maryhelena

Stephan, that there were 77 years from the second year of Vespasian, 70 c.e. to the 10th year of Antoninus (147 c.e.)is clearly simple mathematics. That someone decides that these 77 years are somehow relevant - well, Daniel 9 does come to mind.....or at least someone has an interest in the number 7.....;-) But to use this to argue that Antiquities was written later than its usual dating of 94 c.e. is just a futile exercise.

Questioning Josephus has to be done re his Herodian 'history' reconstructions. But when you don't have any mention in the writing of Josephus about 77 years from the second year of Vespasian to the 10th year of Antoninus - this sort of attempt to discredit the Josephan writer as having written in the first century is baseless. It is something that one would only do if one had some motive for doing so. In your case the questioning of the whole Josephan history of Agrippa I and Agrippa II. i.e. you only want one King Agrippa, the real Messiah.

andrewcriddle

If Tacitus is accurate when he claims that Felix married the granddaughter of Cleopatra, (some reconstructions take this to mean great-granddaughter), and if Felix married three queens/princesses, then the following are probable.

1/ the granddaughter of Cleopatra was the first wife of Felix, (she would be rather old to be his second wife).

2/ By the end of Felix's period of rule in Judea, if not earlier, Felix would have been married to his second princess. The granddaughter of Cleopatra would quite likely have died of natural causes by then, and without making Felix improbably old at death, he has limited time for two more royal marriages if still married to the granddaughter of Cleopatra c 58 CE.

Andrew Criddle

maryhelena

The chart below sets out Josephan history for the marriage of Herod the Great to Mariamne I. It contrasts this history with the later Josephan ‘history’ of the marriage of Felix to the Jewish princess Drusilla. There are no exact parallels. However, elements from this earlier history are reflected within the later Josephan reconstructions of Jewish/Hasmonean history. As the gospel writers have taken from the OT to build up their ‘history’ of the gospel JC - so, similarly, Josephus has taken elements from his earlier Jewish history and used these elements in his reconstruction, his prophetic reconstruction, of later Jewish history.

The ages that Josephus has given to the four children of Agrippa I, at Agrippa’s death in 44 c.e., suggest that Josephus is giving these children a prophetic ‘make-over’. i.e. he is using them as players within a pseudo-history. Having them reflect, in some manner, past historical events deemed to be of significance for his reconstruction of Jewish history.

Agripppa II = 17 years old
Berenice = 16 years old
Marianme = 10 years old
Drusllia = 6 years old

Antiquities Book 19, ch.9

That adds up to 49 years. 7 x 7 years. A prophetic time frame in which Agrippa I and his children are being set within a pseudo-historical setting. i.e. the Josephan stories about them do not necessarily relate to historical facts. History plus pseudo-history. History plus a Josephan prophetic interpretation/ reconstruction of it. To separate the two we need historical evidence. The Herodian coins demonstrate that Agrippa I and Agrippa II were historical figures. The Josephan stories about them do not detract from that evidence. The stories only demonstrate that the Josephan writer is not just a historian but a prophetic historian.

Herod the Great: Made King in Rome in 40 b.c. Siege of Jerusalem in 37 b.c. Married to Doris.	Antonius Felix: Roman Procurator of Judea: 52 -58 c.e. Married to Drusilla of Mauretania; grandaughter (great granddaughter) of Cleopatra and Marc Antony.
Divorce of Doris	Divorce of Drusilla of Maurentania
Married Jewish/Hasmonean princess Mariamne; daughter of Alexander of Judaea; the eldest son of Aristobulus II.	Married Jewish princess, Drusilla, daughter of King Agrippa I
....yet had she all that can be said in the beauty of her body, and her majestic appearance. ..	While Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty....
When Herod's sister and mother perceived that he was in this temper with regard to Mariamne they thought they had now got an excellent opportunity to exercise their hatred against her and provoked Herod to wrath by telling him,..	...her sister Bernice's envy, for she was very ill treated by her on account of her beauty,
... the king's sister Salome, observing that he was more than ordinarily disturbed, sent in to the king his cup-bearer, who had been prepared ..., and bid him tell the king how Mariamne had persuaded him to give his assistance in preparing a love potion for him; Ant. Book 15. ch.7. .	....and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon one of his friends; a Jew he was, and by birth a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician,.....Ant. Book 20 ch.7
Mariamne I executed - also later her two sons.	Drusilla and her son die at Mount Vesuvius 79 c.e.
Herod the Great marries Mariamne II

stephan huller

Andrew,

As I mentioned in your last post, the fact that Felix is mentioned as having three wives IMO does not overcome the inherent difficulties of the Josephus story. The first again is that the Josephus story seems to be written by a Christian (Simon Magus, love philters or magic, and an interest in magic). The second that no one outside of Josephus knows anything about this Drusilla.

