From Liberation to Expulsion: The Exodus in the Earliest Jewish–Pagan Polemics

The exodus from Egypt played a pivotal role in Jewish–pagan polemics from the beginning of the Hellenistic period till far into the Imperial period. Pagan polemicists stood the biblical story of the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt upon its head and portrayed an extremely negative image of Israelite origins. They also pictured the Jewish people as misanthropes and atheists. Jewish–Hellenistic authors reacted to these attacks in a wide variety of ways (e.g., novels, drama, and philosophical treatise).