The Vulnerable Immigrant
Post by Jason Schlude
What happens when local intolerance to an immigrant community finds support in a political authority willing to apply force to eliminate it?
We will see on January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump assumes once again the mantle of leadership as President of the United States.
But if we wish not to wait for that event, we don’t have to. Even now we can look to historical examples of such circumstances that offer perspective and direction.
On November 6, 2024, the day after the election, I found myself teaching the text Third Maccabees in a course on ethnicity and gender in antiquity. It’s a text that doesn’t get a great deal of press, so forgive yourself if you’ve not read it—or even heard of it.
It’s in some bibles (those of the Christian Orthodox tradition), not others. A Greek text written by an unnamed Jewish author, it’s one of so-called “deuterocanonical” books.
It has almost nothing to do with the other books of Maccabees. They pertain to the Jewish revolt against Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled an empire stretching from Syria to Mesopotamia. In 167 BCE, he outlawed Jewish religious practices and took possession of the Jewish temple. It didn’t go as planned, inspiring resistance led by a family of freedom fighters, the so-called “Maccabees.” They retook the temple (an event celebrated in Hanukkah) and reestablished Jewish political autonomy in the region.
Instead, Third Maccabees has Ptolemaic king Ptolemy IV Philopator (r. 221-205 BCE) as its central character. He ruled Egypt and its environs from the capital city of Alexandria. Famously, Ptolemy won a battle against the Seleucids at Raphia in 217 BCE, which maintained Ptolemaic control of Judea (if only till c. 200 BCE, when it was finally lost to them). This reliable historical detail, corroborated without confusion outside the Jewish tradition (see Polybius, Histories 5.79-86), serves as the starting point for Third Maccabees (1.1-5).
The details that follow it, however, are without such corroboration (Jewish historian Josephus mentions some in Against Apion 2.5 but connects them to a different king). This, plus more imaginative elements, caution us from a purely literal reading of the text. Yet we should accept with all seriousness the fears expressed by the author and the community he represents.
On November 6 this storyline was arresting. It promises to be more so on January 20.
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According to Third Maccabees, after his hard-fought victory in 217 BCE, Ptolemy made a victory lap in the region bordering Egypt. Bursting at the seams with piety and egotism, he travelled to Jerusalem where he both sacrificed to Yahweh and insisted on entry into his holy sanctuary. Despite Jewish pleas to the contrary, since gentiles were not permitted into temple, and even the high priest himself could only enter once a year, Ptolemy decided he was above all others and should not be deterred (1.6-15). Upon his entry, however, Yahweh decided to deflate Ptolemy’s hubris. The deity struck him with paralysis. Ptolemy only survived because attendants dragged him from the danger zone. Smarting with embarrassment, Ptolemy returned home (2.21-24).
There we see the blur where past could meet present—where history is especially powerful. In Alexandria, Ptolemy targeted the sizable but vulnerable population of Jewish immigrants. In this effort, he was not alone but found support from advisors and many local groups. Ptolemy implemented a series of escalating measures designed to degrade, restrict, and destroy the immigrants’ presence in the city. Among others, he ordered them to be registered and stripped of freedom. Those resisting faced capital punishment. So as to appear less savage, he offered citizenship to those who would give up what they cherished. Based on our present experience, we might guess this would be the families they built in a foreign land or the land itself which they now called home in some required repatriation process. For the Jews, it was their traditional monotheism, to be abandoned for participation in polytheistic Egyptian cults (2.25-30).
Ptolemy then went further. When too many Jews evaded, he ordered that all Jews in Egypt—men, women, and children—were to be rounded up, placed in cuffs, imprisoned in Alexandria’s hippodrome, and then dispatched. As if to maximize the inhumanity, he selected as the method of dispatch death by drunken horde of elephants (3.1-7, 3.11-5.2).
The experience revealed rifts and diverse attitudes in Alexandrian society. Many in Egypt were hostile to these immigrants. And Ptolemy and his henchmen encouraged them to deepen their animosity and to believe the Jews who maintained distinctive cultural practices and kept to their own were disloyal and dangerous. Others, apparently in the minority, saw the Jews differently—as compatriots who supported the state and its government. Limited in their ability to resist their neighbors’ hostility when backed by a powerful political authority, they offered their grief and advice and hoped for the best. Some even sheltered these vulnerable immigrants (3.8-10).
