copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
The only reason that scholars take for granted that there ever were two historical Marcus Agrippas is because of the surviving texts of Josephus. Of course the ‘two Agrippa’ theory posited in this tradition isn’t the only one from the period. The Seder ‘Olam Rabba, written by one person between 150 and 160 CE only gives the dates for one Agrippa. This is exactly the period that our existing Josephus material went under the knife of a Christian redactor, making the leader of the Jewish revolt a full fledged ‘believer’ in Jesus Christ.
This is not the place to prove my contention that the existing texts of Josephus have suffered from the interpolation of a Christian editor. As I just indicated, the Testamonium Flavium betrays that fact unmistakably. I just happen to take that fact one step further than most scholars. According to my way of thinking, this one generally acknowledged editorial manipulation was part of a greater effort to diminish Agrippa’s standing.
Is it really possible that this claim of Josephus’ “secret faith” in Jesus Christ was connected with a broader attempt to deny Agrippa’s messiahood? Unfortunately, this isn’t the proper place for that argument. At the very least we can say that the presence of corruption in Josephus’ existing narrative – editorial manipulation with a clear theological agenda - helps explain why the rest of the material is so inaccurate.
Indeed it is nothing short of amazing how naively scholars employ Josephus. For them, Josephus is nothing short of a gift fallen from heaven. It often seems that they are all convinced that all you have to do is open the magic book and the exact details of everything that happened in the first century of the Common Era miraculously come to life.
The truth is that it is only because so little information from that period has survived that the Josephus canon can maintain its air of authority. Indeed if we match up what is written about ‘Agrippa’ against the only real and abiding pieces of evidence regarding their rule – the coins and inscriptions which mention his name – the underlying (and deliberate) inaccuracies immediately become manifest.
The existing copies of Josephus, with their claim that one Marcus Agrippa reigned from 38 – 44 CE and another Marcus Agrippa (his son) ruled from 49 CE is plainly disputed by the calmative numismatic evidence. As Ya’akov Meshorer repeatedly notes in his definitive Jewish Coins of the Second Commonwealth Period “one of the most perplexing problems in Jewish numismatics [has been] that of the dates on the coins of Agrippa II” and specifically “the date mentioned by Josephus as the first regnal year … [which is] incompatible with at least some dates on his coins.”
As Meshorer readily recognizes, “because Josephus gives the first year of Agrippa II’s rule as 49/50 many have mistakenly counted the beginning of his regnal year from that date. However the inscriptions foun at Jebel Druze and elsewhere containing dates according to the era of Agrippa I, his coins issued in the days of Domitian mentioning the twelfth consulship of the emperor, as well as the coins under the Flavian emperors with dates below year 20 – all these rule out the possibility of an era of Agrippa II beginning in 50 CE.”
This devastating contradiction to the claims of the beginning of one Agrippa’s rule in the existing text of Josephus pale in comparison to a careful scrutiny of the end of the other. If we are to believe Josephus’ text Agrippa coins should simply disappear after ‘year 8’ of his rule (or 44 CE). The facts however demonstrate that Agrippa coins with Claudius as Emperor continue through years 9, 10, 13 and 15. Only the most pathetic effort to make the numismatic evidence fit Josephus’ surviving text helps scholars turn a blind eye to this problem.
When confronted with the existence of ‘year 9’ `coins of Agrippa Marsden, in his International Numismata Orientalia (p. 132), simply brushes aside the evidence because it doesn’t fit Josephus’ chronology. He cites De Sauley’s argument in French – “Josephe dit on toutes lettres que le regne d’Agrippa Ier n’a pas ete de pius sept ans, puisqu’il est mort dans le cours de sa septieme annee.” De Sauley says that this ‘fact’ allows for coins up to ‘year seven’ but adds that a date of ‘year nine’ “me parait toujour inexplicable; d’ailleurs, les faussaires ne manquant pas a Jerusalem!” (cf De Sauley, ‘Num Chron.’ N. S. 1871 vol xi, 255).
So it is that scholars deliberately ‘stop’ now at ‘year eight’ coins for Agrippa and push aside not only these ‘year nine’ coins but as I mentioned other coins which demonstrate clearly his reign never actually ended. Indeed in 1862, H. C. Reichardt published a coin with the bust of Agrippa to left, on the obverse and an anchor on the reverse. It also read L I (= year 10) on the reverse. As Deutsch notes ‘his reading of the legend and date was accepted -- initially -- with some reservations.’
The problem was again that the coin ‘didn’t fit’ Josephus’ chronology so alternative explanations had to be developed. As Deutsch again notes the style of the coin was clearly that of ‘Agrippa I.’ Yet Josephus ‘makes clear’ that Agrippa I couldn’t have reigned beyond his eighth year. So what to do? Again the simplest explanation is to ignore the anomaly and stick to the rule.
However given that we are not as sophisticated as these men, it is difficult for as to avoid a clear continuation of coinage of one ‘king Agrippa’ through to his tenth year. Of course not every regnal year yields numismatic evidence. As Meshorer notes “except for two coins, one of his second year and the other of his fifth year, all of the coins of Agrippa I were struck under the Emperor Claudius.”
As such, when we turn this observation around for our ‘one Agrippa’ theory, we find no coins minted in year one (which is only natural because Agrippa hadn’t yet taken his kingdom), a coin in year two, no coins in year three and four, a coin in year five, many coins in years six and seven. One or a few coins in years eight, nine and ten and then no coins again in years eleven and twelve followed by a new development in years thirteen and fifteen.
Scholars typically point to the fact that ‘Agrippa I’ tried to avoid offending his Jewish subjects by having images which might be considered ‘graven’ on his coins. This is usually cited as an important distinction between ‘father’ and ‘son,’ the former being somehow ‘closer’ to the Jews and Judaism. Of course this division is ultimately quite artificial. Offensive images do indeed appear on coins usually attributed to ‘Agrippa I.’ Scholars have to push these to the side when making that argument. The better explanation here is clearly that Agrippa was ‘encouraged’ to behave differently towards his Jewish subjects by different Roman Emperors.
Indeed in years thirteen and fifteen it becomes immediately apparently that Agrippa’s own name and likeness were so reprehensible to Jews that they disappear completely. Maltiel-Gerstenfeld (Jewish Coins 1982) begins his section on coins of Agrippa II with a series of coins through these years which simply say ‘Claudius Caesar’ or have images related to the Emperors family. Maltiel-Gerstenfeld makes clear that the identification of ‘year thirteen’ and ‘year fifteen’ on these coins make clear that they are again a continuation of Agrippa’s reign because, after all, Claudius only ruled for fourteen years. He demonstrates at least one coin which explicitly mentions ‘year 15’ as well as three more which he dates to that period. They necessarily prove that an Agrippa continued to rule into 51/52 CE.
The straightforward interpretation of these coins which continue through years 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 15 of a king named Agrippa is that there was only one such ruler. Only a completely arbitrary effort to attribute some coins to two otherwise indistinguishable men of the same name rescues the apparent falseness of Josephus’ surviving account. Indeed one wonders how an Agrippa I whose rule went from year 2 – year 8 and an ‘Agrippa II’ whose reign started at ‘year nine and went up to year 15’ didn’t arouse the suspicion of at least some academics as to the farcical nature of the whole enterprise.
Of course we are still left with Meshorer’s original problem of a ‘restarting’ of Agrippa coins in the Neronian period. Nevertheless the existing text of Josephus has already been proven utterly useless to reconcile the difficulty. As he continues a little later in the same chapter:
The conclusion of Seyrig is that there were two eras of Agrippa II, one that commenced in 56 CE and the other in 61 CE. The higher era (61 CE) was used very much less than that beginning in 56 CE. The one era that of 61 CE was employed for the coins struck in the twelfth consulship of Domitian and appears also on the [Neronian] coins with the double dates. In every instance where these double dates occur on coins and in inscriptions, the difference between the one date and the other is 5 years.
The point again is that the existing text of Josephus’ claim that one Agrippa ended his rule in 44 CE and the other began again in 49 CE is absolutely contradicted by the surviving evidence.
As Meshorer again reemphasizes a little later still in his analysis of the data:
The coins of Agrippa under the Flavian emperors bear dates starting from year 14 and concluding with the year 35. This era could not possibly begin in 49/50 CE, as Josephus would have it, for then ‘year 14,’ the year Agrippa commenced to strike coins under the Flavians, would fall under the rule of Nero, four years before Vespasian became Emperor, even as all the coins under the Flavians bearing the dates below year 20 would have been issued before Vespasian’s accession. The era commencing in 56 CE fits in well, for according to it Agrippa, immediately on the accession of the Flavians in 69/70 CE began to strike coins with their names on them.
The point of course now is that Josephus’ chronology has been utterly disproved by two prominent experts in Jewish numismatics.
Once we see 44 CE cannot plausibly be offered up as the end of the reign of one Agrippa nor 49 CE the beginning of another, there is no need to accept the claims regarding two different Marcus Agrippas. The coins only suggest that the one and the same Agrippa had his rule terminated near the end of Claudius rule and reinstated in the second year of Nero’s. When all the evidence is taken together from Josephus and rabbinic sources the infamous ‘Passover of the Crushed’ – an event which the rabbinic tradition blames Agrippa for and which Josephus identifies as having occurred near the end of Claudius’ reign – i.e. 51 CE.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
the one Agrippa theory
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
As Daniel Schwartz rightly notes, the two thousand year old Jewish tradition makes clear that there was only one ‘Marcus Agrippa.’ He was born around 28 CE, was acknowledged as the messiah after some initial resistance and then when even greater Jewish dissention broke out end up annihilating the Jewish religion in 70 CE. Of course what one hundred generations of rabbinic teaching says about Marcus Agrippa doesn’t seem to matter much too western scholars. That is because ‘Agrippa’ has long been a part of our own religious history at a time when Jews were relegated to living in ghettos and prohibited from intermingling with Christians. To this end a completely separate understanding developed among Europeans which continues to this day.
When scholars piece together their understanding of who or what ‘Marcus Agrippa’ was they prefer instead the authority of a single man whose original testimony was passed on through the Fathers of the Church. This writer was named Joseph or ‘Josephus’ as the name is preserved in Greek. In truth Josephus was actually quite a bit like Agrippa only fortune didn’t smile on him as favorably. After leading a Jewish revolt to try and overthrow Agrippa’s authority in Palestine he ended up getting captured and switching to the Roman side. He made a bargain with the Roman generals to help them secure victory in Jerusalem and thereby saved his life.
So it is within this context that we should see that at the end of the war he began work on a history of the Jewish people which ends with attempt to explain away his role in the uprising. There was feeling among members of the king’s inner circle that Josephus’ text wasn’t quite telling the truth. He wasn’t being honest about his own role in the revolt nor his true motivation. The Jewish War was at bottom a rejection of Agrippa by many if not most of his Jewish subjects.
Now what ever that original text looked like, it is undeniable in my mind that it has not survived down to the present age undefiled. What we have received instead we have received a version of that text which passed through a series of ancient hands in the Catholic Church and effectively become ‘Christianized.’ Many if not most scholars over the last two hundred years view Josephus’ ‘confession’ that he was secretly a Christian as proof that the existing text was tampered with. Yet this is only one are many other examples of this ‘Catholicizing’ of his original Jewish text.
I want the reader to understand what I am suggesting. To be a member of the official orthodoxy in the second century one had to deny the messianic claims of ‘Mark’ – i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa. This argument is outlined in my other books. Nevertheless it stands that Josephus’ subtle anti-Agrippanism in the original work became developed to the next degree by Catholic editors. Now Josephus was being used to against Agrippa’s secretary Justus and his rival historical text A Chronicle of the Kings of the Jews to prove that in point of fact there was no connection whatsoever between Agrippa and Christianity.
I know that this sounds quite ridiculous. One could use this kind of logic to argue on behalf of the idea that Buddhism really believed in Christ. All you have to do is claim that someone came along and removed all the passages which proved your point. Nevertheless I don’t thing that my argument is as preposterous as this owing to the fact that we see that the same pattern of denying a relationship is demonstrable in other Catholic texts which are linked to the new ‘Christianized’ version of Josephus.
Let us begin first with the narrative of Paul before Agrippa we just saw from the Acts of the Apostles. Tannehill notes that it is quite possible that ‘the narrative world may be completely fictional.’ Hans Conzelmann believes that its central point that Festus had to ask Agrippa help him solve the case is utterly ‘artificial’ and ‘self-contradictory.’ So why do scholars question its inclusion in the text?
We should be careful to note that the text here doesn’t say that Agrippa had nothing to do with Christianity. It can be read in such a way that it wanted to explain why it was that some people thought Agrippa was connected with Christianity or better yet identified as St. Paul.
The material does this by having ‘Paul’ – a figure otherwise unknown before the second century – go before the king and utter an apologia. The author develops a most ridiculous argument now that this Herodian king knew absolutely nothing about Jesus or the religion of Christianity even though his predecessor Herod Antipas seemed utterly obsessed about finding out about these matters.
Agrippa is also acknowledged to be a man who is ‘well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies.’ Yet at the same time the text makes it seem as if R. Gamaliel, one of the most important Jewish figures from the period, was well acquainted with the religion of the ‘Nazarenes.’ Jews and Christians had by then been supposedly fighting with one another for decades. How then can Agrippa be an ‘expert’ on Jewish controversies when this was by far the most important spiritual movement in the period? The answer is obvious. The author of Acts merely wants to disconnect Agrippa utterly from the movement because it was well known he was its original patron.
Indeed what makes matters even more ludicrous is that Agrippa was already king of the Galileans at this period in history. Christianity was originally identified as ‘Galileanism’ because it had so many adherents in the region. To this end either Agrippa has to be perceived as a completely delinquent ruler or the second century text deliberately presents an utterly counterfeit historical claim.
Moreover many of the things which are uttered here are impossible to believe were ever conceived as a strategy that anyone would have used before the king. When Paul declares that the Jews ‘can testify … that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.’ No one who actually lived in the period would have ever tried to win the kings favor this way. Agrippa was a sworn enemy of the Pharisees. He butted heads with this ‘separatist’ community many times in the course of his reign. It would be a bad way to begin oral arguments on behalf of clemency.
