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Re: Calendar, MMT & Enoch (longish)
Sorry folks,
Please indulge me. I know I've sent a few too many posts recently, but I've
let this slip by.
Russell Gmirkin wrote:
>the wars of Hyrkanus I and AJ were of a mainly political/nationalistic nature,
>and could easily have escaped mention by MMT.
This is naturally an argument through silence in part: we don't know exactly
what the internal situation was during the reign of John Hyrcanus. We do
know under Alexander Jannaeus that it was not as rosy as Russell is trying
to paint it, with his dangerous wars. We know things got so bad that he
seiged Jerusalem and that the Pharisees even went to the extreme of calling
in the Seleucid king only to repent at the last moment and end up lining the
streets out of Jerusalem crucified.
We don't know for sure whether things were that much better during the time
of John Hyrcanus. He did maintain a mercenary army instead of one based on
his people. Why should he have needed mercenaries if internal affairs were
good? I'd say he felt safer with foreign mercenaries rather than Jewish
soldiers.
These don't seem like comparatively tranquil times for the writing of MMT.
Yours,
Ian Hutchesson