
22. Jews and the First Caesars
23. Influence of Jews in the Early Roman Empire
24. Jews in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa.
25. The Numbers of the Dispersion
26. Jewish Proselytism
27. Internal Organization
28. Unity of the Jewish People
29. Dispersion Influenced by Greek Thought
30. The Dispersion a Preparation for the Advent of Christ
31. The Dispersion an Auxiliary to the Spread of the Gospel
1. Golah and Dispersion:
The Dispersion is the comprehensive designation applied to Jews living outside of Palestine and maintaining their religious observances and customs among the Gentiles. They were known as the Golah (Aramaic Galutha'), the captivity-an expression describing them in relation to their own land; and the Diaspora, the Dispersion, an expression describing them in relation to the nations among whom they were scattered. On a notable occasion Jesus said, "Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, ye cannot come. The Jews therefore said among themselves, Whither will this man go that we shall not find him? Will he go unto the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?" (Joh 7:34,35).
2. Purpose of Dispersion:
In 2 Maccabees certain priests of Jerusalem are represented as praying to God: "Gather together our Dispersion, set at liberty them that are in bondage among the heathen" (2 Macc 1:27; compare 2 Esdras 2:7; Jas 1:1; 1Pe 1:1). The thought of such a Dispersion as a punishment for the disobedience of the people finds frequent expression in the Prophets: Hosea (Ho 9:3), Jeremiah (Jer 8:3; 16:15, etc.), Ezekiel (Eze 4:13), and Zechariah (Zec 10:9). And it appears also in the Deuteronomic Law (De 28:25; 30:1). That the Dispersion of the Jews was for the benefit of the Gentiles is a conception to which expression is given in utterances of psalmists and prophets (Ps 67; Mic 5:7, etc.). It is found also in the Apocrypha Baruch, a work belonging to the 1st century AD: "I will scatter this people among the Gentiles, that they may do good to the Gentiles" (1:7).
3. Causes of Dispersion:
The causes of the Dispersion most obvious to the student of Old Testament history were the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, when the king of Assyria carried Israel away into his own land and placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2Ki 17:5 ff); and when in the reign of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, Judah was carried away into Babylonia (2Ki 24:14). See CAPTIVITY. But there were other captivities which helped to scatter the children of Abraham. Ptolemy I of Egypt (322-285 BC) by his expeditions to Palestine and his capture of Jerusalem added largely to the Jewish population of Alexandria. Antiochus the Great of Syria (223-187 BC) removed from the Jewish communities in Mesopotamia and Babylon 2,000 families and settled them in Phrygia and Lydia (Josephus, Ant, XII, iii, 4). Pompey after his capture of Jerusalem in 63 BC carried off hundreds of Jews to Rome, where they were sold as slaves, but, afterward, many of them obtained their freedom and civic rights.
4. Extent of Dispersion:
There was, besides, a voluntary emigration of Jewish settlers for purposes of trade and commerce into the neighboring countries, and especially into the chief cities of the civilized world. The successors of Alexander, and their successors in turn, encouraged immigration into their territories and the mingling of nationalities. They needed colonists for the settlements and cities which they established, and with the offer of citizenship and facilities for trade and commerce they attracted many of the Jewish people.
"In this way," says Philo, "Jerus became the capital, not only of Judea, but of many other lands, on account of the colonies which it sent out from time to time into the bordering districts of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coele-Syria, and into the more distant regions of Pamphylia, Cilicia, the greater part of Asia Minor as far as Bithynia, and the remotest corners of Pontus. And in like manner into Europe: into Thessaly, and Boeotia, and Macedonia, and Aetolia, and Attica and Argos, and Corinth, and into the most fertile and fairest parts of the Peloponnesus. And not only is the continent full of Jewish colonists, but also the most important islands, such as Euboea, Cyprus, and Crete. I say nothing of the countries beyond the Euphrates. All of them except a very small portion, and Babylon, and all the satrapies which contain fruitful land, have Jewish inhabitants" (Philo, Leg ad Caium, 36).
About the middle of the 2nd century BC the Sibylline Oracles could say of the Jewish people: "Every land and every sea is full of thee" (3:271). About the same period the Roman Senate, being anxious to extend protection to the Jews, had a circular letter written in their favor to the kings of Egypt, Syria, Pergamum, Cappadocia and Parthia, and to a great number of provinces, cities and islands of the Mediterranean, where presumably there was a larger or smaller number of Jews (1 Macc 15:15 ff). It is no surprise, therefore, to read that for the Feast of Pentecost at Jerusalem, there were present after the ascension of Jesus: "Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians" (Ac 2:9-12).
5. The Eastern Dispersion:
The Eastern Dispersion, caused by the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, seems to have increased and multiplied, and to have enjoyed a considerable measure of liberty, and of prosperity. When the return from the captivity took place Under Zerubbabel, it was only a small proportion of the exiles who sought a home again in the land of their fathers. Nor did the numbers who accompanied Ezra from Babylon greatly diminish the exiles who remained behind. In the time of Christ, Josephus could speak of the Jews in Babylenia by "innumerable myriads" (Ant., XI, v, 2). He also tells us of the 2,000 Jewish families whom Antiochus transferred from Babylon and Mesopotamia to Phrygia and Syria. Of the peculiarities of the Jews as a people living apart and observing their own customs and arousing the ill-will of the neighbors, we have a glimpse in the Persian period in the Book of Es (3:8). Babylonia remained a focus of eastern Judaism for centuries, and from the discussions in rabbinical schools there were elaborated the Talmud of Jerusalem in the 5th century of our era, and the Talmud of Babylon a century later. The two chief centers of Mesopotamian Judaism were Nehardea, a town on the Euphrates, and Nisibis on the Mygdonius; an affluent of the Chaboras, which were also centers of Syrian Christianity.
6. The Egyptian Dispersion:
The Egyptian Dispersion is of special interest and importance, and recent discoveries have thrown unexpected light upon it. As far back as the days of Sheshenq, the founder of the 22nd Dynasty, the Shishak of 1Ki 14:25 f; 2Ch 12:2 f, who invaded Palestine in the 10th century BC, and engraved on the South wall of the great Temple of Karnak the names of many districts and cities he had captured, prisoners of war and hostages may have been carried off to Egypt by the conqueror. At a later time Jewish mercenaries are said to have fought in the expedition of Psammetichus II against Ethiopia, to which expedition belong the famous inscriptions of Abu Simbel (594-589 BC). So we learn from the well-known Letter of Aristeas. But the clearest and best-known example of a settlement of Jews in Egypt is that connected with the prophet Jeremiah. When Gedaliah, the governor of Judea, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, had been treacherously murdered, the depressed and dispirited remnant under Johnnan, the son of Kareah, resolved to take flight into Egypt, against the counsel of Jeremiah. A host of fugitives, including Jeremiah and his friend Baruch, accordingly set out thither, and settled at Migdol and Tahpanhes and Noph (Memphis), and in the country of Pathros in upper Egypt (Jer 43$; 44$). It was in Egypt with those fugitives that Jeremiah ended his life. Many of the fugitives were taken prisoners by Nebuchadrezzar on one of his latest expeditions to the west, and were transported to Babylon (Josephus, Ant, X, ix, 7; compare Jer 43:8 f).
7. Testimony of Aramaic Papyri:
Of this colony of Jews it is natural to see a strong confirmation in the recent discovery of Aramaic papyri at Assouan, the Syene of the ancients. The papyri were the contents of a deed box of a member of a Jewish colony in upper Egypt, and the deeds refer to house property in which Jews are concerned. Here then at Assouan, about 470 BC is a colony of Jews who have acquired houses and other property, and have become bankers and money lenders, within a century of the death of Jeremiah. In the papyri there is evidence of the existence of a tribunal of the Hebrews, a court where cases could be decided, as fully recognized by law as any of the other courts, Egyptian or Persian, for Egypt, "the basest of kingdoms," was then subject to a Persian suzerain. Most significant of all, Yahweh is acknowledged as the God of the Jews, and the existence of a chapel and even of an altar of sacrifice is beyond all doubt. Evidently these Jews in Egypt did not consider that an altar of Yahweh could not stand anywhere else than at Jerusalem, or that outside Jerusalem the worship of the synagogue was the only worship of the God of their fathers. These facts are rendered still more striking when we regard them as a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy: "In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Yahweh of hosts; one shall be called the city of destruction. In that day there shall be an altar to Yahweh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to Yahweh" (Isa 19:18,19). These papyri give information similar to that which the clay tablets discovered at Nippur give regarding the house of Murashu Sons (see CAPTIVITY) about the same time-the time when Ezra was setting out from Babylon to restore at Jerusalem the worship of the temple which Zerubbabel had rebuilt. It was just about a century from the time that Jeremiah had gone down to Egypt that we have the first of these deeds, and it was the grandfathers, or great-grandfathers, of the persons concerned whom he had accompanied thither so much against his will.
