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AAARGHin English -- AAARGHen francais Preceding-- Following
by Bernard LAZARE Chapter Two ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY
MODERN antisemites who are in quest of sires forthemselves, unhesitatingly trace the first demonstrations against the Jewsback to the days of ancient Egypt. For that purpose they are particularlypleased to refer to Genesis, xliii, 32, where it is said: "The Egyptiansmight not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that it is an abomination untothe Egyptians." They also rely upon a few verses of the Exodus, amongthem the following: "Behold, the people of the children of Israel aremore and mightier than we; come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest theymultiply." (Exodus, i, 9, 10.) It is certain that the sons of Jacob who came tothe land of Goshen under the Shepherd Pharaoh Aphobis, were treated by theEgyptians with the same contempt as their brothers, the Hyksos, referredto in hieroglyphic texts as lepers, called also "plague"and "pest" in some inscriptions.15 They arrived at that very epochwhen a very strong national sentiment manifested itself against the Asiaticinvaders, hated for their cruelty; this sentiment soon led to the war ofindependence, which resulted in the final victory of Ahmos I., and the enslavementof the Hebrews. However, unless one is a violent anti-Jew, it is impossibleto perceive in those remote disturbances anything beyond a mere incidentin a struggle between conquerors and conquered. There is no antisemitism until the Jews, havingabandoned their native land, settle as immigrants in foreign countries andcome into contact with natives or older settlers, whose customs, race andreligion are different from those of the Hebrews. Accordingly, the history of Haman and Mordecaimay be taken as the beginning of antisemitism, and the antisemites havenot failed so to do. This view is, perhaps, more correct. Though the historicalreality of the book of Esther can scarcely be relied upon, still it is worthyof note that its author puts into the mouth of Haman some of the complaints,which, at a later period, are uttered by Tacitus and other Latin writers."And Haman said unto the[20] king, Ahasuerus: there is a certain peoplescattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces ofthy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep theythe king's laws." (Esther, iii, 8.) The pamphleteers of the middle ages, of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, and of our own time, say nothing else; and ifthe history of Haman is apocryphal, which is highly probable, still it cannotbe denied that the author of the Book of Esther has very ably brought outsome of the causes, which for many centuries exposed the Jews to the hatredof nations. Yet we must go to the period of Jewish expansionabroad, to be enabled to observe with certainty that hostility against them,which by a peculiar misuse of terms has in our days been called antisemitism. Some traditions refer the entrance of the Jewsinto the ancient world to the epoch of the first captivity. While Nabu-Kudur-Ussur led away to Babylonia a portion of the Jewish people, many ofthe Israelites, to escape from the conqueror, fled to Egypt, to Tripoli,and reached the Greek colonies. Tradition brings back to the same periodthe arrival of the Jews in China and India. Historically, however, the wanderings of the Jewsacross the globe commence in the fourth century before our era. About 331B.C. Alexander transported some Jews to Alexandria, Ptolemy sent some ofthem to Cyrenaica, and about the same time Seleucus led some of them toAntioch. When Jesus was born Jewish colonies flourished everywhere, andit was among them that Christianity recruited its first adherents. Therewere Jews in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Syria, in Coele-Syria, in Pamphylia,in Cilicia, and as far as Bithynia. In Europe they had settled in Thessalia,Boeotia, Macedonia, Attica and Peloponnesus. They were to be found in theGreat Isles, on Euboea, on Crete, on Cyprus, and at Rome. "It is noteasy to find a place on earth," says Strabo, "which has not receivedthat race." Why were the Jews hated in all those countries,in all those cities? Because they never entered any city as citizens, butalways as a privileged class. Though having left Palestine, they wantedabove all to remain Jews, and their native country was still Jerusalem,i.e., the only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices offeredin His Temple. They formed everywhere republics, as it were, united withJudea and Jerusalem, and from every place they[21] remitted monies to thehigh priest in payment of a special tax for the maintenance of the Templethedidrachm. Moreover, they separated themselves from otherinhabitants by their rites and their customs; they considered the soil offoreign nations impure and sought to constitute themselves in every cityinto a sort of a sacred territory. They lived apart, in special quarters,secluded among themselves, isolated, governing themselves by virtue of privilegeswhich were jealously guarded by them, and excited the envy of their neighbours.They intermarried amongst themselves and en tertained no strangers, forfear of pollution. The mystery with which they surrounded themselves excitedcuriosity as well as aversion. Their rites appeared strange and gave occasionfor ridicule; being unknown, they were