EGYPT
In the relations that subsisted between Jews and Greeks after Alexander,
Egypt plays an important part, so that particular attention must be
directed to that country.
The influence of Egypt upon Palestine is no new thing in its history.
For century after century the mighty empire across Sinai had been the
huge and determining fact in the political destiny of all Palestinian
nations. Indeed Palestine is much more properly within the Egyptian
sphere of culture than the Babylonian. The glamor lasted even when the
Pharaoh had become a broken reed. Men’s minds instinctively turned in
that direction, and the vigor of the relatively youthful Assyria could
not hold imaginations with half the force of the remembered glories of
Thutmose and Ramses.
Egypt had been in Persian times a turbulent province, subdued with
difficulty and demanding constantly renewed subjugation. Shortly before
Alexander’s conquest, Artaxerxes Ochus had reconquered it with brutal
severity. It offered no resistance to the victorious Macedonians. Upon
Alexander himself it exercised an undoubted attraction. The ancient gods
of this most ancient of countries were those best fitted to confirm his
rather raw divinity. From none else than Amon himself, in his isolated
shrine in the desert, he claimed to have received revelation of his
divine lineage. And at the mouth of the Nile he laid the foundation of
the greatest monument he was destined to have, the city of Alexandria.
When Alexander’s satraps proceeded to carve out portions for themselves,
Egypt was seized by Ptolemy, whose quick brain had grasped at once the
advantages accruing from the possession of an inexhaustible granary and
from the relative remoteness of his position. The first contests would
have to be fought in Asia. To attack Egypt meant a costly and carefully
planned expedition, with the hazards of a rear attack. It was attempted,
and it failed. Egypt might, as far as the country itself was concerned,
breathe freely for a while, and give itself the opportunity of
developing its extraordinary resources.
One of Ptolemy’s first aggressive campaigns was the seizure of
Palestine, the natural geographical extension. Judea and Jerusalem fell
into his hands. It is probable, as will be later discussed, that the
story of the capture of the city on the Sabbath is apocryphal. But there
can be no doubt that one of the immediate consequences of the annexation
of Palestine was a greatly increased emigration of Jews, and doubtless
of Palestinians generally, to Egypt. There is the tradition of a
deportation, but it is feebly supported. However, the emigration was
unquestionably vigorously encouraged and stimulated by the king. The new
city needed inhabitants, and Egyptians were as yet looked at askance by
their Macedonian rulers.
From the beginning, a great number of Greeks, Jews, Persians, Syrians,
and Egyptians dwelt side by side in Alexandria. Greeks who now spoke of
Jews could do so at first hand, and they could also obtain at first hand
accounts of Jews from other nations, especially from the Egyptians.
When, therefore, at about this time, Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek living
in Egypt, wrote a history of that country, he had more to say of the
Jews than that they were a Syrian caste of strange ritual. Indeed his
account of them is so important that it will be briefly summarized.
A pestilence broke out in Egypt, which was popularly attributed to the
neglect of the national cult owing to the presence of foreign elements
in the population. To propitiate the gods, the strangers
(ἀλλόφυλλοι) were expelled. The most distinguished and
energetic, as some say, arrived in Greece led by famous chieftains, of
whom Danaus and Cadmus are the best known. The mass of the population
settled in the neighboring Palestine, which was then a desert.
This colony (ἀποικία) was led by a certain Moses, famous
for his wisdom and valor. He founded several cities, of which Ierosolyma
is now the best-known. Having organized cult and government, he divided
the people into twelve tribes, because he considered that number the
absolutely perfect one, and because it corresponded to the number of
months in the year.
He made no statues of gods, because he regarded as God and Ruler of all
things the heavens that encircled the earth, and accordingly did not
believe that the Deity resembled man in form. The sacrifices he
instituted, the manner of life he prescribed, were different from those
of surrounding nations. This was due to the expulsion they had suffered,
which induced Moses to ordain an inhospitable (μισόξενον)
and inhuman (ἀπάνθρωπον) form of living.
Since the nation was to be directed by priests, he chose for that
purpose men of the highest character and ability. These he instructed,
not merely for their sacerdotal functions, but also for their judicial
and governmental duties. They were to be the guardians of law and
morality.
