Against Apion | Page 3

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Prepared by David Reed [email protected] or [email protected]

Against Apion.(1)
by Flavius Josephus

Translated by William Whiston

BOOK 1.
1. I Suppose that by my books of the Antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus,
(2) 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. However, since I observe a considerable number
of people giving ear to the reproaches that are laid against us by those who bear ill-will to
us, and will not believe what I have written concerning the antiquity of our nation, while
they take it for a plain sign that our nation is of a late date, because they are not so much
as vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historiographers among the Grecians. I
therefore have thought myself under an obligation to write somewhat briefly about these
subjects, in order to convict those that reproach us of spite and voluntary falsehood, and
to correct the ignorance of others, and withal to instruct all those who are desirous of
knowing the truth of what great antiquity we really are. As for the witnesses whom I shall
produce for the proof of what I say, they shall be such as are esteemed to be of the
greatest reputation for truth, and the most skillful in the knowledge of all antiquity by the
Greeks themselves. I will also show, that those who have written so reproachfully and
falsely about us are to be convicted by what they have written themselves to the contrary.
I shall also endeavor to give an account of the reasons why it hath so happened, that there
have not been a great number of Greeks who have made mention of our nation in their
histories. I will, however, bring those Grecians to light who have not omitted such our
history, for the sake of those that either do not know them, or pretend not to know them
already.
2. And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those men, who suppose that
we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are inquiring about the most ancient facts,
and must inform ourselves of their truth from them only, while we must not believe