Land of Onias

The Land of Onias is the name given in Hellenistic Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman sources to an area in ancient Egypt's Nile Delta where a large number of Jews settled. The Land of Onias, which included the city of Leontopolis, was located in the Heliopolite Nome.
While accounts differ on the details, it is known that the Jews of Leontopolis had a functioning temple, distinct from and contemporary to the Temple in Jerusalem, presided over by kohenim and High Priests of the family of Onias III or Onias IV, for whom the "Land of Onias" is named. Aside from a somewhat uncertain allusion of the Hellenist Artapanus of Alexandria, only Josephus gives information about this temple.
The Talmudic accounts are internally contradictory. The establishment of a central sanctuary in Egypt was probably undertaken in response, in part, to the disorders that arose in Judea under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the desecration and sealing up of the Second Temple under his reign and, the supplanting of the legitimate family of priests by the installation of Alcimus, the personal ambition of Onias IV, and the vast extent of the Jewish diaspora in Egypt that created a demand for a sanctuary of this nature.

Jewish temple at Leontopolis (c. 170 BCE – 73 CE)

The account of Josephus in The Jewish War refers to the Onias who built the Temple at Leontopolis as "the son of Simon", implying that it was Onias III, and not his son, who fled to Egypt and built the Temple. This account, however, is contradicted by the story that Onias III was murdered in Antioch in 171 BCE. Josephus' account in the Antiquities is considered by some to be more probable, namely, that the builder of the temple was a son of the murdered Onias III and that, a mere youth at the time of his father's death, he had fled to the court of Alexandria in consequence of the Syrian persecutions, perhaps because he thought that salvation would come to his people from Egypt. Others contend that the story of Onias III's murder is of dubious historical accuracy, instead being based on the story of the murder of Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ nephew, which actually occurred, in part because it is difficult to believe Antiochus IV would be heartbroken at the death of Onias III, as the story of his murder in 2 Maccabees claims, and in part because the stories are very similar. 2 Maccabees seems to have instead possibly, assigned the story of Onias III's flight to Egypt to a character named "Philip" for thematic reasons, as evidenced by there inexplicably being two "Philips" that were close to Antiochus in the narrative that cannot be the same person, an act which implies the author knew of the story of Onias III's flight to Egypt, and similarly made Onias into a martyr for primarily thematic purposes. Notably, Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on the Psalms 54 rejects the Maccabean narrative and states that Onias III fled to Egypt. He uses this account as a source for the rest of the passage, possibly having learned of it from a piece of Rabbinic literature. Theodore seems to consider 2 Maccabees to be less reliable because he lived in the area where the alleged murder took place, and there is a lack of evidence suggesting that the city was aware of the event.
Ptolemy VI Philometor was pharaoh at that time. He probably had not yet given up his claims to Coele-Syria and Judea and gladly gave refuge to such a prominent personage of the neighboring country. Onias now requested the king and his sister-wife Cleopatra II allow him to build a sanctuary in Egypt similar to the one at Jerusalem, where he would employ Levites and priests of his clan; he referred to the prediction of Isaiah 19:19 that a temple would be erected in Egypt.
According to Josephus, the temple of Leontopolis existed for 343 years but the general opinion is that this number must be changed to 243. He relates that the Roman emperor Vespasian feared that through this temple, Egypt might become a new center for Jewish–Roman wars and therefore ordered the governor of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Lupus, to demolish it. Lupus died in the process of carrying out the order, and the task of stripping the temple of its treasures, barring access to it, and removing all traces of divine worship at the site was completed by his successor, Gaius Valerius Paulinus, which dates the event to c. March–August 73.
In his dig at Tell al-Yahudi in 1905/6, Flinders Petrie identified the remains of this temple.

