Against Apion — Book 1

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

I believe I have already made sufficiently clear, in my work on our ancient history, most excellent Epaphroditus, to those who have read it, the matter of the origin of our nation, the Jews — that it is extremely ancient, that it took its own original form independently of others, and how it came to settle in the land we now hold, a history covering some five thousand years, which I set down in Greek on the basis of our sacred books.

But since I observe a good many people paying attention to the slanders spread by certain ill-disposed persons, and refusing to believe what I have written about our antiquity, treating as proof that our nation is a recent one the fact that it has not been thought worthy of mention by the distinguished Greek historians, I have thought it necessary to write briefly about all these matters: to expose the deliberate falsehoods of those who slander us out of malice, to correct the ignorance of others, and to instruct everyone who wants to know the truth about our antiquity. As witnesses for what I say I will call on those judged by the Greeks themselves to be the most trustworthy authorities on all antiquity, while those who have written falsely and abusively about us I will expose out of their own mouths.

I will also try to give the reasons why not many Greeks have mentioned our nation in their histories, and at the same time I will bring to light those who did not omit our history, for the benefit of those who do not know this, or pretend not to.

First of all, then, I am utterly amazed at people who think that for the oldest events one must attend to the Greeks alone and learn the truth from them, while distrusting both us and the rest of mankind. I find the very opposite to be the case — if indeed one ought not to follow empty opinions but derive what is just from the facts themselves. Among the Greeks everything, one might say, will be found to be new — a thing of yesterday or the day before — I mean the founding of their cities, the invention of their arts, and the compiling of their law codes; and virtually the newest thing of all among them is their concern with writing history. As for the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Phoenicians — I leave aside for the moment placing ourselves in their company — they themselves, of course, admit to having the oldest and most enduring tradition of record-keeping.

For all these peoples inhabit lands least exposed to destruction from the surrounding climate, and they took great care that nothing done among them should go unremembered, but that it should always be consecrated in public records by their wisest men. The region of Greece, by contrast, has been overtaken by countless disasters that have wiped out the memory of past events, and since each generation was always establishing new ways of life, they supposed that everything began with themselves. It was late, and only with difficulty, that they came to learn the nature of writing. Those, at any rate, who wish to claim the oldest use of it pride themselves on having learned it from the Phoenicians and from Cadmus. Yet not even from that time could anyone point to a surviving record preserved either in temples or in public monuments — seeing that even about those who campaigned against Troy, so many years later, there has been great uncertainty and inquiry as to whether they used writing at all, and the truth prevails rather on the side of those who hold that the men of that time did not know the kind of writing now in use.

In general, no writing is found among the Greeks that is agreed to be older than the poetry of Homer, and he plainly lived even later than the Trojan War; indeed they say that not even he left his own poetry in writing, but that it was pieced together later from memory, out of the songs, and for this reason contains many discrepancies. As for those who undertook to write histories among them — I mean Cadmus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, and any others said to have come after him — they preceded the Persian expedition against Greece by only a short time.

Moreover, the first among the Greeks to philosophize about the heavens and things divine — men such as Pherecydes of Syros, Pythagoras, and Thales — all agree, unanimously, that they became pupils of the Egyptians and the Chaldaeans and wrote only a little; and yet these writings are considered by the Greeks to be the oldest of all, and even so they can scarcely bring themselves to believe they were written by those men. How, then, is it not absurd that the Greeks should be so puffed up with the notion that they alone know antiquity and accurately hand down the truth about it? Who could not easily learn from their own writers that they wrote with no sure knowledge, but each simply conjectured about the facts as he saw fit? For the most part they refute one another through their own books, and do not hesitate to say the most contradictory things about the very same events.

I would be wasting effort teaching people who know better than I do how much Hellanicus disagrees with Acusilaus about genealogies, how much Acusilaus corrects Hesiod, how Ephorus shows Hellanicus to be mistaken in most matters, how Timaeus does the same to Ephorus, and those who came after Timaeus to him, and everyone to Herodotus. Nor did Timaeus think it worth agreeing with Antiochus, Philistus, or Callias about Sicilian affairs; nor again did the writers of the Atthides agree with one another about Attic affairs, or the historians of Argos about Argive affairs. And what need is there to speak of individual cities and lesser matters, when the most reputable writers disagree even about the Persian expedition and what happened in the course of it, and Thucydides himself is accused by some of falsehood, even though he is thought to have written the most accurate history of his own time?

There are, perhaps, many other reasons that might occur to anyone wishing to inquire into such disagreement, but I attribute the greatest weight to the two I am about to state, and I will speak first of the one that seems to me the more decisive: from the very beginning the Greeks took no care to keep public records of events as they occurred, and this above all gave those who later wished to write about early times both the opportunity to go astray and license to lie. For it was not only among the rest of the Greeks that record-keeping was neglected; not even among the Athenians, who are said to be indigenous to their land and devoted to learning, is anything of the sort found to have existed — rather, they say the oldest of their public documents are the laws on homicide written for them by Draco, who lived only a little before the tyranny of Peisistratus. As for the Arcadians, what need is there to speak of their boasted antiquity, when even after that time they were barely taught letters at all?

Since, then, no record had been laid down beforehand capable of instructing those who wished to learn and of refuting liars, great disagreement arose among their historians. A second cause, in addition to this, must be set down: those who set out to write did not concern themselves with the truth, although that is always the profession put forward, but displayed their rhetorical power instead; and depending on the manner by which each supposed he would outdo the rest in this respect, some turned to telling myths, others sought favor by praising cities or kings, while others still turned to attacking events or other writers, thinking they would win renown that way. In short, they persist in doing the very thing most opposed to history. For the mark of true history is that everyone should say and write the same things about the same events; whereas these men, by writing the same events differently, imagined they would thereby appear the most truthful of all.

For eloquence, then, and skill in that art, we must concede the field to the Greek writers; but not for the true history of ancient times, and especially not for the history proper to each nation's own affairs. That among the Egyptians and Babylonians, from the most remote ages, the care of record-keeping was entrusted to the priests, who made it their special study, and that among the Babylonians it was the Chaldaeans, and that among those who had the most contact with the Greeks the Phoenicians made use of writing both for the management of everyday affairs and for the transmission of public business — all this, since everyone concedes it, I think I may pass over.

But about our own ancestors — that they showed the same, or rather even greater, care in these matters of record-keeping, entrusting this task to the high priests and to the prophets, and that it has been preserved with great accuracy down to our own time, and — if I may say something bolder still — will continue to be preserved, I will try to show briefly. For not only did they from the beginning appoint to this office the best men, those devoted to the service of God, but they took care also that the priestly line should remain unmixed and pure. A man who is to share in the priesthood must father his children by a wife of his own nation, without regard to money or any other honors, but must examine his lineage, tracing his descent from the ancient records and producing many witnesses. And this we do not only in Judaea itself, but wherever there exists a body of our people, there too the priests maintain the same rigor concerning marriages.

I mean those in Egypt and in Babylon, and wherever else in the rest of the inhabited world any of the priestly line are scattered: they write to Jerusalem, setting down the name of the bride's father, and of her ancestors further back, and who the witnesses are. And if war should intervene — as has in fact happened many times, when Antiochus Epiphanes invaded the country, and again under Pompey the Great and Quintilius Varus, and especially in our own time — the priests who survive draw up new registers from the old records and examine the women left to them, for they do not admit women who have been taken captive, suspecting that such women have often had relations with men of another nation.

The greatest proof of this rigor is this: our high priests, for two thousand years now, are recorded in the registers as sons of their fathers by name. If any of the requirements I have mentioned is transgressed, the offender is forbidden to approach the altars or take part in any other sacred rite. It is reasonable, then — indeed it is necessary — since no one has the liberty to set down what he pleases, and since there is no disagreement in what is written, but only the prophets, learning the highest and most ancient matters through the inspiration that comes from God, and setting down clearly the events of their own times as they occurred — that we do not have countless volumes among us in disagreement and conflict with one another, but only twenty-two books, containing the record of all time, which are justly believed to be divine.

Of these, five are the books of Moses, comprising the laws and the tradition of human history from the creation down to his own death — a span of a little under three thousand years. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, who ruled the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets who came after Moses wrote the history of the events of their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and instructions for human conduct.

