In this chapter and the next, we will be examining the range of identities ascribed to non-Jews by Jews. In chapter 4, we will look specifically at the early Christian movement and the identities ascribed to non-Jewish Christ-believers by Jewish fellow believers. In the present chapter, we are looking at identities ascribed to non-Jews by Jews more generally. In each case, our particular focus will be the term ethnē itself, though it will be important to treat it not in isolation but as part of a larger process of identity construction, negotiation, and ascription.
We begin where we left off at the end of chapter 2, in a discussion of how subject peoples responded to the identities ascribed to them by their Roman imperial overlords. As we have observed, these ascribed identities were complex. The Roman Empire developed within a world still heavily imprinted by the Greek sense of superiority over the barbarian nations, and one element of Rome’s success was its ability to inscribe a place for itself and its growing empire at the center of this ethnographical map. This revised map, in turn, served to impose corresponding identities on subject peoples, which meant that the Jews, like other non-Greek peoples in the Mediterranean world, found it necessary to negotiate both Roman and Greek realities in order to locate themselves advantageously on the map. The way in which the Jews responded to the identities ascribed to them at these boundaries also served to shape the identities they in turn ascribed to those non-Jews with whom they came in contact.
Of course, like other non-Greek peoples in the eastern Mediterranean world, the Jews had had plenty of experience negotiating Greek realities before the Romans appeared on the scene. Although the arrival of the Romans brought some new challenges, the identity ascribed to them by both the Greeks and the Romans had a similar two-sided character. In the case of the Greeks, the Jews were confronted with a picture of themselves as one of the barbarian nations, on the one hand, and yet, on the other, as people who were invited to “shift over to the Greek way of life” (to use the language of 2 Macc 4:10), with all the enticements that encouraged such voluntary Hellenization (2 Macc 4:13). In the case of the Romans, the Jews saw themselves characterized both as one of the subjugated nations (gentes devictae) and as potential members of a transethnic commonwealth of benefaction and humanitas. Given the distinctive and sharp-edged character of Jewish identity, both aspects of ascribed identity were especially problematic. On one side, distinctive aspects of Jewish custom (Sabbath observance, circumcision, abstinence from certain foods, rejection of the gods) came in for particular derision from some Greeks and Romans,1 adding a particular sting to the ignominy of the labels barbaroi or gentes devictae. On the other, the appeal of Hellenization or Romanization proved to be just as problematic for Jews as was the ignominy of the labels.
Extant Jewish literature provides us with a much broader range of reaction to imperial rule (and cultural imperialism) than is the case with other ethnic groups. To be sure, highly hellenized authors such as Philo, or articulate Roman sympathizers such as Josephus, had their counterparts elsewhere in the empire. At the other end of the spectrum, however, we have a considerable body of information concerning the attitudes and self-definitions displayed by more fervent nationalistic groups. Some of this information comes to us indirectly, especially through the mediation of Josephus’s historical accounts; much of it is more direct information, found in literature emerging from the groups themselves.2 In addition, of course, the extant evidence bears witness to a whole range of stances stretched out between (and, in some cases, beyond) the two poles.3
The situation, then, is diverse, and the task of mapping the diversity is complex. Geographically, we can observe significant differences between the situation in Judea and that in the diaspora. Further, within the diaspora, the situation of Jewish communities varies considerably as one moves around the Mediterranean from area to area (Egypt and North Africa; Syria; Asia Minor; the Greek peninsula; Italy). In Judea, the political circumstances of Jewish existence vary from period to period: Greek rule under the Ptolemies and then the Seleucids; independence during the Hasmonean period; Roman rule, direct (under prefects and procurators) and indirect (under Herodian rulers); utter subjection and the dissolution of the Judean state (after the revolt of 66–70 CE).
Further, as we have seen in the discussion of Romanization above (and despite the comments made in the second paragraph before this one), the situation of subject peoples in an imperial context cannot simply be reduced to points between two poles on a one-dimensional axis. At the very least, we would need to think in terms of a grid with two axes—one having to do with acculturation (the degree to which an imperial subject learns and becomes adept in the dominant culture), the other with accommodation (the degree to which a subject either collaborates with or resists imperial rule). In addition, as we have seen in the discussion of postcolonialism toward the end of the previous chapter, one has to reckon with the existence of a considerable degree of ambivalence, hybridity, and (as Wallace-Hadrill suggests) cultural layering within the territory plotted along the two axes.4
Nevertheless, despite the diversity, Jewish identity negotiation in the Greco-Roman context took as its starting point a basic sense of inherited identity, passed down through its Scriptures and communal tradition, one that certainly can be described as ethnic. Using the kinds of characteristics that have been in use since the time of Herodotus (with all due recognition of Fredrik Barth’s insistence that these are mutable and do not in themselves create ethnic identity), one can say that we are dealing with a named group (Israel, Judeans, Jews), with a sense of common origins and shared kinship (descendants of Abraham and the patriarchs), associated with a homeland or shared territory (the land of Israel, Judea), marked out by a shared history (chronicled in the Torah and Former Prophets), and the sense of a common culture and way of life (embodied in the Torah), with common gods (or in Israel’s case, God—YHWH) and religious practices (centered on the Jerusalem temple).5
Of course, this homogenized definition elides a number of distinctly Jewish formulations of these ethnic characteristics, which worked together to produce a unique sense of inherited identity. Israel’s God was not simply one national deity among many, but the supreme God. To be sure, in Israel’s tradition, this belief sometimes took the shape more of henotheism (Israel’s God is supreme among the gods) or of monolatry (no other gods are to be worshiped) than of monotheism (Israel’s God is the only deity, all other so-called gods are subordinate angels, demons, or nonentities).6 Still, the trend was in the direction of monotheism and, in any case, the elevated, universal status of Israel’s God inevitably produced and reinforced a more sharply drawn boundary between the Jews and their neighbors than was the case with other nations. Similarly, Israel’s sense of shared origins and common descent was expressed in a story of election: out of all the nations, the supreme God had chosen Abraham and his descendants to form a special people, separate from the others and under God’s own care and supervision. Again, it is true that Israel’s election as a divinely chosen people did not necessarily carry with it the negative corollary that other nations were rejected by God in any ultimate sense (though it sometimes did). As Kaminsky has argued, often it was the case that other nations, despite their non-elect status, were nevertheless considered to be “full participants in the divine economy,” and that “Israel was to work out her destiny in relation to them, even if in separation from them.”7 Still, the sense of separation remains. This sense of separation was reinforced by the pattern of life set out in the Torah, which functioned not merely as a compendium of common customs but as the divinely appointed means of preserving Israel’s distinct identity. Again, there were nuances. Ways were found to include the sojourner in some aspects of Israel’s common life; parts of the Torah were seen as applicable to the rest of the nations as well. Still, it remained apparent to all, outsiders and insiders alike, that the Torah constituted a sharp boundary between them. The uniqueness and universality of Israel’s God was mirrored in the existence of a single temple, the only place where the full worship of this God could be carried out and thus the center both of the land of Israel and of Israel’s common life as a people. In keeping with the universality of the temple, the presence and prayers of the “foreigner, who is not of your people Israel” (1 Kgs 8:41), were expected and welcomed. Nevertheless, the distinction between foreigner and people remained and, at least later in the Second Temple period, was inscribed in the architecture of the temple itself, with its graduated levels of access.8 Finally, Israel’s shared history was not simply accumulated happenstance but was seen instead as the outworking of God’s covenant with Israel, a relationship between deity and people that contained provisions both for punishment (when Israel was unfaithful) and for blessing, a relationship that would culminate in the future fulfillment of the divine purposes for Israel and its place among the nations. To be sure, this eschatological fulfillment of history often contained a promise of blessing for the nations as well. Still, the distinction between Israel and the nations was maintained, even into the projected coming age.
Jewish existence in our period of interest, then, was shaped by a shared sense of inherited identity, one that provided them with the resources both to thrive as a distinct people in a variety of circumstances and—for many of them, at least—to engage in the kind of competitive identity construction that was a characteristic feature of the Greek and Roman eras. Fundamental to this sense of inherited identity was the awareness of an indelible binary between themselves and the other nations of the world. In Gilbert’s words:
Jewish attitudes toward Gentiles start with an understanding that Jews are set apart from Gentiles and that this separation is of divine origin. God selected Israel to be a treasured possession and holy nation. In return Israel is commanded to worship God, and God alone, and not to follow the practices of Gentiles. Gentiles often take on the role of the consummate “other.”9
In a world defined by the distinction between Greek and barbarian, Jews defined themselves fundamentally in terms of a different binary distinction, that between Jews and non-Jews, between the Jewish people and the non-Jewish nations, between Jews and gentiles. In the basic Jewish map of the world, Greeks, Romans, and barbarians alike were allocated to the single undifferentiated section marked the nations; identity distinctions that were often all-consuming in the wider world were, from the perspective of this map, effectively collapsed.10
At one corner of the grid, this was all that was needed. For those who produced and read works such as Jubilees, the Testament (Assumption) of Moses, the Apocalypse of Abraham, or, in a modified way, the sectarian literature found at Qumran,11 the boundary between Jews and non-Jews was high, rigid, and categorical. The attitude toward those on the other side of the boundary was hard-edged, resisting or rejecting any negotiation or accommodation with the other. All those on the other side of the boundary—barbarians, Greeks, or Romans—were seen simply as members of a largely undifferentiated mass of the idolatrous nations. In effect, this segment of the Jewish world simply rejected—or, better, ignored—the binary categorization being imposed on them from outside and replaced it with another.
We will return to this uncompromisingly hard-edged approach to ethnic positioning in a few moments. We begin instead by looking at those Jewish writers and groups who were more sensitive to how they were viewed by others and more prepared to engage in competitive ethnographical discourse. Not surprisingly, most of them were from the diaspora, even though the time is long past when one can assume that cultural distinctions can simply be aligned with geographical location.
Despite their awareness of a sharp separation from the rest of the nations—or, in many cases, precisely because of it—Jews showed themselves to be quite ready to enter the competitive ethnology fray and to jostle for position. For one thing, various aspects of their founding narrative—the first eleven chapters of Genesis,12 the wanderings of Abraham, the sojourn in Egypt, the exodus—together with the idea of election itself, meant that they could hardly recite their national story without thinking about their position with respect to other nations. Also, widespread recognition of them by outsiders as an ancient people (along with Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and others),13 together with the largely positive portraits painted by such early writers as Theophrastus, Hecataeus of Abdera, and Clearchus of Soli,14 provided them with a ready-made entrée into the arena, even as the scathingly negative accounts of an Apollonius Molon or an Apion made it imperative that they join the fray. Further, as has already been noted, their foundational traditions contained resources that were very amenable to the various aspects of competitive identity construction in the Greco-Roman world. As we saw in the previous chapter, we can identify two broad approaches to such identity construction: competitive ethnic historiography, the attempt to locate one’s own group advantageously on a map of the nations; and the identification of transethnic universals, the attempt to align one’s own group with more universal and cosmopolitan categories and identities. We will deal with each in turn.
With respect to the strategies of competitive ethnic historiography, arguments based on antiquity and chronological priority were very amenable to Jewish use. Jewish Scriptures provided considerable material for the argument that the Jews descended from ancient stock and possessed a long and venerable history. As its title suggests, Josephus’s Antiquities was written precisely to make this point,15 and his subsequent work, Against Apion, represents a lengthy refutation of those who had argued otherwise. While Josephus’s work represents the most thoroughgoing exercise in Jewish apologetic historiography,16 he was following a path that had been laid out by others. The fragments of Hellenistic Jewish writers preserved by Eusebius (who depended on the compilations of Alexander Polyhistor), for example, open a tiny but intriguing window into previous Jewish attempts to present their early history in Greek dress. Included among these writers is Demetrius the Chronographer (third century BCE), who addresses apparent chronological and genealogical problems in order to provide a solid and reliable footing for the biblical account.17 A century or so later another Jewish writer adapted the Greek literary tradition of the Sibyl to place the (Jewish) “race of most righteous men” (a race that originated in Ur of the Chaldeans; Sibylline Oracles 3.218–19) within a version of world history that stretched from the tower of Babel and the war between Titan and Chronos through a sequence of empires down to the time of Rome (3.97–161).
In a closely related phenomenon, Jewish apologists showed themselves quite ready to give their own spin to Erfinder and Kulturbringer motifs. Not surprisingly perhaps, they passed up the earliest biblical candidate for the role (Tubal-Cain, “who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools”; Gen 4:22) and focused their attention on more prominent figures, Moses in particular. Artapanus presents Moses as one who “bestowed many useful benefits on mankind” during his time in Egypt, including “boats and devices for stone construction,” the organization of Egypt’s civil administration, and even (surprisingly) the establishment of Egyptian religion.18 Eupolemus adds to his list of innovations the discovery of the alphabet (which then was transmitted to the Phoenicians and the Greeks).19 Artapanus also links Moses with the Greeks; the Greeks knew him as Mousaeus, “the teacher of Orpheus.”20 But Moses is by no means unique. Joseph is credited with the discovery of measurements and the introduction of orderly land management;21 Abraham (again surprisingly) taught astrology to the Egyptian king.22
The most significant instance of the phenomenon, however, was the argument that Plato and the other Greek philosophers were taught by Moses or depended in essential ways on his laws.23 Not only was the law a form of philosophy, equal with that developed by the Greeks;24 nor was it simply that the law was a superior philosophy, so that those who were instructed by it were thereby able to “far surpass [the philosophers] in attitudes and eloquence.”25 More than this, Moses was the origin of the whole philosophical tradition: “our earliest imitators were the Greek philosophers, who … in their conduct and philosophy were Moses’ disciples.”26
Since in most cases the role of Kulturbringer involved travel, this naturally leads to the theme of migration. In the material just discussed, the journeying of Jewish cultural heroes sometimes comes in for explicit attention. Abraham “came to Egypt” to teach the king and returned to Syria after twenty years; Joseph, to escape the fraternal conspiracy against him, “requested the neighboring Arabs to convey him to Egypt.”27 Here, as with non-Jewish instances of the motif, migration stories are used to forge connections and explain (or create) similarities.28 More often, however, ancestral journeyings and migrations are used to express and reinforce differences and separation. The story of the exodus, of course, lent itself readily to this theme (e.g., Wis 10:15–11:11). Likewise, Abraham’s journey from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan was also pressed into service. In a variety of writings, his departure from Chaldea is linked with his monotheistic opposition to the idolatry of his ancestors and the related errors of the astrologers. For Josephus, Abraham’s departure was occasioned not simply by a call from God but by his pioneering realization “that God, the creator of the universe, is one,” an opinion that incited the polytheistic Chaldeans to force him out of the country (Jewish Antiquities 1.154–57). In a slightly more allegorical key, Philo interprets Abraham’s “migration” (apoikia) from Chaldea as a rejection of the polytheistic astrology in which he “had been reared and for a long time remained.”29 In Sibylline Oracles 3, although Abraham’s Chaldean origins are used to embed the Jewish story in a broader world history, Chaldean astrology is one of the things explicitly rejected by “the race of most righteous men” (3:218–30).30
The theme of migration is also linked with aggregative ethnology—the establishment of genealogical connections in the past that enable alliances and advantageous repositionings in the present. To some extent, Israel’s genealogical tradition was better suited for purposes of differentiation and separation than of aggregation and inclusion: Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; Judea, not Samaria. Still, this is only part of the story. First Maccabees contains a particularly striking example of aggregative ethnology operating as an instrument of political strategy. In an account of attempts made by the Maccabean leader Jonathan to secure his own position, the author includes the text of a letter to the Spartans, in which Jonathan endeavors to forge an alliance with the Spartans on the basis of a supposed common descent from Abraham (1 Macc 12:1–23). To make the case, Jonathan cites a letter purportedly from the Spartan king to the Judeans, in which the Spartans assert that they and the Judeans “are brothers and are of the family [genous] of Abraham.” The value of the example, of course, does not depend on the historicity of the correspondence.31
This, however, is a unique instance. What is more important for our purposes is the way in which the concepts of kinfolk and descent figure into some Jewish discourse about proselytism. The reception of proselytes can certainly be identified as one of the developments in Jewish identity construction that are connected to analogous aspects in the Greco-Roman world. Although the phenomenon is linked with biblical legislation concerning the sojourner or resident alien, only later in the Hellenistic era did this develop into the idea that gentiles who adopted Jewish laws and customs and identified with the Jewish people could thereby become fully and (at least in principle) equally Jewish. While it is difficult to prove, it can hardly be doubted that this development was stimulated by the analogous redefinition of Greekness that we looked at in chapter 2.32
What is of particular interest in the present context is the element of kinship and the way in which it becomes a mutable aspect of Jewish identity. In Joseph and Aseneth, for example, Aseneth’s conversion is depicted as an alienation from her family and its idolatrous patrimony and an incorporation into the people of Joseph and his fellow Hebrews.33 In a lengthy prayer of repentance, she appeals to the God of Joseph for refuge “because my father and my mother disowned me and said, ‘Aseneth is not our daughter,’ because I have destroyed and ground (to pieces) their gods, and have come to hate them.”34 On the other side of the process of conversion, Joseph, in his own prayer to God on Aseneth’s behalf, calls on God to bless her and to “number her among your people that you have chosen before all (things) came into being” (8:9).
