A New Chronology « History Hunters International

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A New ChronologyBy John, on May 18th, 2012

(Taken from both a comment to a post and our front page. Here, one may comment. This is a summary and so omits nearly all of theartefactual evidence, as well as the history of most divine men such as Buddha.)

Vitarka Mudra gestures on Indo-Greek coinage. Top: Divinities Tyche andZeus. Bottom: Depiction of Indo-Greek kings Nicias and Menander II.

We have published very little in quite a while, because once we found that there was no Christianity until Late Antiquity-Early Medieval, itbecame obvious that we needed a new chronology, which placed Chrest, Gnosticism and Manicheism in their proper context. On one hand,this negates quite a bit of our earlier hypothesising – especially for the second century – whilst demanding a major revision of the history forClassical Antiquity; this is now done.

We have thus moved certain of our articles from the public domain; David and I are working up a new series. This summarises, I believe, ourpresent position:

> The underlying theology of divine men is Pythagorean. This movement seemingly disappears from the view of historians around the time ofthe Macedonian conquests ascribed traditionally to Alexander III of Macedon, then reappears in the 1st century of the modern era asNeopythagoreanism. I believe we can trace the archaeology of this movement from the Chi-Rho of Ptolemey III to Menander I in Greco-India.Its presence in Greco-India during this period is how it has been ‘missed’.

> The arrival of Scythians in Greco-India changed everything. First, they adopted Pythagoreanism, then they expanded their domain acrossCentral Asia, to include India in the East, to Crimea and Upper Mesopotamia in the West.

> The chronicles of Josephus – upon which both Roman chroniclers and modern historians became overly dependent for their understandingof people and events in the East, especially Parthia and Parthians – contain a number of conflations. These were used to produce religious



Ptolemy III AE 26 - eagle standing left on thunderbolt, w ingsclosed, cornucopia before, Chi-Rho monogram betw een legs.

syncretisms, such as the ‘history’ of Christianity (the New Testament and theworks of the fictive Eusebius of Caesarea).

> Scythians take over the Parthian Empire in the final century of the past era;these become the two competing ‘Arsacid’ dynastic lines.

> There is no Izates, nor Azizus of Emesa – there is no archaeology at all forthem. These are Azes, the Scythian king of kings of the first half of the firstcentury – the archaeology for this is reasonably secure. He supports HerodAgrippa I and James the Just, and thus also the ‘Jewish Resistance’ againstAgrippa II. Azes is the “Great King of the Peoples Across the Euphrates” to whomMMT is addressed, probably by James at Qumran (the “Teacher ofRighteousness”). The archaeology for this is also good.

> The Chrestians of the first century of this era are the result of the Romanisingby Antonia Minor of the provincial Levantine royalty; this is the policy of Augustus.One is the Saul of Josephus (as described by Robert Eisenman), who is relatedto all of them through his Herodian family (via the marriage of General Costobaruswith Salome). This group includes Philo, through his brother, the Alabarch.

> One of the conflations within Josephus is between Adiabene of Izates/Azes andEdessa (an Antioch). This becomes the basis for Izates (Azes) conflation withAbgarus. In the late 2nd century, Bardaisan (if that is his real name) builds a

textual tradition upon these conflations to the political (and theological) benefit of his friend, the king Abgaros (correct spelling). From thiscomes the ‘School’ of Bardaisan, which produces the archaeology Dura Parchment 24, the Dura baptistry and Acts of Thomas.

"I S" in Dura parchment 24. Archaeologists agree that this pre-dates the fall of Roman Dura Europosca 256-7. It describes a scene that later appears in the canonical gospels of Mark, Matthew and

Luke, in w hich "Zebedee and Salome and the w ives of those w ho had follow ed him from Galilee tosee the crucif ied."

