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Josephus Dismantled the Egyptian Slanders Against Moses One by One

Ancient writers claimed the Jews were expelled lepers and Moses a renegade priest. Josephus dismantled each accusation in turn.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Lies in Circulation
  2. What the Slander Said
  3. How Josephus Responded
  4. The Claim About Moses

The Lies in Circulation

Someone was telling stories about Moses, and they were specific, named, and circulating widely across the literate world. Josephus had read enough of them to understand that they were not casual errors. They were a systematic slander with named authors, and he wrote Against Apion to dismantle it argument by argument.

The authors were Manetho, an Egyptian priest who had written a history of Egypt in the third century BCE, and Apion, a Greek grammarian from Alexandria who had taken Manetho's material and amplified it for a Roman audience in the first century CE. Their version of the Exodus inverted the biblical account completely.

What the Slander Said

In the Torah, Israel left Egypt after God afflicted the Egyptians with ten plagues, and the departure was a liberation from slavery. In Manetho's version, the Jews were a group of diseased slaves, many of them lepers, who had been expelled because their presence was a religious and public health threat to Egypt. Moses was not a liberator sent by God. He was a renegade Egyptian priest who had been dismissed from the temples for impurity and had organized this band of outcasts into a people. The Exodus was not a departure. It was an ejection.

The slander accomplished several things. It denied the antiquity and dignity of Jewish origins. It reframed liberation as expulsion. It converted Moses from a prophet into a criminal. And it offered a narrative that explained Jewish monotheism not as revelation but as the religious invention of a group of rejected outsiders.

How Josephus Responded

He responded with several categories of argument. First, he addressed the chronological problem. Manetho's dates were internally inconsistent. The Egyptian priest placed events in sequences that contradicted his own account at multiple points. If you could not keep the timeline straight, you could not be trusted on substance.

Second, he addressed the evidence question. The Jews had preserved detailed records across many centuries, records maintained by priests, transmitted in fixed form, never altered to make the history more flattering. This is a different standard of documentary reliability than anything the Egyptians or Greeks could produce for their own ancient histories, which had been revised, embellished, and edited repeatedly to serve different political purposes over time.

The Claim About Moses

On the specific accusation about Moses being a renegade priest: Josephus pointed out that the Egyptian account could not even agree with itself about who Moses was or what his crime had been. Different versions named different offenses. This internal inconsistency was exactly what you would expect from a fabrication constructed to serve a polemical purpose rather than from an account based on actual records.

Beyond the inconsistency, Josephus made a positive case. Moses had given the Jewish people a legal and social system that had survived for centuries. Its institutions were coherent, its laws were internally consistent, and its effects on the people who followed it were observable. This was not the work of a criminal priest trying to hold a mob of lepers together in the desert. This was legislation of genuine quality, which Josephus argued had been recognized as such by Greek philosophers who had borrowed from it without acknowledgment.

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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Against Apion 40:1Against Apion

Ever get the feeling someone's telling stories about you, and they're just... not true? That's kind of the situation the Jewish historian Josephus found himself in during the first century. He penned his work, Against Apion, to set the record straight.

Josephus wasn’t just rambling. He was responding to some pretty harsh accusations leveled against the Jewish people. Ouch.

In this particular section – Against Apion 40 – Josephus wraps up his defense. He reflects on what he has accomplished in his writing. He reminds us, his readers, that he meticulously detailed the Jewish people's unique political laws in his other work, Antiquities of the Jews. Here, in Against Apion, he says, he only touched on them as needed. His main goal wasn't to praise his own people or criticize others. No, his mission was far more direct: to expose the lies and distortions spread by those writing unfairly about the Jews.

He states, quite powerfully, that he believes he has successfully completed his task in these books. Think about the magnitude of that claim. He's saying, "I've done what I set out to do. I've corrected the record."

What were these accusations, exactly? Well, some claimed the Jewish nation was a newcomer on the world stage. Josephus counters that, no, actually, numerous ancient writers – people with no stake in the matter – mentioned the Jews in their writings, proving their ancient roots. “I have demonstrated that they are exceeding ancient; for I have produced as witnesses thereto many ancient writers,” he declares.

Then there was the slander that the Jews originated in Egypt. Josephus firmly rejects this, asserting they migrated to Egypt from elsewhere. And the really nasty claim that they were expelled from Egypt because of some kind of disease? Josephus flips the script. He argues that the return to their homeland was a conscious choice, made by people in good health. It was a triumphant return, not a shameful expulsion.

Finally, the character assassination of Moses, the great legislator. Josephus points out that God himself testified to Moses's virtuous character long ago. And, he adds, time itself has only confirmed that divine testimony. It's a powerful statement, arguing that history ultimately vindicates the righteous.

What can we learn from this? Josephus teaches us about the importance of historical accuracy. It’s about standing up to those who spread misinformation and prejudice. It's a timeless battle, isn’t it? The struggle to define your own narrative, to be heard, to be understood. Josephus's words, written so long ago, still resonate today. They remind us to question narratives, seek the truth, and challenge injustice wherever we find it.

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Against Apion 39:1Against Apion

The writer Josephus, in his work Against Apion, makes a pretty bold claim. He argues that Jewish laws and customs have not only been admired but actively imitated by people across the globe, from the earliest Greek philosophers to the "multitude of mankind." He's not just talking about a little influence, either. He suggests that even those who outwardly followed their own cultural norms were, in their hearts and actions, following the lead of the Jewish legislator, Moses. for a second.

In Josephus, the very concept of living simply and fostering friendly relationships, ideas readers often attribute to Greek philosophy, actually stemmed from Jewish teachings. He goes on to say that the widespread observance of the Sabbath, our day of rest, has permeated countless cultures – "there is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come." And not just the Sabbath! Josephus notes the adoption of Jewish fasts, the lighting of lamps, dietary restrictions and even the emphasis on mutual support and charitable giving.

Why would so many people, from so many different backgrounds, adopt these practices? Josephus points out that Jewish law doesn't offer any superficial allure or easy pleasures. "Our law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force." So what's the draw? Perhaps it's the inherent wisdom, the sense of community, the ethical framework that resonates deeply within the human spirit.

He even touches on the resilience of the Jewish people, our "fortitude in undergoing the distresses we are in, on account of our laws." It's a powerful evidence of the enduring strength of faith and tradition.

Josephus then throws down a challenge: are we to believe that all these people who have adopted aspects of Jewish law are simply wicked, deliberately choosing something "foreign and evil"? Or is it possible that these laws possess an inherent goodness, a universal appeal that transcends cultural boundaries? It’s a pretty stark choice, isn’t it?

And what about our own pride in our heritage? Josephus argues that even if we don’t fully grasp the profound wisdom within our own laws, the sheer number of people who seek to emulate them should give us reason to value them. In his words, "though we should not be able ourselves to understand the excellency of our own laws, yet would the great multitude of those that desire to imitate them, justify us, in greatly valuing ourselves upon them."

Josephus concludes with a powerful image: "as God himself pervades all the world, so hath our law passed through all the world also." A bold statement, to be sure, but one that invites us to consider the profound and often unseen ways in which Jewish thought has shaped the world we inhabit.

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