ABSTRACT
In the year 722 bce, Israel was destroyed by Assyria and the people fled to Judah, where they came to be known as Jews. When the history of this movement was written down between 640 and 610 bce, it was decreed of the Jewish people that ‘thou shalt be a diaspora in all kingdoms of the earth’ (Deuteronomy, 28:25). From these very specifically Jewish origins, the term has spread to describe the general experience of large-scale geographical dispersion of human populations from a shared home place as a result of violent and traumatic events. So, the scattering of Greeks after the fall of Constantinople (1453), of Armenians after the First World War, or of Africans as a result of the transatlantic slave trade are all seen as archetypal diasporas.
