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In the Ptolemaic era, Onias, a Jewish priest who lived in exile in Egypt, built a Temple in the Egyptian city of Leontopolis. While it never could rival with the Temple of Jerusalem, this Temple still became very popular in the Jewish diaspora in Egypt, as it allowed them to worship their God without having to do the long and costly trip all the way to Palestine.
Context
The Kingdom of Judea was defeated in 586 BCE, by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, the capital, and its Temple, which had been built by King Solomon son of David. The Jews were exiled and scattered through the Babylonian Empire. For the Jewish Prophets, their exile was a divine judgment because of the people’s disobedience to God’s Law.
70 years later, the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great, after defeating the Babylonians, allowed the Jews who were living in dispersion throughout his immense Empire to return to live in the land of their ancestors. The Jewish returnees founded a new Jewish national home in Palestine, under the authority of the Persian Empire. The city of Jerusalem was rebuilt, together with its Temple. All Jews didn’t return from exile: strong Jewish communities remained in many Middle-Eastern cities and regions .
Two centuries later, the Persian Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great. After Alexander the Great’s death, his Empire was divided between his generals. Palestine first belonged to Ptolemaic Egypt, and then to the Seleucids of Syria. The Jews struggled to keep their identity and their religion under strong pressure from their new Greek pagan overlords.
At this time, many Jews settled in Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic Empire, elsewhere in Egypt, and all the way to Cyrenaica. The Jewish community of Alexandria was one of the largest in the ancient world, and translated the Holy Scriptures into Greek.
High Priest Onias and the Seleucids
In 198 BCE, Palestine was conquered by the Seleucids of Syria. Unlike the Ptolemies, whose policies were quite favorable to the Jews, the Seleucids wanted to force them to renounce their religion and assimilate to the Greek civilisation.
In 175 BCE, the Jewish High Priest Onias III was removed. Jewish sources claim that he was forced to leave his function because of his opposition to the Hellenization of Judea that the Seleucids were aiming for. His successors started introducing Greek customs that went against the Torah.
Three years later, the new High Priest Menelaus took vases from the Temple of Jerusalem, and gave them as an offering to Seleucid nobles. Onias protested, accusing Menelaus of pillaging the sacred treasure of the Temple. Onias fled to the Syrian city of Daphne (Harbiye, modern-day Turkey), close to the Seleucid capital of Antioch, where he was assassinated by Menelaus, with the help of the Seleucid governor.
The fact that Onias fled to Daphne, a city that was famous for its sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis, casts doubt on the description given of him in Jewish sources, of a devout Jew who fought to prevent his people from turning away from the true God. It is more likely that he was removed by the Seleucids because he was too favorable to the Ptolemies.
The Hellenizing reforms of the High Priest Menelaus met strong opposition in Judea. In 167, the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes profaned the Temple of Jerusalem: he built an altar to Zeus in the Temple and sacrificed a pork on it. The profanation of the Temple, together with the Jewish persecution by the Seleucids, led to a Jewish revolt in Palestine: the Maccabean Revolt (167-160).
The Temple of Onias in Leontopolis
The son of the High Priest Onias, who was also called Onias, fled to Egypt after his father’s death. He entered the Ptolemaic court, and entertained good relations with the Ptolemies. Thanks to him, the Jewish community in Egypt became influential.
After the Maccabean Revolt, Onias was hoping that the Jews in Palestine would ask him to return to Jerusalem and restore him as High Priest, like his father. However, the leaders of the uprising chose instead to proclaim themselves High Priests, and later Kings of Judea, founding the Hasmonean dynasty, that reigned until the Roman conquest.
Around 145 BCE, Onias decided to build a Jewish Temple in Egypt. He obtained permission from King Ptolemy VI Philometor to build this Temple in Leontopolis (now Tell el-Yahudiya, about 20 km North of Cairo). His goal in building this Temple was to free the Jews in Egypt from the influence of their brothers in Palestine, by allowing them to worship God without having to return to Jerusalem. He might have even hoped that after the Temple of Jerusalem had been profaned by the Seleucids, all Jews would now accept his Temple as the new legitimate Temple, especially as Onias was the heir, through his father, of the ancient Jewish high-priestly family. This ambition was not fulfilled: most Jews, like the historian Flavius Josephus, considered his building of another Temple as an act of betrayal.
The Temple of Onias was built on the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple of the goddess Bastet. It was built on the model of the Temple of Jerusalem, but much smaller, and with some differences. According to Flavius Josephus, it looked like a fortress. Onias and his family served as priests there.
The Temple of Onias never acquired the same importance as the Temple of Jerusalem. It still enjoyed some popularity with the Jewish diaspora in Egypt, who came to offer sacrifices there. With time, the region around the Temple of Onias, where many Jews had settled, became known as the “Land of Onias”.
The building of the Temple enabled Onias to strengthen his authority over the Jewish community in Egypt. Onias and his successors continued playing an important role in the Ptolemaic Empire. During the civil war between Ptolemy VIII Physcon and Cleopatra III, Hilkiah and Ananias, the two sons of Onias, served as officers in the army of Cleopatra III.
The Cyrenean Jewish historian Jason of Cyrene wrote a history of the Maccabean Revolt. His history is very favorable to Onias and his father, which shows that his influence spread beyond Egypt, to much of the Jewish diaspora.
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