THE JEWISH DISPERSION.
Something still remains to be said with reference to the diaspora.
We have seen how it began; in spite of Josephus (Antiquities,
xi. 5, 2), it is to be carried back not to the Assyrian but merely
to the Babylonian captivity; it was not composed of Israelites,
but solely of citizens of the southern kingdom. It received its
greatest impulse from Alexander, and then afterwards from Caesar.
In the Graeco-Roman period Jerusalem at the time of the great
festival presented the appearance of a veritable Babel (Acts ii.
9-11); with the Jews themselves were mingled the proselytes (Acts
ii. 11), for even already that religion was gaining considerable
conquests among the heathen; as King Agrippa I. writes to the
Emperor Caius (Philo, Legat. ad Gaium, sec. 36),
"Jerusalem is the metropolis not only of Judaea but of very many
lands, on account of the colonies which on various occasions
('epi xairwn) it has sent out into the adjoining countries of Egypt,
Phoenicia, Syria, and Coelesyria, and into the more remote Pamphylia,
Cilicia, the greater part of Asia Minor as far as to Bithynia and
the remotest parts of Pontus; likewise into Europe--Thessaly,
Boeotia, Macedonia, AEtolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, most parts
(and these the fairest) of the Peloponnesus.
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