Coins and Gospels

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

Out of curiosity, what would Babylon mean in 1 Peter if not Rome? Do you think it means the actual Babylon?

First, I think the epistle was not written by Peter, and it was composed well after 70 CE (I prefer from 75 to 80 CE).
- If the author wanted the readers to understand "Babylon" by being Rome, that means that his audience did not think (or did not accept the rumors about) Peter died under Nero or during the war of 66-70 CE (Rome could only be thought as Babylon not sooner than after 70 CE)
- If the author wanted the readers to understand "Babylon" as being Babylon, that means that the letter could be believed to be written at any times, when Peter was still alive.

I would opt with my first option as for what the author wanted his audience to interpret "Babylon". But if anyone believed Peter was already dead for some time, then they would fall back on "Babylon" as being really Babylon.

Also, how do you interpret (and to what time period do you date) Ascension of Isaiah 4.2-3?

This passage from the Ascension of Isaiah would seem to find a parallel in the Rainer fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter (text and translation from M. R. James):

Yes there is a parallel. And yes, there is a reference of Nero having Peter arrested (likely to be killed). The main villain here is Beliar, first incarnated as Nero and next (from 4.4?) as a bad ruler still to come. But the chapter is probably the result of several interpolations. However because it borrowed from Revelation, part of that chapter, the mini apocalypse, was written after this later book was known, probably much later by Christians.

Cordially, Bernard

[Peter Kirby]

- If the author wanted the readers to understand "Babylon" by being Rome, that means that his audience did not think (or did not accept the rumors about) Peter died under Nero or during the war of 66-70 CE (Rome could only be thought as Babylon not sooner than after 70 CE)

I'm not just trying to pick your nits here, but you're assuming more than the fact/idea that "Rome could only be thought as Babylon not sooner than after 70 CE."

You're assuming that the audience and/or author knew that fact was a fact.

Now maybe that is connected to your assumption about the dating of 1 Peter, but it is still forms an additional part of the argument.

If it is based on your dating of 1 Peter, perhaps your argument is reversible, if someone thought the identification was the more solid point and that your dating of 1 Peter was the less.

Final little thing I'd like to ponder: what if it were written by Peter (yeah, that Peter) sometime during the war, ca. AD 66-73? Is that possible? What truly does tell against it?

Now I usually opt to put both Revelation and 1 Peter around the time of Domitian, to coincide with the hint of a whisper regarding persecution of Christians in Asia Minor at this time, among other things, but that doesn't mean I stop pondering.

If 1 Peter were written in the 90s AD, is it possible that the etymological history of the usage of "Babylon" for Rome, and whether it was or was not an anachronism, could have been lost to the author? Take into account that the author may be in his 20s or 30s.

Them's the nits this morning...

[spin]

Geez, lots of posts while I was off doing things.

The Usfiyeh hoard of the mid-first century AD contains 160 Roman denarii of Augustus. But the book also indicates that paying the half-shekel temple tax actually required the use of Roman denarii for a surcharge. (I'm not sure I follow the argument, I must say, but I'm on the run). Similar proportions of coin finds (including denarii) are found at Qumran.

Dating and location are essential factors. Usifiyeh, by its nature, implies the collection of and inability to pay the temple tax. It is certainly after the Jewish War started. It's location is between the Roman administrative seat for Judea at Caesarea and the Roman colonia at Akka (Ptolemais). Most telling about the hoard is that it contained ~3400 shekels and 1000 half-shekels. That means the Denarii were 3.5% of the full hoard, ie such a small number that 1) understanding their significance in the hoard isn't likely and 2) there significance for us is so negligible that it's strange that it was brought up. They indicate just how scarce denarii were, certainly not what you would expect from a story about casually calling for a denarius used in paying a tax. Looking at the day-to-day finds from Qumran (650+), ie excluding the coin hoard from L.120, not a single Roman coin was found there from before the Jewish War.[R.D. Leonard, Numismatic Evidence for the Dating of Qumran, QC v.7 3/4 (1997), 230] (And let's not have any desperate pleas to a sect living at Qumran who would have avoided Roman coins, when the site was full of signs of purity defiling elements.)

