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ZAKHORIUM
PTEN

Onias at Leontopolis

Date

150BCE

second century BCE to 74 CEapproximate date

Having fled Judea, a high priest built a temple in Egypt that operated for more than two centuries, until it was closed by the Romans.

Religious historyDiaspora communities30.2925°N 31.3308°E
300 BCE
250 BCE
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150 BCE
100 BCE
Jews and Greeks: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

4 statements

In the second century BCE, a high priest named Onias (Onias III or Onias IV: Josephus, the only source, seems to confuse the two) fled Judea and, with permission from the Ptolemaic king (probably Ptolemy VI), built at Leontopolis a temple modeled on the one in Jerusalem, on a smaller scale. Onias saw it as the fulfillment of Isaiah 19:19. The temple operated until the Romans closed it in 74 CE.

02The precedent of Elephantine

The Jewish temple at Elephantine was destroyed in the late fifth century BCE, and the Jews there apparently were unable to rebuild it.

Context

The most powerful office in Judean society was that of high priest, which seems to have been restricted to the Oniad family. A priest named Jason ousted Onias III by bribing Antiochus; years later, Menelaus offered a bribe of his own, paid out of the Temple treasury, which outraged the population of Jerusalem. The high priest had for centuries come from the line of Zadok. The family lost the office during Antiochus's persecution, and the Maccabees' subsequent occupation of it seemed illegitimate for many Jews. Misgivings about the Temple and its priesthood seem to have fueled dissident groups.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
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§ 04Network

Connections

§ 05Bibliography

Further reading

No specific reading recorded for this event.

§ 06Apparatus

Sources on this page

  1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 69; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 70inspect
  2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 69inspect
  3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73inspect
  4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 80; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 81inspect
  • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
  • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
  • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
  • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
  • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.