6. 1 Macc. iv. 52-54: Megill. Taan. 23.
7. 1 Macc. l. 54.
Nor were such the feelings of the Palestinian Jews only. These indeed were now a minority. The
majority of the nation constituted what was known as the dispersion; a term which, however, no
longer expressed its original meaning of banishment by the judgment of God,8 since absence
from Palestine was now entirely voluntary. But all the more that it referred not to outward
suffering,9 did its continued use indicate a deep feeling of religious sorrow, of social isolation,
and of political strangership10 in the midst of a heathen world. For although, as Josephus
reminded his countrymen,11 there was `no nation in the world which had not among them part of
the Jewish people,' since it was `widely dispersed over all the world among its inhabitants,'12
yet they had nowhere found a real home. A century and a half before our era comes to us from
Egypt13 - where the Jews possessed exceptional privileges - professedly from the heathen, but
really from the Jewish14 Sibyl, this lament of Israel -
8. Alike the verb hlg in Hebrew, and diaspeirw in Greek, with their derivatives, are used in the Old
Testament, and in the rendering of the LXX., with reference to punitive banishment. See, for example,
Judg. xviii. 30; 1 Sam. iv. 21; and in the LXX. Deut. xxx. 4; Ps. cxlvii. 2; Is. xlix. 6, and other passages.
9. There is some truth, although greatly exaggerated, in the bitter remarks of Hausrath (Neutest.
Zeitgesch. ii. p. 93), as to the sensitiveness of the Jews in the diaspora, and the loud outcry of all its
members at any interference with them, however trivial. But events unfortunately too often proved how
real and near was their danger, and how necessary the caution `Obsta principiis.'
10. St. Peter seems to have used it in that sense, 1 Pet. i. 1.
11. Jew. W ii. 16. 4.
12. vii. 3.3.
13. Comp. the remarks of Schneckenburger (Vorles ü. Neutest. Zeitg. p. 95).
14. Comp. Friedlieb, D. Sibyll. Weissag. xxii. 39.
Crowding with thy numbers every ocean and country -
Yet an offense to all around thy presence and customs!15
15. Orac Sibyll. iii. 271,272, apud Friedlieb, p. 62.
Sixty years later the Greek geographer and historian Strabo bears the like witness to their
presence in every land, but in language that shows how true had been the complaint of the
Sibyl.16 The reasons for this state of feeling will by-and-by appear. Suffice it for the present that,
all unconsciously, Philo tells its deepest ground, and that of Israel's loneliness in the heathen
world, when speaking, like the others, of his countrymen as in `all the cities of Europe, in the
provinces of Asia and in the islands,' he describes them as, wherever sojourning, having but one
metropolis - not Alexandria, Antioch, or Rome - but `the Holy City with its Temple, dedicated