Introduction
The first century Judean historian Josephus wrote Against Apion to combat the anti-Jewish tract written by the Roman grammarian and Homeric commentator, Apion (of Egyptian origin). Apion had composed a treatise against the Jews in the midst of the crisis which arose in the capital of Egypt, Alexandria, in the first third of that century. He had served as the official delegate to the Emperor on behalf of his fellow Alexandrians. Some aristocratic Egyptians had resented Jewish attempts to gain increased rights concomitant with their Alexandrian citizenship from the Roman emperor Gaius (Caligula). The conflict resulted in extensive riots (38-41 CE) during which the Jewish quarter of the city of Alexandria was burned. Just after Caligula died, the emperor Claudius quelled the unrest with a harsh reprimand to both parties in a decree whose text is preserved to this day (P. London 1912).
Apion recycled claims, made previously by the Egyptian author Manetho and the Greek writers Mnaseas of Patara and Apollonius Molon, that Jews were descended from a leprous group of Egyptian slaves that had fled the country, were misanthropes, worshipped the head of an ass, performed human sacrifice, and that Jewish observance of strange dietary laws and circumcision demonstrated their Egyptian pedigree. Josephus attempted to discredit Apion’s claims with a two-pronged ad hominem attack. The first is reflected in this passage, and the second questioned Apion’s legitimacy as an historian as well as the credibility of his sources.
Text
| 223 Now the Egyptians were the first who cast reproaches upon us in order to please their nation; some others undertook to pervert the truth, while they would neither own that our ancestors came into Egypt from another country, as the fact was, nor give a true account of our departure from there. | Tw=n de\ ei)j h(ma=j blasfhmiw=n h)/rcanto me\n Ai)gu/ptioi: boulo/menoi d' e)kei/noij tine\j xari/zesqai paratre/pein e)pexei/rhsan th\n a)lh/qeian, ou)/te th\n ei)j Ai)/gupton a)/ficin w(j e)ge/neto tw=n h(mete/rwn progo/nwn o(mologou=ntej, ou)/te th\n e)/codon a)lhqeu/ontej. |
| And indeed the Egyptians took many occasions to hate us and envy us; in the first place, because our ancestors had exercised dominion over their country, and when they had been delivered from them, and gone to their own | ai)ti/aj de\ polla\j e)/labon tou= misei=n kai\ fqonei=n to\ me\n e)c a)rxh=j, o(/ti kata\ th\n xw/ran au)tw=n e)duna/steusan h(mw=n oi( pro/gonoi ka)kei=qen a)pallage/ntej e)pi\ th\n oi)kei/an pa/lin eu)daimo/nhsan, |
| Next, the difference between our religions occasioned great enmity between us, while our way of Divine worship exceeded what their own laws appointed, as does the nature of God exceed that of brute beasts, | ei)=q' h( tou/twn u(penantio/thj pollh\n au)toi=j e)nepoi/hsen e)/xqran, tosou=ton th=j h(mete/raj diaferou/shj eu)sebei/aj pro\j th\n u(p' e)kei/nwn nenomisme/nhn, o(/son qeou= fu/sij zw/|wn a)lo/gwn die/sthke. |
| for so far the whole country agrees to esteem such animals as gods, although they differ one from another in the peculiar worship they regionally pay to them. | koino\n me\n ga\r au)toi=j e)sti pa/trion to\ tau=ta qeou\j nomi/zein, i)di/a| de\ pro\j a)llh/louj e)n tai=j timai=j au)tw=n diafe/rontai. |
| And certainly they are men entirely of vain and foolish minds, who have thus accustomed themselves from the beginning to have such bad notions concerning their gods, and could not think of imitating that decent form of Divine worship which we employ, though, when they saw our institutions approved of by many others, they could not but envy us on that account; | kou=foi de\ kai\ a)no/htoi panta/pasin a)/nqrwpoi kakw=j e)c a)rxh=j ei)qisme/noi doca/zein peri\ qew=n mimh/sasqai me\n th\n semno/thta th=j h(mete/raj qeologi/aj ou)k e)xw/rhsan, o(rw=ntej de\ zhloume/nouj u(po\ pollw=n e)fqo/nhsan. |
| for some of them have proceeded to that degree of folly and meanness in their conduct, as to have no compunction about contradicting their own ancient records, and even to contradict themselves in their writings, and yet they were so blinded by their passions that they did not discern it. | ei)j tosou=ton ga\r h)=lqon a)noi/aj kai\ mikroyuxi/aj e)/nioi tw=n par' au)toi=j, w(/st' ou)de\ tai=j a)rxai/aij au)tw=n a)nagrafai=j w)/knhsan e)nanti/a le/gein, a)lla\ kai\ sfi/sin au)toi=j e)nanti/a gra/fontej u(po\ tuflo/thtoj tou= pa/qouj h)gno/hsan. |
Commentary
With this paragraph, the first century Jewish historian Josephus launched the first of several attacks as a strategy in his refutation of Apion’s anti-Jewish calumnies. In addition to defending Jewish history and practice on its own terms, Josephus employs several anti-Egyptian slanders in his attack, for which the above excerpt gives one example: that Egyptians worship animals. Josephus uses this claim to demonstrate that Egyptians lack religious sophistication, and therefore any religious claims that Egyptians (like Apion) might make about Jews are to be dismissed as spurious.
Although such anti-Egyptian attitudes could be viewed as mere self-defense, these slanders played into a range of prejudices widely held among educated Romans. Thus, aside from constituting an appeal to his Roman audience and aligning Jews with Romans (by virtue of their shared sophistication), these slurs perpetuated the type of anti-Egyptianism rampant during the Roman period of Egyptian control. Such a derogatory assessment of the type of animism thought to have been representative of indigenous Egyptian religion was adopted later by Christianity and Islam, and persisted throughout Jewish literary treatments of paganism.
Bibliography
John M.G. Barclay, “The Politics of Contempt: Judaeans and Egyptians in Josephus’ Against Apion,” paper delivered to the SBL Josephus Seminar, Nov. 19, 2000, in Nashville, Tennessee. Available at http://josephus.yorku.ca/pdf/barclay2000.pdf.
Jan Willem van Henten and Ra'anan Abusch, “The Jews as Typhonians and Josephus’ Strategy of Refutation in Contra Apionem,” Louis Harry Feldman, ed. Josephus’ Contra Apionem. Studies in its character and context with a Latin concordance to the portion missing in Greek, AGJU 34 (eiden1996): 271-309.
Kempton Corey Keeble, A Critical Study of Josephus’ Contra Apionem (Oxford 1991).
Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, Tr. Robert Cornman (Princeton, 1997).
Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia. Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: 1997).
Text and annotation prepared by Shira Lander. Translation adapted from that of William Whiston, The Works of Josephus (Hendrickson, 1981).