Three salient facts can be distinguished among these quotations:
1) that the Jewish colonization in Libya was connected in Josephus’ view with their settlement in Egypt, and took place in similar conditions;
2) that with regard to Cyrene, Josephus speaks of two periods or stages of Jewish immigration, namely of the first settlement and subsequently of the situation created by the union of Egypt and Cyrenaica in the second half of the 2nd century B.C.;
3) Josephus’ writings produce the clear impression that the first Jewish settlement in Egypt and Libya was of a decidedly military character. His account of the despatch of Jews to Cyrene and the country’s other cities, does not indeed state explicitly that they were sent as garrisons or to discharge military duties. Only the fact that his report comes immediately after the description of the Jewish settlement in garrisons (φρούρια) in Egypt, leads us to this assumption. But his words clearly mean that the Jews were sent to be a loyal element among the population and supporters of the Ptolemaic regime. Very interesting, moreover, is the term applied by Josephus when he reports the “organized groups”, (συντάγματα) of Libyan Jews, as the word is derived first and foremost from the sphere of military organization.
We therefore face two questions: What was the character of this first settlement — military, agricultural or other; and when did it take place?
Some scholars have seen in the first clause of the Ptolemaic constitution of Cyrene a loophole for the introduction of newcomers, including Jews, into the ranks of the citizens of Cyrene; the reference is to the clause which permits Ptolemy to grant Cyrenean citizenship to anyone he chooses.[793] But it is very improbable that Ptolemy would at this stage have intruded a non-Greek group into a citizen-body whose affairs he was endeavouring to compose by compromise, with the object of restoring stability and healing rifts after a stormy period. On the other hand the evidence from Egypt and perhaps from the Syrtis confirms that Jews were brought in at this period as a colonizing factor, hence there are two possibilities: either that Jews figured among the Ptolemaic garrisons of Cyrene and the remaining Libyan cities, or that Jews were included among the new military settlers planted by Ptolemy on the soil of the conquered country. If we could be certain that the clauses of the constitution disqualifying for citizenship those joining “Ptolemy’s colonies” was rightly read by Oliverio (Fraser was unable to find the words on the inscription), this would be good proof of contemporary cleruchic settlement. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure if the proof exists. As to the first possibility, there is no evidence for Jews serving in garrisons in Cyrenaica; the information of Ptolemy’s constitution is simply that his garrison was stationed at Cyrene.[794] We therefore have no alternative but to examine the question of the form and date of the first Jewish settlement by the method of analogy, that is, in the light of the contemporary situation in Egypt and elsewhere.
There were Jewish troops in Alexandria, on archaeological evidence, as early as in the 3rd century. This is shown by the tombs of al-Ibramiyeh.[795] We also know of Jewish garrisons in the Egyptian Delta, indicated by the names Castra Iudaeorum[796] and Στρατόπεδον Ἰουδαίων (the Jewish camp);[797] a third is recorded at Pelusium.[798] Unfortunately the records belong to the 1st century B.C. or later, and we do not know when they originated. A “phyle” (φυλή) of Jewish “Macedonians” existed in Alexandria in the 1st century A.D.,[799] and it seems highly probable that Tcherikover was right in interpreting the designation “Macedonians” as a “pseudo-ethnic” indicating merely the type of unit to which they belonged,[800] “phyle” being thus, not a tribe of the polis but a military formation. The date when this body originated is equally unknown, and it may well have been formed during the 2nd century B.C. when Jewish prestige as a military factor was high for both external and internal political reasons, and the independent Jewish katoikia of Onias was set up at Leontopolis for a body of Jewish katoikoi.[801] The Egyptian analogy, then, does not help us to answer the question, whether the Jews composed garrisons in early Ptolemaic Libya.
On the other hand the question of whether the first Cyrenean Jews were military cultivators (cleruchs, katoikoi), invites two other considerations. Firstly, the word κατοίκῆσαν (“in order to settle there”) is used by Josephus when he reports the despatch of Jews to the cities of Cyrenaica. Possibly he was influenced to use this word by the conditions of a period later than the event he was describing, since the word κάτοικος replaced that of κληρούχος in Egypt only in the 2nd century B.C.[802] in application to a soldier settler who received his plot in return for military service. But the term κάτοικος for such a settler appears in the 3rd century B.C. in Asia,[803] and the Jews of Hierapolis (Phrygia) not only called themselves κατοικοῦντες, a broad term without specific meaning (cf. the Latin word consistentes) but their communal organization was known as a κατοικία, and we have reliable testimony from Josephus that Jews were settled in the cities and countryside of Phrygia in organized military colonies under Antiochus III in the years 223-197 B.C.[804] Accordingly it is possible that Josephus himself, at least, believed that the Jews of Cyrene had been sent from Egypt as an organized body of military settlers.
Antiochus III’s settlement of Jews in Asia may indeed assist our study, since its circumstances were decidedly parallel to those in which the Cyrenean Jews were originally settled, to judge by Josephus’ account. Two thousand Jewish families were then sent from Babylonia to Phrygia and Lydia to prop Seleucid rule after serious risings had occurred in those countries. In Antiochus’ instructions to his governor Zeuxis, preserved in Josephus’ text, the King directs his deputy to settle the immigrants in “garrisons (or fortresses) and at the most vital points (εἰς τὰ φρούρια καὶ τοὐς ἀναγκαιοτάτους τόπους), the orders being explicit to allot them plots of land and plantations.[805] Recently Sardis has yielded epi-graphical confirmation of the background of the colonization, in the form of a fragmentary inscription discovered in the city’s synagogue, and containing parts of the orders of Antiochus to Zeuxis, the destruction of the city in the course of disorders being referred to, and instructions issued to repair the damage.[806] If analogy is here permissible, we shall understand the Jewish colonization in Cyrenaica described by Josephus as the settlement of these newcomers in organized bodies, some in the town and some outside it, but all with plots of land assigned from tracts in royal possession. Here again, Asia Minor offers us an instructive analogy. Sources consistently refer to the Jews of Cyrenaica as “the Jews about Cyrene” (see further p. 196) e.g. οἱ κατὰ Κυρήνην Ἰουδαῖοι. A not dissimilar phrase was used in 281 B.C. to designate the Macedonian military katoikoi settled round Thyateira (Phrygia) in the hellenistic period.[807] This being the case, there can be little doubt that the Jewish settlers of the period did not obtain citizenship in the cities concerned, and it may be stated that as noncitizens did not normally enjoy the right to acquire landed property (γῆς ἔγκτησις) within the territory of a Greek city,[808] the new immigrants of the period must have been mostly absorbed, in so far as they took up agriculture, by royal lands. This inference is important, and apt to influence our estimate of events in a subsequent period.
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