Edward H. Flannery
Hellenistic Antisemitism
"As late
as the fifth century B.C.E., Herodotus--that meticulous
observer and perambulating pioneer of history who visited
many lands, including "the Palestine of Syria"--ignored the
Jews in his comprehensive history of the time. Obviously,
their theological claims and their ethnic exclusivism
neither interested nor irked the syncretic polytheists of
antiquity as long as they were worked out on Palestinian
soil. Nor did they attract much notice during the first
years of the Diaspora. At most, these introverted
communities scattered among the nations were regarded as
mere curiosities. Herodotus also visited Elephantine, yet he
failed to note in his History that the garrison there was
Jewish. But the Diaspora, quietly gaining its foothold in
the ancient world, was the stage being prepared for the
inevitable clash between the worshippers of Yahweh and those
of pagan deities.
...After the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.),
the Jews ceased to remain unnoticed. The Macedonian
conqueror pupil of Aristotle and diligent propagator of the
Grecian mode of life, left behind him a world rapidly
becoming Hellenized. Against the first unification of
culture, Jewish communities--now grown in size and
influence--emerged in all their singularity. Unlike the rest
of their Greco-Oriental and, later, Roman neighbors, Jews
did not take their place as average citizens of the cities
and towns. They continued to acknowledge Jerusalem as the
Holy City to which they sent a didrachma each year as a
personal tax and where stood the temple of Yahweh, their one
true God, invisible and transcendent, who refused to assume
His place in the Pantheons of the empire. Looking upon their
host countries as profane soil and their fellow citizens as
children of error and superstition, Jews grouped themselves
in a quarter of their own city. The "ghetto" was a voluntary
reality hundreds of years before the term was coined or
legislation regarding it enacted. To the proud heirs of
Pericles, Aristotle and Homer, this aloofness was an
insufferable arrogance. Convinced that all that was not
Greek was barbarian, they resented rival claims to
superiority or privilege on the part of the people they
considered politically and culturally undistinguished. A
collision between these two proud and dissimilar mentalities
could only be a matter of time."
Edward H.
Flannery "The Anguish of the Jews" Revised and Updated
(New Jersey: Paulist Press., INC, 1985) pp. 8, 10-11
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