58 A History of Judaism
It is all the more striking that in Egypt another temple for worship-
ping the Jewish God had in fact been built in Leontopolis just after the
revolt of the Maccabees, by a group of priests in exile from the Jeru-
salem Temple. According to Josephus, somewhere around 140 bce a
certain Onias, son of the former Jerusalem High Priest, obtained from
the Egyptian king Ptolemy and his queen Cleopatra ‘authority to build
a temple in Egypt similar to that at Jerusalem, and to appoint Levites
and priests of his own race’, in return for his ‘many and great’ services
as a mercenary leader. The temple thus built (on the site of a previous
pagan temple) was said by Josephus in one passage to be indeed similar
to that of Jerusalem, ‘but smaller and poorer’, although elsewhere he
asserted specifically that it was not like that in Jerusalem, but like ‘a
tower of huge stones and sixty cubits in altitude’. Onias’ motives are
now difficult to fathom, since Josephus claimed variously that he wished
primarily to fulfil the ancient prophecy of Isaiah that ‘on that day there
will be an altar to the Lord in the centre of the land of Egypt’, that he
wanted to bring together the Jewish inhabitants of Egypt at a single
shrine rather than the scattered temples they were currently using ‘con-
trary to what is proper’, or that he wished dishonestly to rival the Jews
at Jerusalem, and that he hoped ‘by erecting this temple to attract the
multitude away from them to it’.
The history and eventual fate of the Leontopolis temple seem to
reflect Jewish ambivalence towards such an enterprise. On the one hand,
the temple remained in continuous operation for considerably more
than two centuries, until it was closed down, and in due course despoiled,
by the Romans in c. 73 ce, after the destruction of Jerusalem. The rab-
bis, as cited in the Mishnah, envisage a pious individual vowing to make
personal offerings in ‘the House of Onias’ and being obliged to keep
such vows: ‘[if he said] “I will offer the Hair- offering [as a nazirite] in
the House of Onias”, he should offer it in the Temple [in Jerusalem]; but
if he offered it in the House of Onias he has fulfilled his obligation.’ It
seems that nazirites, who vowed to ‘separate themselves from the Lord’
by abstention from vine products and allowing hair to remain uncut,
could fulfil in Leontopolis as well as in Jerusalem their duty to shave
their hair at the end of their consecration at ‘the entrance of the tent of
meeting’, as ordained in Numbers 6:18. On the other hand, neither the
writings of Philo nor any other Egyptian Jewish text makes any overt
reference to the Leontopolis temple, and attempts to discover covert
references are not convincing.^28
Whether or not Onias intended Leontopolis to rival Jerusalem, he