An alternate chronology for the life of Jesus Christ.

[Ben C. Smith]

This other article by Chapman is related and intersting
Papias on the Age of our Lord

Thanks, Andrew.

[Secret Alias]

Yes fascinating stuff

[Secret Alias]

So Irenaeus expanded Jesus's life from Papias's 35 to 49 according to Chapman. Cool.
If Papias's life was the same understanding as Hegesippus then the succession list has to add 14 years too or ...

it was discovered that since Claudius's reign was also 14 years removing it (Claudius's reign) allowed for the original system to stay intact with Jesus being 49 when crucified. Why did Irenaeus go to such lengths to jig the system? I think it had something to do with the various attempts to the prophesy of Daniel. For instance Against the Jews does a remarkable thing by taking the 'seven sevens' at the beginning of Daniel and ascribing it to the end of the 70 sevens:

Observe we, therefore, the limit,--how, in truth, he predicts that there are to be lxx hebdomads, within which if they receive Him, "it shall be built into height and entrenchment, and the times shall be renewed." [8] But God, foreseeing what was to be--that they will not merely not receive Him, but will both persecute and deliver Him to death--both recapitulated, and said, that in lx and ii and an half of an hebdomad He is born, and an holy one of holy ones is anointed; but that when vii hebdomads and an half were fulfilling, He had to suffer, and the holy city had to be exterminated after one and an half hebdomad--whereby namely, the seven and an half hebdomads have been completed. For he says thus: "And the city and the holy place to be exterminated together with the leader who is to come; and they shall be cut short as in a deluge; and he shall destroy the pinnacle unto ruin."109 [9] Whence, therefore, do we show that the Christ came within the lxii and an half hebdomads? We shall count, moreover, from the first year of Darius, as at this particular time is shown to Daniel this particular vision; for he says, "And understand and conjecture that at the completion of thy word110 I make thee these answers." Whence we are bound to compute from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision.

The text makes no sense now. Jesus is understood to have been born forty-nine plus 3 1/2 years before 70 CE. Go back 3 1/2 years before 70 CE and ... It makes no sense. But it has something to with reconciling Papias/Hegesippus's system with another system based on Daniel 9 (see below).

[Secret Alias]

And remember also that the various traditions (Acts of Pilate) which ascribed Jesus to have been crucified in 21 CE necessarily leave 7 x 7 (= 49) between his death and the destruction of Jerusalem. I think they were all playing around with Daniel chapter 9. Or rather, Irenaeus as "peacemaker" was reconciling one group which said Jesus was 35 with another group that said that Jesus was the unction (Aquila) crucified 49 years before the destruction

[Secret Alias]

I also wonder whether the explicit reference to 'fourteen years' in Galatians is yet another (orthodox) chronology fix - viz "Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem ..." The idea being that there were two visits fourteen years apart because the original chronology was off by fourteen years because of Irenaeus adding fourteen years to Jesus's life. Let's suppose that there was a historical reference to Paul visiting the 'Jerusalem Church.' Would the Marcionites - accepting this premise (which isn't necessarily true to begin with) - have accepted TWO visits to the same group? Not likely. It is difficult to reconcile a 'blitzkrieg' ministry for Jesus (i.e. the understanding of the one year ministry in the 'year of favor' i.e. Clement, Origen and others) with a prolonged activity for Paul and Peter. Thirty years of 'spreading the word' takes away from the 'world aflame with the message' narrative.

[JoeWallack]

Also, that quotation from Daniel Schwartz mentions the dating of the crucifixion in the Acts of Pilate: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ilate.html. Another reference to Claudius! I think this issue of Claudius being named as the emperor was handled by many past scholars by noting that the full name of Tiberius is Tiberius Claudius Nero. Not sure how convincing that explanation might be, though, especially given a Johannine time line in which Jesus was at least in his forties when he was crucified, which would agree with Claudius being emperor at the time.
Ben.

JW:
Thanks for the Thread Ben. Reminds me of my own Award winning Thread:

According To "John" About How Old Was Jesus When He Died?

I'm especially interested here in sources that give direct dating evidence which combines Pilate's supposed crucifixion with the Emperor at the time. None of the Gospels explicitly have it. The likely original story, GMark, does not name the Emperor at the time. Not a bad idea for what I'm guessing was a major author in Rome. As subsequent Gospels try to get more historical sounding, the closest you can get to a combination of Pilate/Crucifixion/Emperor is orthodox GLuke:

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea

As my Thread above indicates, orthodox GJohn looks like a counter to Gnostics who argued that Jesus dropped down from Heaven for a relatively quick soJourhn and than returned. Irenaeus of Lyons (yes, "Lyons"), orthodox representative of his time, appears to give us the first explicit (historically sounding) combination:

For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar, came together and condemned Him to be crucified.

I don't think there is any contradictory Gospel/Patristic statement either before Irenaeus or after and up to Eusebius with the same explicit combination of Pilate and Emperor at the time.

