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.
CAECILIUS ON THE SUBLIME
Favorable remarks on Hebrew literature are very rare in the Greek writers. One of the most significant is contained in the ninth section of Longinus’ famous treatise on the Sublime.
This Greek author—it will soon be seen why the name Caecilius and not Longinus appears in the title of this article—analyses sublimity of style into five sources: 1) grandeur of thought; 2) spirited treatment of the passions; 3) figures of thought and speech; 4) dignified expression; 5) majesty of structure. Longinus points out that the first two conditions of sublimity depend mainly on natural endowments, whereas the last three derive assistance from art.
It is when illustrating the first of the five elements that our author refers to the Bible. The most important of all conditions of the Sublime is “a certain lofty cast of mind.” Such sublimity is “the image of greatness of soul.” As he beautifully says: “It is only natural that their words should be full of sublimity, whose thoughts are full of majesty.” Longinus, accordingly, refuses to praise without reserve Homer’s picture of the “Battle of the Gods”:
A trumpet sound
Rang through the air, and shook the Olympian height,
Then terror seized the monarch of the dead,
And, springing from his throne, he cried aloud
With fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunder
By Neptune’s mighty arm, forthwith reveal
To mortal and immortal eyes those halls
So drear and dank, which e’en the gods abhor.
An impious medley, Longinus terms this, a perfect hurly-burly, terrible in its forcefulness, but overstepping the bounds of decency. (I take these and other phrases from Mr. H. L. Havell’s fine translation). Far to be preferred are those Homeric passages which “exhibit the divine nature in its true light as something spotless, great, and pure.” He instances the lines in the Iliad on Poseidon, though there does not seem much to choose between them and the passage condemned above. But then follows the remarkable paragraph which is the reason why I have chosen Longinus for a place in this gallery: “And thus also the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man, having formed an adequate conception of the Supreme Being, gave it adequate expression in the opening words of his Laws: God said: Let there be light, and there was light; let there be earth, and there was earth.”