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References
P.W. van der Horst, ‘The Jews of Ancient Crete’, JJS 39 (1988) 183–200, reprinted in my Studies on the Jewish World of Early Christianity (Fribourg/Göttingen 1990) 148–165.
Ph. Bruneau, Recherches sur les cultes de Délos (Paris 1970) 480–493, and idem, ‘Les Israélites de Délos et la juiverie délienne’, Bulletin de correspondence hellénique 106 (1982) 465–504.
See the survey by F. Millar in E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ III.1, rev. ed. by G. Vermes et al. (Edinburgh 1986) 68–72.
Very brief and incomplete surveys are A. Reifenberg, ‘Das antike zyprische Judentum und seine Beziehungen zu Palästina’, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 12 (1932) 209–215; G. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols (Cambridge 1940) vol. I, 241ff.; and T.B. Mitford,’ The Cults of Roman Cyprus’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.18.3 (Berlin/New York 1990) 2204ff.
For the problems relating to this letter (e.g., its displacement in the present text of I Macc.) see J.A. Goldstein, 1 Maccabees (Anchor Bible 41; Garden City 1976) 492ff.
It is not clear to me how Lea Roth can confidently state that the beginning of the third century BCE was ‘the period at which a Jewish settlement on the island apparently began to develop on a large scale’ (L. Roth, ‘Cyprus’, Encyclopaedia Judaica 5 [1972] 1181), although, of course, it is not impossible to surmise that ‘under Ptolemy I there seems to have been a considerable exodus from Palestine of Jews who settled in many places in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Cyprus must have had its share of such settlers’ (Hill, History of Cyprus I, 241, n. 4).
See D.H. Cox in Numismatic Notes and Monographs 145 (1959) 25f. (nos 191–200, including Herodian coins). Reifenberg, ‘Das antike zyprische Judentum’, 213.
Sh. Applebaum, ‘The Social and Economic Status of the Jews in the Diaspora’, in S. Safrai and M. Stern, eds, The Jewish People in the First Century II (Assen 1976) 711.
M. Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule (Leiden 1976) 412. The reference for Herod is Josephus, Ant. Jud. XVI.128–129.
See M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism I (Jerusalem 1974) 268ff.
For the sequel see Ant. Jud. XIII.324–333.
A. Nobbs, ‘Cyprus’, in D.W.J. Gill and C. Glempf, eds, The Book of Acts in Its First-Century Setting. Volume 2: The Book of Acts in Its Graeco-Roman Setting (Grand Rapids/Carlisle 1994) 279–289.
The same information is repeated by Orosius VII.12.8 and Syncellus 657. See M. Hengel and A.M. Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch (London 1997) 347, n. 240.
See Smallwood, The Jews, 389–427, esp. 412–415; Schürer, History I (Edinburgh 1973) 529–534.
Reifenberg, ‘Das antike zyprische Judentum’, 211: ‘eine starke Übertreibung.’
See J. Mélèze-Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt (Philadelphia 1995) 198–205.
Rabbinic literature seems, according to some interpreters (e.g. S. Krauss in his entry on Cyprus in the Jewish Encyclopedia) to confirm this when in jSuk 5.1,55b, it is said that the blood of the Jews slaughtered by Trajan flowed into the sea as far as Cyprus (the passage is repeated in Lamentations Rabbah I.16.45), but here it is rather the Jews of Egypt or Palestine who are meant. See Stern, Greek and Latin Authors II (Jerusalem 1980) 389.
Laudatio sanctorum martyrum Cyri et Johannis 55 (= PG 87/3: 3625). J. Starr, The Jews of the Byzantine Empire (New York 1939) 85f., mentions medieval sources reporting that a Jewish sorcerer from Salamis was burnt there at the stake ca. 635 CE.
PG 93:1597–1612. On thi streatise see H. Schreckenberger, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.-11. Jh.) (Frankfurt a.M. 1990) 445.
This is, of course, not necessarily the case. It is also unwarranted to conclude from the fact that Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, wrote a refutation of the ideas of a great number of Jewish (and Christian) groups, that all these groups were represented on Cyprus, in spite of what is suggested by S. Krauss and W. Horbury, The Jewish-Christian Controversy I: History (Tübingen 1996) 43.
