''Against Apion'' ( ''Peri Archaiotētos Ioudaiōn Logos'';

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''Contra Apionem'' or ''In Apionem'') is a work written by

Flavius Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a History of the Jews in the Roman Empire, Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing ''The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Judaea ...

(c. 37 CE – c. 100 CE ) as a defense of

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

against criticism by the

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

author Apion. Josephus was a Roman–Jewish historian, defector, and courtier to the emperors of the

Flavian dynasty The Flavian dynasty, lasting from 69 to 96 CE, was the second dynastic line of emperors to rule the Roman Empire following the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Julio-Claudians, encompassing the reigns of Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian. Th ...

; Apion was a Hellenized

grammarian and

sophist A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellen ...

. The work is dated to after 94 CE.

Purpose

In the centuries of imperial conquests in the

Eastern Mediterranean The Eastern Mediterranean is a loosely delimited region comprising the easternmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea, and well as the adjoining land—often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It includes the southern half of Turkey ...

, first by

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

and his successors (see

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

) and then by the Romans, a phenomenon arose among the literate elites of the various civilizations that were incorporated into the newly formed imperial states. This took the form of historians from different cultures (typically Egyptian,

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

, or Greek) writing histories in the form of polemics, with each author claiming his own civilization as the world's oldest, a designation that—to the authors and audience of these works—would serve as proof of cultural supremacy. ''Against Apion'' was Josephus's contribution to the polemical discourse, and also a work of Jewish

apologetics Apologetics (from Greek ) is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their beliefs against critics and recommended their f ...

, an earlier example of which are the works of

Philo of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian Je ...

(c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE.) ''Against Apion'' is a wide-ranging defense of

against charges laid against Judaism in Josephus's time. Josephus stressed Judaism's antiquity as a classical religion and philosophy, and opposed it to what he perceived as the more recent—and so less venerable—traditions of the Greeks. ''Against Apion'' cites Josephus' earlier work ''

Antiquities of the Jews ''Antiquities of the Jews'' (; , ''Ioudaikē archaiologia'') is a 20-volume historiographical work, written in Greek, by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus in the 13th year of the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, which was 94 CE. It cont ...

'', so can be dated after 94 CE.

Sources

One of Josephus's main sources was

Menander of Ephesus Menander of Ephesus (; fl. c. early 2nd century BC) was the historian whose lost work on the history of Tyre was used by Josephus, who quotes Menander's list of kings of Tyre in his apologia for the Jews, '' Against Apion'' (1.18). "This Menan ...

. He also cites Hermippus of Smyrna to argue that

Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos (; BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of P ...

(c. 570 – c. 495 BCE) admired the Jews and was a student of

Jewish philosophy Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until the modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconc ...

. Notably, Josephus incorporates what he says are the words of the Egyptian historian

Manetho Manetho (; ''Manéthōn'', ''gen''.: Μανέθωνος, ''fl''. 290–260 BCE) was an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom who lived in the early third century BCE, at the very beginning of the Hellenistic period. Little is certain about his ...

(''fl''. 290–260 BCE), purportedly recovered from indirect literary fragments of Manetho's lost work the '' Aegyptiaca''. As Josephus himself notes, his work does not contain quotations from Manetho's original, but rather cites (or claims to cite) from one or perhaps even two epitomized and altered version of

's ''Aegyptiaca''. ''Against Apion'' is a narrative, not an epitome. It covers only a portion of Manetho's comprehensive history of Egypt, from about the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth dynasties. This era encompassed the entirety of the

Second Intermediate Period The Second Intermediate Period dates from 1700 to 1550 BC. It marks a period when ancient Egypt was divided into smaller dynasties for a second time, between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom. The concept of a Secon ...

.Josephus
© 2011–2023 by Peter Lundström — Some Rights Reserved — V. 4.0 Josephus's use of Manetho in his polemic would loom large in the centuries that followed, as his introduction of the

Hyksos The Hyksos (; Egyptian language, Egyptian ''wikt:ḥqꜣ, ḥqꜣ(w)-wikt:ḫꜣst, ḫꜣswt'', Egyptological pronunciation: ''heqau khasut'', "ruler(s) of foreign lands"), in modern Egyptology, are the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt ( ...

and the story of Osarseph entered into the growing discourse on the relative antiquity and primacy of Judaism vis-a-vis Hellenism and then

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

Positions

In the first book of ''Against Apion'' (1:8) Josephus delineated which books he believed to be part of Hebrew Scriptures. In the second book, Josephus defends the historicity of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Apion (who Josephus states is not Greek), arguing that Apion in fact rehashes material of

's, though there was apparently some confusion between Manetho's references to the

and the

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

. Josephus also refutes Apion's

blood libel Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mu ...

in the second book (2:8).

Editions

*Josephus, ''The Life. Against Apion'' (

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...

), Harvard University Press, 1926. *Josephus, ''Flavius Josephus: Against Apion'', trans. and comment. by John M. G. Barclay, Brill, 2013.

References

External links