The Status of the Jews in Egypt by W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders) Petrie

Author:W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders) Petrie [Petrie, W. M. Flinders]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, New Age, Religion & Spirituality, History, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9781465618368
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2021-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

There was also another and entirely different side of Jewish life in Egypt. In Josephus we read a long account of the Essenes,[37] to which sect this Pharisee of the High-Priestly family had devoted himself in his youth. This account of the Ascetics of Palestine so closely accords with the account that the Alexandrian Jew Philo gives of the Therapeutae in Egypt[38] that they seem to be identical. This spread of asceticism appears to have been started by the Buddhist mission from India. It was entirely foreign to the Western ideals, yet it took root quickly after Asoka’s mission. Indian figures are found of this period at Memphis, and a multitude of modelled heads of foreigners also found there,[17] can only be paralleled by the modelled heads of foreigners made now for a Buddhist festival in Tibet, and thrown away as soon as the ceremony is over. The influence which thus came into Egypt with the Indians of the Persian occupation is found in working order by 340 B.C., and it was probably strengthened and organized by the Buddhist mission in 260 B.C., and so grew until we meet with the full description of long-established communities in the pages of Philo and Josephus. These bodies were apparently composed of philosophical Jews and proselytes largely influenced by the Alexandrine mixture of Oriental beliefs with Greek theorizing.

Though we are reviewing the status of the Jews, that must include their intellectual as well as social position. The Alexandrian school of thought, as we have it in the Hermetic books[39] and in Philo, was a new development in the world, freely reasoning on the nature of God and of man, starting from various beliefs which were chosen for their prominence and compatibility, and coming to conclusions which are curiously similar to some modern thought. These ideas are the ground for various dogmas which naturally grew up from it in the development of that Jewish sect of Christianity.

We turn from these recluses back to the busy world of the Roman age, when troops for Caesar at Alexandria were collected by his General Mithradates, but stuck at Askelon, hindered by the desert and the Delta.[40] Antipater, a Jewish general with 3,000 Jewish troops, joined him, organized the desert transport with the Arabs, and then forced the fortress of Pelusium. On entering Egypt Antipater brought over the Jews of the Delta to the Caesarian cause, and so opened the way across to Alexandria, and this induced the Memphite Jews also to join Caesar. This service was handsomely acknowledged by Caesar.

Augustus rewarded the fidelity of the Alexandrian Jews by giving them a renewal of all the rights and privileges of equality with the Greeks,[41] which they had in the original charter of Alexander. They had an ethnarch and a council, or a president and parliament, of their own; but the Alexandrian Greeks by their opposition to Augustus lost their right to a senate.

Trouble began with the insane Caligula,[42] who tried to force the worship of his own statues in every place.

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