ליסימכוס איש אלכסנדריה והגרסאות העוינות ליציאת מצרים

The discussion concerning Lysimachus' story of the Exodus from Egypt (Jos. Ap . 1.305-311) leads to the following main conclusions: 1. It seems that the author of the passage should be identified not with an unknown Egyptian, but with Lysimachus of Alexandria, a Greek - perhaps of Boeotian origin - who wrote compositions on Thebes, on Greek colonization, and on the plagiarisms of Ephorus, and other works in contemporary genres. 2. Lysimachus of Alexandria took care to give the names of his sources. The depth of his feeling on this issue may be seen in his particularly harsh criticism of Ephorus the plagiarist. 3. The passage from Lysimachus on the Exodus was originally part of a historicalethnographic work he wrote on Egypt, following in the footsteps of Hecataeus of Abdera, another Greek who wrote a similar work on Egypt. 4. Josephus was familiar with Lysimachus' work on Egypt, and used his remarks on the Jews without the aid of an intermediate source. 5. The text of Lysimachus on the Exodus as it appears in the surviving Greek manuscripts of Josephus' Contra Apionem is one of the most corrupt passages in it, and in a number of places the reading of the first edition is to be preferred, as it seems to have been based upon a manuscript from a family which has not survived. Even so, there still remain lacunae and difficult readings. 6. Lysimachus seems to have drawn on two different versions of the Exodus, in addition to variations in some details, and would have indicated his sources in one way or another as he did in his other works. 7. Josephus turned Lysimachus' account into indirect speech and set them down according to summaries and quotations he noted for himself (or his assistants noted for him) during the reading of the passage. These notes did not mention Lysimachus' sources, and further details were also omitted, or abbreviated. The account in Josephus, therefore, appears to be a unified version, but it is in fact full of inconsistencies and duplications. The most outstanding discrepancy is between the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt and their arrival in Judaea and their previous drowning at sea. 8. Despite all the abbreviations and omissions, the passage attributed to Lysimachus contains in a concentrated form most of the hostile versions of the Exodus and their variations known to us from surviving Greek and Roman literature. 9. Separating the two main versions and sorting out their various elements allows us to identify Egyptian traditions and fragments of accounts of the Exodus which are unknown from other sources, alongside stories and variations familiar from literature both before and after Lysimachus. Not a few elements originated in Egypt of the Persian period. One of the two versions is quite similar to the descriptions of the Exodus in Diodorus and Tacitus. 10. In the selection of versions by the Greek Lysimachus, there are included only those which fall into the category of 'active response stories,' whose essential point, in addition to folklore motifs, is to turn on their head both Jewish traditions concerning the Exodus, and common conceptions held by various nations concerning the character of the Egyptians. Completely absent are 'passive response stories,' in which Jewish traditions are presented - with additions and variations ־ as a part of the destructive activity of Seth-Typhon, the bad god in Egyptian mythology and the patron of foreigners, the source of all ills befalling the Egyptians. The 'passive response' itself originated in the fatalistic attitude so characteristic of oriental peoples at many periods in their history. Its absence from Lysimachus' account is understandable in view of his Greek descent. 11. Both reactions originated in the Persian period and came about because of the general tensions between Jews and Egyptians at that time. There were a number of reasons for the tensions. One among them was the public and domestic celebration of the Passover, upon which occasion the story of the Exodus was told - quite loudly - and which speeded up the development of the counter-stories. 12. Lysimachus' passage on the Jews was written near the end of the second century B.C.E., as may be deduced from a clear hint in the passage to the violent treatment meted out by the Hasmonaeans against the Greek cult centers. By indirectly deploring these actions, Lysimachus not only expressed his personal indignation as an Alexandrian Greek, but also his concern at the overwhelming influence of senior Jewish military figures on Cleopatra III. 13. The hostile literary rivalry in the Hellenistic period went both ways. Not only did Egyptian and Greek authors react to rumours about the stories of the Torah and their developments in Jewish Hellenistic literature, but Jewish authors of the second century B.C.E. - if not earlier - answered back. One example of this is Pseudo-Hecataeus, who reacted to an important detail in Lysimachus, just as Artaphanus reacted to Manetho's version. There were also later Jewish writers, such as the poet-dramatist Ezekiel, and the author of The Wisdom of Solomon, who made the stories of the Exodus more extreme, and others who wrote direct polemical works against the Egyptian reactions. All these also contributed to the spread of the Egyptian 'reaction literature,' and to its later developments.