(586 BCE–135 CE)
The Middle East is the only place in the world where three continents come together. It is a crossroads that links Asia, Africa, and Europe. Life at a crossroads can be dangerous. In ancient times, the Middle East was often in turmoil, much as it is today. The armies of one group after another conquered all or part of the region and then imposed their own way of life on the people they conquered. Many cultures disappeared completely during those years. Yet Jewish culture survived and even flourished. Still, some historians believe that the hatred of Jews that is known today as antisemitism began in the Middle East in ancient times. If so, where and when did it begin? What caused it? To what extent was it similar to antisemitism in modern times?
In the centuries before the Common Era,* it was not unusual for Jews as well as other peoples to move from one country to another. Some felt they had no choice—they were fleeing an invading army, or perhaps they were being forced into slavery or exile after their homeland was conquered. Most, however, packed up their belongings in order to escape poverty at home or to seek opportunities abroad, just as people do today. Unlike most people today, people in ancient times usually migrated as part of a large extended family. The newcomers would negotiate with local rulers for the right to establish roots in a new land.
The process of moving must have been as unsettling then as it is now. Newcomers in an unfamiliar place are often fearful and anxious: Will they be accepted? How will they fit in and find their own place in this new setting? We can hear these concerns in the book of Psalms, one of the oldest books of the Hebrew Scriptures (writings included in the Christian Bible as the Old Testament), when the author of Psalm 137 asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
In the ancient world, Jews were not easily distinguished from their neighbors. They did the same kinds of work, built similar homes, and in many ways lived similar lives. Yet there was at least one important difference: Jews worshipped the one God—invisible and indivisible—at a time when most people prayed to a wide array of gods who looked like animals or humans. In such a world, the Jews’ devotion to the one God was seen as strange or odd. Monotheism was still a new idea.
When one group defeated another, the newly conquered people were expected to accept the gods of the victor. After all, the new gods had triumphed and were therefore entitled to praise and honor. But most Jews, committed to the one God, refused to pay their respects to the gods of their conquerors. Their stubborn refusal raised questions for their conquered neighbors as well as their conquerors: Why did Jews refuse to worship the same gods everyone else did? Why did they stand apart? Their allegiance to God made Jews seem like outsiders who refused to conform to the dominant group’s beliefs. Their behavior almost always aroused curiosity; sometimes it also provoked suspicion and charges of disloyalty.
Some scholars have traced the beginnings of antisemitism to the experiences of Jews in the Diaspora—a Greek word that means “scattering.” The word has come to describe the communities Jews established beyond Israel, which was the kingdom established by Saul, David, and Solomon in biblical times (in about the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE). After Solomon’s death, quarrels among the twelve tribes of Israel led to the creation of two separate kingdoms. Ten of the twelve tribes formed a kingdom known as Israel in the north and the other two tribes built a kingdom in the south called Judea.
In 721 BCE, Assyria, a neighboring empire, captured Samaria, the capital of Israel, the northern kingdom. The Assyrians forced members of the ten tribes from their land, and eventually they disappeared from history, probably absorbed into other groups. About 135 years later, in 586 BCE, the Babylonians conquered Judea, the southern kingdom. They destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into exile in Babylonia. These Judean Jews did not disappear from history.
The exiled Jews who settled in Babylonia were able to maintain their identity, in part because they were allowed to practice their religion. They not only kept their beliefs but also deepened and enriched their understanding of those beliefs by beginning to compile and write down the Torah (the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, which are also the first five books of the Christian Bible’s Old Testament).
Little is known about the day-to-day lives of these Babylonian Jews. We do know that in 538 BCE, soon after the Persians (people who lived in what is now Iran) conquered Babylonia, their emperor, Cyrus, allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Only a small minority left; many families had by this time put down roots in Babylonia and decided to remain there. It had become their home.
Those families were part of the growing number of Jews who lived outside Judea. Although they differed from one another in many ways, most of them struggled to maintain a Jewish identity even as they built new loyalties. Two incidents that took place in Egypt more than 400 years apart—one on the island of Elephantine and the other in Alexandria, a bustling port in the northern part of Egypt—show some of the difficulties of divided loyalties.
