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Scattered Seeds: The Origins of Diaspora

JL;DR SUMMARY Malka Z. Simkovich explores the origin and significance of the term "diaspora" as coined during the translation of the Hebrew Torah into the Greek Septuagint in the late third century BCE. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish IdentityDiasporaTranslationExileDeuteronomyBabylonian ExileSeptuagintHellenistic JudaismJudeanTerm Origin

Places mentioned

Israel
"But Aristeas is correct that the project was extraordinarily important for Jews who lived under Hellenistic rule outside the Land of Israel and for the Judean Jews who pondered the significance of Jewish life abroad."
Egypt
"In the late third century BCE, a group of scholars working on a translation project in Egypt invented a Greek word that would change the course of Jewishand arguably human history."
Jerusalem, Israel
"He dispatched envoys to Eleazar the high priest in Jerusalem who sent back six translators from each of the twelve tribes, seventy-two in all."
Alexandria, Egypt
"They were sequestered just off the coast of Alexandria on the island of Pharos and completed the translation in seventy-two days, which is why it is called (rounding down) the Septuagint, which means seventy. There likely werent seventy-two translators, they probably didnt come directly from Jerusalem, the Septuagint was intended for Greek-speaking Jews and not the royal library, and the translation took much longer."
Fars, Iran
"However, when the Persian King Cyrus defeated Babylon in 539 BCE and permitted the Judahites to return to their homeland and rebuild the Second Temple, it became clear that these prophecies would not be entirely fulfilled. Those who returned to Judah now lived in the Persian province of Yehud and were subjects of the Persian empire."
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Retrieved 2025-01-15 05:30:55 UTC
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