Talk:Apion

old discussion

This article needed some clean up. Contemporary historians know there were inter and intra communal fights and polemics in Alexandria. To use Josephus, who himself was writing a polemic against the Greeks, who is then attributing to Philo (50 years later no less) who is leading a delegation with the purpose of making an argument for one side on a complex set of antagonisms and the third hand source for allegations of what Apion might have said is simply wrong. The Flaccum, the Against Apion are inherently propagandistic works. We know they contain many false statements already. The embassy itself was a hugely POV exercise in competing narratives and accusationsPerdurant 16:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm no sure that I follow you - especially the bit about Philo. Of course Against Apion is polemical. That does not mean that it does not provide evidernce of Apion's views, just that we should be aware of the fact that it's tendentious. Josephus would not bother to rebut arguments that had not been made, so we can reasonably consider Apion to be anti-Jewish and to have repeated the story about the human sacrifice which you have cut out. Paul B (talk) 14:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

2011

Folksong onto this discussion: No, Josephus does have a reason to rebut arguments not made. He is setting up a straw man.Contemporary scholars state that Josephus misrepresented Apion's views -- essentially creating a straw man of supposed antisemitic views by Apion and knocking them down. Here is the abstract of Jones piece in the Journal of the study of Judaism:

A comparison of Josephus' portrait of Apion with other ancient testimonia shows that the Jewish historian, in his effort to discredit the grammarian, focused on the same failing of character that other ancient authors hadfound. Josephus also aimed a deceptive attack at Apion's ethnicity wherein he blurs the line between the Alexandrian's Greek cultural identity and his Egyptian origin. Josephus took pains to construct an ideal opponent, one with whom the reader of Josephus' treatise-be he Jew, Greek, or Roman-would not sympathize. An analysis of Apion's "case" against the Jews shows that Josephus himself culled various Jewish items from Apion's Aegyptiaca and, after distorting the original intention of the excerpts, cobbled them together to form an easily refuted indictment of Jewish history and practices. An appendix examines the evidence for a supposed κατα 'Ioυδαíων attributed to Apion. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/jsj/2005/00000036/00000003/art00002 Stae2 (talk) 14:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

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That's nice -- if you've found new alternative scholarship, then it should be incorporated into the article (if relevant and notable and within the range of accepted scholarly debate). Arbitrarily and randomly removing large chunks of text from the article is not the solution to anything. Meanwhile, it would really be best if you would refrain from your pointless statements of pure personal opinion (such as calling Josephus "anti-Greek"[sic] etc.) which generate far more heat than light, and conspicuously fail to to lead to constructive conversation on collaborative article improvement... AnonMoos (talk) 22:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative scholarship? I am talking about the mainstream of current views. The period and place was rife with cultural competition, and communal and intra-communal fighting over institutions, commercial and tax concessions, citizenship and outright riots within and between groups, especially in the face of dealing with the Romans for patronage, acceptance, and support in these struggles. There were myriad anti-Greek, Anti-Egyptian, and Anti-Jewish outbreaks and polemics.

You do have some idea of the mendacity of calling Apion "Anti-Jewish" when there is nothing whatsoever anti-Jewish in his writings and scholars now beleive that Josephus falsely corrupted Apions writing to make it seem so?

Elsewhere you say Josephus had no motive. Of course he did. He was a profound chauvinistic and a professional polemicist. Indeed his strange claims on the Jewish Revolt against Rome are commonly seen through the lens of his own ambition with his own interests in Roman patrons.

Again we are discussing cultural chauvinists who are arguing for their communities support in inter communal fighting.

Scholars today also know why Josephus was given credibility during the Christian ere. It is because attacked Egyptian historians such as Manetho whose histories indicated a continuous Egyptian civilization predating the suppsoed firmly dated flood of Noah.Stae2 (talk) 23:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Whatever -- in this field, if a hypothesis was first heard of in 2005, and it seeks to radically revise the consensus of several preceding centuries of scholarship, and it is not based on any new discoveries of primary source materials (such as newly-found manuscripts of Apion's writings, etc.), then it is NOT the "mainstream of current views"... Furthermore, your tirade of pretended pseudo-indignation is rather off-target -- none of Apion's works have directly survived, so that our understanding of them is completely dependent on what others have written, including Josephus. Josephus does something of a hatchet job on Apion, of course, in the accustomed grand style of Classical rhetoric, but it would not appear to make too much sense to suppose that Josephus would fabricate direct quotes from Apion, or systematically falsify his basic statements of Apion's arguments (for one thing, his ancient readership had a lot more information available to them about Apion than we do today). Apion can be fairly considered to be "anti-Jewish" (certainly far more so than Josephus is allegedly "anti-Greek"[sic]!), unless Josephus is not just a partisan advocate in a duel of rhetoric, but also an outright lying dishonest rogue of the scummiest lowest degree -- something which it would appear to take more than one person's deconstructionist/postmodernist-style arguments to solidly establish... AnonMoos (talk) 06:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)