It is for this reason that the Jews have never had a king, but appoint
as ruler the wisest and ablest of their priests. They call him high
priest (ἀρχιερεύς), and regard him as bearer of the divine
commands, which he announces at the public assemblies and other
meetings. In this matter the Jews are so credulous that they fall to the
ground and adore (προσκυνεῖν) the high priest when he
interprets the divine message. At the end of their laws is written,
“These words, which Moses heard from God, he states to the Jews.”
Moses showed much foresight in military matters, since he compelled the
young men to train themselves by exercises that involved courage and
daring and endurance of privations. In his campaigns he conquered most
of the surrounding territory, which was divided equally among all
citizens, except that the priests received larger shares, so that they
might enjoy greater leisure for their public duties. These allotments
the possessors were forbidden to sell, in order to prevent depopulation
by the creation of great estates. As an additional means to that end he
compelled every one to rear his children, an arrangement that involved
little expense and made the Jews at all times a very populous nation.
Marriage and funeral rites were likewise quite different from those of
their neighbors.
However, many of these ancient customs were modified under Persian, and
more recently under Macedonian, supremacy.[94]
So far Hecataeus of Abdera. The fragment is interesting, not merely as
the first connected account of Jews by a Greek, but also from a number
of facts that are contained implicitly in his narrative.
We have seen, in the previous chapter, what general knowledge of the
Jews educated Greeks had in the latter half of the fourth century.
Hecataeus could scarcely avoid being familiar with that version before
he came to Egypt. That he ever was in Judea there is no evidence. If he
followed his master Ptolemy, he might easily have been there. But the
information he gives was almost certainly obtained in Egypt, and the
sources of that information will be more closely examined.
It is evident at once that some of his facts must have come from
contemporary Jewish sources. His statement of conditions among the Jews
is markedly accurate for the time in which he wrote, although to be sure
these conditions do not date to Moses. The absence of a king, the
presence of a priestly nobility, the judicial functions of the priests,
the compulsory military service, the supremacy of the high priest, and
the veneration accorded to him, are all matters of which only a resident
of Judea can have been cognizant.
Was the source a literary one? Did Hecataeus, writing at about 300
B.C.E., have before him a translation of the Bible or of the Pentateuch
or a part of it? In the first place there is very little reason to
believe that such a translation was current or was needed at this time.
Secondly, the matters mentioned are just those that do not stand out at
all in such a rapid reading of the Bible as a curious Greek might have
given it. To obtain even approximate parallels, single verses of the
Bible must be cited. But the statements of Hecataeus do correspond to
actual conditions in the Judea of his time. We may therefore plausibly
suppose that Hecataeus’ informant was a Greek-speaking Jew, perhaps a
soldier. Certain inaccuracies in the account would not militate against
such a supposition. Whoever it was from whom the information came,
cannot himself have been especially conversant with his national
history. The glorious period of Jewish history was that of the kings, of
David and Solomon. For any Jew to have asserted that no king ever
reigned over them is scarcely conceivable. But that may be an inference
of the Greek and not a statement of the Jew, and that in Egypt there
were Jews crassly ignorant of everything but the facts of their own
time, we can readily enough imagine.[95]
Was there any other source of information? Obviously no Jew told
Hecataeus that his people were descendants of Egyptian outcasts, at
least in the way in which they are here described; no Jew qualified the
institutions of his people as “inhospitable and inhuman”; no Jew
represented his kinsmen as credulous dupes. Plainly these stories are
told from the Egyptian point of view. The first almost surely is. It
constitutes in outline what has often been called the “Egyptian version
of the Exodus.”
As to that version this question at once arises: What are its sources?
Is it a malicious distortion of the Biblical story, or has it an
independent origin in Egyptian traditions?
The former supposition is the one generally accepted. We have seen that
there is little likelihood that a Greek translation of the Pentateuch
existed as early as 300 B.C.E. If then the Egyptian version is
consciously based upon the Jewish story, that story must have been known
to the Egyptians by oral transmission only. Until recently, imagined
difficulties in the way of assuming such a transmission seemed weighty
objections, but all these difficulties have disappeared in the light of
the Assuan and Elephantine papyri. The existence of Jewish communities
in Egypt from pre-Persian times is established by them, and particular
interest centers upon one of them, which alludes to the Passover
celebration and represents the Egyptian Jewries as referring certain
questions to the Palestinian community.[96]
It must be clear that if Passover had been celebrated in Egyptian
surroundings for two centuries, the Egyptian neighbors of the Jews knew
of the feast’s existence and of the occasion it was intended to
celebrate. In those two centuries the elements that make this version an
Egyptian one may easily have arisen. Indeed, it would have been strange
if stories representing the Exodus as anything but the Jewish triumph it
is depicted in the Pentateuch had not circulated widely among Egyptians.
