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Old October 1st, 2012 #1
Karl Radl
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Default Apion of Alexandria on the Jews

Apion of Alexandria on the Jews

Part I



Apion of Alexandria; or Apion the Grammarian as Josephus calls him, (1) is one of the best known of all historical critics of jews and Judaism, but yet conversely we know next to nothing about the man himself and have no work of his that has come down to us. We do know that Josephus heaped a large amount of odium on him and referred to him as a parasite and man with no morality. (2)

That said we must understand that Josephus was a jew who refused to credit any other argument other than his own and effectively sought to place the jews among the most ancient of people and thus tacitly suggest to his readers that the jews were superior to the Greeks and Romans who were their military, political, social and religious conquerors. Indeed Josephus devotes most of the first book of 'Against Apion' to arguing the tacit superiority of the jews based on their alleged religious antiquity.

The object of this is clear if we understand that Josephus was a religious hard-liner who had sided with the Romans when faced with the imminent prospect of a very limited morality in the near future while the entire contingent of jewish rebels that were under his command had committed ritual suicide. (3) It it unclear how Josephus emerged alive from this situation (as he is vague about it in his 'Jewish War' and 'Life'), but emerge alive he did.

His living while all his comrades lay dead and his nation smashed by the exercise of sheer Roman political and military power seems to have been the motivational source for much of Josephus' later intellectual activity. This motivation appears to us in the form of Josephus' need to assert the primacy of the jews in being an ancient and/or original religion or as he puts it himself. Josephus claims to have: 'made it evident to those who peruse them [his books], that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own originally.' (4)

Now what Josephus is saying here may not be readily apparent to the modern reader in our increasingly secular age, but we can readily comprehend his meaning if we but understand that the Greeks and Romans in particular placed a large amount of emphasis in their religious thought on the historical origins of their religion. In essence the Greeks and Romans were searching for the original religion of man and their most frequent identification of that oldest religion was that of Egypt and occasionally Mesopotamian polytheism. (5)

If we understand that the Greeks and Romans were engaged in a Kant-like quest for the 'pure religion' or the origin of religious thought: then we can begin to see Josephus' intellectual game which is evident throughout his writing. That game is very simple. Josephus is doing two things at once: he seeks to belittle the religious beliefs of the conquerors of Judea using their own search against them (6) and additionally seeks to raise Judaism to the status of ancient primacy that Egyptian polytheism then enjoyed in Greek and Roman thought. (7)

In other words Josephus was trying to provide the intellectual basis for asserting that Judaism was the origin of religion and that as such the Greeks and Romans should be the servants and not the rulers of the jews.

From that we can see that Josephus may have surrendered himself to Vespasian and 'rendered unto Caesar', but at the same time he still carried the burning zeal of a puritanical jewish religious fanatic in his heart. A zeal which required that the jews were the chosen people of the omnipresent, omnipotent creator of the universe and that as such they were born to rule over the non-jews of the world. It was the jews who; in Josephus' unquestioned and uncritical opinion, were bearers of the original religion and as such Josephus set out to prove it by means fair or foul.

Josephus was; in the light of the failure of the first jewish revolt, seeking to open up a new; intellectual, war against Greek and Roman civilisation by subverting it where it was in many ways weakest: the thirst for an unquestionably authentic religion, which could drive those who sought it into the arms of the jewish religious fanatics and rabble-rousers who we know existed in Rome at this time. (8)

Josephus' rabid religious fanaticism explains his own need to consciously distort quotations from such figures as Clearchus of Soli, (9) Theophrastus of Eresos, (10) and Pythagoras of Samos (11) to name but a few of those who Josephus seems to have intentionally misinterpreted and/or misquoted. The reason for doing so is very simple in so far as in order to convince Greeks and Romans that the jews really were the ancient religion and the force for good that Josephus made them out to be: he would have to find respected Greek and Roman authorities who believed as such.

