Vette traces the anti-Semitic image of the ‘ungrateful Jew’ through its usage in early Christian literature to its origin in the imperial rhetoric of the first-century ce. Vette describes how imperial rhetoric employs racial stereotypes to demarcate dominator and dominated, thereby inscribing hierarchy and difference. Then, as now, gratitude can become weaponized in the service of Empire; but as the first-century Jewish author ce Josephus explains, gratitude can also disrupt imperial discourse.