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Diaspora (The Dispersion of Jewish People Outside of Jerusalem)
Meaning
The word “Diaspora” means “the dispersion” and it refers to the dispersion of Jewish people outside of Jerusalem. And this happened in three primary waves and in all cases it was due to the disobedience of the people to follow the Lord. The people disobeyed God and forsook His commands. The first wave was started around 722 BC, when the king of Assyria took captive the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. At this time the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms. There was the Northern Kingdom called Israel and the Southern Kingdom called Judah. The Northern Kingdom never had any good or godly kings. As a result, they fell into idolatry. However the Southern Kingdom of Judah had a mixture of wicked and godly kings. But Judah failed to follow God’s commands and as a result, they were carried away into Babylon for seventy years beginning around 597 BC.
And the third and final wave started in 70 AD when the Romans invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. When people speak of the Diaspora, it’s usually the Roman dispersion of 70 AD which comes to mind. This was because God intended for the Gospel message to spread throughout the world. However, it was in danger of becoming a Jewish religion. Therefore, many Bible scholars believe God allowed the dispersion to take place in order to spread the Gospel around the world at the time. These dispersions played an important role in both the spread of Christianity and the preservation of God’s word throughout the millennia. This was because there were large populations of both Jews and Christians throughout the Mediterranean world. And as a result tens of thousands of manuscripts and fragments have survived assuring us, that the Bible we have today is the same as the scripture which was read thousands of years ago.
“Now the king of Assyria went throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods, and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.” (Book of 2nd Kings 17:5-8)
“At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, as his servants were besieging it.vThen Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his servants, his princes, and his officers went out to the king of Babylon; and the king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, took him prisoner.” (Book of 2nd Kings 24:10-12)