Justus, Josephus, Agrippa II and His Coins*
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Justus, Josephus, Agrippa II and his Coins* Nikos Kokkinos An appendix to my book on the Herods dealt with the complex subject of the date of Agrippa II’s death.* 1 A double critique of my view by Christopher Jones and Alla Kushnir-Stein has appeared in this journal.2 Jones claims to be making a contribution by means of ‘Greek philology and Roman imperial prosopography’, tools presumably ‘in sufficiently exploited’, and declares that while the revised edition of Schürer is out of date, my discussion is ‘questionable on many points’. So it is necessary to restate my case here. Had the numismatic model proposed by Kushnir-Stein been right, it would simply have made one aspect of my previous discussion, like that of Schürer (and of all numismatists involved), out of date — nothing more. But the model is not right as it stands, and in any case it does not affect my chronology. The appendix first exposed the weak assumptions behind the conventional date of pre-CE 93 for the death of Agrippa II, which are based on an interpretation of Josephus. These assumptions will be mentioned again later in response to Jones. The appendix then listed evidence — literary and documentary — which contradicted the conventional date: the testimony of Justus of Tiberias; the inscription of Archieus as interpreted by me; the lead weight from Tiberias as read by Qedar and interpreted by me; and the coins of Agrippa II as interpreted by Dan Barag (followed by Meshorer and Burnett et al.). The documentary evidence will be re-assessed last in response to Kushnir-Stein. Justus The crucial testimony of Justus, placing the death of Agrippa II in CE 100, was included in his lost work [Χρονικὸν] Ίουδαἰων Βασιλἐων τῶν ἐν τοῖς Στἐμμασιν ([Chronicle] * Scholars who must particularly be thanked for discussion are Dan Barag, Theodore Buttrey, Louis Feldman, Tomas Hägg, Brian Jones, Fergus Millar, Daniel Schwartz, Joseph Sievers, Warren Treadgold and Nigel Wilson. The following abbreviations are used in this article: BMCRE = Η. Mattingly, Coins o f the Roman Empire in the British Museum, vol. 1 (London, 1923); CDPA = Α. Spijkerman, The Coins o f the Decapolis and Provincia Arabia (Jerusalem, 1978); KHD = Ν. Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty (Sheffield, 1998); RPC = Α. Burnett, Μ. Amandry & I. Carradice, Roman Provincial Coinage, vol. 2 (London/Paris, 1999); SVM= Ε. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age o f Jesus Christ, vol. 1, rev. by G. Vermes & F. Millar (Edinburgh 1973); TJC = Y. Meshorer, A Treasury o f Jewish Coins (Jerusalem/New York, 2001). 1 KHD 396-400. 2 C.P. Jones, ‘Towards a Chronology of Josephus’, SCI 21 (2002) 113-21 (henceforth ‘Jones’); Α. Kushnir-Stein, ‘The Coinage of Agrippa ΙΓ, 5C/21 (2002) 123-31 (henceforth ‘Kushnir-Stein’). Scripta Classica Israelica vol. XXII 2003 pp. 163-180 164 JUSTUS, JOSEPHUS, AGRIPPA II AND HIS COINS o f the Kings o f the Jews who are in the Genealogical Tables)? A brief review written around CE 845 has been preserved in the Βιβλιοθὴκη of Photius (codex 33). The main summary reads: Ἀρχεται δὲ τῆς ἱστοριας ἀπὸ Μωῦσἐως, καταλῆγει δὲ ἕως τελευτῆς Ἀγριππα τοὺ ὲβδὸμου μὲν τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκἰας Ἡρῷδου, ὺστἀτου δὲ ἐν τοῖς Ίουδαἰων βασιλεῦσιν, ὅς παρἐλαβε μὲν τῆν ἀρχῆν ἐπὶ Κλαυδἰου, ηὺξῆθη δὲ ἐπ'ι Νἐρωνος καῖ ὲτι μᾶλλον ὺπὅ Οὺεσπασιανοὺ, τελευτᾷ δὲ ἔτει τρἰτῳ Τραιανοῦ, οὐ καῖ ῆ ιστορἰα κατἐληξεν. He begins the history from Moses and concludes with the death of Agrippa, the seventh of those from the House of Herod and last to reign among the Jews, who received the authority during the time of Claudius, increased it during the time of Nero and even more under Vespasian, and died in the third year of Trajan, when the history also ends.4 While this evidence has been readily accepted by many scholars of older generations,5 in recent decades there has been an array of attempts to reject it. Few other such testimo nies can have been ignored, sidestepped, amended, mangled, mistranslated, and misin terpreted as much as this. Jones (116), avoiding individual evaluations, offers what he thinks to be a solution: ‘Various ways around it have been proposed, some more plausi ble than others. If they are rejected, the only way to reconcile Photius’ statement with the supposition that Agrippa had already lost his kingdom is to emphasize the word “died”, and to assume that he lived on as a titular king’. But this will not do. The ‘supposition’ is only that, and the emphasis is of course on the word ‘authority’ which was clearly essential in a chronicle of royal succession — Agrippa’s authority must have ended with his death in the third year of Trajan. The most usual ‘ways around’ this evidence since the 1960s, apart from doubting whether Justus’ work was available to Photius (despite the Bibliotheca's repeated The meaning is not clear, but it seems to suggest the existence of royal stemmata, which may only refer to the genealogical king-lists in the Bible. Perhaps the brief commentarioli de scripturis mentioned by Jerome ( Vir. Illust. 