From Artaxerxes to our own time, everything has indeed been written down, but it has not been held worthy of the same trust as what preceded it, because the exact succession of the prophets ceased. It is plain from our actual conduct how we regard our own writings: though so long an age has now passed, no one has dared to add anything to them, to take anything away, or to alter anything; and it is instinctive in every Jew, from the very day of his birth, to regard them as decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, gladly to die for them.

Many prisoners of our nation have often been seen, time and again, enduring tortures and every form of death in the theaters rather than let slip a single word against the laws and the records that accompany them. What Greek would ever endure that for the sake of his own writings? Not even to prevent the destruction of every one of their books would any Greek suffer the least injury, for they regard such writings merely as speeches composed at the whim of their authors — and they hold this opinion, rightly enough, even about the older writers, since they see that some among their own contemporaries are bold enough to write about events at which they were not present themselves, and about which they took no trouble to inquire from those who knew. Indeed, concerning the war that has just now taken place among us, certain men have published so-called histories without either visiting the places concerned or approaching anywhere near the events as they occurred, but have strung together a few things from hearsay and, with the utmost impudence, abused the very name of history.

I, however, have composed a true account of the entire war and of all that happened in its several parts, having myself been present at all the events. For I commanded those of our people called Galileans for as long as resistance was possible, and I was then taken prisoner by the Romans; and Vespasian and Titus, keeping me under guard, compelled me to remain constantly in attendance on them — bound at first, but later released — and I was sent along with Titus from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem. During that time nothing that took place escaped my knowledge, for I observed carefully and recorded what happened in the Roman camp, and I alone understood what was reported by the deserters. Later, having gained some leisure at Rome, with the whole undertaking already prepared, I made use of certain assistants for the Greek language and in this way composed my account of the events.

Such was my confidence in the truth of what I wrote that I thought it right to take, first of all, the commanders of the war themselves, Vespasian and Titus, as my witnesses; for it was to them that I gave the books first, and after them I sold copies to many of the Romans who had served in the war, and to many of our own people who also shared in Greek learning — men such as Julius Archelaus, the most honorable Herod, and the king himself, the most admirable Agrippa. All of these bore witness that I had scrupulously upheld the truth, for they would not have held back or kept silent had I, through ignorance or favoritism, altered or omitted anything that had happened.

Yet certain worthless men have undertaken to discredit my history, as though it were an exercise set in a school

young men's exercise in outlandish accusation and slander, when they ought to understand this: that anyone who promises others a record of true events must first have accurate knowledge of them himself, either by having followed the events as they happened or by inquiring of those who knew them. That, I think, is exactly what I have done in both of my works. The Antiquities I translated, as I said, from our sacred writings, since I am a priest by birth and have had a share in the philosophy contained in those writings; and the history of the war I wrote as one who took an active part in many of its events, was an eyewitness of most of them, and was ignorant of absolutely nothing that was said or done. How, then, could anyone fail to judge as reckless those who have undertaken to contend with me over the truth—men who, even if they claim to have consulted the memoirs of the emperors, were certainly not present, as I was, at the actual operations of our opponents?

On this subject, then, I have felt obliged to make this digression, wanting to expose the carelessness of those who profess to write history. Now that I have, I think, made it sufficiently clear that the recording of ancient events is a practice native to barbarian peoples rather than to the Greeks, I want first to say a little against those who attempt to argue

that our people's standing is a recent one, on the ground that, as they claim, nothing is said about us by the Greek historians. After that I will present the testimonies to our antiquity drawn from the writings of other peoples, and I will show that those who have slandered our nation are themselves guilty of far worse slanders in what they say. We, then, do not inhabit a coastal country, nor do we take pleasure in trade or in the mingling with others that trade brings, but our cities are built far from the sea, and since we occupy good land we work hard at cultivating it, caring above all else for the rearing of our children and for keeping our laws and the piety handed down through them, which we have made the most essential business of our whole life. Given all this, together with the peculiar character of our way of life, there was nothing in ancient times

to bring us into contact with the Greeks, the way the exports and imports of the Egyptians brought them into contact with others, or the way the inhabitants of the Phoenician coast, because of their love of profit, pursued shopkeeping and trade eagerly. Nor, unlike some other peoples, did our forefathers turn to piracy or to making war for the sake of gaining more, even though their country contained many tens of thousands of men who were far from cowardly. That is why the Phoenicians themselves, sailing to the Greeks for trade, quickly became known, and through them the Egyptians and all the other peoples from whom they carried cargo to the Greeks, crossing great seas, became known as well. The Medes, and later the Persians, became known once they had gained control of Asia, and some of the Persians even made expeditions into our own continent. The Thracians became known through their proximity and through the Scythian tribe, by way of those who sailed into the Pontus. In general, all the peoples who live along the sea, whether to the east or the west, became better known to those wishing to write anything, while those whose homes lay further inland remained largely unknown.

And this appears to have happened even in the case of Europe, where, although the city of Rome had long possessed such power and had accomplished such feats of war, neither Herodotus nor Thucydides nor any of their contemporaries makes any mention of it at all; it was only late, and with difficulty, that knowledge of the Romans made its way to the Greeks. Indeed, concerning the Gauls and the Iberians, even the most careful historians, Ephorus among them, were so ignorant that he supposes the Iberians, who inhabit so vast a part of the western world, to be a single city, and he has dared to write down customs that were neither practiced nor even spoken of among them, as though the Iberians actually followed them. The cause of their ignorance of the truth was excessive isolation from other peoples, while the cause of their writing falsehoods was the wish to appear to know more than others.

Why, then, should it still seem surprising if our own nation was not widely known and gave no occasion for mention in the writings of others, settled as far as it was from the sea and having chosen to live in the way it did? Suppose, then, that we should claim the right to argue, on the ground that nothing is said about the Greeks in our own records, that their race is not ancient—surely everyone would laugh at us for bringing forward these very arguments I have just made, and would produce their neighboring peoples as witnesses to their antiquity. Well then, I too will try to do this. I will make use above all of the Egyptians and the Phoenicians as my witnesses, since no one could plausibly charge their testimony with falsehood, for they clearly show the greatest hostility toward us—the Egyptians as a whole, and among the Phoenicians, the Tyrians in particular. Concerning the Chaldeans, however, I cannot say the same thing, since they are actually the ancestors of our race, and because of this kinship they make mention of the Jews in their own records. Once I have presented the evidence on these points, I will go on to show which of the Greek writers have made mention of the Jews, so that our detractors may be left with no pretext at all for their dispute with us.

I will begin first with the Egyptian records. It is not possible to quote these directly, but Manetho was by birth an Egyptian who had a share in Greek education, as is clear from the fact that he wrote the history of his own country in the Greek language, translating it, as he himself says, from the sacred writings, and he shows Herodotus to have been wrong on many points of Egyptian history through ignorance. This Manetho, then, writes as follows about us in the second book of his Egyptian History. I will set down his own words, just as if I were bringing the man himself forward as a witness:

"There was a king of ours whose name was Timaios. In his reign, I do not know why, god was displeased with us, and unexpectedly, out of the regions toward the east, men of obscure race, growing bold, marched against our land and, with no resistance, seized it by force. Once they had subdued the rulers of the land, they thereafter burned our cities savagely, razed the temples of the gods, and treated all the native inhabitants with the utmost hostility, slaughtering some and leading the wives and children of others into slavery. In the end they even made one of their own number king, whose name was Salitis.

"This man settled in Memphis, exacting tribute from both Upper and Lower Egypt and leaving garrisons in the most suitable places. He secured the eastern regions especially, foreseeing that the Assyrians, once they grew more powerful, would desire and invade his kingdom. Finding in the Sethroite nome a city most favorably placed, lying east of the Bubastite branch of the river and called, after some ancient theology, Avaris, he rebuilt it and made it exceedingly strong with walls, settling in it a garrison of as many as two hundred and forty thousand armed men. He would come there in summer, partly to measure out grain rations and pay wages, and partly to drill his troops carefully in arms in order to intimidate foreign peoples. After a reign of nineteen years, he died.

