209
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
the Achremenidae, a small select number of poor, fervent Jews were allowed to reenter Palestine, where they organized a community Exile with the restored Temple as a center.
and Res-
Under the guidance of a hierarchy of high priests the people enjoyed wide
toration.
internal liberty but, disturbed at the religious reform, they did not always bear
outset by Persian domination with patience, and, about 350, Artaxerxes Ochus deported a group of Jews that had revolted to Hyrcania.
The Macedonian conquest
(332 B.C.) put an end to
the empire founded by Cyrus. In the partition that followed the death of Alexander, Palestine fell to the share of the Ptolemies, who retained it during the third centmy. Clever politicians, Greek they knew how to deal with national and Roman sentiment and to render Greek civiliDomzation accessible to a sensitive people. ination. The Seleucidae, succeeding the Ptolemies in 198 B.C., desired to hasten the
work
of Hellenization. Antiochus Epiphanes, by his fanaticism, provoked the revolt of the Maccabees, whose success was the triumph of the cause of independence after more than four centuriesof subjection.
This independence, however, lasted but a short while.
From
63 B.C. the intestine quarrels of the
Hasmoneans, who had become kings, placed the little state at the mercy of the Komans. Pompey entered Jerusalem, and Gabinius placed Judea under tribute. However, a century had to pass before defi nite annexation could take place. Rather than administer the ungovernable and stricken country directly, the Romans handed it over to the Idumean Herod and his descendants. In the course of this last period Judaism had overstepped the limits of its ancient centers and had spread over the whole of western Asia. Western During the first century of the comAsia. mon era it not only kept the positions in the region of the Euphrates, which, it
had not ceased
to possess since the
but also scattered thence in all directions. To the south it reached Mesene and around Nehardea, during the reign of Tiberius or thereabouts, Jewish influence had been strong enough to permit the maintenance for some thirty years of the open revolt of Anilai and Asinai against the Parthian king. To the north, with Nisibis as its capital, Judaism conquered Adiabene through the conversion of the royal house. In the extreme north it penetrated Armenia It is singular that from Mesopoto the east, Media. tamia, under Antiochus the Great (200 B.C.), went forth the first Jewish colony having Asia Minor as exile,
The colony must have been followed by a number of emigrants, who formed flourits
destination.
ishing communities in nearly every important city of the country.
Northern Syria, too, was invaded by numerous Jewish colonies, especially at Damascus and Antioch and the petty dynasties of Emesa and Cilicia were influenced by Judaism. In the epoch of the
Misbnah, Jews existed among the nomad Arabs; a later, through immigration and especially through conversion, the Jewish religion penetrated into the center and to the south of the Arabian peninlittle
II.— 14
Asia
When in the course of the early centuries of the common era these movements were completed, Asiatic Judaism embraced a domain that has not since been exceeded to any extent. In contrast with this expansion was the simultasula.
neous disappearance of the centers of Jewish national and religious life— Jerusalem and the Temple. When the Romans decided to place Judea under the direct jurisdiction of the empire, incompatibility between suzerain and subject induced the formidable revolt (67-70) that was terminated by the systematic destruction of the capital, followed by the edict forbidding Jews to return thither, and by the establishment in the country of Greek and Roman colonies, which were destined to destroy all possibility of reconstruction. Despite these precautions, there occurred under Hadrian (131-135) the sanguinary revolt of Bar Kokba. Depopulated and politically enslaved, Judea played a smaller and smaller role in the destiny of Judaism.
—
The religious center rather than the national gradually shifted its location. The schools first placed at Jabneh (Jamnia), south of Joppa (Jaffa), were afterward removed to Galilee that is, to Usha, Seppharis, Shefar'am, and especially to Tiberias; and in these schools the Talmud known as the Jerusalem Talmud was elaborated during Epoch of the third and fourth centuries. The
the
Talmud,
triumph of Christianity must have been fatal to Galilean Judaism, that, with the suppression of the patriarch-
-
apparently,
Ashyan
ate (about 425), lost the served till then.
autonomy which
it
had pre-
The communities beyond the Euphrates gained in importance what Palestine lost. The foundation of the Academy of Sura (219) nearly coincides with the advent in Mesopotamia and Iran of a new dynasty, that of the Sassanids. At first hostile, this dynasty became quite tolerant toward Judaism, which gained adherents even in the royal house. Then rivals of the Academy of Sura sprang up and flourished the schools of Nehardea, Pumbedita, and Mahuza; and from them proceeded the Bab}'lonian Talmud. In the sixth century the Jews on both sides of the Euphrates were persecuted but a new religion, arising
—
to deprive Byzanand Sassanids of domination in western Asia Academies in Babylonia, Academies in Pal-
in central Arabia, tines (see
was destined
estine).
A
Jewish population of real importance had been Proselytism, established in the Arabian peninsula. rather than immigration, had introduced Judaism into the tribes of northern Hijaz, about Taima, Khaibar, Fadak, and Yathrib (now Medina), and those speaking the Sabean language and inhabiting the present Yemen. Among the last-mentioned, according to a somewhat doubtful tradition, Judaism, under the Himyaritic king Du Nuwas, obtained political supremacy. In his eaily discourses Mohammed made advances to the Jews of Hijaz, whose religion had furnished him with the essential elements of the one he himBut he experienced a repulse, which self founded. explains the hostility displayed by him toward the Jews after the battle of Badr, and which was
Arabia.
