![]() | The current title of this article is disputed . An alternative proposed title is Alexandrian pogrom.(February 2013) |
The Alexandrian pogrom, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] or Alexandrian riots, [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] were attacks directed against Jews in 38 CE in Roman Alexandria, Egypt.
The Roman emperor Caligula did not trust the prefect of Egypt, Aulus Avilius Flaccus. Flaccus had been loyal to Tiberius, had conspired against Caligula's mother and had connections with Egyptian separatists. [28] In 38 CE, Caligula sent Herod Agrippa to Alexandria unannounced to check on Flaccus. [29] According to Philo, the visit was met with jeers from the Greek population who saw Agrippa as the king of the Jews. [30] Flaccus tried to placate both the Greek population and Caligula by having statues of the emperor placed in Jewish synagogues. [31] As a result, riots broke out in the city.[ why? ] [32] Caligula responded by removing Flaccus from his position and executing him. [33]
Riots again erupted in Alexandria in 40 CE between Jews and Greeks. [34] Jews were accused of not honouring the emperor. [34] Disputes occurred in the city of Jamnia. [35] Jews were angered by the erection of a clay altar and destroyed it. [35] In response, Caligula ordered the erection of a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem, [36] a demand in conflict with Jewish monotheism. [37] In this context, Philo wrote that Caligula "regarded the Jews with most especial suspicion, as if they were the only persons who cherished wishes opposed to his". [37]
The sole source is Philo of Alexandria, himself a Jew, who witnessed the riots and afterwards led the Jewish delegation to Caligula, and requested the re-establishment of legal Jewish residence in Alexandria. [1] Philo's writings on the topic are found in two sources: In Flaccum [38] (meaning "Against Flaccus"), which is wholly devoted to the riots, and Legatio ad Gaium [39] (meaning "Embassy to Caligula"), which makes some references to the event in its introduction. [40] Scholarly research around the subject has been divided on certain points, including whether the Alexandrian Jews fought to keep their citizenship or to acquire it, whether they evaded the payment of the poll-tax or prevented any attempts to impose it on them, and whether they were safeguarding their identity against the Greeks or against the Egyptians. [12]
Sandra Gambetti states that "[s]cholars have frequently labeled the Alexandrian events of 38 CE as the first pogrom in history, and have often explained them in terms of an ante litteram explosion of anti-Semitism." In her book The Alexandrian Riots of 38 CE and the Persecution of the Jews (2009), however, Gambetti "deliberately avoids any words or expressions that in any way connect, explicitly or implicitly, the Alexandrian events of 38 CE to later events in modern... Jewish experience" as – in her view – this would "require[] a comparative re-discussion of two historical frames". [12]
Adalbert Polacek referred to the event as a holocaust in his work Holocaust, Two Millennia Ago, [41] a characterization that Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev believes is "misleading and methodologically unsound." [42]
Caligula, formally known as Gaius, was the third Roman emperor, ruling from 37 to 41. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus's granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Titus Flavius Josephus, born Yosef ben Matityahu, was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.
Herod Agrippa, also known as Herod II or Agrippa I, was a King of Judea from AD 41 to 44 and of Philip's tetrarchy from 39. He was the last ruler with the royal title reigning over Judea and the father of Herod Agrippa II, the last king from the Herodian dynasty. The grandson of Herod the Great and son of Aristobulus IV and Berenice, he is the king named Herod in the Acts of the Apostles 12:1: "Herod (Agrippa)".
Apion was a Hellenized Egyptian grammarian, sophist, and commentator on Homer. He was born at the Siwa Oasis and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD. His name is sometimes incorrectly spelt Appion, and some sources, as in the Suda, call him a son of Pleistoneices, while others more correctly state that Pleistoneices was only a surname, and that he was the son of Poseidonius.
Philo of Alexandria, also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt.
The Jewish diaspora or exile is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.
The First Jewish–Roman War, sometimes called the Great Jewish Revolt, or The Jewish War, was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire, fought in Roman-controlled Judea, resulting in the destruction of Jewish towns, the displacement of its people and the appropriation of land for Roman military use, as well as the destruction of the Jewish Temple and polity.
