The Biggest Lie in the Study of Earliest Christianity

[andrewcriddle]

I'm not sure what to make of this but according to Abu l'Fath the persecution by Commodus occurred when 'Aqbun was high priest.
However 'Aqbun supposedly was still high priest after Ardashir became Persian ruler (224 CE) and supposedly sent delegates to Ardashir. It is prima-facie unlikely that a high priest would overlap both Commodus (killed in 192) and Ardashir (killed the previous ruler 224). If the figure of 23 years for the high priesthood of 'Aqbun given by Abu l'Fath is approximately correct then it would be impossible.

IMVHO the overlap between 'Aqbun and Ardashir is very plausible hence I doubt if 'Aqbun was persecuted by Commodus.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

There are problems with the Chronicle. For instance Dositheus is introduced twice in the narrative at different chronological points. But again this underscores what Abu'l Fath himself says - he had real sources but doesn't always know where to put them. There were many high priests with the same name. My teacher and friend I R M Boid of Monash has argued convincingly that one of the mistakes made in the chronology have to do with two high priests named Amram a common name. As it stands now Baba is dated to the turn of the fourth century and Marqe after him. But very few people are happy with that. Stenhouse dates Marqe to the early third century (from what I remember). I will dig up some of Boid's arguments for mistakes in the chronology. But the explicit reference to Commodus and his relationship with Galen is hard to overcome.

[Secret Alias]

Here is a summary of his work I posted in the old forum. Haven't talked to Boid in over a year. Gives me an excuse to ring him:

All of the existing mss. of the Tulida have serious omissions of names of High Priests in the centuries between the wars of the Jews against the Romans and the coming of Muhammad. Look at the list in Abul-Fataḥ. His list is complete. Try adding up the length of years of each High Priest in the Tulida and this becomes obvious. If you add all the High Priests from the death of Alexander in 323 BC (just before the death of the High Priest Azqayya) till the surrender of Palestine to the Islamic forces in 625 AD the number of years listed in the Tulida is not enough.

If you add the years from the Jewish wars against Rome up to Muhammad, you see that is where names have been lost. Adding the years up from Alexander or Hadrian gives a date of about 450 AD for Muhammad! Someone has seen this, so they have counted backwards from Muhammad. This puts the start of the period of Baba Rabba in about 320 AD. If you keep counting backwards you see it puts Jesus in about 200 AD!

This confusion must have occurred very early. Although Abul-Fataḥ has a complete list of names, he still had to put events into two (sometimes three) sets of narrative. Dositheos appears twice [Actually thrice. Look carefully at the long section on Dositheos and notice how he is first mentioned as some unknown person fleeing from Judaea, then he is suddenly the son of the High Priest].

[This is irrelevant but it needs to be known. The name of the woman at whose house Dositheos stayed, Amanto, is Greek. The suffix [-o] is a femiminine diminutive suffix in Greek. The name is probably short for adamantia or adamantina meaning diamondlike, translating the Hebrew yahalom. This is irrelevant too. Has Benny noticed that his computer’s Hebrew spell-checker always changes the surname of Ingrid Hjelm from HYLM to YHLM meaning diamond?]

After Dositheos three times there are the categories of Dositheans, but with Jesus and Philo in between. So he goes forward from the sects of the Dositheans then Jesus, Philo of Alexandria etc. to Commodus and then briefly mentions Dositheos A FOURTH TIME and then the notable deed of Garmon. Then he stops his narrative and gives a list of High Priests up to that point. Then he goes back in time and starts again with Jesus etc. then various events up to Muhammad.

Approximate correct dates are these: (a) End of the time of Baba Rabba (or more exactly the start of his captivity) 180 AD. This was when the policies of Commodus took effect in Syria-Palestine. Adding years puts Garmon (Germanos) in about 202 AD. This must have been the same Germanos that was at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

