Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
The Battle of Histories was taken up with spirit by the Jews, and it was round the history of the Israelites in Egypt that the conflict chiefly raged. In reply to the offensive picture of a Manetho and the diatribes of some "starveling Greekling," there appeared the eulogistic picture of an Aristeas, the improved Exodus of an Artapanus.
The fictitious was mixed with the true, and the legendary material which Artapanus added to his history passed into the common stock of Jewish apologetics. The great national revival that followed on the Maccabean victories induced both within and without Palestine the composition of works of contemporary national history. For a period the Jews were as proud of their present as of their past.
To rebut this attack, the Jewish chroniclers elaborated the chronological indications of their long history, and brought them into relation with the annals of their neighbors. Demetrius is followed by Eupolemus and Artapanus, who treated the Bible in a different fashion.
Aristaeus, Aristobulus, and Artapanus are hardly more than names, but their spirit is inherited and glorified in Philo-Judæus. His work, therefore, is more than the expression of one great mind; it is the record and expression of a great culture. The chronology of Philo's writings is as uncertain as the chronology of his life.
Artapanus, or one of the Jewish Hellenists masking as a pagan historian, may have provided him with this reflection. He spoils the grandeur of the scene on Mount Carmel, when Elijah turned the people from Baal-worship back to the service of God.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking