Megasthenes the 'Father of Ethnography' is not as well-known as Greek founders of intellectual disciplines such as Strabo the 'Father of Geography' and Herodotus the 'Father of History', but his only known comment on the jews in his 'Indica' is often cited by the descendants of his subject to 'prove' that some few non-jewish intellectuals in the ancient and classical worlds actually thought well of them.
Megasthenes states as follows:
'All that has been said regarding nature by the ancients is asserted also by philosophers out of Greece, on the one part in India by the Brachmanes, and on the other in Syria by the people called the Jews.' (1)
This fragment of 'Indica' - as repeated by the Church Father Clement of Alexandria - is relatively benign and mentions nothing bad about the jews: however jews have historically tried - as I have stated -mto use this Megasthenean fragment to assert that he viewed the jews in a positive light by misinterpreting what Megasthenes is saying by suggesting that he places the jews and Indians as having founded pre-Socratic philosophy (the 'philosophers' that Megasthenes refers to although a better translation would be 'things concerning nature') before the Greeks had done so. (2)
This jewish intellectual fancy is however incorrect in so far as it takes Megasthenes' statement that the jews - like the Greeks - speculated much about 'things concerning nature' and tries to insert jewish intellectual priority per Clement of Alexandria's commentary that the 'philosophy of the jews' preceded that of the Greeks and therefore that jewish philosophy was - in Clement's words - 'the oldest of all'.
The reason that Clement did this was because of the importance of the antiquity of belief in ancient religion (as the older a religious system was the more likely it was to be genuine [a-la Kantian 'pure religion']) and particularly to such an intellectually assailed religion as classical Judaism. We should remember that 'proving' this alleged antiquity was the probable reason for Josephus writing his 'Jewish Antiquities' and was also the intellectual rationale for the alleged - although not actual - friendliness towards the jews by such Emperors as Claudius (3) and Julian. (4)
Indeed, we have good reason to doubt that although Megasthenes could easily have had direct contact with jews: (5) he did not see them as philosophers or thinkers in any way, shape or form. The reason we can suggest this is because - unfortunately for Clement - Strabo also reproduces precisely the same quotation from Megasthenes but inexplicably 'forgets' to include the reference to jews in it! (6)
Now Bar-Kochva - one of the most notable recent authors on the Greek view of the jews - performs some rather absurd mental gymnastics to claim that Clement's text is accurate and Strabo's is not. (7) Bar-Kochva would have it that Clement - in spite of his obvious falsification of the meaning of the quotation from Megasthenes - is more likely to be the more accurate, because he doesn't tend to abbreviate and summarise as Strabo does, but rather state quotations literally.
The problem with that of course is that no other Greek mentions this rather unusual reference to the jews by Megasthenes and Josephus - who refers to Megasthenes at least twice - does not reproduce or mention this assertion. Bar-Kochva's argument hinges on the trustworthiness of Clement because he - as Bar-Kochva correctly asserts - was well-versed in literature, but this 'truth worthy' nature is undermined by the lack of mentions of this quotation being found or even mentioned anywhere else other than in Clement.
Are we to imagine - as Bar-Kochva tries to convince us is the case - that Clement managed to find something that no one else - even those with a special interest in collecting positive references to the jews (like Josephus) - had in a very popular source for those writing history in the ancient world?
In addition, we have Clement's own laboured attempt to argue the intellectual priority of the jews in philosophy and thus undermining the basis of the pagan justification against Christianity. In this Clement is clearly not only wrong, but also intellectually malicious and as such introducing a few words into a Megasthenes quotation is not impossible or even unlikely.
Thus we have to conclude that Bar-Kochva's argument for the authenticity of the quote fails not because he doesn't argue his case well - as he does - but because he has simply failed to take into account the fact that Clement had every reason to add to such a quotation and that we have no evidence for this addition of the jews to the Brahmins ('Brachmanes') and the Greeks as the originators of 'thinking about nature'.
However, let us suppose for a moment for the sake of argument that Clement's version of the quotation from Megasthenes' 'Indica' is in fact correct: does it say anything positive about the jews as they like to claim? (8)
The answer is a very simple negative, because all Megasthenes is saying - when we remove Clement's narration and switch the culturally-loaded term 'philosophy' with 'thinking about nature' - is that the jews are known to think about the origin of the world as every people has since the point where man began to ask the simple question: 'why?'
Megasthenes then - if Clement's version is genuine - is saying nothing positive about the jews and is essentially just asserting that jews are capable of metaphysical explanation and speculation, which no-one to my knowledge has ever denied them the capacity of.
Thus, Megasthenes cannot be viewed as the friend of the jews that they like to claim he is.
References
(1) Clem. Alex. Strom. 1:15.72; also, Eusb. Pamp. Praep. Evang. 9.6
(2) Bezalel Bar-Kochva, 2010, 'The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period', 1st Edition, University of California Press: Berkeley, pp. 137-138; 204-205
(3) Harry Leon, 1960, 'The Jews of Ancient Rome', 1st Edition, The Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, pp. 21-22
(4) Glen Bowersock, 1978, 'Julian the Apostate', 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, p. 89
(5) Bar-Kochva, Op. Cit., p. 141
(6) Strabo 15:1.59
(7) Bar-Kochva, Op. Cit., pp. 144-157
(8) http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/judeophobia2.htm