Fragments of the Chronographies

Contents

Reading pages: 1–48 · 49–53

1. 1Africanus held that the first day of creation was an intelligible day, since the first light was not yet formed into bodies.
2. 2A catena notice that Africanus and Athanasius wrote about the burial of Adam.
3. 3On Gen 4:26: Enos, whose name means ‘man,’ first hoped to be called by God's name, as the Savior is truly son of man.
4. 4God's name is shared by all who come from him; in the incarnation he is called man, as the one in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.
5. 5Methuselah, eighth from Adam, lived 969 years, longer than any, a figure of the eighth day; Cain's and Seth's lines share the names Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech.
6. 6The Septuagint chronology of the patriarchs from Adam to Lamech, with the ages at which each begot his successor.
7. 7On Gen 6–8: the ‘sons of God’ are most likely Seth's descendants marrying Cain's, though if angels are meant they taught magic and astrology and fathered the giants; then the flood, the ark, and its resting on Ararat, whose two supposed sites Africanus says he visited.
8. 8From Adam to the flood are 2262 years.
9. 9The chronology from the flood to Abraham, whose entry into Canaan falls in the year 3277 of the world; the name ‘Hebrew’ means ‘one who crosses over.’
10. 10Africanus rejects the vast Egyptian, Phoenician and Chaldaean chronologies in favor of the Jewish reckoning of 5,500 years to Christ, and gives his epitome of Manetho's thirty-one dynasties of Egypt, placing the Exodus under Amos, first king of the eighteenth dynasty.
11. 12A euhemerist account of the pagan gods as early kings descended from Shem: Kronos, Zeus (Picus), Ares (Baal), Faunus (Hermes), Aphrodite and Adonis.
12. 13Abraham in Egypt and his parting from Lot; the war of the four kings by the salt sea; and Africanus's eyewitness description of the Dead Sea and its marvels.
13. 14Abraham's marriage to Keturah after Sarah's death, and their five sons.
14. 15Jacob went to Mesopotamia at seventy-seven.
15. 16A later chronographer doubts both Africanus's and Eusebius's dating of Levi's birth to Jacob's 87th year.
16. 17Africanus reported that Jacob's tent, kept at Edessa, survived until it was struck by lightning under Antoninus.
17. 18Africanus reported an altar by the trunk of the terebinth near Shechem, under which Jacob buried the foreign gods, where the local people offered prayers at festivals, and that the tree did not burn though it seemed to be on fire.
18. 19Africanus traced Job, tempted by the devil and victorious, to Esau's line through Reuel and Zerah; a garbled chronological note on Joseph and Jacob follows.
19. 23A later chronographer disputes Africanus's dating of the start of the Argive kingdom.
20. 24Synchronisms of Greek legend with the time of the judge Othniel: Atlas the astrologer, the Kouretes, Syrus, Prometheus and others.
21. 25Africanus dated a flood to the seventieth year of a reign or era whose name is lost.
22. 26A later writer discusses whether Abimelech and his seventy brothers were sons of Gideon or of Jerubbaal, noting Africanus's view and his number of years.
23. 27Eusebius charged Africanus with inserting periods of anarchy and peace into the chronology of the judges, which Africanus himself admitted were disputed.
24. 28Chronological totals from Adam to Eli according to Africanus, Eusebius and Syncellus, with the 450 years of the judges from Acts 13:20 and Africanus's one year for Shamgar.
25. 29The years from the Exodus to the building of Solomon's temple, reckoned from the judges, Moses, Joshua, Eli, Samuel, Saul, David and Solomon, come to 659.
26. 31The years from Adam to Solomon's eighth year according to Syncellus and Africanus.
27. 32Africanus identified Jonah's Tarshish with Rhodes and Cyprus.
28. 33Africanus gave Pekahiah a reign of two years.
29. 34Copies differ on Pekah's reign; Africanus and Eusebius followed those giving twenty years.
30. 35Africanus gave the kingdom of the Lacedaemonians 325 years.
31. 36Africanus synchronized the first Olympiad with Jotham of Judah and the Athenian archon Aeschylus.
32. 37Africanus synchronized the first Olympiad with the first year of Ahaz.
33. 38The fall of Samaria in Hezekiah's sixth year, and the reckonings of the length of the northern kingdom by Syncellus, Africanus and Eusebius.
34. 39The succession of Athenian rulers, from the kings to the annual archons beginning with Creon, reckoned to the time of Antoninus.
35. 40A fragment on Manasseh's miraculous escape from his iron bonds.
36. 41Africanus counted the seventy years of captivity from Zedekiah's first year and placed Daniel and the three youths in the second deportation.
37. 43Africanus, with others, identified Cambyses with the Nebuchadnezzar of the book of Judith.
38. 44Ezra, sent by Artaxerxes, brought the remnant and temple vessels to Jerusalem, taught the law, and made those who had married foreign wives put them away.
39. 45Africanus dated the Peloponnesian War to the 87th Olympiad and gave the comic tradition of its cause.
40. 46Africanus gave Ptolemy Philometor a reign of eleven years.
41. 48Against Josephus, Africanus made Herod's father Antipater an Ascalonite, son of a temple-servant of Apollo, captured as a boy by Idumaean brigands and later the friend of Hyrcanus.
42. 49Long excerpts from Africanus's Chronography: the history of Herod, Antony and Augustus to the fall of Alexandria; the three kings omitted from Matthew's genealogy; the darkness at the crucifixion, which Thallus wrongly called an eclipse; and the seventy weeks of Daniel, counted from Artaxerxes' twentieth year to Tiberius's sixteenth.
43. 51A later chronographer judges that Africanus rightly dated the incarnation to the year 5500 but erred by two years in dating the passion to 5531.
44. 52A brief notice from Africanus about something made known at Edessa.
45. 53A broken notice in which Africanus calls Abgar a holy man.