58
Procopius:
History of the Wars
, 1.6.
59
Ibid.: 1.5.
60
Procopius:
On Buildings
, 1.1.12.
61
From
The Book of the Deeds of Ardashir
, quoted by Stoneman, p. 41.
62
Ibid.: p. 42.
63
Herodian: 6.2.2.
64
Ammianus: 22.12.2.
65
See Robert Adams, pp. 179–83, who estimates that the population of Mesopotamia grew by 37 per cent over the course of the Sasanian period.
66
Ammianus: 24.8.3.
67
Procopius:
On Buildings
, 3.3.10.
68
Joshua the Stylite: p. 1.
69
“Aspebedes” was almost certainly not his proper name, but a transliteration into Greek of his official title: the
Spahbed
, or “Generalissimo,” of the West. If this is the same
Spahbed
who took part in Kavad’s attack on Amida in 503, then “Aspebedes” was actually called Bawi. (See Joshua the Stylite, p. 76.)
70
Procopius:
History of the Wars
, 1.11.
71
Letter of Tansar
, p. 43. Although ostensibly written during the reign of Ardashir, the identification of the events described with the Mazdakite revolt is almost universally accepted.
72
Ibid.: p. 38.
73
Ammianus: 24.6.3.
74
Theophanes, p. 26. The description is of Khusrow II’s gardens at Dastagerd, but would certainly have been applicable to the great park of Ctesiphon.
75
Ibid.
76
Genesis: 2.8.
77
Danieclass="underline" 7.3. The Book of Daniel is conventionally dated to the mid-second century BC, some four hundred years after Daniel himself is supposed to have lived.
78
Ibid.: 7.18.
79
Cassius Dio: 68.30.
80
Jeremiah: 51.7.
81
Ibid.: 51.37.
82
Procopius:
History of the Wars
, 2.13.13.
83
For the identification of the Harranian rituals as described by Christian and Muslim sources with the
akitu
festival, see Green, pp. 156–7.
84
Letter of Jeremiah
: 72.
85
Berosus, pp. 20–1.
86
Ammianus: 23.6.25.
87
Genesis: 11.28. Muslim and some Jewish traditions identify Ur with Urfa, the ancient city of Edessa, not far from Harran. There seems to be some support for this attribution in the fact that Abraham received his first revelation from God not in Ur but in “Haran”—which was almost certainly Harran. However, most scholars agree that the Ur mentioned in Genesis was the ancient city of the same name in Chaldaea, in the south of Mesopotamia. This had its final flourishing as a major cultural centre during the first half of the sixth century BC, under the Babylonian monarchy—precisely the period when the Judaeans were in exile in Babylon and the Book of Genesis was reaching its final form. Therefore, the exiles’ desire to link their ancestor to a sophisticated place of origin probably explains the association of Abraham with a city that is specifically described in Genesis (11.28) as “Ur of the Chaldaeans.” Of course, this strongly implies that Abraham himself was a mythical, rather than a historical, figure—which, by and large, is the current scholarly consensus. It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that doubts about the historicity of Abraham entered the academic mainstream in the 1970s—precisely when scepticism about what Muslim tradition had to say about the origins of Islam was also gaining currency in scholarly circles.
88
Ibid.: 12.1–2.
89
Ibid.: 17.8.
90
Ibid.: 17.5.
91
Letter of Tansar
, p. 64. The reference is to Persia itself, but the market place of Persia lay in Ctesiphon, not Iran.
92
Genesis: 17. 9–10.
93
Exodus: 20.4.
94
b. Berachoth
8b. Quotations from the Talmud are often prefaced by one of two letters—“b” and “y”—which indicate whether they derive from the “Bavli,” or Babylonian Talmud, or the “Yerushalmi,” or Palestinian Talmud.
95
b. Avodah Zarah
16a.
96
Denkard
: 3.229. Though composed in the early ninth century, the material that this source incorporates mostly dates from the Sasanian period.
97
Elishe: p. 63.
98
Elishe: p. 63.
99
There is a late and fantastical tradition that narrates the rise to power of one last exilarch—Mar Zutra. He supposedly exploited the chaos unleashed by the Mazdakite revolt to carve out an independent Jewish state before being toppled by Kavad and crucified on a bridge in Ctesiphon. For a long time, there was an “uncritical acceptance of the fabulous stories as literally true, factual historical accounts, though with the exclusion of the more miraculous of the miracles” (Neusner [1986], p. 98). As the leading contemporary historian of the Mesopotamian Jews has conclusively demonstrated, however, the evidence is patently “inadequate, indeed incredible” (ibid., p. 104).
100
b. Hullin
62b.
101
Nowhere are we specifically told this, but the enthusiasm with which Jews flocked to serve in Kavad’s armies is inexplicable unless we presume as much.
102
Eusebius:
Preparation for the Gospel
: 9.18. The phrase is a quotation from an otherwise largely vanished book named
Concerning the Jews of Assyria
, by a second-century BC Jewish historian named Eupolemus.
103
Such, at least, is the overwhelming scholarly consensus, which dates the start of the transcription of the Talmud to around AD 500.
104
Exodus Rabbah
15.21.
105
b. Sanhedrin
98a.
106
Genesis Rabbah
42.4.
107
b. Sanhedrin
36a. The rabbi was Jehuda ha-Nasi, who lived in the late second century AD.
108
b. Yevamot
20a.
109
b. Berakhot
58a.
110
b. Kethuboth
111b.
111
b. Shabbat
30b.
112
Numeri Rabbah
14.10.
113
See Marcel Simon, p. 196.
114
b. Gittin 57a
. The references to Jesus in the Talmud are notoriously elliptical and enigmatic, and have traditionally—for understandable reasons—been skated over by both Christian and Jewish scholars. For a fascinating and persuasive survey, see the recent book by Peter Schäfer, who demonstrates how the “[mainly] Babylonian stories about Jesus and his family are deliberate and highly sophisticated counternarratives to the stories about Jesus’s life and death in the Gospels” (p. 8).
115
Numeri Rabbah
14.10.
116
Abodah Zara
2a.
3 New Rome
1
Propertius: 3.22.21.
2
The quotation comes from Athenaeus, 6.273A–275A.
3
Plutarch,
Roman Questions