The theme receives considerable emphasis in Philo.35 On the one hand, proselytes are those who have abandoned their own family and patrimony.36 They have left “their country [patrida], their kinsfolk [syngeneis] and their friends for the sake of virtue and religion” (On the Special Laws 1.52); they have “abandon[ed] their kinsfolk [genean] by blood, their customs and their temples and images of their gods” (On the Virtues 102).37 On the other hand, in making “the passage to piety” (On the Special Laws 1.51), they have entered a new commonwealth, home, and kin group. To be sure, although Philo can speak of the “equal rank” (isotimian, isoteleian) and “equal privilege” (isonomian) of the proselyte (On the Special Laws 1.52–53), most of the time he speaks in an imperative rather than an indicative mood. Moses “exhorts the old nobility [eupatridais] to honor them … with special friendship and with more than ordinary goodwill”; for this reason Philo enjoins his fellow members of the old nobility not to “let them … be denied another citizenship or other ties of family and friendship” (On the Special Laws 1.52). The fact that he feels a need to exhort suggests that in Philo’s world, the biblical/philosophical ideal did not fully translate into social reality. Still, the ideal was one that could be described in terms of incorporation into a kin group: proselytes now “must be held to be our dearest friends and closest kinsmen [syngenestatous]” (On the Virtues 179).
In one striking passage, Philo presents Abraham as a prototypical proselyte (On the Virtues 210–19). Abraham “was a Chaldean by birth, the son of an astrologer, one of those who … think that the stars and the whole heaven and universe are gods.” Beginning to perceive the folly of such thinking, he was led “to leave his native country, his race and paternal home [patrida kai genean kai patrōon oikon]” in order that he might “discover the One, who alone is eternal and the Father of all things.” As a result, this native Chaldean became both “the most ancient member of the Jewish nation [tou ethnous]” and “the standard of nobility [i.e., noble birth: eugeneias] for all proselytes,” those who have abandoned idolatry with its “strange laws and monstrous customs” and have then “come to settle in a better land, in a commonwealth full of true life and vitality.” Although Philo does not explicitly call Abraham the father of proselytes, he seems to be suggesting the existence of an alternative, direct line of descent for those who conform to the same “standard of noble birth” as was exhibited by Abraham. Those who imitate Abraham in abandoning their own “native country, race and paternal home,” Philo seems to imply, thereby become members “of the Jewish nation” in the same way—and with the same resultant status—as Abraham himself.
The concept of Abraham as the father of proselytes—and thus as the foundation of an alternative, socially constructed line of descent—comes more explicitly into view in one strand of rabbinic tradition.38 In this strand, Abraham is celebrated as the first and greatest proselyte,39 and also as one who was engaged in the making of proselytes.40 Further, God delayed Abraham’s circumcision until he was ninety-nine in order to make it clear that the door remained open to proselytes at any age.41 Abraham’s role as father of proselytes comes explicitly into play in the context of a debate about proselyte status. Although it could be said that when a gentile becomes a proselyte “he is deemed to be an Israelite in all respects” (b. Yevamot 47b), a proselyte’s status was subject to some qualification and limitation.42 One debate had to do with whether a proselyte should be permitted to participate in prayers that contain the phrase “the God of our fathers.” Although the Mishnah prohibits it (m. Bikkurim 1:4), later rabbinic tradition preserves a tradition in which R. Judah (a second-century Tanna, noted for his positive attitude toward proselytes and sympathetic gentiles [cf. t. Sanhedrin 13:2]) argues the opposite, on the grounds that Scripture identifies Abraham as the “father of a multitude of gôyîm” (Gen 17:5).43 According to the Jerusalem Talmud at least, R. Judah’s opinion carried the day. The tradition, of course, is late and thus cannot be used as evidence for our period of interest with any confidence. Nevertheless, at the very least, it does illustrate the pattern of thought to which Philo gives expression.
In addition to competitive ethnic historiography, identity construction in the Greco-Roman world also involved the search for universals—ways of transcending ethnic particularities and arriving at some form of transethnic cosmopolitanism—with which ethnic groups could align themselves in advantageous ways. As we have seen, Greek paideia—a complex amalgam of Greek language, culture, and philosophy—offered an entree into a desirable and widely accessible form of social identity for those outsiders with the opportunity and means to acquire it, even as it also created a sharp distinction between these Greeks and those others (barbarians) who did not. Greek philosophical traditions, with their concern for virtue and their search for foundational accounts of reality, provided solid underpinnings for this idea of Hellenism as a universalizing culture. In addition, unitary conceptions of the divine realm in one way (e.g., the pantheistic logos of Stoicism, the ultimate One of Neoplatonism) and the pantheon of the gods in another (especially as a means of correlating local gods and incorporating them syncretistically into a single divine company) provided a common sacred canopy first for those in the Hellenistic east and subsequently for those in the Roman Empire as a whole. In its empire, Rome imposed its own form of universality on the human oikoumenē, not only through sheer military might but also by positioning itself both as the natural heir of the Greeks (Roman humanitas preserving all that was valuable in Greek paideia) and as their more capable successors (Rome’s long tradition of social incorporation and effective rule making for a much more successful world empire).
Through their long experience under Hellenistic rule, both in Judea and the diaspora, Jews developed relatively sophisticated means of positioning themselves with respect to this transethnic and universalizing discourse. This has already come into view in a limited way, in the discussion about Moses as Erfinder and Kulturbringer. But these appeals to Moses’s achievements were related to a much larger project, whose aim was to align the law of Moses and Jewish monotheism with Greek (and subsequently Roman) cosmopolitanism.
The most significant aspect of this project was what I have described elsewhere as “ethical monotheism”—the attempt to present the torah as a particular (and usually the best) manifestation of a universal natural law, embedded in the created order by the divine creator, a law that could, at least in principle, be discovered through educated reason and that, consequently, was also to be seen in the best aspects of Greek philosophy.44 To be sure, the idea that rational observation of the created order could lead to true knowledge about the creator and the norms for creaturely existence stood in tension with the claim that what was true in the philosophers had been derived from Moses. Even if they were aware of the tension, however, Jewish authors paid little attention to it, concentrating their efforts rather on the argument that the law of Moses and the teachings of the philosophers were parallel articulations of the same underlying monotheistic ethic.45 Of course, this was anything but self-evident, and the argument was hampered by the many ethnic-specific aspects of the law, some of which (circumcision, Sabbath observance, abstinence from certain foods, rejection of the gods) were seen to be particularly offensive. Jewish writers responded gamely, however, providing allegorical interpretations for various laws or downplaying these aspects of the law in favor of the more universal aspects (monotheistic worship and the pursuit of virtue) that resonated most strongly with Greek paideia and Roman humanitas. Even the Jerusalem temple, which in many ways seemed to symbolize ethnic particularity and the sharp boundary between Israel and the rest of humankind, could be set into a universalizing frame. Josephus takes great pride in the fact that offerings from non-Jews were welcomed at the temple;46 more explicitly, Philo frequently declares that the sacrifices and prayers offered in the temple are given both for “the nation in particular and for the whole human race in general.”47 That these responses met with some success seems to be indicated by the existence of a considerable number of proselytes and sympathizers.48 In the case of sympathizers, perhaps the cause was aided by Jewish readiness to differentiate those aspects of torah that pertained to humankind generally from those that had to do with the Jewish people in particular.49
While the more significant aspect of Jewish attempts to align the law of Moses with Greek and Roman ideals had to do with ethics and virtue, another line of argument centered on political constitution. Both Josephus (e.g., Jewish Antiquities 1.10) and Philo (e.g., On the Life of Moses 2.49–51; On the Virtues 108) strove to portray the ancient law of Moses as an ideal constitution, a politeia to be emulated by Greeks and Romans alike.50 It was a particularly bold move, especially as it stood in contrast to the willingness on the part of some Greeks to concede Roman superiority in the art of government.51 At least in Josephus’s case, it also stood out against current discussion about possible forms of government. While Aelius Aristides might have credited Rome with the discovery of an ideal “form of government [politeian],” one that took the best elements from the three forms of government already in existence (oligarchy, monarchy, democracy), Josephus credits Moses with the articulation of an additional and superior form (“placing all sovereignty and authority in the hands of God”), for which he coined the term theocracy (theokratia).52 Although the portrayal of the torah as an ideal constitution was probably less persuasive than the argument based on ethical monotheism, it nevertheless served to identify the Jews as a civilized nation with an extensive constitution of its own and thus to locate it on a respectable part of the ethnic map.53
In various ways and with some success, then, many Jews took their place in the arena of competitive identity construction and marked out an area for themselves on the dominant Greco-Roman map. While they did not fundamentally abandon the sharp binary that was part of the inherited tradition (Israel/the nations; Jews/non-Jews), they certainly softened it and redrew it in ways that enabled it to line up advantageously with the dominant map.54 In part, this was done by aligning themselves and their tradition with the best elements of the Greek side of the Greek-barbarian binary. In part, it involved rendering the boundary more porous by the willingness to accept proselytes and thus to construct alternatives to genealogical descent as points of entry into group membership. And in part, it involved the construction of some positive enclaves on the other side of the boundary for certain groups of non-Jews (sympathizers and natural-law monotheists).
Nevertheless, there were limits; the boundary was not abandoned. It would be rare to find a Jewish counterpart to Favorinus—that is, a tricultured Jew who felt himself to be fully Roman, fully Greek, and fully Jewish, and who was also accepted as such by other Jews.55 In Philo’s case, for example, even though he, like many other Jews, adopted aspects of Greek and Roman culture, the Jew/non-Jew binary remained fundamental. In a well-known passage (On the Migration of Abraham 89–83), Philo describes the position of extreme allegorists, Jews who took the position that since the truth of the Mosaic laws was to be found in their symbolic reference to philosophical “matters belonging to the intellect” (98), the literal observance of the laws concerning circumcision, the Sabbath, the festivals, and so on could readily be dispensed with. Although Philo would have agreed with them that these observances functioned as symbolic pointers to more ultimate truths, he steadfastly resisted their inference: “we must,” he insists, “pay heed to the letter of the laws” (93). In another context, faced with mistreatment of the Alexandrian Jews by Flaccus, the Roman governor of Egypt, he declared: “He [i.e., Flaccus] knew that both Alexandria and the whole of Egypt had two kinds of inhabitants, us and them.”56 In such a situation of crisis, the nuance readily fell away, and the sharp binary came to the fore.
As another example, the indelible character of the boundary is also on display in the Letter of Aristeas, a fictionalized and entertaining account of the translation of the Torah into Greek. This work contains one of the most generous statements about the character of gentile worship to be found in Second Temple Jewish literature, the generosity only slightly qualified by the fact that the speaker (Aristeas) is a (highly sympathetic) non-Jew. Speaking to the Egyptian king, Aristeas says: “These people [i.e., the Jews] worship God, the overseer and creator of all things, whom all people, ourselves included, O king, also (worship), although naming him differently, Zeus and Dis” (Letter of Aristeas 16). In addition to this stunning alignment of the God of Israel with the head of the Greek pantheon, the author portrays the Jewish high priest Eleazar as valuing Greek learning as highly as Jewish (120–27) and as providing his Egyptian visitors with an allegorical interpretation of the ethnic-specific aspects of the law (143–66). The author also portrays the Egyptian king and his court philosophers, at the series of banquets hosted by the king for the Jewish translators, as being amazed at the ability of their Jewish guests to draw on the Jewish law to express Greek wisdom.
Despite all this, however, the torah-based boundary between Jews and others remains fully intact. In Eleazar’s discourse on the Mosaic legislation, he refuses to compromise on the literal significance of the Jewish laws. The various injunctions involving “strict observances connected with meat and drink and touch and hearing and sight” function as “unbroken palisades and iron walls” erected by God to prevent Jews from “mixing with any of the other peoples [tōn allōn ethnōn] in any matter” and thus to preserve them “from false [idolatrous] beliefs” (Letter of Aristeas 139). To be sure, a certain degree of mixing does take place in the narrative—the series of banquets that precedes the actual work of translation, for example. Nevertheless, the author is careful to make clear that these palisades remained unbroken: at the banquets, “everything,” including the menu (181) and the prayers (184–85), was carried out “in accordance with the customs practiced by all [the king’s] visitors from Judea” (184).
Finally, another indication of the indissoluble nature of the boundary is to be seen in the appearance in both Philo and Josephus of what might be called a form of muted national eschatology. Each in his own way, both Philo and Josephus seem to have come to terms with the current political status quo, devoting their energies to the task of defining and defending a place for the Jewish people within the Greek and Roman maps of reality. Yet each of them also retains a certain eschatological reserve, an expectation (even if carefully couched and camouflaged) that eventually the map of reality would be returned to its divinely intended pattern and Israel would be restored to its rightful place among the nations of the world.
