Archive for the ‘Chronology’ Category

Interesting article on the Chronicon of Hippolytus

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Yancy Smith has pointed me to this interesting article

Julius Africanus und die christliche Weltchronik: Julius Africanus und die christliche Weltchronistik. Edited by Martin Wallraff. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Especially the article by Osvalda Andrei, “Dalle Chronographiai di Giulio Africano di Giulo Africano alla Synagoge di ‘Ippolito’: Un debattio sulla scrittura cristiana del tempo,” 113-45

According to Yancy this article claims that there is some interdependence between Hippolytus’ and Julius Africanus’ Chronicles and also Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel. I’ll have to ILL this thing and send the Italian on through google translate and see what comes out.

Thanks Yancy!

Posted in Chronology, Hippolytus | 3 Comments »

Chronicon Completed (Finally!)

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

I have posted the final version of Hippolytus of Rome’s Chronicon here.  Though I essentially finished in 2009, it took me a while to get posted.  I would like to thank Roger Pearse, Nick Nicholas, and Yancy Smith for their help, advice and encouragement.  I would also like to thank my brother and my wife for helping me type up a rather monotonous text!  Still, there are some good interesting bits in it, I can’t say that my translation lacks errors, I’m sure some are there, with all of the hundreds of place names and proper names its nearly impossible to get them all right without a small team of people.  Let me know what you all think of this.

My translation of Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel should be posted in the next 4 weeks (I promise!).

Here is my introduction to the text:

Hippolytus wrote his Chronicon in the year 235AD as he himself tells us.  His goal seems to have been threefold: to make a chronology from the beginning of the world up until his present day, to create a genealogical record of mankind, and to create a geographical record of mankind’s locations on the earth.  For his task Hippolytus seems to have made use of the Old Testament, to research the chronology and genealogies, and a nautical dictionary, to research the distances between locations in and around the Mediterranean Sea.

Though Hippolytus published his Chronicon several years after Julius Africanus published his own Chronicon, Hippolytus does not, as far as I can tell, reference his contemporary’s work nor does he seem to write in response to it.  Despite not gaining the level of prestige as Africanus, Hippolytus’ Chronicon seems to have been fairly successful.  Many historians made use of it, such as the author of the Chronography of 354, Epiphanius of Salamis, the author of the Chronicon Paschal, and George Syncellus.

For this translation the GCS (Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller) series number 46 was used.  From lines 1 to 613 the Greek of two manuscripts H1 and H2 were used.  From lines 614-720 the Latin translation from the Liber Generationis 1 of the Chronography of 354 was primarily used.  Whenever this was nonsensical, I attempted to compare it with a German translation of the Armenian or the Liber Generationis 2. From lines 721-741 a Greek fragment was used, and from lines 742-778 the Latin from the Liber Generationis 1 was used again.

The footnotes are not exhaustive, they are meant only to point out difficult readings, suggest possible translations of people groups and locations not found in William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, and occasionally provide references to other ancient authors.  The maps by Heinrich Kiepert can be used to find many of the people groups and locations mentioned in this work.  These maps are in the public domain can be found on many websites.

The form we have the Chronicon in today contains errors and the reader is cautioned against using Hippolytus’ dates, names, and locations without further research. Additionally, this is my first attempt at translating a work from Greek and Latin into English, and no doubt many of the errors are due to my own paltry German or my inattentiveness and not the editors of the GCS or Hippolytus.

This translation needs one more revision using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) database to truly ensure a proper translation, but I do not have the time for such a task at the moment.

I would like to thank Nick Nicholas and Yancy Smith for their help and advice, Roger Pearse for his inspiration, which led me to take up this task, and my brother Mike, for recording my dictation.  Lastly, and most of all, I thank my very pregnant wife, who spent countless hours typing up a work that, by any standard, is not a pleasant read!

