highly visible Gentile rulers adopt a foreign way of life, when I myself
would face all sorts of social obstacles if I converted? That is the question
Josephus answers, and he does so emphatically.
Under the influence of his wives and a Judean merchant, we are told,
the prince Izates first began to worship God according to the tradition of
the Judeans (A.J. 20.34). When Izates found out that his mother had also
been attracted to Judean ways (20.38), through a different teacher, Izates
became eager to convert fully (metatithêmi). He desired this, even though
he knew that to become a real Judean would require circumcision (20.38).
Tension builds in the story as we read that both his mother and his Judean
teacher agreed that, in his case, circumcision would be most dangerous
because of public perceptions. The reader’s question becomes: Will Izates
do it, and if he does, will he survive?
Josephus makes it clear that if any would-be convert had a reason to
refrain from circumcision, it was Izates (A.J. 20.38–42; cf. 20.47), who could
certainly be assured, in such circumstances, of divine pardon for omitting
the rite (20.42). Josephus makes this alternative perfectly reasonable, and
allows that the pious Izates was content with it for a time. But when
another teacher, whose precision in the laws Josephus respects (20.43),
insisted that conversion required circumcision, Izates immediately com-
plied (20.46). After noting that Izates’s mother and former teacher became
afraid, Josephus editorializes: “It was God who was to prevent their fears
from being realized. For although Izates himself and his children were
often threatened with destruction, God preserved them....God thus demon-
strated that those who fix their eyes on Him and trust in Him alone do
not lose the reward of their piety” (20.48).
We are still only halfway through the story, and Josephus takes the
remainder to illustrate the beneficial effects of Izates’s conversion on world
affairs, and the divine protection of his family. Izates prospered and was uni-
versally admired (20.49); he and his mother supported the needy of
Jerusalem during a famine (20.53); he used his influence to restore the
Parthian king Artabanus to his rightful throne (20.66); Izates himself was
protected by God from the Parthian Vardanes (20.72) and then from two
separate plots instigated by the nobles of Adiabene (20.76–91). In these
last cases, Josephus emphasizes that although Izates’s conversion to
Judaism was the cause of hatred (20.77, 81), Izates entrusted himself to God
(20.85). Indeed, the Arab king enlisted by the nobles makes the issue a
contest between his own power and that of Izates’s God, saying that “even
the God whom he worshipped would be unable to deliver him from the
king’s hands” (20.88). But, of course, God did intervene to spare Izates.
TheContra Apionemin Social and Literary Context 157