Against Apion
Mar 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
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87
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About this ebook
Written in the first century CE, Against Apion is one of the earliest and most deliberate works of communal defense in Jewish literary history.
The historian Flavius Josephus - soldier, statesman, Pharisee, and eyewitness to the siege of Jerusalem - constructs a point-by-point rebuttal of hostile Greek and Egyptian claims about Jewish origins, customs, and character.
The treatise argues systematically for the antiquity and coherence of Jewish life, meeting slander not with silence but with evidence, chronology, and reasoned appeal to the historical record. The context surrounding the work is as important as its arguments.
Josephus composed Against Apion during the Roman imperial period, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple - a moment when the survival of Jewish communal identity was genuinely uncertain.
Rather than withdraw, he chose articulation: laying out who his people were, where they came from, and why the accusations leveled against them were baseless.
The result is a document that helps clarify how long Jewish communities have faced organized campaigns of delegitimization, and how consistently they have responded with intellectual discipline and an insistence on continuity and dignity.
What makes the treatise endure beyond its ancient setting is the structural pattern it reveals.
Each generation's hostility toward Jewish life recycles recognizable distortions - about loyalty, about separateness, about origins - and each generation's defense draws on the same core commitment to documented history and collective memory.
Josephus's method of answering prejudice through careful argumentation rather than polemic remains a reference point for understanding how communities sustain themselves against recurring threat.
This edition places Against Apion alongside Josephus's larger body of work, including his History of the Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, providing access to the full arc of his writing on Jewish-Roman relations and the pressures that shaped Jewish self-understanding in the ancient Mediterranean world.
The historian Flavius Josephus - soldier, statesman, Pharisee, and eyewitness to the siege of Jerusalem - constructs a point-by-point rebuttal of hostile Greek and Egyptian claims about Jewish origins, customs, and character.
The treatise argues systematically for the antiquity and coherence of Jewish life, meeting slander not with silence but with evidence, chronology, and reasoned appeal to the historical record. The context surrounding the work is as important as its arguments.
Josephus composed Against Apion during the Roman imperial period, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple - a moment when the survival of Jewish communal identity was genuinely uncertain.
Rather than withdraw, he chose articulation: laying out who his people were, where they came from, and why the accusations leveled against them were baseless.
The result is a document that helps clarify how long Jewish communities have faced organized campaigns of delegitimization, and how consistently they have responded with intellectual discipline and an insistence on continuity and dignity.
What makes the treatise endure beyond its ancient setting is the structural pattern it reveals.
Each generation's hostility toward Jewish life recycles recognizable distortions - about loyalty, about separateness, about origins - and each generation's defense draws on the same core commitment to documented history and collective memory.
Josephus's method of answering prejudice through careful argumentation rather than polemic remains a reference point for understanding how communities sustain themselves against recurring threat.
This edition places Against Apion alongside Josephus's larger body of work, including his History of the Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, providing access to the full arc of his writing on Jewish-Roman relations and the pressures that shaped Jewish self-understanding in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Written in the first century CE, Against Apion is one of the earliest and most deliberate works of communal defense in Jewish literary history.
The historian Flavius Josephus - soldier, statesman, Pharisee, and eyewitness to the siege of Jerusalem - constructs a point-by-point rebuttal of hostil...
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About the author
A member of a wealthy priestly family in Judea, Josephus was a Pharisee originally named Joseph ben Matthias. An active supporter of anti-Roman activity, he became governor of Galilee, a post he held with honor and valor until Galilee was taken by the Romans in a.d. 67. He won the favor of the Roman general Vespasian, whose name---Flavius---he took as his own and through whose patronage he later became a Roman citizen. Although often criticized for becoming a supporter of Rome, in his work Against Apion he passionately defends Jewish religion and culture. Josephus wrote both in Greek and in Hebrew. His writings are neither remarkably fine representatives of classical culture nor the product of deep learning in Jewish literature and history. They do, however, tell the reader a great deal not known from other sources. The Jewish War (75--79), based to a great extent on what Josephus himself saw, heard, and experienced, describes the tragic events of the Jewish revolt against Rome. Antiquities of the Jews (93) covers the history of the Jews from creation to the war with Rome, with special attention given to the Maccabees and the dynasty of Herod.
A member of a wealthy priestly family in Judea, Josephus was a Pharisee originally named Joseph ben Matthias. An active supporter of anti-Roman activity, he became governor of Galilee, a post he held with honor and valor until Galilee was taken by the Romans in a.d. 67. He won the favor of the Ro...
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