ABSTRACT
The establishment of the Diaspora attested, of course, to the continuous expansion of the Jewish people and of the Jewish civilization and it was very often connected with strong proselytizing movements and tendencies. The various basic orientations and tensions inherent in the Jewish civilization were transformed by the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of the Second Commonwealth. In the lands of the Diaspora the synagogue, communal organizations, and family networks became the major institutional framework of the Jewish people. The chapter analyses the new types of social structure, leadership and elites. Indeed the very attempts at the codification of the canon - including the prophetic canon - revealed the ambivalent attitude of the elites to the prophetic tradition. In the great Jewish concentrations in the Hellenistic-Egyptian Diaspora there developed a growing Jewish philosophical and historical literature written in Greek.
