2. Josephus Flavius, Against Apion, 1.1, 1.12, 1.54, 2.287 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •against apion, defense by josephus against anti-semites Found in books: Feldman (2006) 333 | 1.1. 1. I suppose that, by my books of the Antiquities of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, I have made it evident to those who peruse them, that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own originally; as also I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this country wherein we now live. Those Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books; but are translated by me into the Greek tongue. 1.12. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to be genuine among them ancienter than Homer’s Poems, who must plainly be confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward; and this is the reason of such a number of variations as are found in them. 1.54. Now, both these methods of knowledge I may very properly pretend to in the composition of both my works; for, as I said, I have translated the Antiquities out of our sacred books; which I easily could do, since I was a priest by my birth, and have studied that philosophy which is contained in those writings; 2.287. 41. But, as for the [distinct] political laws by which we are governed, I have delivered them accurately in my books of Antiquities: and have only mentioned them now, so far as was necessary to my present purpose, without proposing to myself either to blame the laws of other nations, or to make an encomium upon our own,—but in order to convict those that have written about us unjustly, and in an impudent affectation of disguising the truth:— |
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