Elephantine is an island in the Nile River in southern Egypt. By 600 BCE, well before the Babylonian conquest of Judea, Jewish families had already been living on Elephantine for generations. They were not exiles or refugees. They had chosen to leave their homeland and could have returned if they wished to do so. In those days, emperors often hired foreign soldiers to protect their borders because they did not want to arm their own people. They preferred to place their trust in outsiders who were well paid to be loyal to their employer. Like neighboring rulers, Egypt’s pharaohs had hired companies of Jewish, Syrian, and other foreign soldiers to protect their lands. And some of those soldiers had been stationed on Elephantine.
In order to obtain certain religious and civil rights, Jewish soldiers negotiated with the pharaohs who hired them to guard Egypt’s borders. Those rights were honored not only by succeeding pharaohs but also by each of Egypt’s conquerors. For example, after Persia conquered Egypt in 525 BCE, the Jewish soldiers on Elephantine transferred their loyalty to the new ruler. Because soldiers were in great demand, the Jews and other foreign soldiers who served the Persians received land as well as salaries. They and their families built permanent homes on the island.
JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE DIASPORA (500 BCE–100 CE)
In ancient times, most Jewish settlements in the Diaspora—the area beyond Judea—were on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Much of what is known about the “Jewish force” comes from the Elephantine archives that date to about 500 BCE. These documents show an established Jewish community. There are records of marriages, births, and deaths, as well as wills and purchase agreements.
For example, a deed dated 437 BCE reveals that Ananiah, an official at the Jewish temple on the island, and his wife, Tamut, an Egyptian slave owned by a man named Mueshullam, purchased a two-story mud-brick house. The seller was a Persian soldier. The family’s new neighbors included other Persians and an Egyptian who managed the garden at a local temple dedicated to Khnum, an Egyptian god. Letters are also part of the archives. Some of these letters boast of accomplishments, while others demand protection of religious and civil rights.
The documents in the archives suggest that the Jews of Elephantine maintained their identity as Jews and that their religious life centered on the temple they had built on the island. They probably kept the dietary laws of Judaism, meaning they would not eat certain foods, and they probably did not work on one day each week, their Sabbath—a custom that did not exist in Egyptian society.
However, the Jews of Elephantine did not strictly follow what we have come to know as Jewish law. They sacrificed animals, such as sheep and goats, in their temple, even though the high priests in Judea had ruled many years earlier that such sacrifices could take place only in the Temple in Jerusalem. No one knows why Jews on Elephantine chose to disobey the high priests in Jerusalem. Their temple may have been built before the ruling was issued. Or the Jews who settled on the island may have left Judea in the first place because they disagreed with the high priests. What is known is that the sacrifices the Jews of Elephantine made in their temple were a source of conflict with Egyptians as well as with other Jews.
The Jews and the Egyptians were often at odds because the Egyptians worshipped Khnum, the ram-god who they believed controlled the annual flooding of the Nile River—an event essential to Egypt’s survival. Elephantine was the center of Khnum’s worship, and the Egyptian priests who served him were outraged that Jews included rams among their sacrifices. The Egyptians considered the practice blasphemy—open contempt for their god. However, as long as the rulers of Egypt protected the religious rights of the Jews, the Egyptians were silent.
Then, in the spring of 410 BCE, a group of Egyptians saw an opportunity to force out the Persian conquerors and the Jews who worked for them. That summer, with the support of a local ruler named Vidranga, the rebels made a point of burning the Jewish temple and several nearby homes on the island. The Jews fought back, killing a number of Egyptians.
Three years later, the rebellion was history. But the Jews of Elephantine did not yet have permission to rebuild their temple. Their anxious leaders sent a petition to the Persians, reminding them of the long history of the “Jewish force” on the island and its loyalty to Persia during the recent rebellion.1
The Persians did not immediately respond to the petition, perhaps because they knew that both the Egyptian priests on the island and the Jewish high priests in Jerusalem strongly objected to the sacrifices that were carried out on Elephantine. They may have feared that granting permission to rebuild the temple would lead to more conflict. So they looked for a compromise. In the end, the Persians allowed the Jews to restore their temple but ruled that they could no longer sacrifice animals there. Only the high priests at the Temple in Jerusalem were to have that privilege.
