Nongbri Greek Authors on Jews

[An edited version of this entry with alterations not approved by the author appears in The

Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 692-696.]

Greek Authors on Jews and Judaism (Author’s Version)

Brent Nongbri

Antiquity has left us a substantial body of Greek literature about Judea and Judean

people, including some important works written by prominent Judean authors, such as the

historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, as well as a number of other

individual Greek texts composed by various Judean authors (on these latter texts, see Collins

2000). The present entry, however, is limited to material written in Greek by non-Judean

authors before the emperor Hadrian’s establishment of Aelia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem

in 135 C.E. The discussion will be for the most part confined to non-Christian authors, but

Christian Greek literature on Judeans is quite important in its own right and will be briefly

discussed in the conclusion. Nevertheless, the material that will be the focus of this entry is the

rich Greek ethnographic tradition that treated Judeans as one among many nations (ethnē), such

as Egyptians, Scythians, Thracians, or Romans. The works of these authors present a wealth of

perceptions about Judea and Judeans (Ioudaioi), although it is interesting to note that not even

once in this literary corpus do we find the term now commonly translated as “Judaism”—

Ioudaismos. Menahem Stern has provided an exhaustive collection of all these Greek primary

sources along with English translations in Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (1974-

84). A number of Stern’s entries are simply brief notes about the geography of Judea or reports

of the existence works now unfortunately lost to us, such as the Judean History (Ioudaikē

historia) in six books by Teucer of Cyzicus, a little-known writer of the first century B.C.E.

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mentioned in the Suda (Stern no. 54). The present article concentrates on the material from

Greek authors that provides somewhat more sustained descriptions Judeans and their practices.

Characteristics of the Sources

A word must be said at the outset about the nature of the sources. While Stern’s lengthy

volumes attest to the considerable number of Greek authors who showed some interest in Judea

and Judeans, the majority of this material survives only as excerpts or summaries (the line

between these two is sometimes indistinct) in the works of later Judean and Christian writers

who had their own reasons for choosing to employ their selections. A very large proportion of

these fragments are preserved in the works of Josephus, especially his highly polemical tract

Against Apion (on which see the extensive commentary of Barclay, 2007). In this text, likely

written around 100 C.E., Josephus is at pains to establish the antiquity of the Judean nation and

to portray Judeans as exemplars of Roman virtues (Goodman, 1994). He proceeds by citing

authors who attest to the early existence of the Judean people and then rebutting authors (largely

Greek writers from Egypt) that he thinks slander Judeans. Josephus essentially construes Greek

writers as either wholly pro-Judean or wholly anti-Judean, and this method of presentation

persists in some modern scholarship (for example, Feldman, 1993). There have, however, been

recent efforts to move beyond Josephus’s framework and to think outside of a simple pro-Judean

or anti-Judean model (Gruen, 1998). In addition to Josephus, the other major source for

fragmentary Greek opinions about Judeans is the Preparation for the Gospel (Praeparatio

evangelica) of the Christian author Eusebius of Caesarea, who was active under the reign of

Constantine in the early fourth century. Along with citing the authors Josephus collects in

Against Apion, Eusebius, in order to establish the antiquity of the Christian ethnos, also provides

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selections of other Greek authors who wrote about Judeans. Thus, while we have evidence of the

existence in antiquity of extended ethnographic treatises entirely dedicated to describing Judeans,

most of what actually survives for us to evaluate are highly edited, second- or third-hand

accounts deployed in specific polemical contexts, sometimes centuries after the times of the

authors whose opinions are related. When attempting to assess the attitudes that Greek writers

held about Judeans in the Hellenistic and early Roman eras, this point should constantly be borne

in mind. In what follows, I proceed in a roughly chronological fashion, but I always note the

later authors who preserved and edited this material, Josephus being foremost among them.

