Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World

Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World

Author: Sevenster

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-04-09

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9004266526

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Discusses social, economic, and political aspects of antisemitism in the ancient (Greco-Roman) world, based extensively on the writings of Josephus Flavius and Philo.


The Origins of Anti-semitism

The Origins of Anti-semitism

Author: John G. Gager

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0195036077

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Examines the presence of anti-Semitism among the Greeks, Romans, and early Christians and argues that anti-Semitism was rare in the ancient world.


Judeophobia

Judeophobia

Author: Peter SchŠfer

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780674043213

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Taking a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews and Judaism, Peter Schafer locates the origin of anti-Semitism in the ancient world. Judeophobia firmly establishes Hellenistic Egypt as the generating source of anti-Semitism, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic history. A pattern of ingrained hostility toward an alien culture emerges when Schafer surveys an illuminating spectrum of comments on Jews and their religion in Greek and Roman writings, focusing on the topics that most interested the pagan classical world: the exodus or, as it was widely interpreted, expulsion from Egypt; the nature of the Jewish god; food restrictions, in particular abstinence from pork; laws relating to the sabbath; the practice of circumcision; and Jewish proselytism. He then probes key incidents, two fierce outbursts of hostility in Egypt: the destruction of a Jewish temple in Elephantine in 410 B.C.E. and the riots in Alexandria in 38 C.E. Asking what fueled these attacks on Jewish communities, the author discovers deep-seated ethnic resentments. It was from Egypt that hatred of Jews, based on allegations of impiety, xenophobia, and misanthropy, was transported first to Syria-Palestine and then to Rome, where it acquired a new element: fear of this small but distinctive community. To the hatred and fear, ingredients of Christian theology were soon added--a mix all too familiar in Western history.


The Origins of Anti-Semitism

The Origins of Anti-Semitism

Author: John G. Gager

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1985-02-14

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 019536516X

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This revisionist reading of early anti-Judaism offers a richer and more varied picture of the Jews and Christians of antiquity.


Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World

Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World

Author: Louis H. Feldman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 691

ISBN-13: 1400820804

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Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.


The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity

The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity

Author: Benjamin Isaac

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 140084956X

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There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.


The Jesus Mysteries

The Jesus Mysteries

Author: Timothy Freke

Publisher: Harmony

Published: 2001-12-18

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0676806570

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Drawing on the cutting edge of modern scholarship, this astonishing book completely undermines the traditional history of Christianity that has been perpetuated for centuries by the Church and presents overwhelming evidence that the Jesus of the New Testament is a mythical figure. “Whether you conclude that this book is the most alarming heresy of the millennium or the mother of all revelations, The Jesus Mysteries deserves to be read.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram Far from being eyewitness accounts, as is traditionally held, the Gospels are actually Jewish adaptations of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting godman Osiris-Dionysus. The supernatural story of Jesus is not the history of a miraculous Messiah but a carefully crafted spiritual allegory designed to guide initiates on a journey of mystical discovery. A little more than a century ago, most people believed that the strange story of Adam and Eve was history; today it is understood to be a myth. Within a few decades, authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy argue, we will likewise be amazed that the fabulous story of God incarnate—who was born of a virgin, who turned water into wine, and who rose from the dead—could have been interpreted as anything but a profound parable.