The artificiality of the Acts of the Apostles narrative has been addressed in many other works so it is not my place now to rehash old arguments. Nevertheless it is worth noting what the author is attempting here. He wants to simplify the context of the emergence of Christianity into a world where there was such a thing as ‘Jewish orthodoxy.’ Indeed the author is hoping to gloss over the actual reality of the age that there were countless ‘Judaisms’ each claiming to be ‘orthodox’ and all other rival communities represented schisms from it.
We can begin to see the reason this is so important to the author of the Acts of the Apostles when we step back and look at his purpose in writing this pseudo-historical text in the first place. He desperately wants to establish that there was such a thing as a clear unmistakable ‘orthodoxy’ within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The alternative was that there was always chaos even before the destruction of the temple and so he and his Church had no grounds for accusing those who disagreed with them as ‘breaking away’ from its original doctrine.
Whatever the case may be, it is obvious how artificial the whole dialogue is once we go back to Paul’s supposed open declaration to Agrippa that he was a lifelong Pharisee in order to win his favor. This would be like trying to get something from the American President George Bush by shouting out that you are a lifelong Democrat. Indeed when we look carefully at Paul’s statement before Agrippa, the problem isn’t just that he ‘mentions’ his Pharisaic affiliation – the text is so artificially concocted that the pseudo-apostle continues to heap praise upon this hated group beyond what is reason would allow.
All of this necessarily begs the question – who wrote Acts? It is an inquiry I have developed elsewhere in some detail. The critical part of that inquiry was that there can be no doubt that the text was slightly modified at the time of Irenaeus, the late second century Roman Church Father. Irenaeus invented the character of ‘Luke’ who now became the author of both a gospel and this book of Acts. However when you look closely at the structure of the work Luke can’t possibly be the original author. It seems far more likely that John who was also called Mark – who spends the first half of the work in the company of Peter and most of the second with ‘Paul’ – was originally credited with the composition. The opening words of the companion work, the Gospel of Luke, also undoubtedly were originally argued to be ‘Johannine.’
To this end I believe that the original mid-second century author was ultimately concluding with the clear proof that ‘Mark’ was clearly a different person from Marcus Agrippa. This point became less important in the late second century when Agrippa was himself a most forgotten figure. Nevertheless the Markan heretics continued to heap insults on the invented figure of ‘John Mark’ in the text. A member is cited at the time of Origen as saying to him of the Book of Acts that “your deceitful codice is not trustworthy.” The true Mark was not as described in this text.
So who did this third century heretic think ‘Mark’ really was? We will never know for certain. Nevertheless I think that the Book of Acts provides us with some clues in its description of Agrippa in what follows in the chapter. ‘Paul’ goes on to describe to Agrippa what happened to him on the road to Damascus – the experience that we have now identified as being the ‘revelation’ in 2 Cor 13:3f. Nevertheless it is clear also that these heretical adherents of Mark denied ‘Paul’ as well as the aforementioned figures from Acts. Whoever was announcing his ‘vision from heaven’ in this epistle he wasn’t named ‘Paul’ - ‘Mark’ is a much more likely suggestion.
Isn’t it strange then that the author of Acts seems to acknowledge that Marcus Agrippa was also associated with having a visionary experience? When ‘Paul’ speaks directly to Agrippa telling him that at “about noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions’ ‘Paul’ is made to think that the king might be convinced by his argument because he was also connected with a well known ‘revelation from heaven.’
We hear the Catholic pseudo-apostle say not only “so then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven’ but again ‘the king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.” Of course the author is just contradicting himself again. The whole premise at the beginning of the discussion is that Agrippa knew nothing about Christianity. Now suddenly ‘everyone’ must have known these things including Agrippa.
Why then the pretence that Agrippa didn’t know anything about Christianity? Clearly the author is trying to make it seem that Agrippa’s vision was something different from the one which founded Christianity. The next lines make this clearer. Out of nowhere ‘Paul’ asks “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do." Indeed the Jewish tradition cited in the Appendix knows full well that Agrippa was declared to be no less than the messiah of the prophets. Of course Agrippa believed in the prophets! Wouldn’t you if they were universally regarded to prove you were the reason for the very existence of Israel?
Agrippa’s response to this strange statement is even stranger. We read that “Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" To which Paul replied "Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains." This is reference again to the central mystery of the so-called ‘Pauline epistles’ – namely that the martyr who is ‘weak’ necessarily ‘empowers’ those who behold his trials.
Scholars have struggled with the meaning of these words relating Agrippa to Christianity for some time. The Greek literally means here ‘you have convinced me a little.’ In my mind this is a clear play on words on the emphasis of Mark’s ‘littleness’ in his community yet there are other interpretations. Peloubet notes that “most modern critics agree with [the idea] that Agrippa’s better nature was touched and that he spoke sincerely saying in effect, ‘if you go on a little longer you will persuade even me [to become a Christian].” Indeed he rightly notes that “this best agrees with Paul’s reply.”
As such the author of Acts clearly did not think it ridiculous that the last king of Israel might well have been connected with Christianity. He leaves us with a curious ambiguity which says to the effect that ‘if you hear that Agrippa was a Christian he only was so because of ‘Paul.’ In other words – and this is critical – the author was saying to his adherents whatever you may have heard Marcus Agrippa was not the author of the Pauline epistles. This narrative in the Acts of the Apostles actually ‘proves it’!
As Daniel Schwartz rightly notes, the two thousand year old Jewish tradition makes clear that there was only one ‘Marcus Agrippa.’ He was born around 28 CE, was acknowledged as the messiah after some initial resistance and then when even greater Jewish dissention broke out end up annihilating the Jewish religion in 70 CE. Of course what one hundred generations of rabbinic teaching says about Marcus Agrippa doesn’t seem to matter much too western scholars. That is because ‘Agrippa’ has long been a part of our own religious history at a time when Jews were relegated to living in ghettos and prohibited from intermingling with Christians. To this end a completely separate understanding developed among Europeans which continues to this day.
When scholars piece together their understanding of who or what ‘Marcus Agrippa’ was they prefer instead the authority of a single man whose original testimony was passed on through the Fathers of the Church. This writer was named Joseph or ‘Josephus’ as the name is preserved in Greek. In truth Josephus was actually quite a bit like Agrippa only fortune didn’t smile on him as favorably. After leading a Jewish revolt to try and overthrow Agrippa’s authority in Palestine he ended up getting captured and switching to the Roman side. He made a bargain with the Roman generals to help them secure victory in Jerusalem and thereby saved his life.
So it is within this context that we should see that at the end of the war he began work on a history of the Jewish people which ends with attempt to explain away his role in the uprising. There was feeling among members of the king’s inner circle that Josephus’ text wasn’t quite telling the truth. He wasn’t being honest about his own role in the revolt nor his true motivation. The Jewish War was at bottom a rejection of Agrippa by many if not most of his Jewish subjects.
Now what ever that original text looked like, it is undeniable in my mind that it has not survived down to the present age undefiled. What we have received instead we have received a version of that text which passed through a series of ancient hands in the Catholic Church and effectively become ‘Christianized.’ Many if not most scholars over the last two hundred years view Josephus’ ‘confession’ that he was secretly a Christian as proof that the existing text was tampered with. Yet this is only one are many other examples of this ‘Catholicizing’ of his original Jewish text.
I want the reader to understand what I am suggesting. To be a member of the official orthodoxy in the second century one had to deny the messianic claims of ‘Mark’ – i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa. This argument is outlined in my other books. Nevertheless it stands that Josephus’ subtle anti-Agrippanism in the original work became developed to the next degree by Catholic editors. Now Josephus was being used to against Agrippa’s secretary Justus and his rival historical text A Chronicle of the Kings of the Jews to prove that in point of fact there was no connection whatsoever between Agrippa and Christianity.
I know that this sounds quite ridiculous. One could use this kind of logic to argue on behalf of the idea that Buddhism really believed in Christ. All you have to do is claim that someone came along and removed all the passages which proved your point. Nevertheless I don’t thing that my argument is as preposterous as this owing to the fact that we see that the same pattern of denying a relationship is demonstrable in other Catholic texts which are linked to the new ‘Christianized’ version of Josephus.
Let us begin first with the narrative of Paul before Agrippa we just saw from the Acts of the Apostles. Tannehill notes that it is quite possible that ‘the narrative world may be completely fictional.’ Hans Conzelmann believes that its central point that Festus had to ask Agrippa help him solve the case is utterly ‘artificial’ and ‘self-contradictory.’ So why do scholars question its inclusion in the text?
We should be careful to note that the text here doesn’t say that Agrippa had nothing to do with Christianity. It can be read in such a way that it wanted to explain why it was that some people thought Agrippa was connected with Christianity or better yet identified as St. Paul.
The material does this by having ‘Paul’ – a figure otherwise unknown before the second century – go before the king and utter an apologia. The author develops a most ridiculous argument now that this Herodian king knew absolutely nothing about Jesus or the religion of Christianity even though his predecessor Herod Antipas seemed utterly obsessed about finding out about these matters.
Agrippa is also acknowledged to be a man who is ‘well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies.’ Yet at the same time the text makes it seem as if R. Gamaliel, one of the most important Jewish figures from the period, was well acquainted with the religion of the ‘Nazarenes.’ Jews and Christians had by then been supposedly fighting with one another for decades. How then can Agrippa be an ‘expert’ on Jewish controversies when this was by far the most important spiritual movement in the period? The answer is obvious. The author of Acts merely wants to disconnect Agrippa utterly from the movement because it was well known he was its original patron.
Indeed what makes matters even more ludicrous is that Agrippa was already king of the Galileans at this period in history. Christianity was originally identified as ‘Galileanism’ because it had so many adherents in the region. To this end either Agrippa has to be perceived as a completely delinquent ruler or the second century text deliberately presents an utterly counterfeit historical claim.
Moreover many of the things which are uttered here are impossible to believe were ever conceived as a strategy that anyone would have used before the king. When Paul declares that the Jews ‘can testify … that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.’ No one who actually lived in the period would have ever tried to win the kings favor this way. Agrippa was a sworn enemy of the Pharisees. He butted heads with this ‘separatist’ community many times in the course of his reign. It would be a bad way to begin oral arguments on behalf of clemency.
The artificiality of the Acts of the Apostles narrative has been addressed in many other works so it is not my place now to rehash old arguments. Nevertheless it is worth noting what the author is attempting here. He wants to simplify the context of the emergence of Christianity into a world where there was such a thing as ‘Jewish orthodoxy.’ Indeed the author is hoping to gloss over the actual reality of the age that there were countless ‘Judaisms’ each claiming to be ‘orthodox’ and all other rival communities represented schisms from it.
We can begin to see the reason this is so important to the author of the Acts of the Apostles when we step back and look at his purpose in writing this pseudo-historical text in the first place. He desperately wants to establish that there was such a thing as a clear unmistakable ‘orthodoxy’ within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The alternative was that there was always chaos even before the destruction of the temple and so he and his Church had no grounds for accusing those who disagreed with them as ‘breaking away’ from its original doctrine.
Whatever the case may be, it is obvious how artificial the whole dialogue is once we go back to Paul’s supposed open declaration to Agrippa that he was a lifelong Pharisee in order to win his favor. This would be like trying to get something from the American President George Bush by shouting out that you are a lifelong Democrat. Indeed when we look carefully at Paul’s statement before Agrippa, the problem isn’t just that he ‘mentions’ his Pharisaic affiliation – the text is so artificially concocted that the pseudo-apostle continues to heap praise upon this hated group beyond what is reason would allow.
All of this necessarily begs the question – who wrote Acts? It is an inquiry I have developed elsewhere in some detail. The critical part of that inquiry was that there can be no doubt that the text was slightly modified at the time of Irenaeus, the late second century Roman Church Father. Irenaeus invented the character of ‘Luke’ who now became the author of both a gospel and this book of Acts. However when you look closely at the structure of the work Luke can’t possibly be the original author. It seems far more likely that John who was also called Mark – who spends the first half of the work in the company of Peter and most of the second with ‘Paul’ – was originally credited with the composition. The opening words of the companion work, the Gospel of Luke, also undoubtedly were originally argued to be ‘Johannine.’
To this end I believe that the original mid-second century author was ultimately concluding with the clear proof that ‘Mark’ was clearly a different person from Marcus Agrippa. This point became less important in the late second century when Agrippa was himself a most forgotten figure. Nevertheless the Markan heretics continued to heap insults on the invented figure of ‘John Mark’ in the text. A member is cited at the time of Origen as saying to him of the Book of Acts that “your deceitful codice is not trustworthy.” The true Mark was not as described in this text.
So who did this third century heretic think ‘Mark’ really was? We will never know for certain. Nevertheless I think that the Book of Acts provides us with some clues in its description of Agrippa in what follows in the chapter. ‘Paul’ goes on to describe to Agrippa what happened to him on the road to Damascus – the experience that we have now identified as being the ‘revelation’ in 2 Cor 13:3f. Nevertheless it is clear also that these heretical adherents of Mark denied ‘Paul’ as well as the aforementioned figures from Acts. Whoever was announcing his ‘vision from heaven’ in this epistle he wasn’t named ‘Paul’ - ‘Mark’ is a much more likely suggestion.
Isn’t it strange then that the author of Acts seems to acknowledge that Marcus Agrippa was also associated with having a visionary experience? When ‘Paul’ speaks directly to Agrippa telling him that at “about noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions’ ‘Paul’ is made to think that the king might be convinced by his argument because he was also connected with a well known ‘revelation from heaven.’
We hear the Catholic pseudo-apostle say not only “so then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven’ but again ‘the king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.” Of course the author is just contradicting himself again. The whole premise at the beginning of the discussion is that Agrippa knew nothing about Christianity. Now suddenly ‘everyone’ must have known these things including Agrippa.
Why then the pretence that Agrippa didn’t know anything about Christianity? Clearly the author is trying to make it seem that Agrippa’s vision was something different from the one which founded Christianity. The next lines make this clearer. Out of nowhere ‘Paul’ asks “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do." Indeed the Jewish tradition cited in the Appendix knows full well that Agrippa was declared to be no less than the messiah of the prophets. Of course Agrippa believed in the prophets! Wouldn’t you if they were universally regarded to prove you were the reason for the very existence of Israel?