In Philo, the key passage appears as the conclusion to the treatise On Rewards and Punishments,57 and thus also as the conclusion to the Exposition, the set of treatises containing his apologetic description and interpretation of the Torah.58 While the treatise uses the language of blessing and curse in addition to that of reward and punishment,59 one is not surprised that the discourse centers less on matters of covenantal faithfulness (as in Deut 27–30) than on issues of monotheism (On Rewards and Punishments 162) and virtue (164). Be this as it may, the treatise concludes with the expectation of a national restoration that is roundly Deuteronomistic (cf. Deut 30:1–5). When the Jews have been converted “in a body to virtue” (164)—that is, when they have accepted their chastisements and have repented (163) for their departure from “the teaching of their race and of their fathers [tēs syngenous kai patriou]” (162)—then
those who but now were scattered in Greece and the outside world over islands and continents will arise and post from every side with one impulse to the one appointed place, guided in their pilgrimage by a vision divine and superhuman unseen by others but manifest to them as they pass from exile to their home…. When they have arrived, the cities which but now lay in ruins will be cities once more; the desolate land will be inhabited; the barren will change into fruitfulness; all the prosperity of their fathers and ancestors will seem a tiny fragment, so lavish will be the abundant riches in their possession. (165, 168)
In what needs to be seen as a related passage (On the Life of Moses 2.41–44), Philo anticipates a time when “our nation” experiences “a fresh start … to brighter prospects,” the result of which will be “that each nation would abandon its peculiar ways, and, throwing overboard their ancestral customs, turn to honoring our laws alone.”60
While Philo was forced to deal with the hard realities of Jewish existence under Roman imperial rule only toward the end of his life (Against Flaccus, On the Embassy to Gaius), Josephus’s whole opus was shaped by the shattering collision between Jewish hostility toward the other and the brute force of Roman military power. This is not the place for anything like a thorough discussion of Jewish identity construction by Josephus in response to Roman ideology.61 Any such discussion would need to take into account the increasing scholarly appreciation of the complexity of his work and the recognition that he cannot be seen simply as a turncoat lackey for his new Roman patrons.62 For present purposes, I am interested primarily in the element of eschatological reserve.
In his account of the war, Josephus describes his attempt, now as part of Titus’s entourage, to persuade the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem to surrender to the superior might of the Romans:
To scorn meaner masters might, indeed, be legitimate, but not those to whom the universe [ta panta] was subject. For what was there that had escaped the Romans, save maybe some spot useless through heat or cold? Fortune, indeed, had from all quarters passed over to them, and God who went the round of the nations [kata ethnos; “nation by nation”], bringing to each in turn the rod of empire [tēn archēn; imperial sovereignty], now rested over Italy. (Jewish War 5.367)
At first glance, the passage seems simply to be a parroting of Roman ideology.63 At second glance, one is struck by the reference to God (in context, certainly the God of Israel) as the superior agent of Rome’s earthly success. If the statement echoes the ideological theme of Rome’s invincibility and the will of the gods, it does so with a decidedly Jewish twist: it is the God of Israel who had delivered the imperial sovereignty to Italy.64 This is very much in keeping with Josephus’s repeated declaration that Israel’s defeat was divine punishment for sin and that Rome’s success was in conformity with the divine will.65 At third glance, however, one is also struck by the statement that God, who has been making “the round of nations,” has “now” come to Italy. The language conveys a certain transitory sense that hints at the possibility that the “rod of empire” might at some point in the future pass on from Rome to another nation.
In two other passages, Josephus strongly implies that the nation of Israel would take its place (as the last in the sequence?) in this succession of empires. The clearer of the two is in his account of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and Daniel’s interpretation (Jewish Antiquities 10.195–210). After presenting Daniel’s description of the dream (the four-part image and the stone that demolished it) and the portion of his interpretation dealing with the four successive empires, Josephus suddenly breaks off, on the grounds that his present purpose concerned “what is past and done” and not “what is to be” (Jewish Antiquities 10.210). Nevertheless, anyone who wants “to learn about the hidden things that are to come”—which necessarily would have to do with the destruction of the “iron” empire (commonly understood to be Rome)—could readily do so by reading Daniel.
The second is in Josephus’s account of the prophecy of Balaam (Jewish Antiquities 4.112–30; Num 22–24), who, though he was hired by the Moabite king Balak to curse Israel, was compelled by Israel’s God to bless them. Josephus reads the blessings as prophecies, adding two guarded but highly telling comments. First, having observed that some of the prophecies had already been fulfilled, including some “within my memory,” he added that from these fulfilled prophecies “one may infer what the future has in store” (Jewish Antiquities 4.125). A few sentences later, in a parting shot to Balak and the princes of Midian, Balaam declares that, while Israel may experience passing misfortunes at the hands of their enemies, they would eventually “flourish once more to the terror of those who inflicted these injuries upon them” (Jewish Antiquities 4.128). While the statement was crafted in such a way as to provide Josephus with plausible deniability, one can readily identify some significant “misfortunes” that the Jews had experienced “within [Josephus’s] memory” and thus discern Josephus’s expectation that Israel would eventually “flourish,” the “rod of empire” passing from Italy to Judea.
Thus while significant elements of the Jewish population were prepared to enter the fray of competitive identity construction, striving to position themselves advantageously with respect to the competing maps of the human world, and while in the process the boundary between Israel and the other nations was modified, softened, and (to some extent) relativized, it was by no means abandoned. While Hellenistic Jewish authors showed themselves to be adept at using the widely accepted strategies of competitive ethnology and cosmopolitan self-alignment, the constraints of Israel’s distinctive tradition and the resultant sense of difference from the non-Jewish other produced a form of identity that was also unique in significant respects.
Still, this is only part of the picture. As we observed at the outset, at the opposite corner of the grid, there was a segment of the Jewish population for whom the boundary between Israel and the other nations was sharp, hard-edged, and categorical. The only map that mattered was the one in which the human population was divided simply into Jews and non-Jews, Israel and the nations. Even so, however, as we look more closely at this uncompromisingly hard-edged form of Jewish mapmaking, we can see some analogous elements of competitive identity construction, even if in a negative mode or a pessimistic key.
A fundamental aspect of this hard-edged attitude is the belief that the division between Israel and the other nations was categorical and ordained by God from the beginning. In the retelling of the creation account in Jubilees, for example, on the seventh day of creation, God declares to the accompanying angels that “I shall separate for myself a people from among all the nations; and they will also keep the sabbath” (Jubilees 2:19). A similar note is sounded in the Apocalypse of Abraham, where Abraham has a vision of the creation of the world in which the “great crowd of men and women and children” is divided into two, “those on the right side of the picture” being identified as “the ones I have prepared to be born of you [Abraham] and to be called my people” (21:7–22:4).
In one amplification of this theme, the author of the Testament of Moses declares that, according to God’s purpose from the beginning, the world was created for the people of Israel alone (1:11–13). The negative counterpart of this variation on the theme is that the nations have been created for ultimate destruction, a belief clearly on display in Jubilees. Here humankind is divided into two groups, the “sons of the covenant” and the “children of destruction”; the fate of the latter is that they will finally “be destroyed and annihilated from the earth” (Jubilees 15:26). For the author of this work, the only way to please God is to keep the torah in its entirety. Since the torah contains an injunction requiring circumcision on the eighth day, gentiles are in effect condemned to this fate from the outset (15:26).
In some expressions of this hard-edged view, the ultimate destruction of the gentile nations is choreographed by God. According to Jubilees, God “caused spirits to rule [over the nations] so they might lead them astray from following him” (Jubilees 15:31)—a stringently negative rereading of Deut 32:8. For the author of the Testament of Moses, God deliberately withheld from the gentile nations any knowledge of the divine purposes: “the Lord of the world … created the world on behalf of his people, but he did not make this purpose of creation openly known from the beginning of the world so that the nations might be found guilty” (Testament of Moses 1:11–13).
While the Testament of Moses displays little sensitivity to theodical concerns—guilt or not, the non-Jewish nations were excluded from the “purpose of creation” from the outset—other writers with a generally similar pessimistic outlook felt more obliged to establish the culpability of the gentiles, and thus the ultimate justice of their fate. In Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, although the law was given as “a light to the world” (11.1), the purpose of this light is simply to silence any gentiles who might protest their condemnation. Likewise for the author of 4 Ezra, the gentiles are justly condemned; they had a real opportunity to repent (7:82), but “[t]hey scorned his Law, and denied his covenants; they have been unfaithful to his statutes and have not performed his works.”66 Even so, 4 Ezra differs from the other Jewish works discussed to this point, in that the author is prepared to open up, even if ever so slightly, the possibility that there might have been one or two individual gentiles here or there “who have kept your commandments” (3:36).67 Second Baruch is less gloomy than 4 Ezra, envisaging a considerable number of those from the nations “who left behind their vanity and who have fled under your wings,” a group described a little later as “those who first did not know life and who later knew it exactly and who mingled with the seed of the people” (41:4; 42:5). Still, except for the righteous who keep the law, the “whole multitude” of Adam and Eve’s descendants are “going to corruption” (48:43); those “who do not keep the statutes of the Most High” will in the end pass away like smoke (82:6).
This discussion of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch leads to another element in the hard-edged Jewish view being discussed here—namely, a correspondingly hard-edged view of proselytism. Here the Jew/gentile binary is drawn with particular and categorical sharpness. All non-Jews are on the wrong side of the created order of things and are destined for destruction, except for those (few) who abandon their native identity and “mingle with the seed of the people” Israel. Put differently, the only hope that non-Jews have of pleasing the creator of the world and having a share in the age to come is by becoming a Jewish proselyte in this age. In many cases, this stringent view of proselytism was simply theoretical and theodical—a way of justifying the ultimate destruction of the nations. However, the example of Eleazar—the advisor of King Izates in Adiabene who admonished the king that as long as he hesitated on the wrong side of the line, he was “guilty of the greatest offence against the law and thereby against God” (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.44)—suggests that the view was operative in the social sphere as well.
But not every non-Jew had Izates’s opportunities to become familiar with the torah. If the ultimate destruction of the nations is to be justified by their rejection of “the statutes of the Most High,” how might they have been expected to know them in the first place?68 In some cases, gentile culpability results simply from the fact that they “did not know my Law” (2 Baruch 48:40) or that “they have not learned my Law” (Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 11.2). While these statements seem to assume that non-Jews should have known and learned the torah,69 how this knowledge should have been acquired is left unspecified. Elsewhere in 2 Baruch it is said that non-Jews “despised my Law” (51:4), which implies that they did have at least some awareness of the law’s existence. This line of thought is especially prominent in 4 Ezra:
For God strictly commanded those who came into the world, when they came, what they should do to live, and what they should observe to avoid punishment. Nevertheless, they were not obedient, and spoke against him; they devised for themselves vain thoughts, and proposed to themselves wicked frauds; they even declared that the Most High does not exist, and they ignored his ways! They scorned his Law, and denied his covenants; they have been unfaithful to his statutes and have not performed his works. (7:20–24; see also 7:72–74; 8:55–61; 9:9–12)
How this strict commandment was communicated, however, and how it was that they “obtained the Law” (7:72) is not made clear, though some of the language (e.g., “who came into the world”) is suggestive of a line of thought that is interesting from the perspective of identity construction and competitive ethnography.
According to this line of thought, some basic knowledge of God and of God’s commandments is discernible from the created order itself. This theme appears clearly at one point in 2 Baruch (54:13–19). In support of the statement that “those who do not love your Law are justly perishing” (v. 14), Baruch declares: “For his works have not taught you, nor has the artful work of his creation which has existed always persuaded you” (v. 18). The fault, however, lies not with God’s “works” but with the “unrighteous ones” themselves, who willfully “rejected the understanding of the Most High” (v. 17).70 The theme appears as well in the Apocalypse of Abraham. The first eight chapters of this work tell the story of Abraham’s recognition of the folly of idolatry, the conflict between Abraham and his father Terah over the nature of Terah’s gods, Abraham’s discovery of the true God, and his subsequent departure from Chaldea.71 The example of Abraham, then, demonstrated that it was possible to recognize the folly of idolatry and to perceive from the created order that there was a “God who created all things” (7:10). The gentiles, however, have spurned this opportunity for perception and repentance; as God declares toward the end of the work, “For I waited so that they might come to me, and they did not deign to” (31:6).72
What emerges in this latter set of texts, then, is a kind of natural theology in a pessimistic key. The created order itself bore witness to the creator God and to some fundamental ethical injunctions, which should have led human beings to seek the God who had been revealed more fully in the torah and the covenant. While this did happen in some cases (those “who left behind their vanity and who have fled under your wings”; 2 Baruch 41:4), for the most part the witness of the natural order simply justified the judgment to come. This is a far cry from the kind of ethical monotheism on display in Philo or the Letter of Aristeas. Nevertheless, along with the concern in this more pessimistic literature to locate Israel and the nations more generally within the created order, it does demonstrate the need to engage in competitive ethnology—if even in an unreflective and defensive mode.
Admittedly, this discussion of Jewish identity construction in the Greco-Roman context is far from complete. We have concentrated on two of the extreme segments of the grid, leaving out of account a lot of Jewish literature in between. In addition, more might have been said about attempts to come to terms with the realities of Roman rule—both juridical explanations (God has allowed the Romans to exercise power over Judea specifically as a means of punishing the people of Israel for their sins) and eschatological ones (God may have empowered the Roman Empire as an agent of punishment in the present, but this was just an episode in a longer story that would culminate in a new state of affairs where Israel would be purified, vindicated, and restored to a central place among the nations).73
Nevertheless, the preceding discussion provides a sufficient foundation for our primary concern here—to explore the ways in which ethnē and related terms were used as ascribed identity terms for non-Jews.
As was discussed in the previous chapter, social identity is negotiated and formed at the significant boundaries, those lines where the “us” becomes aware of itself as distinct from the “not us.” Part of the negotiation involves ascribed identities, as those on the other side of the boundary form an image of the group on the basis of their own perceptions and then project the image back over the boundary, where it is experienced as an ascribed identity to which the group itself needs to respond in some way. From this dialectic of perception, projection, and response emerges a constructed self-identification—a social identity—which incorporates within it an image of the other, an ascribed identity in return, which is then projected back across the boundary.74 Thus the identity that Jews would have ascribed to non-Jewish others was implicit in its own constructed identity—the impress, as it were, of the ring on the sealing wax.
We also need to recall the elements of desirability and of power. The extent to which an undesirable ascribed identity is internalized and incorporated into group identity depends on relative power—the power of the outside agency to impose the ascribed identity and the power of the group itself to resist it. For most Jewish groups in our period of interest, there were not many situations where they were in a position to impose an identity on their non-Jewish neighbors; only in rare situations—Judea during the Hasmonean period, for example—was the identity imposed from a position of power. Nevertheless, non-Jews who came in contact with Jewish groups would become aware, to a greater or lesser extent, of the identity that was being ascribed to them. Where the ascribed identity was perceived as attractive, the attractiveness itself provided its own power.
The identity that Jewish groups projected onto non-Jewish outsiders, then, would have emerged as the reflex of the Jewish identity as discussed above, expressed in a set of distinctive categories (monotheism, election, torah, temple, covenant, eschatology) as these were reshaped and repackaged in the competitive environment of the Greco-Roman world. Of course, one needs to maintain the distinction here between projection and perception. The nature of the perception depends on the lens used to perceive. Only those non-Jews who came into sufficiently close contact with Jewish groups would be able to arrive at a fine-grained perception of the ascribed identities being projected from the Jewish side, and even then the perception would vary according to how much they sympathized with the Jewish world. Someone who would have fallen into Josephus’s category of “those who would enquire further” would have gained a much more accurate and nuanced perception than a Petronius or a Tacitus,75 with their wildly inaccurate accounts of Jewish beliefs and attitude toward outsiders.76 Here, however, our present concern has to do more with the ascribed identity itself—or, at least, with the perceptions of non-Jews who were in a position to perceive it accurately.77
Like the identities imposed on the other by the Greeks and later the Romans, this ascribed identity had two sides to it. On one side, non-Jews would have perceived themselves to be categorized as the other in an ethnic binary. To be sure, as we have seen, the nature of the boundary varied considerably, from sharp and hard-edged to softer and more porous. Still, the basic distinction between Jews and non-Jews remained. On the other side, non-Jews perceived a range of ways in which they could locate themselves with respect to this binary. The range is considerable. As one moves, say, from Jubilees to Philo, one moves from a map in which the non-Jewish portion is an area of categorical nullification (“children of destruction” destined to be “destroyed and annihilated from the earth”; 15.26) to one in which discerning non-Jews occupy an area equal in status to that of the Jews.78 In between, one encounters maps where the boundary between Jewish and non-Jewish territories is fitted with gates through which proselytes are invited to enter, together with maps containing a special strip of territory along the non-Jewish side of the border, occupied by various non-Jewish sympathizers, especially those who acknowledge the God of Israel as the one true God and live in conformity with that portion of the torah that pertains to humankind as a whole.79 Except for the case of Jubilees and like-minded works, I have carried out an extensive examination of these maps elsewhere (within the framework of what I called “patterns of universalism”), and so I will not attempt to describe and document this phenomenon in more detail here.80
Within the broader phenomenon of the various identities that Jews ascribed to the non-Jewish others, we are especially interested in the vocabulary of categorization—the terms in which these ascribed identities are expressed—and, within this vocabulary set, the term ethnē in particular. Our interest in this Greek term, of course, is due to its later use in Christian identity construction, though because Jewish and Christian use of ethnē has been shaped by prior Hebrew usage, we need to begin here.81
The identity binary that we have already observed is rooted in Israel’s Scriptures, with their contrast between Israel as a people (usually ‘am) and the other nations (usually gôyîm). While gôy on occasion can be used with reference to Israel (e.g., Gen 12:2; Exod 19:6; Isa 51:4) and ‘ammîm appears with some frequency as a term for the other nations,82 the plural gôyîm is almost always reserved for the nations other than Israel.83 Indeed, the usage is so standard that the apparently inclusive phrase “all the nations” (kol-haggôyîm) almost always excludes the people of Israel,84 and the articular form “the nations” (haggôyîm), used in an absolute sense without further qualification, denotes not simply “the nations” but “the nations as distinct from the people Israel.”85
In addition to gôyîm, two other words are consistently (albeit infrequently) used in the plural to refer to nations other than Israel: lә’ummîm, appearing primarily in poetic material;86 and, in the Aramaic material, ’ummayā’.87 Also, various forms of nkr are used to denote “foreigner(s)” (nēker, ben-nēker, nokrî), forms that (unlike gôyîm) allow for the possibility of referring to individual non-Jews.88
The contrasted pairing of ‘am (Israel) and gôyîm (the nations other than Israel) is carried over into the Greek version, though in an even more sharply focused way. While the basic tendency of the translators was to use ethnos for gôy and laos for ‘am, this pattern was subject to significant modifications. For one thing, the Greek version makes a sharper terminological distinction between the people Israel and the (other) nations. In instances where gôy appears with reference to Israel, for example, the Greek version often avoids ethnos, either using laos instead (e.g., Josh 3:17; 4:1; Isa 58:2) or using some alternative expression.89 On the other side of things, ethnos was routinely chosen to render ‘am (sg.) when it denoted a nation other than Israel (e.g., Exod 1:9; 15:14; 21:8; Lev 20:2; Deut 1:28; 2:10, 21). Likewise, ‘ammim is regularly rendered ethnē in instances where the Hebrew term denoted peoples other than Israel (e.g., Exod 19:5; 23:27; 33:16; Lev 20:24, 26; Deut 2:25; 4:6; 6:14; 10:15). Further, the range of vocabulary found in the Hebrew Scriptures is reduced in the Greek, with both ethnos and laos often being chosen as translations of Hebrew words other than gôy and ‘am.90 In short, the Greek version provides evidence for a development in which laos and ethnē come to function virtually as technical terms for Israel (as God’s special people) and the other nations, respectively.
Before moving on, we should note a possible exception to this conclusion, one that has a bearing on some early Christian texts (especially Matt 28:19). It has to do with the phrase “all the nations” (panta ta ethnē). In the great majority of its occurrences in the Greek Scriptures (some 115 in total), the phrase denotes the non-Jewish nations. In five passages, however, the phrase might be read in an inclusive sense—that is, “all nations [Israel included].” In two passages, the term appears twice, making a total of seven occurrences. The question, then, is whether in these instances the distinction between Israel and the non-Jewish nations has been effaced, so that Israel is seen as just one of the many nations of the world.
Three of these passages (four occurrences)—all of them in Daniel (OG Dan 3:2, 7; 4:37; 6:26)—can be immediately set aside. In each of them, the phrase “all the nations” is either spoken by a gentile king or at least reflects his point of view. In each case, while the Jewish nation is included within “all the ethnē” who are subject to the king, the Jewish author is simply replicating the perspective of the non-Jewish character rather than redefining the usual Jewish use of the term. These instances thus have little bearing on the use of the phrase from Jewish perspective.91
This leaves us with two other passages (three occurrences): LXX Isa 56:7 and LXX Jer 35:11, 14 (= MT 28:11, 14). The statement in LXX Isa 56:7 has to do with the aliens (hoi allogeneis) who, along with others “keep my sabbaths so as not to profane them and hold fast my covenant,” will be invited to worship at the temple in Jerusalem, “‘for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations [pasin tois ethnesin],’92 said the Lord, who gathers the dispersed of Israel” (vv. 6–8). Certainly this is an inclusive scene: aliens—members of foreign nations—will worship together with reassembled Israel. Logically, then, “all the nations” could have an inclusive sense; members of other nations join with the nation of Israel to worship the Lord. Nevertheless, this is not where the emphasis falls. The clause in question (“for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the ethnē”) is subordinate to a main clause that has to do with non-Jews: “I will bring them into my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their whole burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar.” This, coupled with the reference to Israel that follows (“who gathers the dispersed of Israel”), suggests that the distinction between Israel and “all the ethnē” remains in place. Further support for this conclusion is provided by the use of laos with reference to Israel in verse 3 and the fact that the other fifteen occurrences of panta ta ethnē in Isaiah denote “all the non-Jewish nations.” In other words, the thrust of the whole passage is that members of the non-Jewish nations are invited to share in Israel’s worship rather than that Israel is being designated as one of the larger group of nations joining together in worship. While the phrase could possibly be read in an inclusive way, the inclusion would be peripheral at best; Israel’s special status is by no means dissolved into a homogeneous collection of ethnē.
We see a similar case in LXX Jer 35:11–14 (= MT 28:11–14). In the larger context (starting with ch. 34), Jeremiah had placed a wooden yoke around his own neck as a symbolic way of reinforcing his message that God had “given the earth to King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon to be subject to him” and that any nation that did not “put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon” would suffer dire consequences (34:6, 8). After crushing Jeremiah’s yoke, the false prophet Hananiah declared that within two years God would “crush the yoke of the king of Babylon from the necks of all the nations [pantōn tōn ethnōn]” (35:11). Replacing the wooden yoke with a yoke of iron, Jeremiah replied: “Thus did the Lord say, ‘I have put an iron yoke on the neck of all the nations [pantōn tōn ethnōn] so that they might work for the king of Babylon’” (35:14).93 The nation of Judah certainly is not excluded from consideration here. Jeremiah urges king Sedekias to submit to the king of Babylon (34:12); anything that he says in general terms about “the nation” that does (34:11) or does not (34:8) submit to Babylon applies to Judah as well. At the same time, however, when he refers to Judah as a whole, he uses people rather than nation: “I spoke to you and all this people [panti tō laō toutō] and the priests” (34:16). Further, when the yoke imagery is first introduced, it is non-Jewish nations that are in view: Jeremiah had first put the yoke around his neck as part of a message that he sent to the kings of surrounding nations (Idumea, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Sidon; 34:2).94 In keeping with this, in the message that God instructs Jeremiah to deliver to Hananiah, “all the nations” are then referred to in the third person (“so that they might work for the king of Babylon”; 35:14), which might be taken to imply that the term refers primarily to the other nations. Further, the other six occurrences of the phrase in Jeremiah denote non-Jewish nations. In sum, while what is true of “all the nations” in this passage is true of Judah as well: there is little indication that Judah is being explicitly and deliberately lumped together with Idumea, Moab, and the rest as one of “all the ethnē.”
Turning to other Jewish literature in the Greek and Roman periods, we are not surprised to find a continuation of the patterns apparent in the Hebrew Scriptures and their Greek translations. In addition, however, there are several differences that will become significant. One is a development in the use of ethnē in which it comes to denote not only the totality of non-Jewish nations but also a multiplicity of non-Jewish individuals. Tannaitic literature takes this one step further, as gôy in the singular is frequently used to refer to a single non-Jew. Another striking observation is the almost complete absence of ethnē in the sense of the “non-Jewish nations” in a significant body of Greek literature (most notably Philo and Josephus). These aspects will come more fully into view as we proceed.95
We begin with the use of “nations” (ethnē, gôyîm, and various translational equivalents) to denote the non-Jewish other—all nations other than that of Israel. This binary usage, heavily dependent on biblical language, is widespread throughout Second Temple and Tannaitic literature:
Acknowledge him before the nations [tōn ethnōn], O sons of Israel [hoi huioi Israēl]; for he has scattered you among them. (Tob 13:3)
For I did not wish to inquire about the ways above, but about those things which we daily experience: why Israel has been given over to the gentiles [gentibus] as a reproach; why the people [populum] whom you loved has been given to godless tribes. (4 Ezra 4:23)
For this will be a time of suffering for Isra[el and a servi]ce of war /against/all the nations [hgwyym]. For God’s lot there will be everlasting redemption /2/ and destruction for all the wicked nations [lkwl gwy rq‘h]. (1QM XV, 1–2)
When it says: “It shall be the first month of the year to you” [Exod 12:2], behold, there it tells you that it is commanded only to you and not /38/ to the Gentiles [lgwyym]…. We thus learn that Israel reckons by the moon and that /40/ the Gentiles [hgwyym] reckon by the sun. (Mekilta Tractate Pisha 2.39–40)
In addition to the binary usage in the form “the nations”/“(sons of) Israel,”96 the Israel side of the binary is also expressed in a variety of other ways:97 “(the/God’s) people”;98 “(my/our) race”;99 “(your/holy) seed”;100 “Jews”;101 “(God’s) son(s)”;102 “we” or “us”;103 “you”;104 contextual references to Zion, Jerusalem, or the temple;105 various other contextual indicators.106 With respect to the non-Jewish side of the binary, while the articular or emphatic form (“the nations”) is standard, the anarthrous form (“nations”) appears occasionally.107 Also to be noted is the phrase “all the nations,” which appears frequently with respect to the totality of non-Jewish nations.108
Moving from the level of vocabulary to that of discourse, gôyîm and its translational equivalents appear with reference to most of the themes that are familiar from Israel’s Scriptures:109 Israel’s election and God’s choice of Israel from out of the nations;110 the nations as those from whom Israel should keep separate and refuse to imitate;111 the nations as wicked and idolatrous;112 the nations as enemies;113 the nations as nevertheless ultimately subject to Israel’s God;114 the nations as divine instruments of punishment;115 the exile among the nations as one form of punishment;116 God’s action in gathering Israel from all the nations among whom they had been scattered;117 the nations as witnesses of God’s activity with Israel, both in judgment and in salvation;118 the nations as beneficiaries of Israel’s covenantal role;119 and the eschatological fate of the nations, both in judgment and in salvation.120
As was mentioned above, during the Second Temple period ethnē and gôyîm come to be used not only of non-Jewish nations but also of non-Jewish individuals, a development that became important in early Christian usage as well. The development is curious, both because the basic meaning of ethnē has to do with nations or ethnic groups rather than with individuals, and because the term in its singular form always denotes a single nation, rather than a single, non-Jewish individual. In other words, there is no singular equivalent to the plural ethnē when used with reference to individuals. We will return to this point presently, but first we will survey the evidence,121 which suggests that the usage was well established in the Second Temple period.
To begin with, there are frequent occurrences of the usage in 1 and 2 Maccabees. For example, in 1 Macc 4:12–14 we read:
When the foreigners [hoi allophyloi] looked up and saw them coming against them, they went out from their camp to battle. Then the men with Judas blew their trumpets and engaged in battle; ta ethnē were crushed, and fled into the plain.
