by Tom Holland
83 From an inscription on a Persian curse bowl, quoted by Levene, p. 290.
84 Ignatius, “The Letter to the Magnesians”: 10.3.
85 The city was briefly lost to Ardashir in 241, but it was recaptured a couple of years later.
86 b. Gittin 55b. The rabbi was Rabbi Meir.
87 Kohelet Rabba 10.5.
88 Acts: 19.26.
89 Such, at any rate, is the tradition. It is probably true.
90 Eusebius, History of the Church: 5.1.
91 An alternative theory derived the word religio from relegere—“to write or reflect upon over and over again.” Whatever the derivation, religio itself signified practice, rather than belief.
92 The emperor was Galerius, in a decree of 311, quoted by Lactantius: 34.1.
93 From an inscription by one Demeas, who, in his own words, tore down “the deceitful likeness of the demon Artemis.” Quoted by Foss (1979), p. 32.
94 Jacob of Serugh, quoted by Griffith (2008), p. 123.
95 Daniel: 7.7.
96 Ibid.: 7.19.
97 Lactantius: 44.5.
98 Daniel: 7.11.
99 Isidore of Pelusium, p. 217.
100 Theodosian Code: 16.2.16.
101 Eusebius, Life of Constantine: 1.28.
102 Ibid.: 2.12.
103 Ignatius, “The Letter to the Magnesians”: 10.1. See also “The Letter to the Philadelphians,” 6.1.
104 From a letter written by Constantine jointly to Arius and his bishop. It is quoted by Eusebius in his Life of Constantine: 2.71.
105 Eusebius, Life of Constantine: 3.10.
106 As so often with Christian neologisms, Tertullian seems to have been the first to use the word religio in a way analogous to our word “religion.” See Sachot, pp. 111–16.
107 Lactantius, Divine Institutes: 4.28.
108 Theodosian Code: 16.10.12.
109 Socrates Scholasticus: 7.29.
110 Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum: Vol. 2, p. 149.
111 The phrase was added in the 470s, by the Patriarch of Antioch, to the formula “Holy Powerful One, Holy Deathless One.” See Brown (2003), p. 119.
112 Barhadbeshabba of Holwan, p. 605.
113 John Malalas, p. 228.
114 Procopius: History of the Wars, 1.24. Opinions on the veracity of the episode vary widely.
115 Procopius: Secret History, 2.9.
116 John Lydus: 3.69.
117 Procopius: On Buildings, 1.10. The mosaic was part of the renovations to the Chalke that were required after the Hippodrome riots.
118 Ibid.: 2.6.
119 Theodosian Code: 16.10.22.
120 Procopius: Secret History, 2.13.
121 The exact chronology is obscure. See Watts, pp. 128–39.
122 Agathias: 2.31.4.
123 For the theory that the philosophers may have settled in Harran, see Athanassiadi (1993). As she has subsequently acknowledged, however, the theory remains controversial (1999, pp. 51–3).
124 1 Corinthians: 1.20.
125 It is Athanassiadi (1999, pp. 342–7) who argues (convincingly) that a bishop took up residence in this villa.
126 Paul the Silentiary: 489.
127 Procopius: On Buildings, 1.27.
128 Ibid.: 1.30.
4 The Children of Abraham
1 Paul the Silentiary: 144.
2 Sayings of the Desert Fathers: Joseph of Panephysis, p. 103.
3 Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, p. 3.
4 Life of Sabbas: 8.92, in Three Byzantine Saints.
5 Lucian, De Dea Syria: 28, quoted by Frankfurter, p. 178.
6 Life of Symeon the Younger: 11.
7 Ibid.: 40.
8 Ibid.: Prologue.
9 Ibid.: 199.
10 Ibid.: 115.
11 Life of Daniel Stylites: 54, in Three Byzantine Saints.
12 Genesis: 32.24–30.
13 Exodus: 1.7.
14 Ibid.: 1.14.
15 Ibid.: 3.2.
16 Ibid.: 3.7–8.
17 Egeria, p. 8.
18 Procopius: On Buildings, 8.9.
19 Exodus: 19.16.
20 Deuteronomy: 34.10.
21 Quoted by Sivan (2008), p. 68.
22 Jerome, Letters: 58.3.
23 Ibid.: 46.2.
24 Life of Daniel Stylites: 10, in Three Byzantine Saints.
25 A sixth-century pilgrim, quoted by Sivan (2008), p. 70.
26 Jerome, Letters: 46.13.
27 From a letter written by two monks to the Emperor Anastasius, quoted by Wilken, pp. 168–9.
28 Procopius: On Buildings, 5.6.
29 Micah: 3.12. For the evolution of the phrase “Temple Mount,” see Goodblatt, pp. 193–203.
30 Although the anecdote is suspiciously late: from the eighth or ninth century.
31 Jerome, On Zephaniah: 1.16.
32 Tanhuma to Leviticus (Qedoshim 10).
33 b. Yoma, 54b.
34 Ammianus Marcellinus: 23.1.
35 From a sixth-century Jewish hymn, quoted by Weinberger, p. 34.
36 b. Gittin 62a.
