Yonatan Binyam — What Ancient History Reveals About the Origins of Antisemitism
Historian Yonatan Binyam examines the contested origins of the term 'antisemitism' through the ancient Jewish historian Josephus — and what that genealogy tells us today.
Why we picked this
Understanding where a concept comes from — and how it's been misread across centuries — often changes how we recognize it in the present. This is that kind of talk.
Yonatan Binyam examines the first-century Jewish historian Josephus and the text known as Contra Apionem — a defense of Jewish history and tradition written against Greek and Roman detractors — as a way into the longer genealogy of what we now call antisemitism. The lecture asks a deceptively simple question: what was actually troubling Josephus, and how has that original context been obscured by later uses of his work?
The historiography of antisemitism — how the concept was named, shaped, and deployed across different eras — matters enormously for how we recognize and respond to it now. Binyam’s work situates modern debates in a much longer timeline, drawing on ancient sources that are rarely part of contemporary discussions.
Part of the UW Jackson School’s public lecture program. Free and open to the public.