“The End of Jewish Egypt- Artapanus’s Second Exodus,” in Gregg Gardner and Kevin Osterloh (eds.), Antiquity in Antiquity, Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck) 2009, 27-73 By Holger Zellentin

https://www.academia.edu/9171604/_The_End_of_Jewish_Egypt_Artapanus_s_Second_Exodus_in_Gregg_Gardner_and_Kevin_Osterloh_eds_Antiquity_in_Antiquity_Jewish_and_Christian_Pasts_in_the_Greco_Roman_World_T%C3%BCbingen_Mohr_Siebeck_2009_27_73?rhid=39204486914&swp=rr-rw-wc-2502302&nav_from=131114e6-f541-42bd-95d4-7d2f9af635f8 I argue that Artapanus’s implied audience is to be found among Greco-Egyptian Jewish military officers and governors. The text can be dated towards the end of the second reign of Ptolemy VIII (“Physcon”) and his two wives Cleopatra II and III (145–116), which saw a radical emancipation of native Egyptian culture. I further argue that Artapanus’s work is a response to Ptolemy’s philantropa decree of 118, which sought to alleviate agricultural hardship by granting substantial relief to the small farmers, especially to the Egyptian veterans of the army. This decree also reprimanded corrupt officers and dioiketes, confirmed the rights of the priests to their land, and financed the (substantial) burial for the Apis bull. The new proposed historical contextualization of Artapanus has been presented as the new scholarly consensus by J. J. Collins, “Artapanus Revisited,” in P. Walters (ed.), Judaism to Christianity: Tradition and Transition : A Festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday (Leiden 2010), 59-68 and C.R. Holladay, “Acts and the Fragmentary Hellenistic Jewish Authors,” Novum Testamentum 53 (2011) 22-51. ...