The context is a battle between Judas and his company of three thousand men (andrasin; 4:6) and the “five thousand infantry and one thousand picked cavalry” led by Gorgias (4:1). In the passage just quoted, ta ethnē stands in parallel with hoi allophyloi (“foreigners”—a plurality of foreign individuals) and thus serves to identify those who “were crushed and fled into the plain” as a group, not of nations, but of non-Jewish soldiers. Similarly, the result of another battle was that Simon and his troops “pursued them to the gate of Ptolemais; as many as three thousand of the ethnē fell, and he despoiled them” (5:22). Again, soldiers, not nations.122
Turning to 2 Maccabees, in 2 Macc 6:4 we read: “For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the ethnē, who dallied with prostitutes and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and besides brought in things for sacrifice that were unfit.” Clearly those who were dallying with the prostitutes were individuals and not nations. Individuals are also in view in 2 Macc 14:14: “And the ethnē throughout Judea, who had fled before Judas, flocked to join Nicanor, thinking that the misfortunes and calamities of the Jews would mean prosperity for themselves.”123
Instances of this usage are by no means restricted to 1 and 2 Maccabees. Third Maccabees contains an account of a letter written by King Ptolemy Philopator to his Egyptian subjects, announcing harsh measures against the Jewish residents in Egypt. The announcement was greeted with great joy by the local non-Jewish residents: “In every place, then, where this decree arrived, a feast at public expense was arranged for the ethnē with shouts and gladness” (3 Macc 4:1). In the Psalms of Solomon, the psalmist laments the incursion of Pompey and his soldiers into Jerusalem and the temple: “Foreign ethnē went up to your place of sacrifice; they arrogantly trampled [it] with their sandals”; “ethnē insulted Jerusalem, trampling her down”; “let it be enough, Lord, to make your hand heavy on Jerusalem by bringing ethnē [upon her]” (2:2, 19, 22).124 In each case, ethnē denotes groups of non-Jewish individuals, not nations.125
Several other instances have to do with sexual activity. The Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo contains an account of Tamar’s pregnancy in which her motivation is explained in this way: “For her intent was not fornication, but being unwilling to separate from the sons of Israel she reflected and said, ‘It is better for me to die for having intercourse with my father-in-law than to have intercourse with gentiles [gentibus]’” (9.5). In a description of end-time woes found in the Testament of Moses, among the calamities to be expected are these: “And their wives will be divided among the gentiles [gentibus] and their young sons will be cut by physicians to bring forward their foreskins” (8.3).126
Sexual intercourse with non-Jews is the focus of an extended passage in Jubilees (30:1–17). The statement of particular interest here appears after the account of Dinah and the men of Shechem, as the angel of the presence instructs Moses: “And you, Moses, command the children of Israel and exhort them not to give any of their daughters to the gentiles [Latin: gentibus], and not to take for their sons any of the daughters of the gentiles [Latin: gentium] because that is contemptible before the Lord” (Jubilees 30:11). While it is possible that the second use of gentes in this sentence is to be read as nations rather than individuals (“daughters of non-Jewish nations”; also vv. 13–14), individuals are decidedly in view in the first clause (where gentes stands in parallel with “daughters”). The same is to be said of another passage dealing with separation from non-Jews, this time in terms of social rather than sexual intercourse: “Separate yourself from the gentiles [Latin: gentibus], and do not eat with them, and do not perform deeds like theirs. And do not become associates of theirs. Because their deeds are defiled, and all of their ways are contaminated, and despicable, and abominable” (Jubilees 22:16).127
Three of the seven or eight instances of the usage in the Qumran literature have to do with social separation from the gôyîm, seen as individuals. Two of these appear in the Damascus Document: “No one <should stay> in a place close to gôyîm [lgwyym] on the sabbath” (CD XI, 14–15); “No one should sell clean animals or birds to gôyîm [lgwyym] lest they sacrifice them” (CD XII, 8–9). The third (4Q271 frag. 5 I, 9) repeats the injunction in CD XI, 14–15. 4QIsaiah Pesher interprets Isa 10:33–34 as follows: “Its interpretation concerns the] Kittim, wh[o] will be pla[ced] in the hands of Israel, and the meek [of the earth …] all the gôyîm [kwl hgwyym] and soldiers [gbwrym] will weaken and [their] he[art] will melt” (4Q161 frag. 8–10, 1–4). Here the parallelism between gôyîm and “soldiers” suggests strongly that the gôyîm are also to be seen as a plurality of individuals. In the case of 4Q159, while the manuscript is quite fragmentary, the fact that it seems to rework Lev 25:47–55, which deals with an impoverished Israelite selling himself into slavery, suggests that gôyîm refers to individuals: “And if [… to a] foreigner [gr] or the descendant of a [foreign] fam[ily …] in the presence of Is[rael.] They are [no]t to serve gentiles [hgwyym]; with … [… from the land of] Egypt and commanded them not be sold for the price of a slave” (4Q159 frag. 2–4, 1–3).128 Finally, there are two passages in the Temple Scroll in which members are commanded not to behave as the gôyîm behave: “And you shall not do as the gôyîm [hgwyym] do: they bury their dead in every place, they even bury them in the middle of their houses; instead you shall keep places apart within your land where you shall bury your dead” (11QTemplea XLVIII, 11–13); “You shall not behave in your land as the gôyîm [hgwyym] behave; in every place they sacrifice, and plant asheroth for themselves, and set up for themselves stelae, and place hewn stones in order to bow down before them, and build for themselves” (11QTemplea LI, 19–21). In both cases, although there is a representational character to the usage—that is, this is how the gôyîm behave; these actions typify the nations as a whole—the actions of the gôyîm nevertheless are carried out by individuals (e.g., burying the dead in the middle of their houses; constructing various things for themselves).
This representational overtone to the use of gôyîm with reference to individuals, which is apparent as well in one or two of the texts already cited,129 is thrown into sharper relief by some additional passages where one finds not simply representational overtones but a more clearly representational usage. In these passages, nations, usually articular and without modification, is used in very specific contexts, most often with reference to a very specific event involving a restricted number of people. One instance appears already in Israel’s Scriptures; in Lam 1:10, the prophet speaks of the desecration of the temple as the work of “the nations” (gôyîm, ethnē). Although those who “invaded her sanctuary” were a group of Babylonian soldiers, the author sees it as the work of “the nations,” categorically considered. Likewise, in 1 Macc 2:12 Mattathias laments: “And see, our holy place, our beauty, and our glory have been laid waste; the ethnē have profaned them.” The temple was profaned by a specific group, the agents of Antiochus IV; the text seems to view them, however, as representatives of the nations in general. A little later, after the recapture of the temple, Judas and his companions, deliberating over what to do with the altar, “thought it best to tear it down, so that it would not be a lasting shame to them that the ethnē had defiled it” (1 Macc 4:45). Again, the actions of a very specific group of non-Jews is probably being portrayed as the work of the nations as a whole. The Epistle of Jeremiah provides another case in point: “Now in Babylon you will see gods made of silver and gold and wood, which people carry and which cause the ethnē to fear” (Ep Jer 1:4).130
To be sure, it is sometimes difficult to draw a sharp line between this set of representational texts and those that clearly refer to a collectivity of individuals. Even in the latter, the representational element is not entirely absent. Those ethnē who consorted with prostitutes in the Jerusalem temple (2 Macc 6:4), for example, or who “trampled [the sanctuary] with their sandals” (Psalms of Solomon 2:2) were not simply foreigners, they were typical representatives of the nations—the ethnic other from whom Israel was to remain separate and whose ways Israel was to shun. Rather than making a sharp distinction, then, between representative and individual usage, it is probably more appropriate to recognize the presence of both individual and representative elements in all these passages, with the balance shifting from case to case as we move from, say, 2 Macc 6:4 (specific activity pertaining to non-Jewish individuals) to 11QTemplea XLVIII, 11–13 (typical gentile behavior) to 1 Macc 4:45 (activity pertaining to individual non-Jews seen as representatives of the nations as a whole).
These nuances notwithstanding, the basic development—one in which a word that in its singular form denoted a nation came to be used in the plural to denote a set of individuals (rather than nations)—is curious and requires some explanation. It is not as if there were no alternatives; both Hebrew and Greek already provided other ways of denoting the non-Jewish other (Heb. nokrî, ben-nēkār; Gk. allophylos, allogenēs, etc.). Why did gôyîm and ethnē come to denote collectivities of non-Jewish individuals when other terms were already available for the purpose? Further, these other terms had the advantage of referring to individuals in their basic sense and thus of being able to denote not only non-Jews in the plural but also individual non-Jews. Ethnē is quite awkward in this respect; in its singular form, the term always denotes a single nation rather than a single, non-Jewish individual. In other words, there is no singular equivalent to the plural ethnē when used with reference to individuals.131
Two observations can be made about this development. First, the fact that the usage was able to establish itself despite these obstacles seems to suggest that gôyîm and ethnē had crystallized as categorical terms for the non-Jewish other to such an extent that generic terms for foreigners simply were not adequate to express the covenantal binary. By denoting individual non-Jews as gôyîm or ethnē, these texts characterize them as members of the (non-Jewish) nations. What this choice of designation accomplished was to link these groups of non-Jewish individuals with that scriptural category—the nations (haggôyîm, ta ethnē)—that, more than any other, served to give Israel its distinct identity.
The second observation has to do with the process of development. Although it would be difficult to prove conclusively, it seems plausible to suggest that the fully representational use—actions of a group of non-Jewish individuals portrayed as actions carried out, in a representational sense, by the non-Jewish nations as a whole—is to be seen as an intermediate step in the process. In that it uses the term nations with respect to individuals only indirectly, this usage can be seen both as a more natural extension of the term’s semantic range and as providing a plausible basis for a further extension to individuals directly. The fact that evidence for (primarily) representational use (Lam 1:10) predates any evidence for (primarily) individual use is at least consistent with this explanation.
This brings us to rabbinic literature and a further stage in the development. As with earlier Jewish literature, gôyîm is used in Tannaitic literature to denote not only nations—especially haggôyîm,132 the non-Jewish nations as a whole—but also pluralities of non-Jewish individuals. Several examples: “A man stipulates concerning his erub and says, ‘If gentiles [gôyîm] come from the east, my erub is at the west. [If they come] from the west, my erub is at the east’” (m. Eruvin 3:5). “A city in which Israelites and gentiles [gôyîm] live—the collectors of funds for the support of the poor collect equally from Israelites and from gentiles [gôyîm], for the sake of peace” (t. Gittin 3:13–14).133 In addition, however, the Tannaim take the development one step further, as they frequently use the singular gôy to denote an individual non-Jew. The well-known injunction of R. Judah is a case in point: “A man must recite three benedictions every day,” the first of which is “Praised [be Thou, O Lord …] who did not make me a gentile [gôy]” (t. Berakhot 6:18). Another is a comment on Exod 12:43 in the Mekilta, where “There shall no alien [ben-nēkār] eat thereof” is explained as “meaning both an apostate Jew and a Gentile [gôy]” (Mekilta Pisha 15.19–20). This use of gôy—which, of course, is familiar to modern ears, given its currency in contemporary English—is common in rabbinic literature.134
Given that the more significant extension of the semantic range had already taken place with the use of the plural gôyîm to refer to individuals, this further extension to the singular is readily understandable as a logical additional step. Still, it should not be simply taken for granted. To refer to individual foreigners both in the plural and the singular, the rabbis had other terms at their disposal, both drawn from Scripture (nokrî, nokrîth, ben-nēkār) and formulations of their own devising.135 Again one gets the sense that generic terms for foreigner did not fully capture the fundamental and categorical distinction between us and them that was conveyed by the biblical language of Israel and the nations.
In this connection, it is striking to note that yiśra’ēl (Israel) is often used, in binary constructions with gôy, to denote an individual Israelite. To cite just one example, here is a Tosefta passage having to do with laws concerning harvesting and the poor: “[As regards] a gentile [gôy] who sold his standing [crop] to an Israelite [literally, “to Israel”: yiśra’ēl] for harvesting—[the produce that the Israelite harvests] is subject to designation as pe’ah” (t. Pe’ah 2:9).136 Equally striking is that yiśra’ēl can be used in tandem with gôyîm to denote Israelites in the plural. We have already seen an example: “A city in which Israelites [yśr’l] and gentiles [gwyym] live …” (t. Gittin 3:13). In both cases, the representational character of the usage is fully in view: Whenever some Jews live in a city or a Jew has dealings with a non-Jew, Israel—conceived of as a distinct category of human existence—is present. The significance of this for present purposes is that this use of yiśra’ēl serves to underscore the analogous representational use of gôy. As with Israel, so with gôy and gôyîm: the latter have also come to designate a category of human existence sufficiently distinct and fundamental that whenever one or more non-Jews live in a city with Jews or have dealings with them, one can say that the human category itself is present.137 While this does not mean that such non-Jews are perceived or portrayed any less as individuals, the usage serves to highlight their membership in a particular class and thus to ascribe to them a distinctive (non-Jewish) identity. This combination of representative and individual elements in the rabbinic use of yiśra’ēl and gôy adds further plausibility to the suggestion that the emergence of a primarily representational sense of gôyîm and ethnē (e.g., Lam 1:10) paved the way for the two further developments that we have been tracing—first, the use of gôyîm and ethnē to denote pluralities of non-Jews, and then the rabbinic use of gôy to denote an individual non-Jew (with distinct connotations in each case).
As was mentioned above, however, these distinctive uses of gôyîm and ethnē with reference to the non-Jewish nations—both the original scriptural usage and the later developments—are almost completely absent from a significant body of Jewish literature composed in Greek. To be sure, the usage does appear in some Hellenistic Jewish literature, notably Wisdom and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.138 It is virtually absent, however, from Philo, Josephus, the Jewish Sibyllines (Sibylline Oracles 3, 4, and 5), and the Letter of Aristeas.139 The cases of Philo and Josephus are particularly striking, given that extensive components of their writings are directly related to Scripture.
As we have seen, this literature represents one end of the spectrum of Jewish ethnography—marked by apologetic rather than polemic, presenting a softer-edged boundary between the Jewish people and the rest of the human race, preserving the binary distinction between Jews and non-Jews while relativizing it beneath a more universal canopy of ethical monotheism, all in the attempt to negotiate a place for Israel and the Jewish people on the ethnographical maps of the Greco-Roman world. The absence of the distinctive biblical vocabulary for this binary distinction (i.e., Israel/the nations) needs to be seen within this context.140
Looking a little more closely at vocabulary usage, we note first that, in contrast to the tendency in the LXX, Israel is frequently designated as a nation (ethnos).141 Other terms appear (especially genos and laos), but ethnos is very common.142 This designation is also implied in a number of instances in which outsiders are referred to as “the other nations,”143 the implication being that Israel is also one of the nations. On the other side, to designate non-Jewish nations, Philo and Josephus regularly use generic terms for foreigners (allogenē, alloethnē, and allophyloi).144 When they use ethnē with reference to non-Jewish nations, this is always clearly indicated in the context.
More generally, this literature tends to accept and work within the more widely accepted maps of the human race as a whole. The distinction between Greeks and barbarians,145 the concepts of the whole inhabited world (oikoumenē) and of the human race (usually to tōn anthrōpōn genos)—this is the universal conceptual framework within which the Jewish apologists want to locate themselves and the Jewish people.146 In his exposition of the Special Laws, for example, as Philo discusses the laws pertaining to firstfruits, he characterizes the firstfruit offering as something pertaining both to “the land which has been given to the nation to dwell in” and to “the whole earth,” and then he draws out its anthropological significance:
so that it serves that purpose both to the nation [tou ethnous] in particular and for the whole human race [hapantos anthrōpōn genous] in general. The reason of this is that the Jewish nation [to Ioudaiōn ethnos] is to the whole inhabited world [tēn oikoumenēn] what the priest is to the State. (On the Special Laws 2.162–63)
The idea that the Jewish nation plays a special representative role on behalf of the whole human race or inhabited world comes up frequently in Philo’s work.147 Further, as with the Jewish nation, so with its lawgiver and his laws. Not only is Moses “the best of all lawgivers,” surpassing “any that have ever arisen among either the Greeks or the barbarians,” but his laws “attract and win the attention of all, of barbarians, of Greeks, of dwellers on the mainland and islands, of nations of the east and the west, of Europe and Asia, of the whole inhabited world [tēn oikoumenēn] from end to end.”148 In contrast, say, to Jubilees, where the distinction between the torah and the ways of the nations is qualitative, categorical, and dualistic, here it is quantitative; to say that Moses is “the best of all lawgivers” is to say that Moses and the other lawgivers can be ranged on the same scale, measured according to a common standard.149
The conviction that the story of the Jewish people belongs within the established frameworks of Greco-Roman discourse is present in Josephus as well. The phrase “Greeks or/and barbarians,” for example, often serves as Josephus’s way of denoting humanity as a whole: Korah’s rebellion against Moses was a sedition with “no parallel whether among Greeks or barbarians.”150 In his paraphrase of Deuteronomy, where Moses warned Israel that if they strayed from the covenant, “the Lord will scatter you among all the nations” (pasin tois ethnesin; LXX Deut 4:27), Josephus has Moses declare: “dispersed through the habitable world [oikoumenēs], you will fill every land and sea with your servitude” (Jewish Antiquities 4.190). Likewise, in his repackaging of Balaam’s prophecy, where the biblical narrative spoke in terms of “a people living alone and not reckoning itself among the nations,” but “devour[ing] the nations that are its foes” (Num 23:9; 24:8), Josephus’s Balaam declares that for Israel “the habitable world [oikoumenēn] … lies before you as an eternal habitation, and your multitudes shall find abode on islands and from continent to continent, more numerous even than the stars in heaven” (Jewish Antiquities 4.116).
