Have a look here:
| 538 | Pompeioupolis earthquake (John Malalas) (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXI – Page 193) (Zuqnin) In the eleventh year of Justinian… a great and terrible comet appeared. (PZ) (MtS, Book IX Chapter XXIV page 209) the great Beirut earthquake and tsunami occurred in the same year. (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXIX – page 241-247). | |
| 539 | Comet, famine, Vesuvius rumble The Wars, Procopius: [539 A.D.] Book II, IV Antioch earthquake (John Malalas) (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXI – Page 193) | |
| 540 | Cometary bombardment (Chinese historical records) Comet bombardment (Gildas), Flood Collapse of the great dam of Marib in Yemen (Sheba). |
If you haven't already read "From Paul to Mark", you might want to do so as it may help you to get accustomed to how to read ancient texts and note when the author is obfuscating or where possible interpolations or redactions have occurred.
Above we see an almost throwaway remark about Vesuvius in the year 539. (Keeping in mind that dating could be inaccurate for any number of reasons. Way more interesting are the other events surrounding that mention of Vesuvius.
Below is the full text for those years with discussion:
538
In that year Pompeioupolis in Mysis suffered from the wrath of God. When the earthquake occurred, the ground suddenly split open and half the city with its inhabitants was swallowed up. They were beneath the ground and the sound of their voices was carried to the survivors. (John Malalas)Michael the Syrian places this event in the second year of Justinan which is incorrect. It’s obvious that his account is taken straight from John Malalas though somehow he has managed to add the beginning line which misdates the event. This just highlights how totally garbled these things can get.
In the second year of the reign Justinianus II, there was a violent earthquake in which Pompeiopolis in Mysia [was destroyed]. All the ground cracked and opened from one side to the other side of the city, with the houses and people living inside fell into it. The cry of pain was their clamor, without anyone being able to help them in any way. (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXI – Page 193)
Pompeiopolis was struck. This (city), Pompeiopolis, was not (only) overthrown like other cities by a heavy earthquake which befell it, but (also) a terrible sign took place in it, when the earth suddenly opened and also was torn apart from one side of the city to the other: half of (the city) together with (its) inhabitants fell in and was swallowed up in (this) very frightful and terrifying chasm. In this way it “went down to Sheol alive”, as is written. When the people had fallen down into this fearful and terrible chasm and were swallowed up into the depth of the earth, the sound of clamor of all of them together rose bitterly and terribly from the earth to the survivors for many days. Their souls were tormented by the sound of clamor of (the people who had been swallowed up), which rose from the depth of Sheol, but they were unable to do anything to help them. (Zuqnin)
In the eleventh year of Justinian… a great and terrible comet appeared in the sky at evening-time for one hundred days. (PZ)
In the 11th year of Justinianus reign, which is the year 850 of the Greeks, a great and terrible comet appeared for many days, during the evening. And in that same year, the peace between the empires was broken. (MtS, Book IX Chapter XXIV page 209)
In a second account of the same event, Michael the Syrian places it in the 23rd year of Justinian’s reign. He also says that the great Beirut earthquake and tsunami occurred in the same year.
In the land of Mysia, half the city was engulfed. Pompeiopolis6 and its inhabitants went down alive into the earth with their homes. The cry of their groan rose from the midst of the earth for a long time while no one could rescue them. - Other cities were also knocked over in the same country. (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXIX – page 241-247)
This must have prompted Justinian to issue a second edict that prohibited Jews from owning Christian slaves. These prohibitions against Jews would be recorded in the Justinian Code as 1.10.2 and 1.3.54.
In 538 at the 3rd synod of Orleans, Canon 13 re-stated for its region that Jews could not hold public office, become judges, own Christian slaves, employ Christian servants, or marry Christians. Christians were also forbidden to attend Jewish festivities and celebrations. Canon 13 also declared Christians could not convert to Judaism. Orleans declared the clergy was even forbidden to eat with Jews. The 538 synod at Orleans decreed that Jews had to be out of all Christians' site during the Easter festivities because their appearance is an insult to Christianity. Canon 30 stated:
From the Thursday before Easter for four days, Jews may not appear in the company of Christians.
The Merovingian King Childebert approved the measure. To further the economic toll on Jews, Canon 30 stated that any slave of a Jew could attain freedom just by converting to Christianity. Christian leaders of Gaul, like those of Rome and Constantinople, made Christianity the religion of the region by making it illegal to evangelize any other faith. In the pluralist religious world of late antiquity, Christian leaders sought to wipe out all competitors by law, by decree, by persecution, by economic sanctions, and by force if necessary.
War continued in Italy, we are told. Belisarius moved north and took Milan. The Ostrogoths then laid siege to the city.
539
The war in Italy continued. The Franks sent 10,000 Burgundians to help out. With their help, the Ostrogoths continued the siege of Milan, starving the residents. After negotiations, the Ostrogoths allowed the military garrison to leave and then they went in and massacred all the male inhabitants and took all women and children as slaves which they gave to the Burgundians. They then pull down the walls of the city and retreated back over the Po. The Franks withdrew from participation due to a sickness that decimated their army. Meanwhile, Justinian issued an edict that all weapons production was to be limited to state-owned factories.The Wars, Procopius: [539 A.D.] At that time also the comet appeared, at first about as long as a tall man, but later much larger. And the end of it was toward the west and its beginning toward the east, and it followed behind the sun itself. For the sun was in Capricorn and it was in Sagittarius. And some called it "the swordfish" because it was of goodly length and very sharp at the point, and others called it "the bearded star"; it was seen for more than forty days. Now those who were wise in these matters disagreed utterly with each other, and one announced that one thing, another that another thing was indicated by this star; but I only write what took place and I leave to each one to judge by the outcome as he wishes.
Straightway a mighty Hunnic army crossing the Danube River fell as a scourge upon all Europe, a thing which had happened many times before, but which had never brought such a multitude of woes nor such dreadful ones to the people of that land. ~ Book II, IV
[Writing about conditions in Rome while there with Belisarius] But at the beginning of the spring equinox famine and pestilence together fell upon the inhabitants of the city. There was still, it is true, some grain for the soldiers, though no other kind of provisions, but the grain-supply of the rest of the Romans had been exhausted, and actual famine as well as pestilence was pressing hard upon them. ~ Book VI, III
And the Huns likewise, after they had made their camp near by, as I have said, were on their part causing the Goths no less trouble, so that these as well as the Romans were now feeling the pressure of famine, since they no longer had freedom to bring in their food-supplies as formerly. And pestilence too fell upon them and was destroying many, and especially in the camp which they had last made, close by the Appian Way, as I have previously stated. And the few of their number who had not perished withdrew from that camp to the other camps. The Huns also suffered in the same way, and so returned to Rome. Such was the course of events here. …
At that time the mountain of Vesuvius rumbled, and though it did not break forth in eruption, still because of the rumbling it led people to expect with great certainty that there would be an eruption. And for this reason it came to pass that the inhabitants fell into great terror. ~ Book VI, IV
It seems to me that the author protests too much in claiming that Vesuvius did NOT erupt.
It was at that time that Antioch suffered its sixth calamity from the wrath of God. The earthquake that occurred lasted for one hour and was accompanied by a terrible roaring sound, so the buildings that had been reconstructed after the former shocks collapsed, as did the walls and some of the churches. (John Malalas)
Michael the Syrian has also misdated this one, putting it with the also misdated Pompeiopolis earthquake in the second year of Justinian II:
Antioch was also knocked over by an earthquake. it was the sixth time, four years after it was ruined for the fifth time. At the same time as the earthquake, the sound of a violent thunder rang in the air, and from the earth came a voice of terror, like a roaring bull. All churches collapsed, same for the houses new or old, and for the surrounding villages. When the people dead of suffocation were discovered, 4770 were counted. Those who escaped fled to the cities and to the mountains. The city remained abandoned for five months, then a few people came back. … Then, the same year the winter was rigorous, and there were three cubits of snow. (MtS, Book IX – Chapter XXI – Page 193)
540
Chinese historical records of AD 540 say : "Dragons fought in the pond of the K'uh o. They went westward....In the places they passed, all the trees were broken. "[1]This item above strongly suggests extraterrestrial impact a la Tunguska. Gildas, who was writing at approximately 540 AD, says
"In just punishment for the crimes that had gone before, a fire heaped up and nurtured by the hand of the impious easterners spread from sea to sea. It devastated town and country round about, and, once it was alight, it did not die down until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue ... All the major towns were laid low by the repeated battering of enemy rams; laid low, too, all the inhabitants - church leaders, priests and people alike ..."[2]
Notice that it certainly does not appear that Gildas intends allegory. The “enemy” that may have wielded those battering rams could very well have been natural forces. The narrative seems to suggest a cause and effect relationship. This connects back to the scientific evidence cited above that 540 was the really big blow. It may have been a year in which multiple comet fragment air-burst events took place. The migration of multiple thousands of people from Southern Britain to Brittany gives weight to the idea of a sudden, devastating trauma particularly affecting Britain.
In the month of June of the 3rd indiction Antioch the Great was captured by Chsroes, emperor of the Persians. Germanus was sent with his son Justin to carry on the war… Achieving nothing, he stayed in Antioch buying sliver [at a tremendous discount] from the Antiochenes. (John Malalas)
In 540, in Yemen, the Great Dam of Marib, dating from around the seventh century B.C., one of the engineering wonders of the ancient world and a central part of the south Arabian civilization, broke and began to collapse.
Prior to this event, Yemen was the most powerful political force among the Arabs controlling the trade from Eastern Africa. The city of Marib had formerly been the capital of the ancient kingdom of Saba (Sheba). The great dam was a marvel of engineering and said to have been one of the most amazing feats of human engineering of the pre-modern world. It fed hundreds of miles of irrigation canals, watering 24,000 acres. The collapse of the dam was a process that took place over time, but the final straw, after years of drought and famine, seems to have been a series of torrential rains, one of which produced such massive quantities of water that the dam gave way. The event was recorded in a royal inscription which said that a workforce had to be raised to repair it but a later inscription stated that the work had to be delayed because the availability of workers had been reduced by plague. This collapse of an irrigation system that fed tens of thousands of people forced migration[3] and led to the collapse of Yemeni power in the region. The people of Yemen were fully half the population of the Arabian peninsula and the loss of many of them, along with the power infrastructure left a serious power gap that, within two generations, had shifted to Medina which was a town dominated by Jewish Arabs. We will come back to this point further on.
[1] Greg Bryant (1999) The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?: Universe, September 1999 issue.
[2] Gildas De Excidio Brittaniae, section 24.
[3] Two tribes – the Banu Ghassan and the Azd – which migrated north to the Medina oasis in Central Arabia. This event has been erroneously placed in the 3rd century AD or the 1st century AD, depending on which source one consults.