Maryhelena,

Unfortunately love is necessarily cliche. I mean, for a man at least, beauty, appearance, the envy of other women/women in the household are quite common. I don't know if this proves or even suggests borrowing. They say all love stories are a version of Romeo and Juliet.

Duke Leto

Deep Breaths.

Recite the litany against making an ass of yourself while arguing on the internet.

OK Mr. Huller, I have had the most basic correspondence with Robert M. Price and confirmed the legitimacy of the disputed review. I apologize for suggesting it was a forgery on your part.

I have reread both the Amazon review and the review of your preceding work on Price's website. I think you may be misunderstanding his opinion of you.

He's not using the standard I and most reviewers would prefer, where one evaluates a work based on the cogency of the argument and the rigorous presentation of all evidence for and against the author's case. He's recommending it because he finds the ideas interesting irrespective of whether or not they are accurate.

I'm taking a big risk putting words in Price's mouth here, but I would say he is giving your book a recommendation not on its scholarly value, but on its entertainment value. Stop and think about that.

My accusation that other 5-star reviews were canned is true and I'm not retracting it. See page 2 of your book's reviews. sclibra777, Shanti Girl and "terminator 2" (possibly a copyright infringement but I'll throw no stones on that count) all give your book five stars, are anonymous reviewers and never review anything again. They are obviously suborned.

The best case scenario for you is that your publisher had an editorial assistant hash them out for you without telling you they were doing it, and since Shanti Girl and terminator 2 appeared on the same day that's fairly likely for those two at least. Another possibility is that you encouraged friends to review it favorably and that accounts for the three I've mentioned and some of the other good reviews from people with genuine identities and/or other extant reviews. The most unflattering possibility is that you paid these people yourself, but since the other two are equally possible, I won't say you did so.

OK. I've spent the last day or so looking up the scholarship on Josephus, the alleged Drusillas and Felix.

In spite of the thread title where you say this discrepancy "proves" Josephus to be a 2nd Century Christian forgery, you keep refusing to explain WHY 2nd Century Christians would WANT to forge Josephus in whole or in part. If they forged the whole of Josephus doesn't it stand to reason that they'd include the full Gospel account?

You have brought up Josephus' Synergoi (not mentioned in the Wiki article). Googling "josephus synergoi" brings up a web posting by YOU as item #2, indicating to me that scholarship in general is not as interested in the question as you are. (Shaye Cohen's web published items on the accuracy of Josephus seems to call into question his account of Masada, something I was already aware of, not Josephus' Authorship in general.) Leaving that aside, I have found that it is suggested that the Synergoi, helpers or translators into Greek that Josephus used were largely responsible for the content of the last few books of the Antiquities, which include the particular passages you are disputing here. It is also very clear from the sources that this is just a theory.

So are you now saying that these passages are not only written by the Synergoi, but that the Synergoi were actually Christian forgers from the 2nd Century? At the start you said ALL of Josephus was forged, not just the parts sometimes attributed to the Synergoi. Don't hurt yourself moving the goalposts.

You seem to equate Josephus with Hegesippus. Price has apparently suggested that Hegesippus was the Christianized version of Josephus, rewritten to Christian tastes and no longer extant. You're suggesting that the individual known as Hegesippus was the real Josephus and made up the identity of the 1st century Romanizing Jew... And WHY would he do this?

Once again if the early Christians, calling them Catholic or even Orthodox is ludicrously anachronistic, wanted to forge a Jewish history that corroborated with Acts and the Gospels, couldn't they have made slightly more of an effort? The Jewish War does not contain any reference to formative Christianity, positive or negative and Antiquities contains only the very suspect Testamonium, the brother of Jesus bit and the corroborations with Acts and Luke. Why not include the passion narrative in full if you're going to go to the trouble of faking the whole damned thing?

Laying in only so much corroboration as will seem to lend credibility to the Josephus narrative but not the Gospels seems to be a very roundabout way of doing things, and if it's a subtle strategy then it ought to be noted that early Christians were not known for subtlety.

OK. On to the damned Drusillas.

First, you have to know that Tacitus' Drusilla of Mauretania is every bit as dubious as Drusilla the Herodian. She is ONLY attested in Tacitus.

