Jews, Greeks and Romans: A Reply to Oxartes

I have previously mentioned that I am a 'member' of the Julian society's mailing list and that same time ago a jew who calls himself 'Oxartes' joined. Oxartes has been spewing all sorts of... well... disinformation about jews at every opportunity since he joined and seems completely uninterested in the discussion of neo-Platonism and paganism: rather spending his time posting such cringe-worthy as well as outright stupid material such as the below:

'That a monotheistic faith like Judaism & the various forms of polytheism/paganism offer mutually exclusive worldviews shouldn't be news to, or shock, anyone. Romans like Julius Caesar, who is remembered very well in our traditions, were not troubled by this. (Caesar even remitted certain taxes in the 7th, sabbatical, year when Jews in the Holy Land would let their fields lay fallow.) In this he is similar to Ptolemies I-III and Antiochus III. So we disagree, so what? We still have to get along in the real world. What many later Roman rulers (Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius & Julian being the notable exceptions) simply couldn't grasp was what while we (as in our Sages, not the Zealot hotheads) would bring offerings in our Temple *for* the Emperor, we would not bring offerings *to* the emperor, and that while we would accept Roman government, we would not and could not accept the prevailing Roman lifestyle. Indeed, had the Romans (like the 1st three Ptolemies) allowed the High Priest & our Sages internal autonomy, they would have had a quiet, stable & docile province, and may have turned the tables on their Parthian/Sassanid rivals who could always count on the large and wealthy Jewish populations in Mesopotamia, Syria & the Holy Land being anti-Roman. But Roman hamhandedness played right into the hands of our Zealot hotheads. Julian seemed to understand what his predecessors did not.

I also resent the author's lumping us together with the Christians. Unlike the Christians, we never missionized, preached that non-Jews were necessarily inferior (that's NOT what the "Chosen People" means) or maintained that it was our way or the highway to Hell. A Jewish text dating back to the time of Antoninus Pius declares that, "The righteous of *all* nations have a share in the world-to-come." Like the pagans, we have known Christian intolerance & bigotry up close and personal.

Today (http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayd.htm ) is the day when we fast & mourn our lost Temples. How different things might have been had Julian

returned from the Persian war & been able to rebuild our House.

L'chaim!

Oxartes'

Now not only is Oxartes spewing illogical nonsense - mainly in the vein of 'oh we why can't we all get along' - he has actually lied (as in deliberately misrepresented facts that he must be aware of) at least three times in the process.

First off is the fact that Julian was not a philo-Semite or in any way pro-jewish - as Oxartes represents him - no Julian biographer I know of believes Julian to have been a friend of the jews and indeed a read of Julian own work - such as 'Against the Galileans' where he spits rhetorical and intellectual venom at the jews on numerous occasions - (1) would quickly disabuse anyone of that notion. Julian viewed the jews as a lesser enemy and viewed what he saw as their religious error as being a lesser one than that of the Christians.

Second is the idea that the Romans 'couldn't grasp' what Judaism was 'really about'.

Actually the Romans understood very well what Judaism was about precisely because of the way the jews had behaved and were then behaving towards the Romans in so far as they were religiously arrogant, highly aggressive and prone to provoking a major superpower by revolting across the Empire (several times in fact). Oxartes simply 'forgets' to mention that the imposition of Roman manners and lifestyle was not a problem for other religious groups in the Empire and some - like the followers of the cult of Isis - were viewed as subversive and suppressed by several Roman Emperors, but never-the-less their followers managed to at least adopt Romans norms and forms.

The jews however largely refused to comply with so small a point of practical politics as to not do in Rome what the Romans did: instead the jews across the Mediterranean wanted to do in Cyrene, Rome, Antioch, Ephesus and Alexandria what they could in Jerusalem. If they didn't get what they wanted the jews - as the amount of strife they caused in their fights with the Greeks and Egyptians in North Africa amply attests to - would imperiously send missives to the Emperor and leading figures in the Senate themselves to get what they wanted (in a series of demands on behalf of all jews). So arrogant were these missives that the otherwise extremely tolerant Claudius openly berated the jews in some of his letters to them following riots and fighting caused by the jews in Alexandria. (2)

Oxartes again fails to mention that Augustus - for example - was a great friend of the jews and granted them special privileges in line with Caesar's policy (Cicero saw the jews as subversive in partly because they so ardently supported Caesar and then the Triumvirate of Anthony, Octavian and Lepidus). (3) Further to this Tiberius was also a friend of the jews in that he - if we follow recent re-evaluations of the Emperor - stopped Sejanus' treason trials, which were partly directed towards judaising Romans (i.e., what the jews called 'god-fearers'). However Tiberius still had problems with the jews causing problems in Rome as Suetonius recorded. (4)

This means that the jews were not - as Oxartes claims - an innocent party to Roman misunderstanding, but rather that the Romans were originally willing to let the jews have their weird religion (on very favourable terms) as long as they would concede to offer sacrifice to the Imperial cult as well. This was the background to Caligula's attempt to put his statue in the Temple of Solomon: a normal enough requirement, but one the jews simply refused to comply with and nearly revolted over.