Still, as has been noted already, absence of the terminology does not mean absence of the conception. All of this literature retains the clear distinction between Israel and the other nations of the world, a point that requires little justification but can nevertheless be illustrated. According to Philo (as we have seen), “Alexandria and the whole of Egypt had two kinds of inhabitants, us and them” (Against Flaccus 43). Abraham had to depart from his native land because God planned to make him the founder of “another race [genous] and nation [ethnous],” which Philo also describes as a “new race and nation” (Who Is the Heir? 278). In Philo’s account of the story of Balaam and Balak, Balaam describes the “Hebrews” as a people “not reckoned among other nations [heterois ethnesin] … because in virtue of the distinction of their peculiar customs they do not mix with others to depart from the way of their fathers” (On the Life of Moses 1.278). Tellingly, Philo uses “other nations” to formulate the distinction, even though the biblical account he is following speaks more categorically of the nations (Num 23:9); distinction there may be, but it is not expressed in a binary formulation with the nations.151 For his part, Josephus also speaks of Abraham’s race (genos) as not “mixing with the others” (Jewish Antiquities 1.192),152 and he sums up his work in the Antiquities with the declaration “that no one else, either Jew or foreigner [allophylos], would have been equal to the task” (Jewish Antiquities 20.262). The pairing of Jews and foreigners appears a number of times in the Jewish War, albeit in an ironic way, as Josephus contrasts the impieties of the Jewish rebels with the reverence of the foreigners (Jewish War 4.261–62; 5.563–64; 6.102).
In his study of Philo’s attitude to the gentiles, Runia observes that, “although the binary opposition of Jew and non-Jew is central to his thinking in the religious, political and cultural domains, he has not developed a clear and constant terminology to express it.”153 While not disagreeing with Runia, for present purposes I would prefer to say that Philo and those like him deliberately avoided the “clear and constant terminology” that was readily available in the biblical tradition.154
Why was this so? In part, no doubt, it was because the biblical usage was in-house language. The distinctive Jewish use of the nations took a common term and assigned a meaning that would have struck outsiders as odd (one might even say foreign). Such in-house antilanguage might be useful in maintaining a stout boundary between us and them,155 but it would pose a significant obstacle for those with an interest in negotiating a place for themselves in social space shared with others.156 The other side of this coin is that, regardless of whether the ethnological terminology of Greco-Roman discourse met the criterion for being “clear and constant,” it could hardly be avoided. Anyone attempting to engage in the kind of apologetic projects that we find in the massive works of Philo and Josephus would necessarily need to use this terminology and the category structures undergirding them.
Of course, any non-Jews who associated closely with a Jewish community—the “multitude of Greeks,” say, who were attracted to Jewish “religious ceremonies” in Antioch (Jewish War 7.45), or the “multitudes of others” who joined Jews in an annual celebration of the giving of the law in Alexandria (On the Life of Moses 2.41–42)—would necessarily become familiar with the distinctive biblical usage. It is difficult to keep in-house language to yourself when you invite others into the house. One wonders what the houseguests would have thought of it.
This question is important for its own sake, and we will return to it in chapter 6. Our primary interest in that chapter will have to do with a more particular subset of non-Jews—those who became Christ-believers, especially in the early stages of the movement—and with their perception of the identity ascribed to them as ethnē by Jewish Christ-believers. Even so, as we consider their perception of this ascribed identity, it will be helpful to give some consideration to the question of what non-Jews more generally thought about ethnē as an identity term.
As the next step, however, we turn our attention to the early Jewish Christ-believers—to their conceptions of how non-Jews might become Christ-believers as well and thus to the identity (or range of identities) that they constructed for those non-Jews who were prepared to do so.
1. See especially Benjamin H. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); J. N. Sevenster, The Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World, NovTSup 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1975).
2. Greek period: e.g., Daniel, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 2 Maccabees. Roman period: e.g., Psalms of Solomon, the War Scroll from Qumran, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch.
3. While much of the evidence is literary, archaeological evidence is significant as well.
4. With reference to the Roman world, he speaks of “the complexities of cultural identity, especially the subtle layering of identities in the wake of passages of conquest and colonization”; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 7.
5. For similar descriptions, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 6–7; Lee I. Levine, “Jewish Identities in Antiquity: An Introductory Essay,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 27. The list of ethnic characteristics is similar to that proposed by Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
6. See, e.g., Robert Goldenberg, The Nations That Know Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes towards Other Religions (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997).
7. Joel S. Kaminsky, “Israel’s Election and the Other in Biblical, Second Temple and Rabbinic Thought,” in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in Honor of John J. Collins, ed. Daniel C. Harlow et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 18. Kaminsky sees a distinction between the “anti-elect” (in effect Israel’s perennial enemies) and the “non-elect” (the rest of the nations); see also his longer work Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007).
8. While it was Herod’s expansion of the precincts that presumably created the distinct “court of the gentiles,” the prohibition of gentile access to the inner courts could not have been an innovation. On gentile access in earlier periods, see Christine Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 34–37.
9. Gary Gilbert, “Gentiles, Jewish Attitudes Towards,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 670.
10. Ophir and Rosen-Zvi have argued that it is only in the rabbinic period that we encounter such a binary distinction between the Jew and the other; Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Goy: Israel’s Others and the Birth of the Gentile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). As they describe it, the rabbinic concept of the gôy is one in which the distinction between the Jews and the (other) nations has become so categorical, and the distinctions among the other nations has become so inconsequential, that the nature of the non-Jewish other can be represented fully by the gôy as an individual. Prior to the rabbis, the term is always plural (gôyîm), and Jewish writers are quite prepared to recognize the differences among the nations and the distinctive features that each exhibit. Without wanting to deny either the uniqueness of this rabbinic usage, however, or the evidence for conceptual development, I think that it is still appropriate to speak of a binary distinction between Jews and non-Jews in prerabbinic Judaism. To take one of their examples, it is true that in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 83–90) “the nations are different from each another, each with its own distinct symbolism: Ishmael is a wild ass, Esau a swine, Egyptians are wolves, and Philistines dogs. The exception of one species does not make all others the same” (p. 94). But this does not negate the fundamental difference in the apocalypse between the “one species” (the Israelite sheep) and all the others. In my opinion, the recognition of difference does not require us to conclude that “this binary representation—Israel and the gentiles—… is missing from the apocalypse” (p. 94). To take a parallel example, the fact that Greek writers often show keen interest in the distinctive characteristics of barbarian nations does not negate the basic Greek-barbarian binary. Here the concept of salience is pertinent—that is, the fact that different identity characteristics come into play in different situations.
11. Modified in that the boundary drawn by their distinctive fundamental binary—between the sons of light and the sons of darkness—separated them from fellow Jews as well.
12. Frank Crüsemann notes the uniqueness of the genealogical system of Genesis: “Indeed, a system with the propensity to encompass all of humanity, all neighboring peoples as well as the whole internal structure of one’s own people, that is something extraordinary”; “Human Solidarity and Ethnic Identity: Israel’s Self-Identification in the Genealogical System of Genesis,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 63.
13. See, e.g., Daniel S. Richter, Cosmopolis: Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 178–94; Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh, “The Significance of Antiquity in Antiquity: An Introduction,” in Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh, TSAJ 123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 8–9.
14. Primary texts are collected in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–84).
15. In Against Apion 1.1 he calls it the Archaiologia.
16. On the genre, see Gregory E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts, and Apologetic Historiography, NovTSup 64 (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
17. The fragments deal primarily with the period from Abraham to Moses (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.19.4; 9.21.1–19; 9.29.1–3, 15, 16). Eusebius himself devoted a whole treatise to issues of chronology for similar reasons (Chronicle).
18. Artapanus (frag. 3; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.27.4). Moses also taught circumcision to the Ethiopians (9.27.10).
19. Eupolemus (frag. 1; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.26.1).
20. Artapanus (frag. 3; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.27.3).
21. Artapanus (frag. 2; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 9.23.2–3).
22. Artapanus (frag. 1; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.18.1). In Artapanus’s reworking of history, “the Jewish ancestors Abraham, Joseph, and Moses are re-imagined as culture-heroes who bequeath the benefits of civilization to the Egyptians, and correlative riches of cultural capital to the Jews living among the second-century B.C.E. descendants of their Egyptian beneficiaries”; Gardner and Osterloh, “Significance of Antiquity in Antiquity,” 8.
23. An argument that resonated in non-Jewish ears: “Moses is among a class of ancient sages whose movements, like those of Pythagoras, Plato, Solon, and others, defined the relationships and hierarchies of groups in the present, and these traditions are best understood in light of one another”; Richter, Cosmopolis, 188. See also Erich S. Gruen, “Jews and Greeks as Philosophers: A Challenge to Otherness,” in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in Honor of John J. Collins, ed. Daniel C. Harlow et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 403.
24. For Josephus, “nearly all the philosophers appear to have held similar views concerning the nature of God” (Against Apion 2.168); see also Philo, On the Virtues 65.
25. Letter of Aristeas 235; also Philo, That Every Good Person Is Free 160; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.15–26; Against Apion 2.163. Aristobulus makes the point more hesitantly: “It is agreed by all the philosophers that it is necessary to hold holy opinions concerning God, a point our philosophical school makes particularly well” (frag. 4; preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12.8).
26. Josephus, Against Apion 2.281. The theme also comes to the surface in Philo’s work as well; see, e.g., That Every Good Person Is Free 57, where “the law-book of the Jews” is described as “the fountain from which Zeno drew” a particular idea. Also Aristobulus (frag. 3; Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12.1, 4). See further Terence L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 493–98.
27. Artapanus, frag. 1 (preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.18.1); frag. 2 (preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.23.1).
28. Greg Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 44; Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 17; Erich S. Gruen, “Kinship Relations and Jewish Identity,” in Levine and Schwartz, Jewish Identities in Antiquity, 113–14.
29. Philo, On the Life of Abraham 66–71 (here 70); see also On the Virtues 210–19.
30. Cf. Apocalypse of Abraham 1–8 and Jubilees 11:14–13:9, which contain highly dramatized accounts of Abraham’s opposition to the idolatry of his father Terah, culminating in the fiery destruction of Terah’s house along with its gods and Abraham’s subsequent migration.
31. Of the two, the letter from the Spartans is less likely to be historical than the other; see Lester L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 1:264.
32. See, e.g., John North, “The Development of Religious Pluralism,” in The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, ed. Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak (London: Routledge, 1992), 174–93; Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (New York: Vintage, 2008), 168.
33. The otherness of Aseneth in her pre-conversion state is undercut somewhat by the author’s description of her: she “had nothing similar to the virgins of the Egyptians, but she was in every respect similar to the daughters of the Hebrews; and she was as tall as Sarah and handsome as Rebecca and beautiful as Rachel” (1:5).
34. Curiously, this theme appears only in her soliloquies; there is no indication of parental rejection in the narrative itself. For a more thorough discussion of Joseph and Aseneth, see Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 141–51.
35. See also Josephus, Jewish War 4.265, where he describes the Idumeans as kinsmen (syngenōn; also 278). Also to be mentioned are Jewish texts where converts are described without qualification as Jews (Bel and the Dragon 28; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13.257–58; 20.38; cf. Epictetus, Discourses 2.19.19–21; Cassius Dio, Roman History 37.17.1).
36. While Philo uses prosēlytos when it appears in a scriptural passage under discussion, his preferred term is epēlys (incomer).
37. See also On the Special Laws 1.308–9; 4.178; On the Virtues 178, 210–19.
38. Bamberger’s treatment of the theme remains useful; Bernard J. Bamberger, Proselytism in the Talmudic Period (New York: Ktav, 1968), 175–79.
39. E.g., b. Sukkah 49b; Midrash Exod. 1.36.
40. E.g., Sipre Deut. 32.2 (on Deut 6:5); Midrash Gen. 39.16.
41. Mekilta Nezikin 18 (on Exod 22:20).
42. A theme treated in detail by Gary G. Porton, The Stranger within Your Gates: Converts and Conversion in Rabbinic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
43. The tradition is found in y. Bikkurim 1:4 64a. The passage has received extensive discussion; see Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities, 166–68; Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 308–30; Porton, Stranger within Your Gates, 7, 77; Bamberger, Proselytism in the Talmudic Period, 65–67.
44. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 493–98. The next few paragraphs draw on material in this section of the book.
45. Much of the pertinent work stems from Alexandria (Philo, Letter of Aristeas, Sibylline Oracles 3, Wisdom of Solomon), but it also comes to expression in Josephus’s Against Apion. Thoroughgoing discussions of the pertinent material can be found in John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996).
46. Jewish War 2.340–41; 4.181, 275; 5.15–18, 562–64; Jewish Antiquities 8.116–17; 11.331–36; 13.78, 242–44; 14.110; 16.14; 18.122; Against Apion 2.48.
47. On the Special Laws 2.162; he continues: “The reason for this is that the Jewish nation is to the whole inhabited world what the priest is to the State” (the whole section 2.162–68 is significant); see also On the Life of Abraham 98; On the Life of Moses 1.149; On the Special Laws 1.97, 168, 190; 2.188–192; 4.180; On the Embassy to Gaius 306.
48. See chs. 10 and 11 in Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles.
49. Cf. the Roman distinction between ius civile and ius gentium, discussed above (ch. 2).
50. According to Steve Mason, Josephus “offers Judaism as an alternative political constitution and an alternative philosophical system”; “‘Should Any Wish to Enquire Further’ (Ant. 1.25): The Aim and Audience of Josephus’ Judean Antiquities/Life,” in Understanding Josephus: Seven Perspectives, ed. Steve Mason, JSPSup 32 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 80.
