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9. the Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story 199 Ing Their History and Slandering Their Values

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9. the Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story 199 Ing Their History and Slandering Their Values 9. The Useand Abuse of the ExodusStory The Exodus was adefining moment,perhaps the defining moment in ancient Is- raelite tradition. As the legend has it,the Israelites’ escape from Egypt under the leadership of Moses shook off the yoke of Egyptian oppression and gave them the impetusfor articulatingprinciples and values, surmounting an arduous jour- ney through the wilderness, and shapingtheir identity as apeople and aculture. The dayoftheir release from the tyrannyofPharaonic Egypt,sothe Lordde- clared in the Book of Exodus,would thereafter be commemoratedinanannual festival, among the most sacredonthe calendar,the ceremonyofPassover.¹ The Exodus generated highdrama, an unforgettable tale in the Bible, perhaps the single most familiar one to Jewand Gentile alike. As inspiration to subsequent generations of Jews and theiradmirers,its power is manifest. But what of the villains of the piece? They,orrather their presumed descend- ants, would not have found this story very entertaining. Indeed, we might imag- ine, they would have reason to feel maligned and defamed. The heartless Phar- aohs, the hostile Egyptian populace,and the royal armyasanagent of evil hardlysupplied models for imitation. And the tale could bring little satisfaction to the indigenous dwellers in the land of the Nile. The spreadofthe story should onlyhaveaggravated matters.Jewishsoldiers and Jewish settlers in Egypt occasionallyappear on record in the centuries that followed the supposed time of the Exodus,most notablyinthe garrison at Elephantine.² But the principal wave of Jewishreentry into Egypt appears to have come at the end of the Persianperiod and in the earlyyears of the Hellen- istic age.³ The Exodus story could have seepedinto Egyptian consciousness in the course of this era, thus to stir reaction and response. Indeed, echoes of a very different variety of the tale emerge in the literatureproduced by pagan au- Exodus, .–, .–. See B. Porten, Archives fromElephantine: The Life of aJewishMilitaryColony (Berkeley, ), –.There were, of course, Jews in Egypt prior to the Elephantine garrison; cf. Jeremiah, – ; Let. Aris. , ;J.Mélèze-Modrzejewski, TheJews of Egypt: FromRameses II to Emperor Ha- drian (Philadelphia, ), –. Let. Aris. –;Jos. A. J. .–, , . .–.The tale itself of the deportation of , Jews by PtolemyIand their release by PtolemyIIisquestionable. Nor can one place implicit faith in the moreagreeable version ascribed to Hecataeus of Abdera by Jos. C. Ap. .–,that has numerous Jews follow PtolemyIvoluntarily from Palestine to settle in Egypt.See also B. Bar Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus “On the Jews” (Berkeley, ), –.But the congruenceoftestimonydoes at least suggest that asignificant movement of Jews to Egypt occurredatthe beginningofthe Hellenistic period. 198 9. The Useand Abuse of the Exodus Story thors in Egypt.Inassorted versions, Jews appear as villains rather thanvictims, oppressors rather thanoppressed, the perpetrators of sacrilegerather than the upholders of the faith, and ultimatelythe defeated rather than the triumphant. Scholars have drawnwhat seems to be alogical conclusion: the conflictingver- sions represent aform of competinghistoriography; pagans produceda“coun- ter-history” to negateorreverse the effects of the Jewish legend; apolemicalcon- test ensued, awar of propagandabetween Jews and Egyptians over the nature of the biblical Exodus.⁴ Josephus, vehicle for much of the variant tradition, buttresses the interpre- tation. His treatise,the Contra Apionem, devotes itself in large part to refuting anti-Jewishtracts by Alexandrian writers and others perceivedashostile to the Jews. Diverse treatments of the Exodus constitute asubstantial portion of the work, drawingJosephus’ fire and promptingelaborate counteractions to under- mine the negative portrayals by Manetho, Lysimachus,Apion, and Chaeremon.⁵ Josephus’ apologia has setthe terms for moderndiscussion. Perhaps misleading- ly so. That the Exodus narrative became transformed and manipulated seems ob- vious enough.But the manipulators and their motivesare not quite so obvious. Complexity and ambiguity adhere to the several versions, undermining trust in the stark and simplisticapproach of Josephus. Modern scholarship, taking its cue from Josephus, discerns abasic dichoto- my.Ingeneral, pagan writingsonthe Jews are assessed along aspectrum with a clear division in the center: they were either favorablyinclined, admiring of Jew- ish character and practices,with positive judgments on their traditions and in- stitutions, or they werevirulentlyantisemitic, hostile to Jewishcustoms,distort- See, e.g., the formulations of A. Funkenstein, “Anti-Jewish Propaganda: Pagan, Christian, and Modern,” TheJerusalem Quarterly (), ;idem, Perceptions of JewishHistory (Berkeley, ), –;A.Kasher, TheJews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Tübingen, ), –; C. Aziza, “L’utilisation polémique du récit de l’Exode chez les écrivainsalexandrins,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römishchen Welt, II.. (), –;E.Gabba, “The GrowthofAnti-Ju- daism or the Greek Attitude towards Jews,” in W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein, TheCambridge HistoryofJudaism (Cambridge, ), vol. , –;M.Pucci ben Zeev, “The Reliability of Josephus Flavius:The Case of Hecataeus’ and Manetho’sAccounts of Jews and Judaism,” Jour- nal for the Study of Judaism, (): –;Z.Yavetz, “Judeophobia in Classical Antiqui- ty:ADifferent Approach,” Journal of JewishStudies (): ;P.Schäfer, “The Exodus Tra- dition in Pagan Greco-Roman Literature,” in I. M. Gafni, A. Oppenheimer, and D. R. Schwartz (eds.), TheJews in the Hellenistic-Roman World: Studies in MemoryofMenahem Stern (Jerusalem, ), , –. See especiallyJos. C. Ap. .–, .., .–.OnJosephus’ apologetics and po- lemics,see A. Kasher, “Polemicand Apologetic,” in L. H. Feldman and J. R. Levinson (eds.), Jo- sephus’ ContraApionem: Studies in its Character and Context with aLatin Concordance to the Por- tion Missing in Greek (Leiden, ), –. 9. The Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story 199 ing their history and slandering their values. They might,tobesure, combine as- pects of both. But analyses consistentlyapplythe categories of “pro or anti-Jew- ish.” Researchers differ on where the balance lies. Forsome, the negative pre- vails:the attitude of most pagans was sharply antagonistic.⁶ Others take a quite different line: pagans on the whole either looked upon Jews with favor or merelyindulgedinscorn and mockery,but showed no race hatred against them.⁷ One can refine this division further by resortingtostatistics. An eminent scholarrecentlyreviewed the textsand tabulated the results,calculating that 18 percent of pagan assessments werefavorable, 23 percent unfavorable, and 59 percent neutral.⁸ Hence, ajudicious selectivity can provide support for any line thatone seeks to argueonthis matter.But the whole approach is conceptu- allyflawed. No numbers game will determine the issue, no reckoning of sums or statistical tables can elucidatepagan attitudes towardthe Jews. Even to charac- terize amajority of Gentile remarks as “neutral” maymisconceive the situation. It begs acritical question by assumingthe existenceofawar of words, apolem- ical setting in which all pagan appraisals of Jews can be placed. But that is the very proposition that needs reevaluation. The story of the Exodus supplies acentral exhibit.Asthe common recon- struction has it,that drama served as vehicle either for enhancing the Jewish imageorfor maliciously undermining it,depending on how the tale was told. Adifferent perspective is offered here. Twostarklycontrasting versions of the Exodus can set the matter in abold light.Their sharp differences make the two presentations, those of Strabo and Lysimachus,particularlyuseful and revealing.Onthe face of it,they seem to confirm definitively the notion thatrival interpretations of the tale stemmed See, e.g., J. L. Daniel, “Anti-Semitism in the Hellenistic-Roman World,” Journal of Biblical Lit- erature (), : “Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman literature… werealmost universallydis- liked or at least viewed with an amused contempt;” M. Goodman, in E. Schürer (ed.), TheHistory of the JewishPeople in the Age of Jesus Christ (rev. and ed. by G. Vermes,F.Millar,and M. Good- man, Cambridge, ), III., : “Most pagan authors whospokeabout the Jews at all after c. B.C. did so in apolemicalsense. Hostility was almost universal after the first century B.C.” See, e.g., J. Isaac, Genèse de l’antisémitisme (Vanves, ), –;R.Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: TheTheological Roots of Antisemitism (Minneapolis, ), –;M.Simon, Verus Israel (Oxford, ), –. L. H. Feldman, “Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World,” in D. Berger(ed.), Historyand Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia, ), ;idem, “Pro-Jewish Intimations in Anti- Jewish Remarks CitedinJosephus’ Against Apion,” JewishQuarterly Review (): – ;idem, Jewand Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, ), . 200 9. The Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story from polarizedattitudes toward the Jews. Careful scrutinymight suggest other- wise. Strabo, an indefatigable researcher,traveler,historian, and geographer from Pontus, produced most of his work, in Greek, duringthe ageofAugustus. In the course of his monumental geographic treatise,Strabodescribes the terrain, top- ography, and economies of Syria, Phoenicia,and Judaea. And he takes the occa- sion to append notes on the historical background and traditions of the region. That treatment includes astriking rendition of the Exodus events and their cen- tral figure, Moses. ForStrabo, the most reliable report about the ancestors of con- temporary
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