Hermippus of Symrna, Pythagoras of Samos and the Jews
Hermippus of Symrna is one of many authors of classical antiquity whom we know of, but we have nothing but fragments of their works remaining. From what we know Hermippus he was a scholarly-compiler - as opposed to a full-blown thinker (rather like the difference between the specialist archive-based historians of today against those who interpret their findings for the non-specialist) - based in Alexandria in the fourth or third century BC. His mention of the jews has come down to us via two different writers: the jewish historian Josephus and the Church Father Origen.
Josephus says:
'Indeed, Pythagoras of Samos, being ancient, and considered to have excelled those who had philosophized in wisdom and respect for the divine, clearly not only knew our [jewish] affairs, but also was a very great admirer of them. Well then, no composition is agreed to be his, but many have investigated the things about him, and most outstanding of these is Hermippus, a man careful with regard to all research. He, then, in the first of his books concerning Pythagoras, says that Pythagoras, after one of his pupils died, by the name of Calliphon by origin a Crotonian, used to say that that man's soul spent time with him both at night and during the day; and that Calliphon recommend not to traverse a place wherever an ass sinks to its knees, and to abstain from drying water, and to refrain from all blasphemy.
Then Hermippus adds after this the following as well: “And Pythagoras used to do and say these things imitating and transferring to himself the opinions of the Jews and the Thracians.” For that man is in fact said to have transferred many of the customs among the Jews to his own philosophy.' (1)
While Origen adds:
'It is said that Hermippus as well, in the first book of On Lawgivers, has stated that Pythagoras brought his own philosophy from Jews to Greeks.' (2)
This description has historically been taken as being a positive one largely based on Josephus' admonition that Hermippus was a 'very careful' historian and the (unfounded) assumption that he would not make such statements rashly. The problem with that is quite fundamental: the figure of Pythagoras was not so much one of the innovative scholar-scientist as he is viewed today, but rather he was one of antiquity's most hated men who was the effective Adam Weishaupt of his age. He trained his disciples in political ruthlessness and wanted only to rule not caring how or what was sacrificed for his goals.
As such there was a very considerable anti-Pythagorean literature in antiquity and from what we know of Hermippus and his biography of Pythagoras: it is clear that he was part of this anti-Pythagorean current of opinion. Thus his description of Pythagoras as having copied his laws from the jews and Thracians is not meant to be benign in the slightest but rather malicious sarcasm.
This is further indicated by understanding the Thracians were - at this time - one of the bête noires of Romano-Greek literature regarded as they were as some of the ignorant and barbaric of all the many 'barbarian peoples' whom the Romans and Greeks encountered and wrote about.
Now once we understand that suggesting that Pythagoras copied his laws from the Thracians is not a neutral statement, but is rather a deliberately pejorative one. We can begin to see that the reference to the jews is clearly also not a positive intimation for Hermippus but rather is akin to calling the jews an ignorant and barbaric people. This would have been quite the insult to Pythagoras' memory precisely because he had founded his own intellectual school of thought and was regarded in some quarters as being a sort of flawed genius.
This, of course, is completely opposed to our modern conception of Pythagoras as a scholar-scientist who revolutionized the world with his mathematical principles, but this image of Pythagoras is not one that would have existed in any substantial segment of the Graeco-Roman world. It also partly accounts for why this quotation has been misunderstood for so long, because to us Pythagoras is a positive figure; a genius of quite some stature, while to Hermippus he was anything but.
The other part of the equation is that we have had very little of Hermippus' work come down to us and combined with the positive mention by Josephus: we can begin to see that scholars have for generations been lead up the proverbial garden path to the dead end of a quotation that isn't actually saying what Josephus' seems to have thought it was.
Now that said I am not so quick to assume the benign nature of Josephus' mistake as others precisely because this comes from Josephus' philippic against Apion - the anti-jewish Alexandrian Greek scholar - and as such Josephus is manifestly setting out to prove that great men have thought the jews wonderful throughout history and that then current anti-jewish intellectual sentiments - exemplified by Apion's fierce anti-Judaism - are just an irrational historical aberration. As well as incidentally proving the alleged 'great antiquity' of Judaism, which was a subject that Josephus was extremely keen to find non-jewish evidence for.
Thus I find it difficult to believe that Josephus - having presumably actually read Hermippus' biography of Pythagoras - would not have realised - well-versed as he was in classical literature - that he was dealing with a writer who was attacking Pythagoras by implying he got many of his socio-political ideas from ignorant and barbaric peoples such as the jews and Thracians. That Josephus prefaces his comments by unusually stating how 'careful' and 'trustworthy' a source Hermippus is should immediately cause us to prick our ears up, because is this kind of addition that suggests - if we work the psychology of it back - that Josephus is keen to try and encourage people to believe him and not to look at the work themselves.
This all adds up to Josephus knowingly falsifying the meaning of Hermippus' text by reproducing the quote without telling his readers that it is actually derogatory of the jews rather than praising them. As we can begin to see with other such quotes such as that from Clearchus of Soli: (3) it is clear that Josephus is not only a partisan writer, but also one who systematically misrepresents his sources in a very deliberate way in what we may only presume is the hope that they are so numerous that nobody would ever be able to look them all up.
Essentially, in modern intellectual parlance, we can see that Josephus is a fairly typical example of the 'quote miner' or somebody who uses lots of quotes to support a claim without providing the context to those quotes or even often discussing them to explain their case.
That Origen also mistook this quote we should not be surprised at: as it is quite possible - even likely - that by his time he only knew Hermippus through quotation (as he only states it in passing as if it was just something he read once that he remembered), which is supported by the fact that he does not mention the Thracian element of the quotation and also does not reproduce it. Thus we can suggest that Origen's mistake - although performed in making the now long-debunked claim that the jews gave Greeks their philosophy - (4) was a relatively benign one but that Josephus' was a malicious one. Precisely because with the latter it is systematic misrepresentation, while with the former it is merely an apparently honest mistake caused in all probability by a bad source.
Thus we can see that Hermippus was certainly not a friend of the jews (in fact he was their enemy) and that Pythagoras - if he even knew of the jews at all - was probably at the very worst neutral to them and couldn't in general give a fig about such a small insignificant tribe albeit one with so unusual a religious system.
We can also see from this the essential truth of a Greek merchant's letter to a friend in Alexandria who was hard-pressed by his creditors: 'Whatever you do: keep clear of the Jews.' (5)
References
(1) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 1:162-165
(2) Origen Cont. Cels. 1:15
(3) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/clearchus-of-soli-aristotle-and-the
(4) On this see Arthur Drodge, 1989, 'Homer or Moses?: Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture', 1st Edition, J.C.B. Mohr Verlag: Tubingen
(5) Edwyn Bevan, 1948, 'Hellenistic Judaism', pp. 35-36, n. 2 in Edwyn Bevan, Charles Singer, 1948, 'The Legacy of Israel', 3rd Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford