Before Alexander
Before the conquests of Alexander, all Jews (so far as we are aware) resided
within the confines of the Persian Empire. Stretching from Anatolia in the
west to Afghanistan in the east and from the Caspian steppe in the north to
Upper Egypt in the south, the multiethnic domain of the Achaemenid dy-
nasty sustained numerous Jewish communities. Most of these are known
to us only through indirect or retrospective testimony. Thus, our present
understanding of Jewish life on the eve of Alexander’s conquests is imper-
fect, especially outside of Palestine.
An obscure biblical allusion and a stray Aramaic inscriptionmayat-
test to a Jewish presence in Asia Minor before Alexander, but their inter-
pretation and dating are contested. In the absence of stronger evidence, it
is more defensible to treat the Jewish settlement of western Anatolia as a
Hellenistic development.
The Babylonian Diaspora is a major focus of the prophetic corpus of
the Hebrew Bible. The later flowering of talmudic culture in that region
spawned a wealth of traditions concerning the Jews of Mesopotamia. But
the historicity of the latter is often suspect, and the former deals mostly
with the Neo-Babylonian period. This gap in reliable testimony is partly
remedied by economic documents that locate individual Jews (as well as at
least one predominantly Jewish town) in the Babylon-Borsippa and
Nippur regions. As yet, there is no cuneiform evidence for a Jewish pres-
ence in the city of Babylon itself during Achaemenid times.
Less certain still is the extent of pre-Hellenistic Jewish penetration of
lands of the Zagros arc — Armenia, Adiabene, Media, Elam — or the vast
Iranian plateau beyond. Late antique sources attest to an Achaemenid de-
portation of Jews to distant Hyrcania around 340b.c.e., and the subse-
quent appearance of “Hyrcanus” as a Jewish name has been cited as cor-
roboration for this tradition. It is possible, however, that the alleged
deportation has been chronologically misplaced and that it actually hap-
pened six centuries later.
The geopolitical situation of Palestine has traditionally linked it with
Egypt. The Bible is rife with references to pro-Egyptian factions collabo-
rating with allies on the Nile. Such interstate cooperation appears to have
supplied the occasion for the emergence of a Jewish military colony at Ele-
phantine (Yeb) in Upper Egypt. Although there were certainly other Jew-
ish settlements in Egypt, the Elephantine garrison is the only one whose
persistence into Achaemenid times has been verified by papyri. Unfortu-31Jewish History from Alexander to HadrianEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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