Kenneth Lonnqvist writes: "As far as our surveys of archaeological reports are accurate, then, Roman denarii do not appear as common archaeological site finds or hoards in Syria, Judaea, the Decapolis or Jordan prior to the early second century A.D., despite decades of intensive archaeological excavations." Lonnqvist also cites D.T. Ariel as having "already noted the complete absence of Roman coin hoards in Jerusalem before A.D. 70". Note that Lonnqvist is writing of Judea and the Decapolis. In another place Lonnqvist argues that the Qumran hoard is extremely late.[New Perspectives on the Roman Coinage on the Eastern Limes in the Late Republican and Roman Imperial Periods. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Saarbrücken 2009, 222-227]

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

This forum has really blossomed ever since Ben ...

We all love Ben, me too, and we are happy that Grandmaster spin is back

*Everyone loves the happy times*

[StephenGoranson]

The 2009 book cited by spin ("New Perspectives on the Roman Coinage....") proposed that the Qumran silver hoard might have been deposited as late as the third century.

This proposal contradicts the findings of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman. The proposal also contradicts the findings of Robert Donceel. (These four knew how to recognize Roman coins.)

Donceel wrote--to paraphrase his Revue Biblique 99 (1992) 559-60 n.10)--that he was surprised to find in the Amman museum other [non-Qumran hoard] coins, notably denarius coins of Trajan, slipped in with the Qumran coins, but that with Henri Seyrig's autograph coin list (though lacking photos) one can eliminate the adventitious [added from outside, intrusive] coins.

To confirm that what Donceel wrote in 1992 supports the coin dating of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman compare what Donceel wrote on the silver coin hoard in the 1997 Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, "Qumran," page 393:
"...the latest date is 118 of the Tyrene era, that is, 9/8 BCE. The hoard, in three different pots, must have been hidden between then and 1 BCE/1 CE."

[Ben C. Smith]

Right. This is a totally different animal than your (accurate, I think) "right side, wrong side" chart above. The phrase ὅ ἐστιν points to a different kind of phenomenon elsewhere in the gospel, one that I pointed out above: the translation of terms from one language into another (several times from Aramaic/Hebrew into Greek, twice from Greek into Latin). That is the data set that has to be addressed first.

In a post where I try to explain what I mean with "neutral remark"? And where I hope to show that an argument should not be build

- on just 4 words

with blending out

- the context of the gospel and
- the explicit theme of the pericope ?

Mmh ...

You are right; I momentarily lost the context of our exchange. Thank you for explaining what you meant by "neutral remark"; I think I understand you better now. Sorry for the confusion.

[Ben C. Smith]

- If the author wanted the readers to understand "Babylon" by being Rome, that means that his audience did not think (or did not accept the rumors about) Peter died under Nero or during the war of 66-70 CE (Rome could only be thought as Babylon not sooner than after 70 CE)

I'm not just trying to pick your nits here, but you're assuming more than the fact/idea that "Rome could only be thought as Babylon not sooner than after 70 CE."

You're assuming that the audience and/or author knew that fact was a fact.

Now maybe that is connected to your assumption about the dating of 1 Peter, but it is still forms an additional part of the argument.

If it is based on your dating of 1 Peter, perhaps your argument is reversible, if someone thought the identification was the more solid point and that your dating of 1 Peter was the less.

....

If 1 Peter were written in the 90s AD, is it possible that the etymological history of the usage of "Babylon" for Rome, and whether it was or was not an anachronism, could have been lost to the author? Take into account that the author may be in his 20s or 30s.

This hits the nail on the head. Just because (if it truly be so) Babylon cannot be a cipher for Rome until 70 does not mean that a pseudepigraphical epistle cannot attribute that cipher to an imagined Petrine setting before 70. In fact, to my mind, it may not even matter if the actual author knows the origin of the cipher, since (s)he may simply be crediting Peter with a prescience about Rome that parallels the prescience that 2 Peter 1.12-15 gives Peter about his own impending death. And, if the actual author does not know its origin, then all bets are off.

Final little thing I'd like to ponder: what if it were written by Peter (yeah, that Peter) sometime during the war, ca. AD 66-73? Is that possible? What truly does tell against it?

(What would that Peter mean by Babylon, then, in your best estimation?)

Ben.

[Roger Pearse]

The 2009 book cited by spin ("New Perspectives on the Roman Coinage....") proposed that the Qumran silver hoard might have been deposited as late as the third century.

This proposal contradicts the findings of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman. The proposal also contradicts the findings of Robert Donceel. (These four knew how to recognize Roman coins.)

Donceel wrote--to paraphrase his Revue Biblique 99 (1992) 559-60 n.10)--that he was surprised to find in the Amman museum other [non-Qumran hoard] coins, notably denarius coins of Trajan, slipped in with the Qumran coins, but that with Henri Seyrig's autograph coin list (though lacking photos) one can eliminate the adventitious [added from outside, intrusive] coins.

To confirm that what Donceel wrote in 1992 supports the coin dating of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman compare what Donceel wrote on the silver coin hoard in the 1997 Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, "Qumran," page 393:
"...the latest date is 118 of the Tyrene era, that is, 9/8 BCE. The hoard, in three different pots, must have been hidden between then and 1 BCE/1 CE."

Thank you very much for this. I'm having trouble following the thread, and know nothing about numismatics anyway.

[spin]

The 2009 book cited by spin ("New Perspectives on the Roman Coinage....") proposed that the Qumran silver hoard might have been deposited as late as the third century.

This proposal contradicts the findings of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman. The proposal also contradicts the findings of Robert Donceel. (These four knew how to recognize Roman coins.)

We must be careful when citing older scholarship in an effort to negate more recent work. Specialist knowledge often increases over time. We frequently find people still citing C.H. Roberts for his dating of P.52, though many voices have cautioned against such optimistic dating as access to more Greek manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus and Tebtunis are noted for their relevance to the hand seen in P.52. Various recent scholars have extended the range of possible production of P.52 to the end of the second and even into the third century. The new evidence must be considered.

Lonnqvist was the scholar responsible for the close examination of two of the three coin hoards in 2007. A countermark was noted on one of the tetradrachmas originally minted 12/1 BCE. The countermark is newly noticed evidence and it points to a Roman military use of the coin on it being countermarked in 52/53 CE.[New Perspectives…, 254f] This date then marks the earliest possible deposit of the hoard (assuming all three jars were in reality one deposit and therefore one hoard—and there is a consistency across the three). The problem arises as to when a coin with a Roman military countermark from 52/53 CE could have been deposited at Qumran in jars that don't reflected either Qumran ware or even Judean forms and why.

Personally, I'm not too interested in or committed to his third century dating, though it makes reasonable sense if you feel like reading it. My interest is in the availability of denarii in Palestine earlier in the first century. In another paper Lonnqvist concludes "The inspection of the Syro-Palestinian hoarding evidence from the first century B.C. to the first century A.D. is also unequivocal in showing that no Roman denarii appear in any of the hoards [in Judea and the Decapolis] prior to the 60s A.D." ["The Date of Introduction of Denarii to Roman Judaea and the Decapolis Region", ARAM, 23 (2011) 307-318]

Donceel wrote--to paraphrase his Revue Biblique 99 (1992) 559-60 n.10)--that he was surprised to find in the Amman museum other [non-Qumran hoard] coins, notably denarius coins of Trajan, slipped in with the Qumran coins, but that with Henri Seyrig's autograph coin list (though lacking photos) one can eliminate the adventitious [added from outside, intrusive] coins.

To confirm that what Donceel wrote in 1992 supports the coin dating of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman compare what Donceel wrote on the silver coin hoard in the 1997 Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, "Qumran," page 393:
"...the latest date is 118 of the Tyrene era, that is, 9/8 BCE. The hoard, in three different pots, must have been hidden between then and 1 BCE/1 CE."

[StephenGoranson]

The purpose of my Jan 9 note was to pass along information: reason to question whether some coins reported as if from Qumran were actually not from Qumran.