37 The estimate is Avi-Yonah’s, p. 241. Others regard the figure as over-optimistic.
38 Jerome, On Isaiah: 48.17.
39 A combination of carbon-dating and circumstantial evidence points to the first decade of Justinian’s reign.
40 Quoted by Meyers, p. 353.
41 Ibid.: 5.
42 Procopius: On Buildings, 5.9. Procopius does not mention the church: for evidence of that, we are dependent exclusively upon archaeology.
43 See Ab Isda of Tyre (quoted in Crown, p. 457), for the classic formulation. The phrase is at least as old as the fourth century AD: archaeologists on Mount Gerizim have found it on a large number of inscriptions. See Sivan (2008), p. 119.
44 Quoted in Crown, Pummer and Tal, p. 161.
45 For the possible influence of Samaritan notions of “submission” to God on early Islam, see Crone and Cook, p. 19 and Crown, Pummer and Tal, p. 21.
46 Specifically, Rabbis Judah bar Pazzi and Rabbi Ammi. See p. Abodah Zarah 5.4. (III.a).
47 Abu l-Fath, p. 241.
48 Procopius: On Buildings, 5.7.
49 John Malalas: 446.
50 Procopius: Secret History, 11.
51 Genesis: 19.28.
52 Cyril of Jerusalem, “Prologue to the Catechetical Letters”: 10. At the time he delivered this lecture, Cyril was still two or three years away from becoming bishop.
53 Ibid., “Catechetical Lecture”: 4.36.
54 Theodoret, Compendium of Heretical Fables: p. 390.
55 Jerome, Letters: 112.12. It is only fair to point out that no rabbi would have disagreed.
56 Jerome, In Esaiam: 40.9, quoted by de Blois (2002), p. 15.
57 Epiphanius: 30.1.3.
58 Ibid.: 30.1.2.
59 For the strong likelihood that there were villages of Christian Jews on the Golan, see Joan Taylor, pp. 39–41. A broader issue is the degree to which we can trust the evidence for the survival of a recognisably Jewish form of Christianity into the sixth and seventh centuries. A seminal essay by Pines in 1968, arguing that there was evidence from as late as the tenth century, generated much controversy, but in the words of Gager (p. 365), it has been “largely vindicated, though with certain modifications.”
60 Quoted by Strugnell, p. 258, from a letter written by the Nestorian patriarch Timothy I in 786. As the remainder of Strugnell’s article demonstrates, there is incontrovertible evidence from Syriac manuscripts of even earlier discoveries of what have become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. That Jews in the Middle Ages were also familiar with one of them, at least—the so-called “Damascus Document”—is evident from the discovery in the late nineteenth century of two copies of the “Damascus Document” in the Jewish quarter of Cairo.
61 Sozomen: 2.4.
62 Josephus: 4.533.
63 Genesis: 19.27.
64 From a letter of Constantine to the bishops of Palestine, quoted by Eusebius in his Life of Constantine:
3.53. The identification of the three angels who visited Abraham with the constituent parts of the Trinity had first been made in the second century.
65 The opinion of a late sixth-century Christian who lived in Mesopotamia. Quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 25.
66 Sargon II, the King of Assyria. Quoted by Hoyland (2001), p. 96.
67 Ammianus: 14.4.4. For the blood-drinking, see Ammianus: 31.16.5–7. Greek and Roman writers never missed an opportunity to cast barbarians as cannibals.
68 Ibid.: 14.4.1.
69 From “al-Murqqish al-Akbar,” in Alan Jones (1996, Vol. 1), p. 112.
70 Abid ibn al-Abras, quoted by Hoyland (2001), pp. 121–2.
71 For the argument that the Thamud were indeed a confederation, and not, as is sometimes assumed, merely a tribe, see Bowersock (1983), pp. 97–8, and Graf and O’Connor, pp. 65–6.
72 The word features on a second-century AD temple at Ruwwafa, a remote site in western Arabia, where there is an inscription written in both Greek and Nabataean. See Milik for the translation of shirkat as “confederation.”
73 The derivation has only recently been recognised, courtesy of new epigraphic evidence. See Graf and O’Connor.
74 Joshua the Stylite, p. 79.
75 Or at least it is “practically certain” this is what it meant. See Shahid (1989), p. 213.
76 Quoted in the Cambridge History of Iran, p. 597.
77 Cyril of Scythopolis: 24.
78 The Arabic word seems to have derived from a Greek form of the original Latin. See Jeffrey, p. 196.
79 Procopius: History of the Wars, 1.17.
80 It is possible that the visit to Constantinople took place after the formal appointment of Arethas as king. See Shahid (1989), pp. 103–9.
81 Procopius: History of the Wars, 1.22.
82 From a report by Nonnosus, a Roman diplomat whose father and grandfather had both served as ambassadors to various Arab chieftains, and who himself was sent by Justinian on a mission to Ethiopia and the central and southern reaches of Arabia. What Gibbon describes as “a curious extract” from his memoirs was preserved by Photius, a ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, in his Biblioteka. The precise location of the shrine mentioned by Nonnosus is unknown, but the specifications that he does give, although frustratingly vague, make it clear enough that it was not Mecca, but somewhere in northern Arabia. See Crone (1987a), p. 197, n. 127.
