5 min read

Apion Said Suffering Proved Jews Unloved

Josephus had a reply ready. Egypt never knew a single free day, and the Persians butchered the very animals the Egyptians called gods.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. A Grammarian's Proof from Pain
  2. Egypt Under Other Lords
  3. Lepers, Mines, and a Hostile Witness
  4. Gods of Clay and a Law That Does Not Change
  5. Suffering Is Not a Theology of Trash
Apion Said Suffering Proved Jews Unloved Click for full size

A Grammarian's Proof from Pain

Apion needed a short argument that could travel through Greek dinner halls. The Jews, he said, are not favored by the divine. Their laws are not just. Their worship is wrong. How else explain their subjection, their calamities, while Alexandria sits as an imperial city? Suffering becomes evidence. Defeat becomes theology.

Josephus refuses the scale. If only unconquered nations own righteousness, almost no nation owns it. Empires rise and fall. The Athenians and Lacedaemonians, praised for courage and piety, still met misfortune. Croesus, famous for devotion, still fell. Calamity is human weather. It is not a clean verdict on a people's God.

Egypt Under Other Lords

Josephus turns the sneer toward Apion's own house. The Egyptians, he says, appear never to have had one day of freedom, not even from their own lords. The Persians laid waste their cities, demolished temples, and killed the animals they called gods. Later the Macedonians held them. Servitude is not a Jewish invention. Boasting while chained is.

Against that record he sets Jewish memory of liberty and dominion over neighboring cities for nearly a hundred and twenty years. He does not claim a people without wounds. He claims that wounds do not prove divine rejection any more than Persian boots prove Egyptian wisdom. Apion's measuring stick breaks the hand that holds it.

Lepers, Mines, and a Hostile Witness

Older Egyptian poison said the Jews sprang from lepers and the diseased expelled from Egypt. Josephus answers with Manetho himself, a hostile source turned against the tale. Manetho, as Josephus reads him, admits the Jewish nation was not derived from Egypt and that Egyptians were not mingled into it. Distinction, even from an enemy pen, is still distinction.

He presses attrition. People forced into mines die. Battles after expulsion kill more. Flight kills still more. A broken remnant cannot become a thriving nation on schedule. The origin story fails as arithmetic before it fails as honor. Josephus is defending blood and name against a myth built to make Israel look like waste the Nile coughed out.

Gods of Clay and a Law That Does Not Change

He widens the case to how nations know God. Heathen legislators, he says, never grasped the divine clearly and never taught what little they held. Poets invented gods with every human failing. Orators imported foreign deities for politics. Painters and sculptors shaped gods from clay, picture, ivory, and gold. Temples rose and fell with fashion. Old gods lost honor. New gods arrived and were abandoned before the paint dried.

Opinion about God, Josephus insists, should be constant. Jewish law fixes the object of worship so that art and mood cannot remake Heaven every season. Against that fixed point he sets Moses' concrete mercy: offer fire, water, and food to the needy; show travelers the way; leave no one unburied. Even toward enemies, moderation holds. Do not burn their country for sport. Do not cut fruit trees. Do not despoil the dead. Provide for captives. Protect women. Spare laboring animals even in enemy land. "Thus hath our lawgiver contrived to teach us an equitable conduct every way."

Suffering Is Not a Theology of Trash

Apion wanted Jewish pain to mean Jewish unworthiness. Josephus answers with Egypt's own chains, with Manetho's forced admission of separation, with the arithmetic that kills the leper-nation fable, and with a law that trains mercy while pagan workshops mold gods like toys. The defense is angry without becoming a mirror of the insult.

Joseph, raised to rule in Egypt in Israel's memory, stands behind the quarrel as a fact Apion cannot digest: a Hebrew once held Egypt's stores. That memory does not erase later conquests. It does erase the claim that Jews never knew favor or order. Moses' statutes about strangers, enemies, and beasts still speak when the Temple is gone and Greek mouths call the people a late disease.

The drama ends where Apion began, on the meaning of misfortune. Josephus will not baptize every wound as guilt. He will not let Alexandria's pride rewrite Sinai. He will not let a sculptor's newest idol outrank a law that still feeds the traveler and buries the dead. Against a grammarian's sneer he sets history, hostility that still concedes difference, and a legislator who taught equity until even animals felt the fence of mercy.

He writes knowing Greek rooms love a clean insult. A short charge about Jewish calamity can outrun a long archive. So he lengthens the archive on purpose. He names Persian boots on Egyptian necks. He names mines and battles that would thin any expelled throng. He names fruit trees spared in war and strangers fed at the door. Each detail is a weight on Apion's scale until the scale tips. Suffering remains. The lie that suffering equals divine trash does not.

JosephusApionEgyptJosephMosesLaw
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Against Apion 30:1Against Apion

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Against Apion, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

Sometimes, digging into the past brings up unexpected things... and uncomfortable questions.

