ABSTRACT
For over 2500 years, one notion of the word “diaspora” has been dominant – one which highlights the catastrophic origin, the forcible dispersal and the estrangement of diasporic peoples in their places of settlement. As I have shown in Chapter 1, this interpretation of “diaspora” may have strong biblical support, but it does not conform to the origins of the concept in the Greek colonizing experience. It is, in any case, too narrow an interpretation of the experience of one of the most commonly recognized diasporas, that of the Jewish people.
