Before Jerusalem Fell

Tb Role of Nero Caaar 211
between languages is exactly parallel to the gematria problem in
Revelation 13.
Third, as a matter of fact, Asia Minor was well populated by
Jews. “Long before the Christian era the Jews had formed a considerable
factor in the population of the Asian cities. “7 9
A number of
scholars, including Ramsay and Walker, agree.w
More broadly, we should note that the Jewish presence was felt
throughout the Roman Empire. “The Jews, since the Babylonish
captivity, had been scattered over all the world. They were as ubiquitous
in the Roman empire in the first century as they are now
throughout Christendom. According to Josephus and Strabo, there
was no country where they did not make up a part of the population.
”81 In fact, “in the times of Augustus, the Greek historian and
geographer Strabo (quoted in Josephus, JunM Antiquities 14.115)
could write that in the entire inhabited world there was hardly a place
where the power of the Jews had not made itself felt. “8 2
Because of
the first century Diaspora a “great Jewish world . . . had grown up
around Palestine, a world that reached out into all the known lands. “8 3
mann (Das Markusevangelium, 2nd ed. [1926], p. 35); E. Schiirer ( Geshichte des jiidtichen
Vofkes irn Zeitcdter Jew Chrhti, 4th ed. [Leipzig 1901] 1:486; G. Dalman (Jesu-Jeshua, trans.
P. P. Levertoff [London: 1922], p. 12); Eisler (ZESO US BASZLEUS, 2:68); Joseph Klausner
(Jesw of N~areth [London: Allen and Unwin: 1925], p. 254); Vincent Taylor (Mark,
p. 234) and M. Hengel (Dti Zefoton, pp. 72-73).
79. Swete, Revelation, p. lxvi. Here he makes reference to Phiio, Legatio ad Cg”um 33 and
Contra Fhmm 7.
80. William M. Ramsay, The Letters to k Sezwz Charches (Grand Rapids: Baker, [1904]
1963), chap. 12. Williston Walker, A Hktoy of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (New York:
Scribners, 1970), p. 16, writes of the Jews in the first century: “They were a notable
part of the population of Alexandria. They were strongly rooted in Syria and Asia
Mhor. . . . Few cities of the empire were without their presence.”
81. Philip Schaff, His.kwy of the Christiaa Church, 8 VOIS. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
[1910] 1950) 1:85. Josephus’s statements are found in Josephus’s Wars 3:3 and Antiquities
147:2.
82. H. H. Ben-Sasson, cd., A Histoy of the Jewish People (Cambridge: Harvard, 1976),
p. 277. In this work much attention is given on the influence of the Jews on the Roman
Empire: “In the Second Temple era, the Jewish faith expanded as it never had before
and never has since. Throughout the Roman Empire and even beyond it, people adopted
the Jewish faith or at least part of the Jewish way of life” (p. 288). See Josephus, Agatrzd
Apion 2:282ff. Note the complaint of the Roman writers about the Jewish influences
Tacitus, Histories 5:5; Juvenal, Fourk-enth Satire 11 :96ff.
83. Rufus Learsi, Israel: A Histoy of the Jiwish People (New York: World, 1949), p.
166. See also: Si/ylline Oracles 3:27 lfl