JETS 62.4 (2019): 759–73

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE

AND ITS RELATION TO THE CHRONOLOGY

OF HEROD THE GREAT

RODGER C. YOUNG AND ANDREW E. STEINMANN

Abstract:

The Emperor Caligula’s attempt to put a statue of himself, portrayed as the god

Jupiter, in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple is described by contemporary authors

Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. The chronology of this episode is firmly established by these

authors as well as by Roman historians. The challenge of that chronology to the consensus

chronology for Herod the Great is described, along with the attempts of consensus scholars to

deal with the challenge. Closely related to the Caligula statue issue is a Seder ‘Olam passage

associating the burning of the Second Temple with a Sabbatical year. New evidence is presented

showing that the Seder ‘Olam places that event in the latter part of a Sabbatical year, in con-

flict with the consensus date for a Sabbatical year during Herod the Great’s siege of Jerusalem

but in harmony with the minority view that dates the siege to 36 BC.

Key words:

Herod the Great, Emil Schürer, W. E. Filmer, Sabbatical years, Jubilees,

NT chronology, Josephus, Seder ‘Olam

In late AD 40, the emperor Caligula announced that a statue of himself, por-

trayed as the Roman god Jupiter, would be placed in the Temple at Jerusalem. The

announcement was the culmination of a series of proclamations and role-playing

whereby Caligula presented himself as a divine or semi-divine being. At first the

role-playing may have appeared as just cheap theater for the masses, as when their

emperor adorned himself with ivy and carried a lyre to imitate Bacchus, the demi-

god of wine and revelry, or when he dressed in a lion’s skin and carried a club to

impersonate the demigod Hercules. But it was not just impersonation. Caligula

intended that he really was to be identified as the demigod that was being repre-

sented, and further, that he was the embodiment of all the demigods. The cha-

rade—or megalomania—went further when he progressed beyond demigods to the

gods themselves. He attired himself in the caduceus, sandals, and tunic of Mercury;

the garlands, bow, and arrows of Apollos; and then the breastplate, sword, and

helmet of Mars.

Rodger C. Young is an independent researcher who resides at 1115 Basswood Lane, St. Louis,

MO 63132. He may be contacted at rcyoung8@yahoo.com. Andrew E. Steinmann is distinguished

professor of theology and Hebrew at Concordia University Chicago, 7400 Augusta Street, River Forest,

IL 60305. He may be contacted at Andrew.Steinmann@cuchicago.edu.

The progressive delusions of Gaius/Caligula are described in rather wordy detail in Philo, Legat. 78,

79, 93–97, available online at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book40.html. The decree

of Caligula to set up his statue in the Jerusalem Temple is also mentioned in Josephus (see below) and

Tacitus, Hist. 5:9.

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An equally serious chain of events began with the killing in a horrid manner

of Caligula’s youthful cousin Gemellus, who had a more legitimate claim to the

throne than did Caligula, because Gemellus was the grandson of Tiberius by blood,

whereas Caligula was Tiberius’s grandson by adoption. The murdering of a poten-

tial rival to power is hardly unusual, as demonstrated in our own day by an aspiring

demigod on the Korean peninsula. But Caligula went beyond Kim Jong Un in his

treatment of advisors; whereas advisors to the latter only have to be circumspect in

what they advise, Caligula determined that no advice at all should be given to a god

such as himself. As a god, his opinions and decrees needed no counsel, and to offer

such was to show a lack of respect for his affected divine nature. As a consequence

of this delusion, he put to death his father-in-law, who mistakenly thought that

familial closeness entitled him to offer advice that the son-in-law sorely needed.

The acme of Caligula’s hubris came when he identified himself with Rome’s

chief god, Jupiter. Previously, he had been seriously provoked by one populace in

the empire that did not humor him in his pretensions to divinity: the Jews. At the

instigation of some of his anti-Jewish associates, Caligula devised a plan to break

the spirit of the Jews and to establish his cult among them. A colossal statue of

himself was to be erected in the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem. His

name was to be inscribed on the statue, and, accompanying that name, the title of

Jupiter, the chief god in the Roman pantheon.

