Against Apion: A Classic Defence of Jewish History and Antiquity - Paperback

Flavius Josephus's Against Apion is one of the most important ancient defences of Jewish history, antiquity, law, and religious identity. Written in answer to Greek and Egyptian critics who attacked the Jewish people and questioned the authority of their traditions, the work sets out to demonstrate the age, dignity, and coherence of Jewish civilisation. Josephus argues from history, law, custom, and comparative religion, answering hostile claims while presenting Judaism as an ancient, disciplined, and intellectually serious tradition.

Composed near the end of the first century CE, Against Apion is both an apologetic work and a major source for the study of Jewish life in the Greco-Roman world. It stands beside Josephus's The Jewish War, Antiquities of the Jews, and The Life of Flavius Josephus as part of the surviving corpus of one of antiquity's most significant historians. Readers interested in ancient history, Second Temple Judaism, classical polemic, Jewish apologetics, Roman-era religion, Hellenistic culture, and the relationship between Judaism and the wider Mediterranean world will find in Against Apion a concise but powerful statement of cultural defence and historical argument.