> The basic claim of Edessa (Bardaisan) is that Abgaros is the true inheritor of the divinity (king of kings) of Izates/Azes. The two IScharacters in the canonical gospels – IS Barabbas and IS Chrest – represent Izates/Azes and the 1st-century king of Edessa, this fablebeing the explanation of Bardaisan as to how Edessa lost out (unjustly) to Adiabene. It is this scene which is played out in the archaeologyof Dura Europos: Dura Parchment 24 and the baptistry, then revised in the Romanised Codex Sinaiticus, with the crucified IS to becomelater still ‘Jesus Christ’ (and the Isa of the Qur’an).



Follis by Constantine. On the reverse, a labarumw ith the chi-rho

Azes 25mm bronze hexachalkon, bull-lion, Chi-Rho, Taxila Sirsukh

> The School of Bardaisan probably also transmuted Saul into Paul of Tarsus, Acts of the Apostles and the Chrestian archaeology ofPhrygia (and its imperial “Purple Order” which we see also in the archaeology of the church at Megiddo), wrongly ascribed to a fictiveMontanus.

> The changes within the Severan dynasty relate directly to the theological developments inEdessa, through Julia Domna, “Caracalla” and successors.

Though the Sassanids take over Iran in this (3rd) century, the Scythians do not disappear,hanging on in Arabia and other regions. Very possibly ‘Arius’ is as fictive as ‘Montanus’ andactually refers to Aria in Central Asia (essentially Bactria); Arian Goths are therefore mostlikely descended from the Scythians, which is how Arianism enters the Roman Empire.

The theological cauldron in which 3rd-century Chrestianity is brewed is bounded by Adiabene,Edessa and Emesa – Upper Mesopotamia and Syria. It is from here and the School ofBardaisan that Manicheism is propagated and this is taken to Rome by Aurelian and probablyZenobia, where it is picked up by Helena and her husband, the parents of Constantine. There iszero evidence for his Christianity – maybe he became Chrestian.

Christianity begins to appear as Chrest becomes Christ in codex Sinaiticus and the same onthe Phrygian monuments. As for the papacy and the great, formal Church of Rome, thisappears out of the Roman reaction to Gothic Ravenna. The archaeological record for this isclear and has been ignored.

That’s the outline, which we hope to publish in some form.

Postscript

The above is a reposting of a comment on another article here, which then was reposted to our front page, but as many would not find thecomment and the front page changes regularly, it was posted here to my personal blog. As you will probably realise, this is the briefestsummary of our present position and not meant to be definitive, fully referenced, or even illustrated.

To those of you who have not studied the Levant in this period, the appearance here of Edessa, Adiabene and Emesa at the heart of thehistory for the New Testament could be something of a surprise. It is less of a surprise to us here at HHI, because quite early in our studyfor divine men, the primary sources quickly and consistently took us north of Judea, into Greater Armenia.

This was one of the clues as to how the New Testament story was less about characters in Judea and more about regional politics, whichinclude religion.

Personally, I found persuasive the account by Josephus for this angelic visitation:

Monobazus, the king of Adiabene, who had also the name of Bazeus, fell in love with his sister Helena, and took her to be hiswife, and begat her with child. But as he was in bed with her one night, he laid his hand upon his wife’s belly, and fell asleep,and seemed to hear a voice, which bid him take his hand off his wife’s belly, and not hurt the infant that was therein, which, byGod’s providence, would be safely born, and have a happy end. This voice put him into disorder; so he awaked immediately,and told the story to his wife; and when his son was born, he called him Izates.(Titus Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews – Book XX Containing the interval of twenty-two years. From Fadus the Procurator toFlorus. Chapter 2: How Helena the Queen of Adiabene and her son Izates, embraced the Jewish religion; and how Helena supplied the poorwith corn, when there was a great famine at Jerusalem.)

This is too close to the canonical gospel accounts to be coincidental, in my view. Next, as I looked and failed to find any evidence at all forthe existence of this famous king Izates, I began to wonder: is he a conflation? Then, after some years, I found him and much to mysurprise, he turned out to be Azes, the Scythian king of kings, ruling Greco-India. The archaeology for this is clear, so the next step was totry to understand his identity and importance. The answers to this became the road leading to Pythagoreanism, how the Parthian Empirebecame Scythian, and how this impacted the Roman Levant.

