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Pamphylia

PAMPHYLIA, region in the southern part of Asia Minor. According to a Roman decree quoted in I Maccabees (15:16ff.), Pamphylia was among those countries notified by the Roman consul Lucius (142 B.C.E.) of the renewed pact of friendship between the Roman Senate and the Jewish nation under the high priest Simeon. Numerous scholars have deduced from this document that a Jewish community existed in Pamphylia (cf. F.-M. Abel, Les Livres des Maccabées (1949), 269) as well as the other districts mentioned in the decree. There is, however, only sparse information on Jewish communities in Pamphylia. There is some information about the Jews in Pamphylia in the city of Side in I Maccabees 15:23 (cf. also a late inscription from the Byzantine period from Side (Journal of Hellenic Studies, 28 (1908), 195)), and also mention of Jews in Pamphylia in Philo's Legatio ad Gaium, 281, and in Acts 2:10. Josephus makes no mention of such a community, and refers to the area primarily in connection with Herod, who was nearly shipwrecked not far from Pamphylia on his way to Rome in 40 B.C.E. (Ant. 14:377; Wars 1:280).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Schuerer, Gesch, 3 (19094), 22; Juster, Juifs, 1 (1914), 192.


Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.