Was the destruction of the temple an act of hatred toward Jews? Was it retaliation for the Jews’ religious sacrifices that Egyptians saw as insults to their god? Or was the attack motivated by the loyalty of Elephantine’s Jews to Egypt’s hated Persian conquerors? It is not uncommon for people to act out their anger toward a powerful ruler by attacking a weaker person or group allied with that ruler. Most historians believe that the incident arose from a clash of cultures, political disagreements that were expressed in religious form, or a combination of the two, rather than from antisemitism as we think of it today. They point out that once the Persians resolved the issue of temple sacrifices, life on Elephantine returned to normal.
A portion of the petition sent by the Jews of Elephantine to the Persian governor in what was later known as Palestine.
Yet Jews continued to differ from their neighbors on Elephantine in important ways. They continued to worship God rather than the gods of the Egyptians, and they continued to work as soldiers for the Persians. From the Egyptians’ point of view, it must have seemed that Jews were choosing to be outsiders.
Whole families, husbands with their wives, infant children with their parents, were burnt in the heart of the city by these supremely ruthless men who showed no pity for old age nor youth, nor the innocent years of childhood.2
The author of this powerful statement is Philo, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote an eyewitness account of the violence against Jews in the city in 38 CE—more than 400 years after the destruction of the Jewish temple on Elephantine. Who were the “supremely ruthless men who showed no pity”? Why did they attack Jews?
By 38 CE, the city of Alexandria was more than 300 years old. It had prospered because of its unique location; it was a bustling port on the Mediterranean Sea, linked by a canal to the Nile River. In 38 CE, Alexandria, like the rest of Egypt, was part of the Roman Empire. Many in the city resented Roman rule, particularly their Roman governor, Avillius Flaccus. He had won the job because he was a friend of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Nevertheless, in his first years in office, Flaccus managed to keep the peace and make important reforms. Then, in the year 37 CE, Tiberius had died and a new emperor took the throne. Flaccus was now understandably anxious about his future.
The new Roman emperor was Caligula, widely known as the “mad emperor.” (The writers of his time all mention his insanity.) Caligula demanded that everyone in his empire worship him as a god. This was not an unusual demand from Roman emperors, but it put Jews, with their belief in the one God, in an impossible situation.
Meanwhile, a few Alexandrians of Greek descent—who considered themselves the only true Alexandrians—saw Caligula’s madness and Flaccus’s uncertainty as an opportunity to regain control of the city. They also wanted to limit the political and economic power of Alexandria’s Jews. To achieve those goals, they needed to stir up tensions in the city.
Why were there Greeks in an Egyptian city? They were descendants of the city’s founders, who had arrived when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in about 331 BCE. The Greeks took pride in the fact that Alexandria had become a major center of Greek culture. It was home to two of the world’s earliest and largest public libraries—one in a temple to the Greek god Zeus and the other in a museum. The two buildings housed at least 500,000 scrolls at a time when each scroll was painstakingly written by hand. The first university in the Middle East developed around the museum and attracted scholars in mathematics, medicine, and literature from Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The Jews of Alexandria were equally proud of the city. They too saw themselves as true Alexandrians, and they made up about 40 percent of the city’s population. During the 300 years that the Greeks ruled Egypt, Jews had taken an active part in the city’s economic, political, and cultural life. Among them were merchants, scholars, bankers, government officials, and army officers. A few Jews had become generals and trusted advisers to Egypt’s Greek rulers; many more were ordinary people—peasant farmers, artisans, sailors, soldiers, and traders.
In many respects, the Jews of Alexandria, like the Jews of Elephantine 400 years earlier, could not be distinguished from their neighbors, particularly their Greek neighbors. They too had Greek names, wore Greek clothing, and spoke the Greek language. In fact, so many Jews in Alexandria spoke only Greek that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek for their benefit. Yet they remained Jews.
After the Romans conquered Egypt in 30 BCE, Roman emperors continued to recognize the right of Jews to practice their religion, even though this meant that they would not honor the many gods of Rome. Jews, like other groups in the city, also had some political rights, including a degree of self-government as a separate ethnic group within Alexandria. But they were not full citizens; only Greeks and Romans had that status under Roman law.
A glass base from Alexandria. The Greeks and later the Romans welcomed Jews to Alexandria and other cities because of their skill as glassmakers. In Alexandria, Jews turned that craft into a major industry.
Alexandria’s Jews were, however, permitted to send money to Jerusalem for the upkeep of the Temple. Many of them also made the long, often dangerous journey to Jerusalem for Passover, Shavuot, or Sukkot—the great pilgrimage festivals of ancient Judaism.
Some Egyptians lived in Alexandria as well, and they too considered themselves the only true Alexandrians even though they had even fewer rights than Greeks or Jews. As a result, they were increasingly resentful of their Roman conquerors and also of the Jews, Greeks, and other foreigners who supported those conquerors. They were outraged that outsiders had a higher status than they did.
Over the years, religious issues had heightened political tensions among these various groups in Alexandria. For example, Jews regarded the story of their ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, led by Moses, as a key event in their history. Each year at Passover, then as now, Jews recalled the days when they were slaves of the pharaoh in Egypt.
Not surprisingly, many Egyptians disliked this story; it made their ruler, the pharaoh, seem weak. In fact, in the third century BCE, Manetho, an Egyptian priest in Alexandria, wrote an alternative version of history in which the pharaoh was the hero and Moses the villain. It was the first of several such accounts by Egyptian writers that conflicted with Jewish beliefs.
In the first decades of the Common Era, Apion, a Greek lawyer in Alexandria, wrote and spoke against Jews. He claimed that they were a “diseased race of lepers” and a “godless” people who worshipped the head of an ass in their Temple in Jerusalem. He insisted that once a year, Jews kidnapped a Greek and fattened him up so that he could be sacrificed to their deity.3 These and other false charges would find their way from Alexandria to Rome and, eventually, into the works of Roman and, later, Christian writers.
But even as some Greeks, like Apion, concocted false accusations about the Jews, many other Greeks were attracted to Jewish life. In much of the Middle East, life, particularly public life, was lived outdoors. When Jews gathered to pray or read from the Torah, they often did so in Greek, not Hebrew. Passersby could not only listen to the service but also understand its meaning. Many non-Jews attended Jewish services regularly, and a number of them traveled to Jerusalem for the great pilgrimage festivals. The Temple even had a special section set aside for their use. Some non-Jews in Alexandria and elsewhere became Jews; others observed Jewish festivals and commandments without a formal conversion.
A few Greeks and, later, Romans were alarmed by the interest of ordinary Alexandrians in Jewish religious practice. They viewed that interest as a threat to the state. They expected everyone in the city to pay homage to the emperor’s gods as an expression of loyalty. They saw the refusal of Jews—and, later, Christians—to participate as both foolish and potentially disloyal.
Still, many historians note that for the most part, neither Greek nor Roman writers singled out Jews as targets for hatred; they had similarly negative views of other minority groups. Historians also point out that most writers at that time, including Jewish writers, tended to praise the virtues of their own group while denying the virtues of others. It was part of the usual style of rhetoric of the times, and, indeed, the same kind of hate-filled rhetoric can be heard today in places where groups are in conflict.
Nevertheless, Jews were different in certain ways from the people around them. They were the only group that consistently refused to acknowledge the gods of their neighbors, send gifts to their temples, or participate in festivals honoring those gods. Jews alone insisted on worshipping the one God. And they alone refused to work on one particular day each week; to some outsiders, Jews’ insistence on observing their Sabbath was a sign of laziness or even religious absurdity. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that malicious lies about Jews gained acceptance among many people.
Tension between Jews and their neighbors was heightened in August of 38 CE, when Agrippa I, the Roman-appointed Jewish king of Judea, stopped in Alexandria on his way to Rome. Jews celebrated his visit, but Greeks and Egyptians responded with riots and demonstrations. According to Philo, three prominent Greeks in the city—Isidoros, Dionysios, and Lampon—told Flaccus, the city’s Roman governor, that Agrippa’s visit was a sign that Flaccus’s own days in power were numbered. They accused Agrippa and other Jews of causing trouble and questioned their loyalty to Rome.
Flaccus, worried about his own relationship with Caligula, the new emperor, did nothing to stop the violence that the Greeks incited. In fact, he encouraged it by ordering that statues of Caligula be placed in every Jewish house of worship. The Jews of Alexandria were outraged; they closed their synagogues rather than allow them to be desecrated in this way. Flaccus retaliated by taking away the political and religious privileges that Jews had enjoyed for more than 300 years. He declared that Jews were aliens in Alexandria—which meant that they were considered outsiders with no right to government protection.
The Greeks and Egyptians in Alexandria understood Flaccus’s announcement to mean that they could now treat Jews as they pleased. After all, people without rights cannot appeal to the authorities for help or seek justice on their own. In the days that followed, well-organized mobs attacked Jews with stones and clubs and forced them into a single section of the city. According to Philo, Flaccus encouraged the rioting by publicly executing a number of Jewish leaders.
When the emperor Caligula learned what was happening in Alexandria, he ordered Flaccus’s arrest. Flaccus was brought to Rome, where he was tried and convicted. To the surprise of many, his main accusers were Isidoros, Dionysios, and Lampon, the same Greeks from Alexandria who had encouraged his attacks on the Jews. The attack on the Jews and the one on Flaccus were part of an effort to restore power to the city’s Greek community.
The removal of Flaccus did not calm Alexandria. Both the Jews and the Greeks sent delegations to Rome to plead their case before the emperor. For Jews, the issue centered on their political and religious rights. They had been second-class citizens under the Greeks. Many now wanted to become full citizens of Alexandria.
While the delegations were still in Rome, Caligula was assassinated and a new emperor, Claudius, was named. Alexandrians responded to the news by resuming the violence. This time, the Jews armed themselves and fought back. The fighting was so ferocious that some have called it a war. Determined to end the conflict, Claudius issued an order addressed to the people of Alexandria in 41 CE; his words were read aloud throughout the city. The order stated, in part:
With regard to the responsibility for the disturbances and rioting, or rather, to speak the truth, the war, against the Jews, although your ambassadors, particularly Dionysios the son of Theon, argued vigorously and at length in the disputation, I have not wished to make an exact inquiry, but I harbor within me a store of immutable indignation against those who renewed the conflict. I merely say that, unless you stop this destructive and obstinate mutual enmity, I shall be forced to show what a benevolent ruler can be when he is turned to righteous indignation. Even now, therefore, I [urge] the Alexandrians to behave gently and kindly toward the Jews who have inhabited the same city for many years, and not to dishonor any of their customs in their worship of their god, but to allow them to keep their own ways, as they did in the time of the god Augustus and as I too, having heard both sides, have confirmed.
The Jews, on the other hand, I order not to aim at more than they have previously had,… and not to intrude themselves into the games presided over by the [Greeks], since they enjoy what is their own, and in a city which is not their own they possess an abundance of all good things. Nor are they to bring in or invite Jews coming from Syria or [other parts of] Egypt, or I shall be forced to conceive graver suspicions. If they disobey, I shall proceed against them in every way as seeking to spread a sort of public sickness throughout the world.
If you both give up your present ways and are willing to live in gentleness and kindness with one another, I for my part will do for the city as much as I can, as one that has long been closely connected with us.4
Despite Claudius’s edict, Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians continued to jockey for power in Alexandria. And the rhetoric that had roused such strong feelings in Alexandria resonated throughout the Roman Empire. As a result, the violence that began in Alexandria in 38 CE spread to other parts of the empire, including Judea.
Roman emperors recognized the right of Jews to practice their religion because it predated the Roman Empire, but they failed to understand why Jews stubbornly refused to accept Roman gods. So, from time to time, an emperor would try to force Jews to accept him as a god, as Caligula had done. Jews were outraged by such demands. Many of them came to view the Roman conquest as a religious insult. The Romans, in turn, often regarded the Jews’ refusal to accept Roman gods as an act of disloyalty.
An incident that took place in 4 BCE reveals how swiftly and brutally the Romans responded to any sign of rebellion. That year, several Jewish groups in Judea mounted small uprisings. Roman soldiers responded by sweeping through the countryside, raping women, killing villagers, and destroying nearly everything in their path. In Jerusalem, the Romans executed anyone even suspected of taking part in the uprisings. They killed the rebels by nailing them to crosses and then leaving them to die a slow and horrific death. According to Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who sided with the Romans and later became a historian, the Romans erected 2,000 crosses just outside the gates of Jerusalem after putting down the revolt. On each cross hung a Jew. The message was clear.
In 66 CE, 25 years after Claudius’s edict to the Alexandrians, Jews in Judea once again launched a revolt against Rome. Known as the Great Rebellion, it was a fight that many Jews were convinced they could not win; they had too few soldiers, weapons, and other resources. They were also divided among themselves, each group with its own view of Jewish law and its own ideas about the best way to handle Rome. Some Jews believed that they had to go to war to stop the Romans from violating the Temple. Others thought a war would be suicidal. Like so many rebellions in history, a struggle for liberation became a civil war as Jews fought each other as well as the Romans.