There has been much scholarly study of the Abgar legends which connect two of the kings of Edessa with (i) the biblical Jesus and (ii) the



Early Armenian Empire of Tigranes, w hich existed betw een the f inal collapse of the Seleucids and the Roman conquest of theeastern Mediterranean.

origins of Christianity. It isgenerally agreed how these arelegendary rather thanhistorical. What nobody seemsto have done is connect theorigins of this legend withBardaisan, whom scholarshipregards as a source forgnosticism in general andManicheism in particular, bothof which feature a magicalJesus.

There has been a generalfailure of scholarship to treatthe primary sources properly;instead too much has beenaccepted at face value, ashistorical, and judged in areligious manner – heretical, ororthodox/canonical. This isunacceptable in properscholarship. Time and again,claims in ancient texts to havehad access to lost sources isaccepted as fact and thecontents as historical.Archaeology should treatartefactual evidences, notunsupported claims, and thisapplies as much to texts asany other.

Understanding the archaeologyof Dura Europos is key tounderstanding Christianorigins. Dura Parchment 24 isregarded commonly as part ofa Diatessaron, but this isbased on the unfoundedassumption that it post-dates

the New Testament, whose books have not been dated reliably. This fragment illustrates a scene in the domus ecclesiae at Dura Europosand this is a baptistry. They pre-date anything Christian and belong to a milieu encompasing Syria and Edessa at the time of the School ofBardaisan, if not the man himself. Into this scene steps Patik and his son Mani, and the result is Manicheism, which also pre-datesChristianity.

Christianity enters Europe with monasticism from Egypt, though the only monasteries there in this period are Manicheist. In our view, monasticism derives ultimately from Qumran and other Jewish ascetic settlements, via Buddhism in Greco-India, then Manicheism takingthe movement westwards to Egypt. There are a number of connections between Judaism and this late Christianity, and none is moreimportant that the conversion of the Scythian royal family – Helen and ‘Izates’ – as described by Josephus and later ‘Christian’ tradition. Thestudies of Robert Eisenman contain much of relevance here; I suggest this as a starting point:

Robert Eisenman’s James the Brother of Jesus: A Higher-Critical Evaluation, by Robert M. Price

Where did Luke find his raw material for the prophecy of Agabus of a great famine to transpire in Claudius’ reign, of Paul’s trip fromAntioch to deliver famine relief funds to Jerusalem, and for the earlier tale of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch? Again, from Josephus(though perhaps also from other cognate sources of information). It all stems, by hook and by crook, from the story of Helen, Queen ofAdiabene, a realm contiguous and/or overlapping with Edessa, whose king Agbar/Abgarus some sources make Helen’s husband.Helen and her son Izates converted to Judaism, though initially Izates refrained from circumcision on the counsel of an unnamedJewish teacher who assured him the worship of God was more important than circumcision. His mother, too, advised against it, sincehis subjects might resent his embracing of such alien customs. But soon a stricter Jewish teacher from Jerusalem, one Eliezer, visitedIzates, finding him poring over the Genesis passage on the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision. Eliezer asked if Izates understood theimplications of what he was reading. If he did, then why did he not see the importance of being circumcised? And this the prince thenagreed to do. Helen and Izates proved the sincerity of their conversion by, among other philanthropies, sending agents to Egypt andCyrene to buy grain during the Claudius famine and to distribute it to the poor in Jerusalem.

