Antisemitism

This revisionist reading of early anti-judaism offers a richer and more variegated picture than ever before of the Jews and Christians of antiquity.

Aiming to take a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about the Jews, this book firmly locates the origins of anti-semitism in the ancient world. Hellenistic Egypt is established as the generating source, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic past. A pattern of ingrained hostility to an alien culture emerges from Greek and Roman writing, when a whole spectrum of comments on Jews and their religion are surveyed. The writings focus on the topics most interesting to the pagan classical world: the Exodus, or expulsion from Egypt as they interpreted it, the nature of the Jewish god, food restrictions, laws relating to the sabbath, and so on.

No one would disagree with the assessment that Christians, over the centuries, have been guilty of antisemitism, sometimes with barbarous results. The real question is not whether individual Christians have been antisemites, but whether antisemitism is somehow ingrained in the very roots of Christianity, in its very essence.

Discusses social, economic, and political aspects of antisemitism in the ancient (Greco-Roman) world, based extensively on the writings of Josephus Flavius and Philo