What Was Antisemitism Like in the Ancient World?
Writing about 100 A.D. in his Histories, the Roman historian Tacitus describes the origin of the Jews in Palestine. Tacitus was focused on the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the final act in Rome's war to end the Jewish revolt that had begun four years earlier. But he digresses to provide a brief history of the Jews.
Tacitus' description of the Jews is hostile. It's also unreliable, which is unusual for Tacitus. It's unreliable because Tacitus simply repeats what other sources say about the Jews, and these sources are unreliable because they have no first-hand knowledge. Tacitus places the Jewish population in Egypt (this is true), then writes that the King of Egypt expel them because they brought a plague of leprosy on Egypt. Led by Moses, the Jews wander aimlessly. Becoming incredibly thirsty, they follow a herd of asses to water with the result that the Jews decide to make an ass their god. The Jews continue their aimless wanderings for six days, stopping on the seventh day in a new land where they build a city and a temple.
Tacitus' description is of how the Jews made their way from Egypt to Palestine is uncomplimentary, but his overall description of the Jews is outright hostile. According to Tacitus, Jews don't eat pork because pigs have leprosy, Jews are lazy as they don't work one day out of seven, and Jews refuse to interact with non-Jews (gentiles).
Tacitus was not the first to express hostility towards Jews. Before Tacitus, several Egyptians disparaged the Jews. Among the earliest was Manetho, an Egyptian priest, whose writings are known only through others. Writing about 270 B.C., Manetho described the departure of the Jews from Egypt as an expulsion of lepers. According to Manetho, the Jewish leader, Moses, directed Jews to live apart from non-Jews. Jews, said Manetho, derided Egyptian customs – especially Egyptian religion – and had a general contempt for humans in general.
Early Greek writings expressed similar antisemitism, including those of Hecataeus, 3rd century B.C., Lysimachus, 1st century B.C., and Apion, late 1st century A.D. The Jewish historian Josephus was sufficiently concerned to write Against Apion as a way to refute these falsehoods. Josephus made four points: First, these early Greek writers used no actual sources, but fabricated their histories; Second, these Greek histories were filled with internal contradictions; Third, other Greeks wrote favorably about the Jews.; And fourth, other histories confirmed the Biblical history of the Jews.
The antisemitism expressed in these ancient writings was not limited to words. Jews had lived in Alexandria from the time Alexander the Great founded the city in 332 B.C. Over time, Jews came to make up as much as a quarter of the city's population. Jews occupied a section of the city and were allowed to practice their religion free of pagan interference. In 38 A.D., after Egypt had become part of the Roman empire, the Greek and Egyptian populations of Alexandria attacked the Jews. According to Philo, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, the non-Jews of Alexandria, supported by the Roman administration, attacked Jewish homes and businesses and then killed Jews of all ages and sexes in the thousands.
There was an element of truth, then, to the accusation that Jews lived apart from others. The influence of Greek culture that came with the conquests of Alexander the Great extended to the Jews, and many of them – especially the higher and educated classes – approved of Greek ideas. Greek games and sports, literature, and philosophy were common even in Judea. But the influence of Hellenistic culture was strenuously resisted by many Jews, especially the pharisees and the scribes who saw Hellenistic culture as an effort to replace Jewish religion and culture. To prevent this from happening, Jewish religious leaders, the rabbis, led opposition to gentiles and their culture. This opposition included refusing to have any association with non-Jews – rabbis argued against eating with gentiles, visiting gentile homes, and above all inter-marriage. Some rabbis even taught that gentiles were not fully human.
As a result, non-Jews became even more resentful of Jews. Cicero described the Jewish religion as a superstition. Seneca considered Jews to be criminals. The common theme, as expressed by Tacitus, was that the Jews hated the non-Jewish world.
In psychology, prejudice is identified as a universal human trait. All individuals can be identified by their membership in a particular group based on such traits as religion, ethnic origin, skin color, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, and financial status, to name the most common. An individual can be both a victim of prejudice and a perpetrator. As applied to antisemitism, in the world of Egypt, Palestine, and the Roman empire at the time, Jews were mostly the victim of prejudice – but they were occasionally perpetrators, too.
The source of antisemitism before the advent of Christianity is not hard to identify. Jews as a group were separated from non-Jews by religion, ethnic origin, and culture. Many Jews not only failed to assimilate, but they also actively refused assimilation. Those who wanted to assimilate failed in their effort. This resulted partly from an inability to change features that separated them from non-Jews, such as religion and ethnic origin. But it also resulted from non-Jews lumping all Jews into a single group sharing the same characteristics. All this came before Christianity, which added new sources for antisemitism. In short: antisemitism has an ancient history.