The Early Hellenistic Period

And it is with Josephus, then, that we must commence. In the course of Against Apion,

Josephus writes that one Clearchus of Soli (ca. 300 B.C.E.) narrates a story in which his teacher,

Aristotle, had met a Judean. Aristotle is duly impressed and finds the Judean to be “Greek in

both language and soul” in spite of the fact that Judeans are “descended from the Indian

philosophers” (Ag. Ap. 1.180 = Stern no. 15). Porphyry, the philosopher of the third century

C.E., records that another of Aristotle’s students, Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.E.) mentions “the

Syrians, among whom are the Judeans” in the context of a discussion of sacrifice, and reports

that they were “philosophers by race” and seems to say that they practiced human sacrifice

(“they were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves”) in the

context of a discussion on the different sacrificial practices of various nations (Porphyry, On

Abstinence 2.26 = Stern no. 4). Josephus also claims that Theophrastus had sufficient knowledge

of Judeans to know the Hebrew term korban (Ag. Ap. 1.167 = Stern no. 5). These would appear

to be the earliest instances of Greek authors taking note of the Judean people.

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Hecataeus of Abdera

Conspicuously absent from the preceding section are the descriptions of Judeans in the

writings attributed to Hecateus of Abdera (ca. 360-290 B.C.E.). I treat the material ascribed to

Hecataeus separately because these writings illustrate some special difficulties. During the reign

of Ptolemy I, Hecataeus visited Egypt and composed a work on the region, the Aegyptica. This

book seems to have had an excursus on the Judeans, and it later served as a source for the

Bibliotheca Historica of the historian Diodorus Siculus in the middle of the first century B.C.E.

Much of what Diodorus has to say about Judeans, however, exists only in the form of a

paraphrase by the ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople, Photius. The manuscripts of

Photius attribute this material to Hecataeus of Miletus (who wrote around 500 B.C.E.), but

scholars universally regard this point as a mistake on Photius’ part and believe that the material

in Photius’s summary of Diodorus is based on the excursus on the Judeans from the Aegyptica of

Hecataeus of Abdera. The excerpt relates that “in ancient times,” a plague roused native

Egyptians to expel foreigners (xenoi). Among those expelled were a group who formed a

“colony” (apoikia) in the “utterly uninhabited” region of Judea and were led by Moses, a man

“outstanding both for his wisdom and his courage.” Moses founded Jerusalem, set up the temple

there along with the priesthood, and established the laws and civic institutions. While the young

men of the Judeans were manly, steadfast, and able to endure hardships, the way of life that

Moses instituted was “misanthropic and hostile to foreigners” (apanthrōpos kai misoxenos). The

conclusion of the excerpt notes that the traditional way of life of the Judeans was disturbed under

the rule of the Persians and the Macedonians (Photius, Bibliotheca 244.380 = Stern no. 11). In

spite of the complicated history of the excerpt (Photius summarizing Diodorus summarizing

Hecataeus), scholars are in agreement that this material on Judeans accurately reflects the

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opinions of Hecataeus. The material fits well into usual generic conventions of the Greek

ethnographic tradition—describing the founder of a people and his establishment of their laws

and institutions as well as passing judgment on various customs of the people. This fragment

from Diodorus, however, constitutes only a portion of the writings about Judeans circulating

under the name of Hecataeus. Josephus attributes to Hecataeus a work entitled On the Judeans

(Peri Ioudaiōn) and quotes extensively from it in Against Apion (Ag. Ap. 1.183-205, 2.43 = Stern

nos. 12 -13). According to Josephus, Hecataeus lavishly praises Judeans’ fidelity to their laws as

well as the size of their population and the beauty of their region. Yet, doubts about the

authenticity of this work arose already in antiquity and continue today (Bar-Kochva, 1996). In

fact, some scholars now regard this material as the work of a Judean author (dubbed Pseudo-

Hecataeus), who likely wrote in the first century B.C.E. Others contend that On the Judeans is

an authentic product of Hecataeus edited by a Judean author, while still others maintain that it is

entirely the work of the actual Hecataeus (see Bar-Kochva, 1996 for bibliography). Whatever

the case may be, the lack of certainty should encourage caution in using Josephus’s excerpts

from On the Judeans as an example of Greek opinions about Judeans.

