Philo’s On the Special Laws (De Specialibus Legibus), written for the then-dominant Hellenistic audience, condemns the exposure of infants as a “sacrilegious practice” forbidden by the law. He condemns parents who expose or kill newborns as committing “murder, and the very worst kind of murder, infanticide.” He contrasts this with care for the unborn (building on Exodus 21:22–23) and argues that if the law protects the fetus, it certainly protects the born child. Exposure is portrayed as driven by inhumanity or pleasure-seeking, not Jewish practice.

Decades later, Josephus, a 1st-century Jewish historian writing for a Roman/Greek audience after the Jewish-Roman War explicitly defends Jewish law as requiring the rearing of all offspring. He characterizes infanticide as murder, tying it to Torah ethics against harm and the duty to preserve life.