Re: Fall of Jerusalem

    On 2012-04-09 13:00, Aristeo Fernando wrote regarding my
    post on the value of Josephus' writings in chronology:

>  Could you please list down some of those who have tried using Josephus’ years?

    As I said, _all_ chronologers of biblical events did that.
    See some references in "Studies of Eusebian and post-Eusebian
    Chronography", on line at

[http://books.google.de/books?id=9R_CGC9wL9MC&pg=PA104&lpg=PA104&dq=richard+w.+burgess+witold+witakowski+Josephus+Appendix+2&source=bl&ots=DFM9OPQYYS&sig=Hg4KsYx5r1F711V3yLzANJEBAxM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Rth9T-fJLor2sga21OGTCQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false]
    (The link may have to be pasted into a single line.)

>  Do you know why they failed?

    I've explained that in my previous post -- these chronologists
    did not "fail" but they found out that Josephus' writings
    are next to useless for chronology. The reference above
    gives some technical details; every modern scholarly treatise
    on the date of the birth or of the crucifixion of Jesus
    also gives such details.

>  Do you know why they say that Josephus cannot
>  contribute much? Because they were using a lunisolar
>  calendar like what the Jews
>  are using these days. Try using a purely lunar calendar
>  and you might get it right.

    Well yes, I do know why they conclude that Josephus
    cannot contribute much to chronology, and I have
    explicated two major reasons for it in my previous post.

    No, Josephus has never used a lunar calendar in those
    dates where he gives a month name. As I have
    stated in my previous post, Josephus used several
    calendars in his works, with a special notation,
    but none of them is a lunar calendar. His method
    of using Macedonian month names for all these calendars
    does not even work for a lunar calendar.

    When Josephus gives only year counts between events,
    these numbers are taken directly from the bible, and thus
    the year length is completely uncertain. When the age of
    a person is given as 969 "years" (as in the bible), then
    such a "year" can be at most 40 d long, and cannot be any
    approximation of the tropical year, nor any approximation
    of 12 synodic months (unless it is taken as chronologically
    meaningless).

>  The following are what I got:
>  2069 BC – Foundation of the city of Jerusalem
>  1522 BC – Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt
>  1100 BC – start of King David’s reign
>  1058 BC – Start of building of house of the Lord
>  637 BC – Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians
>  33 BC – Birth of Jesus Christ (May 23)
>  1 BC – Death of Jesus Christ (August 17)
>  AD 44 – Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans

    Only the last event can be dated with an
    uncertainty of under a year. The Roman conquest
    of Jerusalem took place around J0070-09; and
    the triumph on J0071-04-24 in Alexandria is
    documented by an Egyptian papyrus ([POxy 2725]).
    So the last date in your list is grossly
    incorrect: Titus could not have taken
    Jersusalem when he was only 5 years old.

    Before you propose yet another time line for
    biblical events, you should first look at
    what other people have proposed, and why.
    No serious chronographer will consider
    your proposals if these proposals do not
    even satisfy the (few and weak) constraints
    established in the literature.

    I find it arrogant to pretend to know better
    than hundreds of painstakingly careful
    investigators, without knowing what these
    investigators are saying, let alone knowing
    why they are saying it.

    Michael Deckers.