Tiberius Julius Alexander was an equestrian governor and general in the Roman Empire. Born into a wealthy Jewish family of Alexandria but abandoning or neglecting the Jewish religion, he rose to become procurator of Judea under Claudius. While Prefect of Egypt (66–69), he employed his legions against the Alexandrian Jews in a brutal response to ethnic violence, and was instrumental in the Emperor Vespasian's rise to power. In 70, he participated in the Siege of Jerusalem as Titus' second-in-command. He became the most powerful Jew of his age, and is ranked as one of the most prominent Jews in military history.
The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of the Eastern Mediterranean against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. While the First Jewish–Roman War and the Bar Kokhba revolt were nationalist rebellions, striving to restore an independent Judean state, the Kitos War was more of an ethno-religious conflict, mostly fought outside Judea Province. Hence, some sources use the term Jewish-Roman Wars to refer only to the First Jewish–Roman War and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE), while others include the Kitos War as one of the Jewish–Roman wars.
The Roman province of Judea, sometimes spelled in its original Latin forms of Iudæa or Iudaea to distinguish it from the geographical region of Judea, incorporated the regions of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, and extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Judea. It was named after Herod Archelaus's Tetrarchy of Judea, but the Roman province encompassed a much larger territory. The name "Judea" was derived from the Kingdom of Judah of the 6th century BCE.
Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture. Until the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa region, both founded at the end of the fourth century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists.
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, (6–39) married the emperor Caligula's younger sister Julia Drusilla.
Aulus Avilius Flaccus was a Roman eques who was appointed praefectus or governor of Roman Egypt from 33 CE to 38. His rule coincided with the riots against Alexandria's Jewish population in 38. According to some accounts, including Philo's, Flaccus was responsible for cruelty against the Jews during these events.
Alexander the Alabarch was an Alexandrian Jewish aristocrat. His brother was the exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria.
Marcus Julius Alexander, the son of Alexander the Alabarch and brother of Tiberius Julius Alexander, was a distinguished and wealthy Alexandrian Jewish merchant.
The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire. The two cultures began to overlap in the centuries just before the Christian Era. Jews, as part of the Jewish diaspora, migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of Israel, Asia Minor, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires from the 4th to the 1st centuries BCE. In Rome, Jewish communities thrived economically. Jews, both ethnic Jews and converts, became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century CE.
Extensive riots erupted in Alexandria, Roman Egypt, in 66 CE, in parallel with the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War in neighbouring Roman Judea.
The history of the Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, dates back to the founding of the city by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Jews in Alexandria played a crucial role in the political, economic, and religious life of Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria, with Jews comprising about 35% of the city's population during the Roman Era. Alexandrian Jewry were the founders of Hellenistic Judaism and the first to translate the Torah from Hebrew to Koine Greek, a document known as the Septuagint. Many important Jewish writers and figures came from or studied in Alexandria, such as Philo, Ben Sira, Tiberius Julius Alexander and Josephus. The position of Alexandria's Jewry began deteriorating during the Roman era, as deep antisemitic sentiment began developing amongst the city's Greek and Egyptian populations. This led to the subsequent Alexandrian pogrom in 38 CE and the Alexandria riot in 66 CE, which was in parallel with the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War. Alexandria's Jewry began to diminish, leading to a mass emigration of Alexandrian Jews to Rome, as well as other Mediterranean and North African cities. By the beginning of the Byzantine era, the Jewish population had again increased, but suffered from the persecutions of the Christian Church, and during the subsequent Muslim conquest of Egypt, the number of Jews in Alexandria increased greatly, with some estimates numbering around 400,000. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the ensuing Six-Day War, almost all of Alexandria's Jewish population were expelled from the country and emigrated to Israel.
Gregory E. Sterling is an American religious scholar, academic and researcher. He is the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. He is a former dean of the Graduate School of University of Notre Dame where he also served on the faculty for 23 years.