Palinurus
The Living Force
Re: Historical Events Database
Thank you both, Laura and Dirgni, for your swift responses and helpful comments.
Understood. I will put it in there in the manner you suggested.
Your questions and remarks are very to the point, so thanks again for taking the time and the trouble composing and posting them, but they don't really help to solve the problem. That's not your fault of course but Josephus's.
When you close read the quoted passage, you will notice that Josephus doesn't mention this famine as such for its own sake but only uses it as a means to point the attention of his readers/listeners towards the behavior of the priests, in order to give them an example of the awe inspiring nature of the towering figure of Moses, even now, in his own time, after all those ages. We wouldn't have known anything about this famine at all if not for this specific reason. As such this famine appears right out of the blue in his narrative and there are no further details about it to be found anywhere else; not in this work, nor in his other treatise about the Wars of the Jews.
Granted, in that other work Josephus has mentioned the odd famine here and there but always in the context of warring factions, regional skirmishes, or sieges of cities. In short, as a by-product of war. Not as such, as a phenomenon of nature or as a result of mismanagement, dispossession, theft, or what have you.
As far as I can see, Josephus has nor the eye, nor the interest, and certainly not the compassion, needed to be keen on these types of misfortunes from which the common man, woman and child are frequently suffering. And he's not much into prodigies and the like, either. Therefore he won't be of much relevance to our database endeavor at all, I have come to think.
Thank you both, Laura and Dirgni, for your swift responses and helpful comments.
Laura said:I think I would put it in this way:
Let's assume that it was under Nero, but J referred to him as Claudius.
Put the date range as 54 to 60 AD, location Palestine/Judaea
Put the text in the quote box and exactly what you have written about the problem in the notes box.
Good job!
Understood. I will put it in there in the manner you suggested.
Dirgni said:Is there something mentioned in the text before or after your quoted one, which may help to narrow the timeframe?
If the famine was before the war in 60 AD and there was Ismael and a emperor named Claudius then the famine could have been between 58 AD and 60 AD (ca. 59 + / - 1 year). This is the second time Ismael was High Priest and during the time Nero (Claudius) was emperor.
Was there any high food prices or food shortages or any wrath of God mentioned elsewhere?
In database in 59 AD there is a thunderbolt (entry 1763) and in 60 AD there are earthquake, unusual weather and comet events (entries 1405, 1406, 244). Could fit to your famine. There were quite many comets (= wrath of God?) between 60 AD and 66 AD, too. The fifties AD were also quite 'interesting' times. These were no easy times for normal people back then.
I would mention your difficulties with dating in other notes field.
Just my 2 cents.
Your questions and remarks are very to the point, so thanks again for taking the time and the trouble composing and posting them, but they don't really help to solve the problem. That's not your fault of course but Josephus's.
When you close read the quoted passage, you will notice that Josephus doesn't mention this famine as such for its own sake but only uses it as a means to point the attention of his readers/listeners towards the behavior of the priests, in order to give them an example of the awe inspiring nature of the towering figure of Moses, even now, in his own time, after all those ages. We wouldn't have known anything about this famine at all if not for this specific reason. As such this famine appears right out of the blue in his narrative and there are no further details about it to be found anywhere else; not in this work, nor in his other treatise about the Wars of the Jews.
Granted, in that other work Josephus has mentioned the odd famine here and there but always in the context of warring factions, regional skirmishes, or sieges of cities. In short, as a by-product of war. Not as such, as a phenomenon of nature or as a result of mismanagement, dispossession, theft, or what have you.
As far as I can see, Josephus has nor the eye, nor the interest, and certainly not the compassion, needed to be keen on these types of misfortunes from which the common man, woman and child are frequently suffering. And he's not much into prodigies and the like, either. Therefore he won't be of much relevance to our database endeavor at all, I have come to think.