Order Robert Spencer’s new book, Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It: HERE.
The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, writing in the first century BCE, asserts that inside the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes encountered “the image of a man with a long beard, carved in stone sitting upon an ass.” This was
unbelievable on its face, as Judaism forbade statues of human beings. But it was among the first instances, and possibly the very first, of Jews being accused of having secret teachings that contradicted what they taught and practiced publicly.
The king understood this image to be that of Moses, who, says Diodorus, “built Jerusalem and brought the nation together, and who established by law all their wicked customs and practices, abounding in hatred and enmity to all other men.” In his hostility to the Jews’ refusal to assimilate, Antiochus performed calculated expressions of contempt for the Jews’ beliefs before this statue, and at the altar:
Antiochus, therefore, abhorring their antagonism to all other people, tried his utmost to abolish their laws. To that end he sacrificed a great swine at the image of Moses, and at the altar of God that stood in the outward court, and sprinkled them with the blood of the sacrifice. He commanded likewise that the books, by which they were taught to hate all other nations, should be sprinkled with the broth made of the swine’s flesh. And he put out the lamp (called by them immortal) which burns continually in the temple. Lastly he forced the high priest and the other Jews to eat swine’s flesh.
The Egyptian Hellene Apion, who wrote a century later, says that inside the temple, Antiochus saw horrors that justified his profanation, as well as the burning of the Jewish books that supposedly taught them to “hate all other nations.” Josephus laments that critics of the Jews “accuse us for not worshipping the same gods whom others worship,” they “think themselves not guilty of impiety when they tell lies of us; and frame absurd and reproachful stories about our temple.” Apion’s work is lost, but Josephus quotes him asserting that the Jews preceded Antiochus’s profanation of the temple with one of their own: “The Jews placed an ass’s head in their holy place.”
This was a curious charge. Why would the Jews, who forbade images, profane their own holy place with an image of an ass? It is, however, similar to charges that have reverberated throughout history: the Jews offered one image to the world but had all manner of secret beliefs and practices that were shrouded in darkness because even those who subscribed to them and acted upon them knew that they were evil.
And so Apion goes on, quoted by Josephus: “This was discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes spoiled our temple; and found that ass’s head there made of gold; and worth a great deal of money.” The value of the thing indicated indirectly the depth of Jews’ supposed evil: not only had they profaned their own holy of holies with an ass’s head, but they had devoted considerable expense to doing so. This was, apparently, an important priority for them.
Josephus then offers several points in rebuttal to this story: First, he says, it is the Egyptians, not the Jews, who worship asses and other “contemptible animals” as gods. “As for us Jews,” says Josephus, “we ascribe no honor, nor power to asses; as do the Egyptians to crocodiles, and asps; when they esteem such as are seized upon by the former, or bitten by the latter to be happy persons; and persons worthy of God.”
Josephus also marvels that “Apion does not understand this to be no other than a palpable lie,” for, he points out, “we Jews are always governed by the same laws; in which we constantly persevere,” and none of the other non-Jewish rulers who entered the temple, including the Romans Pompey, Crassus, and Titus, ever said that they had seen such a thing inside it. Josephus adds that other writers who took note of Antiochus’s entering the temple don’t mention that he saw any such thing.
That is almost certainly because he didn’t. But that has never stopped those who have been throughout history inclined to hate and scapegoat Jews.
