The Third Century
The Ptolemaic Empire dominates the historical record of Jewish life in the
third centuryb.c.e.(see map 3). From the Battle of Ipsus until the Seleucid
seizure of Palestine in 198, roughly half the world’s Jews were subjects of
the House of Ptolemy. (Of the other half, we possess virtually no evidence
for this period.) From an Egyptian core, centered on the maritime metrop-
olis of Alexandria, the Ptolemies projected their power across the eastern
Mediterranean. Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Crete, the islands of the Aegean, the
coasts of Anatolia and the Levant, along with much of the Syrian and Pal-
estinian hinterlands, all felt the hand of Ptolemaic rule.
Egypt itself provides the greatest wealth of documentation for Jews in
the Ptolemaic realm. Third-century papyri reveal Jewish military settle-
ments in the Fayyum, while funerary inscriptions from the vicinity of
Alexandria indicate an early concentration of Jews there. This picture is re-
inforced by inscriptions from Schedia and Arsinoe-Crocodilopolis dedi-
cating prayer houses to Ptolemy III (ruled 246-221b.c.e.). The presence of
one such building at Schedia on the Nile may also lend some credence to
Josephus’s claim that Jews had been involved in official oversight of river
traffic (Ag. Ap.2.64).
The vexed and ultimately insoluble problem of dating theLetter of
Aristeasneed not detain us. Most scholars conjecture a late second- or early
first-century-b.c.e.setting; but whatever the date of its creation,Aristeas
must have postdated (probably by several generations) the actual event of
the Pentateuch’s translation into Greek. Since there is no convincing reason
to question Alexandria as the site of the translation, we may infer that, by
the end of the third century, the Ptolemaic capital supported a Greek-
speaking Jewish population numerous enough to warrant such an extensive
undertaking. It is unnecessary to account for the existence of this commu-
nity by any single event or cause. A century of Ptolemaic rule, along with
the city’s economic importance, is sufficient grounds for Alexandria’s repu-
tation as the largest urban Jewish settlement of the Hellenistic age.
The Libyan pentapolis of Cyrenaica was incorporated into the Ptole-
maic realm already by the late fourth century. Predictably, Josephus attrib-
utes the origins of Jewish presence there to an act of Ptolemy I, bent on
consolidating his hold over this tenuous frontier (Ag. Ap.2.44). More sub-
stantial testimony for Jewish habitation of North Africa emerges only in
the first centuryb.c.e., and so can tell us little about its possible begin-
nings two hundred years earlier (Ant.14.115).34chris seeman and adam kolman marshakEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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