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V Talking Back: Against Apion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2025
Extract
The Against Apion is not like the other works of Josephus. Most obviously, it is the only work which is not predominantly narrative. Although many of its themes and preoccupations are historical in nature, it takes the form of a rhetorical treatise, and its central mode is not narrative but argumentation. Indeed, it is argumentative in every sense of the word, by far the most outspoken and intemperate of all the author's extant writings. It was written, as Josephus tells us, in response to hostile commentary about Jews and Judaism which he had encountered in the works of some Gentile (in most cases Greek) writers (C.Ap 1.2, inter alia). Because of the prestige which Greek scholarship enjoyed in the Roman Empire, hostile presentations of Judaism by Greek authors could cause significant issues in terms of broader attitudes towards Judaism at this time, both in Rome itself and throughout the empire. Thus Josephus aims to set the record straight, to combat misinformation about his people which was circulating in influential Greek works, and to present an insider's view of Judaism to a wider audience, in the hope that such a view would replace the often poorly informed notions which prevailed in contemporary Greek scholarship.
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References
1 The name Against Apion almost certainly does not go back to Josephus, and it is not possible to reconstruct the original title (see Barclay 2006: xviii–xxx; Barclay 2016: 80).
2 C.Ap 1.1 (Antiquities); C.Ap 1.47–56 (War).
3 On the Against Apion as apologetics, see Barclay 2009; Hardwick 1996.
4 On Christian readers of Josephus, see below, pp. 101–4. For parallel arguments appearing in Christian apologia, compare Tertullian's objections to the indignities of Greek mythology (Apol. 14) with those of Josephus at C.Ap 2.239–49, or the same apologist's emphasis on the great antiquity of Judaism (Apol. 19), compared with the first major section of Against Apion.
5 Goodman 1999: 53–5. See also Kasher 1996; Barclay 2016: 79.
6 On the work's audience, see Mason 1996; Barclay 2006: xlv–li; Barclay 2016: 81–3.
7 On the manuscript transmission of the work, see Barclay 2006: lxi–lxiv; and Leoni 2016: 315–17.
8 In the latter section, Josephus occasionally passes off Jewish authors as Gentiles, among other manipulations of their testimonies. See Goodman 1999: 53; Barclay 2016: 77–8.
9 On the importance of συμφωνία to historiography, see C.Ap 1.26, 38, 160. For συμφωνία in Josephus’ historiographical theory, see Cohen 1988: 1–5.
10 For the trope, see, for example, Hdt. 2.2–3, 44, 99; Diod. Sic. 1.12.9; Plut. De Is. et Os. 353B. See also Marincola 1997: 108–11. Similarly, by drawing attention to the Greek historiographical habit of denigration of predecessor works, Josephus uses another feature of Greek historiography to undermine it (while, somewhat ironically, participating in that process of denigration himself).
11 See esp. Pl. Criti. 109D–110B.
12 The last clause alludes to Hdt. 2.53.
13 It is worth noting that the most frequent elements of Josephus’ vituperation of the Egyptians (especially his fixation on the idea that they worshipped animals) seem strongly to mirror attested Roman prejudices about Egypt (on which see Smelik and Hemelrijk 1984; Isaac 2004: 352–70). This may indicate that such vituperation was designed to score points in the eyes of Roman readers.
14 In a similar vein, Josephus is quite happy to cite Greek historians who support his case, despite his resounding denunciation of Greek historical scholarship in the first section of Book 1.
15 For more on Josephus’ argumentative strategies, see Kasher 1996; Gruen 2016: 245–53.
16 On the cannibalistic ritual, see above, pp. 24–5.
17 On Apion's Homeric scholarship, see Dillery 2003. On his encounter with Pliny, see HN 30.18 (and Damon 2011). On his impression on Tiberius, see Plin. HN praef.25–6. On verse competitions, see Benaissa 2014.
18 For more on Apion, see, in addition to the works already cited, Van der Horst 2002: 207–22; Jones 2005; Damon 2008.
19 Harker 2009: 212–20.
20 The other occasion is at C.Ap 2.115.
21 On the virtues in the Against Apion, see Rajak 1998: 231–4. The identification of four chief virtues was already a commonplace in Greek philosophical writings (see North 1966), but the precise combination of virtues which Josephus claims is taught by the Mosaic Laws (justice, temperance, fortitude, and harmony) appears to be original to him. Goodman 1999: 57–8 has suggested that the virtues which Josephus emphasizes as being inculcated by Judaism map very closely onto conservative Roman values, suggesting that Josephus may have had one eye on winning approval from a Roman audience. When we recall how the hostile stereotypes about both Egyptians and Greeks in this treatise also closely echo Roman prejudices, we get the impression that, in the Against Apion, Josephus aims to suggest that Romans and Jews are similar, and to oppose both groups to Egyptians and Greeks.
22 On Josephus’ three schools model more broadly, see Haaland 2007; Klawans 2012; Baumgarten 2016.