That he could not find such authors and had to settle for misinterpreting and/or misquoting those who mentioned the jews he did find is strong evidence for the fact that the Torah's historical claims are not be taken literally, but rather are best take allegorically unless we have independent evidential confirmation of them. The reason for that is simple in that there are remarkably few references about jews in the ancient world before the rise of a jewish kingdom: something which makes the Judeocentric history told in the Torah look remarkably like an imaginatively dressed up; and occasionally outright fictitious, version of their history as one frequently sees in mythological tales written down after being transmitted orally for generations.

Indeed Josephus' quest to establish the antique nature of the worship of Yahweh consumed most of his later life as a Roman subject and the scarcity of the evidence is evident even in so large a tome as his 'Jewish Antiquities'. That long-term research project and the emotional need to prove the superiority of the jews in all things is what lies at the base of Josephus'; often personal, attacks in 'Against Apion' on Greek and Roman critics of the jews. Apion; after who the two books are named, only really appears in the first half of the second book, but he is mentioned more than any other author; with the possible exception of Manetho, (12) by Josephus.

To understand what Apion was arguing we have to remove what Josephus claims; as already he stated he is rather unreliable but unfortunately our only source for Apion's thought, and see what lies behind them. The first thing which Josephus tells us about Apion's argument against the jews is that:

'For some of his writings contain much the same accusations which the others have laid against us, some things that he has added are very frigid and contemptible, and for the greatest part of what he says, it is utterly scurrilous.' (13)

We may derive from the above that Apion was consciously writing as part of a Graeco-Roman anti-jewish intellectual tradition; very likely including Manetho, Chaeremon and Lysimachus, that had had sufficient time to develop a set of standard charges that it laid at the door of the jews. Further we may say that while Apion did cite previous charges: he added new ones to the list as Josephus clearly says that one of his reasons for writing against Apion is that he has come up with new arguments rather than just repeating the established anti-jewish tradition in which he was writing.

Indeed Josephus splits Apion's case against the jews down to three separate sections, which are as follows:

'However, it is not a very easy thing to go over this man's discourse, nor to know plainly what he means; yet does he seem, amidst a great confusion and disorder in his falsehoods, to produce, in the first place, such things as resemble what we have examined already, and relate to the departure of our forefathers out of Egypt; and, in the second place, he accuses those Jews that are inhabitants of Alexandria; as, in the third place, he mixes with those things such accusations as concern the sacred purifications, with the other legal rites used in the temple.' (14)

From the above we can firstly see that the anti-jewish intellectual tradition; in which Apion was writing, appears to be centred on Alexandria given that nearly all of those Josephus mentions as principle critics of the jews; and on whom we may presume Apion drew at least in part, came from or spent a lot of time in Alexandria. This is confirmed by Josephus' comment that Apion 'accuses those Jews that are inhabitants of Alexandria' and when we combine this with Josephus' assertion that Apion came up with both new charges and restated older ones: then tells us that the charges against the jews of Alexandria must have been a staple of this anti-jewish school of thought.

Indeed we can note that this school of thought mirrors what we know about Alexandria at the time in that the jews were consciously striving to best the Greeks and Egyptians of the city and that rioting, violence and intellectual brawls were not uncommon among the two warring parties. This was after all the city in which the normally pro-jewish and rather docile Emperor Claudius had to intervene in with threats to prosecute the jews wholesale if they kept regarding themselves as a specially-appointed nation (able to send ambassadors directly to the Emperor himself) and continued their war against the Greek and Egyptian inhabitants of Alexandria.

This conflict is mentioned by Josephus himself when he declares that Apion contrived his arguments against the jews to benefit the Alexandrians who hated the jews of that city. (15) What is perhaps surprising; considering that Josephus has told us that Apion's argument were based on experience with the jews (i.e. he was no stranger to them and obviously interacted with them regularly) and that these arguments covered a considerable amount of intellectual ground from charges against the jews of Alexandria plus charges about the origin of the jews and further charges in and around jewish rituals, is just how little Josephus actually tries to rebut. Instead he spends the best part of his time attacking Apion personally and trying to attack Apion's chronology not the multifaceted argument structure that he; as quoted above, stated that Apion made.