"After him another king reigned for forty-four years, called Beon. After him another, Apachnas, for thirty-six years and seven months. Then Apophis for sixty-one years, and Iannas for fifty years and one month. After all these, Assis, for forty-nine years and two months. These six were the first rulers among them, and they constantly longed to root out Egypt still further. Their whole nation was called Hyksos, that is, 'shepherd kings'; for in the sacred language hyk means 'king,' and sos in the common dialect means 'shepherd' or 'shepherds,' and combined in this way the word becomes Hyksos. Some, however, say they were Arabs."

In another copy it is said that this term does not signify 'kings' by the word hyk, but on the contrary indicates 'captive shepherds'; for hyk in turn, in Egyptian, and hak when aspirated, plainly mean 'captives.' This explanation seems to me the more plausible one, and closer to ancient tradition.

"These kings so named, and those called shepherds, together with their descendants, held power over Egypt, he says, for five hundred and eleven years. After this, he says, the kings of the Thebaid and of the rest of Egypt rose up against the shepherds, and a great and long war broke out between them. Under a king whose name was Misphragmuthosis, he says, the shepherds were defeated and driven out of the rest of Egypt entirely, and were confined to a place with a circuit of ten thousand arouras; the name of the place was Avaris.

"Manetho says that the shepherds surrounded this entire place with a great and strong wall, so as to keep all their possessions and their plunder secure within it. Misphragmuthosis's son Thummosis, he says, attempted to take them by siege, by force, with an army of four hundred and eighty thousand men laying siege to the walls; but when he gave up the siege, he made an agreement with them, that they should leave Egypt and go wherever they wished, all of them unharmed. Under the terms of this agreement, no fewer than two hundred and forty thousand of them, together with their households and possessions, made their way out of Egypt, through the desert, into Syria. There, fearing the power of the Assyrians, who then ruled over Asia, they built a city in what is now called Judea, one large enough to hold so many tens of thousands of people, and named it Jerusalem."

In another of his books on Egyptian history, Manetho says that this same people, called shepherds, are recorded as 'captives' in their own sacred books—and rightly so, he says; for indeed our earliest ancestors practiced shepherding, since that was their traditional way of life, and because they lived as nomads they were called shepherds. They were also, in turn, recorded as 'captives' by the Egyptians not without reason, since our ancestor Joseph told the king of the Egyptians that he himself was a captive, and later, with the king's permission, sent for his brothers to come into Egypt. But I will make a more exact examination of these matters elsewhere.

For now I set down these Egyptian witnesses to our antiquity. I will next lay out, once again, how Manetho's chronology stands with respect to the order of dates. He speaks as follows: after the people of the shepherds had gone out of Egypt to Jerusalem, the king who drove them out of Egypt, Tethmosis, reigned for twenty-five years and four months after this, and died; and his son Chebron succeeded to the throne for thirteen years. After him, Amenophis for twenty years and seven months. His sister Amessis for twenty-one years and nine months. Her son Mephres for twelve years and nine months. His son Mephramuthosis for twenty-five years and ten months. His son Thmosis for nine years and eight months. His son Amenophis for thirty years and ten months. His son Orus for thirty-six years and five months. His daughter Acencheres for twelve years and one month. Her brother Rathotis for nine years.

His son Acencheres for twelve years and five months. His son, another Acencheres, for twelve years and three months. His son Harmais for four years and one month. His son Ramesses for one year and four months. His son Harmesses Miamoun for sixty-six years and two months. His son Amenophis for nineteen years and six months. His son Sethos, also called Ramesses, who possessed a strong force of cavalry and ships, appointed his brother Harmais governor of Egypt and vested him with all his other royal authority, except that he charged him not to wear the diadem, nor to wrong the queen, the mother of his children, and to keep away from the king's other concubines as well. He himself campaigned against Cyprus and Phoenicia, and then again against the Assyrians and the Medes, and subdued them all,

some by the spear and some without a fight, through fear of his great power; and, elated by his successes, he pressed on still more boldly, subjugating the cities and lands to the east. When a considerable time had passed, Harmais, who had been left behind in Egypt, recklessly did everything his brother had warned him not to do; for he seized the queen by force and continued shamelessly to make use of the other concubines as well, and, persuaded by his friends, he put on the diadem and set himself up against his brother. But the man appointed over the priests of Egypt wrote a letter and sent it to Sethosis, informing him of everything, and telling him that his brother Harmais had risen against him. Sethosis at once returned to Pelusium and took back control of his own kingdom. The country was named Egypt

after his own name; for he says that Sethos was called Aigyptos, and his brother Harmais was called Danaus. So much for Manetho. Now it is clear, once one reckons up the years he has stated, that the so-called shepherds—our own ancestors—left Egypt and settled this land three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaus arrived at Argos, even though the Argives consider Danaus their most ancient figure. Manetho, then, has borne witness for us to two of the greatest facts drawn from the Egyptian records: first, our arrival in Egypt from elsewhere, and second, our departure from there, so ancient in date that it preceded the events at Troy by roughly a thousand years. As for the further claims Manetho has added—not from the Egyptian records, but, as he himself admits, from unauthenticated legendary material—I will later refute them point by point, showing his implausible falsehoods.

I want now to turn from these matters to what is recorded among the Phoenicians concerning our people, and to present the testimonies drawn from them. Among the Tyrians there are, from very many years back, public records, carefully written and preserved, concerning events among them and their dealings with others worthy of remembrance. In these it is recorded that the temple in Jerusalem was built by King Solomon one hundred and forty-three years and eight months before the Tyrians founded Carthage. And the building of our temple was recorded among them not without reason; for Hiram, the king of the Tyrians,

was a friend of our king Solomon, having inherited his father's friendship for him. Eager to match Solomon in the splendor of the undertaking, he gave a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and had the finest timber cut from the mountain called Lebanon and sent for the roof. In return Solomon gave him many gifts, and in particular a territory of Galilee called Chabulon.

But it was above all their shared love of wisdom that drew the two men into friendship: they used to send each other riddles to solve, and in this exercise, as in everything else, Solomon proved the wiser. Many of the letters they exchanged are preserved among the Tyrians to this day. That I have not invented this account of the Tyrian records, I will cite as my witness Dius, a man trusted for the accuracy of his history of Phoenicia. He writes, in his histories of the Phoenicians, in these words:

"When Abibalus died, his son Hiram succeeded to the throne. He filled in the eastern quarter of the city and so enlarged it, and joined to the city the temple of Olympian Zeus, which had stood by itself on an island, by filling in the space between; he adorned it with gifts of gold, and went up to Lebanon to cut timber for the construction of the temples. They say that Solomon, ruler of Jerusalem, sent riddles to Hiram and asked to receive some from him in return, on the understanding that whoever failed to solve them would pay a sum of money to the other. Hiram agreed, and being unable to solve the riddles, spent a great deal of money as the penalty. He then had a certain Tyrian named Abdemon solve the riddles that had been proposed, and propose others of his own, which Solomon failed to solve, so that he in turn had to pay Hiram a large sum of money."

Such is the testimony Dius has given us on these matters. But I will also cite, in addition, Menander of Ephesus. He wrote of the deeds of each of the kings, both Greek and non-Greek, taking pains to learn their histories from the local records of each people. Writing, then, of the kings who had reigned in Tyre, when he comes to Hiram he says: "When Abibalus died, his son Hiram succeeded to his kingdom; he lived fifty-three years and reigned thirty-four.

He filled in the Eurychorus and dedicated the golden pillar in the temple of Zeus, and went and cut cedar timber from the mountain called Lebanon for the roofs of the temples; he tore down the old temples and built new ones, to Heracles and to Astarte, and he was the first to hold the raising-festival of Heracles, in the month of Peritius. He also campaigned against the people of Utica, who were withholding their tribute; he subdued them and returned. In his time there was a young man named Abdemon, who always won the contests when Solomon, king of Jerusalem, set his riddles."