misrepresented and slandered. At Alexandria they were quite numerous. Accordingto Philo,16 Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two were inhabited bythe Jews. The privileges accorded to them by Caesar were engraved on a columnand guarded by them as a precious treasure. They had their own Senate withexclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and they were judged by an ethnarch.They were ship-owners, traders, farmers, most of them wealthy; the sumptuousnessof their monuments and synagogues bore witness to it. The Ptolemies madethem farmers of the revenues; this was one of the causes of popular hatredagainst them. Besides, they had a monopoly of navigation on the Nile, ofthe grain trade and of provisioning Alexandria, and they extended theirtrade to all the provinces along the Mediterranean coast. They accumulatedgreat fortunes; this gave rise to the invidia auri Judaici. The growingresentment against these foreign cornerers, constituting a nation withina nation, led to popular disturbances; the Jews were frequently assaulted,and Germanicu, among others, had great trouble protecting them. The Egyptians took revenge upon them by deridingtheir religious customs, their abhorrence of pork. They once paraded inthe city a fool, Carabas by name, adorned with a papyrus diadem, deckedin a royal gown, and they saluted him as king of the Jews. Under Philadelphus,one of the first Ptolemies, Manetho, the high-priest of the Temple at Heliopolis,lent his authority to the popular hatred; he considered the Jews descendantsof the Hyksos usurpers, and said that that leprous tribe had been expelledfor sacrilege and impiousness. Those fables were repeated by Chaeremon andLysimachus. It was not only popular animosity, however, that[22] persecutedthe Jews; they had also against them the Stoics and the Sophists. The Jews,by their proselytism, interfered with the Stoics; there was a rivalry forinfluence between them, and, notwithstanding their common belief in divineunity, there was opposition between them. The Stoics charged the Jews withirreligiousness, judging by the sayings of Posidonius and Apollonius Molo;they had a very scant knowledge of the Jewish religion. The Jews, they said,refuse to worship the gods; they do not consent to bow even before the divinityof the emperor. They have in their sanctuary the head of an ass and renderhomage to it; they are cannibals; every year they fatten a man and sacrificehim in a grove, after which they divide among themselves his flesh and swearon it to hate strangers. "The Jews, says Apollonius Molo, are enemiesof all mankind; they have invented nothing useful, and they are brutal."To this Posidonius adds: "They are the worst of all men." Not less than the Stoics did the Sophists detestthe Jews. But the causes of their hatred were not religious, but, I shouldsay, rather literary. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, until the middle of thethird century, the Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and strengtheningtheir propaganda, gave themselves to forging all texts which were capableof lending support to their cause. The verses of Aeschylus, of Sophocles,of Euripides, the pretended oracles of Orpheus, preserved in Aristobulusand the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria were thus made to glorifythe one God and the Sabbath. Historians were falsified or credited withthe authorship of books they had never written. It is thus that a Historyof the Jews was published under the name of Hecataeus of Abdera. The mostimportant of these inventions was the Sibylline oracles, a fabrication ofthe Alexandrian Jews, which prophesied the future advent of the reign ofthe one God. They found imitators, however, for since the Sibyl had begunto speak, in the second century before Christ, the first Christians alsomade her speak. The Jews would appropriate to themselves even the Greekliterature and philosophy. In a commentary on the Pentateuch, which hasbeen preserved for us by Eusebius,l7 Aristobulus attempted to show thatPlato and Aristotle had found their metaphysical and ethical ideas in anold Greek translation of the Pentateuch. The Greeks were greatly incensedat such treatment of their literature and philosophy, and out of revengethey circulated the slanderous stories of Manetho, adapting them to thoseof the Bible, to the great fury of the Jews; thus the con- [23]fusion oflanguages was identified with the myth of Zeus robbing the animals of theircommon language. The Sophists, wounded by the conduct of the Jews, wouldspeak against them in their teaching. One among them, Apion, wrote a Treatiseagainst the Jews. This Apion was a peculiar individual, a liar and babbler,to a degree uncommon even among rhetors, and full of vanity, which earnedhim from Tiberius the nickname "Cymbalum mundi." His storieswere famous; he claimed to have called out, by means of magic herbs, theshade of Homer, says Pliny. Apion repeated in his Treatise against the Jewsthe stories of Manetho, which had been previously restated by Chaeremonand Lysimachus, and supplemented them by quoting from Posidonius and ApolloniusMolo. According to him, Moses was "nothing but a seducer and wizard,"and his laws contained "nothing but what is bad and dangerous."18 As to the Sabbath, the name was derived, he said,from a disease, a sort of an ulcer, with which the Jews were afflicted,and which the Egyptians called sabbatosim, i.e., disease of the