The Middle and Late Hellenistic Period

As Greek influence in the east continued to spread, Judeans continued to be of interest to

Greek ethnographers, and it is in the second century B.C.E. that we first begin to see some of the

descriptions of Judeans that would become common in the Roman era. Mnaseas of Patara, upon

whom Josephus says Apion relies for his description of Judeans worshipping a “golden head of a

pack-ass,” likely wrote in the early second century B.C.E. (Ag. Ap. 2.112-114 = Stern no. 28).

A visitor to Alexandria during the middle of the second century, Agatharhides of Cnidus briefly

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mentions Judeans. According to Josephus, Agatharhides describes Judeans as having a “custom

of abstaining from work every seventh day; on those occasions, they neither bear arms nor take

any agricultural operations in hand, nor engage in any other form of public service, but pray with

outstretched hands in the temples until the evening” (Ag. Ap. 1.209 = Stern 30a). Josephus also

notes that Agatharhides refers to Judean practices as “superstition” (desidaimonia), a term that

would become a popular designation for the practices of Judeans over the next three centuries

(Ant. 12.5-6 = Stern no. 30b).

This was also a time period when non-Judeans began to show an interest in the figure of

Solomon. Josephus mentions two writers of this period, Menander of Ephesus and Dius, who

briefly refer to Solomon in connection with Phonecian history. They describe Solomon as the

king or ruler of Jerusalem and find him noteworthy because he issued “problems” (problēmata)

or “riddles” (ainigmata) that a Phonecian was able to solve (Ag. Ap. 1.112-120 = Stern nos. 35

and 36). By the beginning of the first century B.C.E., Judeans begin to turn up in the poetry of

Greek authors, as attested by two lines of a poem of Meleager of Gadara that seem to describe a

Judean: “If love for a sabbath-keeper (sabbatikos pothos) grips you, it is no surprise; Eros burns

hot even on cold sabbaths (sabbasi)” (Greek Anthology 5.160 = Stern no. 43). Along with

sabbath observance, the perception that Judeans disliked association with other peoples also

became a common trope in this time. Josephus claims that Apollonius Molon (one of Cicero’s

teachers in Rhodes) describes Judeans as “atheists and misanthropes (atheous kai

misanthrōpous)” (Ag. Ap. 2.148 = Stern no. 49). Apollonius further says that Judeans “do not

welcome people with other preconceived opinions about god” and that Judeans show “no desire

to associate with those who have chosen to adopt a different way of life” (Ag. Ap. 2.258 = Stern

no. 50). Eusebius also preserves some of Apollonius’s statements about Judeans in the form of a

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garbled account of Judean origins that seems to be dependent upon stories of the patriarchs in

Genesis (Praep. Ev. 9.19.1-3 = Stern no. 46). Finally, Josephus’s treatment of Apollonius may

also provide a clue to Josephus modus operandi for assessing Greek authors in Against Apion.

While Apollonius is one of the authors that Josephus depicts as staunchly anti-Judean, there is

nothing in the material preserved in Eusebius that is explicitly anti-Judean, and Josephus himself

states that Apollonius “has not grouped his accusations together, but scattered them here and

there over his work” (Ag. Ap. 2.148 = Stern no. 49). If this is Josephus’ usual practice, we

should be even more cautious in relying upon Josephus’ judgments about Greek writers in

Against Apion.

