neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 7:13 pm
Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 5:20 pm
My research (in an unpublished article "Agatharchides, Pseudo-Hecataeus and the Sabbath") indicates that the entirety of Josephus, Ant. 11.297-12.10 comes from a single source, Pseudo-Hecataeus. German scholars have hypothesized several sources combined in this section (including a Samaritan source), but Josephus very consistently uses a single source across a significant block of text (biblical books, Letter of Aristeas, Maccabees, etc.). Pseudo-Hecataeus wrote in (ca. 105-95 BCE), according to the compelling arguments in Bezalel Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus On the Jews: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). All scholars are 100% agreed that the episode of Alexander visiting the Jewish temple is fictional, as is a lot of other stuff in Pseudo-Hecataeus, who is a highly unreliable source.
I have not looked into the dating of Ps.-H but had understood that he was a contemporary of Alexander. So what are the factors that help us determine the date for Ps-H.?
Criddle is right, Hecataeus was a contemporary of Alexander, but Pseudo-Hecataeus (as quoted in Josephus, Apion) is much later. In the Bryn Mawn review Andrew Criddle cites, there is a fairly good summary of Bar-Kochva's argument:
"The book starts with an analysis of the genuine Hecataeus preserved in Diodorus/Photius and arrives at the conclusion that, far from being an idealized account, ‘the excursus is, by and large, an interpretatio Graca of Jewish history and life’ (43). Next, after the passages in contra Apionem, accompanied by a literal translation, comes the first focus of the study, ‘The Question of Authenticity’ (ch. iii, pp.54-121). An analysis of the Mosollamus story, presented as an eye-witness account by Hecataeus, firmly concludes that its author was not acquainted with Greek augural lore and that its entire stance cannot be harmonized with what we know about the genuine Hecataeus, or, in fact, any educated Greek writer. Next, an analysis of the story of Hezekiah the High Priest, who is said to have migrated to Egypt (which should be read together with the Appendix on the Hezekiah coins, coauthored with the numismatist A. Kindler), identifies Hezekiah with the last governor of Persian Palestine still active in the generation of Alexander and the Successors, who may well have been banished to Egypt by Ptolemy I in 302/1. Other arguments against authenticity include Jewish attitudes to persecution and martyrdom, implausible before the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, and the positive attitude to the destruction of pagan temples and altars, utterly unimaginable in a Greek author like Hecataeus. Finally B., best known for his studies of Hellenistic armies and of the battles of Judas Maccabaeus, takes exception to geographical and political data in the text, including the passage in Book ii of contra Apionem, which attributes to Alexander the Great the annexation of Samaria to Judaea: the anachronisms are, in B.’s view, too blatant and too numerous to be accepted even as an adaptation by Josephus or an earlier Jewish writer.
Having thus disposed of the ascription to Hecataeus, it remains to reveal the true date, authorship and purpose of the work. B.’s solutions are firm and unequivocal. An analysis of the anachronisms suggests 107, or rather 103/2 as the terminus post quem and 96-93 as the terminus ante quem, just a few years after the Letter of Aristeas, dated in a separate Appendix between the years 116 or 118 and 113."
Reading the chapter on "Date of Composition" in
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ps ... =en&gbpv=1 (I could locate my photocopies of his book, but I'm being lazy here), one can drill down into his dating arguments as follows:
Bar-Kochva finds 5 anachronistic references in
(1) claims of religious persecutions of the Jews and Jewish martyrdom (pointing to a date after 168 BCE and Antiochus Epiphanes).
Pointing to a period during Hasmonean rule (142-63 BCE):
(2) the destruction of the pagan cult (Apion 1.193), under Simon, Aristobulus I (BK is wrong here, as Josephus attributed to Aristobulus I events under Aristibulus II), John Hyrkanus, Alexander Jannaeus
(3) the Jewish expansion to Phoenicia (Apion 1.194), reflecting the conquests of John Hyrkanus
(4) the existence of many Jewish fortresses (Apion 1.197), which BK finds fulfilled starting under Simon
(5) the annexation of Samaria to Judea (Apion 2.43), which BK thinks reflects the conquests of John Hyrkanus in 112/111 and 107 BCE. [I personally believe that Samaria was temporarily denied autonomy in the wake of their rebellion against Alexander the Great, but the historical evidence is too scanty to claim certainty on this point.]
Bar-Kochva finds the absence o any references to Alexander Jannaeus' conquests in Transjordan as pointing to a latest possible date of ca. 96 BCE.