This informs us of two principle facts: that Apion made a wide-range of arguments based on first-hand information as well as an established Alexandrian intellectual tradition and that Josephus tried to pick the arguments he felt he could handle as opposed to rebutting Apion and the Alexandrian anti-jewish intellectual school of thought en toto as he suggests he was doing. (16)

I have dealt with Josephus' arguments against Manetho's chronology; as well as what we can extract of Manetho's actual thought about it, elsewhere, (17) that said it is worth restating; for the benefit of the reader, Apion's chronology concerning the origin of the jews in the Exodus.

If we read Josephus' account carefully we can see that there are a couple of problems in it; which Josephus sometimes does and sometimes doesn't pick up, firstly is the reason why Osarseph (usually read as referring to Moses) suddenly became the leader of the 'lepers' and how on earth; after becoming their leader, he was able to pass draconian religious laws, rebuild a deserted city, establish international contact with Jerusalem and convince them to send a large army into Egypt (because he asked them to). We may also wonder why Pharaoh decided to send the 'lepers' to the stone-quarries (probably at Tura) rather than expel them body and soul as was originally required by the seer Amenophis.

If we understand the 'lepers' to be those literally afflicted with leprosy; as has traditionally been the case (although German language scholarship has tended; correctly in my view, to see in this an allegory), then it is very difficult to explain this passage without simple high-handed dismissal. It is however simply explained once we; as I have said, understand that 'lepers' is probably an allegory for simply being diseased in some way.

That this is a religious disease is indicated by the participation of Egyptian priests; i.e. they had formed or been seduced into following a new cult, as well as the unity of 'lepers' throughout their ordeal as well as why Moses could take and promulgate numerous radical religious laws against the Egyptian system of worship (as well as the oath of absolute obedience) in addition to why Pharaoh sent the 'lepers' to the mines rather than simply banish them from his borders.

This latter point; in regard to the use of the mines rather than simple banishment beyond Egypt's borders, is indicative of a religious cult; which as the Pharaoh was a god-king would have direct political implications if the established religion was substantially challenged, precisely because if you have group of religious subversives then if you banish them they could very easily return to haunt you; as is indeed what happens in Apion's account, as well as maintain their influence by a network of hidden cult members (which is also what Apion hints was the case). If on the other hand you reduce them to the status of slaves and send them to place; like the stone-quarries, where they can be worked to death and their outside contact can be easily limited: then it is the ideal way; in many respects, to be rid of subversives of every kind.

This explanation is also directly pointed to by Manetho's phrase: 'there to work segregated from the rest of the Egyptians'. Meaning; of course, that the Egyptian labourers and slaves who were working at the stone-quarries were potential candidates for religious conversion and as such the 'lepers' had to be separated from them to prevent a possible eventual cult-inspired uprising. Further a later passage from Apion directly suggests this when it states that when the jews from Jerusalem invaded Egypt with 200,000 men: Pharaoh instructed that the sacred animals be gathered and protected as well as the religious sanctuaries shut down and their sacred objects hidden before he fled with his army to Ethiopia.

This; of course, means that Pharaoh had some special religious reason to be worried about the temples during a 'leper' invasion.

Further the description of the desire of Pharaoh to see the gods and for the seer Amenophis to state that this required a purification of the diseased from the kingdom reads like the message of an established state religion, which is being challenged by a new populist cult that is spreading rapidly (hence the allegorical use of the term 'disease').

This passage could then be read as Pharaoh desiring to see the gods as one of his ancestors had (although I must admit it sounds like the use of hallucinogenic substances as opposed to an allegory here) to which his religious adviser declares that this would be impossible until the new populist cult and its followers had been purged from Egypt by Pharaoh. Who would then have purified Egypt from the highly contagious religious disease that was threatening it (leprosy being simply a prime example as well as a disfiguring disease to boot which gives the allegory even more force) and would thus be rewarded by the Egyptian gods; whom the established priesthood represented, with a sighting/meeting with those that he had served so well.