8. Jewish Temple at Syene:
These papyri were discovered in 1904, and a year or two later, additional papyri were discovered in a mound which stands on the site of the ancient Elephantine or Yeb, an island in the Nile, on the frontier also. One of these papyri contains a petition from the Jewish colony in Elephantine addressed to Bagohi (called Bagoas by Josephus, Ant, XI, vii, 7), the Persian governor of Judah, about 408 BC. They ask for assistance to enable them to rebuild the temple of Yahweh in Elephantine, which had been destroyed at the instigation of the priests of the rain-headed Egyptian god Khnub, who had a temple in the fortress of Yeb or Elephantine. This Jewish temple had been erected to Yahweh at least 125 years before and had been spared by Cambyses in 525 BC when he destroyed all the temples erected to the gods of Egypt. The destruction of the temple at Yeb occurred in the 14th year of Darius, 411 BC. It contained an altar for burnt sacrifice, and there were gold and silver vessels in which the blood of sacrifice was collected. The head of the college of priests presenting this petition is Jedoniah, a name found in an abbreviated form in Jadon (Ne 3:7).
9. Theories of the Syene Settlement:
An attempt has been made to show that the bearers of these Hebrew names were descended from the captivity of the Northern Kingdom. It is suggested that they had come into Egypt with the Persian army under Cambyses from their adopted homes in Assyria and the cities of the Medes and had obtained possessions on the southern frontier of Egypt. Names believed to point to the Northern Kingdom, like Hosea and Menahem, occur very frequently, but this is too narrow a foundation for such a theory, and the Israelite origin of the Syene colonists is not established (JQR (1907), 441 ff). There is more to be said in favor of the view that they were the descendants of a Jewish military colony. That Jewish mercenaries fought in the campaigns of the Pharaohs we have already seen. And that Elephantine was an important garrison town on the frontier is also certain. Josephus (Ant., XIV, vi, 2) mentions a Jewish military colony holding a post at Pelusium in the century before Christ, and this might be a similar garrison stationed at the opposite extremity of the land in the 5th century. Such a garrison would attract Jews engaged in business and in the occupations of civil life, and so a distinct Jewish community would be formed. It has even been suggested that the tidings of the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem furnished the motive to these Egyptian Jews to build the temple and rear the altar of burnt offering which the heathen priests of Khnub had destroyed.
10. Importance of the Discovery:
While the petition to the religious authorities at Jerusalem indicates that the priests of Elephantine regarded their temple as dependent upon the temple at Jerusalem, it is significant. that they were also, as is shown in their letter, in communication with Delaiah and Shelemiah the sons of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. That this was Nehemiah's enemy (Ne 4:1; 6:1, etc.) is impossible, for he lived nearly a century earlier. But the association with descendants of his, themselves Samaritans, gives a schismatical appearance to the position of the Elephantine temple. The existence of this temple with its priesthood, its altar of sacrifice, and its offerings, from 500 years BC, is an important fact in the history of the Dispersion. It was meant to keep those Jewish exiles true to the religion of their fathers and in religious fellowship with their brethren in Palestine. For a like purpose the Temple of Onias at Leontopolis was erected in the early years of the Maccabean struggle. Onias had to flee from Jerusalem with a number of priests and Levites, and for the aid he rendered to Ptolemy Philometor, the king of Egypt, he received a gift of land upon which he built a temple like to the Temple at Jerusalem. Professor Flinders Petrie believes he has discovered this temple of Onias IV at Tel el-Yehudiyeh (Hyksos and Israelite Cities, 31). The discovery confirms the account given of the temple by Josephus, who is our only authority for its erection (Ant., XIII, iii, 2; XIV, viii, 2).
11. A New Chapter of Old Testament History:
The Elephantine-Syene papyri have added a new and valuable chapter to Old Testament history. We know now of a Jewish temple in Egypt which certainly reaches 400 years further into antiquity than the temple of Onias IV at Leontopolis, and we obtain important information as to the relations of its priesthood with the leaders of the Jerusalem Jews and the Samaritans. We know now from unbiased authorities that the Jewish settlements in the Valley of the Nile are much older than has hitherto been believed. We have valuable confirmation not only of the notices in the Book of Jeremiah, but also of the statements in the later Hellenistic literature. Moreover, it is now shown that the skepticism which has prevailed in some quarters as to the very existence of any considerable Egyptian Dispersion before the time of Alexander the Great is unwarranted (Peters, Die judische Gemeinde von Elephantine-Syene, 50 f; Schurer, GJV4, III, 19 f).
12. Alexandrian Judaism:
What exactly were the fortunes of this Jewish community at a later time, no record has yet been found to tell. Possibly it decayed in course of time, for Herodotus who visited Egypt about 450 BC makes no mention of it and found no Jews in sufficient numbers to attract his attention. It was undoubtedly with the founding of Alexandria in 332 BC that the flourishing period of Judaism in Egypt commenced. Alexander the Great had hastened from the field of victory at Issus 333 BC, through Syria by way of Tyre, the siege of which occupied him some months, showing clemency to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and severity to the recalcitrant inhabitants of Gaza till by its eastern gate he entered Egypt and took possession of the land of the Pharaohs. The Jews appear to have been friendly to Macedonian conquest, and in Alexander's new city they received the rights of citizenship and two quarters all to themselves. That they were restricted to their own quarters does not appear, and in the time of Philo, at the commencement of the Christian era, they had synagogues and places of prayer in all parts of the city. Alexander died in 323 BC but the favor which he had accorded to the Jews was continued by the Ptolemies who succeeded to his Egyptian empire. The first Ptolemy, Lagi or Soter (322-285 BC), increased the Jewish population of Alexandria by raids into Palestine on which he brought back a large number of captives, both Jews and Samaritans. Other Jews, hearing of his liberality and of the prosperity of their coreligionists, were attracted to Egypt and settled in Alexandria of their own accord (Josephus, Ant, XII, i, 1). Under their own ethnarch they enjoyed great prosperity and had full religious liberty. The principal synagogue of the city was on a scale of great magnificence. In the reign of Ptolemy Philometor (182-146 BC) they were allowed to set up the temple at Leontopolis, as we have already noticed. In the time of Philo the Jewish colony in Egypt was considered to number a million.
13. The Jews and Hellenism:
It was in Alexandria that the Jews first came so powerfully under the influence of Hellenism, and here that the peculiar Greco- Jewish philosophy sprang up of which Philo was the most notable representative. The same soil was eminently favorable to early Christianity which had from the end of the 2nd century onward its greatest teachers and their learned catechetical school. See ALEXANDRIA.
14. The Septuagint:
The great monument of Hellenistic Judaism, which had its chief seat in Alexandria, is the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which became such a powerful praeparatio evangelica, and was the Bible of the Apostles and the first Christians, even of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is ascribed in the Letter of Aristeas to the interest of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285- 247 BC) in a proposal to secure a copy of the Jewish Law in an accessible translation for the famous Royal Library. It is more likely that as familiarity with their Hebrew tongue diminished in their new surroundings, the need of an intelligible version of the Law to begin with was felt, and Jewish hands were set to work to produce it. In course of time the rest followed, but from the tradition of its being the work of 70 or 72 translators it is known as the Septuagint. See SEPTUAGINT.
15. Early Evidence of a Jewish Community:
The question has been raised whether too much has not been made of a Jewish community in Alexandria so early, and it has been asserted that we can scarcely speak of a Jewish Dispersion anywhere before the Maccabean period in the second half of the 2nd century BC. The evidence as we have seen points to the existence of Jewish communities continuously from the days of Jeremiah. Papyri prove the presence of Jews in Egypt, not only in the towns but in country districts from a comparatively early period. A remarkable inscription has recently come to light showing that at Schedia, some 20 miles from Alexandria, there existed a Jewish community which had built a synagogue and dedicated it to the honor of Ptolemy III Euergetes (247-222 BC) and his queen Berenice. If such a community was organized in the little town of Schedia at that date, we can well believe the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria to have had a considerable Jewish community at a still earlier date.
