peculiar people was of an abiding character, for it had abiding
causes, envy and dislike of a separate manner of life; and the
professional anti-Semite,[17] who had his forerunners before the reign
of the first Ptolemy, was able from time to time to fan popular
feelings into flame. In those days, when history and fiction were not
clearly distinguished, he was apt to hide his attacks under the guise
of history, and stir up odium by scurrilous and offensive accounts of
the ancient Hebrews. Hence anti-Jewish literature originated at
Alexandria.

Manetho, an historian of the second century B.C.E., in his chronicles
of Egypt, introduced an anti-Jewish pamphlet with an original account
of the Exodus, which became the model for a school of scribes more
virulent and less distinguished than himself. The Battle of Histories
was taken up with spirit by the Jews, and it was round the history of
the Israelites in Egypt that the conflict chiefly raged. In reply to
the offensive picture of a Manetho and the diatribes of some
"starveling Greekling," there appeared the eulogistic picture of an
Aristeas, the improved Exodus of an Artapanus. Joseph and Moses
figured as the most brilliant of Egyptian statesmen, and the Ptolemies
as admirers of the Scriptures. The morality of this apologetic
literature, and more particularly of the literary forgeries which
formed part of it, has been impugned by certain German theologians.
But apart from the necessities of the case, it is not fair to apply to
an age in which Cicero declared that artistic lying was legitimate in
history, the standard of modern German accuracy. The fabrications of
Jewish apologists were in the spirit of the time.

The outward history of the Alexandrian community is far less
interesting and of far less importance than its intellectual progress.