The war ended with the destruction of the second Temple on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av in 70 CE. Josephus, who witnessed the fighting, described what happened that day:
While the holy house was on fire, everything was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain; nor was there a commiseration of any age, or any reverence of gravity; but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests, were all slain in the same manner…. The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought that the whole city had been on fire. Nor can one imagine anything either greater or more terrible than this noise; for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions, who were marching all together, and a sad clamour of the seditious, who were now surrounded with fire and sword.5
Anger over the Romans’ disrespect for Jewish customs and beliefs continued to smolder for decades. Between 115 and 117 CE, Jews in Alexandria and other cities along the coast of North Africa began their own rebellions against Rome. Like the Great Rebellion in Judea, these ended in defeat. A few years later, in 123 CE, Jews in Judea once again tried to break away from Rome by launching a series of surprise attacks. The Romans responded by sending to Judea an army legion (a force of 3,000 to about 6,000 soldiers) to put down the rebellion.
Then, in about 132 CE, the emperor Hadrian announced a plan to rename Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, in part to honor the Roman god Jupiter Capitolinus. Hadrian also planned to build a temple in honor of Jupiter where the Jewish Temple had stood. These and other acts of contempt toward Jews and their religion prompted a new rebellion. Jewish rebels under the leadership of Shimon Bar-Kokhba captured 50 fortified Jewish towns and 985 undefended villages and towns, including Jerusalem. Jews from other countries and even some non-Jews joined the anti-Roman rebels. Early victories inspired Jews to mint coins with slogans such as “The freedom of Israel” written in Hebrew. But the war was not over.
The turning point came when Hadrian sent to Judea one of his best generals, Julius Severus. His army included soldiers from Egypt, Britain, Syria, and other parts of the empire. Because of the size of the rebellion, Severus did not attack directly. Instead, he surrounded the fortresses to keep food and water from reaching the people who lived behind the walls. Only when hunger had weakened the rebels did the Romans attack. In the end, they destroyed every single fortress and village held by the rebels.
The final battle of the war took place at Bethar, the city where Bar-Kokhba had his headquarters. Bethar was a military stronghold because of its strategic location on the main road to Jerusalem. It also housed the Sanhedrin (the Jewish high court). In 135 CE, Hadrian’s army laid siege to the city. Its walls are said to have fallen on the ninth day in the Hebrew month of Av, the Jewish fast day that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples. Every Jew in the city was slaughtered—children, women, and men.
The Jewish war was now essentially over. Hadrian changed the country’s name from Judea to Palestine. He also demolished the city of Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into slavery. According to a Roman decree, Jews could not rebuild the city or live there. Only Romans had that right. Jews were permitted to enter only on the ninth day of Av to mourn the loss of the Temple.
In the first and second centuries, the Romans ruled an empire that was greater than any the world had yet known. It included not only much of the Middle East but also a large part of Europe. Within that empire, many groups continuously competed for power and influence. The Romans sometimes encouraged these rivalries, because this helped them maintain control of their empire.
Statements about Jews like those made by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans sound strongly antisemitic today. But it is not clear that people in those days were antisemitic in the sense that the term is currently used. In some ways it appears that Jews were treated no differently from other groups conquered by the Romans, even though the customs and practices that set Jews apart from other groups, such as their monotheism, were a recurring source of tension and even hostility.
Still, many of the key elements that define modern antisemitism can be traced to this time in history. A variety of stereotypes and myths lie at the heart of every hatred, including antisemitism. Stereotypes are the labels “we” attach to “them” and the assumptions “we” make about “them”—sometimes without ever meeting “them.” In this context, myths are lies based on those faulty assumptions, and they tend to endure because they appeal to strong emotions rather than to reason.
Both the Greeks and the Romans created stereotypes that dehumanized and demonized Jews as a group. Those stereotypes persisted long after the empires of Greece and Rome had crumbled. The Romans also claimed that Jews were conspiring to take over their empire, even though Jews in the ancient Middle East were a small minority with few allies. Over the course of many centuries, that myth would acquire a deadly force that undermined the usual “live and let live” attitudes of many rulers.
