Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

That they were not alone in their outlook on the function of the desert, is shown by the appearance of the idea in various forms over centuries of Jewish life[1199] and by the “exodus to the Desert’ of which we hear both in Judaea and in Cyrenaica. Knowledge of the aims of the Qumran Sect enables us to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the character and acts of Jonathan the Weaver. The currents and sects of the period also included men in whom the two ideas were associated: sojourn in the desert as a place of preparation, physical and spiritual, for the messianic war, the warlike aim being the way to complete redemption. The same conclusion has been reached by Professor Y. M. Grinz,[1200] who identifies the “prophets of the desert” with the aims embodied in the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness. The two principal ideas of this current are such as to explain Jonathan’s programme and enable us to divide it into two phases: the assembly of the rebellious for preparation in the desert, and, subsequently, the war itself. Jonathan did not survive the first phase.

Does the study of the Libyan tribes enable us to add to a reconstruction of the events under discussion? The opinion of Gautier has already been cited, that the federation of the judaizing tribes of Algeria, the Zenata, took its origin in Cyrenaica at the time of the Jewish rising under Trajan. On the other hand the period of the most rapid spread of Judaism among the tribes of the Maghreb is placed by Gautier in the Severan epoch, when the camel-riding tribes came into being after the nomads had been thrust into the desert by the Roman administration. This view has been criticized by Julien and Margais,[1201] who doubt the exclusively nomadic character of the Botr tribal group constituting the Zenata. Alber-tini[1202] dates the judaization of certain Berber tribes and their expansion from Tripolitania to the Saharan oases, to the end of the ist century A.D. Simon,[1203] for his part, sees the first point of contact between the western Berbers and Judaism in the great Jewish Rebellion of 66-70. If the opinion is correct that the origin of the Botr tribes was in Cyrenaica, it is clear that they moved westward to Tripolitania and the Maghreb after the First Revolt on account of their attachment to Judaism, and this would support the view that their association with Judaism began before the time of Trajan. Simon writes of this conclusion,[1204] that the circumstances of the rebellion under Trajan imply “the presence, on the fringes of the hellenized Jewish communities, on the desert borders of the province (i.e. Cyrenaica), of important Palestinian Jewish elements, doubtless of Zealot spirit and origin, part of whom flowed, as time went on, to the Saharah, while others sought refuge in the direction of the Maghreb plateau.”

But unfortunately it now seems that the information concerning the judaizing Berber tribes alleged to have existed before the Arab invasion is less proven than it appeared to be some years ago. In 1963 Professor H. Z. Hirschberg published a detailed enquiry containing a systematic criticism of the sources of this information,[1205] showing that the first report of the phenomenon is not older than the Middle Ages. The main source is Ibn Khaldoun, but his statement concerning the Judaism of the tribes concerned in Tripolitania and the Maghreb is less confident than would appear to the reader from the French translation of de Slane.[1206] Most of the stories of Jewish influence on the Berber tribes, moreover, originated, as Hirschberg shows, not earlier than the 12th century, as a result of the contemporary spread of Jewish communities over north Africa; they also stem from tales of the Lost Ten Tribes, and above all from the ethnic and religious assimilation, forced or voluntary, of Jews to the Moslem population. Despite all this, Hirschberg sums up the discussion by saying:[1207] “the possibility of Jewish influence on the Berbers, and even Judaizing by certain Berber groups, should not be ruled out. That influence may have obtained not only in the pre-Islamic period, but also in the days of Arab rule.” There survive, indeed, several fragments of evidence of such influence in the pre-Arab period. The epigraphical material at Teucheira speaks in clear language of reciprocal influence between the two elements in the ist century B.C., and similar hints appear in eastern Cyrenaica and at Ptolemais;[1208] we have also noticed signs of contact between Jews and Libyans at Barka.[1209] Even if the tribes of the Nafusa and the other tribes of Cyrenaican origin did not really Judaize, Jewish settlement on the Syrtic Gulf is very ancient, and we shall shortly see evidence that the Jews continued to enter that area in the ist century A.D. This study has also made it clear that the physiographic conditions of Cyrenaica, as well as its agrarian development, associated the Jews and the Libyan tribes in a common plight.

Jewish literature early reveals an interest in Libyan origins, and claims that they are kindred to the Jews because they are descended from the Canaanites who had been expelled from their country by Joshua. This idea is expressed in the Book of Jubilees, composed a short time before the beginning of the Christian era;[1210] the same information, cited by Flavius Josephus,[1211] derives from Cleudamos, also known as Malchus, a Jewish or Samaritan historian who appears to have written in the 2nd century B.C. The tradition, then, originated not later than in the same century; it is further quoted by King Juba in his work.[1212] Yohanan Lewy on the other hand,[1213] argues that belief in the Canaanite origin of the African natives arose from the dispute between the Jews and Phoenicians over the ownership of Eretz Yisrael, which flared up following the Maccabean conquests, and was influenced by Greek legal conceptions. If Lewy was right, then the. tradition on the Canaanite origins relates not to the Libyans but to the Phoenicians. This view, however, evokes two questions: Why was the tradition of Canaanite origin also accepted by the Jews, precisely in connection with Africa; and how did it become popular among the simple people of the African countryside?[1214] If these ideas were known to the Phoenicians, who used them as propaganda against the Jews, such propaganda was apt to be useful to both sides, and in Africa it could be turned to the advantage of the latter. The very use of such propaganda by non-Jews beyond the frontiers of Eretz Yisrael means that Jewish counter-influence existed. Professor Y. Guttman, indeed,[1215] has noticed an interesting element in later Jewish hellenistic literature which constitutes valid evidence of a rapprochement between Jews and Libyans in the ist century A.D. This is to be found in the surviving portions of the Greek tragedy of Ezekiel, written in Egypt in the ist century A.D., on the subject of the Exodus.[1216] It is superfluous to remark that the theme was not one likely to appeal to Egyptians; more important, it transfers the encounter of Moses with the Midianites and his subsequent friendship with them to the Libyans of the Western Desert. As Josephus recorded that Eophren, who conquered Libya, was descended from Madian son of Abraham, Ezekiel must have read an allied source, perhaps Cleodamus,[1217] and it becomes clear that this genealogy was being used by the Jews as propaganda among the Libyans at least as early as the ist century of the present era.