83 Dushara was the Greek form of the god who was known by the Nabataeans as Dhu l-Shara and by the Lakhmids as Ashara. See Ryckmans, p. 246.
84 Diodorus Siculus: 3.42.
85 A temple in the Jabal Qatuta, near Marib, is the best example of this.
86 For Epiphanius’s confusion over ka’iba and ka’ba, see Sourdel, p. 67.
87 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History: 26.13.
88 From ibid., The Cure of Greek Maladies: Vol. 1, p. 250.
89 Genesis: 16.12.
90 However, the Bible does not equate the Children of Ishmael with the Arabs. For an account of how the two came to be seen as synonymous, see the essays by Eph’al and Millar.
91 From The Life of Simeon Priscus, quoted by Shahid (1989), p. 154.
92 Genesis: 21.21.
93 For the “highly unusual frequency of occurrence of the name Abraham in the sixth-century Negev,” see Nevo and Koren, p. 189.
94 Sozomen: 6.38.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid. For the evidence of a Jewish presence in north Arabia during the Roman period, see Hoyland (1995), p. 93.
97 The title was also applied to the Christian God in the wake of Yusuf’s defeat. See Nebes, pp. 37–8.
5 Countdown to Apocalypse
1 Cosmas Indicopleustes, p. 113.
2 Sidonius Apollinaris: Vol. 1, p. 41.
3 Sigismund of Burgundy, quoted by Harris, p. 33.
4 For the likely derivation of the word “Ostrogoth,” see Wolfram, p. 25.
5 As Ward-Perkins (p. 73) points out, “there is not even a word in the Latin language for ‘moustache.’ ”
6 For the commemoration of Ulfilas as Moses, see Amory, p. 241.
7 Quoted by O’Donnell (2008), p. 131.
8 Quoted by Brown (2003), p. 103.
9 Codex Justinianus: 27.1.1.
10 Procopius: History of the Wars, 4.9.12.
11 Ibid.: 5.14.14.
12 Ibid.: 6.
13 Ibid.: 2.2.6.
14 Menander the Guardsman: fragment 6.1.
15 John of Ephesus (as he is known, although in fact he was called Yuhannan, and came from Amida, not Ephesus), p. 83.
16 Joshua the Stylite, p. 29.
17 Jerome: Letters, 130.7.
18 Ibid., Commentary on Ezekiel: 8.225.
19 Ammianus Marcellinus: 22.9.14.
20 Life of Symeon the Younger: 57.
21 Novella 30.11.2.
22 John of Ephesus, p. 77.
23 Although only one source, and a late one at that, explicitly states that Alexander was instructed by the oracle to found Alexandria, the circumstantial evidence is strong. See Welles.
24 Ammianus Marcellinus: 16.15.
25 A formula often used by Christians in Alexandria. Cited by Haas, p. 130.
26 Isidore of Pelusium, quoted by Haas, p. 10.
27 Stephen of Herakleopolis: 10–11.
28 John of Nikiu: 92.7.
29 Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium: lines 229–30.
30 Joshua the Stylite: 26.
31 John of Ephesus, pp. 74–5.
32 Procopius: History of the Wars, 2.23.4.
33 John of Ephesus, p. 87.
34 Procopius: History of the Wars, 2.22.7.
35 A 2005 DNA study of two skeletons found in Germany conclusively proved that the pestilence of the 540s was caused by Yersinia pestis. In the words of the scientists who conducted it: “The identification of Y. pestis–specific DNA sequences in these two skeletons, buried in the second half of the 6th century AD, constitutes molecularly supported evidence for the presence of Y. pestis, the causative agent of plague, during the first pandemic recorded” (Wiechmann and Grupe, p. 48). It is worth noting that the prevalence of plague during the winter as well as the summer months and the description in contemporary accounts of some of the symptoms suggest that one of the strains might have been pneumonic, the most deadly and infectious of all.
36 John of Ephesus, p. 75.
37 Procopius: History of the Wars, 2.22.9.
38 Ibid.: 2.23.18.
39 Ibid.: 2.22.1.
40 John of Ephesus, p. 95.
41 Paul the Deacon: 2.4. This passage refers to an outbreak of plague in Italy in 565.
42 John of Ephesus, p. 102.
43 Michael Morony (in Little, p. 73) suggests that a mortality rate of a third is “realistic and believable.” Following an influential article by Jean Durliat, estimates of the total death toll were reduced downwards throughout the nineties, but recent DNA studies have reversed that trend. We now know that the sixth-century pestilence was humanity’s first experience of bubonic plague, so it is probable—indeed, almost certain—that its impact (upon a population that had no immunity whatsoever) was even greater than that of the Black Death in the fourteenth century. Historians are still in the process of making their calculations in light of this.
44 Procopius: History of the Wars, 2.23.10.
45 Procopius: The Secret History, 13.28.
46 Ibid.: 18.29.
47 Ibid.: 18.30.
48 Ibid.: 12.27.
49 For a fascinating analysis of how admirers and opponents of Justinian both put their spin on the selfsame policies of the emperor, see Scott.
