Ancient Greeks: What Strabo said about the Jews – A Nation of Thieves and Robbers

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JAN 23, 2024

Strabo – the ancient Greek founder of geography – is perhaps one of the best known of all ancient writers, but he is also one of the least read. Strabo is well known to anti-Semites, because of the famous passage in his ‘Geography’ that condemns the jews writ large as a nation of thieves and robbers.

To wit:

‘Here it was, according to certain writers of myths, that Andromeda was exposed to the sea-monster; for the place is situated at a rather high elevation — so high, it is said, that Jerusalem, the metropolis of the Judaeans, is visible from it; and indeed the Judaeans have used this place as a seaport when they have gone down as far as the sea; but the seaports of robbers are obviously only robbers’ dens.’ (1)

An alternative translation of this passage however provides valuable context to this well-known passage when it states the following:

‘It is sufficiently elevated; it is said to command a view of Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews, who, when they descended to the sea, used this place as a naval arsenal. But the arsenals of robbers are the haunts of robbers. Carmel, and the forest, belonged to the Jews.’ (2)

This alternative translation tells us that Strabo’s meaning here is not that the jews are a nation of robbers in the sense that they will each individually go and steal your food, but they are rather a nation of robbers in the sense that they will go and steal your land and squat on it.

This is confirmed by a slightly later comment of Strabo’s when he states:

‘In the interval is Gadaris, which the Jews have appropriated to themselves, then Azotus and Ascalon.’ (3)

So what Strabo is telling us in this passage – which clarifies the former more famous passage – is that the jews have occupied the lands of their neighbours and now see them as part of their holy inheritance, which Strabo later informs us is the case when he asserts (4) that Moshe selected the location for Jerusalem on the basis that it was largely land without value, proceeded to teach the jews that he was the chosen of God and then set his rather simple (5) followers to squat upon other people’s land. (6)

This imperialistic ambition of the jews to conquer by guile or force the lands of others is confirmed by a comment appended to the famous quote in some translations of it. To wit:

‘The district was so populous that the neighbouring village Iamneia, and the settlements around, could furnish forty thousand soldiers.’ (7)

It might be argued here that Strabo is merely using a military analogy to express the populousness of an area and that is indeed a viable interpretation, but it what it leaves unanswered is why Strabo in this case uses a military analogy to express populousness rather than say the amount of food consumed or the crowded nature of settlements etc. No, the military analogy must be taken as analogous with Strabo’s own later comments (8) which indicates that he saw the jews as undertaking both a demographic and military war of conquest against their neighbours as otherwise a military analogy would be rather vacuous.

This military adventurism had inevitably led to the original jewish population becoming mixed in with various others and Strabo specifically mentions the Indumeans, Egyptians, Arabs and Phoenicians as being ethnic sub-groups that had been partially or wholly subdued in the area of Judea – especially the hinterland of Jerusalem – by the jews as part of their policy of conquest. (9)

Strabo attributes – as did many classical authors – (10) to the jews an Egyptian origin based off the tales and traditions which went on to form the Book of Exodus and thus attributed to the jews an antiquity that is hardly deserved and whose main prop of support is the Egyptian historian Manetho that we know principally through the writings of the Hellenized subversive jewish historian Josephus’ ‘Against Apion’. (11) However he also hints that the jews are a hodgepodge of different Semitic groups when he notes that there are many different things believed about the Temple of Jerusalem, but that the Egyptian ethnic sub-group is probably the origin of the present jews indicating that although he ascribes to an original Egyptian origin: he does not see the Egyptian ethnic sub-group as their only origin due to the ‘mixing’ of ethnic sub-groups in Judea. (12)

Strabo goes on to outline the role of Moses; whom he refers to as an Egyptian Priest (13), in the formation of the jewish people. Strabo goes on to describes something of what he asserts that jewish tradition at this time, tells us of Moses’ actual beliefs and he focuses – understandably – on the fact that Moses believed in a God which was not represented by idols but rather was invisible and everywhere. It is tempting to point out that given his supposed antiquity Moses could have potentially have been a priest of Akhnaten’s cult of the solar disc at Amarna who was driven out with his die-hard followers when the traditional Egyptian priestly class re-asserted itself.

This theory is not new having first been asserted by the infamous jew Sigmund Freud in his ‘Moses and Monotheism’ and has been much debated since and this author inclines towards it as it would explain much of the parallels between Atenist religion and early Judaism as well as more importantly why the ancestors of the jews allegedly fled Egypt with all their booty in hand (which has two other explanations one of which is equally cogent). That said significant and original objections to this theory have been stated by Egyptologists based on the study of what somewhat scanty evidence we have about Atenism from archaeology and source material, but in spite of this their arguments are still somewhat at a loss to cogently explain the odd rise of monotheism – not the most natural of intellectual evolutions from animism or polytheism – among the Semitic near east without some kind of external stimulus that could have been given by an Atenist Moses. (14)

Strabo’s description of Moses asserts him to be a kind of religious innovator and it is tempting to ascribe to Strabo some sympathy with what he understood of Mosaic religion, which was based on his comments probably not a great deal, but to do so would I think be unfounded as Strabo more than likely saw the jews as an unusual cult with a wide following that he found interesting enough to describe to his readers in his ‘Geography’.

Strabo does however make one particular comment of note regarding the jews who were to be permitted to sleep in the Temple ‘where they might dream both for themselves and others’ (15), which is both potentially damning and suggestive in regard to the origins of much of the Old Testament as an accurate historical record.

The two most likely interpretations suggested by this particular comment are firstly that what Strabo is talking about is the beginnings of the jewish priestly class and the fact that they per Strabo’s earlier comments were merely dreaming about their future conquest of the world. This is perhaps the more flattering interpretation – although one can rather suspect that jews would kvetch about it – but the second is far more damning and suggestive in that it was the custom in the ancient world to induce – prophetic and otherwise – ‘dreams’ with hallucinogenic drugs – most notably the amanita muscaria mushroom – (16) which would directly suggestive that a lot of jewish ideas about the divine come from their ancestors interest in and use of hallucinogenic drugs (which would certainly be ironic considering the long-time jewish claim that the Jesus Christ was either a madman or a drug-user (17)) and indeed this very point has been argued persuasively by Wasson as long ago as 1968 (and has yet to receive a cogent opposing response from scholars of Judaism and/or jewish history). (18)

One is forced to wonder: are hallucinogenic drugs kosher or treif?

These two explanations are not mutually exclusive and either or both could be true: in fact we may suggest that both instances are most likely to be true as one of the presumptions on which Judaism has come to be based – Tikkun Olam (usually translated as ‘healing the world’ although; as with many translations, it does not do the actual meaning justice) – assumes that the jews – as a biological group (for Judaism is based on the notion of a biological Israel descended from Abraham not the Christian notion of a spiritual Israel) – have to rule the world in order to turn it to the worship of Hashem (who they view – rightly or wrongly – as the one true God) and in order to achieve this – as Strabo himself implies – the jews at that time thought to conquer and subdue neighbouring territory. Indeed, the jews as a group tried to do just this during their several revolts against Rome that so annoyed the very tolerant and patient Romans – leading to jewish historians demonizing them – that they enacted an almost unique policy in the history of the Empire: remove the jews from their apparent homeland and ban their religion completely within it.

Strabo’s next comment on Moses is even more revealing as it suggests that not only did Moses allow and encourage the use of hallucinogenic drugs by the attendants/priests/oracles/prophets of his ‘temple’ to induce visions, but that Moses actively recruited new adherents with these very same hallucinogenic drugs.

This might sound absurd, but Strabo’s words are clear:

‘By such doctrine Moses persuaded a large body of right-minded persons to accompany him to the place where Jerusalem now stands.’ (19)

One might argue that this is merely a reference to the section of text before which does contain the mention of Moses’ unusual belief system and his attempts to propagate it, (20) but what suggests that this is not the whole truth is that this statement is directly after the presence of a passage that can most reasonably be explained to be an allusion to hallucinogenic drug usage by senior figures inside Judaism in Moses’ time. We do not here seek to argue that hallucinogenic drugs were the only way Moses recruited followers, (21) but we would be remiss if we did not point out that it is likely that Moses did engage in such activity if Strabo’s account if correct on this point which we have little reason to doubt in spite of the scholarly abuse hurled at classical authors for ‘not being acquainted with the Torah’ among other things, but such scholars do not seem to realise (or perhaps don’t want to admit) that classical authors on jews and Judaism are more likely to be reliable than the historical claims of the much revised Torah and Tanakh (which have over the last hundred years been called into serious doubt if not outright rejection).

Indeed this interpretation of a partially drug-induced origin of Judaism is later confirmed by Strabo’s comments that ‘he taught that their defence was in their sacred things and the Divinity’ (22) as opposed to their defence being ‘in arms’, which would suggest that Moses – if what Strabo asserts is correct – placed his trust not so much in arms but the allure of his ideas, the magnetism of his personality and potentially in the lure of pleasure in the form of hallucinogenic drugs to secure and expand his influence in the region. This general interpretation is further confirmed by Strabo’s own point that his religion would not be ‘a burden’ to those who adopted it: (23) the interpretation of which is difficult at best in terms of a simple religious allure in so far as Moses’ cult of Hashem (or YHWH if we want to again get technical) is unlikely to not have had some ritual burdens which the more orthodox interpretation would suggest, but the more unorthodox interpretation seems to this author more likely to have been the case in so far as the ‘burden’ referred to should potentially be understood to be the lack of ‘burden’ felt by users of narcotics when they get their first and subsequent ‘fixes’. (24)

This is once again further supported by Strabo’s clarification of the form that Moses’ governance took when he asserts that he:

‘Established no ordinary kind of government. All the nations around willingly united themselves to him, allured by his discourses and promises.’ (25)

How are we to explain this assertion – if Strabo is correct to make it – without a physical/material incentive such as either pleasurable experience or gold/silver/trading opportunities?

I ask this rhetorical question as an intellectual device to point to the fact that Strabo earlier in the same passage tells us that Moses had chosen an uncontested and barren spot on which to build his cultic kingdom, but yet suddenly Moses is able to gain the support of ‘all the nation’ around him willingly. Either he was a very remarkable man, or he had something unique to offer: such as hallucinogenic drugs.

That said we may counter that if the Book of Exodus in the Torah is correct it could actually answer this conundrum in that we are told in that Moses and his rag-tag band of followers had taken much of the wealth of Egypt with them when they departed (which necessitated the army that Pharaoh sent after them, and which was promptly drowned on command by Moses’ blood-thirsty God). If Moses indeed had the wealth of Egypt at his disposal it would account for his sway over the local tribes and their willingness to follow him as he could pay them well for their services and enrich their ruling elite in the process. It would also remove the necessity of such an unorthodox explanation as the use of hallucinogenic drugs in foreign policy and seducing the aboriginal tribal leadership, but it does not rule it out as a possibility if a more unlikely one than simple gold and silver but more likely than novel religious ideas and a cult of personality.

It is interesting to note that Strabo’s point that Moses created a government ‘like no other’ (26) does suggest that Moses was indeed a cultic figure who ruled by a mix of ruthless rooting out of opposition, religious fanaticism, access to large reserves of wealth and an all-pervasive cult of personality. Strabo’s note indicates this as a theocracy would have been rather out of place in the Middle East at this time and other ancient and classical civilizations tended to have religion as an arm of the state rather than be ruled by their religious leaders (although like the Spartans they could be heavily influenced by them).

This interpretation can be confirmed by the next section of Strabo’s comments on Moses’ governance which as that the jews after Moses were ruled over by priests and tyrants. (27) Strabo also notes that these later jewish leaders were ‘superstitious’ and were categorically different from Moses and those leaders immediately following him. This would suggest that there was something very different about Moses and the early jewish religious leadership compared to the better known later jewish religious leadership. Indeed, Strabo implies a distinct difference when he declares that these later rulers were primarily the robbers he describes earlier (28) when he points out that their ‘tyrannical government produced robbery’ as the ‘rebels’ – i.e., the jews – ‘plundered both their own and neighbouring countries’. (29) Strabo specifically mentions both Syria and Phoenician as being the principle external targets for this jewish avarice and imperialism, which he compares unfavourably with the ‘willing nations’ who allied with Moses.

Perhaps the likeliest explanation for this can be found in the fact that Moses’ reserves of wealth had by this later period dried up and having situated Jerusalem and its hinterland on ‘barren’ land Moses had made it impossible for the first bandit jewish state to survive without launching wars of conquest against its aboriginal neighbours. Indeed, Strabo explicitly tells us that these wars and associated robbery were not undertaken for the profit of the jews writ large, but rather for the jewish elite who no doubt desired to replenish the depleted reserves of wealth that had caused their state to come into existence in the first place. Or perhaps more simply they might have desired to conquer the world for their invisible, omnipotent and overtly genocidal God that he – through them – could ‘repair the world’ with a sea of non-jewish blood and the ruling elite could have a shiksa or two for themselves as disposable concubines in payment for their trouble.

So, end Strabo’s interesting comments on the jews and so does this somewhat unorthodox analysis. I have advanced many unusual and even heterodox ideas/theories in the course of this short article, but they are meant to stress that when dealing with jews we should be open to novel interpretations which open up the discussion of the jewish question to both orthodox and unorthodox scholarly analyses. For too long anti-Semitism has been hide-bound within a nineteenth century intellectual framework and it is well past time that it entered the twenty-first century as a radical new intellectual and political alternative.

References

(1) Strab. 16.2.28

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid., 16.2.29

(4) Ibid., 16.2.37

(5) Ibid., 16.2.37; 38. Strabo suggests this was the case when he asserts that Moses did not want his followers to be ‘burdened’ by ‘absurd practices’ and ‘great expense’, which we may take to mean he sought out the most gullible to follow him (and even then they were sufficiently lacking in gullibility to take his claim to have received divine laws without at least some written proof). This is confirmed when Strabo clarifies himself by pointing out that Moses sought to ‘allure’ people to him by ‘discourses and promises’, which for somebody with relatively little power is a minor miracle unless he had specifically targeted the most gullible of the locals much like his later fellow Semitic parallel: the ‘Prophet’ Mohammed.

(6) The parallel between the founding of the land of Judea and the modern Israel is both obvious and striking in that both were groups who had no substantive claim to the territory in the first place, both used systematic violence and coercion to achieve their objectives and both followed an explicitly messianic ideology lead by leaders who conceived themselves as prophets and combined their ‘prophetic’ abilities with apocalyptic pronouncements. For example compare Strabo’s account of the jews to the analysis of the Zionist movement in Ilan Pappe, 2007, ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’, 1st Edition, One World: London.

(7) Strab. 16.2.28

(8) Such as that found in Ibid. 16.2.29 where Strabo notes that the jews have ‘appropriated’ – i.e., conquered by guile or force – some territory bordering that which they had previously captured. It is also suggested in 16.2.34 by Strabo that the jews engaged in guile and ‘sedition’ to achieve their objectives in this case of the Indumeans in order to win them temporarily over to their side so they can continue their imperialistic dreams.

(9) Ibid., 16.2.34

(10) Tacitus in his ‘Histories’ and Diodorus Siculus in his ‘The Library of History’ (notably in 1.28 and 1.55) for example assume an Egyptian origin for the jews as did later; more polemical, classical writers such as Celsus and (the Emperor) Julian who used the myth of the ancient nature of Judaic worship as part of the basis for their attacks on Christianity. It is also noteworthy that Suetonius in Tib. 36 mentions both the Egyptian and Judaic cults together as poisons to Roman society that had to be suppressed by the authorities because of their growing influence and exhortations to subversions and degeneracy on the part of their adherents. This is also confirmed by his later comments about the subversive nature of the jews in Claud. 25.

(11) Fortunately in recent times there has been an increasing and healthy scepticism regarding the veracity of this classical jewish historian who has for so long been the basis for the jewish claims to antiquity and the central prop in supporting such weird intellectual aberrations as Christian Zionism because he; it has claimed, mentions Jesus. That said in spite of his lack of veracity Josephus is an unused resource among anti-Semites – a fact recognised by the late great Dr. William Pierce – as Josephus’ principal two works ‘Jewish Antiquities’ and ‘The Jewish War’ were two of the very few books written by a jewish author stocked by his National Vanguard imprint and bookstore.

(12) This is strongly supported by recent genetic studies that have indicated that the jews and their Palestinian foes are actually genetic cousins even in the case of such phenotypically dissimilar groups as Ashkenazi jews and the darker breed of Palestinian Arabs. This is in spite of weird claims dating from the 1940s and 1950s among anti-Semites that the Ashkenazim are descended from the Khazarian Khanate, which have been thoroughly debunked by Brook who appears to have been misquoted (in regards to emphasis) by Michael Hoffman II, 2000, ‘Judaism’s Strange Gods’, 1st Edition, The Independent History and Research Company: Coeur d’Alene, p. 110, but can be corrected by quoting Brook’s 2nd Edition of ‘The Jews of Khazaria’ (Hoffman quotes the first edition so I am giving him something of the benefit of the doubt): ‘Existing evidence, taken as a whole, demonstrates that while Eastern European Jews are descended both from the Jews of the ancient Middle East and from various non-Jewish peoples (including Slavs and possibly Khazars), the Israelite element constitutes the majority of their ancestry.’ (Kevin Alan Brooke, 2006, ‘The Jews of Khazaria’, 2nd Edition, Rowman & Littlefield: New York, p. 234)

(13) Strab. 16.2.35

(14) For a brief outline of the Amarna period in Egypt please Jacobus van Dijk, 2003, ‘The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom’ in Ian Shaw (Ed.), 2003, ‘The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt’, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 269-281. As to Strabo’s allusion to Africans in Strab. 16.2.35 it should be noted that this refers to Africa as meant to the classical world not – as Afro-centrists would have it – as a reference to Negroes.

(15) Ibid., 16.2.35. We should understand the ‘Temple’ here to be metaphorical and not a direct allusion to the Temple at Jerusalem.

(16) The most famous use of this hypothesis is to be found in John Allegro’s; brilliant but much derided, 1970, ‘The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East’, 1st Edition, Hodder & Stoughton: London. An extended defence and in many ways brutal demolition of Allegro’s critics can be found in Michael Hoffman’s 2006 article ‘Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita’ in the Journal of Higher Criticism, which maybe found at the following address: http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889181.

(17) Jews have repeatedly had trouble about their ancestor’s (and their own) comments about the Christian Messiah most notably in the various disputations between Christian theologians and jewish rabbis that were organised in Europe in the Middle Ages. For example see Hyam Maccoby (Ed. and Trans.), 1993, ‘Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages’, 2nd Edition, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization: London and Daniel Lasker, 1977, ‘Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages’, 1st Edition, Ktav: New York.

(18) R. Gordon Wasson, 1968, ‘Soma: The Divine Mushroom of Immortality’, 1st Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, p. 221. Wasson responded to some of his critics in his later 1971 second edition, which includes in summation his response to Brough, which may independently be found in R. Gordon Wasson, 1971, ‘Soma and the Fly-Agaric’, Ethno-Mycological Studies, Monograph No. 2, Botanical Museum of Harvard University: Cambridge.

(19) Strab. 16.2.36

(20) Ibid., 16.2.35

(21) There are clear historical precedents for this in the later cult of the Assassins who were recruited by using various drugs and subterfuges and in essence tricked – as Moses may have done – into believing that the leader of cult held the keys to the gate of Eden itself. It is not much of an intellectual stretch to see Moses as the leader of a small and fairly radical cult based on his will and personality rather than the more usual hagiographic vision of him as a principal founder of three of the major world religions. A similar interpretation is offered in Dan Merkur, 2000, ‘The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible’, 1st Edition, Park Stress Press: Rochester.

(22) Strab. 16.2.36

(23) Ibid.

(24) Indeed Strabo’s comment that Moses did not encourage ‘absurd practices’ could be held to tentatively support this in so far as such practices would have been fairly normal in Strabo’s day. The problem with this interpretation of this particular passage is that it uses a value judgement on Strabo’s own possible meaning, but as we do not know the level of Strabo’s knowledge of the use of hallucinogenic drugs in the various oracles it would be unwise to assert positively that he was aware of this. For the uses of hallucinogenic drugs in the Greek oracles see R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck, Albert Hofmann, 1978, ‘The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries’, 1st Edition, Harcourt Brace: New York and Carl Ruck, Clark Heinrich, Blaise Staples, 2000, ‘The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist’, 1st Edition, Carolina Academic Press: North Carolina.

(25) Strab. 16.2.36

(26) Ibid.

(27) Ibid., 16.2.37

(28) Ibid., 16.2.28

(29) Ibid. 16.2.37

Source: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/strabo-on-the-jews