Against Apion isn't exactly light bedtime reading. It's a polemic, a fiery defense of Judaism against the slanderous accusations of a man named Apion, an Egyptian grammarian who clearly wasn't a fan. Josephus, a staunch defender of his people, wrote this to set the record straight.. or, at least, his version of it.

One of the most persistent accusations against the Jews was that they were somehow "tainted" or "impure," that their origins were less than noble. Apion, echoing earlier Egyptian writers like Manetho, claimed that the Jews were descended from lepers and other diseased people who were expelled from Egypt. Ouch.

Josephus, understandably, took serious issue with this. And in Against Apion, he presents a counter-narrative. He quotes Manetho himself, attempting to turn the Egyptian historian's words against him. Here's the gist: According to Manetho, the Jewish nation "was not derived from Egypt, nor were any of the Egyptians mingled with us."

Think about the weight of that statement. Josephus is arguing that even according to a hostile source, the Jews were a distinct people, separate from the Egyptians. He then goes on to suggest a grim reason why the alleged "leprous and distempered people" couldn't have formed the basis of the Jewish nation.

He points out the harsh realities of life for these individuals: many would have died in the mines where they were forced to work, others in the battles that supposedly followed their expulsion, and still more during the final, desperate flight. In other words, Josephus is arguing that sheer attrition would have decimated their numbers, making it impossible for them to become a thriving nation.

Is this a convincing argument? Well, that's where things get tricky. History is rarely black and white, and ancient sources are often colored by bias and political agendas. Josephus was writing to defend his people, and he was clearly selective in his use of sources. But that doesn't necessarily mean he was wrong.

What is important to remember is that these ancient accusations, these whispers of impurity and tainted origins, have had a long and painful history. They've been used to justify discrimination, persecution, and even violence against the Jewish people for centuries.

So, when we read these old texts, we need to read them critically, with an awareness of the context in which they were written and the potential harm they can inflict. We need to ask ourselves: Whose voice is being amplified? Whose voice is being silenced? And what are the consequences of accepting a particular narrative as truth?

It's a heavy task, but it's a necessary one. Because the stories we tell about the past shape the world we live in today. And we have a responsibility to make sure those stories are as accurate, as fair, and as compassionate as possible.

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Against Apion 11:1Against Apion

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Against Apion, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

The writer Josephus, in his work Against Apion, deals with just such an argument. He's responding to the claims of a fellow named Apion, who’s taking potshots at the Jewish people. Apion, according to Josephus, says, "Look, you Jews are clearly not favored by the divine. You don't have just laws, and you don't worship God correctly. How else do you explain the fact that you're often under the rule of others? Your city has suffered calamities, unlike Alexandria which has always been an imperial city."

Ouch.

Josephus isn't having it. He cleverly turns Apion's argument right back on him. "Hold on a minute," he says, in effect. "Are you seriously suggesting that only nations who’ve never been conquered are righteous or have just laws? If that’s your standard, pretty much everyone fails! Very few nations have been consistently in power without facing subjugation at some point. History is full of empires rising and falling."

Then, Josephus really gets going. He zeroes in on Apion's own people, the Egyptians. And this is where it gets interesting. Josephus points out a rather uncomfortable truth: The Egyptians, despite Apion's boasting, have a pretty consistent track record of being… well, ruled by others. He says they “appear to have never, in all the past ages, had one day of freedom, no, not so much as from their own lords.”

He even references the Persians, who, as Josephus reminds us, repeatedly laid waste to Egyptian cities, demolished their temples, and even killed the animals they considered gods. Awkward!

Josephus isn't trying to revel in anyone's misfortune. His point is much bigger than that. He's saying, "Bad things happen. Calamities strike. It's part of the human experience. To single out one group and say their suffering is proof of some inherent flaw is not only unfair, it's ridiculous." He mentions the Athenians and Lacedaemonians (Spartans), respected for their courage and piety, yet they too faced misfortunes. What about King Croesus, known for his piety, who also suffered greatly? Were they all somehow deserving of their fates?

He then calls out Apion for conveniently forgetting the long history of Egyptian subjugation. Josephus emphasizes that the Egyptians were servants to the Persians and later to the Macedonians. Meanwhile, the Jewish people, he reminds us, "enjoyed liberty formerly; nay, more than that, have had the dominion of the cities that lie round about us, and this nearly for a hundred and twenty years together." He even mentions that when all the other kings were conquered by the Romans, the Jewish people were considered their confederates and friends because of their fidelity.

Josephus isn't just engaging in historical point-scoring. He’s challenging a dangerous line of thinking. The idea that suffering equals guilt. The notion that power equals righteousness. He's reminding us that history is complex, that fortunes rise and fall, and that judging an entire people based on their current circumstances is not only inaccurate but deeply unjust.

