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Updated: May 1, 2025
And the two books Against Apion show that when Josephus had not to qualify his own weakness nor to flatter his patrons, he could rise to an appreciation and even to an eloquent exposition of Jewish ideals. Yet it was not the Greek-writing historian, but the Palestinian Rabbis, that were to prove to the world the undying vigor, the unquenchable power of resistance of the Jewish Law.
Now men of good tempers ought to observe their own laws concerning religion accurately, and to persevere therein, but not presently to abuse the laws of other nations, while this Apion deserted his own laws, and told lies about ours. And this was the end of Apion's life, and this shall be the conclusion of our discourse about him.
What then can we say of Apion, but that he examined nothing that concerned these things, while still he uttered incredible words about them? but it is a great shame for a grammarian not to be able to write true history.
But one can hardly doubt that the man who devoted himself to refuting the lying calumnies of Apion first made himself master of the classical work of Apion's opponent, which claimed to give to the Greek world the authoritative account of the Jewish lawgiver and his legislation. What Josephus knew must have been known to other cultured Jews of Palestine.
Now although I cannot but think that I have already demonstrated, and that abundantly more than was necessary, that our fathers were not originally Egyptians, nor were thence expelled, either on account of bodily diseases, or any other calamities of that sort; yet will I briefly take notice of what Apion adds upon that subject; for in his third book, which relates to the affairs of Egypt, he speaks thus: "I have heard of the ancient men of Egypt, that Moses was of Heliopolis, and that he thought himself obliged to follow the customs of his forefathers, and offered his prayers in the open air, towards the city walls; but that he reduced them all to be directed towards sun-rising, which was agreeable to the situation of Heliopolis; that he also set up pillars instead of gnomons, under which was represented a cavity like that of a boat, and the shadow that fell from their tops fell down upon that cavity, that it might go round about the like course as the sun itself goes round in the other."
Somewhat late in the day a Hebrew translation of the books Against Apion, which were regarded as the most Jewish part of his work, was made in the Middle Ages, and printed, together with Abraham Zacuto's Yuhasin, at Constantinople, in 1506, by Samuel Shullam. The Hebrew translation is very free, and is marred by several large omissions. It was very probably made with the help of the Latin version.
Moreover, since this Apollonius does not do like Apion, and lay a continued accusation against us, but does it only by starts, and up and clown his discourse, while he sometimes reproaches us as atheists, and man-haters, and sometimes hits us in the teeth with our want of courage, and yet sometimes, on the contrary, accuses us of too great boldness and madness in our conduct; nay, he says that we are the weakest of all the barbarians, and that this is the reason why we are the only people who have made no improvements in human life; now I think I shall have then sufficiently disproved all these his allegations, when it shall appear that our laws enjoin the very reverse of what he says, and that we very carefully observe those laws ourselves.
He had scant notion of accuracy, he made no independent research into past events, and he was unconscionable in chronology. In his larger works he is for the most part a translator and compiler of the work of others, but he has some claim to originality of design and independence of mind in the books against Apion. The times were out of joint for a writer of his caliber.
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