Breaking Down the Narrative Regarding "Jews": Judeans in Judea and Egypt in Hellenistic and Roman Times

Abstract

Abstract: This article focuses on the Hellenistic period, when Jews had a homeland, that is, a territory in which they formed the majority population group and possessed their own state institutions. Consequently, it is claimed, their history cannot be apprehended through paradigms, such as "antisemitism," devised for later periods of time, when Jews formed a minority bereft of a homeland. Moreover, statehood also impacted the collective self-perception, and hence the agency, of Jewish population groups who lived as minorities outside Judea, in particular in Egypt. To illustrate this twofold claim, two case studies are discussed: the so-called religious persecution carried out by Seleucid King Antiochus IV in the mid to late 160s BCE, and commemorated in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah; and the distorted versions of the Exodus story composed by Egyptian authors, which are often seen as the first anti-Judaic texts ever written.