My question to you Ben is what is the earliest such Patristic combination contradiction to Irenaeus that you have seen?

I applaud this type of effort to inventory evidence but I would suggest that you now summarize all sources and key statements so it will be easy for potential contributions here to see if they would be adding something new.


Joseph

The New Porphyry Blog

[Ben C. Smith]

My question to you Ben is what is the earliest such Patristic combination contradiction to Irenaeus that you have seen?

Well, the Epistula Apostolorum does not name the emperor, but it does name Archalaus and Pilate together:

For this reason we have not delayed in writing to you about the witness of Our Saviour Christ, the things which he did, we following him and still in the thoughts and deeds which we witnessed about him, that he is the Lord who was was crucified by Pontius Pilate and Archelaus between the pair of thieves....

You already mentioned Luke 3.1.

So the earliest father of which I am aware with a true emperor/governor combination specifically for the crucifixion that contradicts Irenaeus is Justin Martyr in 1 Apology 13:

Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar.

I applaud this type of effort to inventory evidence but I would suggest that you now summarize all sources and key statements so it will be easy for potential contributions here to see if they would be adding something new.

This is a good point, and of course my entitling of that thread as alternate times and places does send tend to limit the search only to those texts which differ from what eventually became the orthodox chronology (Tiberius/Pilate).

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

If we wanted to start an 'earliest chronologies' about Jesus there are three early traditions as far as I can remember:

1. crucified in 21 CE (Acts of Pilate) as cited by Eusebius. This reference explains why Jesus is reading (Luke 4) or referencing (Clement Stromata 1) the idea of the 'year of favor' (= Jubilee) which 21 and 70 CE were almost certainly.
2. born during the reign of Herod the Tetrarch. This is not only the system of Papias, and likely Hegesippus but also the story history cited by Celsus - https://books.google.com/books?id=wsKLI ... us&f=false
3. Irenaeus's reconciliation of (1) and (2) = Jesus was 49 when crucified under Claudius. I am not sure when Jesus would have born under this scheme. Presumably Herod the Great I would think.
4. Clement of Alexandria's uncertainty about 'the fifteenth of Tiberius.' Apparently the heretics (Basildeans and undoubtedly the Marcionites) did not have 'the fifteenth of Tiberius' as the beginning of the gospel but 'the fifteenth of Tybi'

They of Basilides (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) celebrate the day of His Baptism by a preliminary night-service of [Scripture] readings (προδιανυκτερεύοντες ἀναγνώσεσι); and they say that the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' (Luk_3:1) is (or means) the fifteenth day of the [Egyptian] month Tybi while some [make the day] the eleventh of the same month as Henry Wace and William Coleman Piercy note in their Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century:

Οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Βασιλείδου καὶ τοῦ βαπτίσματος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν ἑορτάζουσι προδιανυκτερεύοντες <ἐν> ἀναγνώσεσι. φασὶ δὲ εἶναι τὸ πεντεκαιδέκατον ἔτος Τιβερίου Καίσαρος τὴν πεντεκαιδεκάτην τοῦ Τυβὶ μηνός, τινὲς δὲ αὖ τὴν ἑνδεκάτην τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνός. τό τε πάθος αὐτοῦ ἀκριβολογούμενοι φέρουσιν οἳ μέν τινες τῷ ἑκκαιδεκάτω ἔτει Τιβερίου Καίσαρος Φαμενὼθ κεʹ, οἳ δὲ Φαρμουθὶ κε [1.21.146.1 - 3]

And here is the contentious sentence:

φασὶ δὲ εἶναι τὸ πεντεκαιδέκατον ἔτος Τιβερίου Καίσαρος τὴν πεντεκαιδεκάτην τοῦ Τυβὶ μηνός, τινὲς δὲ αὖ τὴν ἑνδεκάτην τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνός
they say that the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' the fifteenth day of the month Tybi while some the eleventh of the same month

My guess again would be that the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius' replaced the fifteenth of Tybi and the heretics identified the year as the 21 CE. But that is mere speculation again.

[Secret Alias]

And for those who are interested, the earliest Christian interpretation of the 'seventy weeks' interpretation can only be solved with an acknowledgement that Darius II must have been the starting point. If Darius II began his reign in 423 it at least has the potential to arrive - 490 days later - at the destruction of the temple. As we know there was a Christian group that assumed a 21 CE crucifixion date (Acts of Pilate) and given that we see Against the Jews take the seventy weeks and places it (out of its natural order in Daniel) near the end it seems obvious how the Christian group which used the 21 CE crucifixion applied Daniel:

1. 49 weeks counted back from 70 CE to the crucifixion (21 CE). Both were likely jubilee years.
2. 'the week' counted back from the crucifixion to the beginning of Tiberius's reign (because Eusebius explicitly says that it was the 'seventh year of Tiberius')
3. the rest of the 62 weeks count back to the start (perceived or not) of Darius II.