There is a daughter of Juba II and Cleopatra Selene attested in an inscription but she is unnamed. Looking at the Wiki articles on Cleopatra Selene and her children, it should be obvious that nobody has the slightest idea when those children were born. Ptolemy of Mauretania is alternately dated as being born in 10-5 BCE or 1 BCE, with his sister, presumptively named Drusilla based on the Tacitus passage being dated between 5 BCE or 5 CE. Both dates are obviously pure guesswork. Some prefer a late date for Ptolemy because he is described as "boyish" by Tacitus circa 20-21 CE. There's also some speculation based on the iconography of the coinage. I think these dates are ludicrously late.

Selene was born in 40 BCE and purported to have been married off to Juba II in 26 BCE or 20 BCE. For Ptolemy to have been her first child in 10 BCE, there would have to have been 10 years of infertility or no marital relations between her and Juba. That goes up to 20 years without children if you accept the turn of the millennium date. Compare Selene's younger half sister Antonia Minor, who was married in 16 BCE to Nero Drusus and produced Germanicus almost immediately in 15 BCE.

Juba II is known to have remarried an Anatolian Princess in 6 CE, so unless he was a polygamist (which Juba I was), Selene was dead by that point. I think the balance of probability points to Ptolemy and his unnamed sister being born by 15 BCE at the latest and Selene dying shortly thereafter.

This would make the marriage of a Drusilla daughter of Cleopatra Selene II in 53 totally absurd. That would make a daughter of Ptolemy and a Great-Granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra the only option, although she might not be on her 1st marriage in this scenario herself depending on the age of Ptolemy at his marriage.

(One thing that is not considered is that Tacitus' Drusilla might be a daughter of Alexander Helios or Ptolemy Philadelphus, as everyone assumes they were "spared" by Augustus and conveniently never made it to adulthood. Neither is ever mentioned in history after Actium.)

Even if we accept Tacitus at face value and assume that Selene had a daughter named Drusilla as late as 5 CE (At age 45), there's still a problem as she would probably have been married off before she could marry Felix.

Felix can't have been born much later than 7 CE because he was supposedly freed by Antonia Minor, who died in 37 CE instead of Claudius, and you are supposed to take the name of your owner when you are freed. Apparently a law decreed that you could only become a full freedman if you stayed a slave until you were 30. (Josephus called him Claudius Felix instead of Antonius Felix, but since we're trying to prove Josephus was reliable he can't be used.)

Felix was supposedly younger than his brother Pallas, who is assumed to be some age between Antonia's son Claudius (10 BCE) and his niece Agrippina the Younger (16 CE). Pallas' birth is given by Wikipedia as circa 1 CE. Agrippina accepted Pallas as a lover, supposedly, and he was young enough to serve well into Nero's reign, so as low as 5 CE is not unreasonable. I'm actually inclined to explain the contradiction between Antonius and Claudius Felix in Josephus as the result of Felix being manumitted in Antonia Minor's will, with Claudius carrying out the actual manumission when he came of age, causing some confusion on the matter. This'd give Felix a date of around 7-10 CE.

At any rate, Felix is supposed to have married Drusilla of Mauritania in 53 CE. If this Drusilla was the daughter of Selene and not he granddaughter as Tacitus states, she'd have been 48 years old at a minimum, a pretty ridiculous age for a first marriage in the Roman world. If she were a widow, why would she want to remarry? Felix can't have been much older than 48, although probably can't have been much younger than 45. If he's older, Pallas is older and the further we push them both back the more unlikely it is for both to be alive by 63 CE. Pallas is said to have been the slave Antonia tasked with informing Tiberius of the murder of Drusus Julius Caesar by her daughter Livilla in 31 CE, which would mean he can't have been freed until then.

Even if you accept Claudius as an idiotic buffoon, rewarding Felix by marrying him to an older, possibly much older, woman is a bit odd.

Bottom line? If you accept Tacitus' description of Ptolemy of Mauritania's actions in the first war against Tacfarinas as "boyish" as referring to his actions rather than his age, then one has to conclude he was born between 18-15 BCE and not 1 BCE as Wikipedia claims, since a 20 year run of infertility or straight stillbirths before 2 children who survived to adulthood were born seems highly unlikely, and that his sister did not survive long enough to have descendants, nor did Cleopatra Selene herself survive much beyond about 15 BCE unless disease or other accident rendered her infertile. The problems this scenario raises are why Juba II would have remained a bachelor so long after Selene's death and why Ptolemy would name his daughter Drusilla before Julia Drusilla's deification, since it is unlikely he would have his first and only attested child in 38 CE so far into middle age. If she was born around the accession of Tiberius, naming the child after Tiberius's mother Livia Drusilla. If she was born after the death of Germanicus but before the murder of Drusus Julius Caesar than she might have been named for Drusus.