Agrippa’s response to this strange statement is even stranger. We read that “Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" To which Paul replied "Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains." This is reference again to the central mystery of the so-called ‘Pauline epistles’ – namely that the martyr who is ‘weak’ necessarily ‘empowers’ those who behold his trials.
Scholars have struggled with the meaning of these words relating Agrippa to Christianity for some time. The Greek literally means here ‘you have convinced me a little.’ In my mind this is a clear play on words on the emphasis of Mark’s ‘littleness’ in his community yet there are other interpretations. Peloubet notes that “most modern critics agree with [the idea] that Agrippa’s better nature was touched and that he spoke sincerely saying in effect, ‘if you go on a little longer you will persuade even me [to become a Christian].” Indeed he rightly notes that “this best agrees with Paul’s reply.”
As such the author of Acts clearly did not think it ridiculous that the last king of Israel might well have been connected with Christianity. He leaves us with a curious ambiguity which says to the effect that ‘if you hear that Agrippa was a Christian he only was so because of ‘Paul.’ In other words – and this is critical – the author was saying to his adherents whatever you may have heard Marcus Agrippa was not the author of the Pauline epistles. This narrative in the Acts of the Apostles actually ‘proves it’!
Danny Schwartz on Agrippa
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
For most people the Acts of the Apostles is just about the only place that they might run into Marcus Julius Agrippa. Nevertheless there exists a small percentage of Christians and history students who will end up turning to the portrait of Agrippa in the writings of Josephus. There is a great body of literature which has essentially proven that a relationship exists between the canonical Acts of the Apostles and Josephus. It is usually used to demonstrate that Acts can’t have been developed much earlier than the middle second century CE given that Josephus only completed his work c. 95 CE.
Holtzmann for instance notes that the all the principle sections of Josephus’ text where mention is made of the contemporary ‘false messiahs’ of the Jews – Theudas and Judas (Ant xx 5, 1, 2) emerge somewhere in Acts in the exact order established by the Jewish author. He also adds that in the short passage in Acts dealing with these figures there are five expressions which appear identical or near identical in Josephus. He also adduces certain Greek words which he demonstrates the author ‘Luke’ appropriated material from Josephus.
Max Krenel’s develops additional arguments including the fact that the author of Luke-Acts doesn’t just ‘use’ Josephus, he ‘adapts’ the material to say things which were never in the original text. There have been countless variations and innovations to these original observations over the last century. Those who defend the Book of Acts answer by saying that the case that ‘Luke’ used Acts isn’t yet ‘proved.’ This is utterly ridiculous. If we have to deny that there was borrowing from Josephus in our New Testament canon then we must refrain from ever arguing that any ancient author used any source without his explicit confirmation to that effect. The underlying case is that strong.
Many have made the case that the editor of our canon misused or used Josephus badly. Yet there is something which never gets said in any study of Josephus that I have ever read. The account of Josephus even beyond the famous Testamonium Flavium is hopelessly corrupt. This can’t be the original text that Josephus published around 95 CE. There are inconsistencies in almost every chapter. I will put forward that many of these are deliberate especially those which can be connected somehow to Marcus Julius Agrippa.
So when we put forward our startling claim that the Christian editor of Josephus manufactured the figure of ‘Agrippa I’ the father of Marcus Julius Agrippa we are fortunate that much of the work has already been done for us. For while Daniel Schwartz in his Agrippa I in no way supports our contention as to the complete falseness of this figure he has already begun the task of examining the sources behind Josephus’ account of Agrippa. It is noteworthy that he concludes that many of the details had to be entirely fictitious leaving open the possibility that ‘Agrippa I’ himself was an entirely fictitious creation.
To this end let us begin with Schwartz’s attribution of sources. Schwartz assumes of course that there was indeed a ‘real historical’ Agrippa I. One of the sources that Josephus must have had, he concludes was a ‘Life of Agrippa’ which provided him with basic details of his life and accomplishments. Outside of this he acknowledges that the author of these sections drew heavily from existing source materials ‘which dealt with individuals and episodes Agrippa encountered’ in his career. Of note is the fact that Philo of Alexandria is seen as one of the main sources of this section of work and Schwartz argues that the author of Josephus often misquotes the original material.
Of course we have to emphasize that Schwartz sees Josephus’ role as ‘mainly that of extractor, compiler and seamster.’ He imagines that there was a real life of Agrippa I that Josephus ‘filled’ from extracts from other sources. However I think that when we get through all the inventions and borrowings that even Schwartz identifies the reader can really see that there is very little authentic history left for us to seize upon.
According to Schwartz “in the latter part of the first chapter and all of the next two i.e. which focuses successively upon Antipas, upon the Temple-statue affair, and upon Gaius’ death and Claudius’ enthronement, Josephus successively followed the respective specialized sources and used the Life of Agrippa only as a supplement.” So at once we see that Schwartz thinks that whoever ‘Josephus’ was he derived these stories from a patchwork of existing historical sources. This necessarily means that the same stories could have applied to ‘Agrippa II’ (to use the existing term without acknowledging it). They prove no independent knowledge of a particular ‘Agrippa’ having performed them.
One of the main sources that Schwartz attributes to this later section in Josephus’ treatment of Agrippa was Philo of Alexandria. If Philo’s material were read without reference to Josephus not only would we find no evidence to support the existence of two Agrippas, as we shall examine shortly the material actually seems better suited to the assumption that Agrippa was a little boy. Yet once we establish that even by Schwartz’s standards almost nothing at the end of Josephus’ account came from a ‘Life of Agrippa I’ tradition and thus proves nothing for the existence of such a figure, the same can interestingly be noted for the remaining material in the first half of Josephus section.
As Schwartz again notes ‘the use of multiple sources brings with it profit and loss; it allows for a richer picture, but also for confusion.’ Schwartz acknowledges the existence of ‘several difficulties such as doublets and chronological problems’ caused by ‘improper arrangements of narrative segments based upon different sources.’ Yet he is convinced that the one authentic trait of this supposed ‘Life of Agrippa I’ on which Josephus account is based is that it ‘views its hero as living proof of the vicissitudes of fortune.’
Of course the Josephan narrative is written exactly this way – ‘Agrippa I’ is thrown into prison only to emerge and miraculous go ‘from rags to riches.’ However it would be misleading to claim that only Agrippa I could make these claims. As we shall show in the next chapter the coins associated with ‘Agrippa II” never stop referencing Tyche the goddess of Fortune than those coins identified as belonging to ‘Agrippa I.’ Schwartz seems to contradict himself in one sentence when he argues that ‘the assumption that Agrippa’s peripreteia which governed by Divine Providence … [is] typically Josephan” on the one hand but acknowledges that the idea appears also in Philo and other Jewish sources for Agrippa.
Indeed it is curious that Schwartz should emphasize over and over again how the narrative dealing with the imprisonment of Agrippa I should be so authentic while in the same breath should go on to prove that its details were stolen from the Biblical account of the patriarch Joseph. As Schwartz notes the story of Joseph ‘recounts the career of a talented young man who was dashed down due to his brothers’ jealousy from fair haired boy to slave and prisoner in a distant land.’ Just as Joseph eventually was raised to the same status as Pharoah himself, Schwartz reminds us that it recalls the details of Agrippa’s life almost two perfectly.
The point is now that whoever wrote the account of ‘Agrippa I’ imprisoned in Rome did so by borrowing heavily from the Biblical account of Joseph. Schwartz rightly points out that the narrative with Agrippa introduces an ominous bird and a German slave who asks the future king to remember him when he is freed. These ideas are stolen from the account of Joseph where a bird appears over the baker’s head (Genesis 40:17 – 19) and the butler makes much the same request as Agrippa’s German (ibid 12 – 15).
Schwartz again reminds us that the narrative in Ant 18:237 which has Gaius release Agrippa from prison says that ‘he sent for Agrippa to come to his house, and he attended to cutting his hair and changing his clothes.’ As Schwartz notes ‘the only reason these petty details are mentioned, it seems obvious, is that Genesis 41:14 reports the exact same regarding Pharaoh’s liberation of Joseph.” Indeed the parallels don’t stop there.
Schwartz notes that later in the narrative Agrippa gets angry at a certain Silas his chief of command and imprisons him. Silas eventually gets pardoned on the king’s birthday. This exactly corresponds to what occurs to the baker in the Joseph story in Genesis. Similarly the narrative claims that Agrippa was well treated in prison and got along quite well with the prison’s director. While this is flatly denied by another account in Josephus it again conforms with the details of Joseph’s story.
The point of course is now that the imprisonment narrative is the one piece of evidence which Schwartz points to proving the existence of an independent ‘Agrippa I.’ Most of the other famous stories about ‘Agrippa I’ are acknowledged to have come from other sources who might well have originally identified only one Agrippa. The prison narrative makes it appear absolutely certain at first glance that it was a forty something year old Agrippa being thrown into the slammer in 37 CE. With Schwartz’s critical examination of the material we can’t be so sure.
As even he acknowledges the life of Agrippa I which appears in Josephus was undeniably ‘borrowed’ from the Book of Genesis. Indeed as he notes it was written within a stock Biblical tradition of how Jews survived in Imperial courts where ‘the heroes of these books are typical Diasporan heroes, who must depend on their luck and their wiles.’ This might leave us thinking that Schwartz concludes that the author might well have only exaggerated something with actual historical truth underneath it. However Schwartz goes one step further.
He ends by noting that the story which appears in Josephus is very much like the Biblical narrative of Josephus in so far as it is only a novel. Schwartz pauses and finally declares that such works abounded in the period and that “these too are only fascinating novels, but the historical worth of even the latter which claims to be historiography is open to serious doubt.”
For most people the Acts of the Apostles is just about the only place that they might run into Marcus Julius Agrippa. Nevertheless there exists a small percentage of Christians and history students who will end up turning to the portrait of Agrippa in the writings of Josephus. There is a great body of literature which has essentially proven that a relationship exists between the canonical Acts of the Apostles and Josephus. It is usually used to demonstrate that Acts can’t have been developed much earlier than the middle second century CE given that Josephus only completed his work c. 95 CE.
Holtzmann for instance notes that the all the principle sections of Josephus’ text where mention is made of the contemporary ‘false messiahs’ of the Jews – Theudas and Judas (Ant xx 5, 1, 2) emerge somewhere in Acts in the exact order established by the Jewish author. He also adds that in the short passage in Acts dealing with these figures there are five expressions which appear identical or near identical in Josephus. He also adduces certain Greek words which he demonstrates the author ‘Luke’ appropriated material from Josephus.
Max Krenel’s develops additional arguments including the fact that the author of Luke-Acts doesn’t just ‘use’ Josephus, he ‘adapts’ the material to say things which were never in the original text. There have been countless variations and innovations to these original observations over the last century. Those who defend the Book of Acts answer by saying that the case that ‘Luke’ used Acts isn’t yet ‘proved.’ This is utterly ridiculous. If we have to deny that there was borrowing from Josephus in our New Testament canon then we must refrain from ever arguing that any ancient author used any source without his explicit confirmation to that effect. The underlying case is that strong.
Many have made the case that the editor of our canon misused or used Josephus badly. Yet there is something which never gets said in any study of Josephus that I have ever read. The account of Josephus even beyond the famous Testamonium Flavium is hopelessly corrupt. This can’t be the original text that Josephus published around 95 CE. There are inconsistencies in almost every chapter. I will put forward that many of these are deliberate especially those which can be connected somehow to Marcus Julius Agrippa.
So when we put forward our startling claim that the Christian editor of Josephus manufactured the figure of ‘Agrippa I’ the father of Marcus Julius Agrippa we are fortunate that much of the work has already been done for us. For while Daniel Schwartz in his Agrippa I in no way supports our contention as to the complete falseness of this figure he has already begun the task of examining the sources behind Josephus’ account of Agrippa. It is noteworthy that he concludes that many of the details had to be entirely fictitious leaving open the possibility that ‘Agrippa I’ himself was an entirely fictitious creation.
To this end let us begin with Schwartz’s attribution of sources. Schwartz assumes of course that there was indeed a ‘real historical’ Agrippa I. One of the sources that Josephus must have had, he concludes was a ‘Life of Agrippa’ which provided him with basic details of his life and accomplishments. Outside of this he acknowledges that the author of these sections drew heavily from existing source materials ‘which dealt with individuals and episodes Agrippa encountered’ in his career. Of note is the fact that Philo of Alexandria is seen as one of the main sources of this section of work and Schwartz argues that the author of Josephus often misquotes the original material.
Of course we have to emphasize that Schwartz sees Josephus’ role as ‘mainly that of extractor, compiler and seamster.’ He imagines that there was a real life of Agrippa I that Josephus ‘filled’ from extracts from other sources. However I think that when we get through all the inventions and borrowings that even Schwartz identifies the reader can really see that there is very little authentic history left for us to seize upon.
According to Schwartz “in the latter part of the first chapter and all of the next two i.e. which focuses successively upon Antipas, upon the Temple-statue affair, and upon Gaius’ death and Claudius’ enthronement, Josephus successively followed the respective specialized sources and used the Life of Agrippa only as a supplement.” So at once we see that Schwartz thinks that whoever ‘Josephus’ was he derived these stories from a patchwork of existing historical sources. This necessarily means that the same stories could have applied to ‘Agrippa II’ (to use the existing term without acknowledging it). They prove no independent knowledge of a particular ‘Agrippa’ having performed them.
One of the main sources that Schwartz attributes to this later section in Josephus’ treatment of Agrippa was Philo of Alexandria. If Philo’s material were read without reference to Josephus not only would we find no evidence to support the existence of two Agrippas, as we shall examine shortly the material actually seems better suited to the assumption that Agrippa was a little boy. Yet once we establish that even by Schwartz’s standards almost nothing at the end of Josephus’ account came from a ‘Life of Agrippa I’ tradition and thus proves nothing for the existence of such a figure, the same can interestingly be noted for the remaining material in the first half of Josephus section.
As Schwartz again notes ‘the use of multiple sources brings with it profit and loss; it allows for a richer picture, but also for confusion.’ Schwartz acknowledges the existence of ‘several difficulties such as doublets and chronological problems’ caused by ‘improper arrangements of narrative segments based upon different sources.’ Yet he is convinced that the one authentic trait of this supposed ‘Life of Agrippa I’ on which Josephus account is based is that it ‘views its hero as living proof of the vicissitudes of fortune.’
Of course the Josephan narrative is written exactly this way – ‘Agrippa I’ is thrown into prison only to emerge and miraculous go ‘from rags to riches.’ However it would be misleading to claim that only Agrippa I could make these claims. As we shall show in the next chapter the coins associated with ‘Agrippa II” never stop referencing Tyche the goddess of Fortune than those coins identified as belonging to ‘Agrippa I.’ Schwartz seems to contradict himself in one sentence when he argues that ‘the assumption that Agrippa’s peripreteia which governed by Divine Providence … [is] typically Josephan” on the one hand but acknowledges that the idea appears also in Philo and other Jewish sources for Agrippa.
Indeed it is curious that Schwartz should emphasize over and over again how the narrative dealing with the imprisonment of Agrippa I should be so authentic while in the same breath should go on to prove that its details were stolen from the Biblical account of the patriarch Joseph. As Schwartz notes the story of Joseph ‘recounts the career of a talented young man who was dashed down due to his brothers’ jealousy from fair haired boy to slave and prisoner in a distant land.’ Just as Joseph eventually was raised to the same status as Pharoah himself, Schwartz reminds us that it recalls the details of Agrippa’s life almost two perfectly.
The point is now that whoever wrote the account of ‘Agrippa I’ imprisoned in Rome did so by borrowing heavily from the Biblical account of Joseph. Schwartz rightly points out that the narrative with Agrippa introduces an ominous bird and a German slave who asks the future king to remember him when he is freed. These ideas are stolen from the account of Joseph where a bird appears over the baker’s head (Genesis 40:17 – 19) and the butler makes much the same request as Agrippa’s German (ibid 12 – 15).
Schwartz again reminds us that the narrative in Ant 18:237 which has Gaius release Agrippa from prison says that ‘he sent for Agrippa to come to his house, and he attended to cutting his hair and changing his clothes.’ As Schwartz notes ‘the only reason these petty details are mentioned, it seems obvious, is that Genesis 41:14 reports the exact same regarding Pharaoh’s liberation of Joseph.” Indeed the parallels don’t stop there.
Schwartz notes that later in the narrative Agrippa gets angry at a certain Silas his chief of command and imprisons him. Silas eventually gets pardoned on the king’s birthday. This exactly corresponds to what occurs to the baker in the Joseph story in Genesis. Similarly the narrative claims that Agrippa was well treated in prison and got along quite well with the prison’s director. While this is flatly denied by another account in Josephus it again conforms with the details of Joseph’s story.
The point of course is now that the imprisonment narrative is the one piece of evidence which Schwartz points to proving the existence of an independent ‘Agrippa I.’ Most of the other famous stories about ‘Agrippa I’ are acknowledged to have come from other sources who might well have originally identified only one Agrippa. The prison narrative makes it appear absolutely certain at first glance that it was a forty something year old Agrippa being thrown into the slammer in 37 CE. With Schwartz’s critical examination of the material we can’t be so sure.
As even he acknowledges the life of Agrippa I which appears in Josephus was undeniably ‘borrowed’ from the Book of Genesis. Indeed as he notes it was written within a stock Biblical tradition of how Jews survived in Imperial courts where ‘the heroes of these books are typical Diasporan heroes, who must depend on their luck and their wiles.’ This might leave us thinking that Schwartz concludes that the author might well have only exaggerated something with actual historical truth underneath it. However Schwartz goes one step further.
He ends by noting that the story which appears in Josephus is very much like the Biblical narrative of Josephus in so far as it is only a novel. Schwartz pauses and finally declares that such works abounded in the period and that “these too are only fascinating novels, but the historical worth of even the latter which claims to be historiography is open to serious doubt.”
Danny Schwartz on Agrippa (part two)
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
Once Schwartz’s point is understood the only question which lies before us is to what degree is the story of Agrippa’s imprisonment in Josephus a development from Genesis chapter 40? In other words, everyone acknowledges that ‘Agrippa’ was placed in prison in the period leading up to March 26th, 37 CE. The question is whether or not he was an adult or a child when incarcerated is still to be answered. Is the material which found its way into Josephus factual or is the report of Agrippa’s maturity a by products of the narrative’s appropriation from the story of Joseph?
Schwartz never for a minute doubts that ‘Agrippa I’ was a real historical person. He claims that the author has ‘borrowed’ material from the Joseph narrative but there ‘must have been’ a real ‘Agrippa I’ who was imprisoned that year. I have always been intrigued with actually looking at what appears in Philo about Agrippa and trying to see how it might fit or not fit within Josephus’ existing narrative. Most interesting of all as I noted elsewhere is that in Philo’s recording of Agrippa’s own description of Caligula’s ‘releasing him from prison’ there is an overriding sense that he has been ‘resurrected’ from the dead – an idea which does not find echo in Josephus.
My previous discovery that Agrippa’s ‘resurrection’ occurred on the exact day of the ‘Christ’ of Christianity’s release from a tomb is a very good reason to suppose there was a later ‘re-editing’ campaign of Josephus. Indeed what is even more troubling is the way the story of ‘Agrippa I’ is introduced into Josephus. It doesn’t come as one might expect – i.e. woven into the chronological order of the narrative as a whole. Rather at the very moment when Agrippa is said to have been imprisoned the author (or later editor) goes back in time and develops a whole history of ‘Agrippa I’ which in my mind attempts to explain away any connection to Christianity whatsoever.
Indeed it should be stated that the existing texts of Josephus only identify ‘Agrippa’ a little after the date of 28 CE has been already reached in the chronology. This means that the original author might well have accepted only one ‘Agrippa’ but that someone came along later and developed an ‘explanation’ which in effect ‘created’ Agrippa I. Let me explain what I mean.
As we get closer toward the well-known imprisonment of Agrippa the author decides to add material to the text which sets the stage for the ‘Agrippa the father of Marcus Agrippa. The first time “Agrippa” appears in the chronology of Jewish War appears at 2:178 which reads “In the mean time Agrippa, the son of that Aristobulus who had been slain by his father Herod, came to Tiberius, to accuse Herod the tetrarch.” The text might well have offered a different explanation of who this ‘Herod’ who killed Agrippa’s father. Nevertheless we need only note for the moment that the parallel text in Antiquities makes clear that the year is 37 CE.
Now we turn to the first historical reference to “Agrippa” in Jewish Antiquities 120 which reads “Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome, in the year of the death of Tiberius, in order to treat of some affairs with the emperor.” Schwartz notes that the claims of this section are almost impossible to believe all fit in with the relatively short span of time from the beginning of 37 CE to Tiberius’ death in late March. Nevertheless this only serves to argue on behalf of the fact that there is corruption in the existing narrative.
Schwartz writes:
Now I should clarify that this is not the first reference to Agrippa in Jewish Antiquities. It is only the first time that Agrippa appears naturally in the chronology as I already stated.
The first actual reference to “Agrippa” in the text follows a discussion the tower where the high priest garments were stored in the Hasmonaean era. Josephus says that these vestments where kept there by ‘King Herod’ but that after his death they were transferred to the Romans. They only got back into the hands of the Jewish monarchs when Claudius gave them to Agrippa. The ‘Agrippa’ here is explicitly identified as ‘Agrippa II’ which is crucial for all the pieces here to fall properly into place.
The reason I have drawn the readers to both the first chronological reference to Agrippa as well as the first mention of his name in book fifteen is because once these are recognized it becomes quite easy to demonstrate how the text has been corrupted. The first chronological reference appears in chapter five of book eighteen and the text of Josephus almost immediately launches into a ‘trip back in time’ to provided details about who this ‘Agrippa I’ is. Nevertheless I want to stress that already in book fifteen the reader is introduced to his supposed son ‘Agrippa II’ without any overt mention of the father.
Book Eighteen is particularly troublesome as it is the one which contains the so-called ‘Testimonium Flavium’ – Josephus’ secret confession that he is really a believer in Jesus. I believe that this corruption is only the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the structure of the material which follows we see that it is almost immediately followed by the description of Pilate’s attack against a Samaritan messianic gathering. I have long argued that this event should be taken as the historical basis for the Passion narrative. Various Christian writers with connections to Samaria repeatedly reinforce this claim.
If we look at the contents from the whole as the unfold after the pseudo-historical Testamonium Flavium it is also important to note that immediately after the :
1. Testmonium Flavium (Chapter Three)
2. Why the Jews were expelled from Rome (Chapter Three)
3. Pilate’s assaulting the Samaritan messianic gathering (Chapter Four)
4. Pilate dismissed (Chapter Four)
5. Vitellius comes to Jerusalem during Passover (Chapter Four)
6. Vitellius gives the high priest robes to the Jews (Chapter Four)
7. death of Philip identified as 34 CE (Chapter Four)
8. Herod’s war with Aretas the Arab king (Chapter Five)
9. recollection of John the Baptist now dead (Chapter Five)
10. Josephus discussion of family tree of Herod (Chapter Five)
11. chapter begins “a little before the death of Herod the king” (Chapter Six)
12. the imprisonment of Agrippa at the end of Tiberius’ reign (Chapter Six)
13. Agrippa set free by Caligula (Chapter Six)
14. Agrippa made king of Philip’s former territory (Chapter Six)
15. Story of “Agrippa I” culminating with his death by owl (Chapter Six)
16. Banishment of Herod (Chapter Seven)
The last line of the Samaritan messianic gathering narrative is “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch.” All the material which follows actually begins another ‘trip back in time’ which was deliberately added by a later editor to obscure the original account of Marcus Agrippa’s imprisonment.
The readers have to keep the line just cited “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch” fresh in their heads. Tiberius’ death has also been just announced as having occurred so we are necessarily already at the end of March 37 CE. Yet from that point on in text the chronological order is deliberately broken. Events supposedly from earlier in Tiberius’ reign are haphazardly introduced making it seem as if ‘other things’ happened after Vitellius relieved Pilate of his post.
The text says that after the leaders of the Samaritans complained about Pilate’s heavy handedness he boarded a ship preparing to face Tiberius’ wrath. The last thing we are told about Pilate is that when he arrives in Rome Tiberius is already dead. At the same time Vitellius is immediately understood to have arrived in Jerusalem appointing a certain ‘Marcellus’ as Pilate’s replacement while the Passover festival was still happening in Jerusalem.
Most scholars imagine that Pilate must have left sometime in 36 CE in order to make the chronology work properly. There are no difficulties in understanding Pilate attacking a Samaritan messianic gathering which happened on a Passover and Vitellius to have arrived in Jerusalem during a Jewish Passover in the same year. For one, because of slight different methods of geography and the physical location of Mt. Gerizim the Samaritan calculation of Passover almost inevitably arrives at a date which occurs before their Jewish counterpart. It is also worth noting that in Jewish Aramaic ‘the Passover’ can refer to the whole eight days of the festival.
Passover is a most appropriate date for a Hebrew community to imagine their messiah to manifest his presence. Christianity does it – why not the Samaritan community mentioned by Josephus? To this end we are left wondering whether it is more plausible to imagine that Josephus left Palestine during the Passover of 36 CE or 37CE while Tiberius was still king. This whole issue brings up a whole different issue when was the Passover in each of those years?
Another point to consider is that Vitellius couldn’t possibly have been present to clean up the mess from Pilate’s assault on the Samaritan messianic gathering if it had occurred in 36 CE (as most scholars claim).
Once Schwartz’s point is understood the only question which lies before us is to what degree is the story of Agrippa’s imprisonment in Josephus a development from Genesis chapter 40? In other words, everyone acknowledges that ‘Agrippa’ was placed in prison in the period leading up to March 26th, 37 CE. The question is whether or not he was an adult or a child when incarcerated is still to be answered. Is the material which found its way into Josephus factual or is the report of Agrippa’s maturity a by products of the narrative’s appropriation from the story of Joseph?
Schwartz never for a minute doubts that ‘Agrippa I’ was a real historical person. He claims that the author has ‘borrowed’ material from the Joseph narrative but there ‘must have been’ a real ‘Agrippa I’ who was imprisoned that year. I have always been intrigued with actually looking at what appears in Philo about Agrippa and trying to see how it might fit or not fit within Josephus’ existing narrative. Most interesting of all as I noted elsewhere is that in Philo’s recording of Agrippa’s own description of Caligula’s ‘releasing him from prison’ there is an overriding sense that he has been ‘resurrected’ from the dead – an idea which does not find echo in Josephus.
My previous discovery that Agrippa’s ‘resurrection’ occurred on the exact day of the ‘Christ’ of Christianity’s release from a tomb is a very good reason to suppose there was a later ‘re-editing’ campaign of Josephus. Indeed what is even more troubling is the way the story of ‘Agrippa I’ is introduced into Josephus. It doesn’t come as one might expect – i.e. woven into the chronological order of the narrative as a whole. Rather at the very moment when Agrippa is said to have been imprisoned the author (or later editor) goes back in time and develops a whole history of ‘Agrippa I’ which in my mind attempts to explain away any connection to Christianity whatsoever.
Indeed it should be stated that the existing texts of Josephus only identify ‘Agrippa’ a little after the date of 28 CE has been already reached in the chronology. This means that the original author might well have accepted only one ‘Agrippa’ but that someone came along later and developed an ‘explanation’ which in effect ‘created’ Agrippa I. Let me explain what I mean.
As we get closer toward the well-known imprisonment of Agrippa the author decides to add material to the text which sets the stage for the ‘Agrippa the father of Marcus Agrippa. The first time “Agrippa” appears in the chronology of Jewish War appears at 2:178 which reads “In the mean time Agrippa, the son of that Aristobulus who had been slain by his father Herod, came to Tiberius, to accuse Herod the tetrarch.” The text might well have offered a different explanation of who this ‘Herod’ who killed Agrippa’s father. Nevertheless we need only note for the moment that the parallel text in Antiquities makes clear that the year is 37 CE.
Now we turn to the first historical reference to “Agrippa” in Jewish Antiquities 120 which reads “Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome, in the year of the death of Tiberius, in order to treat of some affairs with the emperor.” Schwartz notes that the claims of this section are almost impossible to believe all fit in with the relatively short span of time from the beginning of 37 CE to Tiberius’ death in late March. Nevertheless this only serves to argue on behalf of the fact that there is corruption in the existing narrative.
