Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (review)

General Book Reviews General Book Reviews 157 Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, by Peter Schafer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. 306 pp. n.p.l. The subtitle notwithstanding, this volume seeks to examine one particular ancient "attitude toward the Jews." Professor Schafer examines the circumstances under which antisemitism arose and studies recent attempts to distinguish this fateful animosity from other forms of ethnic rivalry and dislike. Part I ofProfessor Schafer's study examines the major rubrics of ancient curiosity about Jews: their alleged expulsion from Egypt, Jewish monotheism, abstention from pork, Sabbath observance, circumcision, and proselytism. Part II examines two outbreaks of hostility against the Jews, the destruction in 410 B.C.E. of the Jewish temple in Elephan~e and the riots in Roman Alexandria that occurred in August of 38 C.E. Part III examines stages in the development of antisemitism in Egypt, then SyriaPalestine , and finally Rome. The chapters in Part I depict in great detail the hatred, fascination, revulsion, fear, and admiration that went into ancient "attitudes toward the Jews." Professor .Schafer surveys the ancient evidence and modem discussion, often briskly dismissing previous opinions while taking due nvte of questions which the evidence does not allow us to answer (e.g., whether Hadrian forbade circumcision before or after Bar Kokhba began his uprising, indeed whether he did so at all). It is in Part II, however, that Professor Schafer's own theory of antisemitism begins to emerge. People from Judah had originally come to Elephantine as a border garrison for the pharaohs who ruled the country, but by continuing in this role their descendants now served to uphold foreign rule over the native Egyptians. The stories connected with the main Jewish festival of Passover naturally irritated Egyptians as well, while the main Passover rite, the slaughter of a lamb, profoundly offended Egyptian sensibilities, especially those of Egyptian priests. The priests of Khnub in Elephantine were able to bring about the destruction ofthe Jewish temple in that city and prevent its reconstruction , and the hostility that led to this outcome was from the beginning a fateful combination of ethnic rivalry, political resentment, and religious abhorrence. In the environment ofHellenistic Syro-Palestine, the original Egyptian mixture was strengthened with themes from Greek culture, mainly the idea that Jews are by nature misanthropic xenophobes, inveterately hostile to outsiders and unavoidably alien when settled among others. This admixture turned native Egyptian Jew-hatred into a cultural 158 SHOFAR Spring 1999 Vol. 17, No.3 force that could spread throughout the Hellenistic world, but Schafer emphasizes that even this development fIrst appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt. Antisemitism gained yet another potent ingredient when it was fused with the growing concem of Roman aristocrats that ancestral virtues were being subverted by a flood of Eastem captives: such people were overwhelming the capital with their alien customs and enticing young Romans to follow them. Of these Oriental invaders, the Jews were the most alarmirig. Terrified by conversions to Judaism among high-ranking Roman families, elements in the Roman elite became convinced that Jews were engaged in a conscious campaign to take over the world through religious proselytism. Jews were no longer merely dislikable, they now were frightening, and in his very last paragraph Schafer notes that "this fear was well-founded" (p. 211; his emphasis). Schafer's claim that antisemitism emerged early in an Egyptian matrix conflicts with a widely accepted view that Jew-hatred was areaction to Maccabean aggressiveness , "the poisonous fruit of the conflict between Judaism and Hellenism and its result" (C. Habicht, quoted on p. 178). Schafer lays out his evidence with patience and care, and he has added a new dimension to the range ofpossibilities that scholars must now consider. It is very difficult, however, to determine scientifIcally when an earlier mix ofrivalry, hostility, and misunderstanding became "antisemitism"; this determination remains a matter ofjudgment and semantics. Schafer is aware of this problem and devotes his final chapter to it. He examines G. Langmuir's analysis of antisemitism and applauds Langmuir's effort to refute the notion that ancient Jewry brought this fearsome hatred down on itself, but he remains unconvinced that Langmuir has persuasively distinguished antisemitism...