I. ANCIENT AUTHORS ON CALIGULA’S STATUE

1. Josephus. Josephus describes the consternation that Caligula’s decree caused

in Judea.

From his lengthy narrative in Antiquities and the shorter version in Wars,

we learn that Caligula sent Publius Petronius to be the new governor of Syria and

to arrange for the building of the statue. Petronius was also commanded to muster

a considerable army for the expected uprising. Petronius sailed to Ptolemais in

Phoenicia, where he made preparations to spend the winter of AD

40/41. Since

this time corresponds to the agricultural year that began in Tishri (the fall), for con-

venience in what follows such a year will be written as AD

40t, the ‘t’ showing that

the year is reckoned to begin on 1 Tishri instead of on 1 January as in the Roman

(and our) calendar.

When the decree was made known in Judea, Josephus relates that “many tens

of thousands of Jews” brought their protest to Petronius in Ptolemais.

He then

made a temporary excursion to Tiberias on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where

“many ten thousands of the Jews met Petronius again.” The protests in Tiberias

lasted “for a period of forty days, in the meanwhile neglecting to farm their land

during the very season of the year that required them to sow it.”

But neglecting

Legat. 64, 65.

Ant. 18.261–309/18.8.2–18.8.9; J.W. 2.184–203/2.10.1–5.

Ant. 18.263/18.8.2. Translation from Louis H. Feldman, Josephus with an English Translation, vol. 9

(LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University, 1965), 157.

Ant. 18.272/18.8.3. J.W. 2.200/2.10.5 also says that it was seed time but puts the number of days

of protest at 50.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 761

their fields when they should have been sowing was not the only way the Jews

demonstrated their earnestness; they also told Petronius that they were willing to

die rather than see their Temple desecrated.

After hearing their grievous and prolonged supplications, Petronius, a man of

more sense than his emperor, told the Jews that he would address a letter to Caligu-

la expressing their concerns. He urged them, “Go, therefore, each to your own

occupation, and labor on the land. I myself will send a message to Rome and will

not turn aside from doing every service in your behalf both by myself and through

my friends.”

Surely aware that sending such a letter would jeopardize his life, he

nonetheless sent it and told the Jews to “tend to agricultural matters” that they had

been neglecting in order to make their desperation known.

Meanwhile, in order to

buy some time, he told the artisans in Sidon whom he had commissioned to make

the statue not to rush its construction, since it was important that it be of the finest

workmanship.

News of the statue project therefore reached Judea in the time of sowing, that

is, the fall. This is consistent with other early sources we have regarding the Caligu-

la statue and also with the subsequent narrative in Josephus. All sources place the

issuing of the statue edict in the late summer or fall of AD

40, with later events

playing out in the early months of AD 41. This chronology is important because, as

will be shown later, it has unavoidable consequences related to the chronology of

Herod the Great in the previous century.

Caligula, on receiving the letter from Petronius, was indeed furious. Although

he had previously promised his close friend King Agrippa that the statue would not

be placed in the Temple, he reversed this decision and, in a reply to Petronius, es-

sentially demanded that Petronius die—but before taking his life he should make

his primary goal the construction and speedy installation of the statue.

Caligula’s

letter, however, was sent on a slow boat and reached Petronius sometime after an-

other letter, written later, came from Rome, telling of the murder of Caligula. He

had been killed by members of the Senate and others who had been affected by

Caligula’s cruelties and who judged (rightly) that Caligula was insane. The murder

of Caligula occurred on January 24, AD

41.

A chief enemy of the Jews in the court of Caligula was the Apion who has

achieved infamy throughout the centuries as an anti-Semite because of Josephus’s

polemic against him in Contra Apionem. Apion had been an agitator in Alexandria

against the city’s large Jewish community. The non-Jewish residents of Alexandria

recognized that Caligula’s pretentions to divinity afforded an opportunity to cause

great harm to their Jewish neighbors. Their polytheism presented no obstacle to

placing statues of the emperor in their places of worship, first in the role of various

demigods, and then as portrayed as one of the major gods. Taking advantage of

Caligula’s known enmity against the Jewish nation because the Jews were unwilling

Ant. 18.283/18.8.5.