The chronology from this king down to the founding of Carthage is reckoned as follows: "When Hiram died, his son Baleazarus succeeded to the throne; he lived forty-three years and reigned seventeen. After him Abdastartus his son lived thirty-nine years and reigned nine. He was murdered by a conspiracy of the four sons of his nurse, of whom the eldest, Methusastartus son of Leastartus, became king; he lived fifty-four years and reigned twelve. After him his brother Astharymus lived fifty-eight years and reigned nine. He was killed by his brother Phelles,

who seized the throne and ruled eight months, having lived fifty years. He was killed by Ithobalus, priest of Astarte, who lived forty-eight years and reigned thirty-two. He was succeeded by his son Balezorus, who lived forty-five years and reigned six. He was succeeded by his son Mettenus, who lived thirty-two years and reigned twenty-nine. He was succeeded by Pygmalion, who lived fifty-eight years

and reigned forty-seven. In the seventh year of his reign his sister fled and built a city in Libya called Carthage. The whole period from the reign of Hiram to the founding of Carthage comes to one hundred and fifty-five years and eight months. And since the temple in Jerusalem was built in the twelfth year of Hiram's reign, from the building of the temple to the founding of Carthage there are one hundred and forty-three years and eight months."

What further need, then, is there to add to this Phoenician testimony? The truth stands strongly confirmed, and it is plain that the arrival of our ancestors in this land came long before the building of the temple; for it was only after they had taken possession of the whole country by war that they built the temple. I have shown this clearly from our sacred books in my Antiquities.

I will now set out what the Chaldeans have recorded and related concerning us, which agrees in most particulars with our own writings. My witness for this is Berossus, a man of Chaldean birth, well known to those engaged in learning, since he was the one who published for the Greeks the Chaldean writings on astronomy and philosophy.

This Berossus, then, following the most ancient records, has given an account of the flood and of the destruction of mankind in it that agrees with that of Moses, and also of the ark in which Noah, the founder of our race, was saved when it came to rest on the peaks of the mountains of Armenia. Then, after listing Noah's descendants and giving their dates, he comes down to Nabopolassar, king of Babylon and of the Chaldeans, and in recounting his deeds tells how he sent his own son Nebuchadnezzar with a great force against Egypt and against our land, on learning that they had revolted, and how he conquered them all and burned the temple that was in Jerusalem, and removing our whole people

resettled them in Babylon, and it happened that the city lay desolate for seventy years, until the time of Cyrus, king of the Persians. He says that the Babylonian conquered Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia, surpassing in his achievements all the Chaldean and Babylonian kings who had reigned before him. (Then, a little further on, Berossus again sets this out in his history of antiquity.) I will quote the very words of Berossus, which run as follows:

"When his father Nabopolassar heard that the satrap set over Egypt and the regions of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had revolted, being no longer able to endure the hardship himself, he put some of his forces under the command of his son Nebuchadnezzar, who was still a young man, and sent him against the rebel. Nebuchadnezzar engaged the rebel in battle,

defeated him, and brought the country back again under their rule from the outset. It happened that at this same time his father Nabopolassar fell ill in the city of the Babylonians and died, having reigned twenty-one years. When Nebuchadnezzar learned of his father's death not long after, he settled affairs in Egypt

and the rest of the region, and entrusted the captives of the Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, and the peoples of Egypt to some of his friends, to bring back to Babylonia together with the heaviest part of the army and the rest of the spoils, while he himself set out with a small escort and made his way through the desert to Babylon. There he found affairs being managed by the Chaldeans and the kingdom preserved

by the best of them, and took possession of the whole of his father's realm. To the captives who arrived he assigned settlements in the most suitable places in Babylonia, while he himself, from the spoils of the war, magnificently adorned the temple of Bel and the rest, and having added to the city that already existed a further city outside it, and having made it impossible for besiegers any longer

to divert the river against the city, he surrounded it with three walls on the inner side and three on the outer, some of baked brick and bitumen, some of the brick itself. And having fortified the city in a manner worthy of note and adorned its gates in a fashion befitting a sacred place, he added to his father's palace another palace adjoining it,

the height and the rest of whose magnificence it would perhaps take too long to describe if one went into detail, except to say that, immense and splendid as it was, it was completed in fifteen days. In this palace he built up high stone terraces, giving them the appearance of mountains, and planted them with trees of every kind, thus creating what is called the hanging garden, because his wife longed

for the mountain scenery in which she had been raised, in the region of Media." This is what he has recorded about the aforesaid king, and much more besides, in the third book of his Chaldean History, in which he criticizes the Greek historians for supposing, wrongly, that Babylon was founded by Semiramis of Assyria, and for falsely crediting her with the wonders built in it.

On these matters, then, the Chaldean record is to be regarded as trustworthy; moreover, in the archives of the Phoenicians there is recorded, in agreement with what Berossus says, an account of the king of the Babylonians, that he conquered both Syria and the whole of Phoenicia. On this point Philostratus agrees, in his histories, where he mentions the siege of Tyre, as does Megasthenes

in the fourth book of his Indica, in which he attempts to show that this same king of the Babylonians surpassed Heracles in courage and in the greatness of his deeds, saying that he conquered a large part of Libya and Iberia as well. As for what has already been said about the temple in Jerusalem, that it was burned by the Babylonians in their campaign and began to be rebuilt again once Cyrus had taken possession of the kingdom of Asia,

this will be clearly shown from what Berossus himself sets out; for in his third book he says: "Nebuchadnezzar, after beginning the wall I have mentioned, fell ill and died, having reigned forty-three years, and his son Evilmerodach became master of the kingdom. He governed affairs lawlessly and shamelessly, and was murdered

in a plot laid by his sister's husband, Neriglissar, after reigning two years. After his murder, Neriglissar, who had plotted against him, succeeded to power and reigned four years. His son Laborosoarchod took possession of the kingdom while still a boy, for nine months, but because he showed many vicious traits a plot was laid against him by his friends, and he was beaten to death. After his death, those who had conspired against him met together and jointly conferred the kingdom on a certain Nabonnedus, one of the Babylonians

who belonged to that same conspiracy. In his reign the walls along the river of the city of the Babylonians were faced with baked brick and bitumen. In the seventeenth year of his reign, Cyrus advanced out of Persia with a large force, and having subdued the whole of the rest of the kingdom, marched against Babylonia. When Nabonnedus learned of his approach, he went out to meet him

with his forces and gave battle, but was defeated and fled with a few men, and was shut up in the city of the Borsippeans. Cyrus took Babylon, and having ordered the outer walls of the city to be torn down, because it appeared to him a place that would be difficult to capture and troublesome to deal with, he set out for Borsippa to besiege Nabonnedus there. But Nabonnedus did not wait out the siege, and surrendered himself beforehand,

and Cyrus treated him kindly, giving him a residence in Carmania and sending him away from Babylonia. Nabonnedus then spent the rest of his life in that region and there ended his days." This account agrees in its truth with our own books; for it is written in them that Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth year of his reign, laid waste our temple, and it lay unseen

for fifty years, and that in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were laid, and it was completed again in the second year of the reign of Darius. I will add also the records of the Phoenicians, for the abundance of proofs ought not to be left out. The reckoning of the years runs as follows: in the reign of king Ithobalus, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. After him Baal reigned ten years.

After him judges were appointed, and they held office as follows: Ecnibalus son of Baslechus, two months; Chelbes son of Abdaeus, ten months; Abbarus the high priest, three months; Myttynus and Gerastratus son of Abdelimus, judges, six years, during which time Balatorus reigned for one year. On his death they sent and summoned Merbalus from Babylon, and he reigned four years. On his death they summoned his brother Hiram, who reigned twenty years.

In his reign Cyrus held power over the Persians. So the whole period is fifty-four years and three months; for it was in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign that he began the siege of Tyre, and it was in the fourteenth year of Hiram's reign that Cyrus the Persian took power. The Chaldean and Tyrian records thus agree with our own writings about the temple, and the testimony I have set out concerning the antiquity of our nation is acknowledged and beyond dispute.

To those who are not excessively contentious, I think what has already been said will suffice. But for those who distrust the records of non-Greek peoples and insist on trusting only the Greeks, it is necessary to satisfy their demand as well, and to produce a good number of these too who were acquainted with our nation and who, whenever occasion arose, mentioned it and set it down in their own writings.