T.C. Schmidt

-Update-

I am already noticing errors in my text, so I am noting them and then will incorporate corrections into my next edition.  Nick Nicholas also made several good suggestions which I forgot to include and will put these into the next edition as well.  If any of you notice errors please email them to me.  My address can be found here

Posted in Chronology, Hippolytus, Translation | 4 Comments »

Hippolytus and December 25th, the birthday of Christ-Christmas

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

*Scroll down for more updates*

Roger Pearse is discussing the dates of the Winter Solstice and “Brumalia” to see if and how they correspond with December 25th.  But why do we think Jesus was born on December 25th?  I thought that I would throw my hat into the ring and give the earliest reference to December 25 as the birthday of Jesus Christ.

Hippolytus in his Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3 says:

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years.  He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation, the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar [29 or 30 AD], while Rufus and Roubellion and Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus were Consuls.

I’m not sure how to calculate the 42nd year of Augustus and the 15th of Tiberius, do we count inclusively or exclusively?  Does a partial year reign count as a full one?  Or does the year begin on the day the man became emperor (March 15th 44bc in the case of Augustus?).  Lastly, don’t we date King Herod’s death to 4BC based only off of Josephus?  As I recall the contemporary historians Tacitus and Suetonius don’t give enough information about his reign.  If so, couldn’t Josephus be a year or two off?   Finally, where is a good source on lists of Consuls?

Thoughts?

-Update-

Peter (in the comments) rightly reminded me that some believe that Hippolytus’ reference to December 25 as the birthday of Christ is a later interpolation.  Quasten says this in his Patrology. The most modern edition of Hippolytus’ commentary GCS (Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller) series number NF 7, puts the text in brackets indicating that it is a conjecture (or perhaps an interpolation), as does GCS #1 found here.  However the SC (Source Christianes) Series 13 edition (published in 1947), contains the text as I gave it above above.

Furthermore, the text that the most modern edition gives doesn’t seem to make sense.  It reads as follows:

“For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, four days before the Nones of April, 8 days before the kalends of January, the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Agustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years.  He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation”

Now in my photocopy of the page the German footnotes are partially cut off, making it very difficult to understand what actually is going on here. The older GCS edition seems to contain the same set of footnotes and it seems that there is conflicting manuscript tradition.   Anyone with a better knowledge of German able to sort this out?  You can see the footnotes here

Do scholars label this an interpolation simply because they think that the traditional date of December was not settled on until after Hippolytus?  Or are their more reasons?

-Update-

For those outside the US the GCS #1 volume is now on my website.  Look for page 242 or 295 of the PDF.

http://www.chronicon.net/GCS1hippolytusWerke.pdf

-Update-

Hippolytus has this to say in the ancient latin translation of his Chronicon about the birth and death of Christ (No Greek fragments survive from this portion of his Chronicon).  Chronicon Section 687:

And after the transmigration into Babylon until the birth of Christ, there were 14 generations, 660 years, and from the birth of Christ until the Passion there was 30 years and from the Passion up until this year which is the 13th year of the Emperor Alexander, there is 206 years.

The 13th year of Emperor Alexander Severus was 235AD [which makes 29AD for the death of Jesus according to the Latin].  Another Latin manuscript reads that it was 207 years from the passion of Christ until the 13th year of Alexander [28 AD for the death of Jesus].  The Armenian manuscript claims Christ was 32 when he died and that there are 205 years from Christ’s death to the 12th year and 6th month of Emperor Alexander’s reign [3BC].  It  is interesting to note that in his Chronicon Hippolytus claims that Jesus died when he was 30, but in his Commentary on Daniel he says he was 33 years old.  However, if we assume that the Armenian manuscript is more accurate than the Latin (Armenian often is more accurate) in which case what Hippolytus states in his Chronicon agrees pretty well with what he says in his Commentary on Daniel.  Read Hans Dampf’s insightful comments below about Jesus being born in 3BC.

Posted in Chronology, Hippolytus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Translation | 23 Comments »