Annales II.220–223 (PG 111:1084–5=CSCO 45:101–2). See K.L. Noethlichs, Die Juden im christlichen Imperium Romanum (4.–6. Jahrhundert) (Berlin 2001) 48, with n. 111.
Some of it was collected by J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum II (Rome 1952) 6f., and B. Lifshitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives (Paris 1967) 73–76. See also T.B. Mitford,’ some New Inscriptions from Early Christian Cyprus’, Byzantion 20 (1950) 105–175, here esp. 110–116. The corpora of Frey and Lifshitz will be referred to in the main text as CIJ and DF.
T.B. Mitford, The Inscriptions of Kourion (Philadelphia 1971) 133f. (no. 70). Another late Hellenistic inscription mentioned as Jewish by Mitford, ‘Cults’, 2204, is much too fragmentary to warrant his conclusion that it ‘appears to concern the construction in cedar wood of the doorway of a synagogue at Amathus’ (ibid.).
For a discussion of this inscription see Reifenberg, ‘Das antike zyprische Judentum’, 211f.
S.J.D. Cohen, ‘Epigraphical Rabbis’, JQR 72 (1981/82) 1–17. For an addendum see P.W. van der Horst, ‘Lord, Help the Rabbi’. The Interpretation of SEG XXXI 1578b’, JJS 38 (1987) 102–106, now also in my Essays on the Jewish World, 182–186.
See L.I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem/New York 1989) 15: ‘In antiquity this title was applied to anyone of high standing in the community.’
Cohen, ‘Epigraphical Rabbis’, 13.
See P.W. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs (Kampen 1991) 85–98; L.I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue (New Haven-London 2000) 387–428.
Cohen, ‘Epigraphical Rabbis’, 14 (italics added).
It is not in CIJ, because Mitford published the inscription only in 1950, after the death of Frey; see Mitford, ‘New Inscriptions’, 110–116.
See Van der Horst, Epitaphs, 89–93; Levine, Synagogue, 390–404 (the best discussion).
See also C. Claußen, Versammlung, Gemeinde, Synagoge. Das hellenistisch-jüdische Umfeld der frühchristlichen Gemeinde (Göttingen 2002) 145.
For instances from Rome, Corinth, and Lydian Philadelphia, see Van der Horst, Epitaphs, 87.
Pace S. Krauss, Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin 1922=Hildesheim 1966) 307.
The first editor thinks it is Christian; see Mitford, ‘New Inscriptions’, 141ff.
R.S. Kraemer, ‘Hellenistic Jewish Women: The Epigraphical Evidence’, SBL 1986 Seminar Papers (Atlanta 1986) 191.
Although J. Juster, Les Juifs dans ľEmpire Romain I (Paris 1914) 189, n. 5, thinks it is ‘tres ancien’.
Reifenberg, ‘Das antike zyprische Judentum’, 213 (with photos opposite p. 212). T.B. Mitford, ‘Further Contributions to the Epigraphy of Cyprus’, American Journal of Archaeology 65 (1961) 118f., publishes the text of a Cypriot horoscope of Flavian date in which one of the months is given the Jewish name Shebat (if that reading is correct!), but it is hard to draw conclusions from that.
See J.G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford 1992) 132–136. The more important of these defixiones were published as nos 127–142 in Mitford, The Inscriptions of Kourion, 246–283.
See e.g. M. Simon, Verus Israel. A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1986) 339–368.
Stern, Greek and Latin Authors I, 498f.
See the convenient list and the texts in S. Mitchell, ‘The Cult of Theos Hypsistos Between Pagans, Jews, and Christians’, in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede, eds, Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1999) 144f.
Mitford, ‘Cults’, 2207.
Mitchel, ‘Cult’, 114.
For their location see Map B VI 18 of the Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients: Die jüdische Diaspora bis zum 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Wiesbaden 1992).
Smallwood, The Jews, 412f.
Ibid., 412.
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van der Horst, P.W. (2004). The Jews of Ancient Cyprus. In: Berger, S., Brocke, M., Zwiep, I. (eds) Zutot 2003. Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2628-5_13
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