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.