Land of Onias

The Land of Onias (Koine Greek: Ὀνίας) is the name given in Jewish, Roman, and Hellenistic period sources to an area in the Nile Delta of the Ptolemaic Kingdom where a large number of Second Temple-era Jews settled. The Land of Onias, which included the city of Leontopolis (Λεόντων πόλις), was located in the Heliopolite Nome (Hebrew: אֹן ʾOn "Heliopolis).

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 kohanim (priests) 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 the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. In the wake of his defeat against Ptolemaic Egypt in the Sixth Syrian War, Antiochus sacked Jerusalem in 168 BCE; he banned local religious practices, desecrated and sealed up the Second Temple, and supplanted the Sons of Zadok, considered the legitimate family of the High Priesthood. The vast extent of the Jewish diaspora in Egypt in the wake of these events created a demand for a new sanctuary.

at its pinnacle Onias’ Temple was a major religious and cultural center of Egyptian Judaism. This assumption is bolstered by the circumstance that several works of Jewish-Hellenistic literature such as 3 Maccabees, Pseudo-Hecataeus, Joseph & Aseneth, and several oracles of the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles appear to have been written in the milieu of the Oniad Temple.