Diaspora communities, which Philo describes as “colonies” of Jerusalem, a concept
which Roman authorities (and all Hellenized peoples) would immediately understand
(Legatio281f.). In Roman legal terms a “colony” was a municipal entity with its
own constitution enjoying full “Latin rights,” as ifthey were on Italian soil. Thus
Philo seeks to portray Diaspora Jewish communities vis-à-vis Jerusalem and the Land
of Israel. As we shall see, such a portrayal of matters was a fiction; Diaspora Jews
were patently not able to implement many of the provisions of their constitution,
the Torah, as iftheir communities were on the soil of the Holy Land.
In sum, the biblical literature and chiefly the Torah of Moses provided the author-
itative basis – in its narrative, in its family, social, and cultic laws and injunctions,
and in its cultic and prophetic poetry – for many constructs at the core of Roman
Diaspora Judaism. On the synchronic dimension, (1) it provided the basis for per-
ceptions of a distinctive ethno-religious identity; (2) it allowed all Diaspora Jews to
see themselves as part of one single people; (3) it fostered the perception that they
were the same ethnosas those who lived still in the Holy Land. Moreover, on the
diachronic dimension, Diaspora Jews’ biblical heritage (4) permitted them to live a
life deemed to be in continuity with Jews (Judeans/Israelites) of the past. However,
Roman Diaspora Jews’ appropriation of biblical Judaism and biblical literature also
set up significant barriers to various forms of social interaction with non-Jews, and
to participation by Jews in activities and functions by which the host city expressed
and reinforced civic identity and solidarity within a larger social construct, the Roman
empire, an important requisite as well on the synchronic dimension. Later I shall
discuss how Diaspora Jews and Judaism overcame the latter barriers and forged
the requisite mechanisms for social integration and solidarity with their host cities
and the empire. At this juncture, however, I turn from Roman Diaspora Judaism’s
continuity with biblical tradition to its opposite: the principal and serious areas of
disjuncture with the scriptures which they inherited, read, studied, and revered.
Roman Diaspora Judaism, biblical literature, and late
biblical Judaism: discontinuities and disjuncture
I have argued that the biblical literature served as an authoritative “source book”
for much of the social identity, social structures, and a distinctive ritual and cultic
life which gave expression and reinforced these structures among Diaspora Jews. Now
I point to the opposite. What is most often highlighted in this respect is Diaspora
Jews’ distance from the Jerusalem Temple, the only site, according to biblical
Judaism’s understanding of the scriptures, where the cult of YHWH, an almost
exclusively sacrificial one, may be practiced. As noted, the Jewish temple of Onias,
in the region of Leontopolis in Greco-Roman Egypt, is the notable exception which
undoubtedly proves the rule, since to our knowledge, no other Greco-Roman
Diaspora Jewish communities availed themselves of this option. I do not wish to
understate the importance of physical distance from Jerusalem and the biblical inter-
diction against sacrificing elsewhere in describing transformations of biblical Judaism
devised and/or adopted in the Diaspora – in particular, the emergence of the syn-
agogue, and a cult of scriptural readings and scriptural lessons, and of prayer – asRoman Diaspora Judaism 367