Biblexika

Against Apion

jewishgreek~94 CE

Josephus's apologetic defense of Jewish antiquity and religion against Greco-Roman critics, particularly the grammarian Apion. Contains invaluable quotations from ancient historians about Jewish history and provides insight into the Jewish canon of scripture.

Translation: William Whiston (1737) (public-domain)

Overview

Against Apion is the most polished and intellectually ambitious work of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, written late in his life around 94 CE as a spirited defense of Judaism against Greek and Egyptian critics. Where Josephus's earlier works — the Jewish War and the Antiquities of the Jews — aimed at historical narrative, Against Apion is explicitly apologetic: a carefully constructed rhetorical argument addressed to educated Greco-Roman readers who had been exposed to hostile caricatures of Jewish history, religion, and culture. It stands as one of the finest examples of Jewish apologetic literature in antiquity and one of the most important texts for understanding the social and intellectual context in which early Christianity emerged.

The work's title refers to one of its primary targets: Apion, an Alexandrian Greek rhetorician and grammarian who wrote a hostile account of Jewish origins and practices that circulated in the educated Roman world. But Josephus's scope is broader than the refutation of any single critic. He engages a range of anti-Jewish charges that were widespread in Greco-Roman culture: that Jews were obscure barbarians with no genuine ancient history, that they had been expelled from Egypt as lepers and disease-carriers, that they worshipped an ass's head in their Temple, that they annually slaughtered a Greek and ate his flesh, and that their religious laws made them misanthropic and incompatible with civilized society.

What elevates Against Apion above mere polemical refutation is its positive concluding vision: Josephus presents the Mosaic constitution as a philosophically superior form of governance, coining the term 'theocracy' (theokratia) to describe it — the rule of God through law — and arguing that Moses anticipated the best insights of Greek philosophy while surpassing them in practical implementation. This positive program, setting Jewish biblical law against the standard of Greco-Roman philosophical ideals and finding the former superior, marks Against Apion as one of the most self-confident and intellectually ambitious documents of ancient Jewish culture.

Bible connections
  • Romans 3:1-2 (the advantage of the Jew and the Jewish scriptures)
  • Galatians 3:17-29 (the law of Moses and its purpose)
  • 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (all scripture God-breathed and profitable)
  • Revelation 22:18-19 (warning against adding or removing from the prophetic book)
Key terms
theocracy (theokratia)– Josephus's coinage for the Mosaic constitution: rule of God through law, with human leaders as administrators of divine sovereignty — the first use of this word in world literature
isnad– the Jewish canon as Josephus describes it: 22 fixed, unalterable books comprising the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and four books of hymns and wisdom
apologetics– reasoned defense of a religious tradition against external criticism; Against Apion is the most sophisticated example of Jewish apologetics in antiquity
Judeophobia– the modern scholarly term for systematic anti-Jewish prejudice in the ancient Greco-Roman world, of which the texts Josephus refutes are primary examples
Did you know?

Josephus's statement that the Jewish Scriptures consist of 22 books (corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet) is the earliest explicit claim that the Jewish biblical canon was closed. His numbering system combines books that Protestants count separately, arriving at the same core content as the Protestant Old Testament.