(3) The third compulsory transportation took place much later. When Pompey conquered the Jews and took Jerusalem in 63 BC, he took many Jews back to Rome as slaves. Their determination to stick rigidly to their own ceremonial law and their stubborn observance of the Sabbath made them difficult slaves, and most of them were freed. They took up residence in a kind of quarter of their own on the far side of the Tiber. Before long, they were to be found flourishing all over the city. The Roman historian Dio Cassius says of them: ‘They were often suppressed, but they nevertheless mightily increased, so that they achieved even the free exercise of their customs.’ Julius Caesar was their great protector, and we read of them mourning all night long at his coffin. We read of them present in large numbers when Cicero, the Roman senator and orator, was defending Flaccus. In AD 19, the whole Jewish community was banished from Rome on the charge that they had robbed a wealthy female convert on pretence of sending the money to the Temple, and at that time 4,000 of them were conscripted to fight against the brigands in Sardinia; but they were soon received back. When the Jews of Palestine sent their deputation to Rome to complain of the rule of Archelaus, we read that the deputation was joined by 8,000 Jews resident in the city. Roman literature is full of contemptuous references to the Jews, for anti-semitism is no new thing, and the very number of the references is proof of the part that the Jews played in the life of the city.
Compulsory transportation took the Jews by the thousand to Babylon and to Rome. But far greater numbers left Palestine of their own free will for more comfortable and more profitable lands. Two lands in particular received thousands of Jews. Palestine was sandwiched between the two great powers, Syria and Egypt, and was therefore liable at any time to become a battle ground. For that reason, many Jews left it to take up residence either in Egypt or in Syria.
During the time of Nebuchadnezzar, there was a voluntary exodus of many Jews to Egypt (2 Kings 25:26). As far back as 650 BC, the Egyptian king Psammetichus was said to have had Jewish mercenaries in his armies. When Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, special privileges were offered to settlers there, and the Jews came in large numbers. Alexandria was divided into five administrative sections, and two of them were inhabited by Jews. In Alexandria alone, there were more than 1,000,000 Jews. The settlement of the Jews in Egypt went so far that in about 50 BC a temple, modelled on the Jerusalem one, was built at Leontopolis for the Egyptian Jews.
The Jews also went to Syria. The highest concentration was in Antioch, where the gospel was first preached to the Gentiles and where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. In Damascus, we read of 10,000 of them being massacred at one time.
So, Egypt and Syria had very large Jewish populations. But they had spread far beyond that. In Cyrene in North Africa, we read that the population was divided into citizens, agriculturists, resident aliens and Jews. The German historian Theodor Mommsen, who wrote a history of Rome, writes: ‘The inhabitants of Palestine were only a portion, and not the most important portion, of the Jews; the Jewish communities of Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt were far superior to those of Palestine.’ That mention of Asia Minor leads us to another sphere in which the Jews were numerous. When Alexander’s empire broke up on his death, Egypt fell to the Ptolemies, and Syria and the surrounding districts fell to Seleucus and his successors, known as the Seleucids. The Seleucids had two great characteristics. They followed a deliberate policy of joining populations together into one, hoping to gain security by banishing national identity. And they founded a great many cities. These cities needed citizens, and special attractions and privileges were offered to those who would settle in them. The Jews accepted citizenship of these cities by the thousand. All over Asia Minor, in the great cities of the Mediterranean sea coast, in the great commercial centres, Jews were numerous and prosperous. There were also compulsory transportations. Antiochus the Great took 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon and settled them in Lydia and Phrygia. In fact, so great was the drift from Palestine that the Jews of Palestine complained against those who left the hardships of Palestine for the baths and feasts of Asia and Phrygia, and Aristotle tells of meeting a Jew in Asia Minor who was ‘not only Greek in his language but in his very soul’.
It is quite clear that everywhere in the world there were Jews. Strabo, the Greek geographer, writes: ‘It is hard to find a spot in the whole world which is not occupied and dominated by Jews.’ Josephus, the Jewish historian, writes: ‘There is no city, no tribe, whether Greek or barbarian, in which Jewish law and Jewish customs have not taken root.’ The Sibylline Oracles, written around 140 BC, say that every land and every sea is filled with the Jews. There is a letter, said to be from Agrippa to Caligula, which the Jewish writer Philo quotes. In it, he says that Jerusalem is the capital not only of Judaea but of most countries by reason of the colonies it has sent out on fitting occasions into the neighbouring lands of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coelesyria, and the still more remote Pamphylia and Cilicia, into most parts of Asia as far as Bithynia, and into the most distant corners of Pontus, also to Europe, Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedonia, Aetolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, and the most and best parts of the Peloponnese. And not only is the continent full of Jewish settlements, but also the more important islands – Euboea, Cyprus, Crete – to say nothing of the lands beyond the Euphrates, for all have Jewish inhabitants.
The Jewish Diaspora extended to the farthest limits of the world, and there was no greater factor in the spread of Christianity.
THE RECIPIENTS OF THE LETTER
James 1:1 (contd)
JAMES writes to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora. Who has he in mind as he writes? The twelve tribes in the Diaspora has three equally valid possible meanings.
(1) It could stand for all the Jews outside Palestine. We have seen that they were numbered by the million. There were actually far more Jews scattered throughout Syria and Egypt and Greece and Rome and Asia Minor and all the Mediterranean lands and far-off Babylon than there were in Palestine. Under the conditions of the ancient world, it would be quite impossible to send out a message to such a huge and scattered constituency.
(2) It could mean Christian Jews outside Palestine. In this instance, it would mean the Jews in the lands closely surrounding Palestine, perhaps particularly those in Syria and in Babylon. Certainly, if anyone was going to write a letter to these Jews, it would be James, for he was the acknowledged leader of Jewish Christianity.
(3) The phrase could have a third meaning. To the Christians, the Christian Church was the real Israel. At the end of Galatians, Paul sends his blessing to the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). The nation of Israel had been the specially chosen people of God; but they had refused to accept their place and their responsibility and their task. When the Son of God came, they had rejected him. Therefore all the privileges which had once belonged to them passed over to the Christian Church, for it was in truth the chosen people of God. Paul (cf. Romans 9:7–8) had fully worked out the idea. It was his conviction that the true descendants of Abraham were not those who could trace their physical descent from him but those who had made the same venture of faith as he had made. The true Israel was composed not of any particular nation or race but of those who accepted Jesus Christ in faith. So, this phrase may well mean the wider Christian Church.
We may choose between the second and the third meanings, each of which gives excellent sense. James may be writing to the Christian Jews scattered throughout the surrounding nations, or he may be writing to the new Israel, the Christian Church.
TESTED AND TRIUMPHANT