51. E.g., Aelius Aristides (e.g., Regarding Rome 51, 59, 90–91).
52. Aristides, Regarding Rome 90–91; Josephus, Against Apion 2.165.
53. “This is a category general enough to make Judeans comparable to other peoples: all nations have their own laws and the Jewish constitution can be compared with others (e.g. Athenian and Spartan), both in its structures and in its specifics”; John M. G. Barclay, “Constructing Judean Identity After 70 CE: A Study of Josephus’s Against Apion,” in Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean: Jews, Christians and Others, ed. Zeba A. Crook and Philip A. Harland (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), 107–8.
54. A measure of the willingness to soften the binary can be seen in an interpretive tradition found in Josephus and Philo. The Greek version of Exod 22:27 (MT 22:28) reads, “You shall not revile (the) gods,” rendering the Hebrew ĕlōhîm with the plural theous. In their references to this piece of Mosaic legislation, Philo (On the Life of Moses 2.205; On the Special Laws 1.53; Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.5) and Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 4.207; Against Apion 2.237) take advantage of this translational curiosity to portray the torah and the people who adhere to it as respectful toward the gods of their non-Jewish neighbors. Of course, there are limits to this respect, and both Philo and Josephus feel free to engage in polemic that their neighbors could well have perceived as violating the legislation. Nevertheless, the tradition is significant. For discussion, see Goldenberg, Nations That Know Thee Not, 66–70.
55. For Favorinus’s tricultured identity (Gallic, Greek, Roman), see Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 1–7, and the discussion in ch. 2 above. See also Cavan W. Concannon, “When You Were Gentiles”: Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 36–47, who compares Favorinus and Paul as examples of what he calls “ethnic malleability.”
56. Against Flaccus 43; in the next clause, us is identified explicitly as Ioudaioi.
57. Philo’s familiarity with Roman imperial ideology and his ability to use it in defense of the Jewish people is on display in the treatise On the Embassy to Gaius; see especially 8–13, 143–47.
58. The discourse in the Exposition is more accessible and less allegorical than the collection of more philosophical works known as the Allegory. The Exposition comprises the treatises On the Creation of the World, On the Life of Abraham, On the Life of Joseph, On the Decalogue, On the Special Laws, On the Virtues, On Rewards and Punishments; while On the Life of Moses displays similar characteristics, disputes remain about whether it should be fully included. On the grouping of Philo’s treatises, see David T. Runia, “Philo and the Gentiles,” in Attitudes to Gentiles in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. David C. Sim and James S. McLaren, LNTS 499 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 31–32.
59. Explicitly in 126–27, which functions as the end of a section on blessings and the start of one on curses (127–61). The section on blessings would have started somewhere in the lacuna between 78 and 79.
60. For further discussion, see Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 231–35. Expectations of an end-time transformation of the non-Jewish nations are found in other Hellenistic Jewish literature as well; see Sibylline Oracles 3:191–95, 556–72, 710–23, 732–33, 762–75; 5:247–80, 420–31, 484–503; Testament of Levi 18:2–9; Testament of Judah 24:4–6; 25:5; Testament of Zebulun 9:8; Testament of Naphtali 8:1–4.
61. Josephus is thoroughly familiar with Roman imperial discourse, as can be seen from the speeches he puts in the mouth of various officials: Petronius (Jewish War 2.192–98); Agrippa II (Jewish War 2.345–401); Titus (Jewish War 6.328–50); Nicolaus of Damascus (Jewish Antiquities 16.31–57). But while he presents these speeches with a measure of sympathy, he does not thereby surrender his own Jewish identity and commitments.
62. See, e.g., the accounts of his writings in Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 55–145; and Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 346–68. See also Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 279–361.
63. We have already heard a version of the second sentence on the lips of Aelius Aristides: “Nothing escapes you, neither city, nor nation, nor harbor, nor land, unless you have condemned something as useless”; Regarding Rome 28.
64. A lengthier development of the same theme is found earlier, in the speech that Josephus puts into the mouth of the Jewish king Agrippa II, at a point in the narrative where all-out war was not yet inevitable. Agrippa runs through a roll call of the subjected nations in order to demonstrate the futility of any attempt on the part of the Jews to defeat “those to whom the universe [ta panta] is subject” (Jewish War 2.361), which he concludes by declaring that Roman success was a sign of divine favor: “for, without God’s aid, so vast an empire could never have been built up” (Jewish War 2.390). On this speech, cf. Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 66.
65. E.g., Jewish War 4.323–25; 5.378, 408–12; 6.250–51.
66. 4 Ezra 7:24; also 7:72–74; 8:55–61; 9:9–12.
67. Of course, 4 Ezra differs from most other Jewish literature from the period, in its pessimism about the ability of Jews to keep the torah to any acceptable extent.
68. Some of the material in the next few paragraphs appears in a different context in Terence L. Donaldson, “Paul, Abraham’s Gentile ‘Offspring’ and the Torah,” in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, ed. David M. Miller and Susan Wendel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).
69. Given as “a light to the world,” according to Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 11.1.
70. In 2 Baruch 48:40, even though the unrighteous did not know God’s law, each one nevertheless “knew when he acted unrighteously.”
71. A similar account appears in Jubilees 11:14–13:9. Both stories recount the fiery destruction of Terah’s house along with its gods. (In Apocalypse of Abraham the house is destroyed by fire from heaven [8:1–6]; in Jubilees the fire is set by Abraham himself [12:12–14].)
72. See also Testament of Moses 1:11–13: “He created the world on behalf of his people, but he did not make this purpose of creation openly known from the beginning of the world so that the nations might be found guilty, indeed that they might abjectly declare themselves guilty by their own … discussions.” While the sentence is obscure, it could be read as implying that something should have been known about God from the created order.
73. Psalms of Solomon offers an example of a juridical explanation. Written sometime after Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem, it is by turns appalled at Pompey’s arrogance and pleased that God has used the Romans to punish the wicked Hasmonean priests and bring their period of dominance to an end (Psalms of Solomon 2, 8). Later, the postwar apocalypses 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra develop the theme that the destruction of Jerusalem was to be seen as divine punishment for Israel’s sin, using the first destruction under the Babylonians as a locus for making sense of the second destruction under the Romans. In Josephus’s case, although he differed from 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra in his readiness to see Roman success in general as a sign and result of divine favor, we have seen how he too views the outcome of the war as divine punishment.
Staying with this same literature, the eschatological theme is central in Psalms of Solomon 17, and it appears at important junctions in 2 Baruch (e.g., 29–34; 39:1–40:4; 72–74) and (despite its more pessimistic outlook) 4 Ezra (e.g., 11:1–12:39; 13:1–58).
74. This dialectic can also be formalized in terms of external categorization and internal group identification, a central theme in Richard Jenkins’s work (as discussed in ch. 2); Social Identity, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014).
75. To use Mason’s translation of Jewish Antiquities 1.25; “‘Should Any Wish to Enquire Further.’”
76. Tacitus, in a passage in which he refers on two occasions to the making of proselytes, says of Jews that, “although they are prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; yet among themselves nothing is unlawful” (Histories 5.5.1–2). Petronius, who was aware of the circumcision of non-Jews (Satyricon 102), describes a Jew as one who “may worship his pig-god” (Poems 24).
77. In addition, in this investigation as a whole, we will be interested not so much in the range of perceptions among non-Jews generally, as in the perceptions of identity on the part of some very specific segments of non-Jews (i.e., Christ-believers, both those included in the movement in the early stages when it was primarily Jewish and those at later points who were part of a more identifiable gentile Christian movement).
78. “For what the disciples of the most excellent philosophy gain from its teaching, the Jews gain from their laws, that is, to know highest, the most ancient Cause of all things and reject the delusion of created gods” (On the Virtues 65). Such “disciples of the most excellent philosophy” can be found both “in Greek or barbarian lands” (On the Special Laws 2.44; also That Every Good Person Is Free 72–73).
79. The plural here (maps) is intended to signal the difference between hard-line proselytism (only those non-Jews who become proselytes in this age will share in the age to come) and softer versions in which, while proselytism is welcomed and even encouraged, non-Jews nevertheless can have a share in the divine purposes without becoming Jews.
80. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles.
81. We will be interested in Latin equivalents as well, but these do not have much of a bearing on Jewish usage.
82. Often in parallel with gôyîm: “Declare his glory among the nations [gôyim], his marvellous works among all the peoples [‘ammîm]” (1 Chr 16:24; also, e.g., Ps 33:10; Isa 14:6; 33:3; 49:22; Ezek 36:15; Mic 4:3; Hab 2:13; Zech 8:22). Also on its own (e.g., Gen 49:10; Ps 45:5; Isa 14:2; 51:5; Hos 10:10; Mic 1:2; 4:1; Zeph 3:9; Zech 8:20). The nations are denoted by other terms as well: lә’ummîm (seventeen times) and the Aramaic ’ummayā’ (seven times).
83. The only clear exception is Ezek 37:22, which refers to the two nations of Judah and Israel; see also Ezek 2:3.
84. Even when the term is used without further qualification: e.g., Deut 29:24; 1 Chr 14:17; 2 Chr 32:23; Ps 59:6; Isa 2:2; 14:26; 34:2; 40:17; 66:20; Jer 3:17; Ezek 39:21; Joel 3:2; Hag 2:7; Zech 14:2. One possible exception is Jer 28:11, 14; the Greek version (= LXX Jer 35:11, 14) will be discussed below, along with other possible inclusive uses of panta ta ethnē.
85. A frequent occurrence: e.g., Deut 32:8; 2 Sam 22:50; Ps 2:1, 8; 10:16; 22:8; 115:2; 135:15; Isa 42:1; Jer 46:1; Ezek 5:8; 20:14. The NRSV occasionally uses other nations, which seems to imply that Israel might be classed among the nations. In each case, however, other is supplied by the translators; the Hebrew is simply a form of haggôyîm (1 Sam 8:5, 20; Neh 5:8; Ezek 25:8; also kā‘ammîm [Hos 9:1]).
86. E.g., Ps 2:1; 44:2; 47:3; Isa 17:13; 34:1; 49:1; Jer 51:58; Hab 2:13.
87. The emphatic plural form of ’ummāh; Ezra 4:10; Dan 3:4, 7; 4:1 (Aramaic 3:31); 5:19; 7:14.
88. In the singular: e.g., Gen 17:12; Exod 12:43; Ruth 2:10; Isa 56:3; Ezek 44:9; in the plural: e.g., Ps 18:44; 144:7; Isa 56:6; Ezek 44:7.
89. E.g., Josh 5:6, 8; 10:13; Isa 51:4; Ezek 2:3. Exceptions occur, however (e.g., Gen 12:2; Exod 19:6; 2 Sam 7:23).
90. Somewhat surprisingly, however, ethnos is rarely used to render forms of nkr, for which other words are used (especially allogenēs, allotrios, allophylos, xenos). Curiously, in the majority of its appearances in the LXX, allophylos is used to denote the Philistines.
91. To these we can add Jdt 3:8, the only other possible exception that I have been able to find in postbiblical Jewish literature.
92. Rendering kāl-hā‘ammim.
93. In both cases (MT Jer 28:11, 14), the phrase renders kāl-haggôyîm.
94. Or does the awkwardly placed phrase pros Sedekian basilea Iouda (34:3) stand in parallel somehow with the preceding pros phrases?
95. On all these topics, see the pertinent sections in Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy.
96. Examples of other instances: ethnē (Tob 14:6–7; 1 Macc 1:11, 43; 4:11; 7:23; Jdt 4:12; Testament of Naphtali 8.3–4); gwyym (1QM XVI, 1; 4Q372 frag. 1, 4–11; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 III, 2–7; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 V, 9–12; 11QTemple LXIV, 9–11; m. Terumot 8:12; m. ‘Erubin 3:5; m. Ta‘anit 3:7; m. Ketubot 2:9; m. Nedarim 4:3; t. Pe’ah 3:1; t. Demai 1:12–13); other (2 Baruch 72:1–6; Testament of Moses 10:7–8 [gentes]).
97. In literature where ethnē is used of non-Jews, the singular ethnos is sometimes used of the Jewish nation: e.g., Jdt 9:14; Tob 1:17 (Sinaiticus); 1 Macc 9:29 (and passim); 2 Macc 5:19–20 (and passim); 3 Macc 1:11; 2:27; 2:33; 4 Macc 1:11 (and passim). Other nations appears occasionally (2 Macc 6:14; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 30.4).
98. E.g., laos (1 Macc 1:13; 4:58; 5:19; 2 Macc 13:11; 14:15; Psalms of Solomon 17:34–35); populus (Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 11:1; 20:4; 27:7); plebs (Testament of Moses 1:11–13); ‘am (1QpHab V, 3–5; 1QM XIV, 4–5; 1QM XVI, 1; 4Q504 frag. 6, 6–9; 11QTemple LXIV, 9–11).
99. Genos (Tob 1:10; 3 Macc 6:13 [of Jacob]; Testament of Levi 14:4).
100. 2 Baruch 72:4 (of Jacob); Jubilees 16:17–18; 18:16; 22:11.
101. 3 Macc 4:1–2; 5:13; 7:3–4; 1 Macc 2:18 (men of Judah).
102. 4Q504 frag. 1–2 III, 2–7
103. Tob 3:4; Sir 36:1; Pr Azar 1:14; 1 Macc 1:11; 2:19; Bar 2:13; Psalms of Solomon 7:3; 17:3; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 III, 2–7.
104. Tob 13:5; Bar 2:29; 4:6; Ep Jer 1:4–5; Testament of Levi 14:1–2, 4; 15:1–2; 4Q394 frag. 3–7 I, 6–11.
105. 1 Macc 1:14–15; 2 Baruch 67:2, 5–6; 68:5–7; Testament of Levi 15:1–2; Psalms of Solomon 1:8; 2:22.
106. 1 Macc 5:43; Ep Jer 1:50–51; Wis 14:11; 15:15; Sir 10:15; 4 Ezra 7.37–38; Jubilees 1:8–10, 13, 15, 19; Lives of the Prophets 1:12–13; CD XII, 6–7; 1QpHab XII, 12–14; 1QpHab XIII, 1–2; 4Q269 frag. 8 II, 1–2; t. Pe’ah 3:1.
107. Wis 14:11; Sir 10:15; 3 Macc 6:13; Psalms of Solomon 2:22; 7:3; 1QM XIV, 4–5.
108. Panta ta ethnē (Tob 3:4; 13:5; 14:6; 1 Macc 4:11; 3 Macc 7:4; Sir 36:2; Ep Jer 1:50 [6:51]; Pr Azar 1:14; Testament of Levi 14:1–2, 4; 15:1–2; Psalms of Solomon 17:34–35. kwl hgwyym (1QpHab III, 4–6; 1QpHab VIII, 5; 1QM XV, 1–2; 1QM XVI, 1; 1QM XIX, 10; 1Q27 frag. 1 I, 8–9; 4Q378 frag. 3 I, 9; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 III, 2–7; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 IV, 2–12; m. Nedarim 3:11). Other (1 Enoch 10:21; 2 Enoch 70:7; 2 Baruch 72:2, 5; Jubilees 12:23; 18:16; 22:11). The phrase also appears occasionally with reference to specific local groups of gentiles (e.g., 1 Macc 1:42; 2:18, 19; 5:43). One instance where “all the nations” might include Israel is Jdt 3:8: the purpose of Holofernes’s tour of conquest was “that all the nations should worship Nebuchadnezzar alone.”