Schwartz writes:
Now I should clarify that this is not the first reference to Agrippa in Jewish Antiquities. It is only the first time that Agrippa appears naturally in the chronology as I already stated.
The first actual reference to “Agrippa” in the text follows a discussion the tower where the high priest garments were stored in the Hasmonaean era. Josephus says that these vestments where kept there by ‘King Herod’ but that after his death they were transferred to the Romans. They only got back into the hands of the Jewish monarchs when Claudius gave them to Agrippa. The ‘Agrippa’ here is explicitly identified as ‘Agrippa II’ which is crucial for all the pieces here to fall properly into place.
The reason I have drawn the readers to both the first chronological reference to Agrippa as well as the first mention of his name in book fifteen is because once these are recognized it becomes quite easy to demonstrate how the text has been corrupted. The first chronological reference appears in chapter five of book eighteen and the text of Josephus almost immediately launches into a ‘trip back in time’ to provided details about who this ‘Agrippa I’ is. Nevertheless I want to stress that already in book fifteen the reader is introduced to his supposed son ‘Agrippa II’ without any overt mention of the father.
Book Eighteen is particularly troublesome as it is the one which contains the so-called ‘Testimonium Flavium’ – Josephus’ secret confession that he is really a believer in Jesus. I believe that this corruption is only the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the structure of the material which follows we see that it is almost immediately followed by the description of Pilate’s attack against a Samaritan messianic gathering. I have long argued that this event should be taken as the historical basis for the Passion narrative. Various Christian writers with connections to Samaria repeatedly reinforce this claim.
If we look at the contents from the whole as the unfold after the pseudo-historical Testamonium Flavium it is also important to note that immediately after the :
1. Testmonium Flavium (Chapter Three)
2. Why the Jews were expelled from Rome (Chapter Three)
3. Pilate’s assaulting the Samaritan messianic gathering (Chapter Four)
4. Pilate dismissed (Chapter Four)
5. Vitellius comes to Jerusalem during Passover (Chapter Four)
6. Vitellius gives the high priest robes to the Jews (Chapter Four)
7. death of Philip identified as 34 CE (Chapter Four)
8. Herod’s war with Aretas the Arab king (Chapter Five)
9. recollection of John the Baptist now dead (Chapter Five)
10. Josephus discussion of family tree of Herod (Chapter Five)
11. chapter begins “a little before the death of Herod the king” (Chapter Six)
12. the imprisonment of Agrippa at the end of Tiberius’ reign (Chapter Six)
13. Agrippa set free by Caligula (Chapter Six)
14. Agrippa made king of Philip’s former territory (Chapter Six)
15. Story of “Agrippa I” culminating with his death by owl (Chapter Six)
16. Banishment of Herod (Chapter Seven)
The last line of the Samaritan messianic gathering narrative is “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch.” All the material which follows actually begins another ‘trip back in time’ which was deliberately added by a later editor to obscure the original account of Marcus Agrippa’s imprisonment.
The readers have to keep the line just cited “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch” fresh in their heads. Tiberius’ death has also been just announced as having occurred so we are necessarily already at the end of March 37 CE. Yet from that point on in text the chronological order is deliberately broken. Events supposedly from earlier in Tiberius’ reign are haphazardly introduced making it seem as if ‘other things’ happened after Vitellius relieved Pilate of his post.
The text says that after the leaders of the Samaritans complained about Pilate’s heavy handedness he boarded a ship preparing to face Tiberius’ wrath. The last thing we are told about Pilate is that when he arrives in Rome Tiberius is already dead. At the same time Vitellius is immediately understood to have arrived in Jerusalem appointing a certain ‘Marcellus’ as Pilate’s replacement while the Passover festival was still happening in Jerusalem.
Most scholars imagine that Pilate must have left sometime in 36 CE in order to make the chronology work properly. There are no difficulties in understanding Pilate attacking a Samaritan messianic gathering which happened on a Passover and Vitellius to have arrived in Jerusalem during a Jewish Passover in the same year. For one, because of slight different methods of geography and the physical location of Mt. Gerizim the Samaritan calculation of Passover almost inevitably arrives at a date which occurs before their Jewish counterpart. It is also worth noting that in Jewish Aramaic ‘the Passover’ can refer to the whole eight days of the festival.
Passover is a most appropriate date for a Hebrew community to imagine their messiah to manifest his presence. Christianity does it – why not the Samaritan community mentioned by Josephus? To this end we are left wondering whether it is more plausible to imagine that Josephus left Palestine during the Passover of 36 CE or 37CE while Tiberius was still king. This whole issue brings up a whole different issue when was the Passover in each of those years?
Another point to consider is that Vitellius couldn’t possibly have been present to clean up the mess from Pilate’s assault on the Samaritan messianic gathering if it had occurred in 36 CE (as most scholars claim).
the suspicious 'double return' of Vitellius to Antioch in Josephus
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
Scholars never know what to make of this Samaritan messianic narrative. They say it ‘had to have occurred in 36 CE” for reasons which are quite easily disproved. The truth is that there can only be one date possible for this event which is the Samaritan Passover of 37 CE. It we know for certain that it fell in late March that year, likely a few days before the Jewish date of March 21st. In my mind Agrippa’s announcement (Flaccus ) that his release out of a Jerusalem prison signaled the first sign of Caligula’s ascension (March 28th) makes it at least possible that he was one of the one’s arrested at that gathering mentioned in Antiquities 18:3. There are several circumstantial bits of evidence we should consider including the interesting fact that he is later crowned as “king of Samaria.”
For the moment however I am content to merely demonstrate that the existing narrative of Josephus is unmistakably corrupt. A later editor doesn’t want the readers to know that this Agrippa – the eight year old Marcus Julius Agrippa – is the one who was placed in prison and ‘miraculously’ released. In other words, there can be no mistake now that the Samaritan messianic narrative frame the context which for Agrippa’s imprisonment. This becomes obvious when we return again to our outline of the material which follows the section.
Remember that story about ‘little Agrippa’ being the one whom Vitellius gave the robes to? It appears immediately after the Pilate’s departure to Rome (March 25th?) “Vitellius sent Marcellus … to take care of the affairs of Judea.” Yet who is this “little Mark” who has never appeared in the narrative before? The text now says that he was just “a friend of his” but this is likely an editor’s gloss. In my mind there is good reason to suppose that he might well be the nine year old Marcus Agrippa who ultimately receives this post from Caligula a few months later.
For the moment however we need only note that just as chapter 15 connected “little Agrippa” with Vitellius and the high priests robes almost the very next line in the narrative deals with this very issue. We read that:
Vitellius came into Judea, and went up to Jerusalem; it was at the time of that festival which is called the Passover. Vitellius was there magnificently received, and released the inhabitants of Jerusalem from all the taxes upon the fruits that were bought and sold, and gave them leave to have the care of the high priest's vestments, with all their ornaments, and to have them under the custody of the priests in the temple, which power they used to have formerly, although at this time they were laid up in the tower of Antonia
What follows is almost an exact retelling of the information which appears three chapters earlier only now without specific mention of “little Agrippa.”
Clearly the editor doesn’t want us to see that Agrippa received the robes of the high priest because we will immediately release that he was an eight year old boy. In order to perpetuate the false story of ‘Agrippa I” the text has to obscure Josephus’ original chronological account.
To this end immediately following the repeat of historical information from chapter fifteen we read Josephus write that:
Vitellius put those garments into our own power, as in the days of our forefathers, and ordered the captain of the guard not to trouble himself to inquire where they were laid, or when they were to be used; and this he did as an act of kindness, to oblige the nation to him. Besides which, he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him. After which, he took his journey back to Antioch.
This particular line “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch” is absolutely critical to make sense of the adultery which took place to the original text. This because immediately after these words “Josephus” is made to go back in time and tell stories about things Tiberius supposedly instructed Vitellius to do in previous years. Once again we must remind the readers that the exact timing of Pilate’s dismissal was the Passover of 37 CE. The reason the text ‘goes back’ to previous years is a later development.
So it is that we read in the surviving text:
After which, he took his journey back to Antioch. Moreover, Tiberius sent a letter to Vitellius, and commanded him to make a league of friendship with Artabanus, the king of Parthia …
Now the details which follow all come from things which the Roman historian Tacitus make clear occurred in 34 CE. Vitellius went to dictate the terms of peace with the king of Parthia over the issue of the ruler of Armenia. There is no doubt about this. This is followed by a series of stories which also can be framed in 34 CE including:
• death of Philip identified as 34 CE (Chapter Four)
• Herod’s war with Aretas the Arab king (Chapter Five)
• recollection of John the Baptist (who died c. 34 CE) (Chapter Five)
• more on Herod’s war with Aretas (Chapter Five)
There can be no doubt about any of these dates. They certainly can’t be understood to have occurred in the four week period that it took Pilate to sail to Rome!
Why does the text ‘jump back’ to 34 CE? The editor doesn’t want our eyes to fixate on that last chronological reference to Vitellius being said to have taken “his journey back to Antioch” in Chapter Four. If we go to the end of the sections just mentioned we find a parallel statement that after Vitellius defeated Aretas the Arabian king in battle it is said now that:
he ordered the army to march along the great plain, while he himself, with Herod the tetrarch and his friends, went up to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice to God, an ancient festival of the Jews being then just approaching; and when he had been there, and been honorably entertained by the multitude of the Jews, he made a stay there for three days, within which time he deprived Jonathan of the high priesthood, and gave it to his brother Theophilus. But when on the fourth day letters came to him, which informed him of the death of Tiberius, he obliged the multitude to take an oath of fidelity to Caius; he also recalled his army, and made them every one go home, and take their winter quarters there, since, upon the devolution of the empire upon Caius, he had not the like authority of making this war which he had before. It was also reported, that when Aretas heard of the coming of Vitellius to fight him, he said, upon his consulting the diviners, that it was impossible that this army of Vitellius's could enter Petra; for that one of the rulers would die, either he that gave orders for the war, or he that was marching at the other's desire, in order to be subservient to his will, or else he against whom this army is prepared. So Vitellius truly retired to Antioch [emphasis mine]
I know what scholars have been trained to think here. They tell us that Pilate leaves for Rome and then all this other stuff happened including a war with a foreign king and then suddenly - wham! – he gets the news that Tiberius has died. Yet this simply doesn’t make sense. The Christian editor has been casting sand in our eyes for two thousand years.
The Samaritan messianic gathering had to have happened on a religious holiday. It is unimaginable that they would have gotten together on just any day of the week. In order for them to have acknowledged someone as ‘the one predicted by Moses’ in this way we have to imagine a religious holiday on which they assembled and one which is also naturally close enough to Tiberius’ death that Pilate could have left thinking Tiberius’ was still the ruler only to arrive four weeks later and discover otherwise.
The only holiday which fits the bill here is the Samaritan Passover of 37 CE. If it was Sukkoth of 36 CE the month would be September and Pilate would have to be imagined to be riding a donkey through Asia Minor in order to arrive sometime after March 26th 37 CE! Thus once we accept March 37 CE it becomes utterly impossible to believe that any of the material which makes its way into the existing text was actually there originally. A Christian editor added it in order to obscure Marcus Agrippa’s presence.
Just look at what happens when you remove all the stuff which actually happened in 34 CE from the narrative. We jump from Antiquities Book 18 chapter 4 line which reads:
So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews.
We read the story about Vitellius coming to Jerusalem as the Passover week was still taking place when he gave the high priest garments back to the Jewish people which concludes with the words:
he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him. After which, he took his journey back to Antioch.
Then when we get rid of all these recycled details from 34 CE falsely claimed to have happened in 37 CE we read:
So Vitellius truly retired to Antioch; but Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome
There can be no doubt now why the editor has perpetrated this greatest fraud in history. He doesn’t want us to take for granted that ‘Agrippa’ was here in Jerusalem (as it is claimed in Philo’s Embassy to Gaius) rather than imprisoned in Rome (as is later claimed in the counterfeit text of Josephus).
I take the ‘second return’ of Vitellius to Antioch as especially suspicious. The use of the emphasizing word ‘truly’ strikes me as a little like the liar who always says ‘honestly’ whenever he is lying. There must have been well known in the period that the Christian editor manipulated the text that Agrippa was here liberated from prison and was now heading to Rome to ultimately receive his kingdom from Caligula. Yet the piling on of layer after layer of what amounts to being literary ‘garbage’ serves only to obscure that realization.
Indeed the problem actually goes well beyond this issue. If we go back to the story in Book Fifteen which we cited earlier here there is no doubt how corrupt the narrative is. I will cite the whole section as it appears now:
Now on the north side [of the temple] was built a citadel, whose walls were square, and strong, and of extraordinary firmness. This citadel was built by the kings of the Asamonean race, who were also high priests before Herod, and they called it the Tower, in which were reposited the vestments of the high priest, which the high priest only put on at the time when he was to offer sacrifice. These vestments king Herod kept in that place; and after his death they were under the power of the Romans, until the time of Tiberius Caesar; under whose reign Vitellius, the president of Syria, when he once came to Jerusalem, and had been most magnificently received by the multitude, he had a mind to make them some requital for the kindness they had shewn him; so, upon their petition to have those holy vestments in their own power, he wrote about them to Tiberius Caesar, who granted his request: and this their power over the sacerdotal vestments continued with the Jews till the death of king Agrippa; but after that, Cassius Longinus, who was president of Syria, and Cuspius Fadus, who was procurator of Judea, enjoined the Jews to reposit those vestments in the tower of Antonia, for that they ought to have them in their power, as they formerly had. However, the Jews sent ambassadors to Claudius Caesar, to intercede with him for them; upon whose coming, king Agrippa, junior, being then at Rome, asked for and obtained the power over them from the emperor, who gave command to Vitellius, who was then commander in Syria, to give it them accordingly.
The typical approach of the scholar is to see repeated mention of something in the text and simply go along with what is written. For some reason they are reluctant or unable to actually calculate the Passover of the Jews in relation to the death of Tiberius in order to see how corrupt the material here actually is.
