Early Jewish Diaspora Communities: Alexandria

The most significant Jewish center in Egypt was in Alexandria, the population of which, around the turn of the millennium, may have been 30–40 percent Jewish. Jews were well integrated into the city culturally, economically, and socially. It seems the Jews enjoyed some degree of political independence and were permitted their own structures of government, which included a Gerousia—that is, an elder council—and an ethnarch, the elected “leader of the people” (see Gerousia and Ethnarch). These bodies acted to mediate between the Jews and the Roman government and also made it possible for the Jews of Alexandria to demonstrate their loyalty to Rome even as they lived according to their own ancestral traditions. The Jews’ relations with the other local ethnic communities took a turn for the worse when Alexandria was integrated into the Roman Empire in 80 BCE (see Violence and Revolts in the Diaspora).

Josephus presents the settlement of Jews in the imperial city of Alexandria as a reward granted by the Macedonian king Alexander, owing to the “virtue and loyalty” the Jews demonstrated toward him. He also maintains that Jewish settlers attained citizenship on a level equal to that of the Greek population, a claim dismissed by most scholars, and that Jews continued to enjoy these rights under Roman rule, despite the alleged animosity shown by many Alexandrians toward the Jewish population. In contrast to Josephus’ romantic notion of Alexandria’s Jews originating as unfaltering allies of Alexander, the second-century BCE Letter of Aristeas understands the first significant Jewish settlements in Alexandria to have been composed of Jewish war captives caught up in the campaigns of Ptolemy son of Lagos in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia.

The pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas also contains the legendary account of Ptolemy II’s request to a certain Eleazar, referred to as a Jewish high priest, for competent translators who would be charged with the task of translating the Torah of Moses into the Greek language. The reading of the finished translation to a Jewish assembly draws unanimous approval, as well as the threat of a curse directed at anyone who either adds to or takes away from the finished literary product, likely an allusion to a scriptural admonition in Deuteronomy 4:2. (For additional excerpts from this narrative and more about the Greek translation of the Bible, see “Greek: The Septuagint.”)

The Jewish philosopher Philo (ca. 20 BCE–50 CE), who also served as a leader of the Alexandrian Jewish community, is the source for much of what we know about this important Jewish center during the late Second Temple period. He also confirms a substantial Jewish population in Alexandria, as he recounts the civil unrest and violence between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations during the first century CE. Like a skilled classical rhetorician, Philo masterfully employs hyperbole in his depictions of the violence and presents the threats to his people as global in scope and capable of wrecking the universe. In Against Flaccus, Philo recounts when the Roman procurator Flaccus arrested and publicly tortured thirty-eight members of the Alexandrian Gerousia. In the same text, he also refers in passing to the death of the ethnarch, thereby witnessing to both of these leadership structures.