Against Apion

In this passionate defense of Judaism written in the first century, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus mounts a fierce rebuttal against Greek and Egyptian detractors who had slandered his people. The work emerged as a direct response to attacks by the Hellenized Egyptian grammarian Apion and others who dismissed Jewish history as recent and Jewish customs as barbaric. Josephus, who had defected to Rome after the Jewish revolt but never abandoned his cultural identity, marshals evidence from Greek historians, Phoenician records, and Babylonian archives to demonstrate the extraordinary antiquity of the Jewish nation. He systematically dismantles each accusation, from claims about Jewish origins to slurs about their laws and customs, while turning the critique back on the Greeks themselves for their own mythological confusions. The result is not merely a polemic but a sophisticated argument about truth, evidence, and what constitutes a civilized people. Against Apion remains essential reading for understanding how one of antiquity's most persecuted peoples defended their dignity, and it provides invaluable testimony about Jewish history during a period for which few sources survive.