There is no direct historical evidence for the date of Marqe. Tulida 9a, p. 90 in Florentin’s edition. “and the Priest with him was ‘Amram ban Sârad. This ‘Amram was T.ut.e the father of Marqe the originator [or creator] of wisdom, may his spirit be at rest, Amen”. The note in the Tulida is correct but in the wrong place. If Marqe and his son Ninna had lived in the time of Baba Rabba, then there would have been a lot of information about them. The fact is that all knowledge on this subject has been lost. My personal opinion is that the note is correct in saying T.ut.e was called ‘Amram. I think this is in fact ‘Amram Dare. [The reason for saying this is that the name Marqe is a substitute for Mushi. ‘ Amram for his father is conventional. Amram is Moses’s father. It is like the name of the author of the book on inheritance Abu Ish.âq Ibrahim. The epithet Dare would then mean elder in relation to Marqe]. But I see no evidence for putting them in the time of Baba Rabba. As said, the lists of High Priests in the Tulida is incomplete. Also, the Aramaic used by Marqe is very early. This is aside from the mistake of putting Baba 170 years too late. A date of Marqe in about 320 AD is just impossible. The Durran might perhaps be from the time of Baba. I say this because several of the hymns speak of repentance for the errors of the very recent past. [See H. G. Kippenberg, article Ein Gebetbuch für den samaritanischen Synagogengottesdienst aus dem 2. Jh. N. Chr.]. If Marqe and ‘Amram and Ninna are before this, then the latest possible date must be before 140 AD. An earlier date is possible.

I agree that Baba Rabba was held in custody by the Romans, but it was not in Constantinople. I know Constantinople is mentioned, but that is an adjustment of the name of the place to its later name. If I say the grave of Joseph is near Nablus (instead of Shechem), I don’t mean Joseph lived after the coming of Islam! As for the stupid stupid stupid stories about the tricks played by Baba on the forces of Constantinople, how he tricked them into thinking the dead were fighting for him, and all the rest, I agree with Abul-Fataḥ, who said he only mentioned them so no-one would think he did not know about them.

The dates in the Arabic book the Comprehensive History At-Târîkh ash-Shâmil by Finaas ban Yeṣaaq or Khaḍir bin Isḥâq are not tradition. They are modern new calculations. This book by Finaas is wonderful. It is indispensable. I use it constantly. BUT the author and his associates tried to do what could not be done with the information available at the time. As an eample, his list of names and periods of the Kings of the Time of Favour is mostly taken from the Jewish Book of Judges. His date for the birth of Samson (Shamshom) is a guess. In the same way, his list of High Priests follows the Tulida, without noticing that the text is incomplete. Thus his chronology is wrong. [Chronicle Adler, which is a short Hebrew version of the book by Finaas, has the same mistake]. Notice that Samaritans stopped using his chronology in about 1950.

[Secret Alias]

Compare the chronological difficulties in Josephus's account of the Tobiads

The history of the earlier years of the father closely resembles that of the son; in both cases the ambitious youth is opposed by the miserly parent, and in both cases the youth succeeds in putting his competitors to shame before the royal court. The narrative is suspicious in many respects. Onias angers the king, but Joseph travels to the court both to assuage the king's anger and to farm the taxes, while the sanguinary battle between Hyrcanus and his brothers is also obscure.

The most serious difficulty, however, is the chronology. An old interpolator of Josephus advanced the opinion that the king mentioned in the story was Ptolemy III; but this monarch was not the consort of Cleopatra, nor was his immediate successor Seleucus IV. The only ruler to whom the narrative can properly refer is Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-182), who in 193 BCE married Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus III In that case, however, Joseph could not have farmed the Egyptian taxes, since Cœle-Syria was then under Syrian, and not under Egyptian, suzerainty, while the assertion that the two powers had divided the revenues of the country is merely an attempt on the part of Josephus to evade the difficulty.[5] Nor was the period between Ptolemy V's marriage (193) and his death (182) sufficiently long to agree with the statement concerning the length of time during which Joseph farmed the taxes (twenty-two years), and still less could Hyrcanus have reached manhood in so short a space.

Büchler, therefore, finds himself compelled to place Joseph's term of office between 219 and 199, although this stultifies the statement of Josephus regarding a division of the taxes.

[andrewcriddle]

Here is a summary of his work I posted in the old forum. Haven't talked to Boid in over a year. Gives me an excuse to ring him:

All of the existing mss. of the Tulida have serious omissions of names of High Priests in the centuries between the wars of the Jews against the Romans and the coming of Muhammad. Look at the list in Abul-Fataḥ. His list is complete. Try adding up the length of years of each High Priest in the Tulida and this becomes obvious. If you add all the High Priests from the death of Alexander in 323 BC (just before the death of the High Priest Azqayya) till the surrender of Palestine to the Islamic forces in 625 AD the number of years listed in the Tulida is not enough.

