Translated by William Whiston
In this polemical work, Josephus constructs a defence of Judaism as a classical religion and philosophy, stressing its antiquity against what he perceived as more recent traditions of the Greeks. Against Apio cites the earlier work Antiquities of the Jews, dating the work to after AD 94. In the second book, Josephus defends the historicity of the Jewish Bible against accusations made by Apion (30-20 BC – c. AD 45-48) a Hellenised Egyptian grammarian, sophist and commentator on Homer.