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susiem
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|  | Historical Records
« Thread Started on Apr 10, 2008, 8:10pm » | ![[Quote]](http://s1.images.proboards.com/buttons/quote.gif) |
Let's examine the historical records that are being relied on for dates of the Neo-Babylonian kings, and let's start with Berossus.
He was a Babylonian priest who wrote a history of Babylon in Greek in about 281 BCE.
We have NONE of his writings or even copies of them. All we know about them and about him are merely fragments that have been quoted or PARAPHRASED by others, such as Josephus, a Jewish historian of the 1st century CE, and Eusebius.
SusieM
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susiem
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| | Re: Historical Records
« Reply #1 on Apr 11, 2008, 8:11pm » | |
Continuing on with Berossus.....Most of my information about this is from Carl Jonsson's book, The Gentile Times Reconsidered; I also have Josephus' writings translated by Wm Whiston.
Anyway, Berossus wrote a history in 281 BCE about events that had happened hundreds of years before him in the Neo-Babylonian period and though we don't have anything of what he wrote, we have other writers who attribute quotes in their own writing to him, and they also paraphrase some of the things he was supposed to have written.
Josephus is said to have the longest quote of Berossus that deals with the reigns of the Neo-Babylonian kings, in his Against Apion, Book 1:19-21, and Antiquities of the Jews, Book X:XI,1. These were written in the latter part of the 1st century A.D.
The passage in Against Apion that has the list of kings also says, "our city was desolate during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus king of Persia." He is supposed to have said "fifty years" in another place that is said to be a correction he made in his old age.
Whiston puts it this way in his Dissertation 5: "he says the temple lay waste, not 70 years, as he had formerly so often said, but only 50 years, which is very near the truth, by the Astronomical Canon itself, and may probably be his on correction in his old age. The copies indeed do not suit this number; but have, without all probability, 7 years only; as if it were the remains of the old number 70."
I'll continue later, but really, how reliable are the historical records, especially Berossus, since, for one thing we don't have any of his writings other than quotes and paraphrases by other writers; he wrote about events hundreds of years before him and the records he is said to have relied on were books that included accounts of legendary kings before the flood with very exaggerated lengths of reign.
Jonsson says, "His history of the dynasties after the Flood down to the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar.....is also far from reliable and evidently contained much legendary material and exaggerated lengths of reign."
Berossus himself is said to indicate it was impossible to give a trustworthy history of Babylonia for the times up to Nabonassar because Nabonassar had "collected and destroyed the records of the kings before him in order that the list of Chaldean kings might begin with him."
So far this doesn't instill much confidence in the historical records being used to establish dates.
SusieM
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susiem
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| | Re: Historical Records
« Reply #2 on Apr 14, 2008, 3:22pm » | |
Berossus is said to have written that he "translated many books which had been preserved with great care at Babylon and which dealt with a period of more that 150,000 years." [Syncellus] Jonsson provides a footnote on this that the Armenian version of Eusebius' Chronicle gives the figure at "2,150,000 years". According to the footnote: "None of them is believed to be the original figure given by Berossus."
We started with a Babylonian king who "collected and destroyed the records of the kings before him", and Berossus finds books that had been "preserved with great care at Babylon"?? And those have exaggerated reigns [something like 28,000 years for one king] and much legendary material in them??? Reminds me of that song, 'there's things that you're liable to read in the Bible [Berossus, in this case] that ain't necessarily so.'
SusieM
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JWNoMorelurking
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| | Re: Historical Records
« Reply #3 on Apr 16, 2008, 12:16pm » | |
Oh man, CARMs domain expired today! LOL. Nobody can get to the CARM boards.
Let's hope that someone steps in and re-purchases the domain quickly, or else they'll have to come up with a new domain name..
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