Onias' letters

Josephus quotes Onias's letter to the royal couple and the king's answer to Onias. Both of these, however, appear spurious on the following grounds: Onias refers in his letter to his military exploits in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, although it is not sure that the general Onias and the priest Onias are identical. His assertion that a central sanctuary is necessary because a multiplicity of temples causes dissension evidences imperfect knowledge of religious life and his request for the ruined temple of the Egyptian goddess Bastet because a sufficient supply of wood and sacrificial animals would be found there seems unwise and improbable for a suppliant who must first obtain compliance with his principal request. In the second letter, it seems strange that the pagan king points out to a kohen that the proposed temple building contradicts Biblical law and that he consents only given Isaiah's prophecy. Both letters were written by a Hellenistic Jew.
Meron M. Piotrkowski contends that the letters were held in the Leontopolis Temple's archive, seized by the Romans alongside temple valuables during its closure at the hands of the empire, and were used later as a source by Josephus when writing. He holds that the anti-Onias sentiments in his recounting of the letters did not come from the letter itself, but were inserted by Josephus. The purging of a pagan temple, or pagan elements from a temple, is not without precedent in Judaism, as Hezekiah purged the Jerusalem temple of pagan influences. Hezekiah and Onias were paralleled in the works of pseudo-Hecataeus, perhaps intentionally, with this being an example. Paralleling the two events casts Onias's choice of the temple site in a positive light. Pseudo-Hecataeus's On the Jews was an Egyptian Jewish work and his Hezekiah story may have been partly aimed at comforting Judeans that came to Egypt as refugees like Onias and his community in Egypt, were. The rededication of native Egyptian shrines for use by foreign soldiers near where they settled was a common practice in the Ptolemaic era as well, as it increased security against uprisings, which provides context and precedent for Onias and Ptolemy's decisions in the matter, with Onias following standard government procedure as the leader of a group of foreign mercenaries by finding an abandoned or ruined shrine to Bubastis, and requesting he be allowed to establish a temple there – though, in his case, not to a pagan deity, but to his God.
The reference in the letters of Onias of his presence at Coele-Syria and Phoenicia is also potentially evidence that the Onias that founded the Leontopolis Temple was Onias III, not Onias IV, as there was no military conflict in the region that Onias IV could have served in, while the Sixth Syrian War matches up with Onias III's lifespan. This is a conclusion supported by Josephus stating that Onias III belonged to a pro-Ptolemaic faction in Jerusalem during a time that overlaps with the Sixth Syrian War.

Layout of the temple

Only this can be stated as a fact that the temple of Leontopolis was built on the site of a ruined temple of Bastet in imitation of the temple at Jerusalem, though smaller and less elaborate. The statement in Wars of the Jews vii. 10, § 2 of Onias' argument that by building this temple, the Jewish nation would be brought to turn from the Syrians to the Ptolemies seems very plausible and may have given rise to the assertion made in the letters that there were disputes among the Jews. The "fortress" of the temple of Bubastis may be explained by the statement, which seems credible, that Onias built a fortress around the temple to protect the surrounding territory, which now received the designation "Oneion". It is also possible this was simply part of standard Ptolemaic practice regarding settling foreign soldiers near or at temple sites.
The Onias temple was not exactly similar to the Temple at Jerusalem, being more in the form of a high tower, and as regards the interior arrangement, it had didn't have a Temple menorah but a hanging lamp. The building had a court surrounded by a brick wall with stone gates. The king endowed the temple with large revenues—a fact that may have suggested to the writer of the letters mentioned above the wealth of wood and sacrificial animals.

Legitimacy of its sacrificial cult

The reputation that the temple of Onias enjoyed is indicated by the fact that the Septuagint, written in the Jewish community of Alexandria, changes the phrase "city of destruction" to "city of righteousness". The Egyptian Jews frequently sacrificed in the temple of Leontopolis. At the same time, they fulfilled their duty toward the Temple at Jerusalem, as Philo narrates that he did.
The Temple at Leontopolis never gained the popularity of Jerusalem. While Alexandrine Jews might like having a subordinate temple close to home, support for the Oniad Temple never was seen to replace the need to send tithes and pilgrims to Jerusalem. Indeed, the Leontopolis temple site seems never to have achieved even the importance of the synagogue in Alexandria's Jewish quarter or the JHWH temple in Elephantine.
In the later Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism, the origin of the temple of Onias is narrated with legendary additions, with two versions of the account in Menahot 109b. Here, Onias is mentioned again as the son of Simon, and Isaiah's prophecy is referred to. Regarding Halakha, the temple of Onias was considered forbidden. There is a question as to whether idolatry was done there. The possibility of the priests of Onias being admitted to officiate at Jerusalem was explicitly stated, while one passage even expresses the view that sacrificial worship was permissible in the temple of Onias; however, this view was rejected and is based on the view that idolatry was not performed there. The opinion was prevalent among the Rabbis that the temple of Onias was situated at Alexandria—an error repeated by all the chroniclers of the Middle Ages. This temple is also sometimes confused or conflated with the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.