Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Aha, it's Herod the Great you're referring to. The 13th year of his reign would equate to 24 BC, which is 51 years before 27 AD, the earliest year of Jesus' ministry. I don't get the sense that this famine lasted 51 years - my reading is that it lasted for a handful of years as the sale of his furniture seems to have alleviated the worst of the crisis, and we wouldn't expect the furniture stock to be unlimited. I don't doubt that Josephus is right that there was a famine of sorts in 24-(?) BC, but it was long before Jesus was born and over half a century before he ministered.

I think you may be right that the memory of the evil King granting good gifts is echoed in Jesus' sayings in Matt7, but I don't see evidence that Jesus lived during a famine.

Lev --

From the ever Politicized Wiki-P:

"Roman Warming Period

The Roman Warm Period, or Roman Climatic Optimum, was a period of unusually-warm weather in Europe and the North Atlantic that ran from approximately 250 BC to AD 400. Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BC) wrote that date trees could grow in Greece if they were planted but that they could not set fruit there. That is still the case today, which implies that South Aegean mean summer temperatures in the 4th and the 5th centuries BC were within a degree of modern ones. That and other literary fragments from the time confirm that the Greek climate was basically the same then as around 2000. Tree rings from the Italian Peninsula in the late 3rd century BC indicate a time of mild conditions there around the time of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with imported elephants in 218 BC.

Dendrochronological evidence from wood found at the Parthenon shows variability of climate in the 5th century BC, which resembles the modern pattern of variation.

Cooling at the end of the period is noted in Southwest Florida, which may have been caused by a reduction in solar radiation reaching the Earth. That may have triggered a change in atmospheric circulation patterns."

To me, a famine in the ME could be contained in this Roman Warming Period. I'm not being argumentative about it. Lev, you don't see it that way and that's OK. Nonetheless, there was a warming and it could have been the cause of the famine(s) in Judea and Surrounds.

Best,

CW

Hi Charles,

Yes, there were famines in Palestine from time to time, more often than not linked to war and environmental conditions. When these famines occur, we usually find a historical record. I can find no historical record of a famine occurring within Jesus' lifetime.

Let me be clear what a famine is and is not. A famine is not the general lived condition of people who lived in acute poverty. Those who lived in acute poverty would frequently miss meals and sometimes go days without food. You would often find these people begging for alms or work so they can eat. However, these people are not experiencing a famine - they are simply too poor to buy food.

A famine is when a crisis has occurred that renders a whole society or region into either acute poverty where the majority are unable to buy enough food to sustain themselves or a crisis that dramatically increases the price of food placing it outside the spending power of even moderately wealthy people. The two most common causes of this are:

1. War - where many (most?) of men of military age (the backbone of the economy) are either dead, crippled or enslaved. Too few are able to tend farms and flocks, or trade their labour to support their families, plunging society into acute poverty.
2. Environmental conditions - when droughts or floods devastate harvests, dramatically reducing available food and driving up prices beyond the reach of all but the wealthy.

What you are describing is a multi-century shift in environmental conditions and you seem to be proposing this caused a multi-century famine across the whole of the middle east. If this was true, then we would expect to see the whole of the middle east abandoned, either because everyone has starved to death, or the land has become uninhabitable due to the environment (much like the Sahara or the Arctic is today).

Moreover, if the default condition was permanent famine, why do we see instances where famines are described? Surely if famines are the norm, why would there be a time when famines occur and times when they do not?

Lev wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 5:01 am Yes, there were famines in Palestine from time to time, more often than not linked to war and environmental conditions. When these famines occur, we usually find a historical record. I can find no historical record of a famine occurring within Jesus' lifetime.

Hi Lev.

John 4: 7 - 12 (RSV):

[7] There came a woman of Samar'ia to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
[8] For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
[9] The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samar'ia?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
[10] Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
[11] The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?
[12] Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?"

Realizing that "Living Water" is a phrase with another meaning:

Berakoth 28A

"He came and knocked at the door. He said to them: Let the sprinkler son of a sprinkler sprinkle; shall he who is neither a sprinkler nor the son of a sprinkler say to a sprinkler son of a sprinkler, Your water is cave water [See Note] and your ashes are oven ashes..."

Note: " And not living water as required, v. Num. XIX, 27. " As I recall, there's a problem with the Numbers verse. Anyway...

The point concerns "Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle..." Families and cattle require massive amounts of water. The well is deep and it takes effort to obtain even a gourd of water.

Let me be clear what a famine is and is not. A famine is not the general lived condition of people who lived in acute poverty. Those who lived in acute poverty would frequently miss meals and sometimes go days without food. You would often find these people begging for alms or work so they can eat. However, these people are not experiencing a famine - they are simply too poor to buy food.

We are halfway to Jude Wanniski's view of Supply Side Economics:

A famine is when a crisis has occurred that renders a whole society or region into either acute poverty where the majority are unable to buy enough food to sustain themselves or a crisis that dramatically increases the price of food placing it outside the spending power of even moderately wealthy people.

Markets clear. The problem in the Great Depression was that products piled up on the docks and there were no buyers. Wanniski showed that the Markets discounted the coming Passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Predictions are sometimes like rectal orifices in that everyone has at least one but we are about to create the same mistakes. So it was then. If cuckoo clocks suddenly have a 3000% tariff placed on them, no one buys cuckoo clocks. If it costs you a Temple Tax to get in, then you might as well find that money in the mouth of a fish. God will provide to the faithful who merely ask.

[Jean Baptiste] Say would explain the current stagflation and inflation by:
"...The stifling barriers to commerce caused by unnecessarily regulation, and a rootless, incontrovertible currency that is manipulated in a futile attempt to alter production when it should be maintained as a reliable medium of exchange."

-- Jude Wanniski, "The Crash and Classical Economics", Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1979.

The two most common causes of this are:
1. War - where many (most?) of men of military age (the backbone of the economy) are either dead, crippled or enslaved. Too few are able to tend farms and flocks, or trade their labour to support their families, plunging society into acute poverty.
2. Environmental conditions - when droughts or floods devastate harvests, dramatically reducing available food and driving up prices beyond the reach of all but the wealthy.

Plz see: Uzi Leibner, https://www.amazon.com/Settlement-Histo ... ast_sto_dp
Examinations of actual Settlements on the Ground.

What you are describing is a multi-century shift in environmental conditions and you seem to be proposing this caused a multi-century famine across the whole of the middle east. If this was true, then we would expect to see the whole of the middle east abandoned, either because everyone has starved to death, or the land has become uninhabitable due to the environment (much like the Sahara or the Arctic is today).

Exactly. See Leibner.

Moreover, if the default condition was permanent famine, why do we see instances where famines are described? Surely if famines are the norm, why would there be a time when famines occur and times when they do not?

"...and the elephant said to the scorpion, "I agreed to give you a ride across this lake and you swore that you wouldn't sting me and here we are, halfway across the lake and you sting me and now we're both going to drown...Why did you do that?,,,"

The scorpion replied, "Well, it is the Middle East"...

CW