It is worth noting the historical commentary on this section of Josephus's work. As one note observes, the Egyptians "had never, in all the past ages since Sesostris, had one day of liberty, no, not so much as to have been free from despotic power under any of the monarchies to that day." And, the commentary continues, this remained "equally true in the latter ages, under the Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, from the days of Josephus till the present ago also." (Against Apion, 11, note 16). As Ezekiel prophesied, Egypt was destined to be a "base kingdom" (Ezekiel 29:14, 15).

So, the next time you hear someone trying to connect a group's struggles to some supposed inherent failing, remember Josephus. Remember Apion. And remember that history is rarely as simple as it seems. Perhaps, instead of judging, we should be asking ourselves, what can we learn from each other’s experiences?

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Against Apion 35:1Against Apion

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Against Apion, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

Flavius Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian, grappled with this very question in his work, Against Apion. And his answer is surprisingly relevant, even today.

Josephus homes in on what he sees as a fundamental flaw in the pagan world's approach to the Divine. He argues that much of the confusion and, frankly, the scandals surrounding their deities stemmed from a basic lack of knowledge – and a lack of consistent teaching – about the true nature of God. The heathen legislators, as he calls them, didn’t fully grasp the essence of the Divine, and even what little they understood, they didn't share effectively with the people.

Can you imagine a society where even the leaders have only a hazy idea about God, and they don't prioritize sharing that understanding? Josephus points out that they didn't build their political systems around a central, consistent concept of the Divine. Instead, they treated religion almost as an afterthought. This opened the door for poets to invent gods with every human failing imaginable, and for orators to manipulate the masses into accepting foreign deities that suited their political agendas.

Then there were the artists. The painters and sculptors of Greece held immense power, each crafting their own version of the Divine. As Josephus notes, they could conjure up a god out of clay or create an image from a bare picture. The most celebrated artisans even had access to precious materials like ivory and gold for their creations.

But here's the kicker: as Josephus observes, this led to a kind of religious fickleness. Some temples flourished, adorned with elaborate rituals, while others were abandoned. The older gods, revered for generations, were overshadowed by newer, trendier deities. And these new gods? Some were quickly embraced, only to have their temples left desolate before long. It was a constant cycle of creation, worship, and abandonment, all driven by human whim.

The core of Josephus's argument is that opinions about God and the worship due to Him should be constant and unchanging. Imagine the contrast he's drawing with the Jewish tradition, where the concept of God, as revealed in the Torah, is meant to be a fixed point, a source of unwavering truth across generations. What happens when our understanding of the Divine becomes subject to the changing winds of popular opinion, artistic trends, and political maneuvering? Does it cheapen the sacred? Does it create confusion and ultimately, a spiritual void? Josephus certainly thought so, and his words offer a powerful critique of a world where the Divine is shaped more by human hands than by divine revelation.

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Against Apion 29:1Against Apion

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Against Apion, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

In his work, Against Apion, he outlines some of the core principles embedded in Jewish law. And they go way beyond the usual "be nice" platitudes.

He points out that our legislator – meaning Moses, the great lawgiver – laid down some fundamental obligations that extend to all of humanity. Things we must do. Simple acts of kindness that can have a huge impact. Offering fire, water, and food to those in need. Showing travelers the way. Ensuring that no one is left unburied. Basic human decency.

Then it gets interesting. It's not just about being kind to those who are down on their luck. What about those we consider our enemies? Josephus argues that our tradition calls for moderation even in dealing with them. We are not allowed to set their country ablaze, nor are we permitted to cut down fruit-bearing trees. Think about the implications of that! Restraint, even in the heat of conflict.

He goes on to say that we’re forbidden to despoil the dead in wartime. Provision must be made for captives, ensuring they are not harmed, and that women are especially protected from abuse. It's a powerful statement about human dignity in the darkest of times.

This idea of extending compassion even to those who might wish us harm.

But it doesn't stop there. Josephus emphasizes that this ethical framework even encompasses our treatment of animals. We are permitted only a regular use of them, not abuse. If an animal seeks shelter in our home, we are forbidden to slay it. We cannot kill a mother animal along with its young. And even in enemy territory, we are obligated to spare animals that labor for mankind.

Why is this so important? Josephus argues that these laws aren’t just about rules. They are about cultivating a particular kind of character. "Thus hath our lawgiver contrived to teach us an equitable conduct every way, by using us to such laws as instruct us therein." It’s about training ourselves to act ethically, consistently, in every situation. And there's a consequence for failing to do so. He adds, "while at the same time he hath ordained that such as break these laws should be punished, without the allowance of any excuse whatsoever."

So, what do we take away from this? It seems to me that Josephus is presenting a vision of ethical life that is both deeply rooted in tradition and startlingly relevant today. It's a vision that calls us to extend our circle of compassion, to act with restraint and humanity, and to recognize the inherent dignity of all living beings. It's a tall order, no doubt. But isn’t that what makes it so compelling? A constant striving toward a more just and compassionate world.

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