AW! Epistles
From Victor
Abstract
Tuesday, 25 May 2004
I would like to know where did you find the fact that Herod Antipas Married Herodias in 14 CE??
You’ve got me here. I have not written these books and pages in an academic fashion but more as reportage, and so did not keep a close note of the sources of particular facts. Looking at the bibliography, I would guess it was the book by Eisenman and Wise on Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was a book that I used from a library, so I have no copy of my own to consult. If you have access to a library you could check it, or try any decent book about the Herodian family. I thought it might have been in Graves and Podro or the book by Rupert Furneaux but could not find it in either. All I can add is that I did not make it up, so it is out there somewhere!
Milton Forbes, in his The Myth of the Lord Jesus Christ, states that Caligula at perhaps the suggestion of his friend Herod Agrippa (some suggest there was a homosexual relationship between Caligula and Agrippa) appointed Aretas King of Damascus in 37 CE to mollify the tension created by Agrippa’s uncle Herod Antipas after Aretas win over Antipas army in 36 CE. I don’t know where Forbes got this tidbit of information but at least that would cast some doubt to your comments that Aretas could never have been ruler over Damascus. Unless as you said this Damascus is “another Damascus” perhaps Qumram. Or could it be what this Christian site:
http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/aretas.html
it says: “Aretas, taking advantage of the complications created by the death of the Emperor Tiberius (A.D. 37), took possession of Damascus”. I find this very unlikely as he would have been crushed by Caligula’s army. Forbes account would be more logical. This suggests to me that Aretas might have been ruler over Damascus at least after 37 CE. And then Paul’s account in 2 Corinthians 11:32 that the governor under Aretas wanted to apprehend him (why would he want to??) was a true episode. This inspite of the contradictions with Acts 9:23 in which the JEWS wanted to kill him. (unless they were Jews of Damascus)
I imagine what you read in Milton Forbes’ book could be checked in a good biography of Caligula. There is a danger here in getting into circularity that I tried to avoid. It is common enough to read that the Nabateans had control of Damascus from the time of Pompey to the time of Trajan, but I suspect that the source is the New Testament. So Christians find themselves citing authorities who have simply assumed it from the New Testament. In the earlier period (BC), the Romans were happy to set up Herod as a puppet in Judaea, and it must be conceivable that Aretas was a puppet governor of Damascus. Perhaps the Arab king had certain trade tariff rights, but it seems unlikely that the Romans would have let a puppet rule one of their main bases in any real sense. If they did, it would be hard to understand why Damascus was not the Arab capital rather than Petra.
The later Aretas ruled a long time, and generally stayed on the right side of the Romans, but the suggestion that he was given Damascus by Caligula does not make sense to me, because surely the Herodian family were the ones who needed placating, having lost. It implies, though, that the Arabs did not normally rule Damascus. You are right that it would offer a window for Paul’s story to be admitted as having some basis. Aretas died in 40 AD. If you find any solid historical backing for this, I should be glad to read it. I simply think the biblical accounts, in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, sounds more likely than having to believe that Jews had any jurisdiction over the Arab city of Damascus, or that even Aretas did, but that “Damascus” was a code name or nickname for the Essene city by the Dead Sea sounds more likely. Often we have to use our heads in trying to decide probabilities when historical accounts are confused. Few historians still take into account the Dead Sea Scroll evidence when weighing up the bible.
I have found several references to John the Baptist being a fictional character, not a historical one. Usually most scholars consider him historical because apart from the Bible, it is also found in Flavious Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews Book 18, Chapter 5. In paragraph 1 the historicity of Antipas and Aretas quarrel with each other and which led to Antipas armies defeat is confirmed, “So they raised armies on both sides, and prepared for war and sent their generals to fight instead of themselves; and, when they had joined battle, all Herod’s army was destroyed”. Then Paragraph 2 “introduces” John the Baptist into history. “Now, some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herods army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist, for Herod’s slew him… Accordingly he was sent a prisoner out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.”
Wait !!!.. where did Josephus mentions Macherus earlier????… . Like the so called Testimonium Flavianus that Christian apologists use to point the historicity of Jesus, and that most scholars accept that is an interpolation, Frank Zindler, in his book The Jesus the Jews Never Knew, states also that paragraph 2 which introduces the Baptist as a historical figure is in its entirety is a very clever interpolation, (more so than the Testimonium Flavianus itself), and I quote from Zindlers book:
Firstly, it is said that John was sent to the castle of Macherus to be executed. The clear implication is that the castle was Herod’s to command. But the two sentences immediately preceding paragraph 1 show that that was not at all the case.
