(CRW Am-EU) What temporary schedule is best for you?

  • Sunday 17:00-19:00 UTC (18:00-20:00 French time)

    Votes: 24 64.9%
  • Saturdays 17:00-19:00 UTC (18:00-20:00 French time)

    Votes: 13 35.1%

  • Total voters
    37
In preparation for tomorrow's meeting, I thought I'd share the video below which I found helpful in understanding the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties. The first half of the video is most pertinent to the section of text and the history that we are currently focused on, the latter part explores other branches of the Herodian dynasty in Egypt and Armenia.


Edit (added): Supplemental info from Wikipedia about Simon of Perea, Agrippa 1, Lucius Vitellius, Germanicus.
 
Hi everyone,

Here’s the meeting ID for the Au-Asia-Am meeting. Please note the new meeting ID and passcode, this will be our regular one from now on. We will start in 30 minutes. :-)

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
Meeting ID: 835 8687 7275
Passcode: 4nuFri


See you soon!
 
We were discussing a couple of ideas as to how to make the history, facts and details in Chapters 3 & 4 a bit easier to remember. Laura’s comprehensive research is staggering, and there is a lot going on in a bunch of places and at different times with people that have the same names across generations just to add to the confusion (there are 6 Herods in the NT, and they’re all different but related!).

As we will be having no meeting next week, we thought about creating a timeline of who/what/when/where as a visual representation might help. And furthermore (to bring these characters to life) we thought about a project such as a radio play or animation if the feedback was that it would be worth investing time in. No idea how that might turn out, it’s just that if there was some way of embedding these various characters across time in various places in a narrative, it might be easier to situate ourselves to better understand what was going on.

What does everyone think?
 
I love the idea of something like this. I posted a series of videos earlier in this thread that helped me better understand the contents of the Gospels. They’re done in storyboard/cartoon fashion.

Cassiopaea Forum Reading Workshops - Public

It would be a heck of a lot of work though. I’m doing my best at the moment to really try and grasp everything in each chapter and I’d love to get involved in the writing side of it when I finish the book and ‘blend mosaic consciousness’. I bet working on something like this would really help those involved to grasp everything even more.

The animation side of it would seem to me to be the most time-consuming part. But then any animator would need the narrative to work from beforehand, in which case, whether there was ever any storyboard or cartoon that came out of it later, a team of people writing “Paleochristianity and Paul for Dummies” would be useful.
 
We were discussing a couple of ideas as to how to make the history, facts and details in Chapters 3 & 4 a bit easier to remember. Laura’s comprehensive research is staggering, and there is a lot going on in a bunch of places and at different times with people that have the same names across generations just to add to the confusion (there are 6 Herods in the NT, and they’re all different but related!).
I just caught up on the "Ethnarchy of Archelaus" last night after the workshop, and in updating the timeline with a few events have noticed that something very strange was going on around the time of the death of Herod the Great. For example, Herod changed his will to make Archelaus his successor, and not long afterwards Judas the Galilean and Simon of Perea/Anthrongeus started stirring things up, probably in some sort of alignment with each other, perhaps in an attempt to make a play for a new independent Jewish dynasty a la Judas Maccabeus redux.

It seems like the "surplus elites" represented by Simon/Anthrongeus perceived Archelaus as a weak leader beset by infighting with his siblings, and used the royal intrigues as cover and justification for their attempt to seize power, which was ultimately put down by Varus in 6 CE and resulted in Rome taking direct control of the region via three provinces allocated to the remaining offspring of Herod after Archelaus was exiled.

Note that 1 AD, the alleged birth year of "Jesus" in mainstream religious chronology, is right in the middle of the ten year period between the death of Herod the Great (4 BCE), and the 6 CE takeover by Rome. Whatever the thought processes and reasoning of successive centuries of scholars, historians and theologians, the resulting fact was that arguably the most important chronological anchor of human history was placed during this period of time.

Now, even if we consider the "460 extra years" conundrum, we're still left with certain archeo-astronomical data (coins, stones, monuments, eclipses etc) that places various events into some form of logical sequence. For instance, according to NASA astronomical data, the 10 January, 19 AD eclipse event took place literally 2002 solar years ago, plus a few months. A definite amount of earth orbital periods elapsed during that time, so one possibility is that the "460 extra years" are not literal years, but "460 years worth of fabricated events" that have been jammed into the chronological series in such a way as to distract from more important matters without seeming too glaringly apparent.

However, the C's have dated the birth of Julius Caesar to 1635 years before the session of 2014, which works out to 379 CE. So there's a big discrepancy there between his mainstream birthdate (12 July 100 BCE), and 379 CE, a discrepancy that just so happens to be 480 years (allowing for no "year zero" in the CE/BCE system).

480 years is very close to the C's stated figure of 460, and it's not difficult to imagine that mainstream history regarding Caesar's birthdate is off by 20 years. So, taking this as a hypothesis, I adjusted the dating of some of the events we've been reading about in FPTM (and some from other sources, with the following results (lines in green are non-adjusted dating for comparison):

Year (adjusted CE)Event
536Cometary bombardment of Western Europe/Middle East.
450Fall of the Roman Empire.
615 - 628Probable writing of the first edition of the New Testament.
610 - 710Dating of P46 codex, earliest surviving document of Paul’s letters.
595Probable writing of the Epistle of Barnabas.
590 - 605Probable writing of the letters of “Ignatius”.
590Earliest versions of the Gospel of Luke and Matthew.
570Marcion’s compilation of Paul’s letters.
535 - 540Probable writing of the “Wars of the Jews”.
533Earliest writing of the Gospel of Mark.
530 - 555Probable writing of the Letters of Clement.
530Jewish War against Rome / Destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
526Defeat of Cestius Gallus in Judea.
524Writing of the Letter to the Hebrews.
516Birth of the Roman Historian Cornelius Tacitus.
510 - 560Creation of earliest extant version of the Didache.
500 - 507Probable writing of the Epistles of James, Peter, John & Jude.
489Best historical anchor for Paul’s conversion to Paleochristianity.
47910 January, 19 AD eclipse event.
466Judea placed under direct Roman rule after Zealot rebellion and exile of Archelaus.
456Death of Herod the Great.
451Accession of King Aretas IV of Nabataea.
416Death of Julius Caesar, beginning of reign of Augustus.
414Caesar’s definitive victory in Gaul.
411Caesar's victory in the Roman Civil War.
384Death of Alexander Jannaeus, second Hasmonean king, father of Hyrcanus II.
379Birth of Julius Caesar.

As you can see, if we assume the same historiography with only a chronological displacement, the Jewish War happens very close to the cometary event of 536-540 CE, which may make some of the later events unlikely. We have good ice core data for the 536-540 event, so we can assume that is anchored correctly amidst the changed dating for the earlier events. So the next step would be to look for evidence that some of the earlier events are closer together in time than previously thought, and which events, if any, might have preserved their alignment. One easy win is to check where the 10 January, 19 AD eclipse might have landed. As it happens, there are two candidates: March 23, 479 CE (possibly subject to the timing problems discussed by Laura on p. 118 of FPTM), and October 27, 478 CE.

I have a hunch that there's lots more that can be done to develop this in a fruitful direction.

As we will be having no meeting next week, we thought about creating a timeline of who/what/when/where as a visual representation might help. And furthermore (to bring these characters to life) we thought about a project such as a radio play or animation if the feedback was that it would be worth investing time in. No idea how that might turn out, it’s just that if there was some way of embedding these various characters across time in various places in a narrative, it might be easier to situate ourselves to better understand what was going on.

What does everyone think?
I think it's a great idea. I'll work on the timeline for starters, and happy to help out with any voice roles as well. :-)
 
Last edited:
Hi everyone,

Below are the links for the recent Aus-Asia-Am group workshop for From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity

Here's the video of the last meeting

The audio

And the folder


We will continue discussing pages 193-213 in Ch 4: Pilate and the Testimonium Flavianum, as well as how to bring the history to life, timeline of events etc. next time. Our next meeting will be on Saturday 3 September.

See you all then!
 
Back
Top Bottom