Still, nothing could stop Ptolemy—well, almost nothing. At first, Ptolemy pressed on, confident in his support by the gods and his people. He ordered those who sheltered the Jews to be punished (3.27-29). He had as many Jews as possible arrested and incarcerated in the hippodrome, so many that they ran short of paper and ink for registering them (4.17-21).
But when the day of execution finally arrived, it was foiled. Three times Ptolemy ordered the elephant keeper to drug the elephants and unleash them on the Jews. Three times the Jews prayed en masse for Yahweh to save them. And three times he did (5.1-6.21). The first time he caused Ptolemy to oversleep, missing his chance to give the final order. The second he struck Ptolemy with an ironic mixture of amnesia and insight, leading him to praise the Jews as the best of subjects and to chastise the keeper for so unjust an act. The third he allowed Ptolemy to release the elephants but then turned them back on the king’s forces themselves. Yahweh finished by bringing Ptolemy into a permanent state of reason. He repented of his former behavior, freed the Jews, and gave them the means to celebrate the event with a festival and return home safely (6.22-7.23).
Scholars have interpreted the story variously. Surely, a text rich with such irony (how could Ptolemy’s men run out of paper in the paper capital of the ancient world?) and creative device to heighten the tension (often the best stories and punchlines involve a series of three) is a product of significant imagination and exaggeration. But the fear driving it is palpable and speaks inescapably to a true historical experience. The Jews suffered anxiety about their position as immigrants in a foreign land where a king could side with subjects who find them unpalatable in one way or another and who jealously regard their own political rights.
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So what can we learn from this often neglected text?
Yes, many of our circumstances are different. That is to state the obvious. Yet the clear peril of an immigrant community, in danger of tremendous human suffering from being rounded up and disposed of in one way or another, is a striking parallel. The story freshly asks readers which part each of us wishes to play in the production to come.
In addition, it may offer advice to those who see a better path forward than mass deportation.
In antiquity, the story of persecution reviewed here led Jewish readers to associate the text with the Maccabean experience. Hence its ultimate title. And it certainly wasn’t the only story of Jewish suffering and deliverance. One may think of Exodus, an archetypal text for the Jewish people (in more ways than one) that they have celebrated at the Jewish festival of Passover for millennia. Here Moses saved the Jews from Pharaoh. Esther, too, offers a narrative in which the Jews face peril at the hands of a king, in this case in the Persian empire. Now Esther was the hero, using her position as the king’s consort to avert disaster. Once again the miraculous escape from sure destruction found expression in a festival still celebrated today: Purim.
But Third Maccabees remains distinctive among them. In Exodus and Esther, there is a clear protagonist whose actions save the day. In Third Maccabees, it seems to be more collective piety and prayer that moves Yahweh to move the political needle.
Collective action produced salvation.
But for those with unease over the potential extent of the deportation plan, we must understand that collective action must go beyond pleas to a divine power.
For the ancient Jews—and any who embrace such a religious worldview—prayer was a serious action. It had real world consequences. It was a way to make material change.
But we must remember that these Jews had few options otherwise. For any living under empire with an autocratic king, whose power was often considered so great it could only be compared to the gods, prayer may have seemed the only viable option.
In the United States, however, we live in a democracy where we have the political ability and responsibility to act as a collective in other ways. We can reach out to and rely on our elected representatives to express our frustration and act on the humanity we share. We can voice our views in private conversations and in public exchanges. We can use non-violent direct action to continue to build the arc of history that leads to a more just world. We are part of this arc. Indeed there will be no arc without human beings willing to create and support it.
Border security is critical. Don’t mistake this essay as a cavalier or naive act that ignores that necessary reality. Such control promotes the safety of the state and its people. It needs attention. Nor is this a plea for the violent criminals who make up a minority of undocumented immigrants (see data published by the National Institute of Justice, suggesting in the ballpark of 1 in a 1,000—a rate measurably below that of U.S.-born citizens) to be given a home here in the United States. That would be to mistake me as well.
Here I speak in support of our good neighbors who fled poverty, danger, and injustice, hoping to find a hospitable society and vibrant economy where they can contribute their talents to the benefit of all. I speak to the humanity that already makes up the landscape of our homes and communities. These immigrants deserve a pathway to citizenship. They deserve what the Jews of Alexandria deserved: a sure home without the looming threat of arrest and removal. To provide it will allow all of us to fully become our best selves.
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Jason Schlude
Professor of Classics and History
College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University
jschlude@csbsju.edu