ABSTRACT
The virtual genocide of the Jews in Roman Egypt lies behind extreme rabbinic hostility toward the biblical Pharaoh and the Egyptians. In Josephus’ view, the Egyptians, even more than the Greeks, were the Jews’ most bitter enemies and authors of the worst libels against them. The rabbis use Egypt as an object lesson in the evils of idolatry and the deification of personality and, by extension, the imperishable values in Jewish education. Hostility toward the Egyptians entered the Passover Haggadah, in which the plagues both in Egypt and the Red Sea are homiletically multiplied many times over. In the Antonine age, Jewish enmity toward Egypt evidently cooled and relations with Rome improved. Although the parallel versions in the Palestinian Midrashim transfer God’s concern from the Egyptians to Israel, it appears that Rabbi Jonathan’s statement as preserved in the Babylonian Talmud is the original version.