Paragraph 1: Herod’s wife having discovered the agreement he had made with Herodias (to marry her) and having learned it before he had notice of her knowledge of the whole design, she desired him to send her to Macherus, which is a place on the borders of the dominions of Aretas and Herod, without informing him of any of her intentions. Accordingly, Herod sent her thither, as thinking his wife had not perceived anything; now she had sent a good while before to Macherus, which was subject to her father, and so all things necessary for her journey were made ready for her by the generals of Areta’s army, and by that means she soon came to Arabia, under the conduct of the several generals, who carried her from one to another successively; and she soon came to her father, and told him of Herod’s intentions. So Aretas made this the first occasion of his enmity between him and Herod, who had also some quarrel with him about their limits at the country of Gamalitis. So they raised armies on both sides and prepared for war and sent their generals to fight instead of themselves;and, when they had joined battle, all Herod’s army was destroyed by the treachery of some fugitives, though they were of the tetrarchy of Philip, joined with Areta’s army. So Herod wrote about this affairs to Tiberius; who, being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius, to Make war upon him, and either to take him alive and bring him to him in bonds, or to kill him and send him his head. This was the charge that Tiberius gave to the president of Syria.
Paragraph 2: Now, some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist, for Herod’s slew him… Accordingly he was sent a prisoner out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. (Paragraph 2 continues here a long discourse.)
Paragraph 3: So Vitellius prepared to make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men; he also took with him all those of light armature, and of the horsemen which belonged to them… “It is quite evident then that the Baptist material in paragraph 2 intrudes into the context of as roughly as the Testimonium. Paragraph 3 follows paragraph 1 perfectly if paragraph 2 be taken away !!”!
So Herod wrote about this affairs to Tiberius; who, being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius, to make war upon him, and either to take him alive and bring him to him in bonds, or to kill him and send him his head. This was the charge that Tiberius gave to the president of Syria. So Vitellius prepared to make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men; he also took with him all those of light armature, and of the horsemen which belonged to them…
“Also it is quite evident that Josephus (in paragraph 1) thought that Macherus pertained to Aretas, and he could not have developed amnesia for that opinion after writing just a few more sentences (in paragraph 2). It is clearly the trace of a bungling interpolator.”
I am of the opinion that this make the existence of John very unlikely, making me think that the forgery in this bible accounts is greater that I thought.
This could be an interpolation by Christians but as you say Zindler says, it is a better one than the others. It does sound like Josephus. There is also the fact that John had his own followers and they still, I believe, exist, despite Saddam and the new crusade against the Arabs in Iraq. There are problems too. If John was fictional, why did the Christians feel they had to include him in the biography of their own demi-god? There could have been no reason for introducing a fictional hero, surely, unless he was real and had to be subsumed by the Christian one. The continued existence of the Mandaeans shows that he was never entirely subsumed. The proposal in THJ that both were successive Essene leaders fits with the biblical, historical and now the Qumran discoveries. The evidence has to be circumstantial, but when I find nibbles in my cheese, I can reasonably assume I have a mouse in my kitchen. Circumstantial evidence is evidence!
Luigi Cassioli, in his The Fable of Christ, thinks that Jesus didn’t exist, and that John was a historical character, but John and Jesus were the same person. He states that John was the firstborn son of Judas the Galilean whom the Jews considered the heir to the throne of Jerusalem being of the Hasmonean line. The Essenes substituted the name John which was remembered by tradition with the name Jesus, making John’s name disappear from their gospels. In this way the facts that were reported without the name of the person who had really done them, could be ascribed to another person, ie, to that Messiah who had passed among then unobserved. The prophet Isaiah had predicted that the Messiah would walk among men in such a humble and modest way that no one would notice him (Isaiah 53: 2-7).
The idea of John and Jesus being the same appears on my own pages too, but in a different context. I see John and Jesus as solar characters denoting the winter sun of the ANE which was the fertilising one. John is the sun of the water carrier, Aquarius, and has a hairy appearance because he is also the goat, Capricorn, the winter constellations. This watery wintery sun is the salvific one in that part of the world. It brings the winter rains that fertilise the earth. As you say, John is the name and Jesus the title—John the Saviour—and the two somehow got separated into the two parts.
I do not think, though, that this solar mythology has to eliminate the parts played by real Essenes with these names. I suggest that the Essenes had extensive rituals in their beliefs, and only some of them survive, though with hidden meaning in the gospels. Others might have disappeared altogether. The Jewish religion itself was a solar religion, derived from the Persians, and the Essenes seem to have been closer to the original than the Sadducees and even the Pharisees. Essenes prayed or sang hymns to the rising sun, just as the Persians did, and my suspicion is that they retained rituals like this Elijah one of the baptist, the hierogamos and so on. Someone once suggested that the gospels were a mystery play right from the start. Perhaps they were, or the solar mysteries of the Essenes were written into them by Mark in the first century when the Parousia never happened.
I am inclined to agree, as you will know, that Jesus and the Galileans were followers of Judas the Galilean, but “son of” seems to be used to mean “disciple of” rather than being a real relationship. It comes from the ancient habit of a master craftsman adopting a son as an apprentice, so that those who learnt from their master were also his sons, metaphorically. If Jesus was a son of a carpenter, he need not have been his natural son but simply his apprentice, and it is baffling why Christians even introduced the holy family, when they claimed God was really the father. Naturally, such discipleship automatically creates a brotherhood, so that the sons were each other’s brothers—and sisters, if women were admitted too, as the gospels suggest. Mary was probably a title equivalent to “Lady”, rather like Abbess, explaining why there were so many of them.
I am glad you enjoyed the book. It really amounts to the footings, and more needs to be worked out and built on it. I am glad you are doing it.