Tacitus makes clear that Vitellius left for Armenia at the end of 34 CE. He was almost exclusively involved with affairs of this region during the summers of 35 and 36 CE. He arrived back in Syria in the fall of 36 CE and a few months later found himself engaged in cleaning up the mess from Pilate’s Samaritan Passover debacle. It is simply impossible that Vitellius managed to send Tiberius a letter which answered his question regarding what to do with the high priest robes after attending the Jewish Passover that year. Tiberius was at the latest assassinated March 26th, 37 CE. The Jewish Passover March 21st, 37 CE. Tiberius could not have responded to this letter.
Thus it is my belief that the whole business about the holy garments being given to Agrippa Jr. during the reign of Caligula’s successor Claudius is false. It deliberately avoids the obvious idea that which follows from our reconstruction of the text that Agrippa simply went to Rome and got Caligula to let him take possession of the garments that year. Indeed the reader needn’t think that my claims for a deliberate transfer of material dealing with Agrippa from Caligula to Claudius is without precedent. Schwartz actually makes the case for us over a stretch of three or four pages in his work.
Schwartz acknowledges to his readers that it might seem outlandish at first but he can’t accept the existing narrative in Josephus about things which supposedly occurred to Agrippa I at the beginning of his reign. He notes that the section begins with a statement that Claudius sent Agrippa “to take up his kingdom” and in what followed he notes Agrippa “thereupon took part in the Temple cult, regulated the affairs of the high priesthood and certain tax in Jerusalem and appointed a commander in chief for his army.”
As Schwartz goes on to note “the second purportedly refers to the year 41 CE … however it seems that serious considerations indicate that Josephus erred and that this section is really from [the original narrative dealing with] … Agrippa’s inheritance of Philip’s territory and describes his return to Palestine in 38 CE.” Indeed I would counter that the two accounts can be brought together in another way entirely. makes clear that in 38 CE Agrippa received from Caligula all that was formerly held by his grandfather Herod the Great. In other words, even the claim that Judea and Samaria fell under his control only in 41 CE has been deliberately disconnected from his miraculous good fortune under Caligula.
The point now clearly is that the definitive work on the figure of Agrippa I acknowledges that ‘things were moved around’ in his story. Schwartz figures that many of the details of Agrippa’s authority over the religious institutions of Judea have been conveniently removed away from association with Caligula. He points to the fact that “in both cases the emperor sent Agrippa back to Palestine to organize his new kingdom” and offers up the following “considerations” to prove that a “confusion” occurred on the part of Josephus including:
1) Josephus places the hanging up of the chains which formerly bound Agrippa in prison to the Claudian period. He spends “two paragraphs [to] explain that the dedication was meant to memorialize Agrippa’s release from prison and rise from the depths to the royal heights.” As Schwartz notes it doesn’t make sense why Agrippa would wait until 41 CE as the text now claims. Yet beyond this Caligula had just tried to destroy the temple a few months earlier. Indeed as he notes “dedicating a gift from Caligula [at this time] and one from Beelzebub would in popular estimation have stood on a par.”
2) While the Christianized texts of Josephus say that Agrippa appointed a certain Simon as high priest in Claudius reign the rabbinic tradition says it was done during the reign of Caligula.
3) His appointment of Silas as his military commander is placed under Claudius but is better suited for the previous reign of Caligula.
4) There was no Roman governor in Judea during Caligula’s reign which makes it all the more likely that “Agrippa would have been entrusted with some authority with regard to the Holy City and the Temple.”
5) The name “Claudius” does not appear anywhere in the main body of the narrative outside of the introductory sentence which connects the events to his reign. All the details are attributed simply to “Caesar.”
Now the underlying question which is never answered by Schwartz is why someone would have done this. Why would the existing text of Josephus deliberately misrepresent these details? Schwartz in my mind cops out by claiming that it was all a misunderstanding on Josephus’ part. It couldn’t have been a misunderstanding. He was living under the authority of a man scholar’s claim was the son of this man. Surely he would have known critical details which stemmed from his miraculous release from prison. Yet then again this is the very point. The real Josephus of history like all the Jews ever since his time knew that there was only one Agrippa – Marcus Julius Agrippa – and so his text wouldn’t just have said that after the details of the Samaritan Passover debacle “Vitellius retired to Antioch; but Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome.” As we read at the end of the narrative in chapter fifteen the idea would also have been present that “upon whose coming, king Agrippa, junior, being then at Rome, asked for and obtained the power over them from the emperor, who gave command to Vitellius, who was then commander in Syria, to give it them accordingly.”
Scholars never know what to make of this Samaritan messianic narrative. They say it ‘had to have occurred in 36 CE” for reasons which are quite easily disproved. The truth is that there can only be one date possible for this event which is the Samaritan Passover of 37 CE. It we know for certain that it fell in late March that year, likely a few days before the Jewish date of March 21st. In my mind Agrippa’s announcement (Flaccus ) that his release out of a Jerusalem prison signaled the first sign of Caligula’s ascension (March 28th) makes it at least possible that he was one of the one’s arrested at that gathering mentioned in Antiquities 18:3. There are several circumstantial bits of evidence we should consider including the interesting fact that he is later crowned as “king of Samaria.”
For the moment however I am content to merely demonstrate that the existing narrative of Josephus is unmistakably corrupt. A later editor doesn’t want the readers to know that this Agrippa – the eight year old Marcus Julius Agrippa – is the one who was placed in prison and ‘miraculously’ released. In other words, there can be no mistake now that the Samaritan messianic narrative frame the context which for Agrippa’s imprisonment. This becomes obvious when we return again to our outline of the material which follows the section.
Remember that story about ‘little Agrippa’ being the one whom Vitellius gave the robes to? It appears immediately after the Pilate’s departure to Rome (March 25th?) “Vitellius sent Marcellus … to take care of the affairs of Judea.” Yet who is this “little Mark” who has never appeared in the narrative before? The text now says that he was just “a friend of his” but this is likely an editor’s gloss. In my mind there is good reason to suppose that he might well be the nine year old Marcus Agrippa who ultimately receives this post from Caligula a few months later.
For the moment however we need only note that just as chapter 15 connected “little Agrippa” with Vitellius and the high priests robes almost the very next line in the narrative deals with this very issue. We read that:
Vitellius came into Judea, and went up to Jerusalem; it was at the time of that festival which is called the Passover. Vitellius was there magnificently received, and released the inhabitants of Jerusalem from all the taxes upon the fruits that were bought and sold, and gave them leave to have the care of the high priest's vestments, with all their ornaments, and to have them under the custody of the priests in the temple, which power they used to have formerly, although at this time they were laid up in the tower of Antonia
What follows is almost an exact retelling of the information which appears three chapters earlier only now without specific mention of “little Agrippa.”
Clearly the editor doesn’t want us to see that Agrippa received the robes of the high priest because we will immediately release that he was an eight year old boy. In order to perpetuate the false story of ‘Agrippa I” the text has to obscure Josephus’ original chronological account.
To this end immediately following the repeat of historical information from chapter fifteen we read Josephus write that:
Vitellius put those garments into our own power, as in the days of our forefathers, and ordered the captain of the guard not to trouble himself to inquire where they were laid, or when they were to be used; and this he did as an act of kindness, to oblige the nation to him. Besides which, he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him. After which, he took his journey back to Antioch.
This particular line “after which [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch” is absolutely critical to make sense of the adultery which took place to the original text. This because immediately after these words “Josephus” is made to go back in time and tell stories about things Tiberius supposedly instructed Vitellius to do in previous years. Once again we must remind the readers that the exact timing of Pilate’s dismissal was the Passover of 37 CE. The reason the text ‘goes back’ to previous years is a later development.
So it is that we read in the surviving text:
After which, he took his journey back to Antioch. Moreover, Tiberius sent a letter to Vitellius, and commanded him to make a league of friendship with Artabanus, the king of Parthia …
Now the details which follow all come from things which the Roman historian Tacitus make clear occurred in 34 CE. Vitellius went to dictate the terms of peace with the king of Parthia over the issue of the ruler of Armenia. There is no doubt about this. This is followed by a series of stories which also can be framed in 34 CE including:
• death of Philip identified as 34 CE (Chapter Four)
• Herod’s war with Aretas the Arab king (Chapter Five)
• recollection of John the Baptist (who died c. 34 CE) (Chapter Five)
• more on Herod’s war with Aretas (Chapter Five)
There can be no doubt about any of these dates. They certainly can’t be understood to have occurred in the four week period that it took Pilate to sail to Rome!
Why does the text ‘jump back’ to 34 CE? The editor doesn’t want our eyes to fixate on that last chronological reference to Vitellius being said to have taken “his journey back to Antioch” in Chapter Four. If we go to the end of the sections just mentioned we find a parallel statement that after Vitellius defeated Aretas the Arabian king in battle it is said now that:
he ordered the army to march along the great plain, while he himself, with Herod the tetrarch and his friends, went up to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice to God, an ancient festival of the Jews being then just approaching; and when he had been there, and been honorably entertained by the multitude of the Jews, he made a stay there for three days, within which time he deprived Jonathan of the high priesthood, and gave it to his brother Theophilus. But when on the fourth day letters came to him, which informed him of the death of Tiberius, he obliged the multitude to take an oath of fidelity to Caius; he also recalled his army, and made them every one go home, and take their winter quarters there, since, upon the devolution of the empire upon Caius, he had not the like authority of making this war which he had before. It was also reported, that when Aretas heard of the coming of Vitellius to fight him, he said, upon his consulting the diviners, that it was impossible that this army of Vitellius's could enter Petra; for that one of the rulers would die, either he that gave orders for the war, or he that was marching at the other's desire, in order to be subservient to his will, or else he against whom this army is prepared. So Vitellius truly retired to Antioch [emphasis mine]
I know what scholars have been trained to think here. They tell us that Pilate leaves for Rome and then all this other stuff happened including a war with a foreign king and then suddenly - wham! – he gets the news that Tiberius has died. Yet this simply doesn’t make sense. The Christian editor has been casting sand in our eyes for two thousand years.
The Samaritan messianic gathering had to have happened on a religious holiday. It is unimaginable that they would have gotten together on just any day of the week. In order for them to have acknowledged someone as ‘the one predicted by Moses’ in this way we have to imagine a religious holiday on which they assembled and one which is also naturally close enough to Tiberius’ death that Pilate could have left thinking Tiberius’ was still the ruler only to arrive four weeks later and discover otherwise.
The only holiday which fits the bill here is the Samaritan Passover of 37 CE. If it was Sukkoth of 36 CE the month would be September and Pilate would have to be imagined to be riding a donkey through Asia Minor in order to arrive sometime after March 26th 37 CE! Thus once we accept March 37 CE it becomes utterly impossible to believe that any of the material which makes its way into the existing text was actually there originally. A Christian editor added it in order to obscure Marcus Agrippa’s presence.
Just look at what happens when you remove all the stuff which actually happened in 34 CE from the narrative. We jump from Antiquities Book 18 chapter 4 line which reads:
So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews.
We read the story about Vitellius coming to Jerusalem as the Passover week was still taking place when he gave the high priest garments back to the Jewish people which concludes with the words:
he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him. After which, he took his journey back to Antioch.
Then when we get rid of all these recycled details from 34 CE falsely claimed to have happened in 37 CE we read:
So Vitellius truly retired to Antioch; but Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome
There can be no doubt now why the editor has perpetrated this greatest fraud in history. He doesn’t want us to take for granted that ‘Agrippa’ was here in Jerusalem (as it is claimed in Philo’s Embassy to Gaius) rather than imprisoned in Rome (as is later claimed in the counterfeit text of Josephus).
I take the ‘second return’ of Vitellius to Antioch as especially suspicious. The use of the emphasizing word ‘truly’ strikes me as a little like the liar who always says ‘honestly’ whenever he is lying. There must have been well known in the period that the Christian editor manipulated the text that Agrippa was here liberated from prison and was now heading to Rome to ultimately receive his kingdom from Caligula. Yet the piling on of layer after layer of what amounts to being literary ‘garbage’ serves only to obscure that realization.
Indeed the problem actually goes well beyond this issue. If we go back to the story in Book Fifteen which we cited earlier here there is no doubt how corrupt the narrative is. I will cite the whole section as it appears now:
Now on the north side [of the temple] was built a citadel, whose walls were square, and strong, and of extraordinary firmness. This citadel was built by the kings of the Asamonean race, who were also high priests before Herod, and they called it the Tower, in which were reposited the vestments of the high priest, which the high priest only put on at the time when he was to offer sacrifice. These vestments king Herod kept in that place; and after his death they were under the power of the Romans, until the time of Tiberius Caesar; under whose reign Vitellius, the president of Syria, when he once came to Jerusalem, and had been most magnificently received by the multitude, he had a mind to make them some requital for the kindness they had shewn him; so, upon their petition to have those holy vestments in their own power, he wrote about them to Tiberius Caesar, who granted his request: and this their power over the sacerdotal vestments continued with the Jews till the death of king Agrippa; but after that, Cassius Longinus, who was president of Syria, and Cuspius Fadus, who was procurator of Judea, enjoined the Jews to reposit those vestments in the tower of Antonia, for that they ought to have them in their power, as they formerly had. However, the Jews sent ambassadors to Claudius Caesar, to intercede with him for them; upon whose coming, king Agrippa, junior, being then at Rome, asked for and obtained the power over them from the emperor, who gave command to Vitellius, who was then commander in Syria, to give it them accordingly.
The typical approach of the scholar is to see repeated mention of something in the text and simply go along with what is written. For some reason they are reluctant or unable to actually calculate the Passover of the Jews in relation to the death of Tiberius in order to see how corrupt the material here actually is.
Tacitus makes clear that Vitellius left for Armenia at the end of 34 CE. He was almost exclusively involved with affairs of this region during the summers of 35 and 36 CE. He arrived back in Syria in the fall of 36 CE and a few months later found himself engaged in cleaning up the mess from Pilate’s Samaritan Passover debacle. It is simply impossible that Vitellius managed to send Tiberius a letter which answered his question regarding what to do with the high priest robes after attending the Jewish Passover that year. Tiberius was at the latest assassinated March 26th, 37 CE. The Jewish Passover March 21st, 37 CE. Tiberius could not have responded to this letter.