The Roman Period

Around the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey the Great in 63 B.C.E., there

appears to have been a surge in the production of literature about Judea and Judeans. In addition

to the Judean History of Teucer of Cyzicus, which was written at about this time, Eusebius

informs us that Alexander Polyhistor also composed a work entitled Peri Ioudaiōn, or On the

Judeans. (Praep. Ev. 9.17-39 = Stern no. 51a). It is difficult to discern the exact contents of

Alexander’s On the Judeans, but it is clear that he relied on a number of Judean and non-Judean

authors in composing the work. In the excerpt from Eusebius, Alexander refers to and in fact

preserves portions of writings about Judeans from several authors, including Eupolemus,

Artapanus, Ezekiel the Tragedian, Timochares, and Apollonius Molon. Clement of Alexandria

says that Alexander’s On the Judeans also contained “letters of Solomon (tinas epistolas

solomōnos)” (Stromata I, 21.130.3 = Stern no. 51b).

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Of the authors preserved in Alexnder Polyhistor, Artapanus deserves some special

attention. Although scholars have since the nineteenth century almost universally identified

Artapanus as Judean, it is at least possible that he was not Judean (Jacobsen 2006). Since no

ancient author gives any indication that Artapanus was Judean, this determination must be made

on the basis of the contents of the fragments of Artapanus that Alexander Polyhistor (by way of

Eusebius) preserves. Attributed to Artapanus are two works (or, perhaps more likely, one work

given two different names): the Judean History and On the Judeans (Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 9:18-

27). These works contain stories that are clearly based on tales from the Pentateuch but include

such embellishments as the claim that Moses established Egyptian cultic rites, including the

worship of cats and dogs (Eusebius, Preap. Ev. 9.27). Whether or not such claims could be

made by a Judean depends on the flexibility of one’s notions of Judean identity. It is at least

worth noting, though, that neither the titles of the works attributed to Artapanus nor the apparent

contents of these works seem out of place in the non-Judean Greek ethnographic tradition.

By way of returning to that tradition, the name Diodorus of Siculus has already come up

in connection with Hecataeus of Abdera, but Diodorus also preserves material about Judeans

from sources other than Hecataeus. Diodorus claims that Judeans inherited the custom of

circumcising male children from the Egyptians (Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica 1.28.1-3 =

Stern no. 55) and connects Moyses and his laws to a god called Iao (Bibliotheca Historica 1.94.2

= Stern no. 58), a name by which the Judean god would frequently be invoked in Greek magical

spells throughout antiquity. In another portion of the Bibliotheca that only survives in the work

of Photius, Diodorus gives a second account of the origin of the Judean nation that diverges

somewhat from the story attributed to Hecataeus. In a digression from his description of the sack

of Jerusalem by Antiochus IV, Diodorus mentions that the ancestors of the Judeans were driven

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from Egypt because they had a skin disease. The Judeans then took up residence in Jerusalem

and its environs and “made their hatred of people (to misos to pros tous anthrōpous) into a

tradition” and “introduced outlandish laws: not to break bread with any other race, nor to show

them any good will at all” (Photius, Bibliotheca 244.379 = Stern no. 63). This same passage of

Diodorus also recounts Antiochus IV’s discovery of “a marble statue of a bearded man with a

scroll seated on an ass” in the temple in Jerusalem. Antiochus thought this figure was Moses,

“the founder of Jerusalem and the organizer of the nation” (ho ktisas ta Hierosoluma kai

sustēsamenos to ethnos). Diodorus also seems to have been aware of the more recent history of

the Judeans. He tells a story of a delegation of Judeans that met Pompey to complain about

Hasmonean usurpation of both the priesthood and kingship of the Judeans, claiming that “it was

by means of a horde of mercenaries, and by outrages and countless impious murders that they

had established themselves as kings” (Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica, 40.2, summarized in the

writings of the tenth-century scholar, Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De sententiis 404.20 =

Stern no. 64).

