Bezalel Bar-Kochva is well known to students of Judaism in the Hellenistic period for his detailed monographs on Judas Maccabaeus (Cambridge UP, 1989) and Pseudo-Hecataeus, On the Jews: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora (University of California Press, 1996). He is an old-fashioned historian in the classical mode, who subscribes to the ideal of von Ranke, to reconstruct the past without passion or prejudice. In the volume under review, he assesses Greek attitudes toward the Jews in the Hellenistic period. This is a revisionary work. Modern scholarship, following the lead of Josephus, has tended to exaggerate the admiration for the Jews in Greek authors of the early Hellenistic period, and has too hastily characterized the hostile comments of later writers as antisemitic. Bar-Kochva sets out to show that the picture is much more complicated than what is usually claimed.

The book deals with the Hellenistic period, down to the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BCE. It is divided into two parts, with the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes as the dividing line. The first part deals with Theophrastus, Clearchus, Hecataeus of Abdera, Megasthenes, Hermippus, and Mnaseas. The second part deals with Seleucid propaganda, Agatharcides, Lysimachus, Posidonius, Timochares, and Apollonius Molon. It does not, however, deal directly with Oriental Greek writers such as Berossus and Manetho, on the grounds that their study requires expertise in Babylonian or Egyptian matters. In each case Bar-Kochva deals in depth with the writer under examination, so that the remarks on the Jews can be properly understood in context. This extensive attention to the Greek authors in their own right sets this book apart from all other treatments of Greek views of Judaism.

Some of the early Greek writers who refer to Jews (Theophrastus, Clearchus) knew very little about them. Theophrastus “does not seem to have bothered to acquire accurate information on the Jews but relied on common rumors and hearsay, partly hostile, partly imaginary, mostly coming from Egypt” (38). Hecataeus of Abdera did seek out information, but he tailored it to his own interests. He is not as positive about the Jewish way of life as sometimes claimed. He sought to give his work a veneer of objectivity, but his criticism of the Jewish way of life, as separate from humanity and hating strangers, should not be disregarded.

Mnaseas of Patara (third to second century BCE) is important as our first witness to the tradition that there was a statue of an ass in the Jerusalem temple. The story is transmitted by Apion, and then by Josephus, who tried to refute it. Mnaseas is thought to have heard the story from Idumeans in Egypt about 200 BCE. Bar-Kochva thinks the story was composed in Egypt, where the ass was associated with Seth-Typhon. It arose from tensions between Judeans and Idumeans. It is unlikely that Mnaseas had any animus against the Jews. He “may well have wished only to delight readers with a stimulating and intriguing story that he had heard” (224–25). The Hellenistic “blood libel,” according to which Jews practiced annual ritual murder, is also known to us from Josephus's refutation of Apion. Antiochus Epiphanes had allegedly entered the Jerusalem temple and found a victim who was being prepared for sacrifice. Bar-Kochva ascribes this story to Seleucid court historians, who used it to justify the repressive measures of the king. He argues, however, that the “blood-libel” originated earlier, in two adaptations of Typhon traditions, and he hypothesizes that these were invented by Egyptians, not Greeks, already in the Persian period. His argument here involves complex source-critical analysis, and is somewhat speculative.

Agatharcides of Cnidus, who flourished in Alexandria in the mid-second century BCE, wrote that Ptolemy I captured Jerusalem because of Jewish observance of the Sabbath, which Agatharcides regarded as an instance of deisidaimonia, or superstition. But he criticized other peoples for similar reasons, and it would be oversensitive to describe him as anti-Jewish. He was, however, the first writer to characterize a major Jewish observance as superstition.

Lysimachus of Alexandria (second century BCE), in contrast, was decidedly hostile to the Jews. His account appeared in a history of Egypt, not in a separate work on the Jews. He claims that the Jews were expelled from Egypt in the reign of King Bochoris (eighth century BCE). Bar-Kochva argues that the hostile traditions about the Exodus were motivated by tensions between Jews and Egyptians in the Persian period, as reflected in the archive from Elephantine. He dates Lysimachus toward the end of the second century BCE. His hostility is ascribed in part to the aggressive policies of the Hasmoneans, but also to the prominence of Jews at the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria.

Bar-Kochva devotes four chapters to Posidonius, the most significant intellectual of his age. Josephus says that Posidonius and Apollonius Molon were Apion's sources for the stories of ass worship and ritual murder. Bar-Kochva argues that Apion falsely named Posidonius as his reference for the ass-worship story, and that Posidonius omitted the story of the blood libel. While he reported the advice given to Antiochus Sidetes by his friends, that he should destroy the Jewish people, he rejected their viewpoint, and explained the Jewish reluctance to mix with other people as arising from their piety. Apion misled his readers when he claimed the authority of Posidonius to lend credibility to his charges against the Jews. Apollonius Molon, however, who was a contemporary of Posidonius on the island of Rhodes, described the Jews as atheists and haters of men. Bar-Kochva attributes his negative account of the Jews to his rivalry with Posidonius, whose account was basically favorable.

This is a monumental book. The brief summary presented here does not begin to do justice to the detail of Bar-Kochva's analysis. He shows definitively that most of the Greek accounts were neither as admiring nor as hostile as scholars have made them out to be. He locates the wellsprings of hostility to the Jews in Egypt in the Persian period, because of Jewish collaboration with the Persian government (130). But this is largely an appeal to the unknown. It is not supported here by the kind of careful analysis applied to the Greek authors. The lack of an analysis of the account of Manetho is especially unfortunate, as he is our earliest witness to the Egyptian tradition about the Exodus.

Nonetheless, this is a major contribution to the study of Judaism, for which we can only be grateful.