If you add the years from the Jewish wars against Rome up to Muhammad, you see that is where names have been lost. Adding the years up from Alexander or Hadrian gives a date of about 450 AD for Muhammad! Someone has seen this, so they have counted backwards from Muhammad. This puts the start of the period of Baba Rabba in about 320 AD. If you keep counting backwards you see it puts Jesus in about 200 AD!

This confusion must have occurred very early. Although Abul-Fataḥ has a complete list of names, he still had to put events into two (sometimes three) sets of narrative. Dositheos appears twice [Actually thrice. Look carefully at the long section on Dositheos and notice how he is first mentioned as some unknown person fleeing from Judaea, then he is suddenly the son of the High Priest].

[This is irrelevant but it needs to be known. The name of the woman at whose house Dositheos stayed, Amanto, is Greek. The suffix [-o] is a femiminine diminutive suffix in Greek. The name is probably short for adamantia or adamantina meaning diamondlike, translating the Hebrew yahalom. This is irrelevant too. Has Benny noticed that his computer’s Hebrew spell-checker always changes the surname of Ingrid Hjelm from HYLM to YHLM meaning diamond?]

After Dositheos three times there are the categories of Dositheans, but with Jesus and Philo in between. So he goes forward from the sects of the Dositheans then Jesus, Philo of Alexandria etc. to Commodus and then briefly mentions Dositheos A FOURTH TIME and then the notable deed of Garmon. Then he stops his narrative and gives a list of High Priests up to that point. Then he goes back in time and starts again with Jesus etc. then various events up to Muhammad.

Approximate correct dates are these: (a) End of the time of Baba Rabba (or more exactly the start of his captivity) 180 AD. This was when the policies of Commodus took effect in Syria-Palestine. Adding years puts Garmon (Germanos) in about 202 AD. This must have been the same Germanos that was at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

There is no direct historical evidence for the date of Marqe. Tulida 9a, p. 90 in Florentin’s edition. “and the Priest with him was ‘Amram ban Sârad. This ‘Amram was T.ut.e the father of Marqe the originator [or creator] of wisdom, may his spirit be at rest, Amen”. The note in the Tulida is correct but in the wrong place. If Marqe and his son Ninna had lived in the time of Baba Rabba, then there would have been a lot of information about them. The fact is that all knowledge on this subject has been lost. My personal opinion is that the note is correct in saying T.ut.e was called ‘Amram. I think this is in fact ‘Amram Dare. [The reason for saying this is that the name Marqe is a substitute for Mushi. ‘ Amram for his father is conventional. Amram is Moses’s father. It is like the name of the author of the book on inheritance Abu Ish.âq Ibrahim. The epithet Dare would then mean elder in relation to Marqe]. But I see no evidence for putting them in the time of Baba Rabba. As said, the lists of High Priests in the Tulida is incomplete. Also, the Aramaic used by Marqe is very early. This is aside from the mistake of putting Baba 170 years too late. A date of Marqe in about 320 AD is just impossible. The Durran might perhaps be from the time of Baba. I say this because several of the hymns speak of repentance for the errors of the very recent past. [See H. G. Kippenberg, article Ein Gebetbuch für den samaritanischen Synagogengottesdienst aus dem 2. Jh. N. Chr.]. If Marqe and ‘Amram and Ninna are before this, then the latest possible date must be before 140 AD. An earlier date is possible.

I agree that Baba Rabba was held in custody by the Romans, but it was not in Constantinople. I know Constantinople is mentioned, but that is an adjustment of the name of the place to its later name. If I say the grave of Joseph is near Nablus (instead of Shechem), I don’t mean Joseph lived after the coming of Islam! As for the stupid stupid stupid stories about the tricks played by Baba on the forces of Constantinople, how he tricked them into thinking the dead were fighting for him, and all the rest, I agree with Abul-Fataḥ, who said he only mentioned them so no-one would think he did not know about them.

The dates in the Arabic book the Comprehensive History At-Târîkh ash-Shâmil by Finaas ban Yeṣaaq or Khaḍir bin Isḥâq are not tradition. They are modern new calculations. This book by Finaas is wonderful. It is indispensable. I use it constantly. BUT the author and his associates tried to do what could not be done with the information available at the time. As an eample, his list of names and periods of the Kings of the Time of Favour is mostly taken from the Jewish Book of Judges. His date for the birth of Samson (Shamshom) is a guess. In the same way, his list of High Priests follows the Tulida, without noticing that the text is incomplete. Thus his chronology is wrong. [Chronicle Adler, which is a short Hebrew version of the book by Finaas, has the same mistake]. Notice that Samaritans stopped using his chronology in about 1950.