Ant. 18.284/18.8.6.

Ant. 18.304/18.8.8; Philo, Legat. 258.

762 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

to ascribe divine honors to him, the Alexandrians correctly determined that there

would be no justice for the Jews if they began to plunder their homes and proper-

ties. The synagogues were marked out for special attention; what better way to

show the disloyalty of the Jews than to place an image of the emperor in a syna-

gogue and then, when this was inevitably resisted by the Jews, to charge them with

treason?

As the persecution of the Jews continued for several months, the Alexandrian

Jews determined that their only hope for relief was to send a delegation to present

their grievances to the emperor, even though they knew of his hostility toward

them. To make sure the calumny against the Jews would continue, the pagans sent

an embassy at the same time, among whom was Apion.

2. Philo on Caligula’s statue. Caligula reigned from March 13, AD

37 to January

24, AD 41, so Josephus would have been about three years of age when Caligula’s

edict about the statue went forth. The story about the decree, and the following

events, would therefore have been well known as part of Josephus’s upbringing.

The incident would probably have been in Paul’s mind when he received the reve-

lation about the “man of sin” mentioned in 2 Thess 2:3–4, written about eleven

years after Caligula’s death.

Paul would have seen Caligula, with his pretentions to

godhood, as a prefiguration of this end-time figure. The essential facts of Caligula’s

mania were thus well known to the contemporary world, while the particulars of

the statue incident are borne out by a report from an individual who was intimately

involved in the crisis: Philo of Alexandria. Josephus writes that Philo, “a most emi-

nent man … and one not unskilled in philosophy,” led the Jewish delegation that

protested to Caligula about the ongoing destruction of their homes and synagogues

in Alexandria.

Philo is best known in modern times for his attempts to syncretize

Hebrew monotheism with Greek philosophy. In particular, his concept of the logos

as the divine creative principle finds a parallel in the Gospel of John, where the

Christ is identified with that principle: “In the beginning was the Logos …” (John

1:1).

Philo was born about 20 BC and died about AD

50. He would have been

around 60 years of age when he led the embassy to Rome. He described that em-

bassy, and the events related to it, in an extensive work, the Legatio ad Gaium, “The

Embassy to Gaius,”

that is, a mixture of narrative, philosophy, rhetoric, and anti-

Caligula polemic. Only part of the original work has survived, but the extant text of

over 33,000 words verifies Josephus’s account. This includes the designation of

Legat. 132, says of the synagogues in Alexandria, “there are a great many in every section of the

city.” In Legat. 138, Philo says that for three hundred years prior to these desecrations, no king had any

images or statues of themselves erected in a synagogue, thereby indicating that the institution of the

synagogue began about 260 BC.

Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011),

334.

Ant. 18.259/18.8.1.

“Caligula,” meaning “Little Boots,” is a nickname that was given to the future emperor by Roman

soldiers when he was a boy. His full name was Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, usually abbreviated

to Gaius Caesar.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 763

Petronius as the governor who was given the responsibility of commissioning the

building of Caligula’s statue and placing it in the Jerusalem Temple. Philo also says

that it was in “the middle of the stormy season”

(Legat. 190) when he and his par-

ty made the voyage to Rome, only to learn after they arrived about the greatest

outrage of all, the plan to place the Caligula/Jupiter statue in the Temple. This

agrees with the chronology of Josephus, who dated the sending of Petronius to

accomplish this task in the late fall of AD 40. It was the time of sowing of seed and

just before the army of Petronius went into winter quarters.

