The First anti-Semite: Philostratus and the Jews
During my research reading on the jewish question I came across a mention (1) of the Greek philosopher Philostratus who had made some rather acidic comments regarding jews as a group not only as a religion in his work ‘The Life of Apollonius of Tyana’. I won’t comment on Philostratus’ life itself, but his comments on the jews are of great interest to us as they appear to have been forgotten by the critics of jewry today.
The usually quoted passage from Philostratus runs as follows:
‘For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own a life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Susa or Bactra or the more distant Indies.’ (2)
This should actually be read in the context of the whole passage to give clarify as to Philostratus’ meaning:
‘Look at the revolt against him planned by Vindex, you surely were the man of the hour, its natural leader, and not he! For you had an army at your back, and the forces you were leading against the Jews, would they not have been more suitably employed in chastising Nero? For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own a life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Susa or Bactra or the more distant Indies. What sense then or reason was there in chastising them for revolting from us, whom we had better have never annexed? As for Nero, who would not have prayed with his own hand to slay a man well-nigh drunk with human blood, singing as he sat amidst the hecatombs of his victims? I confess that I ever pricked up my ears when any messenger from yonder brought tidings of yourself, and told us how in one battle you had slain thirty thousand Jews and in the next fifty thousand. In such cases I would take the courier aside and quietly ask him: ‘But what of the great man? Will he not rise to higher things than this?’ Since then you have discovered in Vitellius an image and ape of Nero, and are turning your arms against him, persist in the policy you have embraced, for it too is a noble one, only let its sequel be noble too. You know how dear to the Romans are popular institutions, and how nearly all their conquests were won under a free polity.’ (3)
It is clear from the complete passage that Philostratus’ meaning is actually fairly well preserved in the passage usually quoted but does need to be clarified by it. In essence what Philostratus is saying in this passage is that the jews are completely different at an intrinsic level from any other people in the world - possibly as a play on their claim to be the chosen of Hashem - and that - as this was the basis of their revolt against Rome - they are revolting ‘against humanity’ represented by the Roman Empire. (4)
Philostratus tells us that the jews spurn the rest of mankind and civilisation in general by the fact that they ‘cannot share the pleasures of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices’ (5) and points out by implication that they are an odd group of ancient luddites who refuse to engage in civilised behaviour and enjoy the fruits of the earth.
However, Philostratus does imply that this is not actually a consequence of their religious beliefs per se - which would probably be the normal argument to try and dismiss his criticism, -(6) when he declares that a ‘greater gulf’ separates the jews from the rest of humanity as he understand it (i.e., Romans, Greeks etc), which implies that there is something distinctly biological about their opposition not merely something theological. This is confirmed by his comment that the Romans would have been better to have never annexed the jews as they there is no reason to ‘chastise’ them from revolting from Rome, because they are unable to comprehend civilisation or Roman values instead preferring to level in self-righteous ignorance and following their barbaric and blood cult that it pleases them to call a religion.
Philostratus also suggests this slightly earlier when he refers to the jews as a race (i.e., a nation in the Roman sense) who have ‘made their own life apart and irreconcilable’ and they have ‘long been in revolt’ both of which directly suggest that the jews have been distinctly separate for a longer time than the annexation of the territory they were occupying by the Roman empire. This combined with Philostratus’ earlier comments leads us to tentatively conclude that Philostratus saw the jewish problem in a fairly innovative way as not one of religion- as most of his fellow contemporaries understood it - but as one of racial biology in the era before Darwin, Galton and Mendel.
In supporting this conclusion, we can point out that Philostratus’ note that the jews are ‘irreconcilable’ to humanity in general in addition to noting that it would better not to bother annexing them as they will always revolt against non-jews ruling them. This leads to only one necessary consequence: Philostratus felt that the solution of the jewish question in the Roman Empire was either to not bother with the jews or wipe them out root and branch. It is impossible to tell which he favoured as his reference to jews is brief, but pointed: however either could quite easily have been the case. (7)
Was Philostratus the first anti-Semite?
Quite possibly and certainly one of the first we know about.
Does he deserve to be remembered by modern anti-Semites?
Certainly.
References
(1) Specifically in Shlomo Gliksman, 1939, ‘The Falsifications of anti-Semitic Literature’, 1st Edition, People’s Institute for Dissemination of Biblical and Talmudic Jurisprudence: New York, p. 28
(2) Philostr. V A 5.33. This is on p. 541 of Vol. I of Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii in the Loeb Classical Library series.
(3) Ibid.
(4) For a critical introduction to this please see Andrea Berlin, Andrew Overman (Eds.), 2002, ‘The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York
(5) Philostr. V A 5.33
(6) Gliksman, Op. Cit., p. 30 for example uses just an argument to dismiss Philostratus.
(7) It is worth comparing Philostratus’ ideas to those of usually (incorrectly) credited as being the first anti-Semites such as Wilhelm Marr. On Marr see Moshe Zimmerman, 1988, ‘Wilhelm Marr: Patriarch of anti-Semitism’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York.