A similar description of the Hasmoneans as local thugs appears in the writings of Strabo

of Amaseia, who composed works of history and geography in the age of Augustus. The

historical Hypomnemata survives only in a few stray fragments, mostly contained in Josephus’

Antiquities (Books 13-15). The Geographica, however, has reached us in nearly complete form

and preserves a number of interesting perceptions of Judeans. In the course of a description of

the region of Syria, Strabo turns to the history of the Judean people (Geographica 16.2.34-36 =

Stern no. 115). He notes that the ancestors of the Judeans are Egyptians. He relates that an

Egyptian priest named Moses led away “thoughtful men” to Judea by advocating the worship of

a single deity that “encompasses us all and encompasses land and sea—the thing which we call

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heaven, or universe, or the nature of all that exists.” Strabo writes that while some of Moses’

successors were “good and pious,” at a later point “superstitious men were appointed to the

priesthood.” From these men “arose the bands of robbers; for some revolted and harassed the

country, both their own country and that of their neighbors, whereas others, co-operating with

the rulers, seized the property of others and subdued much of Syria and Phoenicia.” After

interspersing various geographic observations about Judea and its surroundings, Strabo returns to

narrating Pompey’s overthrow of the Hasmoneans and the quick rise to power of Herod the

Great.

In the course of this historical account, Strabo does also mention what he regards as

typical Judean customs. In this passage, he points out that it was the Judeans’ superstition that

led to some of their characteristic practices, such as “abstinence from flesh, from which it is their

custom to abstain even today, and circumcisions and excisions.” By the latter term, “excisions”

(ektomai), Strabo seems to mean some manner of female genital mutilation, as other passing

references make clear: When he discusses a people called the Creophagi, he notes that “the

males have their sexual glands mutilated (koloboi tas balanous)” and “the women are excised in

the Judean way (Ioudaïkōs ektetmēmenai)” (Geographica 16.4.9 = Stern no. 118). To my

knowledge this is the only ancient reference to such a practice among Judeans.

One of the great misfortunes in the transmission of ancient manuscripts to the present day

is the nearly total loss of the writings of Nicolaus of Damascus. Nicolaus was a member of the

entourage of Herod the Great around 15 B.C.E. and a prolific writer and scholar, producing a

massive work of history in 144 books. According to Josephus, he also may have written a book

dedicated solely to Judeans. Josephus says that in the fourth book of his Histories, Nicolaus

writes about one “Abrames” who came from the “land of the Chaldees” and reigned in

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Damascus. “But, not long after, he left this country also with his people for the land then called

Canaan but now Judea, where he settled, he and his numerous descendants, whose history I shall

recount in another book.” (Ant. 1.159-160 = Stern no. 83). It is unknown whether or not this

book was ever written. In any event, it does not survive, which is truly lamentable. A first-hand

account of a non-Judean who served in the court of Herod the Great would have provided us

with an ideal supplement and counterbalance to the material that Josephus presents in Against

Apion.

And indeed, it is appropriate to discuss Apion himself at this point since he belongs to the

group of Greek authors writing about Judeans in roughly this time period. Apion was a

grammarian active in Alexandria in the first half of the first century C.E. Josephus informs us

that Apion was the delegate of the Greek Alexandrians’ embassy to the emperor Gaius in the

dispute that broke out between Greeks and Judeans in Alexandria (Ant. 18.257). Like several

ethnographers already mentioned, Apion composed a history of Egypt that seems to have

contained some extensive references to Judean history, and Josephus presents some of this

material in Against Apion. Clement of Alexandria, a Christian author of the second century C.E.

attributes to Apion a separate book, Against the Judeans (Stromata 1.21.101 = Stern no.163b),

but scholars for the most part regard this as a mistaken reference to the third and/or fourth book

of Apion’s history of Egypt.

Most of what survives of Apion’s work is embedded in Josephus’s polemic in Against

Apion, and Josephus’s indignation with Apion as a slanderer of Judeans is everywhere apparent.

Yet, if Josephus himself is a reliable guide, there seems to be some variety in the contents of

Apion’s writings about Judeans. Some of the fragments Josephus relates are basically objective

observations. For example, Apion writes that Judeans “are not masters of an empire, but rather

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slaves, first of one nation, then of another, and that calamity has more than once befallen

[Jerusalem]” (Ag. Ap. 2.125 = Stern no. 174). Other fragments of Apion’s work read like stock

ethnic libels, as when Josephus records that Apion “denounces us for sacrificing domestic

animals and for not eating pork, and he derides the practice of circumcision” (Ag. Ap. 2.137 =

Stern no. 176). Still other sections relate to specific historical circumstances such as the question

of Judean rights in Alexandria. According to Josephus, Apion asks, “Why, then, if [Judeans] are

citizens, do they not worship the same gods as the Alexandrians?” (Ag. Ap. 2.65-73 = Stern no.

169). Only a relatively small portion of the fragments Josephus preserves are the kind of

unbelievable allegations worthy of Josephus’s rebuke. These would include the accusation that

Judeans celebrated an annual festival in which they would “kidnap a Greek foreigner, fatten him

up for a year, and then convey him to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with

their customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and, while immolating the Greek, swore an oath of

hostility to the Greeks” (Ag. Ap. 2.94-96 = Stern no. 171]). Aside from the absence of at least

one or two positive observations about Judeans (an absence which may well be due to Josephus’s

selective quotation), there appears to be little in Apion’s writings about Judeans that does not

match the usual content of the Greek ethnographic tradition.

We have now nearly reached the age of Josephus, and in this era (the second half of the

first century C.E.), it is Latin writers rather than Greek writers that provide the bulk of the

surviving commentary on Judeans. The next Greek author to mention Judeans in any detail is

the Stoic teacher Epictetus. His lectures, which were either recorded or summarized by his pupil

Arrian, are thought to have taken place in Nicopolis in Greece in the first quarter of the first

century C.E. In these lectures, Epictetus twice contrasts Judean dietary habits to those of Syrians,

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Egyptians, and Romans (Dissertations 1.11.12-13 and 1.22.4 = Stern nos. 252 and 253).

Epictetus’s other statement about Judeans is especially interesting:

Why, then do you call yourself a Stoic, why do you deceive the multitude, why do you

act the part of a Judean, when you are a Greek? Do you not how each person is called a

Judean, a Syrian, or an Egyptian? And when we see someone vacillating, we are

accustomed to say, “He is not a Judean, but he is just pretending.” But when he takes up

the state of mind of one who has been baptized and made a choice, then he is a Judean in

both reality and name. So also we are falsely baptized, Judeans in word, but in deed

something else, not in harmony with reason, far from applying the principles we profess,

yet priding ourselves for being people who know them (Dissertations 2.9.19-21 = Stern

no. 254).

Here again Epictetus places Judeans as one of several ethnic groups with unique practices, but he

also seems to characterize Judeans as a kind of philosophical school comparable to the Stoics.

The portion of the passage referring to baptism may well be early evidence for the practice of

baptism as an initiation rite for Judeans, but the possibility remains open that Epictetus is here

referring to people that some modern scholars might describe as Christians.

One final author from the early second century merits our attention, Plutarch of

Chaeronea (ca. 50-120 C.E.). Judeans play minor roles in the some of Plutarch’s biographical

sketches of famous figures, the Lives. More extended treatments of Judeans occur in Plutarch’s

so-called moral writings. In his discussion of worship practices that are excessive or wrong-

headed (desidaimonia), Plutarch includes in his list “sabbath keeping (sabbatismos)” (On

Superstition 8 = Stern no. 255). Among the examples of dinnertime conversations recorded in

Plutarch’s Quaestiones convivales (Table Talk) are two discussions relating specifically to

Judeans (Table Talk 4.4.4-4.6.2 = Stern no. 258). The first revolves around the question of

whether Judeans abstain from pork out of reverence for or aversion to pigs. One participant

argues that Judeans considered the pig sacred because “it was the first to cut the soil with its

projecting snout, thus producing a furrow and teaching man the function of a ploughshare.” The

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counterargument is that Judeans did not eat pigs because they feared contracting a skin disease

from them. The second question “Who is the god of the Judeans?” (tis ho gar Ioudaiois theos),

leads to an extended discussion of the affinities between Judean worship and the worship of

Dionysus. An Athenian adherent of Dionysus dominates the conversation by pointing out

parallels between several Judean customs (the feast of Tabernacles, sabbath practices, musical

Levites, and the garments of the high priest) and Dionysiac practices.

Conclusion and Postscript on Christian Greek Writers on Judeans

On the whole, the Greek authors surveyed here show an interest in Judeans that is

consonant with interest shown to other ethnic groups in antiquity. Some of the descriptive

elements surveyed here may be no more than rhetorical tropes (such as tales of exotic peoples

who practice human sacrifice), and we should certainly expect that descriptions of Judeans and

opinions about them would vary widely in different time periods and in different regions in the

Greek and Roman worlds. For example, many non-Judeans living in Alexandria in the early

Roman era seem to have been especially hostile to Judeans (see Collins, 2005). In spite of the

impression of a widespread and deep animosity toward Judeans left by some of Josephus’s

comments in Against Apion, it seems that in the eyes of historians and ethnographers writing in

Greek, Judeans were simply another ethnic group with some curious characteristic practices,

some worthy of praise, others worthy of censure.

Finally, it would be remiss to conclude without briefly discussing Greek literature about

Judeans written by Christians, if for no other reason than the fact that Christians were responsible

for the selection and preservation of nearly all the references to Judeans in Greek literature that

we possess (since even the extant manuscripts of Josephus come down to us through Christian

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scribes). Also, it is in the works of Christian writers that Ioudaismos becomes a much more

commonly used term. While the word Ioudaismos is first found in writers who claim a Judean

heritage (2 Maccabees 2:21, 8:1. 14:38, 4 Maccabees 4:26, and Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians

1:13-14), it comes into more regular use among Christian authors writing in Greek starting in the

second century. A good example is Ignatius, a bishop of Antioch active in the early second

century who uses the term Ioudaismos on two occasions, each time in direct contrast to the term

Christianismos (Epistle to the Magnesians 10:3 and Epistle to the Philadelphians 6:1; see also

Mason 2007). Later Christian authors would invoke Judeans and Ioudaismos specifically for the

purpose of drawing points of comparison with characteristics of newly emerging Christian

groups in an effort to construe Judeans and “Judaism” as a precursor to (and negative foil for) the

newly emerging Christian movements (Boyarin 2001 and Mason 2007). This Christian set of

interests in Judeans would come to dominate later portrayals of Judeans written in Greek.

Bibliography. Barclay, J.M.G. 2007, Flavius Josephus: Against Apion, Leiden: Brill. Bar-

Kochva, B. 1996, Pseudo-Hecataeus, ‘On the Jews’: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora,

Berkeley: University of California Press. Boyarin, D. 2001, “Justin Martyr Invents Judaism,”

Church History 70:427-61. Collins, J.J. 2000, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 2nd

ed., Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans. Collins, J.J. 2005, “Anti-Semitism in Antiquity? The Case of Alexandria,”

in Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context, Leiden, Brill. Feldman, L.H. 1993, Jew and

Gentile in the Ancient World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goodman, M. 1994,

“Josephus as Roman Citizen,” in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period, Leiden:

Brill. Gruen, E.S. 1998, “The Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story,” Jewish History 12:93-122.

Jacobsen, H. 2006, “Artapanus Judaeus,” Journal of Jewish Studies 57:210-221. Mason, S.

2007, “Jews, Judeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ

38 (2007): 457-512. Stern, M. 1974-84, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism,

Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

See also: LATIN WRITERS ON JEWS AND JUDAISM

Brent Nongbri

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