14) as written by Justus is the same work on biblical kings. On Justus (PIR1 1 872; FGrH 734) see, C.R. Holladay, Fragments from Hel lenistic Jewish Authors, vol. 1 (Chico, CA, 1983) 371-89 with bibliography. The text is from the edition of R. Henry (Paris 1959-77), while the translation is mine after checking the French of Henry, the Latin of Α. Schott (PG 103), and the modem Greek of S. Euthymiades (Βιβλιοθῆκη ὅσα τῆς Ίστορἰας: Ἀνθολογἰα [Athens, 2000]). Since codex 33 is not included in Ν. Wilson (Photius, the Bibliotheca: A Selection [London, 1994]), I pre sume that the only other English translation is in S.J.D. Cohen (,Josephus in Galilee and Rome [Leiden, 1979] 142); cf. part translation in D.A. Barish (‘The Autobiography of Jo sephus and the Hypothesis of a Second Edition of his Antiquities’, HTR 71 [1978] 71). For Photius see primarily Τ. Hägg, Photios als Vermittler antiker Literatur (Uppsala, 1975); W.T. Treadgold, The Nature o f the Bibliotheca o f Photius (Washington, DC, 1980); J. Schamp, Photios historien de lettres (Paris, 1987); for an exhaustive bibliography see G. Dragas, ‘Towards a complete Bibliographia Photiana’, Έκκλησἰα καὶ Θεολογἰα 10 (1989/90) 531-669. For an excellent historiographical essay on this problem, see D. Schwartz, ‘Texts, Coins, Fashions and Dates: Josephus’ Vita and Agrippa II’s Death’, in Studies in the Jewish Back ground o f Christianity (Tübingen, 1992). NIKOS KOKKINOS 165 formula Άνεγνωσθη!), have been to question the reading of the given date, or present it as confused, and then launch an attack ad hominem. How could a ninth-century Christian writer have transmitted information of value? Any attempt to give priority to Photius can only be unjustified, as its ‘only purpose’ would be ‘to defend the honor of a tenth (sic) century patriarch’.* 6 He surely must have erred in copying Justus. ‘If the wrong date were inserted by Photius, such an error would be unsurprising’.7 Or, in any case he should simply have ‘confused the date of Justus’ publication (sic)... with the date of Agrippa II’s death’.8 Clearly the best work of what is regarded as the best scholar in Byzantium had not been read carefully, and modem specialists on Photius unfortunately were not consulted. To disbelieve the specific information in codex 33 is extremely difficult given its context. Photius must have read the particular work of Justus — at least its beginning and end, to which there are exact references. His comments on the author’s style also support this view. Photius is not accused of claiming to have read books that he had in fact not read; and there is one codex (268) in which he says explicitly that he had not been able to read the author in question. The possibility of misquotation is very low, as he is known to be correct in cases of this kind, and there could be no motive for him to invent such a detail. Distortion due to scribes is also very unlikely. The text is based on two MSS only, which look as if they are descendants from an original master copy. The key sentence which is missing in MS Μ is added in the margin in MS A, leaving no doubt that it was written in the archetype. The inevitable conclusion is that the burden of proof certainly lies with anyone who would argue that Photius is wrong. Such a conclusion makes it almost unnecessary to probe further into codex 33, unless it is to explain a final misunderstanding. It was once suggested that since in Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus the entry on Justus (14) is followed by that on Clement of Rome (15), which contains the words obiit tertio Traiani anno, Photius’s τελευτᾷ δὲ ἔτει τριτῳ Τραῖανοὐ may have been transferred by mistake from this source.9 This interesting but superficial suggestion was soon to be taken enthusiastically up, and even repeated recently as a solution.10 But it cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. The 280 numbered codices of the Bibliotheca (which in fact describe some 386 different books) show that Photius either had no access to Latin literature or, in any case, made no use of it. Photius’ acquaintance with Jerome was merely at third hand. Jerome’s work (CE 6 Cohen (n. 4) 180. 7 Τ. Rajak, ‘Josephus and Justus of Tiberias’, in L.H. Feldman & G. Hata (eds), Josephus, Judaism & Christianity (Detroit, Mich., 1987) 93, n. 10 = The Jewish Dialogue with Greece & Rome (Leiden, 2001) 180, n.