The Jewish Diaspora

Flight from persecution

Dispersion after the fall of Jerusalem

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70–135 CELand of Israel → Rome & Central Italy

Why it happened

Rome crushed the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), storming Jerusalem and razing the Second Temple in 70 CE;1 Hadrian's later suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) left Judaea near-depopulated.2

The migration

A Jewish already existed for centuries before 70 CE,3 spanning Rome, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Syria and Babylonia,4 so the war deepened and reoriented the dispersion rather than creating it. Josephus claims 1.1 million died in Jerusalem5 and 97,000 were enslaved—a figure several scholars accept1—with captives carried in bondage to Rome.1 After the Bar Kokhba revolt Cassius Dio reports 985 villages razed and 580,000 slain;6 central Judaea was left near-empty by killing, enslavement and flight.2 Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as the pagan colony Aelia Capitolina, barring Jews on pain of death save one day yearly,7 and renamed the province Syria Palaestina.7 After 70, rabbinic sages gathered at Yavneh on the coastal plain;4 after the Bar Kokhba revolt, major centers of Jewish life shifted north to Galilee.2

Genetic corroboration

  • autosomalThe sampled Jewish populations shared Middle Eastern ancestry and showed varying European and North African .8 This population-level result is consistent with common regional ancestry but does not date that ancestry to the revolts of 70 or 132–136 CE.

Sources

  1. BRogers GM. 2022. For the Freedom of Zion: The Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66–74 CE. Yale University Press
  2. BMenahem Mor. 2016. The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132–136 CE. Brill
  3. BGruen ES. 2002. Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Harvard University Press
  4. BSchwartz S. 2014. The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad. Cambridge University Press (Key Themes in Ancient History)
  5. BFlavius Josephus. 75. The Jewish War (De Bello Judaico), Book VI, 6.9.3 (§420), trans. William Whiston.
  6. BCassius Dio. 230. Roman History, Book LXIX (Loeb Classical Library, trans. Earnest Cary). LacusCurtius, University of Chicago link
  7. AEck W. 1999. The Bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View. The Journal of Roman Studies 89 76–89. doi:10.2307/300735
  8. AAtzmon G, Hao L, Pe'er I, et al.. 2010. Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. The American Journal of Human Genetics 86 850–859. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015