sure, but Antiochus, at least, did so willingly. We do not know why. Jose-
phus says that Antiochus was the son of a prominent Antiochene Jew and
that his defection took place when Jews were hated everywhere. While
rebellion against parents is not unknown as a cause of apostasy, it is per-
haps more likely that Antiochus was affected by immediate political pres-
sures; perhaps, a conviction that the Jews were doomed, and a fear that he
would go down with them.
Others appear to have been more highly pressured, such as the Alexan-
drian Jews who succumbed to the persecution instigated by Ptolemy IV
Philopater, accepted initiation into the Dionysiac mysteries, and thereby
gained Alexandrian citizenship (3 Macc. 2:31–33; 3:23; 7:10–15). For this
they were despised and ostracized by their fellow Jews and, when the
tables were turned, the king gave permission for the defectors, numbering
three hundred according to 3 Maccabees 7:15, to be hunted down and put
to death. The defectors acted out of fear, a desire to enhance their reputa-
tion with the king (2:31), and, more obscurely, “for the sake of their belly”
(7:11). The overall implication is that they were responding to external
pressure but also acting out of self-interest. What they gained (temporar-
ily) was Alexandrian citizenship, but only at the price of apostasy and the
loss of solidarity with their fellow Jews.
The same work (3 Macc. 1:3) mentions Dositheus, a Jewish servant of
the king, “who changed his religion and apostatized from the ancestral
traditions (metabalôn ta nomima kai tôn patriôn dogmatôn apellotriomenos).”
From papyri we know of a Dositheus who was a scribe and priest in the royal
court of Philopater IV (Modrzejewski-Mélèze 1993, 82–85), who may be the
same man as the Dositheus in 3 Macc. 1:3, and we may not be far wrong
in supposing that social and political ambitions lay at the root of his defec-
tion. Ostensibly these events took place in Philopater’s reign (222–203BCE),
but the work in which they appear comes from the first century CE(though
it has often been dated to the first century BCE), perhaps during the reign
of Gaius Caligula (38–41 CE; thus J.J. Collins 1983, 104–11, who notes, how-
ever, that the fit with events in Alexandria during Caligula’s reign is loose
and more like the account of Philo in Legatio ad Gaiumthan what is known
from other sources), and this work may be alert to contemporary prob-
lems as well.
The case of Philo’s nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander, of whom it was
said that he “did not continue in the customs of his forefathers (tois patri-
ois ou diemeinen ethesin)” (Josephus, A.J.20.100), is of interest, too. His suc-
cessful military career included spells in Egypt (military commander of
Upper Egypt in the forties, prefect of Egypt in the sixties), Judea (procu-
Rivalry and Defection 55