Pythagoras of Samos, then, a man of antiquity, and held to have surpassed all who have practiced philosophy in wisdom and in piety toward the divine, is clearly shown not only to have known of our institutions but even to have been for a long time an admirer of them. No writing of his own survives, it is true, but many have written accounts of him, and the most notable of these is

Hermippus, a man careful in all matters of history. He says, in the first of his books about Pythagoras, that Pythagoras, when one of his companions, named Calliphon, a Crotoniate by birth, had died, said that the man's soul stayed with him both night and day, and that he urged his followers not to pass over a spot where a donkey had knelt down, and to abstain from thirst-inducing waters, and from all

from cursing every kind of blasphemy. He then adds this as well: he did and said these things by imitating and transferring to himself the beliefs of the Jews and the Thracians. For it is truly said that this man transferred many Jewish practices into his own philosophy. Our people were not unknown in the past to the cities of the Greek world either, and many of our customs had already spread among some of them and were valued as objects of imitation.

Theophrastus makes this clear in his work On Laws. He says that the laws of the Tyrians forbid the swearing of foreign oaths, and among others he lists the oath called the corban. This oath would be found nowhere except among the Jews alone, and, one might say, it means, translated out of the Hebrew language, "gift of God."

Nor indeed was Herodotus of Halicarnassus ignorant of our nation, but he appears to mention it in a certain way. Writing about the Colchians in his second book, he says: "Alone of all peoples, the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision from ancient times. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine themselves admit that they learned it from the Egyptians, while the Syrians who live around the Thermodon and Parthenius rivers, and the Macrones who are their neighbors, say they learned it recently from the Colchians; for these are the only people who practice circumcision, and they are clearly following the same practice as the Egyptians. As for the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I cannot say which of the two learned it from the other."

He has thus stated that the Syrians of Palestine practice circumcision; but of those who inhabit Palestine, only the Jews do this. It is evidently in knowing this that he speaks of them. Choerilus too, an even older poet, mentions our nation, saying that it took part with Xerxes, king of the Persians, in his campaign against Greece. For after listing all the nations, he included ours last, saying: "And behind them there marched a people wonderful to see, letting a Phoenician tongue out of their mouths; they dwelt in the Solyman mountains beside a broad lake, with hair shorn round in a circle and left unwashed, and above they wore caps of horsehide, stiff and dried by smoke."

It is clear, I think, to everyone that he means us, since the Solyman mountains are in our own country, which we inhabit, and so is the lake called Asphaltitis; for it is broader and larger than any other in Syria. This, then, is how Choerilus mentions us.

That not only did the more discerning Greeks know the Jews, but that the finest among them in wisdom, not the meanest, actually admired those they encountered, is easy to establish. For Clearchus, the pupil of Aristotle and second to none among the philosophers of the Peripatetic school, says in the first book of his work On Sleep that Aristotle his teacher told this story about a certain Jewish man, presenting the account as coming from Aristotle himself. It is written as follows:

"But it would take long to tell most of it; still, it is not out of place to go through those points that show something of that man's remarkable character and philosophy in equal measure. Know well, Hyperochides," he said, "that what I am about to tell you will sound to you like a dream." And Hyperochides, being cautious, replied, "That is precisely why we are all eager to hear it." "Well then," said Aristotle, "following the rule of the rhetoricians, let us first go through his lineage, so that we do not disregard the teachers of narrative technique." "Speak," said Hyperochides, "whatever you think best."

"Well then, that man was by birth a Jew, from Coele-Syria. These people are descendants of the philosophers of India; the philosophers there, it is said, are called Calani, but among the Syrians they are called Jews, taking their name from the place they inhabit; for the place they occupy is called Judea, while the name of their city is quite awkward — they call it Hierusaleme. Now this man, since he was a guest of many and had come down from the interior to the coastal regions, was Greek not only in language but in soul as well. And at that time, while we were staying in Asia, he crossed over into the same regions and met with us and some other men of learning, testing their wisdom. And since he had become closely acquainted with many educated men, he imparted to them something in return for what he had received."

This is what Aristotle said as reported by Clearchus, and he goes on to describe at length the astonishing self-control and moderation this Jewish man showed in his way of life. Those who wish to learn more may find it in the book itself, for I am careful not to quote more than is sufficient. Clearchus said this in passing, since his stated purpose lay elsewhere; but that is how he came to mention us.

Hecataeus of Abdera, a philosopher and at the same time a highly capable man of affairs, who flourished in the time of Alexander the king and was an associate of Ptolemy son of Lagus, wrote a book about the Jews themselves — not a passing mention but a whole treatise — from which I wish to run briefly through some of what he says. First I will establish the date: he mentions the battle of Ptolemy against Demetrius near Gaza. This battle took place, as Castor records, in the eleventh year after the death of Alexander, in the hundred and seventeenth Olympiad.

Having noted this Olympiad, Castor says: "In this Olympiad, Ptolemy son of Lagus defeated in battle at Gaza Demetrius son of Antigonus, called Poliorcetes." Everyone agrees that Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. It is clear, then, that our nation was flourishing both in his time and in that of Alexander.

Hecataeus goes on to say that after the battle at Gaza, Ptolemy became master of the region of Syria, and many people, hearing of Ptolemy's mildness and humanity, wished to go with him to Egypt and share in his undertakings. Among them, he says, was Ezekias, high priest of the Jews, a man of about sixty-six years, of great standing among his countrymen, not lacking in intelligence, moreover a capable speaker, and as experienced as anyone in matters of business — though, he says, the priests of the Jews in general who receive the tithe of produce and administer public affairs number about fifteen hundred.

Mentioning this man again, he says: this man, having attained this honor and become close to us, took some of his companions and read out to them the whole of their history, for he had it written down, both the settlement of the people and their form of government. Hecataeus then goes on to show our attitude toward the laws: that we choose to suffer anything rather than transgress them, and that we consider this a fine thing to do.

For this reason, he says, though ill-spoken of by their neighbors and by visitors, and though often insulted by the Persian kings and satraps, they cannot be made to change their minds, but face nakedly, for the sake of these laws, the harshest abuse and even death itself, sooner than deny their ancestral customs. He also offers no small evidence of this firmness about their laws: he says that once, when Alexander was in Babylon and had resolved to restore the fallen temple of Bel, and had ordered all his soldiers alike to carry the rubble, only the Jews refused to comply, and even endured many blows and paid great fines, until the king relented and granted them exemption.

He further says that when temples and altars were built in their country by those who came to settle there, the Jews tore them all down, and paid fines to the satraps for some of them, while for others they obtained pardon. And he adds that it is right to admire them for this. He also speaks of our nation having grown very populous: many tens of thousands of us, he says, were earlier carried off to Babylon by the Persians, and no small number migrated to Egypt and Phoenicia after the death of Alexander because of the unrest in Syria.

This same man has also recorded the size and beauty of the country we inhabit: they occupy, he says, about three million arourai of the best and most productive land, for Judea is that large. He also describes, in these words, how we have inhabited from the most ancient times the city of Jerusalem itself, the finest and greatest of cities, and speaks of the number of its men and the construction of its temple.

"Of the Jews," he says, "most of their strongholds lie scattered through the countryside, along with villages, but there is one fortified city about fifty stadia in circumference, which about a hundred and twenty thousand people inhabit, and they call it Jerusalem. There, roughly in the middle of the city, stands a stone enclosure about five plethra in length and a hundred cubits in width, with double gates, in which stands a square altar, built of unhewn, uncut stones gathered together, each side twenty cubits long and ten cubits high."

"Beside it stands a great building, where there is an altar and a lampstand, both of gold, weighing two talents. Upon these a light burns that is never extinguished, night and day. There is no image at all, nor any votive offering, nor any planting whatsoever, such as a sacred grove or anything of the kind. Priests spend both nights and days there, observing certain purifications and never drinking wine at all within the temple."

He further testifies that they served with Alexander the king and afterward with his successors. He also relates an incident he himself witnessed involving a Jewish man during a military campaign, which I will now set down. He tells it as follows: "When I myself was traveling toward the Red Sea, among those accompanying us with the other cavalry escorting us was a Jew named Mosollamos, a man quite strong in spirit and, by common agreement, the best archer of all, both Greek and barbarian."

