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A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Forum. For the first time I
read the first book of Against Apion
by Flavius Josephus for its own sake rather than trying to figure out
what Apion had written. I had learned the original work by Apion was lost
and was only known through the "rebuttal" by Josephus.
The book itself is wordy and the author not inclined to simple declarative
sentences which would make clear quotes for each of my points below. Until I
find a way to do that please use the above link and text searching.
Upon reading it for its own sake I realized I was reading the first
historical allegation of antisemitism, literally hatred of the Jews because
they are Jews or because they are envied. Unless this was invented by
Josephus it was part of the Judean culture in his time making it even older
than Against Apion.
Historically this is literally incredible. There is nothing in any of the
writings of Josephus or the Septuagint indicating any animosity against
Judeans that was different from against any other group. Certainly the
Galileans and Samaritans were far from fond of the Judeans as they had been
conquered by the Judeans and the Judean Yahweh cult forced upon them.
I have always found the claims by Jews that they are hated to be little more
than group paranoia all through history including to this day. In Christian
Europe Christians treated Jews better than members of any other religion. In
fact Christians treated Jews better than they treated other Christians. All
the "they hate us the most" are truly mental contortions so silly that they
do not deserve to be called intellectual contortions.
Similarly Jews were named along with Christians as the only protected
religions, their members being, like Muslims, peoples of the Book. Sorry but
they are not any kind of survivors except in their own minds and mythology.
In both the Christian and Muslim worlds they were the only religion given
any protection at all. Were they not members of a protected religion Jews
would be as scarce as Druids.
We even find this "antisemitism" claim about the US. In fact the experience
of the wave of Jewish immigrants in the 1890s was no different from that of
the Irish or Italians. It lasted no longer than for the Irish and Italians.
They assimilated as well as the Irish and Italians. Yet we still hear about
it as though it was all part of some millennia old phenomenon, as though it
were the same as the whinings of Josephus. Total nonsense of course. What is
the same as is not special.
As this is the oldest known claim of hate we can examine the validity of the
reasons. As a side benefit we also have this ridiculous claim of hate to an
equally absurd claim of envy of Jews. Envy them because they are rich and
smart? Like stereotypes much?
What we find in this book is Josephus attempting to invent the fact that the
Jews were an ancient people. Ancient in this case meaning among the oldest
if not the oldest people in the world. As old or older than the people of
ancient Ur. This was a prized status in ancient times, to be an elder people
rather than newcomers.
Perhaps unsurprisinly Jews insist to this day they existed before there is
any evidence of them in either history or the archaeological record. It
appears to be some kind of religious compulsion.
From context it appears no one believed the Judeans were ancient. Josephus
addresses observations which are still current today such as there is no
mention of any Jews or Judeans in the literature of any other people. He
does not claim there is mention rather offers the illogical argument that
the absence of mention is meaningless offering the absence of mention of the
Greeks in the writings of the Judeans as of the same value raising his own
people to the stature of the Greeks.
It should go without saying that 2000 years ago, before the massive loss of
literature through the Dark Ages, there was no evidence back then any more
than has survived to today. With as many as 100 times as many important
records not one person including Josephus can find a single mention of Jews
or Judeans by anyone in any record prior to Roman times.
In fact it appears the major argument against the Judeans being an ancient
people is the same as it is today. There is no mention of them in any other
literature but their own Septuagint. Clearly no one at the time took the
Septuagint as a factual collection.
Lets look at the specifics.
You hate the Jews if you refuse to believe the Jews had a
5000 year history in the 1st c. AD, that is a 7000 year history today.
In the time of Josephus the educated had a rather good idea of how old was
civilization, on the order of 4000 years at most just about as it is thought
today. This was independent of any mythology which the educated did not
consider any more than we consider it. Josephus was claiming a history at
least as old if not older than what was known at the time. Every educated
person of his day knew this was nonsense just as today we know it is
nonsense.
Today we know even better Josephus was full of it. In fact it is only a few
people on the intellectual level of creationists who hold Judaism is older
than 1400 years BC and the majority believers put it no older than 600 BC as
a form of Judaism which would be recognizable as such. Look how many Jews
hate Jews today.
Utnapishtim or Atrahasis in the Gilgamesh saga was really
Noah.
As with creationism Noah and his flood are considered real only by a
minority rednecks from either the backwoods of the American South or from
Brooklyn or the West Bank of Palestine via Brooklyn. But if you not only do
not believe it but also you decline to believe Noah is mentioned under a
different name in the Gilgamesh epic then you hate Jews.
It would also have been quite clear to the Romans that the Noah story is
fiction for mostly the same reasons we know it is today.
The Jews were the Hyksos who conquered and ruled Egypt for
a century.
This one is positively incredible and is totally contrary to everything
known today from both archaeology and history but also apparently known to
the ancients from their own records. Here again we only have modern
mouth-breathers trying to equate Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos by
the Egyptians.
On one hand you have to be an idiot to believe it but refusal to believe it
means you hate the Jews.
Note here the Hyksos idea is contrary to Exodus. Clearly Josephus did not
take the Exodus story seriously. He did not believe it was true else he
could not make this contrary claim. Is this what is meant by a self-hating
Jew?
If you do not believe that Jerusalem in the 1st c. AD was so
magnificent a city it was the envy of the Egyptians you only refuse to
believe it because of your irrational hatred of the Jews.
Here is where Josephus introduces an explanation for this hatred. Seems he
was promoting the whacked out idea that Egyptians envied the Hyksos, aka
Jews, for their magnificent city of Jerusalem and the enormous prosperity of
Judea without the assistance of the Egyptians.
Remember after the 130 revolt Rome rebuilt Jerusalem. They added things like
sanitation. They raised it to Roman standards. Yet Josephus would have us
believe it was the envy of the Egyptians. The only question of interest is
if he was dumb enough to believe it himself.
Taken as a whole this book can be read as a petty rant about people who
simply refused to believe the nonsense Jews wanted them to believe. And if
they refuse to believe jewish nonsense then the only possible explanation is
that they refuse what Jews say because they hate Jews. Arbitrary,
capricious, irrational hatred that at best stems from the base motive of
envy. It is the same rant we get from Jews today.
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