Diasporas

Voluntary dispersion from the Jewish homeland in the kingdom of Judah, and later Judea, was sparked by the development of a plastic Hellenistic culture, of which Judea itself would become a part, which formed following the conquests of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C.E. As Hellenistic political rule expanded throughout the Mediterranean world, the colonies, institutions, and commerce it created attracted Jews in search of trade to venture out into far-flung areas of Greek settlement, where they came into closer contact with Hellenistic ideology. It was during this period that Jews began to disperse throughout the Mediterranean basin in substantial numbers. As the philosopher Philo Judaeus noted in the first century C.E., the area of Jewish settlement within the Hellenistic world spread from Libya to Ethiopia. Important and influential diaspora communities formed at Alexandria (Egypt), Cyrene (Libya), Antioch (Syria), Pergamon (Turkey/Asia Minor) and other large Hellenistic port cities. In these places, Jews were exposed to Hellenistic teachings in philosophy and science. Some important Jewish individuals, such as Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, flourished in this bicultural environment, but the impact of Hellenistic thought on rabbinic Judaism was slight overall. This was because of a revival of Jewish nationalism and violent resistance to Greek influence within Judea, under the leadership of Judah Maccabbee, as well as the emergence of Babylon, which remained outside the sphere of Hellenistic culture, as the main center for Jewish theological development and scholasticism.

The migration of Jews out of Judea continued under the Romans, but under different conditions and therefore with different motivations. The economic and social environment of the Hellenistic empire had drawn Jews out of Judea of their own volition without substantially disrupting Jewish theocratic traditions. Roman rule, however, aimed at conquest and subjugation of the Jewish state apparatus. This created a fundamental tension between Judea's inhabitants and Roman administrators that frequently erupted into violence. Jewish migration into the Roman Empire therefore, while still voluntary, was driven in large part by the desire to escape violence and oppression in Judea. Growing conflict led to two revolts by the people of Judea and the employment of ever more brutal tactics by the Romans. Roman military occupation of Judea in 63 C.E. and ongoing violence (including the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.) through the crushing of the Bar Kochba Revolt, made Judea less desirable as a place for Jews to live and encouraged further dispersion of Judea's Jews throughout the Roman world. Judea's role as the center for Jewish life declined rapidly after 138 C.E. By the seventh century C.E., the vast majority of Jews resided in communities outside of biblical Judah and Israel, and by 1600 only one percent of the Jewish people could be found in the traditional Jewish homelands of the Hebrew scriptures.