"This man, then, as many were walking along the road and a certain seer was watching the flight of a bird and asking everyone to halt, asked why they were waiting. When the seer pointed out the bird to him and said that if it remained where it was, it was advantageous for all to wait there too, but if it rose and flew forward, they should advance, and if backward, they should retreat again, the man said nothing, drew his bow, and shot, striking and killing the bird."

"When the seer and some others grew angry and cursed him, he said, 'Why are you raving, you wretched men?' Then, taking the bird in his hands, he said, 'How could this creature, which failed to foresee its own safety, have given us any sound information about our journey? For if it had been able to foresee the future, it would not have come to this spot, afraid that Mosollamos the Jew would shoot and kill it.'"

But enough of Hecataeus's testimonies; for those who wish to learn more, it is easy to find the book itself. Nor will I hesitate to name Agatharchides too, even though he made mention of us in a mocking spirit of ridicule, as he himself supposes. In relating the story of Stratonice — how she came to Syria from Macedonia, abandoning her husband Demetrius, and how, when Seleucus refused to marry her, contrary to her expectation, while he was away on his campaign from Babylon, she stirred up revolt around Antioch —

and how, when the king returned and Antioch was captured, she fled to Seleucia, and though she might have sailed away quickly, she was persuaded by a dream that warned her against it, and so was captured and put to death — having told this story in advance, Agatharchides, mocking Stratonice's superstition, uses as an illustration an account concerning us, writing as follows: "The people called Jews, who inhabit the most fortified of all cities, one which the natives call Jerusalem, have a custom of resting every seventh day, on which they neither bear arms nor take up farming nor attend to any other task,"

"but instead, with hands outstretched in their temples, pray until evening. So when Ptolemy son of Lagus entered the city with his forces, and the people, instead of guarding the city, persisted in their folly, their homeland received a bitter master, and their law was exposed as containing a foolish custom." This incident has taught everyone else except the Jews themselves to flee to dreams and to the traditional interpretation of the law only when human reasoning fails them in matters of difficulty.

To Agatharchides this seems worthy of ridicule, but to those who examine it without hostility it appears something great and deserving much praise: that certain people should always value the keeping of their laws and their reverence toward God above their own safety and homeland.

That some of the historians, far from being ignorant of our nation, passed over its memory out of a certain envy or for other unsound reasons, I think I can offer proof. Hieronymus, who wrote the history of the successors of Alexander, lived at the same time as Hecataeus, and, being a friend of King Antigonus, governed Syria; and yet, while Hecataeus even wrote a whole book about us, Hieronymus nowhere mentioned us in his history, even though he lived for a considerable time in the same regions. So greatly do men's inclinations differ: to the one we seemed worthy of serious record, while in the other some ungracious feeling clouded altogether his regard for the truth.

Still, for demonstrating our antiquity, the records of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians suffice, along with so many Greek writers besides them. And further, in addition to those already named, Theophilus, Theodotus, Mnaseas, Aristophanes, Hermogenes, Euhemerus, Conon, Zopyrion, and perhaps many others — for I myself have not come across all their books — have made no passing mention of us.

Most of the men named, however, missed the truth about our earliest history, since they had not consulted our sacred books, but all of them alike have testified in common to our antiquity, which is the very point I have set out to discuss here. Demetrius of Phalerum, however, and Philo the Elder, and Eupolemus did not miss the truth by much. They deserve to be forgiven for this.

for they could not follow our writings with complete accuracy.

One point still remains of what I proposed at the outset of this discourse: to show that the slanders and abuses some have leveled against our people are false, and to make the very authors who wrote them witnesses against themselves. That this same thing has happened to many other peoples too, through the ill will of certain writers, I think those who read history more widely already know. Some nations, even the most illustrious cities among them, have had their nobility besmirched and their constitutions maligned by men who attempted it — Theopompus attacked the constitution of the Athenians, Polycrates that of the Spartans, and the author of the Tripolitikos (for it is not Theopompus, as some suppose) took on the city of Thebes as well, and Timaeus too has blasphemed much in his histories, both about the peoples already named and about others. They do this especially by attaching themselves to the most illustrious subjects, some out of envy and malice, others because they think that by saying something novel they will be thought worthy of remembrance. Among fools they do not fail of this hope, but those sound in judgment condemn their wickedness thoroughly.

Of the slanders against us, the Egyptians were the first to begin them; and certain people, wishing to curry favor with them, undertook to distort the truth, neither acknowledging the arrival of our ancestors in Egypt as it actually happened, nor telling the truth about the exodus. They had many reasons to hate and envy us: first, from the beginning, because our ancestors had once ruled over their country, and after departing from there had prospered again in their own land. Then the opposition between our two ways of life produced great enmity between them, insofar as our reverence for God differs from the religion they practice as much as the nature of God differs from that of irrational animals. It is a custom common to all of them to regard these creatures as gods, though they differ from one another in the honors paid to each. But being altogether frivolous and senseless people, accustomed from the start to hold base opinions about the gods, they were unable to imitate the dignity of our theology, and seeing it admired by many, they grew envious. Some among them reached such a pitch of folly and pettiness that they did not shrink from contradicting even their own ancient records, but in their blindness of passion wrote things that contradicted themselves without realizing it.

I will pause first on one of them, whom I cited a little earlier as a witness to our antiquity. This Manetho, who undertook to translate the history of Egypt from the sacred writings, first said that our ancestors came against Egypt with many tens of thousands and conquered its inhabitants, and then, admitting himself that they were later driven out again in the course of time, occupied the land now called Judea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple — up to this point he followed the records faithfully. But then, granting himself license by claiming he would set down the myths and stories told about the Jews, he inserted implausible tales, wishing to mix in with us a crowd of Egyptian lepers and others afflicted with disease who, he says, had fled from Egypt after being condemned. He added a king named Amenophis — a false name — and for this reason did not dare fix the length of his reign, although in the case of the other kings he gives their years precisely; to this one he attaches certain myths, forgetting, it seems, that by his own reckoning the exodus of the shepherds to Jerusalem occurred five hundred and eighteen years earlier. For Tethmosis was king when they went out, and from him to the two brothers Sethos and Hermaeus, according to Manetho himself, there are three hundred and ninety-three years.

Of these two, he says, Sethos was renamed Aegyptus, and Hermaeus, Danaus; Sethos drove Danaus out and reigned fifty-nine years, and after him his elder son Rampses reigned sixty-six. Having thus admitted that our fathers left Egypt so many years earlier, he then inserts Amenophis as an interloping king and says that this man desired to see the gods, as Or, one of the kings before him, had done, and that he communicated this desire to a namesake of his, Amenophis son of Paapis, who was thought to share in a divine nature through his wisdom and foreknowledge of things to come. This namesake told him that he would be able to see the gods if he cleansed the whole land of lepers and other impure people. Delighted at this, the king gathered together all those whose bodies were disfigured out of Egypt — eighty thousand of them in all — and cast them into the stone quarries on the eastern side of the Nile, to work there along with the other Egyptians who had been segregated. Among them, he says, were some of the learned priests who had been afflicted with leprosy.

This Amenophis, the wise and prophetic man, feared the wrath of the gods against himself and the king, should they be seen to have been compelled; and he added, saying that certain people would ally with the impure ones and hold Egypt in their power for thirteen years, but he did not dare say this to the king himself. Instead he left a written account of everything and then took his own life, and the king fell into despondency. Then, word for word, he writes as follows:

"When those in the quarries had suffered hardship long enough, the king was petitioned to set apart for them, as a refuge and shelter, the city of Auaris, once abandoned by the shepherds; and this city is, according to theology, from ancient times sacred to Typhon. Those who entered it, having this place as a base for revolt, appointed as their leader a certain man of the priests of Heliopolis, named Osarseph, and swore an oath to obey him in all things. He first made it a law for them neither to worship the gods nor to abstain from any of the animals especially held sacred in Egypt, but to sacrifice and consume them all, and to associate with no one except those bound by the same oath. Having laid down such laws, and many others most opposed to Egyptian customs, he ordered them with many hands to repair the walls of the city and make ready for war against King Amenophis."

