JOSEPHUS AGAINST APION
“Buffon, the great French naturalist,” as Matthew Arnold reminds us, “imposed on himself the rule of steadily abstaining from all answer to attacks made upon him.” This attitude of dignified silence has often been commended. In one of his wisest counsels, Epictetus recommended his friends not to defend themselves when attacked. If a man speaks ill of you, said the Stoic, you should only reply: “Good sir, you must be ignorant of many others of my faults, or you would not have mentioned only these.” An older than Epictetus gave similar advice. Sennacherib’s emissary, the Rabshakeh, had insolently assailed Hezekiah; “but the people held their peace, for the king’s commandment was: Answer him not” (II Kings 18. 36). On this last text a fine homily may be found in a printed volume of the late Simeon Singer’s Sermons. Mr. Singer illustrated his counsel of restraint by a reference to Josephus. Apion more than 1,800 years ago had traduced the Jews, and Josephus demolished his slanders in “as powerful a piece of controversial literature as is to be found.” “But,” continued the preacher, “note the irony of the situation. But for Josephus’ reply, Apion would long have been forgotten”; not his name, but certainly the details of his typical anti-Semitism.
This fact, however, does not carry with it the conclusion that Josephus rendered his people an ill-service. There are two orders of Apologetics—the destructive and the constructive. Apologia was originally a legal term which denoted the speech of the defendant against the plaintiff’s charges. As we know abundantly well from the forensic giants of the classical oratory—such as Demosthenes and Cicero—these defences were largely made up of abuse of the other side. Josephus was an apt pupil of these masters. His abuse of Apion leaves nothing to the imagination; everything is formulated, and with scathing particularity. Josephus, it is true, does not seem to have been unjust. Rarely, if ever, has an out-and-out anti-Semite possessed a pleasing personality. Apion was a grammarian of note, but there is much evidence as to his unamiable characteristics. The emperor Tiberius, who knew a braggart when he saw one, called Apion “cymbalum mundi”—a world-drum, making the universe ring with his ostentatious garrulity. Aulus Gellius records his vanity; Pliny accuses him of falsehood and charlatanism. Josephus was, therefore, not going beyond the facts when he describes him as a scurrilous mountebank. It cannot be denied, moreover, that Josephus scores heavily against his opponent, in solid argument as well as in verbal invective. If the Jewish historian made Apion immortal, it was a deathless infamy that he secured for him.
Certainly, too, Josephus successfully rebuts Apion’s specific libels: the most silly of them, however, antedated Apion and survived him. Tacitus, indeed, seems to have gathered his own weapons out of Apion’s armory, and the Roman repeats the Alexandrian’s libel that in Jerusalem an ass was adored. Those who are interested in this legend of ass-worship may turn to a learned article by Dr. S. Krauss in the Jewish Encyclopedia (vol. ii, p. 222). It has been suggested that the charge arose from a confusion between the Jews and certain Egyptian or Dionysian sects. Others believe that at bottom there lies a misunderstanding of the “foundation-stone,” which, according to talmudic tradition, was placed in the ark during the second temple. The upper millstone was called by the Greeks “the ass,” for its tedious turning resembled an ass’s burdensome activity. But, be the explanation what it may, the ignorance of a professed expert such as Apion was inexcusable. Yet, most grimly amusing of all Apion’s charges is his repetition of the ever-recurrent libel that the Jews were haters of their fellow-men. Never was there a more perfect illustration of Æsop’s fable of the wolf and the lamb: the hated transformed into the haters! Apion was a fine type of lover. Off to Rome went he, leading the Alexandrian deputation against the Jews (who were championed by Philo), denouncing them to the Cæsar, and using every artifice to incite the imperial animosity. With a heart bitter with hostility, Apion would be a fitting assailant of the “haters of mankind.” It is one of the curiosities of fate that, apart from what Josephus has told of him, Apion is best remembered as the author or transmitter of the story of Androcles and the lion. Apion was neither the first nor the last to have a kindlier feeling for a wild beast than for a fellow-man.
To all the points adduced by Apion Josephus makes a triumphant answer. But his book, termed rather inaptly Against Apion, would not deserve its repute merely because it demolished a particularly malignant opponent. The book really belongs to Apologetic of the second of the two orders distinguished above. Higher far than the destructive Apologetic is the constructive, which rebuts a falsehood, not by denouncing the liar, but by presenting the truth. “Great is truth, and it will prevail,” is the maxim of an ancient Jewish book (I Esdras 4. 41), a maxim well known in substance to Josephus himself (Antiquities, xi. 3). “Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” asks Milton. If we once give up confidence in the unconquerable power of truth to win in the end, we have already made an end of human hope. Apologetic, then, of the better type attaches itself to this belief in the inherent virtue of truth. It meets the enemy not with weapons similar to his own, but with a shield impervious to all weapons.
Josephus can sustain this test. Judged by the constructive standard, the treatise Against Apion is a masterpiece. That the Jews were an ancient people with an age-long record of honor, and not a race of recent and disreputable upstarts, Josephus proves by citations from older writers who, but for these citations, would be even less known than they now are. It is not, however, on such arguments that Josephus chiefly rests his case. The external history of the Jews, their glorious participation in the world’s affairs—these are much. But there is something which is far more. “As for ourselves, we neither inhabit a maritime country, nor delight in commerce, nor in such intercourse with other men as arises from it; but the cities we dwell in are remote from the sea, and as we have a fruitful country to dwell in, we take pains in cultivating it. But our principal care of all is to educate our children well, and to observe the laws, and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to keep that religion that has been handed down to us” (i. 12). This passage is famous both for its denial of the supposed natural bent of Jews to commerce and for its assertion that education is the principal purpose of Jewish endeavor. Josephus, especially in the second book of his Apology, expounds Judaism as life and creed in glowing terms. This exposition is one of our main sources of information for the Judaism of the first century of the Christian era. His picture of life under the Jewish law is a panegyric, but praise is not always partiality. Is it an exaggerated claim that Josephus makes on behalf of Judaism? Surely not. “I make bold to say,” exclaims Josephus in his peroration, “that we are become the teachers of other men in the greatest number of things, and those the most excellent. For what is more excellent than unshakable piety? What is more just than obedience to the laws? And what is more advantageous than mutual love and concord, and neither to be divided by calamities, nor to become injurious and seditious in prosperity, but to despise death when we are in war, and to apply ourselves in peace to arts and agriculture, while we are persuaded that God surveys and directs everything everywhere? If these precepts had either been written before by others, or more exactly observed, we should have owed them thanks as their disciples, but if it is plain that we have made more use of them than other men, and if we have proved that the original invention of them is our own, let the Apions and Molos, and all others who delight in lies and abuse, stand confuted.”
There were grounds on which contemporary Jews had just cause for complaint against Josephus. He lacked patriotism. But only in the political sense. When Judea was invaded, he did not stand firm in resistance to Rome. But when Judaism was calumniated, he was a true patriot. He stands high in the honorable list of those who championed the Jewish cause without thought of self. Or, rather, such self-consciousness as he displays is communal, not personal. When he pleads his people’s cause, his pettinesses vanish, he is every inch a Jew.