ABSTRACT
For the Jews, 'Diaspora' was both a physical and a metaphysical state of existence: the restored Zion they longed for was simultaneously a geographical locality and a spiritual condition. As the yoke of exile grew ever more onerous, the story of Joseph, the gifted Jewish boy snatched from his homeland and sold into foreign slavery who yet rose to rule over his masters, seemed increasingly to preoccupy Diaspora Jews. By the fourth century ce, however, with the conversion of the Roman emperors from Constantine onwards, the ascendancy of Christianity posed a still greater threat. The Hellenistic ideal had been founded upon human reason, which could be exposed as inadequate to encompass the full range of human experience. Both Christian and Jewish ideologies adopted as their master-text the Hebrew Scriptures, and undertook the task of explicating these books to their adherents in ideologically consistent terms.
