Jewish dispersion
Sir: Charles Glass is mistaken when he states in his review (6 September) that the Jews of Iraq were almost unique in not being part of the Diaspora created in 70A.D after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Even before the Macedonian conquest four centuries earlier, there had been Jewish settlers in Egypt. Under the Helle- nistic successors of Alexander, many Jews
LETTERS
settled not only in Egypt — where they made Alexandria a centre of Jewish learn- ing — but also throughout the whole of the eastern Mediterranean and eventually in Rome itself. By the time of Christ, they probably outnumbered Jews in Judaea.
It was among these well-established Jew- ish communities that Saint Paul — himself a native of Tarsus — and the other apostles found their converts in the decades before 70AD. Of course, the Jews of this earlier dispersion continued to look to Jerusalem as the Holy City.
Nigel Rogers
6 Kingsley Mansions, Queen's Club Gardens, London W14
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