groins. Philo and Josephus undertook the defence of theJews and fought the Sophists and Apion. In Contra Apionem, Josephusis very severe on his adversary. "Apion," says he, "is asstupid as an ass and as imprudent as a dog, which is one of the gods ofhis nation." Philo, on the other hand, prefers to attack the Sophistsin general, and if he mentions Apion at all, in his Legatio ad Caium,it is merely because Apion was sent to Rome to prefer charges againstthe Jews before Caligula. In his Treatise on Agriculture he drawsa very black picture of the Sophists, and insinuates that Moses has comparedthem to hogs. Nevertheless, in his other writings, he advises his co-religionistsnot to irritate them, so as to avoid all provocation to disturbances, butto await patiently their chastisement, which will come on the day the JewishEmpire, the empire of salvation, will be established on earth. Philo's injunctions were not heeded; the exasperationon both sides often led to violent riots and massacres of Jews; the latter,however, valiantly defended themselves.19 At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colonyas early as the first year of the Christian era. If Valerius Maximus maybe trusted they first came to the city about 139 B.C., during the consulateof Popilius Loenus and Cajas Calpwinius.20[24] Certain it is that, in 160 B.C., an embassy fromJudas Maccabee arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance with the Republicagainst the Syrians; other embassies followed, in 143 and 139.21 The settlement of the Jews at Rome probably datesfrom that time. Under Pompey they came in numbers, and as early as 58 B.C.,they had quite a settlement. Turbulent and formidable, they were an importantfactor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their support during the civilwars and lavished favours upon them; he even granted them exemption frommilitary service. Under Augustus the distribution of free bread was postponedfor them whenever it fell due on Saturday. The Emperor gave them permissionto collect the didrachm which was sent to Palestine, and he ordered thesacrifice of one or two lambs to be offered in his behalf at the Templeof Jerusalem for all time to come. When Tiberius became emperor, there wereat Rome 20,000 Jews, who were organized in colleges and sodalitates. Except the Jews of prominent families, like theHerods and the Agrippas, who mixed in public life, the Jewish masses livedin retirement. The majority resided in the dirtiest and busiest quarterof the city, the Transtiberinus. They were to be seen near the Via Portuensis,the Emporium and the Great Circus, in the Campus Martius, and in Suburra,beyond the Capenian Gate, on the banks of the Egerian Creek, and near thesacred grove. They were engaged in retail trade and the sale of second-handgoods; those at the Capenian Gate were fortune tellers. The Jew of the Ghettois already there. At Rome the same causes were at work as at Alexandria.There, also, the excessive privileges of the Jews, the wealth of some ofthem, as well as their unheard-of luxury and ostentation, excited popularhatred. This resentment was aggravated by deeper and more important reasonsof a religious character; it may even be maintained, strange as it may seem,that the motive of Roman anti-Judaism was religious. The Roman religion resembled in nothing the admirableand profoundly symbolic polytheism of the Greeks. It was ritual rather thanmythical; it consisted of customs closely connected with the doings of everydaylife, as well as with all sorts of public acts. Rome was one body with itsgods; its greatness was bound, as it were, with the rigorous observanceof the practices of their national religion; its glory depended upon thepiety of its citizens, and it[25] seems that the Roman must have had, likethe Jew, that notion of a covenant between the deities and himself, whichwas to be scrupulously lived up to by both parties. Somehow or other, theRoman was always in the presence of his gods; he left his hearth, wherethey abode, only to find them again in the Forum, on the public highways,in the Senate, even in the fields, where they kept watch over the powerof Rome. At all times and on all occasions sacrifices were offered; thewarriors and the diplomats were guided by auguries, and all authority, civilas well as military, partook of the priesthood, for the officer could notperform his duties unless he knew the rites and observances of the cult. It was this cult that for centuries sustained theRepublic, and its commandments were faithfully obeyed; when they were changed,when the traditions became adulterated, when the rules were violated, Romesaw its glory fade, and its agony commenced. Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for along time without change. True, Rome was familiar with foreign cults; shesaw the worshipers of Isis and Osiris, those of the great Mother and thoseof Sabazius; still, though admitting them into her Pantheon, she gave themno place in her national religion. All these Orientals were tolerated; thecitizens were allowed to practice their superstitions, provided they wereharmless; but when Rome perceived that a new faith was subversive of theRoman spirit, she was pitiless, as in the case of the conspiracy of theBacchantes, or the expulsion of Egyptian priests. Rome guarded herself againstthe foreign spirit; she feared affiliation with religious societies; shewas afraid even of Greek philosophers, and the Senate, in 161, upon thereport of the praetor Marcus Pomponius, barred them from entering the city. From this, one may understand the feeling of theRomans toward the Jews, Greeks, Asiatics, Egyptians, Germans, or Gauls,while bringing with them their rites and beliefs, made no objection to bowingbefore Mars of the Palatine, or even before Jupiter Latiaris. They conformedwithin certain limits, to the rules of the city, to its religious customs;at all events, they showed no opposition. Not so the Jews. They broughtwith them a religion as rigid, as ritualistic, as intolerant, as the Romanreligion. Their worship of Yahweh excluded all other worship; thus theyshocked their fellow citizens by refusing to swear to the eagles, whereasthe eagle was the deity of the legion. As their religious faith was blendedwith the observance of certain social laws, the adoption of this faith waspregnant[26] with a change of the social order. Therefore the Romans wereworried by its establishment in their midst, for the Jews were eager tomake proselytes. The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested byall the historians, and Philo justly says: "Our customs win over andconvert the barbarians and the Hellenes, the continent and the isles, theOrient and the Occident, Europe and Asia, the whole world, from end to end." The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeplyattracted by Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its morals; manyof the poor people were attracted by the privileges accorded to the Jews.These proselytes were divided into two great classes: those who acceptedthe circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish community, thus becomingstrangers to their families, and those who, without complying with the requisitesfor admission to the community, nevertheless gathered around it. These conversions, generally by suasion and attimes by force, as when the rich Jews converted their slaves, were boundto create a reaction. It was this chief cause, together with the secondarycauses previously referred to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their politicalinfluence, their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic demonstrationsat Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek writers from Cicero on bear witnessto this state of mind. Cicero, who was a disciple of Apollonius Molo,inherited his teacher's prejudices; he found the Jews in his way: they werewith the popular party against the party of the Senate, to which he belonged.He feared them, and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, thathe hardly dared to speak of them, so numerous were they around him and inthe public place. Nevertheless, one day he burst forth. "Their barbaroussuperstitions must be fought," says he; he accuses them of being anation "given to suspicion and slander," and proceeds by sayingthat they "show contempt for the splendour of the Roman power,"22They were to be feared, according to himthose men who, detaching themselvesfrom Rome, turned their eyes towards the far away city, that Jerusalem,and supported it by denaries which they drew from the Republic. Moreover,he reproached them for winning citizens over to the Sabbatarian rites. It is this last charge that recurs most frequentlyin the writings of the polemists, the poets and the historians. The Jewishreligion,[27] which charmed those who had penetrated its essence, was repulsiveto others who had a scant knowledge of it and regarded it as a heap of absurdand dismal rites. The Jews are nothing but a superstitious nation, saysPersius ;23 their Sabbath is a lugubrious day, adds Ovid;24 they worshipthe hog and the ass, affirms Petronius.25 Tacitus, well informed as he is, repeats, withregard to Judaism, the fables of Manetho and Posidonius. The Jews, sayshe, are descended from lepers, they honour the head of an ass, they haveinfamous rites. He further specifies his charges, which, one would say,are those of modern French Nationalists: "All those who embrace theirfaith," says he, "undergo circumcision, and the first instructionthey receive is to despise the gods, to forswear their country, to forgetfather, mother and children." And he warms up by saying: "TheJews consider as profane all that is held sacred with us."26 Suetoniusand Juvenal repeat the same thing; the principal charge reads: "Theyhave a particular cult and particular laws; they despise the Roman laws."27This is likewise the complaint of Pliny: "They despise the gods."28 Seneca has the same grudge, still with the philosopherother motives supervene. There was a rivalry between Seneca, the Stoic,and the Jews, the same as there had been between the Stoics and the Jewsat Alexandria. He quarreled less with their contempt of the gods than withtheir proselytism which thwarted the spread of the doctrine of the Stoics.He thus gives expression to his displeasure: "The Romans," sayshe regretfully, "have adopted the Sabbath."29 And, further speakingof the Jews, he says in conclusion: "This abominable nation has succeededin spreading its usages throughout the whole world; the conquered have giventheir laws to the conquerors."30 Seneca's view was in accord with theattitude of both the Republic and the Empire, by which measures were adoptedfrom time to time to check Jewish proselytism. Under Tiberius, in the year22, a senatus-consult was directed against the Egyptian and Judaic superstitionsand four thousand Jews, says Tacitus, were deported to Sardinia. Caligulasubjected them to vexatious persecution; he encouraged the doings of Flaccusin Egypt, and Flaccus, sustained by the Emperor, robbed the Jews of theprivileges granted to them by Caesar; he took away from them their synagogueand directed that they might be treated as in habitants of a captured city.Domitian imposed a special tax upon Jews and those who led a Judaic life,hoping by the levy of the tax[28] to stop conversions, and Antoninus Piusprohibited the Jews from circumcising other than their sons. Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at Romeand Alexandria, but wherever there were Jews: at Antioch, where great massacresoccurred; in Lybia, where, under Vespasian, the governor Catullus stirredup the populace against them; in Ionia, where, under Augustus, the Greekcities, by an understanding among themselves, forced the Jews either torenounce their faith or to bear the entire burden of public expenditures. Yet it is impossible to speak of the persecutionof the Jews without speaking of the persecution of the Christians. For along time Jews and Christians, these hostile brothers, were included inthe same contempt, and the same causes which made the Jews hateful madethe Christians hateful as well. The disciples of the Nazarene brought intothe ancient world the same deadly principles. If the Jews taught the peopleto leave their gods, to abandon husband, father, child and wife, and tocome to Jehovah, Jesus also said: "I have not come to unite, but toseparate." The Christians, like the Jews, refused to bow to the eagle;like the Jews they would not lie prostrate before idols. Like the Jews,the Christians knew another country than Rome; like the Jews, they wouldbe oblivious of their civic, rather than their religious duties. Thus, during the first years of the Christian era,the Synagogue and the ancient Church were despised alike. Simultaneouslywith the Jews "a certain chrestus''31 and his followers were drivenfrom Rome. Each side endeavoured to convince the people that it ought notto be mistaken for the other, and no sooner did Christianity make itselfheard than it rejected, in its turn, the descendants of Abraham. FOOTNOTES 15 Inscription of Aahmes, chief of the mariners,cited in Ledrain's Histoire du peuple d'Israel, I, p. 53. 16 In Flaccum. 17 Preparatio Evangelica. 18 Josephus, Contra Apionem, book II, ch.6. 19 Philo, In Flaccum. 20 Valerius Maximus, I, 3, 2. [185] 21 Maccab. viii., 11, 17-32- xii, 1-3; xiv,16-19, 24.-Josephus, Antiqu. Jud., xii, 110; xiii, 5, 7, 9 Mai; Script.vet., 111, part 3, p. 998. 22 Pro Flacco. 23 Sat., V. 24 Ars amatoria, I, 75, 76. 25 Fragm. poet. 26 Tac., Hist., v. 4, 5. 27 Juvenal, Sat., xiv, 96, 104. 28 Hist. nat., xii, 4. 29 Epistle xv. 30 De superstitione, fragm. xxxvi. 31 Suetonius, Claud., 25. Preceding -- Following You have downloaded this document at <http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/BLantisem2.html> This text is the second chapter of the English translation of L'Antisémitisme,son histoire et ses causes, by Bernard LAZARE (real name: Lazare BERNARD),first published in Paris in 1894, several times republished, lastly by thepublishing house La Vieille Taupe (= the Old Mole) in 1982, reprinted in1985, ISBN 2-903279-09-8. The book is still on sale and may be ordered fromthe publisher, BP 98, 75224 Paris cedex 05, France. We believe it costs80 F (around 15 US$) This republication triggered a controversy which isdocumented in a booklet later published by Les Editions de la Différence,Contre l'antisémitisme, Histoire d'une polémque, Paris,1983, 127 p. This material will be displayed with the French text of Lazare. The original French text will be soon available. Check at <http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/fran.html> WARNING An English translation, under the title Antisemitism,Ist History and Causes, appeared in London in 1967, by Britons PublishingCompany. No name is given for the translator. In fact, this is more an adaptationthan a proper translation. Paragraphs are quite often abridged and sometimesaltogether suppressed. Serious students should refer to the French originaltext. Nevertheless, as this book provides a glimpse into an epochal reflexionon antisemtism, we follow this text and do not interfere with the translationitself. A US edition was later done on this English publication: Universityof Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1995, 208 pages. pbk $10. We thank the Australian friend who lent us this rare anddeeply thought book. This text has been computerized, displayed on the Net,and forwarded to you as a tool for educational purpose, further research,on a non commercial and fair use basis, by the International Secretariatof the Association des Anciens Amateurs de Récits de Guerre et d'Holocauste(AAARGH) in 1997. The E-mail of the Secretariat is <aaargh@abbc.com> Interested readers are kindly requested to consider buyingthe book from the publisher, which is handier to read as a book on paper.In order to survive, books must be produced and sold by publishers. We see the act of displaying a written document on Internetas the equivalent of displaying the said document on the shelves of a libraryopen to the public. It costs us a modicum of labor and money. The only benefitaccrues to the reader who, we surmise, thinks by himself. Be reminded of the US copyright law, Section 107: Section 107. 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