Reasons Why Anci;ent Civilizations Hated the Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

Anti-semitism looks like it started even before the 1st century CE.  Everything that Moses taught us offended the pagan world and the Christian world.  Our whole way of living was offensive to them.  I'll give examples soon, but their feelings are summed up by the quote below.                                          

An ancient quote from the 3rd century comes from Philostratus, resident of Athens and Rome who tells us of the pagan world's perception of Jews:  "For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity, and are a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table not join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separated from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the more distant Indies."

In other words, we didn't mix in and eat and drink and act just like the general population.  We are different.  We were different.  Our G-d was different, unseen.  We threatened others by being different.  This difference meant that their ways and gods were false.  That was the threat.  No nation or religion had ever made such audacious claims.  Yitzhak Heinemann described it:" no other nation at that time denied the gods of its neighbors...none of the people refrained from partaking of the sacrifices offered to the gods, except the Jews.   None of the other peoples refused to send gifts to its neighbors' temples, except the Jews.    

Ptolemy Apion or simply known as Apion (Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖος Ἀπίων; between 150 BC and 145 BC – 96 BC) was the last Greek King of Cyrenaica who separated it from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and in his last will bequeathed his country to Rome. He was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Apion, a Greek writer, protested, "Why, if the Jews are citizens, do they not worship the same gods?"

The Jews were the 1st monotheistic people of the world, except maybe one of the gods in Egypt who was the sun.  As for a foreign people the Jews, (Israelites) were the first.  The concept was shocking, different, and the pagans couldn't accept it.  Man could not be a god on one hand and and a man on the other hand.  G0d could not be idols.  He was unseen, a force, the most powerful force that was responsible for making the stars and moon and sun and people, etc.                                             

Moses and G-d had  reasons for the teaching.  We were not to mix in or we would be like the pagans.  This was a world of people who believed in multiple gods, a polytheistic world who believed in human sacrifice to please their gods, a world whose gods were idols, statutes and such, something you could see and touch.  Certain foods were withheld from us in our belief system that pagans enjoyed.  Indeed, this was not easy to uphold Jewish beliefs if one's work involved being with pagans a lot.  

 It is said in the bible that we were chosen because we were stiff-necked people, stubborn people who wouldn't given into temptation;  imagine all the arguments our ancestors had to disregard to maintain their beliefs.                              

Our various styles of clothing representing different Jewish groups

It was like being the Quakers or Amish among a Catholic group only 100 times harder.  The pagans took our behaviors as insulting their gods, their foods and drink and even their people as we wouldn't marry into their families. 

13th century Jews of Germany forced in this costume and hat

In ancient days, Jews were forced by the prevailing government to wear different clothing to identify them, just like the Nazis did with the yellow star of David.  

Today, anti-Semitism has mutated away from the religious and cultural aspects of differences to politics and a social stratum.  We are with some people still 2nd class citizens of the Muslim society, the Dhimmis.  It has never dissolved, just mutates with new reasoning.                             

Life is strange.  600,000 Israelites and others who were all slaves of Egypt left on the Exodus with 80 to 81 year old Moses  and trekked for 40 years to get to their destination by 1271 BCE.  You'd think that they never would return, but it really wasn't that far away as the crow flies.  Egyptians didn't like strangers at all, but disliked the Jews even more so.  To leave this country, Moses was pretty rough, causing people to die, plagues, etc.  The Pharaoh was almost as stubborn as Moses was.   So the Egyptians found Jews to be very offensive people.                                             

Manetho, an Egyptian priest, was annoyed by the Jews' liturgy and bible (which had just been translated into Greek), with its depictions of the Jews' exodus from Egypt, decided to rewrite that event.  According to Manetho, the Jews did not flee Egypt, but were expelled because they were lepers.  This 1st non-Jewish record of anti-semitism dates from Alexandria, Egypt, where in  3rd century BCE,  many Greeks and Jews had migrated as a result of Alexander's conquest of Egypt. Jews returned to Egypt when their enemies  were more threatening.     

Besides the leprosy excuse of spreading it, Maneatho and other said that Jews were hated because they hated all other people.  Jews were also accused of being atheists because they worshipped a g-d that no one, themselves included, had ever seen, while dismissing all visible gods as false.                                

Lysimachus, an Egyptian historian  of the 2nd or 1st century BCE, said about Jews,"Moses exhorted them to show kindliness to no one, to follow only the worst advice, and overthrow all the sanctuaries and altars of the gods they might come upon." 

 In 167 BCE, the Hellenic ruler of Syria and Palestine was Antiochus Epiphanes, and he was incited by some assimilated Jews, to destroy Judaism, which he correctly perceived as the basis of the Jewish opposition to his leadership.  He blamed Judaism for the Jews to reject his claim to be G0d manifest. (Epiphanes* in Greek).  "  Jews do not accept other gods or half god-half humans.  

Antiochus even sent an emissary to Judea to force the Jews to transgress the laws of their fathers and not to live according to G-d's commandments as told in the bible in Maccabees II 6:11).  He renamed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after Zeus Olympus, stopped the observance of the  Sabbath (from sunset on Friday to 3 stars on Saturday night, and the rite of circumcision, and forced the Jews to participate in the festival procession in honor of Dionysus.  Tacitus, Roman historian repeated this slander, and then later, Voltaire repeated it and even later, so did Karl Marx. Old accusations have a long shelf life and most likely are often repeated. 

Resource:

Book: Why the Jews? by Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin