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 |
|---|
| 536 | Cometary bombardment of Western Europe/Middle East. |
| 450 | Fall of the Roman Empire. |
| 615 - 628 | Probable writing of the first edition of the New Testament. |
| 610 - 710 | Dating of P46 codex, earliest surviving document of Paul’s letters. |
| 595 | Probable writing of the Epistle of Barnabas. |
| 590 - 605 | Probable writing of the letters of “Ignatius”. |
| 590 | Earliest versions of the Gospel of Luke and Matthew. |
| 570 | Marcion’s compilation of Paul’s letters. |
| 535 - 540 | Probable writing of the “Wars of the Jews”. |
| 533 | Earliest writing of the Gospel of Mark. |
| 530 - 555 | Probable writing of the Letters of Clement. |
| 530 | Jewish War against Rome / Destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. |
| 526 | Defeat of Cestius Gallus in Judea. |
| 524 | Writing of the Letter to the Hebrews. |
| 516 | Birth of the Roman Historian Cornelius Tacitus. |
| 510 - 560 | Creation of earliest extant version of the Didache. |
| 500 - 507 | Probable writing of the Epistles of James, Peter, John & Jude. |
| 489 | Best historical anchor for Paul’s conversion to Paleochristianity. |
| 479 | 10 January, 19 AD eclipse event. |
| 466 | Judea placed under direct Roman rule after Zealot rebellion and exile of Archelaus. |
| 456 | Death of Herod the Great. |
| 451 | Accession of King Aretas IV of Nabataea. |
| 416 | Death of Julius Caesar, beginning of reign of Augustus. |
| 414 | Caesar’s definitive victory in Gaul. |
| 411 | Caesar's victory in the Roman Civil War. |
| 384 | Death of Alexander Jannaeus, second Hasmonean king, father of Hyrcanus II. |
| 379 | Birth 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.
, here are two good and short videos that explain it.