16. Dispersion in Syria:
When we turn to Syria, we find large numbers of Jews, notwithstanding the hatred of Greeks and Syrians. Josephus (BJ, VII, iii, 3) says that it is the country which has the largest percentage of Jewish inhabitants, and Antioch among the towns of Syria had the preeminence. In Damascus, which seems to have had a Jewish quarter or Jewish bazaars in the days of Ahab (1Ki 20:34 and Burney's note at the place), the Jewish population was numbered by thousands. From Galilee and Gilead and the region of the Hauran, Judas Maccabeus and his brother Jonathan brought bodies of Jews, who were settlers among a pagan population, for safety to Judea (1 Macc 5).
17. In Arabia:
Even in Arabia Judaism had considerable footing. Edward Glaser, who prosecuted valuable archaeological researches in Arabia (see Hilprecht, Recent Researches in Bible Lands, 131 ff), professes to have found Himyaritic inscriptions of the 4th and 5th centuries of our era which are monotheistic and therefore Jewish, but there is still uncertainty as to this. In the beginning of the 6th century a Jewish king actually reigned in Arabia, and because of his persecution of the Christians he was attacked and overthrown by the Christian king of Abyssinia.
18. In Asia Minor:
Of the widespread distribution of the Dispersion in Asia Minor there is abundant testimony, not only in the texts of the apostles, but in classical and early Christian literature and in the epigraphic literature which has been accumulating for the last 30 years. At Pergamum, in Lydia, in Karia, at Magnesia, at Tralles, at Miletum, in Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Pontus, considerable Jewish communities existed at the beginning of the Christian era. At Smyrna the Jews played a prominent part in the death of Polycarp 155 AD, being especially zealous in heaping up fagots upon the fire that consumed the martyr. In his Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia Sir William Ramsay mentions numerous indications found on inscriptions of Jewish settlers, and his chapter on "The Jews in Phrygia" focuses the results of his inquiries (op. cit., 667 ff; compare 649 ff). He has also made it extremely probable that long before Paul's day there was a strong body of Jews in Tarsus of Cilicia, and he holds that a Jewish colony was settled there as early as 171 BC. "The Seleucid kings," he says, like the Ptolemies, "used the Jews as an element of the colonies which they founded to strengthen their hold on Phrygia and other countries." But it is difficult to trace out the profound influence they exerted in the development of their country from the fact that they adopted to such an extent Greek and Roman names and manners, and were thus almost indistinguishable. At Laodicea and Hierapolis there have been found many evidences of their presence: for example, at the latter place an inscription on a gravestone tells how the deceased Publius Aelius Glycon mortified a sum of money to provide for the decoration of his tomb every year at the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
19. Among Greeks Proper:
The Dispersion among the Greeks proper had attained to considerable dimensions in the time of Christ. Philo, as noticed above, mentions Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedonia, Aetolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth and the fairest and most fertile parts of the Peloponnesus as having Jewish inhabitants. Inscriptions recovered from Delphi and elsewhere relating to the manumission of slaves in the 2nd century BC contain the names of Jews (Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 325 f). In Sparta and Sicyon, Jews lived in the days of the Maccabees (1 Macc 15:23). At Philippi we know from Ac 16:16 there was a proseuche, or place of of prayer, and at Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth there were synagogues in Paul's time. On the islands of the Greek archipelago and the Mediterranean there were Jews. Cyprus, the home of Barnabas, had a large Jewish population; and Euboea and Crete are named by Philo as Jewish centers. Rhodes has the distinction of having produced two opponents of Judaism in the first half of the 1st century BC. Clearchus of Soli, a disciple of Aristotle, introduces in one of his dialogues a Jew from Coele-Syria, Hellenic not in speech only but in mind, representing him as having come in his travels to Asia Minor and there conversed with Aristotle. Such an experience may have been rare so early; the incident may not be fact, but fiction; yet such as it is it tells a tale of the spread of Judaism.
20. The Roman Dispersion:
The relations of Rome with the Jewish people lend special interest to the Dispersion there. Jews do not appear to have been settled in Rome before the Maccabean period. There is a certain pathos in the appeal made to the Roman state by Judas Maccabeus, amid the difficulties that were gathering round his position, for "a league of amity and confederacy" with the Roman people (1 Macc 8:17-32). His brother and successor, Jonathan, followed this up later (1 Macc 12:1-4,16). And in 140 BC Simon sent a delegation which concluded a treaty, offensive and defensive, with Rome, which was duly intimated by the Senate to their allies in various countries, especially of the East. During the stay of the mission at Rome its members seem to have made attempts at religious propagandism, and the praetor Hispalus compelled them to return to their homes for attempting to corrupt Roman morals by introducing the worship of Jupiter Sabazius which is no doubt the Roman interpretation of the Lord of Hosts (Yahweh Sabaoth). But ere long in Rome, as in Alexandria, they formed a colony by themselves, occupying Trastevere, the Transtiberine portion of the city, together with an island in the Tiber. Their prosperity grew with their numbers. When Cicero in 59 BC was defending Flaccus he speaks of gold being sent out of Italy, and all the provinces, to Jerusalem, and there was present among his listeners a large body of Jews interested in the case.
21. Jews and Pompey:
When Pompey had captured Jerusalem in 63 BC, he brought back with him to Rome a number of Jewish captives. They were sold as slaves, but many of them received their freedom and rights to citizenship. When Julius Caesar, who was a great patron and protector of the Jews, was assassinated, they wept over him for nights on end.
22. Jews and the First Caesars:
Augustus protected and encouraged them. Tiberius, however, adopted repressive measures toward them, and 4,000 Jews were deported by him to Sardinia while others were driven out of the city. With the downfall of Sejanus, the unworthy favorite of Tiberius, this repressive policy was reversed and they were allowed to return to Rome. Claudius again devised measures against them (circa 50 AD), and they were banished from the city. They had, however, so multiplied and they had attained such influence that it was impossible to get rid of them altogether.
23. Influence of Jews in the Early Roman Empire:
Their customs and religious observances brought down upon them the scorn of Juvenal and others, while Empire their faith and worship had attractions for the thoughtful and the superstitious.
"The Jews from the time of the first Caesar," says Sir Samuel Dill, "have worked their way into every class of society. A Jewish prince had inspired Caligula with an oriental ideal of monarchy. There were adherents of Judaism in the household of the great freedmen of Claudius, and their growing influence and turbulence compelled that emperor to expel the race from his capital. The worldly, pleasure-loving Poppea had, perhaps, yielded to the mysterious charms of the religion of Moses. But it was under the Flavians, who had such close associations with Judea, that Jewish influences made themselves most felt. And in the reign of Domitian, two members of the imperial house, along with many others, suffered for following the Jewish mode of life" (Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, 84).
In recent excavations, which have laid bare much of subterranean Rome, many Jewish tombs have been examined and have yielded much additional knowledge of the conditions of Jewish life in the capital of the Caesars. Probably Jews gracing Pompey's triumph after his Syrian campaign, 61 BC, made the first Roman catacombs similar to those on Jewish hillsides and especially round Jerusalem; and in these Jewish catacombs pagans and Christians were never laid.
24. Jews in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa:
In Italy, apart from Roman and Southern Italy, where they were widely spread, the number of Jews at the beginning of our era was not large. In Southern Gaul they were numerous and in Spain they were numerous and powerful. In North Africa there were Jewish communities in many centers, and Cyrene was the home of a large and flourishing Jewish population.
25. The Numbers of the Dispersion:
It is not easy to form a trustworthy estimate of the Jewish population of the world in the times of Christ. Harnack reckons up four or four and a half millions (Expansion of Christianity, I, 10) within the Roman Empire. The Judaism of the Dispersion would at least be several times more numerous than the Judaism of Palestine.