Thank you for this interesting reply. Some comments

Firstly I will not in this post respond to the dating of Marqe with respect to Baba Rabba.
a/ It is peripheral to the main issue.
b/ The idea of dating Marqe before Baba Rabba is IMO implausible.
c/ Arguing for a date of Marqe before Baba Rabba in no way supports an early date of Baba Rabba, if anything it might point in the other direction.

Secondly I agree that Abu l'Fatah has a list of names of high priests that seems (reasonably) accurate. The problem is that this list of names dates 'Aqbun and Baba Rabba in the 3rd century.
We have finally Eleazer in whose 12th year Muhammad came. I think this means that the 12th year of Eleazer corresponds to 622 i.e. Eleazer became High Pries in 610 Levi was high priest in the time of the Bar Kokhba war. There are 16 high priests between Levi and Eleazer with a total time of 455 years and Levi was High Priest for 25 years. Hence Levi became High Priest in 130 which fits.

However this has 'Aqbun becoming High Priest in 256 CE. with Baba Rabba (active during the nominal high priesthood of his father Nathaniel) some decades later. This seems too late (It is incompatible with the Ardashir 'Aqbun synchronism) but if Levi is high priest at the time of Bar Kokhba and 'Aqbun is his fourth successor it is hard to date him in the 2nd century.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

The following suggestion is extremely speculative.

There was no persecution of Samaritans by Commodus or his immediate successors at all.

The supposed persecution arises from a mistaken attempt to relate the Samaritan High Priests to the Roman Emperors.
Abu l'Fath or his source believed wrongly that 'Aqbun the Samaritan High Priest was a contemporary of Commodus ('Aqbun was actually a contemporary of Alexander Severus).

There was an ancient tradition of persecution suffered by the Samaritans while 'Aqbun was high priest and an ancient tradition of persecution of the Samaritans by Alexander Severus. These tradition refer to the Same persecution in which the Samaritans suffered under Alexander Severus while 'Aqbun was high priest. However the mistaken synchronisms caused this to be understood as two persecutions one suffered by the Samaritans while 'Aqbun was high priest and Commodus was Emperor and the other suffered by the Samaritans when Alexander Severus was Emperor and Nathaniel was high priest.

The account in Abu l'Fath of the persecution under Commodus mixes together
i/ a tradition about the destruction of Samaritan texts which was originally attributed to Hadrian (see the book of Joshua)
ii/ a tradition about the persecution while 'Aqbun was high priest (regarded as a contemporary of Commodus actually a contemporary of Alexander Severus)
iii/ Islamic traditions about Galen Alexander of Aphrodisias and the late 2nd century Roman imperial court.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27 2002 pps 305-347 by Hans Daiber provides an Arabic text with German introduction and translation of a much much longer version of the debate betwen Levi ans Alexander of Aphrodisias. (The standard text seems to be an abridgement of what Abu l'Fath originally wrote. )

My academic German is poor but IIUC Daiber believes that in its present form the debate is based on Arabic philosophy and John Philoponus (c 500 CE) but has a much earlier core.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Fascinating! I will pass this along to Benny. Maybe there is room enough for both of us to be right.

[Secret Alias]

It is worth noting that Philoponus cites extensively from Alexander debating with someone about the eternity of the world. I am very interested in seeing if the citations match verbatim with the Arabic dialogue:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hQEsA ... ld&f=false

[Secret Alias]

Dear Mr. Huller,

thank you for your interest in the discussion between Levi and Alexander of Aphrodisias! You find my answser or better suggestions below:
Am 26.07.2016 um 17:11 schrieb Stephan Huller:

Hi Professor

A couple of questions

1. who possessed this longer version of the account of Levi and Alexander? Was it a Samaritan document or an Islamic text?

I advice you to have a look at the catalogues of the New York and Berlin mss.

2. has an English translation ever been made?

No, not in Stenhouse

3. are there any further historical details which emerge about the context or date of the dispute?

I would be happy to know more about the historical details, behalve my reconstruction of the possible context of the ideas.

4. is it possible that the debate was not 'enhanced' in the Islamic period and that it represents a 2nd or 3rd century document written in Greek and preserved in Arabic?

The concluding answer you find on p. 315 of my article.

With best regards and wishes,
H. Daiber