So if there were a daughter of Juba II and Cleopatra Selene she'd have been pushing 70 by 53 CE, when Claudius is supposed to have married her to Felix. Although in principle the marriage could have been made as early as 40 CE. It occurs to me that the date of 53 CE is chosen as the time a Drusilla daughter of Ptolemy of Mauritania born in 38 CE and named in honor of Julia Drusilla would have been old enough to marry during the reign of Claudius. Even in that case she'd have been in her late 50s. A Drusilla daughter of Ptolemy born around 20 CE during her father's late 30s and married to Felix between 40 and 45 CE seems quite plausible, especially since Juba II would have been 30 at his marriage if he married in 20 CE and Ptolemy may also have chosen to marry late.

So if Felix married a Drusilla of Mauritania it must have been a Great-Granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra and Tacitus must simply have been mistaken on that point. If he was mistaken on that point it is not impossible that he boggled the ancestry of the Drusilla in question entirely, that he meant the Herodian Drusilla and that this woman was the ONLY wife of Felix.

Because Suetonius, who is much less reliable than Tacitus, certainly got it wrong when he says Felix married three queens. Drusilla of Mauritania and Drusilla the daughter of Herod Agrippa I would obviously have both been royal, and Felix's unknown third wife (presumably from after Nero exiled him) may have been of royal blood, but Drusilla the Herodian was a princess, not a queen, although she was briefly married to the king of Emesea. Drusilla of Mauritania was also never allowed to mount the throne of her father and would have simply been a princess too. Since the passage about Felix's wives occurs in a section that is a laundry list of ridiculous excesses Claudius' freedman got up to, if he exaggerated that the women were queens he could just have easily exaggerated their number.

So much for Drusilla of Mauritania.

Here's the exact passage from Josephus' Antiquities (I use a translation from some BS Christian website called sacred-texts.com, but the body seems legit if the footnotes are idiotic and I don't feel like doing any extra digging.):

Now let me tell you what that does NOT say. It identifies the pandering character as Simon a "Cypriot Jew" who "pretended to be a magician". It does NOT identify him with Simon Magus of Acts. Simon Magus is supposed to have been a Samaritan, not a Jew from Cyprus. If Simon Magus were this character in Josephus, it's hard to see how he and Felix would have been friends since Simon Magus was a religious troublemaker and Felix was a Roman governor tasked with suppressing religious trouble. It also doesn't say Jack Shit about a love potion, Simon is represented as using persuasion. Drusilla would have plenty of reason to dump Azizus in favor of Felix, since Felix would have had a lot more wealth and power in his own right and as Pallas' brother.

If you're going to make up a daughter of Herod Agrippa I to corroborate Acts why would you include her in a gratuitous passage about the death of Herod Agrippa I?

Ahem. Presumably Mariamne and Drusilla were present in the house at that time, and it's a little bizarre to do indecent things to the statues of children even by Greek standards, so it's pretty reasonable to assume as Robert Graves did that this a not very sanitized account of the gang rape of two pre-pubescent girls, which is also a little extreme even by Greco-Roman standards.

Why fabricate this story if you're a 2nd century Christian forger? Making up Herodian Drusilla to corroborate Acts vaguely makes sense, but what theological purpose is served by this monstrosity? Early Christians were out to demonize Jews not Gentiles as far as my understanding goes, they were actually getting converts from the latter group.

For that matter why give Drusilla an age and birth year that would suggest she was named in honor of Julia Drusilla after her deification? That's a little too clever. Why fabricate that she was at first engaged to the King of Commagene and then married the King of Emesea? Why give her a named child and indicate that both died at Pompeii? Since her sister Mariamne is only attested in these passages, why make up her at all, with reference to her child and marriage?

Neither forgers nor church fathers are known for their intelligence. If they were going to insert this story about Drusilla to corroborate Acts, why didn't they do the obvious additional work of adding the trial of Paul to their fabricated account as well?

The purpose of this thread is supposed to be you showing that ALL of Josephus is a 2nd century forgery based solely on this one passage that you think is silly. You also seem to be misrepresenting what the passage actually says assuming there isn't a variant version of Josephus that is considered more reliable than the translation I just found.