26. Jewish Proselytism:
The question has been discussed how far the Jews of the Dispersion recruited their ranks by proselytism. That they should maintain a propaganda on behalf of their ancestral faith would only be in keeping with the character of their religion as a religion of revelation. Although they had to live within "the hedge of the Law" to protect them against the corruptions and idolatries of the Gentiles, there was nevertheless at the heart of Judaism a missionary purpose, as we see from the universalism of the Psalms and the Prophets. Judaism was burdened with a message which concerned all men, to the effect that there was one God, holy and spiritual, Creator of heaven and earth, who had committed to the family of Abraham in trust for the world His Law. To witness for the Living God, and to proclaim His Law, was the chief element of the Jewish propaganda in the Roman empire, and their system of proselytism enabled them to gain adherents in numbers. In this the Old Testament Scriptures and the observance of the Sabbath were important factors, and enabled them to win the adherence of intelligent and educated people.
27. Internal Organization:
That the Jews of the Dispersion had an internal organization with courts of their own, having considerable jurisdiction, not only in spiritual but in civil affairs, there is no doubt. This would only be in accordance with the analogy of their constitution as seen in the New Testament, and of their commercial organization in many lands to this day.
28. Unity of the Jewish People:
In all the lands of their Dispersion the Jews never lost touch with the land of their fathers, or Jerusalem, the city of the Great King. The bond of unity was maintained by the pilgrimages they made from all the countries where they were scattered to their three great national feasts; by the payment of the half-shekel toward the services of the Temple as long as it stood; and by their voluntary submission, so long as they had a national polity, to the decrees of the great Sanhedrin.
29. Dispersion Influenced by Greek Thought:
That Judaism was influenced in its Dispersion by contact of the larger world of life and thought in which the Jews had their place outside of Palestine we can see by the example of Alexandria. It was there that it felt most powerfully the penetrating and pervasive influence of Greek thought, and the large apocryphal and apocalyptic literature which sprang up there is one of the most notable results. "The Alexandrian Jew was in reality both a Jew and a Greek; he held the faith of Yahweh and sincerely worshipped the God of his fathers, but he spoke the Greek language, had received a Greek education, and had contracted many Greek ideas and habits. Still those in his position were Jews first, and Greeks afterward, and on all ?The fundamentals' were in thorough sympathy with their Palestinian brethren" (Fairweather, From the Exile to the Advent, 109 f).
30. The Dispersion a Preparation for the Advent of Christ:
The Jewish people thus widely distributed over the Roman world with their monotheism, with their Scriptures, and with their Messianic hopes, did much to prepare the way for the advent of the Redeemer who was to be the fulfillment of Jewish expectation and hope. It was due to the strange and unique influence of Judaism and to the circulation of the glowing visions of Israel's prophets among the nations, that there was so widespread an expectation, mentioned by Tacitus, by Suetonius and by Josephus, that from Judea would arise a Ruler whose dominion would be over all. It is now believed that Virgil's conception of the Better Age which was to be inaugurated by the birth of a child was derived from Isaiah's prophecies. And not only did the Jewish Dispersion thus prepare the way for the world's Redeemer in the fullness of the time, but when He had come and suffered and died and risen and ascended, it furnished a valuable auxiliary to the proclamation of the gospel. Wherever the apostles and the first preachers traveled with the good news, they found Jewish communities to whom they offered first the great salvation.
31. The Dispersion an Auxiliary to the Spread of the Gospel:
The synagogue services lent themselves most effectively to the ministry of Paul and his colleagues, and it was to the synagogue that they first repaired in every city they visited. Even to this day this preservation of "the dispersed of Israel" is one of the marvels of the Divine government of the world, proving the truth of the word of God by one of the earliest prophets: "I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth" (Am 9:9).
LITERATURE.
Schurer, GJV4, III, 1 ff; Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, I, 1-40; Fairweather, Background of the Gospel and From the Exile to the Advent; Jewish Encyclopedia, article "Diaspora"; Sayce and Cowley, Aramaic Papyri Discovered at Assuan; Oestcrley and Box, Religion and Worship of the Synagogue.
Written by T. Nicol
← Dispersion of NationsCaptivity:
kap-tiv'-i-ti (galah, galuth, shebhuth, shibhyah; metoikesia):
I. OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM (THE WORK OF ASSYRIA)
1. Western Campaigns of Shalmaneser II, 860-825 BC
2. Of Rimmon-nirari III, 810-781 BC
3. Of Tiglath-pileser III, 745-727 BC
4. Of Shalmaneser IV, 727-722 BC-Siege of Samaria
5. Samaria Captured by Sargon, 722 BC
6. Depopulation and Repopulation of Samaria
7. The Ten Tribes in Captivity
II. OF JUDAH (THE WORK OF THE CHALDAEAN POWER)
Southern Kingdom and House of David
1. Break-up of Assyria
2. Downfall of Nineveh, 606 BC
3. Pharaoh Necoh's Revolt
4. Defeat at Carchemish, 604 BC
5. The New Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadrezzar, 604-562 BC
The Mission of Jeremiah, 626-580 BC
6. Revolt and Punishment of Jehoiakim, 608-597 BC
7. Siege and Surrender of Jerusalem under Jehoiachin, 597 BC
8. First Deportation, 597 BC
The Baskets of Figs
9. The Ministry of Ezekiel, 592-570 BC
10. Jeremiah's Ministry in Jerusalem, 597-588 BC
11. Zedekiah's Rebellion and Siege of Jerusalem, 588-586 BC
Jeremiah "Falling Away to the Chaldeans"
12. Destruction of Jerusalem, 586 BC
Flight, Capture, and Punishment of Zedekiah
13. Second Deportation of Inhabitants, 586 BC
14. Third Deportation, 581 BC
(1) Number and Quality of Exiles
(2) The Residue Left
15. Gedaliah, Governor of Judah
(1) Jeremiah and the Flight to Egypt
(2) Descendants of the Fugitives, 471-411 BC
16. The Exiles in Babylon: Their Social Condition, 464-405 BC
17. The Rise and Development of Judaism
18. The Return by Permission of Cyrus, 538 BC
19. Rebuilding of the Temple, 536 BC
Completed 515 BC
20. Reforms and Labors of Ezra and Nehemiah, 445 BC
21. Modern Theories of the Return
22. Importance of the Period of Ezra-Nehemiah
LITERATURE
I. Of the Northern Kingdom (The Work of Assyria).
1. Western Campaigns of Shalmaneser II, 860-825 BC:
The captivity of the Northern Kingdom was the work of the great Assyrian power having its seat at Nineveh on the Tigris. The empire of Assyria, rounded nearly 2000 BC, had a long history behind it when its annals begin to take notice of the kingdom of Israel and Judah. The reign of Shalmaneser II (860-825 BC) marks the first contact between these powers. This is not the Shalmaneser mentioned in 2Ki 17 and 18, who is the fourth of the name and flourished more than a century later. Shalmaneser II was contemporary during his long reign with Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ahaziah and Joash, kings of Judah; with Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram and Jehu, kings of Israel; with Hazael and Benhadad II, kings of Syria at Damascus, and with Mesha, king of Moab. The Assyrian authorities for his reign are an inscription engraved by himself on the rocks of Armenia; the Black Obelisk brought by Layard from Nimroud, now in the British Museum; and the texts engraved on the bronze gates of Balawat, discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1878, and recognized as the swinging gates of Shalmaneser's palace. From these authorities we learn that in his 6th year he encountered the combined forces of Damascus, Hamath, Israel, and other states which had united to oppose his progress westward, and completely routed them in the battle of Karkar (854 BC). The danger which threatened the western states in common had brought Syria and Israel together; and this is in accord with the Scripture narrative which tells of a covenant, denounced by God's prophet, between Ahab and Benhadad (1Ki 20:34 ff), and mentions a period of three years when there was no war between Syria and Israel. The defeat of the allies seems, however, to have broken up the confederacy, for, soon after, Ahab is found, with the aid of Jehoshaphat of Judah, attempting unsuccessfully, and with fatal result to himself, to recover from the weakened power of Syria the city of Ramoth-gilead (1Ki 22). In another campaign to the West, which likewise finds no record in Scripture, Shalmaneser received the tribute of Tyre and Sidon, and of "Yahua of Khumri," that is, of Jehu, of the land of Omri, as Israel is called on the monuments.