He himself, taking with him the other priests and those defiled along with him, sent envoys to the shepherds who had been driven out by Tethmosis, to the city called Jerusalem, and having explained his own situation and that of the others who shared his disgrace, he asked them to join him in a united campaign against Egypt. He promised to lead them first to Auaris, the ancestral homeland of their fathers, and to provide the multitudes with supplies without stint, to fight alongside them whenever needed, and to make the land easily subject to them. Overjoyed, they all eagerly set out, to the number of twenty thousand men, and soon arrived at Auaris.

Amenophis, king of the Egyptians, when he learned of their approach, was thrown into no small confusion, remembering the prediction of Amenophis son of Paapis. First he gathered a multitude of Egyptians, and after taking counsel with their leaders, he summoned to himself the sacred animals held in highest honor in the temples, and instructed the priests in each district to hide the images of the gods as securely as possible. His son Sethos, also called Rampses after his father Rapses, then five years old, he sent away to a friend of his own. He himself crossed over with the rest of the Egyptians, numbering three hundred thousand of the most warlike men, and when he met the enemy he did not engage them, but thinking it would be fighting against the gods, he turned back and came to Memphis, taking with him Apis and the other sacred animals that had been sent for there, and set sail at once for Ethiopia with his entire fleet and multitude of Egyptians; for the king of Ethiopia was, by a favor owed him, subject to him.

This king received him, and taking in all the multitudes, supplied them from what the land had for human sustenance, and assigned cities and villages sufficient for the destined thirteen years of exile from his kingdom, and stationed no less an Ethiopian garrison to guard those of King Amenophis's men on the borders of Egypt. Such were the events in Ethiopia.

Meanwhile the Solymites, coming down together with the impure Egyptians, treated the people so impiously that their domination made the earlier deeds seem like gold by comparison to those who then witnessed these outrages; for they not only burned cities and villages, and were not content with plundering temples and mutilating the images of the gods, but they went on using the very kitchens in which the sacred animals held in reverence were cooked, and forced the priests and prophets who sacrificed and slaughtered them to become butchers, and cast them out naked. It is said that the man who established their constitution and laws was a priest by descent from Heliopolis, named Osarsiph after the god Osiris worshiped at Heliopolis, and that when he went over to this people he changed his name and was called Moses.

Now this is what the Egyptians report about the Jews, along with many other things which I omit for the sake of brevity. Manetho says again that afterward Amenophis came from Ethiopia with a great force, and his son Rampses also with his own force, and the two of them joined battle with the shepherds and the impure ones, defeated them, killed many, and pursued them to the borders of Syria. Such then, and things like these, is what Manetho wrote.

That he is talking nonsense and lying openly I will show, first setting apart, for the sake of what I shall say to others later, this point: he has himself granted us and admitted that our race was not originally Egyptian, but came in from outside, conquered Egypt, and afterward left it again. That the disfigured Egyptians were not mixed in with us afterward, and that Moses, who led the people, was not one of them but had lived many generations earlier — these points I shall try to refute through his own statements.

The very first cause he lays down for his fabrication is ridiculous: he says King Amenophis desired to see the gods. What gods? If he meant those legally established among them — the bull, the goat, crocodiles, and dog-headed apes — he already saw them. But how could he see the heavenly gods? And why did he have this desire at all? Because, by Zeus, an earlier king before him had seen them. So he had learned from that king what sort of beings they were and in what manner he had seen them, so he had no need of any new device. But the seer was supposedly wise, through whom the king expected to accomplish this. And how did he not foresee in advance that his desire was impossible? For it did not turn out. And what sense did it make that because of the maimed or the leprous the gods should become invisible? For they are angered by impious acts, not by bodily defects. And how could eighty thousand lepers and diseased people possibly be gathered together in almost a single day?

And how did the king disobey the seer? For the seer told him to expel the disfigured from Egypt, but he instead threw them into the stone quarries, as though he needed laborers rather than intending to purify the land. He says that the seer himself, foreseeing the wrath of the gods and what would befall Egypt, killed himself, but left the prediction in writing for the king. Then how did the seer not know from the start that he himself would die? And how did he not immediately contradict the king when he wished to see the gods? And how was it reasonable to fear evils that would not even befall him personally? Could anything worse have happened to him than what he hastened upon himself?

But let us look at the silliest point of all: having learned this and being afraid of what was to come because of those disfigured men whom he had been told to cleanse Egypt of, he still did not drive them from the land, but when they begged him, gave them a city, as Manetho says, the one once inhabited by the shepherds, called Auaris.

Having gathered there, he says, they chose as their leader one of the priests who had once come from Heliopolis, and that this man taught them neither to worship the gods nor to abstain from the animals worshiped in Egypt, but to sacrifice and eat them all, and to associate with no one except those bound by the same oath, binding the multitude by oaths that they would surely abide by these laws; and having fortified Auaris, he waged war against the king. And he adds that he sent to Jerusalem, calling on those people to join him as allies and promising to give them Auaris, since it was, he claims, ancestral to those who would come from Jerusalem, from which base they would hold all Egypt. Then he says twenty myriads of them came, an army of two hundred thousand, and that the king of the Egyptians, Amenophis, not thinking it right to fight against the gods, fled at once to Ethiopia, having left Apis and some of the other sacred animals in the care of the priests, ordered to guard them.

Then the men of Jerusalem, having come, laid waste the cities, burned the temples, slaughtered the sacred animals, and in general abstained from no lawlessness or cruelty. And the priest who had established their constitution and their laws was, he says, by descent a Heliopolitan, named Osarseph after the god Osiris worshiped at Heliopolis, but he changed his name and called himself Moses. He says that in the thirteenth year — for that was the time destined for his exile — Amenophis came from Ethiopia with a large army, joined battle with the shepherds and the impure ones, defeated them in the fight, and killed many, pursuing them to the borders of Syria.

In these details again, without realizing it, he lies implausibly; for the lepers and the multitude with them, even if they had earlier been angry with the king and those who had done these things to them, in accordance with the seer's prediction, once they had come out of the quarries and received from him a city and land, would surely have become gentler toward him. But if they still hated him, they would have plotted against him privately, not have taken up war against everyone — clearly, since they had, being so numerous, the most extensive kinship ties. Yet even had they resolved to make war on men, they would not have dared to war against their own gods, nor set laws so utterly opposed to their ancestral ones and those by which

...and grew up. We should be grateful to Manetho for saying that the authors of this lawless act were not the leaders who came from Jerusalem, but the Egyptians themselves — especially their priests — who devised it and made the mob swear to it. Yet is it not absurd that none of their own relatives or friends joined the revolt or shared the risk of the war, while they sent these polluted men to Jerusalem to bring back an alliance from that quarter? What friendship or kinship had existed between them beforehand? On the contrary, they were enemies and differed most widely in their customs. He says the Egyptians at once obeyed those who promised to seize Egypt for them, as if they had no accurate knowledge of the land from which they had been driven by force. Now if they had been in desperate or wretched straits, perhaps they might have taken such a risk; but living as they did in a prosperous city and enjoying a large territory better than Egypt, why would they have risked helping men who had long been their enemies and were maimed in body, men whom not even their own relatives could bear? They could not have foreseen the king's coming flight, for Manetho himself says the opposite — that the king's son, with three hundred thousand men, met them at Pelusium. This much those who arrived certainly knew, but how could they have guessed his change of heart and his flight? Then he says that once the men from Jerusalem had gained control of Egypt they did many terrible things, and he reproaches them for it as though he had not himself brought enemies upon the Egyptians, or as though it were not the men summoned from outside whom one ought to blame — since the native Egyptians had already been doing these very things before their arrival, and had sworn to do them. But later Amenophis attacked, won the battle, and drove the enemy in slaughter all the way to Syria. For Egypt is altogether so easy a prey to any invader that those who then held it by force, on learning that Amenophis was alive, neither fortified the passes from Ethiopia, though they had ample resources for it, nor prepared any other force; yet he, killing them, Manetho says, pursued them as far as Syria through the waterless sand — clearly no easy or bloodless crossing for an army. According to Manetho, then, our people are neither of Egyptian stock, nor did any of that stock mix with us; for of the lepers and the sick, it is likely that many died in the quarries, having spent a long time there in misery, many more in the battles that followed, and the greatest number in the final battle and the flight.

