LYSIMACHUS:

Anti-Jewish Alexandrian writer; lived before Apion. Like the Stoic Chæremon, he went beyond even Manetho in his inimical account of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. According to Lysimachus, the Jews, numbering 110,000, left Egypt in the reign of King Bokchoris, journeyed through the desert on the advice of a certain Moyses, and after many hardships finally arrived at Judea, where they founded the city of Hierosyla (= "Temple robbery"), which they subsequently called "Hierosolyma."

The fragments of Lysimachus found in Josephus ("Contra Ap." i. 34 et seq.), as well as in the works Θηβαïκὰ Παράδοξα and Νόστοι, which are often quoted in ancient literature, have been collected by C. Müller in "Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum," iii. 334-342 (see, also, Reinach, "Textes d'Auteurs Grecs," pp. 117 et seq.).

Bibliography:
  • Josephus, Contra Ap. i. 34 et seq.; ii. 2, 14;
  • Schürer, Gesch. iii. 403 et seq.;
  • Westermann, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyc. iv. 1311.
G. M. K.
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