Further the fact that Moses knew about the jews in Jerusalem and was able to quickly win them to his side suggests that in Apion's view: those who were doing the invading were of the same religious persuasion as Moses, which suggests the view that the jews were invading from both without and within. Or put more bluntly: the religious subversion was the worship of Yahweh and that the 'lepers' acted as harbingers of the jewish armies, which were to desecrate the temples of any other god they came across as well as kill or enslave those non-jews they came across.

Having reminded ourselves of what Apion argues and a more likely interpretation of it as opposed to the jews ruling Egypt as a warrior people; which is what Josephus is trying to argue was the case using both Apion and Manetho, we should note that essentially what Apion is doing here is offering a counter-interpretation based on Egyptian records and oral tradition as well as their jewish opposites.

He gives us the very probable scenario that the jews started life as essentially religious rebels; a fact that could be used to reinforce the possible Atenist origin for the worship of Yahweh (which would plausibly explain the jewish tribal elite's tendency to focus on one god alone which was unusual for the time), and then graduated over centuries into the puritanical religious zealots that they became. Josephus by contrast asserts that they had always been said puritanical religious zealots that they were in his time: by simplifying the positions down to their lowest common denominator we can see that Apion is actually being the more reasonable, while Josephus is just simply being a dogmatic holy man with an axe to grind.

We can further see this irrational axe grinding when we note that Josephus at one point accuses Apion of 'contriving to have the very same number as Lysimachus' (18) however just a few lines earlier he attacks Apion for not agreeing with his fellow anti-jewish scholars in relation to the dating of his chronology.

Josephus states as follows:

'Manetho says that the Jews departed out of Egypt, in the reign of Tethmosis, three hundred ninety-three years before Danaus fled to Argos; Lysimachus says it was under king Bocchoris, that is, one thousand seven hundred years ago; Molon and some others determined it as every one pleased: but this Apion of ours, as deserving to be believed before them, has determined it exactly to have been in the seventh Olympiad, and the first year of that Olympiad; the very same year in which he says that Carthage was built by the Phoenicians.' (19)

In other words we can see here that Josephus is trying to have his intellectual cake and eat it at the same time by declaring that on the one hand that if Apion disagrees with his fellow anti-jewish scholars then he is ipso facto wrong and making up libels against the jews, while when Apion agrees with his fellow anti-jewish scholars then he is actively conspiring against the jews by making his argument agree with his fellows.

It boils down to Josephus acting a little like an ancient Alan Dershowitz and believing in the supremacy of the jews so absolutely that he; to use a modern example to illustrate the contradiction in Josephus' argument, is demanding that the Palestinians stop attacking Israel, while demanding that the Israelis continue attacking the Palestinians.

In other words: Josephus' argument doesn't make sense unless you acknowledge that his argument is a simply a heuristic device to rationalize and justify his underlying belief system in a particular situational context.


References


(1) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:1
(2) Ibid.
(3) Kiddush Hashem (lit. 'Sanctification the Name') or the concept of martyrdom in Judaism, which can be achieved; but unlike in Christianity, through suicide or self-sacrifice.
(4) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 1:1
(5) For example Ibid, 1:6
(6) Ibid, 1:22
(7) Ibid, 2:16
(8) Suet. Tib. 35, Claud. 25 ; Tac. Hist. 5:5
(9) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-and-jews.html
(10) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...s-on-jews.html
(11) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-of-samos.html
(12) On Manetho's case against the jews see: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...o-on-jews.html
(13) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:1
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ibid, 2:3-4
(16) Ibid, 1:2; 2:1
(17) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...o-on-jews.html
(18) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:2
(19) Ibid.

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...a-on-jews.html
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