Note 1267 — Chapter XXXI

The sense of distance between the two peoples was mutual. Writing in the middle of the fifth century B.C., Herodotus has heard of the Jews only as a people that practise circumcision and were defeated by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (II. 104, 159; on the latter passage see Hist. Geog., p. 405 n.). He does not even know them by name. The fragment of Chœrilos of Samos, from the end of the fifth century, which Josephus cites (Contra Apionem, I. 22) as a reference to the Jews, is probably of a people in Asia Minor. Even in the last half of the fourth century and before Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle knows of the Dead Sea only by a vague report (Meteor., II. iii. 39). His pupil Theophrastus (d. 287) names and describes the Jews (Porphyr. de Abstinentia, II. 26; Eusebius, Prepar. Evang., IX. 2: cf. Josephus, C. Apion., I. 22); and another pupil, Clearchus of Soli, records the mention by Aristotle of a travelled Jew of Cœle-Syria, but “Greek in soul as in tongue,” whom the great philosopher had met, and learned from him that the Jews were descended from the philosophers of India (quoted by Josephus, C. Apion., I. 22).