The Jewish Diaspora

Migration

Settlement across Asia Minor

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200 BCE – 100 CELand of Israel → Asia Minor (Sardis & the Aegean)

Why it happened

Two streams converged: Antiochus III's c. 210 BCE resettlement of two thousand Jewish colonist families from Babylonia into the fortresses of Lydia and Phrygia,1 and voluntary migration that spread Greek-speaking Jews across Aegean cities, where they won legal immunities.2

The migration

Josephus preserves Antiochus III's order transplanting two thousand Jewish families 'out of Mesopotamia and Babylon' into the Lydian and Phrygian fortresses as loyal garrison-colonists.1 Alongside them, voluntary settlers spread until, by the late second century BCE, Jewish communities ringed the Aegean and southern coasts: the Roman circular letter in 1 Maccabees was copied to Caria, Pamphylia, Lycia, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Cnidus and Side.3 Their prosperity shows in the Temple tax—in 62 BCE the governor Flaccus impounded a little less than a hundred pounds of gold at Apamea and more than twenty at Laodicea.4 Centered on Sardis and the Phrygian towns, these Greek-speaking communities were, under Rome and Byzantium, relatively well integrated and enjoyed legal immunities.2 They were the Romaniote Jews, first settled in Phrygia and Lydia, and the enduring nucleus of Anatolian Jewry.2

Sources

  1. BFlavius Josephus. 94. Jewish Antiquities, Book XII (trans. William Whiston). Perseus / University of Chicago (Whiston translation) link
  2. BPaul R. Trebilco. 1991. Jewish Communities in Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 69) link
  3. BAnonymous (First Book of Maccabees). -100. 1 Maccabees 15:16-24 (Latin Vulgate / Douay-Rheims). New Advent Bible link
  4. BMarcus Tullius Cicero. -59. Pro Flacco (In Defence of Lucius Valerius Flaccus), 66-69 (trans. C. D. Yonge). Attalus.org (Yonge translation, Bohn's Classical Library) link