The Jewish diaspora

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.004

2 - The Jewish diaspora

from Part I - The Political, Social and Religious Setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Tessa Rajak

Edited by

Margaret M. Mitchell and

Frances M. Young

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Margaret M. Mitchell: Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Frances M. Young: Affiliation:
University of Birmingham

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Summary

Development and legacy

The era of the Second Temple in Jewish history, from the return from the Babylonian captivity in 538 bce to the Roman sacking of Jerusalem in 70 ce, has aptly been described as the period of ‘formative Judaism’. Many of the features and institutions of Judaism as we understand it took shape during this period. Among these developments, there can be no disputing the overwhelming historical importance of the diaspora, or dispersion – in other words, the adjustment to a division of the people between the homeland and communities elsewhere. After the disaster of 70, and even more after the Jewish exclusion from Jerusalem following the defeat of Bar Kochba’s rebellion of 135 ce, the diaspora grew in significance. None the less, the rabbinic movement had its first major flowering in Judaea and the Galilee; thus the split existence continued.

The history of the diaspora is usually taken to begin in 587/6 bce, when Nebuchadnezzar took the inhabitants of Jerusalem into captivity. When permitted to return by Cyrus the Persian king, many remained voluntarily in Babylonia. There, communities existed for centuries, saw periods of flowering, and produced, in late antiquity, the Babylonian Talmud, rabbinic learning’s most important monument. That vast compendium is the repository also of much tradition from the land of Israel, but it was the product of diaspora-based academies. The spread of Jews in significant numbers around the Mediterranean, on the other hand, had followed Alexander the Great’s conquest of the east, and was consolidated under Greek and then Roman sovereignty (see Map 3).

Keywords

Christian community funerary epigraphy Jewish diaspora Jewish identity material culture Roman provinces

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Christianity , pp. 53 - 68

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2006

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2 - The Jewish diaspora

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Keywords

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