Place · North Africa
Cyrene
City of Jason of Cyrene, author of the five-volume work that 2 Maccabees summarizes.
32.8200°N 21.8565°E · representative coordinate · Pleiades 373778 ↗
Statements linked to this place
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2 Maccabees is the abridgment of a five-volume work, now lost, by one Jason of Cyrene. Although it sets Judaism against Hellenism, it was written in Greek and imitates Greek literature: the problem, as 2 Maccabees 4:13 puts it, was 'Hellenization carried to an extreme', that is, Greek practices contrary to the laws of Moses.
Community: Jews of Cyrene (Libya)
Josephus relates that, once the war in Judea was lost, surviving rebels tried to carry the revolt to Egypt and Cyrene, in today's Libya. They were turned in to the Romans by Jews who wanted no trouble. Their instinct was not absurd, however: those communities would eventually revolt, only decades later. Under Trajan, between 115 and 117 CE, came the so-called Diaspora Revolt: several Jewish uprisings that ended up linked together. It apparently began in Libya, as one more clash between Jews and Greeks like those in Alexandria; this time, however, Rome failed to contain the violence, which reached Egypt, Cyprus and perhaps Mesopotamia.