2. Of Rimmon-nirari III, 810-781 BC:
The next Assyrian monarch who turned his arms against the West was Rimmon-nirari III (810-781 BC), grandson of Shalmaneser II. Although he is not mentioned by name in Scripture, his presence and activity had their influence upon contemporary events recorded in 2 Ki. He caused Syria to let go her hold of Israel; and although he brought Israel into subjection, the people of the Northern Kingdom would rather have a ruler exercising a nominal sovereignty over them in distant Nineveh than a king oppressing them in Damascus. Hence, Rimmon-nirari has been taken for the saviour whom God gave to Israel, "so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians" (2Ki 13:5; compare 2Ki 13:23).
With the death of Rimmon-nirari in 781 BC, the power of Assyria received a temporary check, and on the other hand the kingdom of Judah under Uzziah and the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam II reached the zenith of their political prosperity. In 745 BC, however, a usurper, Pul, or Pulu, ascended the throne of Assyria, and reigned as Tiglath- pileser III. It is by the former name that he is first mentioned in the Scripture narrative (2Ki 15:19; 1Ch 5:26), and by the latter that he is mentioned on the monuments. That the two names belong to one man is now held to be certain (Schrader, COT, I, 230 f).
3. Of Tiglath-pileser III, 745-727 BC:
Tiglath-pileser was one of the greatest monarchs of antiquity. He was the first to attempt to consolidate an empire in the manner to which the world has become accustomed since Roman times. He was not content to receive tribute from the kings and rulers of the states which he conquered. The countries which he conquered became subject provinces of his empire, governed by Assyrian satraps and contributing to the imperial treasury. Not long after he had seated himself on the throne, Tiglath-pileser, like his predecessors, turned his attention to the West. After the siege of Arpad, northward of Aleppo, the Assyrian forces made their way into Syria, and putting into operation the Assyrian method of deportation and repopulation, the conqueror annexed Hamath which had sought the alliance and assistance of Azariah, that is Uzziah, king of Judah. Whether he then refrained from molesting Judah, or whether her prestige was broken by this campaign of the Assyrian king, it is not easy to say. In another campaign he certainly subjected Menahem of Israel with other kings to tribute. What is stated in a word or two in the Annals of Tiglath-pileser is recorded at length in the Bible history (2Ki 15:19 ff): "There came against the land Pul the king of Assyria; and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man 50 shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria tamed back, and stayed not there in the land." In the reign of Pekah, under his proper name of Tiglath-pileser, he is recorded to have raided the northern parts of Israel, and carried the inhabitants away into the land of Assyria (2Ki 15:29). We next hear of Ahaz, king of Judah, appealing to the Assyrians for help against "these two tails of smoking firebrands," Rezin of Syria and Pekah, the son of Remaliah (Isa 7:4). To secure this help he took the silver and gold of the house of the Lord, and sent it as a present to the king of Assyria (2Ki 16:8). Meanwhile Tiglath-pileser was setting out on a new campaign to the West. He carried fire and sword through Syria and the neighboring lands as far as Gaza, and on his return he captured Samaria, without, however, razing it to the ground. Pekah having been slain by his own people, the Assyrian monarch left Hoshea, the leader of the conspiracy, on the throne of Israel as the vassal of Assyria.
4. Of Shalmaneser IV, 727-722 BC-Seige of Samaria:
In 727 BC Tiglath-pileser III died and was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV. His reign was short and no annals of it have come to light. In 2Ki 17 and 18, however, we read that Hoshea, relying upon help from the king of Egypt, thought the death of Tiglath-pileser a good opportunity for striking a blow for independence. It was a vain endeavor, for the end of the kingdom of Israel was at hand. The people were grievously given over to oppression and wickedness, which the prophets Amos and Hosea vigorously denounced. Hosea, in particular, was "the prophet of Israel's decline and fall." Prophesying at this very time he says: "As for Samaria, her king is cut off, as foam upon the water. The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us" (Ho 10:7,8; compare Ho 10:14,15). No less stern are the predictions by Isaiah and Micah of the doom that is to overtake Samaria: "Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine" (Isa 28:1). "For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria?.... Therefore I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as places for planting vineyards" (Mic 1:5,6). No help came from Egypt. With the unaided and enfeebled resources of his kingdom Hoshea had to face the chastising forces of his sovereign. He was made prisoner outside Samaria and was most likely carried away to Nineveh. Meanwhile the land was over-run and the capital doomed to destruction, as the prophets had declared.
5. Samaria Captured by Sargon, 722 BC:
Not without a stubborn resistance on the part of her defenders did "the fortress cease from Ephraim" (Isa 17:3). It was only after a three years' siege that the Assyrians captured the city (2Ki 17:5). If we had only the record of the Hebrew historian we should suppose that Shalmaneser was the monarch to whom fell the rewards and honors of the capture. Before the surrender of the city Shalmaneser had abdicated or died, and Sargon, only once mentioned in Scripture (Isa 20:1), but one of the greatest of Assyrian monarchs, had ascended the throne. From his numerous inscriptions, recovered from the ruins of Khorsabad, we learn that he, and not Shalmaneser, was the king who completed the conquest of the revolted kingdom and deported the inhabitants to Assyria. "In the beginning (of my reign)," says Sargon in his Annals, "the city Samaria (I took) with the help of Shamash, who secures victory to me (.... 27,290 people inhabiters of it) I took away captive; 50 chariots the property of my royalty, which were in it I appropriated. (.... the city) I restored, and more than before I caused it to be inhabited; people of the lands conquered by my hand in it (I caused to dwell. My governor over them I appointed, and tribute) and imposts just as upon the Assyrians I laid upon them." The Assyrian Annals and the Scripture history support and supplement each other at this point. The sacred historian describes the deportation as follows: "The king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.... because they obeyed not the voice of Yahweh their God, but transgressed his covenant, even all that Moses, the servant of Yahweh, commanded, and would not hear it, nor do it" (2Ki 17:6,7; 18:11,12).
6. Depopulation and Repopulation of Samaria:
The repopulation of the conquered territory is also described by the sacred historian: "And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof" (2Ki 17:24). The fact that Sargon introduced foreign settlers taken in war into Samaria is attested by inscriptions. That there were various episodes of deportation and repopulation in connection with the captivity of the Northern Kingdom appears to be certain. We have seen already that Tiglath-pileser III deported the population of the northern tribes to Assyria and placed over the depopulated country governors of his own. And at a time considerably later, we learn that Sargon's grandson Esarhaddon, and his great-grandson Ashur-bani-pal, "the great and noble Osnappar," imported to the region of Samaria settlers of nations conquered by them in the East (Ezr 4:2,10). Of the original settlers, whom a priest, carried away by the king of Assyria but brought back to Bethel, taught "the law of the god of the land," it is said that "they feared Yahweh, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away" (2Ki 17:33). The hybrid stock descended from those settlers is known to us in later history and in the Gospels as the Samaritans.
7. The Ten Tribes in Captivity:
We must not suppose that a clean sweep was made Of the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom. No doubt, as in the Babylonian captivity, "the poorest of the land were left to be vinedressers and husbandmen" (2Ki 25:12). The numbers actually deported were but a moiety of the whole population. But the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was now at an end. Israel had become an Assyrian province, with a governor established in Samaria. As regards the Golah-the captives of Israel in the cities of the Medes-it must not be supposed that they became wholly absorbed in the population among whom they were settled. We can well believe that they preserved their Israelite traditions and usages with sufficient clearness and tenacity, and that they became part of the Jewish dispersion so widespread throughout the East. It is quite possible that at length they blended with the exiles of Judah carried off by Nebuchadrezzar, and that then Judah and Ephraim became one nation as never before. The name Jew, therefore, naturally came to include members of what had earlier been the Northern Confederacy of Israel as well as those of the Southern Kingdom to which it properly belonged, so that in the post-exilic period, Jehudi, or Jew, means an adherent of Judaism without regard to local nationality.
II. Of Judah (The Work of the Chaldean Power).
Southern Kingdom and House of David
The captivity of Judah was the work of the great Chaldean power seated at Babylon on the Euphrates. While the Northern Kingdom had new dynasties to rule it in quick succession, Judah and Jerusalem remained true to the House of David to the end. The Southern Kingdom rested on a firmer foundation, and Jerusalem with its temple and priesthood secured the throne against the enemies who overthrew Samaria for nearly a century and a half longer.
