Anti-Semitism

Throughout the ages, many peoples have fought one another in the hope of conquering the wealth and land of others, but the antagonists do not usually declare that the existence of their enemy is a danger to the future of all of humankind. Anti-Semitism began in the third century before the beginning of the Christian era. It was defined by Manetho (3rd century B.C.E.), an Egyptian priest who had been substantially influenced by Hellenistic culture. Manetho asserted that the Jews are the enemies of the human race and that it is necessary to remove the Jews from human society. Indeed, a line may be drawn straight from this pre-Christian anti-Semitism of Manetho through the Christian anti-Semitism of ancient and medieval times, to the modern era, when the hatred of Jews was redefined but not essentially changed by secular ideologies.

Manetho's main contention, an obvious rebuttal to the biblical account of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, is that the Jews did not leave Egypt as the victors in a revolt against the pharaoh who oppressed them. On the contrary, the Jews were expelled from Egypt because they were lepers and, on the side, engaged in nefarious and destructive acts. The Egyptians threw them out into the desert because the Jews endangered the existing civilization of Egypt. They were, in fact, a threat to all other civilizations, as well. The Jews were therefore not like the Hittites, a powerful enemy with whom the Egyptians kept fighting but who were never regarded as a unique and fundamental threat to society. According to Manetho, the Jews ought to be expelled into the desert or quarantined wherever they appeared or, if these means failed, society as a whole had the right to defend itself by destroying the Jews. Thus, Manetho's "Jew hatred" was not a simple justification of a violent and vehement conflict.

There is a fundamental parallel between some anti-Semitic assessments of the Jews and the angriest descriptions in the Bible of the dangers posed by idolatry. This competing faith must be totally isolated and the idol worshipers must be walled off from the Jewish society, or utterly destroyed. So, in earliest times, the enemies of the Jews had no monopoly on the idea that a competing faith or way of life might be defined as so dangerous as not to merit the right to survive.