The tragic importance of the “ritual murder” in the modern history of the Jews since the Crusades has given the account of Apion a significance to which it is by no means entitled. The least analysis will show that the “ritual murder” of modern times is not really like the ancient story at all. The latter is simply an application to the Jews of the frequent charge of ξενοθυσία, “sacrifice of strangers,” such as was made against the Scythians. And Apion’s fable found practically no acceptance. There is of course no literary transmission between Apion and the chroniclers of Hugh of Lincoln, but we cannot even suppose that there was a popular one. In the fearful struggles of the rebellions under Hadrian and Trajan, it is impossible to believe that the mutual hatred, which found such expression as the massacre at Salamis and the reprisals of the Greeks, would have failed to register this charge against the ἀνόσιοι Ἰουδαῖοι, “the wicked Jews,” if it were known. The early Middle Ages, at any rate from the Crusades on, devised the “ritual murder” without the aid of older authorities. It is one of the many cases in which parallel developments at different times and in different places produce results that are somewhat similar, although only superficially so.[209] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION A favorite adjective in describing the Jews was “superstitious.” Strangely enough, another, perhaps even more general, was “irreligious.” The Jews were frequently stigmatized as ἄθεοι, a word generally translated “atheist,” and undoubtedly often used in the sense of the modern term. It remains to be seen whether the term meant, in its application to the Jews, all that the corresponding modern term implies. That is particularly necessary here, since to the modern world the devotion of the nation to its Deity is its most striking characteristic, and at least one of the key-notes of its historical development. Upon us it has almost the effect of a paradox to read that this people impressed some Greeks as a nation of “atheists” or “godless.” The modern term and the ancient partly cover each other. Both often denote the speculative negation of a supernatural direction of the world. Now it simply cannot be, in view of the wide distribution of the Jews and their successful propaganda, that even the unthinking could associate the people whose claims to direct divine guidance were so many and so emphatic, with a term that implied the non-recognition of any god. We may remember how even the very first contact had seemed to emphasize the religious side of the Jewish communal life.