109. With respect to some of these themes, cf. the categorization in ch. 3 of Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, Goy.
110. E.g., Jubilees 2:19; 12:23; 16:17–18; 18:16; Testament of Moses 1:11–13; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 11.1; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 III, 2–7.
111. E.g., Tob 1:10; 1 Macc 1:14–15; 2:19; Jubilees 22:16; 30:11–14; 11QTemplea XLVIII, 6–14; 11QTemplea LI, 19–21.
112. E.g., 1 Macc 7:23; 2 Macc 6:4; 13:11; Wis 14:11; 15:15; Jubilees 3:31; 22:16; 1QpHab XII, 12–14; 1QpHab XIII, 1–2.
113. E.g., Jdt 4:12; Bar 4:6; 1 Macc 3:52; 2 Macc 8:16; Lives of the Prophets 1:12–13; Apocalypse of Abraham 27:1; Jubilees 1:19; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 27.7.
114. E.g., Sir 10:15; 17:17; 3 Macc 5:13; 6:13; Psalms of Solomon 17:3.
115. E.g., Tob 3:4; Bar 4:6; Psalms of Solomon 2:22; 7:3.
116. E.g., Tob 3:4; 13:3; Bar 2:13, 29; Testament of Levi 15:1–2; Jubilees 1:13; 4Q372 frag. 1, 4–11.
117. E.g., Tob 13:5; Jubilees 1:15; 4Q504 frag. 1–2 V, 9–12.
118. E.g., 1 Macc 4:11; Ep Jer 1:50–51; Testament of Levi 14:1–4; Testament of Naphtali 8:3–6.
119. Testament of Levi 14:4; Jubilees 12:23; 18:16.
120. E.g., Tob 14:6–7; 1 Enoch 10:21; 2 Baruch 72:1–6; Psalms of Solomon 17:34–35; 4 Ezra 7:37–38; Testament of Moses 11:1–13; 1QM XIV, 4–5; XV, 1–2.
121. We will postpone an examination of early rabbinic usage until a little later.
122. For other instances, see 1 Macc 3:10, 25, 52, 58; 5:9–10; 14:36.
123. The use of the masculine article with the neuter noun ethnē (hoi de … ethnē) underlines the fact that individuals are in view. Other instances of the usage appear in 2 Macc 8:9, 16; 12:13.
124. A curious use of the singular appears in Psalms of Solomon 7:6: “While your name lives among us, … ethnos will not overcome us.”
125. Although the Apocalypse of Abraham is extant only in Old Slavonic, it is plausible that gôyîm stood in the original of 27:1: “And from its left side [i.e., of the visual depiction seen by Abraham] a crowd of heathens ran out and they captured men, women, and children who were on its right side [i.e., the side representing Abraham’s descendants].”
126. This is the probable reading. The Latin MS reads diisdonare, which Old Testament Pseudepigrapha translator Priest (apparently) interprets as diis donare (to give to the gods); thus “And their wives will be given to the gods of the nations.” Although this reading cannot be dismissed entirely, it seems to require the genitive (gentium rather than gentibus). The reading preferred here follows Tromp, who has argued persuasively for disdonare, understood as a synonym for didare (to divide). See Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary, SVTP 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 218–19.
127. In literature that is extant only in translation, one cannot always be sure of the original lying behind a word such as gentes. Given the midrashic character of Jubilees, however, one can be reasonably certain that gentes renders the Hebrew gôyîm. Jubilees 12:22–23, which contains the statement “all the nations of the earth will bless themselves by you,” clearly is a repetition of Gen 12:1–3. Although the Latin version of this passage is not extant (unlike Jubilees 30), the Ethiopic term for nations is the same as in Jubilees 22:16 and 30:11; see the text in James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: English and Ethiopic, CSCO 510–511 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989).
128. 4Q228 frag. 1 II, 1–2 is probably too fragmentary to include here: “[…] flesh and not the race of the nation[s] [mšpḥt hgwyym].” Is this a race made up of non-Jewish individuals?
129. Especially Jubilees 22:16: “Separate yourself from the gentiles (gentibus), and do not eat with them, and do not perform deeds like theirs. And do not become associates of theirs. Because their deeds are defiled, and all of their ways are contaminated, and despicable, and abominable” (Jubilees 22:16); perhaps also Psalms of Solomon 2:22.
130. Literally, “which, being carried on shoulders, cause the ethnē to fear.” Other instances of the representational use of the term appear in 1 Macc 2:40, 44; 4:7, 54, 60; 6:53; 14:36; 3 Macc 6:9; 4 Baruch 6:19; 7:37. In a related but distinguishable category, 1 Macc 1:14 speaks of the gymnasium in Jerusalem as having been constructed “according to the customs of the ethnē,” even though the custom in question pertained to a single ethnic group, the Greeks.
131. The same can be said of gôyîm in the prerabbinic period. To be sure, references to a non-Jew in the singular are rare in our literature (except for rabbinic literature, on which see below): allogenēs (Psalms of Solomon 17:28; Luke 17:18); allophylos (Acts 10:28); ethnikos (Matt 18:17). In Gal 2:14, Paul resorts to a circumlocution with ethnikōs.
132. For examples, see above.
133. Also, e.g., m. Pe’ah 2:7; m. Terumot 8:12; m. Ta‘anit 3:7; m. Nedarim 4:3; t. Demai 1:12–13; t. Eruvin 3:8; 5:19; t. Pesahim 2:5; t. Ketubbot 3:2; Mekilta Pisha 2.35–50.
134. Other Tannaitic examples: m. Demai 6:10; m. Shabbat 23:4; m. Yevamot 16:5; t. Berakhot 5:31; t. Pe’ah 2:9–11; t. Demai 4:25–27; 6:12, 13; t. Pesahim 2:12; t. Sheqalim 3:11; t. Megillah 2:16; t. Yevamot 14:7; Mekilta Pisha 9.34–37.
135. Especially ‘bd kwkbym (servant of stars; e.g., m. Pe’ah 4:6; m. Demai 3:4) and ‘bd glwlym (servant of idols; e.g., m. Shabbat 1:8; m. Bava Metzi’a 5:6). Somewhat surprisingly, several standard treatments of the gentiles in rabbinic literature pay little attention to the range of terms by which non-Jews are denoted, using the term gentiles as the English equivalent for all of them; e.g., Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities; Gary G. Porton, Goyim: Gentiles and Israelites in Mishnah-Tosefta, BJS 155 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).
136. Other examples: m. Shevi’it 5:7; m. Shabbat 23:4; t. Berakhot 5:31; t. Demai 6:13; t. Pesahim 2:12; t. Sheqalim 3:11; t. Yevamot 14:7; Mekilta Pisha 15.19. The same use of yiśra’ēl is found with other terms for the non-Jew: e.g., m. Demai 5:9; 6:1; m. Bava Qamma 4:3.
137. This point is well made, and in much more detail, by Rosen-Zvi and Ophir in their significant monograph, Goy, which was preceded by several pioneering essays: “Goy: Toward a Genealogy,” Diné Israel 28 (2011): 69–122; “Paul and the Invention of the Gentiles,” JQR 105 (2015): 1–41.
138. Wis 10:5; 12:12; 14:11; 15:15; Testament of Levi 14:1–4; 15:1; Testament of Judah 24:6; Testament of Zebulun 9:8; Testament of Naphtali 8:3–6.
139. The possible exceptions are very few and do not require detailed examination here. In Philo, they are restricted to the more esoteric, allegorical portion of his work (On the Posterity of Cain 89–93; On the Migration of Abraham 53–61; Questions and Answers on Genesis 3.60; Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.22), where they echo the language of the biblical text under discussion; see Runia, “Philo and the Gentiles.” In the case of Josephus, the clearest possibility comes in his description of Agrippa I, who “made it a point of honour to be high-minded towards ethnē” (Jewish Antiquities 19.328). Feldman’s LCL rendering (“gentiles”) seems plausible. The other possible exception is Jewish Antiquities 13.200, where Simon declares his confidence that, with God’s help, he will be able to take Judas’s place as leader, to defeat Israel’s enemies, and to preserve the temple, adding: “for I see that the nations [ta ethnē] hold you in contempt as being without a leader, and are eager to make war.” While specific nations are in view, the articular and unmodified form is at least consistent with the more categorical biblical usage.
140. For the depiction of Israel and the Jews in Philo and Josephus, see especially Ellen Birnbaum, The Place of Judaism in Philo’s Thought: Israel, Jews, and Proselytes (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996); Paul Spilsbury, The Image of the Jew in Flavius Josephus’ Paraphrase of the Bible, TSAJ 69 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).
141. Philo: e.g., Who Is the Heir? 174, 278–79; On Flight and Finding 185; On the Change of Names 191; On Dreams 1.167; On the Life of Abraham 56, 98; On the Life of Moses 1.4, 7, 8, 34, 71, 73, 86, 123 ; On the Special Laws 1.54, 78; 2.162, 163, 166, 167, 188, 190; 4.179; On the Virtues 107; 226; On Rewards and Punishments 77; Against Flaccus 170; On the Embassy to Gaius 119, 194, 214, 279, 351. Josephus: e.g., Jewish War 5.233; 7.423; Jewish Antiquities 6.32; 8.120; 10.271, 275, 276; 11.3, 138, 184, 185, 303, 326; 12.7; 13.419; Against Apion 1.172; 2.220. In addition, of course, Philo also interprets ethnos allegorically, usually with reference to the soul and its characteristics (e.g., That God Is Unchangeable 148; On the Migration of Abraham 60; On the Change of Names 148–50; On the Life of Moses 189; On the Decalogue 37; On the Virtues 186).
142. For genos, see, e.g., Letter of Aristeas 6; Philo, On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel 7 (here genos is superior to laos); That God Is Unchangeable 144; Who Is the Heir? 272, 278; On the Life of Abraham 56; Josephus, Jewish War 2.397; Jewish Antiquities 2.215–216; 10.183; 11.207, 211; Against Apion 1.1, 59. And for laos, see, e.g., Philo, On the Posterity of Cain 89; On Planting 59; On the Life of Moses 1.87, 139, 278; 2.165, 225, 271; On the Virtues 184–85; On Rewards and Punishments 123; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 11.19.
143. Philo, On the Life of Moses 1.278; Letter of Aristeas 139. Frequent usages of the term appear in Philo, On the Life of Joseph 242; On the Special Laws 1.2; 2.123; 3.110; On the Virtues 147; and Josephus, Jewish War 2.397; Jewish Antiquities 5.98; 6.130; 11.285; 12.269.
144. For allogenē, see Philo, Dreams 1.161; On the Special Laws 1.124; On the Virtues 147; Josephus, Jewish War 2.417. For alloethnē, see Philo, On the Special Laws 3.29; On the Embassy to Gaius 183 (also heteroethnē: On the Special Laws 4.19; On the Virtues 147); Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 11.140–152; 12.241; 15.417; 19.330. And for allophyloi, see Philo, On the Special Laws 1.56; On the Virtues 160, 222; On the Embassy to Gaius 200, 211; Josephus, Jewish War 2.85–86, 412; 3.41; 4.261–62, 397; 5.563; 6.102; 7.351; Jewish Antiquities 13.200; 16.2; 18.345; 19.329; 20.256; Against Apion 2.122, 209.
145. See, e.g., Philo, On the Life of Joseph 56, 134; On the Special Laws 1.211; 2.165; That Every Good Person Is Free 72–74.
146. For oikoumenē, see, e.g., Letter of Aristeas 9; Philo, On the Life of Abraham 226; On the Life of Joseph 19, 56, 135; On the Life of Moses 1.2, 195; 2.205; On the Special Laws 2.163; 3.8; Josephus, Jewish War 2.362, 364, 382; 4.261–62; 6.442; Jewish Antiquities 4.114–16; 8.116; 11.3; 14.110. And for to tōn anthrōpōn genos, see, e.g., Letter of Aristeas 190–91, 208, 257, 259; Philo, On Dreams 2.230; On the Life of Moses 2.25–28; On the Decalogue 153; On the Special Laws 1.303; On Rewards and Punishments 14; On the Embassy to Gaius 144; Josephus, Jewish War 3.402; Jewish Antiquities 3.23; 4.262; 6.61, 342; 8.120; 16.36.
147. See above, n. 47.
148. On the Life of Moses 2.12, 17–21. On one occasion, Philo was prepared to locate the Jews on the barbarian side; when speaking of the translation of the Torah into Greek, he says that up to that point, the law was found “in one half only of the human race, the barbarians” (i.e., the Jews; On the Life of Moses 2.27). But this is an exception. Katell Berthelot has demonstrated that Philo consistently locates the Jews on the Greek side of the binary; “Grecs, Barbares et Juifs dans l’oeuvre de Philon,” in Philon d’Alexandrie: un penseur à l’intersection des cultures gréco-romaine, orientale, juive et chrétienne, ed. Baudouin Decharneux and Sabrina Inowlocki (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 47–61. Most of Philo’s prodigious energy was directed toward the goal of uniting (the Jewish) Moses and (the Greek) Plato and thus of bringing Israel into alignment with the Greek side of the binary.
149. Josephus’s presentation of Moses’s legislation as an ideal constitution (politeia), incorporating “the best of all models” (Jewish Antiquities 1.19), moves in this direction as well.
150. Jewish Antiquities 4.12; also Jewish War 6.199; Jewish Antiquities 1.107; 8.284; 11.299; 15.136; 16.177. Of course, this could be read in the sense either that “Greeks and barbarians” constitutes the sum of the non-Jewish nations or that the Jewish people belongs to one or the other (or both). Josephus seems content to leave this ambiguity unresolved.
151. To be sure, he does add the (biblical) term laos to the account. In addition, on rare occasions, he reproduces the binary language when he is citing or paraphrasing Scripture—for example, the citation of Deut 32:7–9 in On Planting 59.
152. Here with specific reference to circumcision. Also worth mentioning here are the statements about the prohibition of marriage to foreigners (allophylos, alloethnēs; Jewish Antiquities 11.140–41, 145, 151–52; 18.345). A similar concern with separation from outsiders is present in Letter of Aristeas 139: God “surrounded us with unbroken palisades and iron walls to prevent our mixing with any of the other nations [tōn allōn ethnōn] in any matter.”
153. Runia, “Philo and the Gentiles,” 43.
154. To be sure, Runia is fully cognizant of this; his previous sentence reads: “There is no equivalent in his writings for the opposition ‘am/gôyîm in the Hebrew Bible or the opposition Jew/Gentile in the New Testament.” My concern with terminology here is a little different from his.
155. For the term antilanguage, see Michael A. K. Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning (London: Edward Arnold, 1978).
156. Indeed, as Runia notes, in situations of social tension and conflict (as did break out in Alexandria), such language could exacerbate the situation; “Philo and the Gentiles,” 44.