Apion

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Apion , whose name was derived from the Graecized form of the ancient Egyptian name " Apis ", worked in the first century AD as a contemporary of Pliny as an Alexandrian grammarian , man of letters and Homer philologist . Today he is best known for his anti-Jewish texts, to which Josephus responded in his work Contra Apionem (Against Apion) .

Life and works

Apion seems to have been greatly valued for his extensive knowledge and rhetorical talent. But his contemporaries also agree in rejecting his boastful complacency. For example, he declared that anyone he mentions in his writings would become immortal. He counted himself among the greatest philosophers of ancient Greece and said that Alexandria must be proud to have a man like him among its citizens. However, not a single one of his works has survived.

Apion was the head of the Alexandrian legation, which auditioned for Emperor Caligula in AD 40 . The content was about the dispute over the status of the Alexandrian Jews. On this occasion Apion gave a speech directed against the Jews (λόγος κατὰ Ἰουδαίων), which were probably taken as excerpts from his five-volume Aegyptiaka . As remarkable as Apion's high quotation rate in antiquity is, the quality of the content of his "entertaining works" was subject to serious historical defects, which were probably responsible for the fact that no Apion texts were passed down in the later centuries.

The no longer preserved five-volume Aegyptiaka contained many, sometimes absurd, anti-Semitic statements in the third and fourth books. Josephus did not have a comprehensive knowledge of Apion, since he concentrated exclusively on anti-Semitic statements; for example, Apion claimed that the Jews had been expelled from Egypt because of physical ailments, that Moses came from Heliopolis , declared the Sabbath in an absurd way, etc. Apion also made the first accusation of a Jewish ritual murder (“in the temple in Jerusalem I become a Greek every year sacrificed "). The content of the “ legend of the ritual murder ” corresponds to the previously known “ Busiris myth”, which Apion transferred to Judaism. According to Josephus, Apion was also the author of the slander, which was later also adopted by Tacitus , according to which the Jews practiced donkey worship.

Judgment on his works

Overall, Apion's utterances were so untenable that Josephus accused him of a lack of education and a "screaming" style ( Against Apion II. 3). Apion became a type of enemy of Jews through Josephus' counter-writ against Apion , which is an apology of Judaism and not primarily a refutation of Apion.

A distinction must be made in this context between the terms anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism . Apion's anti-Semitism in antiquity cannot be compared with the modern understanding of anti-Semitism , which relates to racial doctrine , which, however, did not exist in the epoch of that time. Rather, Apion's hostility to Jews refers to the "elitist rites " of Judaism. Flavius ​​Josephus described this problem with the words "But our tribe remained pure".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Folker Siegert: Flavius ​​Josephus: About the originality of Judaism. P. 25.
  2. ↑ Pliny, Natural History Praef. And 30.6
  3. ↑ Folker Siegert: About the Originality of Judaism, Volume 1. P. 51.
personal data
SURNAME Apion
BRIEF DESCRIPTION ancient author and anti-Judaist
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC BC or 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 1st century or 2nd century