Sorry if this is an elementary question, but after the fall of Jerusalem where did all the Palestinian Jews go?
Did they join the Diaspora communities? Do we have evidence of them joining the Jews of Egypt? If they did, how did they deal with language barriers? Would we have had Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jewish Ghettos among Diaspora communities?
If anyone has any pointers on where to head with this regard, please do share! I have been thinking about the makeup of Christianity in Egypt and Roberts' explanation that they were probably highly integrated with the Jews of Alexandria. He states that the Hellenised Jews of Alexandria would have been more open to Christianity - but would there have been a newly established Palestinian Jewish community there post-fall?
What I have so far:
ReplyDelete"Third, the social dynamics within the Jewish communities in Egypt and Cyrenaica were radically altered by the war of 66–73 in Palestine. Even if inflated, the demographic figures provided by Josephus are witness to
extreme convulsions in the composition of these communities: 97,000 enslaved Jewish captives from Palestine, many of whom were sent to
Egypt; 60,000 Jews killed in Egypt, of whom 50,000 perished in Alexandria alone; and 5,000 Jews butchered in Cyrenaica, including ‘‘all’’
3,000 landholding elite. Insurgents and refugees who fled to Egypt and Cyrenaica must have numbered in the thousands. These violent demographic upheavals were compounded by economic stress, psychological trauma and other factors that immersed many Jews in anomie and bitterness."
'The Diaspora from 66-c.235' in The Cambridge History of Judaism (Vol. 4). 57
I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but Dr. Barclay has a book on a related topic, I didn't finish it but it was a pretty good overview
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Jews-Mediterranean-Diaspora-Alexander-Hellenistic/dp/0520218434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256509030&sr=8-1
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'll look into it.