Thus it is my belief that the whole business about the holy garments being given to Agrippa Jr. during the reign of Caligula’s successor Claudius is false. It deliberately avoids the obvious idea that which follows from our reconstruction of the text that Agrippa simply went to Rome and got Caligula to let him take possession of the garments that year. Indeed the reader needn’t think that my claims for a deliberate transfer of material dealing with Agrippa from Caligula to Claudius is without precedent. Schwartz actually makes the case for us over a stretch of three or four pages in his work.
Schwartz acknowledges to his readers that it might seem outlandish at first but he can’t accept the existing narrative in Josephus about things which supposedly occurred to Agrippa I at the beginning of his reign. He notes that the section begins with a statement that Claudius sent Agrippa “to take up his kingdom” and in what followed he notes Agrippa “thereupon took part in the Temple cult, regulated the affairs of the high priesthood and certain tax in Jerusalem and appointed a commander in chief for his army.”
As Schwartz goes on to note “the second purportedly refers to the year 41 CE … however it seems that serious considerations indicate that Josephus erred and that this section is really from [the original narrative dealing with] … Agrippa’s inheritance of Philip’s territory and describes his return to Palestine in 38 CE.” Indeed I would counter that the two accounts can be brought together in another way entirely. makes clear that in 38 CE Agrippa received from Caligula all that was formerly held by his grandfather Herod the Great. In other words, even the claim that Judea and Samaria fell under his control only in 41 CE has been deliberately disconnected from his miraculous good fortune under Caligula.
The point now clearly is that the definitive work on the figure of Agrippa I acknowledges that ‘things were moved around’ in his story. Schwartz figures that many of the details of Agrippa’s authority over the religious institutions of Judea have been conveniently removed away from association with Caligula. He points to the fact that “in both cases the emperor sent Agrippa back to Palestine to organize his new kingdom” and offers up the following “considerations” to prove that a “confusion” occurred on the part of Josephus including:
1) Josephus places the hanging up of the chains which formerly bound Agrippa in prison to the Claudian period. He spends “two paragraphs [to] explain that the dedication was meant to memorialize Agrippa’s release from prison and rise from the depths to the royal heights.” As Schwartz notes it doesn’t make sense why Agrippa would wait until 41 CE as the text now claims. Yet beyond this Caligula had just tried to destroy the temple a few months earlier. Indeed as he notes “dedicating a gift from Caligula [at this time] and one from Beelzebub would in popular estimation have stood on a par.”
2) While the Christianized texts of Josephus say that Agrippa appointed a certain Simon as high priest in Claudius reign the rabbinic tradition says it was done during the reign of Caligula.
3) His appointment of Silas as his military commander is placed under Claudius but is better suited for the previous reign of Caligula.
4) There was no Roman governor in Judea during Caligula’s reign which makes it all the more likely that “Agrippa would have been entrusted with some authority with regard to the Holy City and the Temple.”
5) The name “Claudius” does not appear anywhere in the main body of the narrative outside of the introductory sentence which connects the events to his reign. All the details are attributed simply to “Caesar.”
Now the underlying question which is never answered by Schwartz is why someone would have done this. Why would the existing text of Josephus deliberately misrepresent these details? Schwartz in my mind cops out by claiming that it was all a misunderstanding on Josephus’ part. It couldn’t have been a misunderstanding. He was living under the authority of a man scholar’s claim was the son of this man. Surely he would have known critical details which stemmed from his miraculous release from prison. Yet then again this is the very point. The real Josephus of history like all the Jews ever since his time knew that there was only one Agrippa – Marcus Julius Agrippa – and so his text wouldn’t just have said that after the details of the Samaritan Passover debacle “Vitellius retired to Antioch; but Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome.” As we read at the end of the narrative in chapter fifteen the idea would also have been present that “upon whose coming, king Agrippa, junior, being then at Rome, asked for and obtained the power over them from the emperor, who gave command to Vitellius, who was then commander in Syria, to give it them accordingly.”
a very emotional fifty year old man
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
We now stand before the central problem of this entire book – whether there is enough surviving evidence to suggest that Marcus Julius Agrippa’s trip to Alexandria around 37 CE had something to do with the event described on throne of St. Mark. Agrippa’s age is entirely crucial to our argument; a significance which goes beyond the particular size of the chair. The question ultimately goes back to ‘which Agrippa’ was released from prison by the Emperor Caligula.
If we accept the claims of the surviving texts of Josephus, it was Marcus Agrippa’s father - presumably an ‘Agrippa’ with another given name - who was freed by Caligula. Josephus doesn’t mention anything about a trip to Alexandria thereafter however. All of this information comes from a thoroughly Hellenized Jew named Philo from the same Egyptian city. It is Philo who seems to pick up on the details exactly where Josephus leaves off – or at least that’s how scholars have traditionally looked at the problem. I see things quite differently.
There was always something inherently implausible about Josephus’ portrait of Agrippa’s ‘friendship’ with Claudius. If we accept the portrait of ‘Agrippa I’ which emerges from the Christianized pages of Josephus we have to imagine that Caligula the raving lunatic remained steadfastly loyal throughout his life to a devout Jew. Yet Philo makes absolutely clear that Caligula detested Jews. Why then would he have liked Agrippa I?
Furthermore ‘Agrippa I’ would have been forty eight at the enthronement of the twenty five year old Caesar in 37 CE. It is utterly implausible. What could a twenty five year old have in common with a man of nearly fifty? How could a friendship have emerged between these two men? Again it just doesn’t make intuitive sense.
We have to imagine that the twenty five year old Caesar took a devoted forty eight year old man on various trips to Germany. It has to be accepted now that during all the depravity and bloodshed that characterized his reign, Claudius managed to avoid killing this strange old Jewish man that stood at his right hand. Indeed we are told by a range of sources that Caligula was a very angry young man who killed people on a mere whim. He is said to have killed his grandmother, his brother, his father-in-law and most of the other people around him. The only one who survived was his uncle Claudius who Suetonius says was spared “merely as a laughing-stock.”
How then can we imagine that in the midst of all this brutality and carnage a fifty year old Jew somehow survived the fate of all his other companions? It simply doesn’t make sense. Of course if we imagine that he was a beautiful young lad, the scenario makes perfect sense. Young Agrippa represented the ‘perfect innocent’ Caligula wanted to protect from the brutality he was inflicting on the world around him. There was a deep psychological connection between them which contemporary therapists would have enjoyed dissecting.
To this end if we look carefully at Philo’s alternative account of their relationship it immediately becomes obvious that Agrippa wasn’t anywhere near fifty years old. He was instead a young boy who was continually emotionally traumatized by his ‘older brother.’ This becomes clear when we follow Philo’s reporting of Caligula’s attempt to goad the Jews into outright rebellion by installing statues of himself in all their places of worship including the temple of Jerusalem. The incident occurred in CE when Agrippa was either 13 or 50 years of age.
The story goes that as ‘Agrippa’ walks into the Emperor’s palace and sees that he is angry he finds himself unable to hide his trepidation. ‘Agrippa’ throughout appears as a young innocent with absolutely no control over his emotions. Philo says that when Gaius immediately saw that Agrippa was in a state of great alarm and perplexity he went out of his way to assure him that he bore him no ill will. At this ‘Agrippa’ calms down until he learns about the Emperor’s plan to install a statue in the temple. The innocent of the young lad comes shining through yet again.
We are immediately told again by Philo that:
Agrippa fell into such a state of grief that he changed into all sorts of colours, becoming at the same moment bloodshot, and pale, and livid, for he was all over agitation and trembling from the top of his head down to his feet, and a quivering and shaking seized upon and disordered all his limbs and every member of his body, all his sinews, and muscles, and nerves being relaxed and enfeebled, so that he fainted away, and would have fallen down if some of the bystanders had not supported him. And they being commanded to carry him home, bore him to his palace, where he lay for some time in a state of torpor without any one understanding what sudden misfortune had brought him into this state.
I know already what people are going to say. Perhaps Philo was exaggerating the emotional state of Agrippa for literary effect. Yet this would be utterly absurd such wild displays of pathos would have been unimaginable for man of over fifty years especially a cultured student of philosophy like Agrippa.
The ancient world believed that fifty was the age that a educated man could finally become ‘master’ of his own passions. By contrast children were seen as essentially emotionally uncontrollable owing to their lack of training. It all came down to the philosophical ideal of apatheia which Agrippa surprisingly is unable to demonstrate throughout the whole report. We are told again that he is eventually carried home where he
lay in a state of profound stupor, being completely unconscious of everything that passed; but about evening he raised his head a little, and for a short time opened, though with difficulty, his languid eyes, and with dim and indistinct vision looked upon the people who surrounded him, though he was not as yet able to distinguish clearly between their several forms and features.
Agrippa is so shaken that he relapses into such a deep sleep that those around him wonder if he was still breathing. When he finally wakes up he realizes that he is back in his own palace. It is at this point that he does the unimaginable for a fifty year old philosopher; he is portrait as “shedding abundance of tears” once more.
For the moment it doesn’t matter that all of these histrionics actually lead to the desired result – Caligula does indeed relent from his mad plan. Yet most scholars don’t even think twice about Agrippa’s pathetic display. This pathetic display seems all the more ridiculous when we compare the equivalent behaviour of an embassy of ‘elders’ from the city of Alexandria when they have to face the Emperor attempting much the same thing in the synagogues of their city.
These fifty plus year old gentlemen are confronted with actually something a lot more serious than in Agrippa’s case. The Emperor’s plan to install statues of himself wasn’t theoretical. It actually took place. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that none of these old men end up behaving like Agrippa. They somehow can muster enough courage to carry on a rational dialogue with these men even as he inflicts unimaginable injuries to their community.
When Gaius threatens them for not worshipping him as a God it is acknowledged that the Jewish elders “immediately” had a profound shuddering came upon them. Yet they manage somehow to carry on a conversation. As Gaius entered into their synagogues to drive the Jews into the street alongside hostile pagan adversaries mocking and deriding them they managed to stay calm and quiet in perfect philosophic detachment. As he shouted insults against their idiosyncratic customs they somehow managed to carry on a conversation.
It is utterly ridiculous to maintain Agrippa could possibly have been the same age as the elders of Alexandria especially when compare their behavior. After all this abuse we hear that:
when our pleadings on behalf of justice were thus broken up, and cut short, and interrupted, and crushed as one may almost say, we, being wearied and exhausted, and having no strength left in us, but being in continual expectation of nothing else than death, could not longer keep our hearts as they had been, but in our agony we took refuge in supplications to the one true God, praying him to check the wrath of this falsely called god.
In the end Gaius again relented from his plan to force the Jews into open rebellion. Nevertheless what almost never said in all of this is how clear the proof that Agrippa was not a ‘master.’ He was clearly still a boy and his behavior clearly demonstrates that.
Philo of Alexandria adored Agrippa with every bone in his body. This is absolutely clear from other treatises we shall examine shortly. The ‘sissy’ portrait of Agrippa cannot be attributed to malice on his part. The answer has eluded scholars for so long owing to their slavish devotion to the falsified text of Josephus. Agrippa was a little boy. The elders acted like fifty year old men did in antiquity. Agrippa didn’t because he wasn’t yet a man.
I would argue furthermore that we can apply these same arguments to Agrippa’s slinking into Alexandria’s harbor only a few years earlier.
Philo makes up an excuse that it was all Caligula’s fault because he was the one who instructed Agrippa to carry on like this. As ridiculous as the excuse is it only makes sense if Caligula was directing a nine year old boy. Surely a king of almost fifty years wouldn’t need help to get home!
We now stand before the central problem of this entire book – whether there is enough surviving evidence to suggest that Marcus Julius Agrippa’s trip to Alexandria around 37 CE had something to do with the event described on throne of St. Mark. Agrippa’s age is entirely crucial to our argument; a significance which goes beyond the particular size of the chair. The question ultimately goes back to ‘which Agrippa’ was released from prison by the Emperor Caligula.
If we accept the claims of the surviving texts of Josephus, it was Marcus Agrippa’s father - presumably an ‘Agrippa’ with another given name - who was freed by Caligula. Josephus doesn’t mention anything about a trip to Alexandria thereafter however. All of this information comes from a thoroughly Hellenized Jew named Philo from the same Egyptian city. It is Philo who seems to pick up on the details exactly where Josephus leaves off – or at least that’s how scholars have traditionally looked at the problem. I see things quite differently.
There was always something inherently implausible about Josephus’ portrait of Agrippa’s ‘friendship’ with Claudius. If we accept the portrait of ‘Agrippa I’ which emerges from the Christianized pages of Josephus we have to imagine that Caligula the raving lunatic remained steadfastly loyal throughout his life to a devout Jew. Yet Philo makes absolutely clear that Caligula detested Jews. Why then would he have liked Agrippa I?
Furthermore ‘Agrippa I’ would have been forty eight at the enthronement of the twenty five year old Caesar in 37 CE. It is utterly implausible. What could a twenty five year old have in common with a man of nearly fifty? How could a friendship have emerged between these two men? Again it just doesn’t make intuitive sense.
We have to imagine that the twenty five year old Caesar took a devoted forty eight year old man on various trips to Germany. It has to be accepted now that during all the depravity and bloodshed that characterized his reign, Claudius managed to avoid killing this strange old Jewish man that stood at his right hand. Indeed we are told by a range of sources that Caligula was a very angry young man who killed people on a mere whim. He is said to have killed his grandmother, his brother, his father-in-law and most of the other people around him. The only one who survived was his uncle Claudius who Suetonius says was spared “merely as a laughing-stock.”
How then can we imagine that in the midst of all this brutality and carnage a fifty year old Jew somehow survived the fate of all his other companions? It simply doesn’t make sense. Of course if we imagine that he was a beautiful young lad, the scenario makes perfect sense. Young Agrippa represented the ‘perfect innocent’ Caligula wanted to protect from the brutality he was inflicting on the world around him. There was a deep psychological connection between them which contemporary therapists would have enjoyed dissecting.
To this end if we look carefully at Philo’s alternative account of their relationship it immediately becomes obvious that Agrippa wasn’t anywhere near fifty years old. He was instead a young boy who was continually emotionally traumatized by his ‘older brother.’ This becomes clear when we follow Philo’s reporting of Caligula’s attempt to goad the Jews into outright rebellion by installing statues of himself in all their places of worship including the temple of Jerusalem. The incident occurred in CE when Agrippa was either 13 or 50 years of age.