These events have left their mark in the New Testament as follows. Eisenman notes (as of course all commentators do) that there isno room for the famine relief visit in Galatians’ itinerary of Paul’s visits to Jerusalem, but he ventures to place the event during Paul’ssojourn in “Arabia,” which in the parlance of the time could include Edessa/Adiabene. Acts knows two Antiochs, those in Pisidia andSyria, but there were others, including Edessa! Eisenman identifies Paul as the first Jewish teacher who tells Izates he need not becircumcised if he has faith in God. (This episode also lies at the basis of the Antioch episode recounted in Galatians, when certainmen from James arrived in Antioch to tell Paul’s converts they must be circumcised after all.) Paul is one of Helen’s agents to bringfamine relief to Jerusalem, which he is said to do “from Antioch,” in Acts 11.

The IS character and his story appearing in Dura Europos in the early 3rd century is probably not yet the fully-Romanised version we have in



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the New Testament – Codex Sinaiticus. One may argue the exact date for this codex – perhaps it is 4th century as most scholars seem tothink, though I suggest we keep open the possibility for a later date. Personally, I think scholarship may be skewed on this date because ofthe tendency to accept the tradition for Constantine I converting to Christianity. Once that false assumption is exposed, then I suggest thedate for the codex could move forward in time. What is certain is the there are many important texts needing to be dated reliably – that theyhave not been is very telling of the character of ‘biblical scholarship’.

The summary offered here builds upon articles posted earlier and the most relevant are listed, below. They and the comments added by uslead us to the start of this post. Most notably, they described how there is no Christianity in the early centuries of the modern era, yet thereis a ‘Chrestian’ movement visible in the archaeological record from the early first century and this is not Jewish, but Roman and culturallyGreek (panhellenistic). The Saul of Josephus becomes the Saul and Paul of Tarsus in the New Testament; this is described nicely here.

In future, I will have something to say about a new genre of religious conversion literature that I identify, which includes Acts of Paul andThecla, Life of Apollonius of Tyna, Acts of Thomas and Acts of the Apostles. This seems to be based – chronologically at least – on theconversion accounts in Josephus.

It seems odd, perhaps, to look back from the 21st century to a time when the affairs of city states became so important to their leaders thatthey could and would invent genealogies and even a new form of literature to try to justify their pretensions on such a grand scale. The pointof the IS of Baidaisan is revealed in the selection – by the Jews – of IS Barabbas (Son of the Father) to be saved and the other IS to becrucified. Now, if we had the larger text from which our fragment comes, we would likely see revealed the full character of his creation, whichwe may expect to not be the identical twin of IS XP in the 4th century.

Azes clearly then made an enormous impact beyond his immediate domain, which had grown to become an empire stretching from theIndian subcontinent to the Crimea and into Syria, and Arabia. His dalliance with Judaism and the syncretisms with his native shamanismresulted in the appearance of new religions, for we cannot ignore the appearance of Buddhism and Islam; he also gave hope to the JewishResistance, though this could be viewed as a false dawn which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple Judaism.

Related posts:

1. Mani and Authorship of the Canonical Gospels (17.9)2. Augustus: the Roman Messiah (17.4)3. Archaeology of a first-century wizard (16)4. Romans at Stonehenge: from standing stones to cosmic pillars (15)5. Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians? (14.6)6. The Pantheon: Hadrian’s giant sundial (13)

Map data ©2012 Google, INEGI, MapLink, Tele Atlas Imagery ©2012 NASA, TerraMetrics

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7. 3 Asoka Edicts. Fantastic History of a Forgotten Era (11)8. The Ptolemaic zodiac: from where the sun shines (11)9. Hadrian’s parody (10.2)

10. Chrest Magus (10)

May 18th, 2012 | Tags: Abgarus, Adiabene, Agbat, Antioch, Antonia Minor, Archaeology, Azes, Buddhism, Chrest, Christianity, divinity, Edessa,Emesa, Greco-India, Helios, history, Izates, Jesus Christ, Josephus, Lysimachus, messiah, New Testament, Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy, religionRoman Empire, Severan dynasty, Silk Road, sol invictus, sun, theurgy | Category: Alexander III of Macedon, Archaeology, chrestology, Diggingdeeper, Greco-India, Roman Empire, The History of Antiquity, The Ptolemies and Lysimachi, Theurgy | Edit this post

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