1. Break-up of Assyria:
Sargon, who captured Samaria in 722 BC, was followed by monarchs with a great name as conquerors and builders and patrons of literature, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal. When Ashurbanipal died in 625 BC, the dissolution of the Assyrian Empire was not far off. Its hold over the West had greatly slackened, and the tributary peoples were breaking out into revolt. Bands of Scythians, a nomad Aryan race, from the region between the Caucasus and the Caspian, were sweeping through the Assyrian Empire as far as Palestine and Egypt, and the prophecies of Jeremiah and Zephaniah reflect their methods of warfare and fierce characteristics. They were driven back, however, at the frontier of Egypt, and appear to have returned to the North without invading Judah.
2. Downfall of Nineveh, 606 BC:
From the North these hordes were closing in upon Nineveh, and on all sides the Assyrian power was being weakened. In the "Burden of Nineveh," the prophet Nahum foreshadows the joy of the kingdom of Judah at the tidings of its approaching downfall: "Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! Keep thy feasts, O Judah, perform thy vows; for the wicked one shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off" (Na 1:15; compare Na 3:8-11). The Medes regained their independence and under their king, Cyaxares, formed an alliance with the Chaldeans, who soon afterward revolted under the leadership of Nabopolassar, viceroy of Babylon. Rallying these various elements to his standard Nabopolassar laid siege to the Assyrian capital, and in 606 BC, Nineveh, which had been the capital city of great conquerors, and had "multiplied (her) merchants above the stars of heaven" (Na 3:16), fell before the combined forces of the Medes and Chaldeans, fell suddenly and finally, to rise no more. Of the new Babylonian Empire upon which the Chaldeans now entered, Nebuchadrezzar, whose father Nabopolassar had associated him with him on the throne, was the first and most eminent ruler.
3. Pharaoh Necoh's Revolt:
That the people of Judah should exult in the overthrow of Nineveh and the empire for which it stood we can well understand. Jerusalem herself had by God's mercy remained unconquered when Sennacherib nearly a century before had carried off from the surrounding country 200,150 people and had devastated the towns and fortresses near. But the hateful Assyrian yoke had rested upon Judah to the end, and not upon Judah only but even upon Egypt and the valley of the Nile. In 608 BC Pharaoh Necoh revolted from his Assyrian suzerain and resolved upon an eastern campaign. He had no desire to quarrel with Josiah of Judah, through whose territory he must pass; but in loyalty to his Assyrian suzerain Josiah threw himself across the path of the Egyptian invader and perished in the battle of Megiddo. The Pharaoh seems to have returned to Egypt, taking Jehoahaz the son of Josiah with him, and to have appointed his brother Jehoiakim king of Judah, and to have exacted a heavy tribute from the land.
4. Defeat at Carchemish, 604 BC:
But he did not desist from his purpose to win an eastern empire. Accordingly he pressed forward till he reached the Euphrates, where he was completely routed by the Babylonian army under Nebuchadrezzar in the decisive battle of Carchemish, 604 BC. The battle left the Chaldeans undisputed masters of Western Asia, and Judah exchanged the yoke of Assyria for that of Babylon.
5. The New Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadrezzar, 604-562 BC:
So far as cruelty was concerned, there was little to choose between the new tyrants and the old oppressors. Of the Chaldeans Habakkuk, who flourished at the commencement of the new Empire, says: "They are terrible and dreadful..... Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen spread themselves: yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour" (Hab 1:7,8 the American Revised Version, margin). Over Western Asia, including Judah, Nebuchadrezzar since the battle of Carchemish was supreme. It was vain for Judah to coquet with Egypt when Nebuchadrezzar had a long and powerful arm with which to inflict chastisement upon his disloyal subjects.
The Mission of Jeremiah, 626-580 BC.
The mission of Jeremiah the prophet in this crisis of the history of Judah was to preach obedience and loyalty to the king of Babylon, and moral reformation as the only means of escaping the Divine vengeance impending upon land and people. He tells them in the name of God of the great judgment that was to come at the hand of the Chaldeans on Jerusalem and surrounding peoples. He even predicts the period of their subjection to Chaldean domination: "And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years" (Jer 25:11). This preaching was unpalatable to the partisans of Egypt and to those who believed in the inviolability of Jerusalem. But with stern rebuke and with symbolic action he proclaims the doom of Jerusalem, and in the face of persecution and at the risk of his life, the prophet fulfills his ministry.
6. Revolt and Punishment of Jehoiakim, 608-597 BC:
Jehoiakim, who was first the vassal of Pharaoh Necoh, and then of Nebuchadrezzar, was in corruption and wickedness too faithful a representative of the people. Jeremiah charges him with covetousness, the shedding of innocent blood, oppression and violence (Jer 22:13-19). The fourth year of Jehoiakim was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, who, fresh from the victory of Carchemish, was making his sovereignty felt in the western world. The despicable king of Judah became Nebuchadrezzar's vassal and continued in his allegiance three years, after which he turned and rebelled against him. But he received neither encouragement nor help from the neighboring peoples. "Yahweh sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yahweh, which he spake by his servants the prophets" (2Ki 24:2). The history of the latter part of Jehoiakim's reign is obscure. The Hebrew historian says that after a reign of eleven years he slept with his fathers, from which we infer that he died a natural death. From Daniel we learn that in the third year of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadrezzar came up against Jerusalem and besieged it, and carried off, along with vessels of the house of God, members of the seed royal, and of the nobility of Judah, among whom was Daniel the prophet. That Jehoiakim was included in what seems to be a first installment of the captivity of Judah is expressly affirmed by the Chronicler who says: "Against him (Jehoiakim) came up Nebuchadnezzar.... and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon" (2Ch 36:6). However the facts really stand, the historian adds to the record of the death of Jehoiakim and of the succession of Jehoiachin the significant comment: "And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of this land; for the king of Babylon had taken, from the brook of Egypt unto the river Euphrates, all that pertained to the king of Egypt" (2Ki 24:7).
7. Siege and Surrender of Jerusalem under Jehoiachin, 597 BC:
Jehoiachin who succeeded Jehoiakim reigned only three months, the same length of time as his unfortunate predecessor Jehoahaz (2Ki 23:31). The captivity of Jehoahaz in Egypt and the captivity of Jehoiachin in Babylon are lamented in a striking elegy by Ezekiel, who compares them to young lions, the offspring of the mother lioness Israel, which learned to catch and their prey and devoured men, but were taken in the pit of the nations and put in rings, so that their roar was no more heard in the mountains of Israel (Eze 19:1-9). Nebuchadrezzar came in person while his servants were besieging Jerusalem, and Jehoiachin surrendered at discretion. So the king and his mother and his servants and his princes and his officers were carried off with the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives. None remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. He carried out thence all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold, which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of Yahweh, as Yahweh had said.
8. First Deportation, 597 BC:
And all the men of might, even seven thousand, and the craftsmen and the smiths a thousand, all of them strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon. And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's father's brother, king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah' (2Ki 24:10-17). From Jehoiachin dates the carrying away into Babylon, the year being 597 BC. The unfortunate monarch lived in exile in Babylon 38 years, and seems to have retained the respect and loyalty of the exiles among whom he dwelt.
The Baskets of Figs:
It was with reference to the deportation of the princes and craftsmen and smiths that Jeremiah had his vision of the baskets of figs-one containing figs very good, like the first ripe figs; the other very bad, so bad they could not be eaten (Jer 24:1-3). The good figs were the captives of Judah carried away into the land of the Chaldeans for good; the bad figs were the king Zedekiah and his princes and the residue of Jerusalem, upon whom severe judgments were yet to fall till they were consumed from off the land (Jer 24:4-10).
9. The Ministry of Ezekiel, 592-570 BC:
Among the captives thus carried to Babylon and placed on the banks of the Chebar was the priest-prophet Ezekiel. Five years after the captivity he began to have his wonderful "visions" of God, and to declare their import to the exiles by the rivers of Babylon. To the desponding captives who were engrossed with thoughts of the kingdom of Judah, not yet dissolved, and of the Holy City, not yet burned up with fire, Ezekiel could only proclaim by symbol and allegory the destruction of city and nation, till the day when the distressing tidings reached them of its complete overthrow. Then to the crushed and despairing captives he utters no lamentations like those of Jeremiah, but rather joyful predictions of a rebuilt city, of a reconstituted kingdom, and of a renovated and glorious temple.