The story goes that as ‘Agrippa’ walks into the Emperor’s palace and sees that he is angry he finds himself unable to hide his trepidation. ‘Agrippa’ throughout appears as a young innocent with absolutely no control over his emotions. Philo says that when Gaius immediately saw that Agrippa was in a state of great alarm and perplexity he went out of his way to assure him that he bore him no ill will. At this ‘Agrippa’ calms down until he learns about the Emperor’s plan to install a statue in the temple. The innocent of the young lad comes shining through yet again.
We are immediately told again by Philo that:
Agrippa fell into such a state of grief that he changed into all sorts of colours, becoming at the same moment bloodshot, and pale, and livid, for he was all over agitation and trembling from the top of his head down to his feet, and a quivering and shaking seized upon and disordered all his limbs and every member of his body, all his sinews, and muscles, and nerves being relaxed and enfeebled, so that he fainted away, and would have fallen down if some of the bystanders had not supported him. And they being commanded to carry him home, bore him to his palace, where he lay for some time in a state of torpor without any one understanding what sudden misfortune had brought him into this state.
I know already what people are going to say. Perhaps Philo was exaggerating the emotional state of Agrippa for literary effect. Yet this would be utterly absurd such wild displays of pathos would have been unimaginable for man of over fifty years especially a cultured student of philosophy like Agrippa.
The ancient world believed that fifty was the age that a educated man could finally become ‘master’ of his own passions. By contrast children were seen as essentially emotionally uncontrollable owing to their lack of training. It all came down to the philosophical ideal of apatheia which Agrippa surprisingly is unable to demonstrate throughout the whole report. We are told again that he is eventually carried home where he
lay in a state of profound stupor, being completely unconscious of everything that passed; but about evening he raised his head a little, and for a short time opened, though with difficulty, his languid eyes, and with dim and indistinct vision looked upon the people who surrounded him, though he was not as yet able to distinguish clearly between their several forms and features.
Agrippa is so shaken that he relapses into such a deep sleep that those around him wonder if he was still breathing. When he finally wakes up he realizes that he is back in his own palace. It is at this point that he does the unimaginable for a fifty year old philosopher; he is portrait as “shedding abundance of tears” once more.
For the moment it doesn’t matter that all of these histrionics actually lead to the desired result – Caligula does indeed relent from his mad plan. Yet most scholars don’t even think twice about Agrippa’s pathetic display. This pathetic display seems all the more ridiculous when we compare the equivalent behaviour of an embassy of ‘elders’ from the city of Alexandria when they have to face the Emperor attempting much the same thing in the synagogues of their city.
These fifty plus year old gentlemen are confronted with actually something a lot more serious than in Agrippa’s case. The Emperor’s plan to install statues of himself wasn’t theoretical. It actually took place. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that none of these old men end up behaving like Agrippa. They somehow can muster enough courage to carry on a rational dialogue with these men even as he inflicts unimaginable injuries to their community.
When Gaius threatens them for not worshipping him as a God it is acknowledged that the Jewish elders “immediately” had a profound shuddering came upon them. Yet they manage somehow to carry on a conversation. As Gaius entered into their synagogues to drive the Jews into the street alongside hostile pagan adversaries mocking and deriding them they managed to stay calm and quiet in perfect philosophic detachment. As he shouted insults against their idiosyncratic customs they somehow managed to carry on a conversation.
It is utterly ridiculous to maintain Agrippa could possibly have been the same age as the elders of Alexandria especially when compare their behavior. After all this abuse we hear that:
when our pleadings on behalf of justice were thus broken up, and cut short, and interrupted, and crushed as one may almost say, we, being wearied and exhausted, and having no strength left in us, but being in continual expectation of nothing else than death, could not longer keep our hearts as they had been, but in our agony we took refuge in supplications to the one true God, praying him to check the wrath of this falsely called god.
In the end Gaius again relented from his plan to force the Jews into open rebellion. Nevertheless what almost never said in all of this is how clear the proof that Agrippa was not a ‘master.’ He was clearly still a boy and his behavior clearly demonstrates that.
Philo of Alexandria adored Agrippa with every bone in his body. This is absolutely clear from other treatises we shall examine shortly. The ‘sissy’ portrait of Agrippa cannot be attributed to malice on his part. The answer has eluded scholars for so long owing to their slavish devotion to the falsified text of Josephus. Agrippa was a little boy. The elders acted like fifty year old men did in antiquity. Agrippa didn’t because he wasn’t yet a man.
I would argue furthermore that we can apply these same arguments to Agrippa’s slinking into Alexandria’s harbor only a few years earlier.
Philo makes up an excuse that it was all Caligula’s fault because he was the one who instructed Agrippa to carry on like this. As ridiculous as the excuse is it only makes sense if Caligula was directing a nine year old boy. Surely a king of almost fifty years wouldn’t need help to get home!
Justus of Tiberias on 'Agrippa the seventh'
copyright 2008 Stephan Huller
I know everyone and their uncle takes for granted that there were two Marcus Agrippas, a father and son of the same name (no matter how ludicrous that may seem to Jews). According to the account of Josephus John Hyrcanus was the first in a line of Hasmonaean kings which Herod the Great eventually married into. His son Archelaus had control over Judea and Samaria but never attained the title of king (he was only an 'ethnarch'). After him 'Agrippa' ('Agrippa I' owing to the claims of the surviving text of Josephus) was finally made king of the Jews during the reign of Claudius. His supposed son of the same name ('Agrippa II' according to scholars and Josephus) eventually followed in his father's footsteps.
What rarely gets mentioned is that this 'Agrippa II' is specifically identified in the tenth century Byzantine writer Photius' citation of Agrippa's secretary Justus of Tiberias as 'the seventh' king of the Jews. This necessarily makes a father 'Marcus Agrippa I' who was 'king of the Jews' impossible as we can easily count six Jewish kings before him:
1. John Hyrcanus I
2. Alexander Jannaeus
3. Aristobulos
4. Hyrcanus II
5. Antigonus
6. Herod
7. Marcus Agrippa
There simply isn't any room for two Agrippa's in Justus' chronology. The whole idea of another Agrippa would have made Marcus Agrippa - the guy Justus was writing about - necessarily the eighth. Photius however makes him the seventh quite explicitly as we read in the original Greek:
Photius, Bibliotheca 33:
Ανεγνωσθη Ιουστου Τιβεριεως χρονικον, ου η επιγραφη Ιουστου Τιβεριεως Ιουδαιων βασιλεων των εν τοις στεμμασιν. ουτος απο πολεως της εν Γαλιλαια Τιβεριαδος ωρματο. αρχεται δε της ιστοριας απο Μωυσεως, καταληγει δε εως τελευτης Αγριππα του εβδομου μεν των απο της οικιας Ηρωδου, υστατου δε εν τοις Ιουδαιων βασιλευσιν, ος παρελαβε μεν την αρχην επι Κλαυδιου, ηυξηθη δε επι Νερωνος και ετι μαλλον υπο Ουεσπασιανου, τελευτα δε ετει τριτω Τραιανου, ου και η ιστορια κατεληξεν. εστι δε την φρασιν συντομωτατος τε και τα πλειστα των αναγκαιοτατων παρατρεχων. ως δε τα Ιουδαιων νοσων, Ιουδαιοις και αυτος υπαρχων γενος, της Χριστου παρουσιας και των περι αυτον τελεσθεντων και των υπ αυτου τερατουργηθεντων ουδεν ολως μνημην εποιησατο. ουτος παις μεν ην Ιουδαιου τινος ονομα Πιστου, ανθρωπων δε, ως φησιν Ιωσηπος, κακουργοτατος, χρηματων τε και ηδονων ηττων. αντεπολιτευετο δε Ιωσηπω, και πολλας κατ εκεινου λεγεται επιβουλας ραψαι, αλλα τον γε Ιωσηπον, καιτοι υπο χειρα πολλακις λαβοντα τον εχθρον, λογοις μονον ονειδισαντα απαθη κακων αφειναι. και την ιστοριαν δε ην εκεινος εγραψε πεπλασμενην τα πλειστα φασι τυγχανειν, και μαλιστα οις τον Ρωμαικον προς Ιουδαιους διεξεισι πολεμον και την Ιεροσολυμων αλωσιν.
The Greek says this. “…. and brings it down to the end, to Agrippa, the seventh, of the house of Herod, the last of the kings of the Jews….”. This is absolutely certainly the meaning given by the case endings. To clarify. It does not say he was made king of the Jews by Claudius. It says he was king of the Jews already, but Claudius gave him some effective power.
The Greek word APXH αρχη archê does not mean the quality of being a king or having royal status. It means either effective power over territory or delegated authority over a nation. (Think of the title Exilarch. Remember that in the opera Salome keeps reminding Herod that he is not a king but only Tetrarch, whereas she is Prinzessin von Judäa and therefore royal). This is what was given and increased. I suppose this means his recognised territory was increased. We are not told how he became king, but from the context, he was always a king, before Claudius did anything.
The Greek word “teleutê” meaning “end” [here in the genitive case, teleutês] is the noun equivalent of the verb “teteleuthê” meaning “It is finished”, the word uttered by Jesus. [The Greek says “It has been finished” or “It has ended” (perfect), not “It was finished” or “It ended” (preterite). The choice of word by Justin might be significant. If so, the implication might be that with the coming of Agrippa (and perhaps implicitly the death of Jesus), Priesthood and Prophethood are removed to Heaven, and with the death of Agrippa, Kingship is removed to Heaven. Thus all three qualities of Moses are occulted. The Tabernacle has manifested, done its work, and been occulted again after the successful end.
I know everyone and their uncle takes for granted that there were two Marcus Agrippas, a father and son of the same name (no matter how ludicrous that may seem to Jews). According to the account of Josephus John Hyrcanus was the first in a line of Hasmonaean kings which Herod the Great eventually married into. His son Archelaus had control over Judea and Samaria but never attained the title of king (he was only an 'ethnarch'). After him 'Agrippa' ('Agrippa I' owing to the claims of the surviving text of Josephus) was finally made king of the Jews during the reign of Claudius. His supposed son of the same name ('Agrippa II' according to scholars and Josephus) eventually followed in his father's footsteps.
What rarely gets mentioned is that this 'Agrippa II' is specifically identified in the tenth century Byzantine writer Photius' citation of Agrippa's secretary Justus of Tiberias as 'the seventh' king of the Jews. This necessarily makes a father 'Marcus Agrippa I' who was 'king of the Jews' impossible as we can easily count six Jewish kings before him:
1. John Hyrcanus I
2. Alexander Jannaeus
3. Aristobulos
4. Hyrcanus II
5. Antigonus
6. Herod
7. Marcus Agrippa
There simply isn't any room for two Agrippa's in Justus' chronology. The whole idea of another Agrippa would have made Marcus Agrippa - the guy Justus was writing about - necessarily the eighth. Photius however makes him the seventh quite explicitly as we read in the original Greek:
Photius, Bibliotheca 33:
Ανεγνωσθη Ιουστου Τιβεριεως χρονικον, ου η επιγραφη Ιουστου Τιβεριεως Ιουδαιων βασιλεων των εν τοις στεμμασιν. ουτος απο πολεως της εν Γαλιλαια Τιβεριαδος ωρματο. αρχεται δε της ιστοριας απο Μωυσεως, καταληγει δε εως τελευτης Αγριππα του εβδομου μεν των απο της οικιας Ηρωδου, υστατου δε εν τοις Ιουδαιων βασιλευσιν, ος παρελαβε μεν την αρχην επι Κλαυδιου, ηυξηθη δε επι Νερωνος και ετι μαλλον υπο Ουεσπασιανου, τελευτα δε ετει τριτω Τραιανου, ου και η ιστορια κατεληξεν. εστι δε την φρασιν συντομωτατος τε και τα πλειστα των αναγκαιοτατων παρατρεχων. ως δε τα Ιουδαιων νοσων, Ιουδαιοις και αυτος υπαρχων γενος, της Χριστου παρουσιας και των περι αυτον τελεσθεντων και των υπ αυτου τερατουργηθεντων ουδεν ολως μνημην εποιησατο. ουτος παις μεν ην Ιουδαιου τινος ονομα Πιστου, ανθρωπων δε, ως φησιν Ιωσηπος, κακουργοτατος, χρηματων τε και ηδονων ηττων. αντεπολιτευετο δε Ιωσηπω, και πολλας κατ εκεινου λεγεται επιβουλας ραψαι, αλλα τον γε Ιωσηπον, καιτοι υπο χειρα πολλακις λαβοντα τον εχθρον, λογοις μονον ονειδισαντα απαθη κακων αφειναι. και την ιστοριαν δε ην εκεινος εγραψε πεπλασμενην τα πλειστα φασι τυγχανειν, και μαλιστα οις τον Ρωμαικον προς Ιουδαιους διεξεισι πολεμον και την Ιεροσολυμων αλωσιν.
The Greek says this. “…. and brings it down to the end, to Agrippa, the seventh, of the house of Herod, the last of the kings of the Jews….”. This is absolutely certainly the meaning given by the case endings. To clarify. It does not say he was made king of the Jews by Claudius. It says he was king of the Jews already, but Claudius gave him some effective power.
The Greek word APXH αρχη archê does not mean the quality of being a king or having royal status. It means either effective power over territory or delegated authority over a nation. (Think of the title Exilarch. Remember that in the opera Salome keeps reminding Herod that he is not a king but only Tetrarch, whereas she is Prinzessin von Judäa and therefore royal). This is what was given and increased. I suppose this means his recognised territory was increased. We are not told how he became king, but from the context, he was always a king, before Claudius did anything.
The Greek word “teleutê” meaning “end” [here in the genitive case, teleutês] is the noun equivalent of the verb “teteleuthê” meaning “It is finished”, the word uttered by Jesus. [The Greek says “It has been finished” or “It has ended” (perfect), not “It was finished” or “It ended” (preterite). The choice of word by Justin might be significant. If so, the implication might be that with the coming of Agrippa (and perhaps implicitly the death of Jesus), Priesthood and Prophethood are removed to Heaven, and with the death of Agrippa, Kingship is removed to Heaven. Thus all three qualities of Moses are occulted. The Tabernacle has manifested, done its work, and been occulted again after the successful end.
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