The mere celebration of Passover was apt to make permanent a certain
hostility between the two nations. When we compare Deut. xxiii. 7, “Thou
shalt not abhor an Egyptian,” with Ezra ix. 1, where the customs of the
Egyptians are classed as abominations, and where Egyptian, Moabite, and
Edomite are added to the list of peoples (Deut. vii. 1) to be shunned
and avoided, it is plain that the attitude toward Egyptians had
undergone considerable change in the intervening centuries. It requires
a long period of antagonism to explain the later Alexandrian
anti-Semitism.
At the same time the papyri show other phases of life as well. They
offer instances of amicable relations, even of intermarriage, as well as
instances of hostility, such as that which resulted in the destruction
of the shrine of Yahu at Elephantine. The latter incident is too obscure
to permit us to draw inferences from it. But it is clear that it can no
more be considered typical than the other examples, which show perfectly
free and friendly intercourse.
The story as it appears in Hecataeus, however, does not imply, even in
its unflattering aspects, hostility on the part of the Egyptians. It may
be remembered that the founders of several Greek nations as well as the
Jews were expelled from Egypt on the occasion mentioned. It is easy to
see how Egyptians, learning of Greek and Jewish legends that ascribed
the origin of those nations to themselves, would accept the ascription,
and make it a part of their own stories in a way to flatter the national
vanity.
While therefore the supposition that Egyptians based their version on
the Jewish story of the Exodus as it became known to them is much the
more probable view, the possibility of an independent Egyptian tradition
on the subject is not to be dismissed cavalierly.
The Egyptian records that have come down to us do not often mention
Jews. Careful study has made it plain that the Pharaoh of the oppression
or the Exodus cannot be identified so readily as was formerly done, but
they have shown that the popular traditions about the Hyksos had at
least so much foundation in fact, that about 1580 B.C.E. Ahmose I did
actually drive out the Semitic or half-Semitic conquerors of the
country, and these conquerors are quite plausibly identified with the
Hyksos. Now during the Hyksos period we hear of a ruler named Jacob-Her,
or Jacob-El, and a few centuries after the inscriptions of Mer-ne-ptah
show Israel already established in Palestine. If, in the casual
selection of inscriptions that has been made by the lapse of thirty-five
centuries, these facts appear, it is surely not impossible that in 300
B.C.E. a great many more facts were known. It is not likely that every
Egyptian priest could read the hieroglyphics, but some could, and the
knowledge of a few could easily become common possession.
When Greeks came to Egypt in the train of Alexander and Ptolemy, they
not only brought Jews there, but they found them, as well as the story
just discussed, whether two hundred or twelve hundred years old.
When we meet the Egyptian version again, it is in a form unmistakably
malevolent. A very few years after Hecataeus, an Egyptian priest named
Manetho wrote the history of his people in Greek. His sources were
popular traditions much more than the monuments, but they were at least
partly documentary. Manetho’s book has been lost, and its “fragments,”
as usual, appear in the form of quotations in much later books, where we
must estimate the probabilities of wilful and careless error.
The fragments of especial interest to us are contained in Josephus’
apologetic work known as _Contra Apionem_ (§1, 26-27), where
unfortunately one cannot always distinguish between the statements of
Josephus and those of Manetho.
The essential part of Manetho’s story, as far as we can piece it
together, is that the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt was nothing more nor
less than the defeat and expulsion of certain rebellious Egyptians.
These latter had been isolated from their fellow-men as lepers and
criminals, and had treasonably summoned to their aid the Bedouin Hyksos
from Jerusalem. The Egyptian outcasts were led by a Heliopolitan priest
named Osarsiph, who afterwards changed his name to Moses. After a short
domination over Egypt, they were defeated and expelled, and pursued to
the frontiers of Syria.