10. Jeremiah's Ministry in Jerusalem, 597-588 BC:
Although the flower of the population had been carried away into Babylon and the Temple had been despoiled of its treasures, Jerusalem and the Temple still stood. To the inhabitants who were left behind, and to the captives in Babylon, Jeremiah had a message. To the latter he offered counsels of submission and contentment, assured that the hateful and repulsive idolatries around them would throw them back upon the law of their God, and thus promote the work of moral and spiritual regeneration within them. Thus saith Yahweh, I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God; for they shall return unto me with their whole heart' (Jer 24:5,7). To "the residue of Jerus" his counsels and predictions were distasteful, and exposed him to the suspicion of disloyalty to his people and his God. None of his warnings was more impressive than that symbolically proclaimed by the bands and bars which the prophet was to put upon his neck to send to the kings of Edom and Moab and Ammon and Tyre and Sidon, who seem to have had ideas of forming an alliance against Nebuchadrezzar. Zedekiah was also urged to submit, but still entertained hopes that the king of Babylon would allow the captives of Judah to return. He even himself went to Babylon, perhaps summoned thither by his suzerain (Jer 51:59). With an Egyptian party in Jerusalem urging an alliance with Egypt, and with a young and warlike Pharaoh on the throne, Hophra (Apries), Zedekiah deemed the opportunity favorable for achieving independence, and entered into an intrigue with the Egyptian king. So Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon (2Ki 24:20).
11. Zedekiah's Rebellion and the Siege of Jerusalem, 588-586 BC:
It was a bold throw, but Nebuchadrezzar would brook no such disloyalty from his vassals. He marched at once to the West, and committed to Nebuzaradan the task of capturing Jerusalem, while he himself established his headquarters at Riblah, in Syria, on the Orontes. Meanwhile the Pharaoh with his army crossed the frontier to the help of his allies, and compelled the Chaldeans to raise the siege of Jerusalem and meet him in the field (Jer 37:5). But here his courage failed him, and he retired in haste without offering battle. Nebuzaradan now led back his army and the siege became closer than before.
Jeremiah "Falling Away to the Chaldeans"
During the breathing-space afforded by the withdrawal of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah was going out of the city to his native Anathoth, some 4 miles to the Northeast across the ridge, on family business (Jer 37:11-15). His departure was observed, and he was charged with falling away to the Chaldeans, and cast into an improvised dungeon in the house of Jonathan the scribe. While there the king sent for him and asked, "Is there any word from Yahweh?" And Jeremiah answered fearlessly, "There is. Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon." For a time Jeremiah, by the favor of Zedekiah, enjoyed after this a greater measure of freedom; but as he continued to urge in hearing of all the people the duty of surrender, his enemies vowed that he should be put to death, and had him cast into a foul empty cistern, where he ran the risk of being choked or starved to death. Once again the king sought an interview with the prophet, giving him private assurance that he would not put him to death nor allow his enemies to do so. Again the prophet counseled surrender, and again he was allowed a measure of freedom.
12. Destruction of Jerusalem, 586 BC:
Flight, Capture, and Punishment of Zedekiah
But the end of the doomed city was at hand. In the 11th year of Zedekiah, 586 BC, in the 4th month, the 9th day of the month, a breach was made in the city (Jer 39:1,2), and the final assault completed the work that had been done by months of famine and want. Zedekiah and his men of war do not seem to have waited for the delivery of the last assault. They fled from the city by night "by the way of the king's garden, through the gate betwixt the two walls," and made eastward for the Arabah. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued them, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. They took him prisoner and brought him to Nebuchadrezzar at Riblah, where the king of Babylon first slew the son of Zedekiah, and then put out his eyes. With the sons of the captured monarch were slain all the nobles of Judah. This time neither city nor temple nor palace was spared. Nebuzaradan "burnt the house of Yahweh, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house, burnt he with fire" (2Ki 25:9). His soldiers, too, broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about. The treasure and the costly furnishings of the Temple, in so far as they had escaped the former spoliation, were carried away to Babylon. The ruin of Jerusalem was complete. The Book of Lamentations utters the grief and shame and penitence of an eyewitness of the captures and desolation of the Holy City: "Yahweh hath accomplished his wrath, he hath poured out his fierce anger; and he hath kindled a fire in Zion, which hath devoured the foundations thereof. The kings of the earth believed not, neither all the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and the enemy would enter into the gates of Jerusalem. Woe unto us! for we have sinned. For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim; for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: the foxes walk upon it" (La 4:11,12; 5:16,18). 13. Second Deportation of Inhabitants, 586 BC:
"So Judah," says the prophet who had been through the siege and the capture (if not rather the editor of his prophecies), "was carried away captive out of his land" (Jer 52:27). The statements of the numbers carried away are, however, conflicting. In Jer 52:28-30 we read of three deportations: that of 597 BC when 3,023 Jews were carried off; that of 586 BC when Nebuchadrezzar carried off 832 persons; and one later than both in 581 BC, when Nebuzaradan carried away captive of the Jews 745 persons-a total of 4,600.
14. Third Deportation, 581 BC:
(1) Number and Quality of Exiles:
In 2Ki 24:15,16 it is said that in 597 Nebuchadrezzar carried to Babylon 8,000 men. Dr. George Adam Smith taking all the data together estimates that the very highest figures possible are 62,000 or 70,000 men, women and children, less than half of the whole nation (Jerusalem, II, 268-70). In 597 BC, Nebuchadrezzar carried off the princes and nobles and craftsmen and smiths, leaving behind the poorest sort of the people of the land (2Ki 24:14).
(2) The Residue Left:
In 586 BC Nebuzaradan carried off the residue of the people that were left in the city, but he "left of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen" (2Ki 25:12). "They were, as the Biblical narratives testify, the poorest of the land, from whom every man of substance and energy had been sifted; mere groups of peasants, without a leader and without a center; disorganized and depressed; bitten by hunger and compassed by enemies; uneducated and an easy prey to the heathenism by which they were surrounded. We can appreciate the silence which reigns in the Bible regarding them, and which has misled us as to their numbers. They were a negligible quantity in the religious future of Israel: without initiative or any influence except that of a dead weight upon the efforts of the rebuilders of the nation, when these at last returned from Babylonia" (Jerusalem, II, 269-70).
15. Gedaliah, Governor of Judah:
Over those who were left behind, Gedaliah was appointed governor, with his residence at Mizpah, where also a Babylonian contingent remained on guard. Jeremiah had the choice of being taken to Babylon or of remaining in Judah. He preferred to remain with the residue of the people under the care of Gedaliah. With the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael, a traitorous scion of the royal house, who in turn had to flee and made good his escape, it looked as if the last trace of the former kingdom of Judah was wiped out.
(1) Jeremiah and the Flight to Egypt:
Against the counsel of Jeremiah, the remnant, led by Johanan the son of Kareah, resolved to take refuge in Egypt and insisted that Jeremiah and his friend Baruch should accompany them. It is in Egypt, amid disappointment and misrepresentation which he had to endure, that we have our last glimpse of the prophet of the downfall of Judah.
(2) Descendants of the Fugitives, 471-411 BC:
Of the descendants of those settlers in Egypt remarkable remains have been discovered within the last few years. They consist of Aramaic papyri which were found at Assouan, the ancient Syene, and which belong to a time not more than a century after the death of Jeremiah. The documents are accounts and contracts and deeds of various kinds, from which we gather that in the 5th century BC there were Jews keeping themselves apart as they do still, worshipping Yahweh, and no other God, and even having a temple and an altar of sacrifice to which they brought offerings as their fathers did at Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple. These papyri give us valuable glimpses of the social condition and religious interest of the settlers.
See DISPERSION.
16. The Exiles in Babylon: Their Social Condition, 464-405 BC:
Of the Jewish captives carried off by Nebuchadrezzar and settled by the rivers of Babylon, we learn something from the prophecies of Daniel which are now generally believed to belong to the Maccabean period, and much from the prophecies of Ezekiel, from the Psalms of the Captivity, and from the Second Isaiah, whose glowing messages of encouragement and comfort were inspired by the thought of the Return. From Haggai and Zechariah we see how the work of rebuilding the Temple was conceived and carried out. Of the social condition of the Exiles an interesting revelation is given by the excavations at Nippur. From cuneiform tablets, now in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople, preserved among the business archives of the wealthy firm of Murashu, sons of Nippur, in the reign of Artaxerxes I and Darius II (464- 405 BC), there can be read quite a number of Jewish names. And the remarkable thing is that many of the names are those known to us from the genealogical and other lists of the Books of Ki and Ch and Ezr and Neh. Professor Hilprecht (The Babylonian Expedition, IX, 13 ff) infers from an examination of these that a considerable number of the Jewish exiles, carried away by Nebuchadrezzar after the destruction of Jerusalem, were settled in Nippur and its neighborhood. Of this fact there are various proofs. The Talmudic tradition which identifies Nippur with Calneh (Ge 10:10) gains new force in the light of these facts. And "the river Khebar in the land of the Chaldeans," by which Ezekiel saw his vision, is now known from inscriptions to be a large navigable canal not far from Nippur (ibid., 27,28).
17. The Rise and Development of Judaism:
The influence of the Captivity as a factor in the development of Judaism can hardly be overestimated. "The captivity of Judah," says Dr. Foakes-Jackson (Biblical History of the Hebrews, 316) "is one of the greatest events in the history of religion..... With the captivity the history of Israel ends, and the history of the Jews commences." Placed in the midst of heathen and idolatrous surroundings the Golah recoiled from the abominations of their neighbors and clung to the faith of their fathers in the God of Abraham. Exposed to the taunts and the scorn of nations that despised them, they formed an inner circle of their own, and cultivated that exclusiveness which has marked them ever since. Being without a country, without a ritual system, without any material basis for their life as a people, they learned as never before to prize those spiritual possessions which had come down to them from the past. They built up their nationality in their new surroundings upon the foundation of their religion. Their prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had encouraged and stimulated them with the assurance of spiritual blessings, and the promise of restoration. For their whole social and domestic and spiritual life there was needed some steady and continuous regulative principle or scheme. The need of this threw their leaders and thinkers back upon the Law of Moses. The rabbi and the scribe took the place of the sacrificing priest. The synagogue and the Sabbath came to occupy a new place in the religious practice of the people. These and other institutions of Judaism only attained to maturity after the Return, but the Captivity and the Exile created the needs they were meant to supply. While the prophets were clear and explicit in setting forth the Captivity, they were not less so in predicting the Return. Isaiah with his doctrine of the Remnant, Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and others gifted with the vision of God, cheered the nation, each in their day, with the hope of restoration and return, not for Judah only but for Israel as well. Vineyards were to be planted again upon the mountains of Samaria as well as in the valleys of Judah. Jeremiah had even predicted the length of the period of the Exile, when he declared that the inhabitants of the land should serve the king of Babylon for seventy years (Jer 25:12; 29:10).
18. The Return by Permission of Cyrus, 538 BC:
It was in Cyrus, who brought about the fall of Babylon and ended the New Babylonian Empire in 539 BC, that the hopes of the exiles came to be centered. He was "the battle- axe" with which Yahweh was to shatter Babylon (Jer 51:20), and as he proceeded on his path of victory the unknown Seer whom we call the Second Isaiah welcomed him as the liberator of his people. "Thus saith Yahweh.... of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited; and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and I will raise up the waste places thereof; that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers; that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid" (Isa 44:26-28).
19. Rebuilding of the Temple, 536 BC:
Within a year of the entry of Cyrus into Babylon an edict was issued (2Ch 36:22,23; Ezr 1:1 ff), granting permission to the exiles to return and build a house for the Lord in Jerusalem. He also brought forth the vessels of the Temple which Nebuchadrezzar had carried away and handed them over to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah; and Sheshbazzar brought them with him when they of the Captivity were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.
Particulars of the Return are given in the Books of Ezr and Neh, and in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. Of the exiles 42,360 returned under Sheshbazzar, besides slaves; and under Jeshua the son of Jozadak the priest, and Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, first an altar was built and then the foundations of the Temple were laid. In consequence of the opposition of the Samaritans, who were refused any share in the restoration of the Temple, the work of rebuilding was greatly hindered, and came to a stop. It was then that Haggai and Zechariah urged the resumption of the work and partly by denouncing the niggardliness of the people and partly by foreshadowing the glorious future in store for the Temple, hastened forward the enterprise.
Completed 515 BC:
At length in the month Adar, in the 6th year of Darius (515 BC) the work was completed and the Passover celebrated within the courts of the restored Sanctuary (Ezr 6:15- 18).
20. Reforms and Labors of Ezra and Nehemiah, 445 BC:
For some decades the history is silent, and it was in 458 BC that Ezra set out for Jerusalem taking 1,800 Jews along with him. He found that the returned Jews had become allied in marriage with the people of the land and were in danger of losing their racial characteristics by absorption among the heathen (Ezr 9). It was due no doubt to his efforts and those of Nehemiah, supported by the searching and powerful utterances of Malachi, that this peril was averted. Thirteen years later (445 BC) Nehemiah, the cupbearer of Artaxerxes, having heard of the desolate condition of the Holy City, the place of his fathers' sepulchers, obtained leave of his master to visit Jerusalem. With letters to the governors on the route and to the keeper of the king's forest, he set out, and came safely to Jerusalem. Having himself inspected the walls he called the people to the work of repairing the ruins, and despite the taunts and calumny and active hostility of the Samaritan opposition he had the satisfaction of seeing the work completed, the gates set up and the city repopulated. Nehemiah and Ezra then gathered the people together to hear the words of the Law, and at a solemn convocation the Law was read and explained to the assembly. Thereafter a covenant was entered into by the people that they would observe the Law of Moses and not intermarry with the heathen nor traffic on the Sabbath, but would pay a third of a shekel annually for the services of the Temple and would bring first-fruits and tithes (Ne 10:28 ff).
21. Modern Theories of the Return:
The course of the history as here set forth has been disputed by some modern scholars, who hold that there was no return of the exiles under Cyrus and that the rebuilding of the Temple was the work of the Jews who remained behind in Judah and Jerusalem (EB, article "Ezra-Nehemiah"). This view, held by the late Professor Kosters of Leyden and supported by Professor H. P. Smith and other scholars, proceeds largely upon the rejection of the historical character of the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah. The historical difficulties which are found in the book are by no means such as to warrant us in denying the fact of the Return and the work of Ezra in connection with Nehemiah. As regards the Return, the course of the narrative is too well supported by documents which bear upon them the stamp of historical truth to be rashly disputed. Moreover, it seems highly improbable that an enterprise requiring such energy and skill and faith should have been undertaken, without stimulus from without, by the residue of the people. We have already seen how little initiative was to be expected of the poorest of the people; and the silence of Haggai, on the subject of the Return, is no argument against it. That the Judaism of Palestine required invigoration by an infusion of the zeal and enthusiasm which grew up in the Judaism of Babylonian, is manifest from the story of the Captivity.
22. Importance of the Period Ezra-Nehemiah:
From the age of Nehemiah and the period immediately preceding it came influences of the utmost moment for the future. "Within these hundred years," says the late Dr. P. Hay Hunter in After the Exile (I, xvi), "the teaching of Moses was established as the basis of the national life, the first steps were taken toward the formation of a canon of Scripture. Jewish society was moulded into a shape which succeeding centuries modified, but did not essentially change. During this period the Judea of the days of our Lord came into being. Within this period the forces which opposed Christ, the forces which rallied to His side, had their origin. This century saw the rise of parties, which afterward became sects under the names of Pharisees and Sadducees. It laid the foundation of Rabbinism. It fixed the attitude of the Jews toward the Gentiles. It put the priesthood in the way to supreme authority. It gave birth to the Samaritan schism."
LITERATURE.
Schrader, COT, I; McCurdy, HPM, I, 281 ff, II, 249 ff, III; C. F. Barney, Notes on Heb Text of Bks of Kings; Foakes-Jackson, Biblical Hist of the Hebrews, 260-412; G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, II, 223-349; Cambridge Biblical Essays, 93-135; P. Hay Hunter, The Story of Daniel and After the Exile; EB, article "Ezra-Nehemiah"; Nicol, Recent Archaeology and the Bible, 239-78; H. P. Smith, Old Testament Hist, 219-412; Kittel, History of the Hebrews, II, 329 ff.
Written by T. Nicol
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