Further the idea that Oxartes propounds that what matters was that the jews could bring offerings for the Emperor and not to the Emperor is an amusing nonsense. As all he is saying is that the jews would offer sacrifice to Yahweh on behalf of the Emperor, but they would not sacrifice to the Imperial cult of the deified Emperors.

This is absurd for the simple reason that this was precisely the objection the Romans had in that Roman religion - especially the Imperial cult - required that you not just sacrifice to the gods but to the deified Emperors as well. What Oxartes is claiming is basically that the jews would entreat Yahweh for the Emperor and no more, which is akin to demanding that the Emperor acknowledge that Yahweh is the 'one true god' and that the Roman state worshipped meaningless idols. A claim famously made by Josephus in regards to Alexander the Great for example.

This means that the jews - in Oxartes' view - were subversives to the Roman state, which is precisely what the Roman state increasingly saw them as (leading to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Trajan and then Hadrian). One then sees Oxartes' reasoning for what it is: self-serving jewish hyperbole with nothing of intellectual substance behind it.

The third point which Oxartes brazenly lies about is regarding the view of non-jews as inferior to jews in Judaism. He claims that this was not the view of most jews (he doesn't not tell us how he knows this) and that by believing that (he probably means the view of the jews as haters of the rest of mankind propounded by Greek and Roman intellectual as diverse as Apollonius Molon, Tacitus, Strabo and Diodorus) the Romans played into the hands of the jewish zealots.

We need to understand that Judaism has always had a biological basis for itself (at least in terms of its own vision of its history) and that it has seen this biological community as being the 'chosen' to lead the world into the 'light of Hashem' (with the jews serving as the priesthood). This may be simply confirmed by a reading of the blood-soaked books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, which contain numerous aphorisms about the necessity of biological purity among the jews (not keeping foreign wives and all that) and how Israel is above all other nations as it has been specially chosen.

We may further confirm the longevity of this view by reading the later prophets Ezra, Nehemiah and Ezekiel who frequently talk in such terms. Then we may take a peek at the Dead Sea Scrolls with all the numerous peons of hatred of gentiles they contain and compare them with the views of such jewish 'liberals' as Philo of Alexandria and Josephus who both lionized jews over the Greeks and Romans.

If we wish to confirm this further we can read in the Mishnah a continuance of similar sentiments about how gentiles are inferior to jews in that they are more subject to 'evil inclination' and are unable to control themselves while jews are.

Similarly the Sefer Yezirah - which may be a very old work - echoes such views as I have previously explained. (5)

Understanding this then causes us to ask the simple question of Oxartes: where did the view that the jews looked down on the rest of the world come from?

I rather doubt he has an answer except to; in effect, claim an anti-Semitic conspiracy of a sort against the jews. We may answer this by very simply pointing out that numerous different Greek, Roman and Egyptian authors wrote about the jews and the near universal condemnation from what we have of their writings must inform us that they weren't 'conspiring' but rather were all seeing the same thing in the jews.

How can Manetho, Diodorus and Apollonius Molon all get the same 'wrong ideas' about the jews and their beliefs?

The answer is very simply that it is doubtful they all misunderstood or conspired to deliberately libel the jews precisely because they were rational men and had what Oxartes claims been the case then we would expect to hear some note of dissent on the jews. However the lack of one across the board is utterly deafening and suggests that what they saw and wrote about was very real and not some chimerical fantasy as Oxartes seems to be prefer to believe (i.e., the jews can do no wrong and it is the fault of the gentiles for not 'understanding').

We may summarise this critique in the following rhetorical question: if jews do not regard non-jews as inferior then how can the jews be the chosen people of the omnipotent and omnipresent creator of the universe?

The simple answer is they can't.

We can thus see demonstrated yet again that Oxartes is a typical jewish hack who comes into an unrelated discussion group and decides to spout illogical tirades of misinformation about the jews and their history in the probable hope of making people have a twinge of guilt-inspired sympathy for the 'most persecuted people in history'.

Thus we can understand the importance of what a Greek merchant had to say in a letter to a friend who was trading in Alexandria: 'Whatever you do: keep clear of the Jews.' (6)

Wise words indeed.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/julian-the-apostate-on-the-jews

(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substa ck.com/p/the-emperor-claudius-on-the-jews

(3) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/cicero-on-the-jews

(4) Suet. Tib. 36

(5) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-hatred-of-non-jews-in-the-sefer

(6) Edwyn Bevan, 1948, 'Hellenistic Judaism', pp. 35-36, n. 2 in Edwyn Bevan, Charles Singer (Eds.), 1948, 'The Legacy of Israel', 3rd Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford