In all human societies we find a tendency to rank people
according to perceived importance. The precise criteria differ from country to
country and from one period to the next. Usually we find such norms as: family
origin, social power, wealth, education, the prestige of one’s job, or
one’s standing in religion. People often occupy mixed positions in this
hierarchy of values. A Brahmin priest in India may rank low in wealth and
power, but high in religious prestige. In the Graeco-Roman world a similar mix
of criteria applied.
If we study the Christian community at Corinth, we discover that Christians belonged to some clearly defined social groups. (1) We have already seen in the previous chapter that wealth played a part in putting people high or low in the social pyramid. But there were other factors too. Racial origin featured prominently. So did religion and one’s job.
This pyramid of social class was riddled with mutual prejudice; and even, in part, maintained by it.
If we were to visit our Christian brothers and sisters in Paul’s Corinth, what social rankings would we meet?
Since Corinth was, after all, a Roman colony, we would find that the highest social status in terms of political power was accorded to members of the traditional Roman aristocracy; even more so if the person concerned held an imperial office. Gallio, the governor of Achaia, who resided in Corinth and before whom Paul defended his innocence, belonged to this class. (2) As far as we know, no Christian hailed from this very small elite.
Not far removed in social standing was the local Greek aristocracy, especially people appointed to high office. Remem- ber that Corinth lay in Greece. The Greeks considered them- selves racially and culturally superior to all foreigners, including Romans. Among them we may reckon the Greek family of Stephanas whom we know to have been rather well-off. (3)
Erastos, whom Paul calls ‘the city treasurer’, may be a high-ranking Greek official. (4) In a large commercial city such as Corinth, to be charged with administering the funds and properties of the city was no mean responsibility. What is more, there is good reason to believe that this same Erastos was later promoted to the position of aedile of Corinth.
On a paved square in Corinth archeologists found the inscription: ‘In return for his aedileship Erastos laid this pav ment at his own expense’. (5) The highest city post in Corinth was held by the duumviri, two officials who were elected annually.
Bust on the tomb of Gratinus Libanus and Gratidia Carite, Romans 1st cent. AD. They join their right hands in token of fidelity and harmony, a gesture Romans made at their wedding. |
Immediately following in hierarchical order were the aediles, whose duties involved the oversight and maintenance of public buildings, the provisioning of grain and the organization of games. As treasurer, and later aedile of Corinth, Erastos was near the top of the social order.
Another high ranking group in Corinth must have been families of successful Roman colonists. These were veterans of the army or Roman citizens who had settled in the city when Julius Caesar reopened it. Achaicus, Fortunatus, Gaius and Quartus may have belonged to this category. (6) Or they may have been freedmen (7) who had acquired full citizenship in Corinth with voting rights in the city council.
The Jews formed a special group in the city. Like in other hellenistic cities, they very much kept to themselves, restricting social contacts to what was required in the line of business. Prominent among the Christian converts from Judaism was the family of Crispus.(8)
Then there was the large category of skilled workers and their families, some well-to-do as Prisca and Aquila, others struggling for survival from day to day. They included weavers, smiths, leather workers, potters, masons, glass blowers, men and soldiers. Tertius, the scribe, belonged to this category (9) as, we can be sure, did a large if not the largest, section of the Christian community.
It is with them in mi nd that Paul writes: ‘Make it your aim to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, to work with your own hands, according to the instructions we gave you. Then you will win respect in the eyes of outsiders and will not be dependent on others for your needs.’ (10)
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A final, important group were the slaves. They were used as cheap labour in the homes, in shops, in workplaces, on farms, in the dockyards and on building sites. Some were cooks, servants and maids; others filled clerical posts in government offices.
There were degrees of slavery but all slaves were owned, in one form or other, by their masters.
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Few Christian slaves are mentioned by name. Onesimos of Colossae is one of them. (11) Of others we do not know whether they were slave or free: Ampliatus, Andronicus, Junia and Epinaetus? (12) We know there were Christian slaves in the community of Corinth because Paul occasionally addresses them. (13)
In Corinth, like in the whole of Graeco-Roman society, Christians of lower social rank outnumbered the members of higher social status. Paul writes:
Remember what you were, my brothers and sisters, when God called you.
From a human point of view, few of you were educated or powerful or of high social standing.
God chose what the world considers stupid to shame the educated.
God chose what the world considers weak to shame the powerful.
God chose what the world considers low and contemptible, yes what it thinks nothing, to bring to nothing positions that exist. (1 Corinthians 1,26-28.)
Notice how Paul presupposes various norms of prestige in this text:
power - alluding to politics and Roman rule;
social standing - referring to wealth;
fame - attached to origin or family;
education/culture - claimed for themselves by the Greeks.
It is time we look deeper into some attitudes that kept people in their place.
The Greek city states, as we have seen, developed a very high culture. The arts flourished: architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature. Greek politicians shaped new institutions. Greek philosophers formulated fascinating theories about the nature of human existence. As if this was not enough, Greek military power, as we have seen, dominated the Middle East for at least three centuries. For the Greeks all this justified a sense of great racial superiority.
People who were not Greek were called barbaroi, ‘barbarians’. The word barbaros derives from child speech. An infant who only begins to speak, stutters and says silly things like ‘bah-bah’ (= ‘barbar’). A foreigner’s language sounds like that, a fact which native Greeks found amusing. Barbaros, ‘stutterer’, thus became equivalent to ‘foreigner’. (14)
It is in this sense that Paul uses the word ‘barbarian’ when he discusses the prayer of speaking in tongues. People who strongly feel the presence of God may just utter sounds, as charismatics still do today when they ‘pray in tongues’. Such prayer should not be exaggerated, Paul says, because it lacks the element of meaning. ‘If I do not know the meaning of a language, I shall be a barbarian to the speaker and the speaker a barbarian to me. (15)
However, ‘barbarian’ had also acquired other connotations. The Greeks maintained: ‘Whoever is not a Greek is a barbarian’. When they spoke of ‘the Greeks and the barbarians’, they meant the whole human race. (16) Implied in the expression, even if not always fully expressed, was the sense that humankind consisted of the cultured Greek and the uncivilised barbarians.
Paul too employs the term in this sense: ‘I have a duty to both Greeks and barbarians, to the educated and to the ignorant.’ (17)
Other negative connotations inherent in the term ‘barbarian’ can be gauged from the way it describes perversion and cruelty in the second book of Maccabees (125 BC):
*‘barbarian hordes’;
*‘a man who has the temper of a cruel tyrant and the rage of a barbarian wild beast’;
*‘Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarian than the man who appointed him’;
*‘barbarian arrogance’;
*‘do not destroy so barbarously and savagely’. (2 Maccabees 2,22; 4,25; 5,22; 13,9; 15,2.)
Romans had an inferiority complex about their ‘barbarian’ origins. The sons of the Roman upperclass families would travel to Greece to finish off their education. Their highest ambition was to compose poetry in Greek. Cicero complains about the snobs in Rome who would only read Greek literature and who refused to read anything written in their own language, Latin. Some people were so ashamed of their Italian origins, he tells us, that they wanted to be considered Greek. (18)
 Greek myths, sing in epics and painted on walls and vases, depicted the exploits of Greek heros among barbarian nations. |
No wonder that Cicero expressed his anger at the negative judgment implied in being called a ‘barbarian’. ‘Romans are not barbarians’, he declared. (19) Many Hellenists who were not Greeks by race, but who had adopted Greek culture, will have taken a similar stand. They looked on themselves as ‘Greeks’. Others fought the bigotry head on.
Lucian of Samosata who hailed from Syria, states that philosophy and truth are on the side of the many ‘barbarians from Soli, Cyprus, Babylon or Stagyra’ who possess a good character and proclaim sound teaching. (22)
A century later Clement of Alexandria adduces a similar argument: ‘Barbarians have been inventors not only of philosophy, but of almost any art. The Egyptians, no less than the Chaldeans, were the first to introduce to humankind the knowledge of astrology. (21) The distinction between Greek and barbarian was obnoxious. (22)
Greeks who believed that foreigners were ‘barbarians’, in the sense of being uncivilised, ignorant or savage, were guilty of prejudice. Since this concept is crucial for the theme of this book, we need to examine it more in detail.
The word ‘prejudice’ derives from the Latin word prejudicium. Literally it means ‘pre-judgment’. In Rome, laws were different for the upper class, the patricians, and for the lower class, the plebeians. The ‘pre-judgment’ was a judicial examination, held prior to the real trial, to determine first the social status of would-be litigants.(23) Often it meant that, in fact, long before the actual trial, the outcome was established by the ‘prejudice’.
Today’s meaning of prejudice comes close to this. Without examining a person on his or her own merit, we have already adopted a negative attitude that implies a judgment. A prejudice is a mixture of beliefs and feelings that predisposes people to respond negatively to members of a particular group.
* ‘Prejudice is an emotional, rigid attitude. It leads one to select certain facts for emphasis, blinding one to other facts. It causes one to look on all members of a ‘group’ as if they were alike. (24)
*‘Prejudice is an avertive or hostile attitude towards a person who belongs to a group, simply because he or she belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to that group. It is an antipathy based on a faulty and inflexible generalisation.’ (25)
*‘Social prejudice is a negative, hostile, rigid and emotional attitude towards a person simply because he or she is perceived to belong to a group, and is presumed to possess the negative qualities ascribed to the group as a result of selective, obsolete or faulty evidence. (26)
A lot of research has been done on the origins of prejudice. How does it arise? To summarise the rather complex conclusions of social and psychological studies, we should distinguish between the root cause and additional causes.
The root cause must probably be sought in the need of every group of people, whether a family, a class, a religious community or nation, to protect its own way of life and interests. Once a degree of power, prestige or wealth has been captured, the group resists newcomers who claim access to such goods and values. (27)
A hostile attitude, implying the inferior position of the challengers, helps to retain one’s privileged status. Prejudice is therefore employed consciously or unconsciously to help a group win or maintain a larger share of life’s goods and values.
Many secondary causes then come into play, reinforcing the prejudice. These are: personality traits of authoritarian leaders; the responses of the victims of the prejudice; the coin- ing of abusive terms; the acceptance of discriminatory practices, and so on.
Once a prejudice has been established, it tends to grow and gather momentum. Social scientists speak of ‘the vicious circle’ of prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice brings on conflict, which brings on more prejudice.
For our purpose it is helpful to recognise rationalisation as a key element in prejudice.
There is a big difference between reason and rationalisation. We may have good reasons for our attitudes and actions. But at times we fool ourselves. We do not want to admit that our real motives are irrational. So we invent spurious reasons. This is called ‘rationalisation’: namely the provision of plausible reasons to explain to ourselves or to others behaviour for which our real motives are different and which are either unknown or unconscious.
Ordinary Greeks might justify their prejudice against foreigners with the following rationalisations:
‘You can never trust these barbarians.’
‘It is their own fault that they have made so little progress.’
‘They can’t think straight because their language is crooked.’
‘All their achievements are based on brute force, not on power of mind.’
Greeks might believe these were valid reasons based on fact; whereas they had never been proved. Greeks might remain unaware of the actual motive for their hostility to foreigners: namely the fear that the latter might upset the established order, or, at some stage, take over.
This brings me to another element of prejudice: the formation of stereotypes. By this we mean that human groups are characterised in terms of a few fairly crude traits or common attributes. These characterizations freeze in time so that it is difficult to change them.
Children learn stereotypes even before they can think for themselves. Stereotypes become embedded in songs, in jokes, in literature. (28)
The stereotype of a ‘barbarian’ for a Greek was: a foreigner; speaks a funny language; is probably uncivilised, ignorant and savage; cannot be trusted. Stereotypes are ‘unscientific and hence unreliable generalisations that people make about other people either as persons or groups’. (29)
We will now consider how prejudice, rationalisation and stereotyping functioned in the mutual antipathy between Hellenists and Jews.
The Diaspora Jews did not always get on with their Hellenist neighbours. There were frequent tensions, culminating at times in popular uprisings against them. A number of times Jews were expelled from Rome; as in 19 AD under Emperor Tiberius and in 52 AD under Claudius. Riots against Jewish communities took place in Caesarea, Ephesus, Antioch, Cyprus, Libya and Greece.
In Alexandria, where the Jews occupied two-fifths of the city, there were many clashes. In 38 AD these came to a head in a popular riot against them. The Jews were stripped of their citizenship. They were assaulted by violent mobs who drove them from their homes, mocked them, beat them up and even killed a good number.
The reason for this kind of persecution was mainly religious. Because the Jews worshipped only one God, they refrained from everything that could be related to idol worship. And much in Hellenist life fell under this category. Public feasts began with sacrifices in the local temple. Loyalty to one’s city or local rulers was linkedrespect for the national deities. Before going to the market, meat was first ritually offered to the gods and goddesses. Add to this a strict observance of the Sabbath and avoidance of everything ritually ‘unclean’. It left the Jews little option but to segregate themselves from others.
It led to voluntary Jewish withdrawal in separate housing estates. Jews took over adjoining streets or whole quarters of cities. They established their own synagogues. They supported each other in health care and business. Wherever possible, they tried to obtain self-governing rights for their own part of the town. Jewish parents would restrict the social contacts of their children to reduce the risk of out-marriage.
Diaspora Jews looked on Jerusalem as their real centre, despatching a didrachma each year as a personal tax to its Temple.(30) The consequence of this was that, in the eyes of their Hellenist neighbours, Jews often seemed to present a sectarian, secretive and anti-social front.
A libation altar (above seen from the top, right seen from the side) that Hellenists would use at home. The top holds a shallow dish that is surrounded by images of twelve popular gods and goddesses. Guests would pour a few drops from their drinks onto the dish, thus performing a libation sacrifice. It is this kind of practice that made social mixing difficult for the Jews, and later for Christians. |
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It was a fertile soil for popular prejudice. In many Greek and Roman writings we find an expression of strong antipathy against the Jews. In 59 BC Cicero, acting as defence lawyer in a court case, praised his client Flaccus for having resisted ‘the barbarian superstitions’ of the Jews. ‘Everyone knows’, he asserted, ‘how numerous they are, how they stick together and how they have influence in public meetings’. He then launches a direct attack: ‘Their religion and rites have nothing in common with the splendor of the empire, with the dignity of our reputation and with the institutions of our ancestors.’ (31)
In his classic book on the history of the Roman Empire, Tacitus (56-120 AD) gives this assessment:
‘Moses prescribed for his people a novel religion quite different from those of the rest of humankind. Among the Jews all things are profane which we hold sacred; on the other hand they consider licit what we judge immoral ..................
Many practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting ...................
A reason for their increasing wealth may be found in their stubborn loyalty and generosity towards other Jews. But they confront the rest of human beings with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not share food with non-Jews or intermarry with them. Though a most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of an alien race. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show they are different from others. Converts from among us to Judaism adopt the same practices. The very first lesson they learn is to depise our gods, shed all feelings of patriotism towards their own country and give up their ties to their own parents, children and families.’ (32)
Hellenist distrust of the Jews was fanned by ridiculous stories. The Jews were said to adore the guilded head of an ass. The Sabbath rest arose because, during their flight from Egypt the people had contracted an ailment in the groin which forced them to take rest. The Jews were stated to take an oath never to assist a stranger, least of all a Hellenist. Once a year they were supposed to capture a non-Jew whom they fattened and then killed in a ritual slaughter. Such allegations are found in the writings of Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Molon and Apion.(33)
Although the Jewish practice of seclusion may have given offence to some people, it is not fair to blame antipathy against them on the Jews themselves. We should not overlook the fact that they acted out of conviction. In the Graeco-Roman empire Christians too would become the target for persecution for their religious stand. The Jews Were convinced that they had been separated by God from the nations as his own holy people. They felt obliged to witness to him as the only God and to his Law.
As one historian writes: ‘Jews were resented in this epoch for their separatism, their claims, and also for the higher moral and spiritual quality of their way of life. A cryptic admiration - turned into its opposite - is often discernible behind the pagan resentment’. (34)
The problem for the Diaspora Jews was how to remain faithful to their own cultural and religious tradition while living in a ‘pagan’ modern world. Jews could not take part in public banquets or worship in Greek temples. Moreover, as we have seen, Jewish isolation from normal Hellenistic city life, led to distrust and antipathy. The situation drove the Jewish communities to even greater introspection and to the formation of their own, anti-Hellenist prejudice.
Their Rabbis built up spiritual defences with characteristic black-and-white terminology. They designated non-Jews with the blanket term Gentiles. (35) They justified Jewish aloofness from Hellenists by the ‘impurity and filth’ of Gentile living. In the Book of Jubilees (100 BC) we read this advice: ‘Separate yourself from the Gentiles. Don’t eat with them. Don’t act as they do. Don’t associate with them. For what they do is unclean and their way of life means pollution, abomination and uncleanness’. (36)
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‘Our Lawgiver fenced us round with impregnable ramparts and walls of iron, that we might not mingle at all with any of the other nations but remain pure in body and soul .................
To be ‘the people of God’ is a title that does not fit the rest of humankind but only us who worship the true God. The rest are not of God but of food and drink and clothes .................. (37)
A number of fair-minded Rabbis conceded that there virtuous people among the Gentiles. Others were not as tolerant. Rabbi Ishmael taught that in the future world there would be no redemption for the Gentiles. (38) Rabbi Eliezer held the extreme view that ‘none of the Gentiles will have any share in the world to come. For it is written: "The wicked shall return to Sheol (39) , all the Gentiles that forget God".’ (40) Rabbi Debe Eliyahu maintained that God would make distinctions. Gentiles who had been hostile to Israel would be exterminated in the Messianic era. Friendly Gentiles would become Israel’s slaves until the Last Day. Then they would be saved, but in a second- rate kind of heaven. (41) Popular books such as Jubilees, (42) 1 Enoch, (43) and the War of the Sons of Light from Qumran (44) predict the annihilation of the Gentiles on God’s day of wrath.
We can feel sympathy for the teaching of the Rabbis against the background of Jewish isolation in a Hellenistic world. But it erected a barrier of racial bias and religious bigotry that would be hard to surmount.
The people of Corinth were divided into many social groups. Political power and wealth played an important part. But, as we will now realise, other factors separated people almost as much: chief among them prejudice.
Prejudices in people’s minds maintained the status of inequality and aloofness. Romans believed they were superior because of their military might. Greeks had their pride; they looked on all others as barbarians. Jews considered non-Jews to be unclean and rejected by God. Hellenists regarded Jews as sneaky and untrustworthy. As we will see later, many other prejudices existed. Slaves were thought to be rightly slaves because they were dependent by nature. Women had been created to be subservient to men.
What a mess! On every side bias and bigotry, racism, partiality, intolerance, all fed by rationalisations and stereotypes. We now understand a little better the task before the Gospel. The barriers erected in people’s minds and consolidated in social customs had to be torn down.
From now on there are no longer any distinctions between Gentiles and Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians and savages, slaves and free, but Christ is all, Christ is in all! (1 Colossians 3,11.)
1. Do we recognise in ourselves prejudices we have acquired:
* from our culture, language, use of terms?
*from attitudes and practices we picked up at home?
*from what we learnt at school?
*from newspapers, radio and TV?
2. Read Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18,9-14.
*Can you put your finger on prejudice, stereotyping and rationalisation in the Pharisee’s words?
* How does the parable invite us to respond?
3. What mutual prejudices between Jews and Samaritans are revealed in John 4,8-9 amd 4,20?
*What actions of Jesus in John 4 break through such prejudice?
*Compare also these passages in Luke:
Jesus’ refusal to curse a Samaritan village (Luke 9,51- 56);
the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10,29-37);
the return of the grateful Samaritan (Luke 17,11-19).
4. The Christian community in Corinth included people whom, as Paul says, ‘the world considers stupid, weak, low and contemptible’ (1 Corinthians 1,26-28).
In this light, what are the implications of the fact that every Christian reflects the brightness of the Lord?
( See 2 Corinthians 3,17-18; read also 4,1-6.)
1. For a discussion of social rankings, read: G.THEISSEN, ‘Social Stratification in the Corinthian Community’, in The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, Edinburgh 1982, pp. 99-109; W.MEEKS, ‘The Social Level of Pauline Christians’, in The First Urban Christians, New Haven 1983, pp. 51-63.
| 2. Acts 18,12-17. | 3. 1 Corinthians 16,15. | 4. Romans 16,23. |
5. J.H.Kent, Corinth. The Inscriptions 1926-1950, Princeton 1966, p 99; for the identifiacation with the Eratos of Romans 16,23, see the long discussion in G.Theyssen, The Social Setting, etc., pp. 75-83.
6. 1 Corinthians 1,14; 16,17; Romans 16,23.
7. A freedman was a slave who had been set free by his master through a process called manumission. Sometimes freedmen kept working for the families they had been slaves of. If they possessed special competence, they could also acquire complete economic independence and rise to important positions.
8. Acts 18,8; 1 Corinthians 1,14.
9. Romans 16,22.
10. 1 Thessalonians 4,11-12; ln 1 Thessalonians 2,9 and 2 Thessalonians 3,7-12 Paul adduces his own example of working while he was preaching.
| 11. Philemon 10-21. | 12. Romans 16,5-7. | 13. Corinthians 7,20-24. |
14. This original meaning can still be traced in Greek literature; see HOMER, Iliad 2,867; HERODOTUS, History 2,158; AESCHYLOS, Agamemnon 2013; PLATO, Protagoras 341C; and STRABO, Geography 14,28.
15. 1 Corinthians 14,11.
16. POLYBIUS, The Histories 5,33,5; PLINY, Natural History 29,7; see also the classic by J.JUTHNER, Hellenen und Barbaren, Berlin 1923.
17. Romans 1,14; the New English Bible translates: ‘Greek and non-Greek, learned and simple’; Today’s English Version: ‘all peoples, the civilised and the savage, the educated and the ignorant’. The uncivilised natives of Malta are called ‘barbarians’ in Acts 28,2.4.
18. CICERO, About the Highest Good and the Greatest Evil 1, 4- 10.
19. CICERO, About the Republic, 1,37, par 68. It is sometimes said that ‘barbarian’ was not so negative because non-Greeks applied the term to themselves; see JOSEPHUS, Antiquitates 1,7,1; JUSTIN, Apology 1,46. However, this proves little. In colonial countries people might rank themselves as ‘tribals’, ‘Indians’, ‘natives’, without thereby agreeing to any bias implied.
20. LUCIAN, ‘Fishing for Phonies’; Satirical Sketches, ed. P.TURNER, Harmondsworth 1961, p.176.
21. CLEMENT, Stromata 1,16,74.
22. Colossians 3,11.
23. K.YOUNG, Handbook of Social Psychology, London 1946, p.502.
24. G.E.SIMPSON and J.M. YINGER, Racial and Cultural Minorities. An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination, New York 1972, p. 24.
25. G.ALLPORT, The Nature of Prejudice, Boston 1954, pp. 8- 10.
26. M.MACGREIL, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland, Dublin 1977, p. 9.
27. The process can be seen in report after report of the hundreds of minority groups all over the world whose presence is experienced as a threat to dominant populations; see World Minorities, vols 1-3, ed. G. ASHWORTH, Old Woking 1977-1980. See also the studies about the origin of the caste system in India, such as: F.G.BAILEY, Caste and the Economic Frontier, Manchester 1957; L.DUMONT, Homo Hierarchicus, Chicago 1980.
28. ‘Intergroup Behaviour’, in Introducing Social Psychology, ed. H.TAJFEL and C.FRASER, Harmondsworth 1978, pp. 423- 445.
29. E.S.BOGARDUS, ‘Stereotypes versus Sociotypes’, Sociology and Social Research 34 (1950) p.287. In the United States, for example, these are the stereotypes with which college students describe various groups:
Irish: ‘quick-tempered, very religious, extremely nationalistic, tradition-loving’;
Jews: ‘shrewd, industrious, intelligent, ambitious, aggressive, materialistic’;
Negroes: ‘lazy, ostentatious, happy-go-lucky, very religious, pleasure-loving’;
Americans: ‘industrious, intelligent, ambitious, pleasure-loving’.
From J.W.VANDER ZANDEN, American Minority Relations, New York 1972, p.22.
30. A didrachma was a silver coin that weighed approximately 7 grams. It was equivalent to a two or three days’ wage.
31. CICERO, Pro Flacco; see E.H.FLANNERY, o.c. p.22.
32. TACITUS, The Histories, Book V, no 1-13, esp. 4-5; edition by K.Wellesley, Harmondsworth 1964, pp. 272-274. I have slightly modernised the translation.
33. All the texts have been published by T.REINACH, Texts des auteurs Grecs et Romains relatifs aux Judaisme, Paris 1895; M.STERN, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Jerusalem 1976-1983. See in particular FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS’ reply to Apion’s treatise ‘Against the Jews’, ‘Against Apion’ in The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus, ed. W.Whiston, New York 1962.
34. E.H.FLANNERY, The Anguish of the Jews, New York 1985, p. 25.
35. In Hebrew Gôyim, literally ‘nations’; see Nehemiah 5,8; Jeremiah 31,10; Ezekiel 23,30.
36. Jubilees 22,16; R.H.CHARLES, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis, London 1902.
37. Letter of Aristeas, no 139-140; H.CLARK KEE, The Origins of Christianity, London 1980, pp.70-71.
38. Mechilta d’Rabbi Ishmael, ed. H.S.Horovitz, Jerusalem 1960, p.286.
39. Sheol was the Hebrew term for a dark region under the earth where the souls of the deceased languished in misery.
40. Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13,2; H.DANBY, Tractate Sanhedrin. Mishnah and Tosefta, London 1919.
41. Tanna De-Be Eilyahu Rabbah 22; L.I.NEWMAN, The Talmudic Anthology, New York 1945.
42. Jubilees 20,22-23; 32,19; etc. G.L.DAVENPORT, The Eschatology of the Book of Jubilees, Leiden 1971.
43. 1 Enoch 95,3; 96,6-10; 98,12; 100,4; etc.
44. The Gentiles are called ‘all nations of vanity’ (IQM 4,12; 6,6), ‘the nations of wickedness’ (IQM 14,7; 15,2), ‘God’s adversaries’ (IQM 12,10) and the ‘troops of Belial’ (IQM 11,8- 9). They will be utterly destroyed. Y.YADIN, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, Oxford 1962.