It remains for me to speak to him about Moses. The Egyptians consider this man marvelous, even divine, yet they want to claim him as their own with an implausible slander, saying he was a Heliopolitan, one of the priests from there, driven out with the rest because of leprosy. But the records show he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier, and that he led our fathers out of Egypt into the land we now inhabit. That he was not afflicted with any such bodily misfortune is clear from his own words: he forbade lepers to remain in a city or dwell in a village, but ordered them to walk alone with their garments torn, and he considered anyone who touched them or shared a roof with them unclean. Moreover, even once the disease was cured and a man had recovered his natural condition, he prescribed certain purifications, washings in spring water, and the shaving of all the hair, and commanded that many and varied sacrifices be performed before the man could enter the holy city. Yet it would have been natural for the opposite to happen — for a man who had suffered this misfortune himself to show forethought and kindness toward those who suffered the same. And he legislated this way not only concerning lepers, but he did not even allow men maimed in the smallest part of the body to serve as priests; indeed, if a man serving as priest suffered such a misfortune while in office, he was stripped of the honor. How likely is it, then, that such a man would thoughtlessly make laws against himself — a man gathered up out of just such misfortunes — framing statutes to his own reproach and harm? Moreover, he has changed the name most implausibly: Osarseph, he says, was his name. But this does not fit the change he makes, whereas the true name reveals the man saved from the water — for the Egyptians call water 'moy.' I think enough has been said, and it is clear that as long as Manetho followed the ancient records he did not stray far from the truth, but once he turned to unattested myths, he either composed them implausibly himself or believed some who had spoken out of hostility.

After him I wish to examine Chaeremon; for he too, claiming to write an Egyptian history, and giving the king the same name Manetho gave him — Amenophis — and his son Ramesses, says that in a dream Isis appeared to Amenophis, reproaching him because her temple had been razed in the war. Phritibautes, a sacred scribe, told him that if he purged Egypt of the men who carried the defilement, he would be freed from his terror. Amenophis then selected two hundred and fifty thousand of the afflicted and expelled them. Their leaders were Moses and Joseph, both scribes, Joseph also being a sacred scribe, and their Egyptian names were Tisithen for Moses and Peteseph for Joseph. These men came to Pelusium and there met three hundred and eighty thousand who had been left behind by Amenophis, men he had refused to bring into Egypt; and making an alliance with them, they marched against Egypt. Amenophis, unable to withstand their advance, fled into Ethiopia, leaving behind his pregnant wife, who hid in some caves and there gave birth to a son named Ramesses; and when he had grown to manhood, he drove the Jews, about two hundred thousand of them, into Syria, and welcomed his father Amenophis back from Ethiopia.

So much for Chaeremon. I think it is immediately obvious from what has been said that both men are lying: if there were some underlying truth, they could not possibly disagree so much, whereas men who invent falsehoods do not write in agreement with others but each shapes his own fancies. Manetho says the beginning of the expulsion of the polluted men was the king's desire to see the gods; Chaeremon has invented instead a dream of Isis. Manetho says it was Amenophis who foretold to the king the means of purification; Chaeremon says it was Phritobautes. As for the number of the multitude, the two come very close: one says eighty thousand, the other two hundred and fifty thousand. Further, Manetho first casts the polluted men into the quarries, then gives them Avaris to settle in, stirs up war between them and the rest of the Egyptians, and only then has them call in the aid of the people of Jerusalem; Chaeremon says that as they were leaving Egypt they found, near Pelusium, three hundred and eighty thousand men left behind by Amenophis, and invaded Egypt again together with them, while Amenophis fled into Ethiopia. And here is the most remarkable point of all: he does not even say who these many tens of thousands of soldiers were, or where they came from — Egyptian by race or foreigners — nor does he explain why the king was unwilling to bring them into Egypt, this same king who, on his account, invented the dream of Isis about the lepers. Moreover, Chaeremon has added Joseph to Moses as though expelled at the same time, when in fact Joseph had died four generations before Moses, a span of nearly a hundred and seventy years. And again, Ramesses the son of Amenophis, according to Manetho, is a young man who fights alongside his father and shares his flight into Ethiopia, whereas Chaeremon has made him born in a cave after his father's death, and afterward, victorious in battle, driving the Jews, some two hundred thousand of them, into Syria. What carelessness! He never even said earlier who the three hundred and eighty thousand were, nor how the twenty-three thousand who are missing perished — whether they fell in the battle or went over to Ramesses. And the most astonishing thing of all: it is impossible to learn from him whom exactly he means by 'the Jews,' or to which group he gives this name — the two hundred and fifty thousand lepers, or the three hundred and eighty thousand near Pelusium. But it would perhaps be foolish to spend more words refuting men already refuted by their own account; refutation at the hands of others would have been more restrained.

I will bring forward, in addition to these, Lysimachus, who adopted the same premise of falsehood about the lepers and the maimed as the others, but has outdone their implausibility in his inventions — clearly composing his account out of deep hostility. He says that under Bocchoris, king of the Egyptians, the people of the Jews, being leprous and scabby and afflicted with certain other diseases, took refuge in the temples and begged for food. And since a great many people fell ill, a famine came upon Egypt. Bocchoris, king of the Egyptians, sent men to the oracle of Ammon to ask about the famine, and the god replied that the temples must be purified of unclean and impious men by casting them out of the temples into desert places, and that the scabby and leprous must be drowned, since the sun was angered at their being alive, and that once the temples were purified, the land would again bear fruit. Bocchoris, having received the oracle, summoned the priests and the temple attendants and ordered them to make a selection of the unclean, hand them over to the soldiers to be led into the desert, and bind the leprous in sheets of lead to sink them in the sea. Once the leprous and scabby had been drowned, the rest were gathered together and set out in desert places to die; but they came together and took counsel about their own fate, and when night fell they lit fires and lamps to keep watch over themselves, and fasting through the following night they besought the gods to save them. The next day a certain Moses advised them to risk cutting a single road straight ahead until they reached inhabited places, and he charged them to show goodwill to no one, to give not the best advice but the worst, and to overturn the temples and altars of any gods they came across. The rest agreed, and carrying out what they had resolved, they made their way through the desert, and after considerable hardship they came to inhabited country, where they abused the people, plundered and burned the temples, and came to the land now called Judea; there they founded a city and settled. This town was named Hierosyla — 'temple-robbers' — after their conduct. Later, having grown powerful, they changed the name in time to avoid the reproach, calling the city Hierosolyma and themselves Hierosolymites.

This man did not even manage to name the same king as the others, but has invented a still newer name; and setting aside the dream, he has gone off instead to an Egyptian prophet at the oracle of Ammon to fetch a response about the scabby and leprous — for he says a multitude of Jews gathered in the temples. Did he give this name to the lepers alone, or only to those Jews who fell into these diseases? For he says 'the people of the Jews.' What sort of people — newcomers, or native by race? Why, then, do you call them Jews if they were Egyptians? But if they were foreigners, why do you not say from where? How, when the king had drowned many of them in the sea and cast the rest out into desert places, could so great a multitude have been left over? Or how did they cross the desert, take control of the land we now inhabit, found a city, and build a temple renowned among all peoples? He ought also, in speaking of the lawgiver, not merely to have given his name but to have made clear his race and lineage, and to have explained why he undertook to lay down for them such laws about the gods and about wrongdoing toward other men during their journey. For if they were Egyptian by race, they would not so readily have abandoned their ancestral customs; and if they were from elsewhere, they must surely have had laws of their own, kept through long habit. If, then, they had sworn never to show goodwill to those who had driven them out, that would have made reasonable sense; but that they should have declared undeclared war on the whole of mankind — if indeed they behaved as badly as he himself says, at a time when they needed help from everyone — this proves great folly, not on their part, but on the part of the liar, who has even dared to say that they named the city after their own temple-robbery, and later changed it. For it is clear that to those born afterward the name brought shame and hatred, whereas the founders of the city themselves, in naming it so, supposed they were honoring themselves. This noble fellow, in his great intemperance for abuse, failed to grasp that we Jews do not use the same word for 'commit sacrilege' that the Greeks do. What more, then, should one say against a man who lies so shamelessly? But since the book has now reached a fitting length, I will make a fresh beginning and try, in what follows, to complete the rest of what the subject requires.

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