If the very indefinite words of Josephus are to be trusted (_Contra
Apionem_, i. 26), Manetho expressly asserts that this account is based
upon what is popularly told of the Jews (τὰ μυθευόμενα καὶ
λεγόμενα περὶ τῶν Ἰουδαίων). Whether Manetho really said so or
not, it is extremely unlikely that it was the case. The account seems
too finished and detailed to have such an origin. It is much more likely
that it is a deliberate invention of Manetho himself, following the
Jewish story with a certain amount of care. As has been suggested, the
name Osarsiph is simply an Egyptian version of Joseph, the name of
Osiris (which often appears as Osar- or Osor- in names)[97] being
substituted for the assumed theophoric element Jo-, a syllable that
would be familiar to all Egyptians in such very common Jewish names as
Johanan and Jonathan.
The “Egyptian version” as we found it in Hecataeus is far from
malevolent. In Manetho it is plainly inspired by hatred. The Jews are
represented as the mongrel offspring of Egyptian outcasts and
half-civilized Bedouins. The vice of unsociability is reasserted,
coupled with a charge of “atheism,” a term we shall have to deal with
later in detail. Moses, or Osarsiph, forbade the Jews “to have any
dealings with anyone whatsoever except their confederates”
(συνωμοσμένοι). That is, of course, more precise than the
words “inhospitable and inhuman manner of life” of Hecataeus, and formed
in ancient times a more serious indictment than in our own.
Now Josephus, of course, is roused to considerable heat by the “silly
lies” of Manetho, although as testimony to the antiquity of his people
the story is grist to his mill. He points out very clearly and correctly
that many of the incidents are admissions that the corresponding
incidents of the Jewish story are essentially true. These admissions do
not prove that Manetho read these matters from the hieroglyphic records,
but merely that he knew the Jewish story, and, except for the confusion
of Moses and Joseph, that he knew it well.
Nearly all Manetho’s details are suggested in some way by the Biblical
story. The leprosy of Osarsiph is probably derived from the story of
Moses (Exodus iv. 7); the convicts in the quarries (οἱ ἐν ταῖς
λᾳοτομίαις), from the bondage which the Jews acknowledged of
themselves (Exodus i. 12-14). Manetho cannot accept Joseph’s rule nor
Pharaoh’s discomfiture at the Red Sea, but, as many other ancient and
modern writers did, he will not absolutely deny what he wishes to avoid,
but prefers to present it in a form less galling to his pride. Osarsiph
did rule over Egypt, but his rule was a chastisement of the Egyptians
for the impiety of King Amenophis, and was effected only by the aid of
foreign mercenaries. Pharaoh did advance to “the river” with a picked
army and then withdraw before the enemy, but it was a voluntary
withdrawal, impelled by his fear of the offended gods.[98]
It is by no means impossible that all the facts implied may have been
learned by Manetho through oral acquaintance with the Jewish story of
the Exodus. But if Manetho acquired his information so, we should expect
confusion in the sequence of events. We should find anachronisms of
various sorts. It is therefore more likely that he had an actual book
before him. Tradition of strong intrinsic probability assigns the
translation of the Pentateuch into Greek to the reign of Philadelphus.
Writing at about 270 B.C.E., Manetho may well have read the Pentateuch,
at least cursorily. Indeed it would be easy to suppose that it was the
circulation in Greek of stories so offensive to Egyptians that specially
moved him to publish his own interpretation of those stories. He was
hardly likely to have made so much of them, if they were merely legends,
scarcely known except to the Jews themselves and their closest
neighbors.
The “Egyptian version” may be said to have been the more successful. The
leprosy of Moses, the founder of the nation, was constantly girded at by
later writers. Tacitus repeats Manetho faithfully in the matter,[99] and
one of the latest pagan writers of whom we have fragments concerning the
Jews, Helladius, makes allusion to the same thing.[100] The point does
not seem to us of capital importance, but among peoples that regarded
bodily defects as obvious signs of divine displeasure in the person
afflicted, it was likely to have weight.
It may, however, be well to remember that both versions were in equal
circulation. To many the Jewish story seemed the more probable. But it
is significant that at the very beginning of the period when the Jews
took a larger share in the life of the Mediterranean world we find Jews
and Egyptians distinctly in conflict. That conflict was destined to
become embittered, but it must not be taken as an epitome of Jewish
relations generally with other nations.
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