Lastly, what is with the slurs about my being a "native American"? What in my profile indicates that? I'm assuming you mean native of the United States since no one educated in the US uses Native American to mean anything other than someone descended from the indigenous North American tribes. For all you know I might be Canadian or Mexican and living in Philadelphia, or Puerto Rican or West African or Israeli. Who do you think you are to make assumptions about my education?

Where are you from that your education is so shockingly superior that you can look down on mere drooling Yankees and do you seriously expect me to believe I won't find just as many maleducated morons polluting the gene pool there? Why do you condescend to live in Seattle if you find the American milieu to be such a drag on your intellectual life?

All in all, I think it's fair to say that your conclusions are unjustified, your scholarly methodology extremely unsound, your personality tarnished by extreme arrogance and your honesty extremely suspect.

But then I am just a stupid American cretin, incapable of complex though or deference to my foreign overlords.

maryhelena

Wow - Duke Leto - you have been busy!
Lots to consider there re Drusilla - will come back to your post later......

stephan huller

Hey Duke Leotards, if you are trying to suggest that Tacitus is a questionable historical source but Josephus is sound I am at a loss for words. I am not going to get into a debate about my relationship with Bob. I didn't ask him to post a review of the Good Samaritan. He didn't even tell me that he had posted that review. I won't ask you to contact any of the other references I mentioned either because they too decided to credit me with insight because they are obviously bad judges of character. I have this effect on scholars - like Simon Magus in Josephus. Only you can see the truth about me.

Yes to be certain there is no justification for suggesting that Josephus was written in the second century. Except what our earliest reference to Josephus tells us. But why bother listen to the past. We live in a culture where now is wow. Surely Clement couldn't be right. No, Josephus the Aramaic speaking Jew really wrote a work based on Dionysius's Roman Antiquities. Sure, no problem with that.

In any event, since black is white and white is black, why don't you explain I am so unjustified to suggest that Josephus was written in the second century when there is this:

Of course I don't understand your aggression but then again it must be a cultural thing. I wasn't raised on the A Team and a shoot first ask questions later approach to life. If Clement is our earliest witness to Josephus and he says that his history of the Jews was written in the second century, please muster all your 'are you as smart as a third grader' smarts and explain why this should be ignored.

If you can explain away the reference in Clement of Alexandria as not indicating that the writings of Josephus were compiled in 147 CE I will agree to everything you say about the unsoundness of my methods. I bet you can't even muster an argument. Prove me wrong. Show me the greatness of your wonderful education.

maryhelena

Post #71 above.

[T2]Stephan, that there were 77 years from the second year of Vespasian, 70 c.e. to the 10th year of Antoninus (147 c.e.)is clearly simple mathematics. That someone decides that these 77 years are somehow relevant - well, Daniel 9 does come to mind.....or at least someone has an interest in the number 7.....;-) But to use this to argue that Antiquities was written later than its usual dating of 94 c.e. is just a futile exercise.

Questioning Josephus has to be done re his Herodian 'history' reconstructions. But when you don't have any mention in the writing of Josephus about 77 years from the second year of Vespasian to the 10th year of Antoninus - this sort of attempt to discredit the Josephan writer as having written in the first century is baseless. It is something that one would only do if one had some motive for doing so. In your case the questioning of the whole Josephan history of Agrippa I and Agrippa II. i.e. you only want one King Agrippa, the real Messiah.[/T2]

stephan huller

I don't see how this answers the question. Clement says that Flavius Josephus in his History of the Jews developed the following chronology:

This is the way every scholar who has ever commented on this passage in Clement has read the reference. There is no doubt about this. The cop out that follows is that this is another Flavius Josephus who wrote another history of the Jews which presumably mentions another Drusilla the wife of Felix - you see where I am going with this. This has nothing to do with Agrippa. This has to do with whether Acts and Josephus are reliable historical sources.

maryhelena

Acts and Josephus are not reliable historical sources - full stop. One does not have to reference Clement to come to that conclusion....:huh:

Actually, after referencing Josephus, Clement uses the word "then". I don't know Greek so can't argue re what the Greek means here. However, the English word "then" can be read, in that context, as Clement's own addition to what he had found in Josephus re the other dating. i.e. the 77 years are not from Josephus but from Clement or from some other source. It is a futile exercise to suggest that these 77 years have come from the Josephan writer, writing in the first century.