II. WAS AD 40T A SABBATICAL YEAR?

The agricultural year beginning in Tishri (early fall) of AD

40 and ending 12

months later in the early fall of AD 41 could not have been a Sabbatical year. In

several passages, Josephus mentions the seriousness of the Jews who, in their pro-

tests to Petronius, left off the working of their fields, even though “it was time to

sow the seed,” which was done in the fall. After Petronius assured them that he

would address a letter to the emperor regarding the statue, he told them to return

to their tillage. A similar concern about possible neglect of agricultural work by the

Jews appears in the Legatio, where Philo’s delegation, arriving in Rome in the late

fall or early winter, learned at that time of the edict regarding the statue. The

timeframe for these events is therefore from the fall of AD

40 to sometime in Feb-

ruary or March of AD 41, at which time Petronius and the Judean leaders learned

of Caligula’s death in the preceding January. The several mentions of agricultural

activity by both the Jews and Petronius show that these Jews, who were willing to

die rather than see their temple desecrated, were the same Jews who left off their

tillage for 40 days at the critical time of sowing in order to protest to Petronius.

They then returned to their labor in the fields when Petronius agreed to send his

letter to the emperor. These were not the kind of people who would violate the

Mosaic legislation that forbade both sowing and harvesting in a Sabbatical year,

especially when we know from various passages in Josephus and 1 Maccabees that

the Sabbatical year legislation was being observed in the latter part of the Second

Temple period.

If AD 40t was not a shemitah (Sabbatical year), then neither was 38t BC, that is,

the agricultural year that began in Tishri of 38 BC and extended through the winter,

spring, and summer of 37 BC. The time difference is 77 years, which would make

exactly 11 Sabbatical cycles. Yet it is essential to the currently favored chronology

for the life of Herod the Great that 38t BC be a Sabbatical year. That chronology

places Herod’s siege of Jerusalem in the summer of 37 BC, and advocates of the

consensus chronology for Herod, as well as critics of that chronology, accept Jose-

χειμῶνος. BAGD, s.v. χειμών, ῶνος, ὁ [χεῖμα “winter weather, storm”] “inclement weather con-

dition” bad weather … adv. gen. χειμῶνος in winter Mt 24:20; Mk 13:18.

1 Macc 6:49; Ant. 14.202/14.10.5, 14.206/14.10.6, 14.475/14.16.2, 15.7/15.1.2. Unlike the First

Temple period, when the people generally did not observe the stipulations of the Sabbatical years, Jose-

phus says that in his days and in the days of Herod the Great, “we are forbidden to sow the earth in that

year” (Ant. 15.7/15.1.2).

764 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

phus’s statements that there was a shortage of food during the summer of the siege

because it was the time of a shemitah.

III. HOW DO ADVOCATES OF THE CONSENSUS CHRONOLOGY FOR

HEROD DEAL WITH THE NON-SABBATICAL NATURE OF AD 40T?

The answer is: not very well. There is no reason to doubt the basic facts of

the Caligula statue narrative as found in Josephus and Philo, the latter of whom was

intimately involved with the unfolding of events: Philo was leading the Alexandrian

delegation when they learned of the plans for the statue, and he wrote at great

length (some of which is lost) about those events before his death some nine years

later. The basic chronology cannot be doubted; the death of Caligula is well estab-

lished by Roman historians as occurring in January of the year 41. Neither can the

repeated references to sowing seed and otherwise preparing the ground for the

expected spring harvest be dismissed. The references to agricultural activities by

devout Jews are an integral part of the story as related by Josephus. It is therefore

of interest to see how defenders of the 37 BC date for Herod’s siege of Jerusalem

counter the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that the Caligula/Petronius narra-

tive presents to their chronology.

1. Treatment in Schürer. It is generally recognized that the major source for the

chronology of Herod the Great is the work of Emil Schürer in his monumental

history of the Jewish people around the time of the incarnation. There were three

German editions of Schürer’s volumes. The first appeared in 1874, the second in

1886–1890, and the third in 1901–1909. Essential to Schürer’s chronology is his

acceptance of the consular years given by Josephus for Herod’s investiture as king

by the Romans (consuls Calvinus and Pollio, AD

40) and his siege and capture of

Jerusalem three years later, with the assistance of a Roman army under Sossius

(consuls Marcus Agrippa and Caninius Gallo, AD

37).

As W. E. Filmer pointed

out, Josephus’s consular year for the siege and fall of Jerusalem is contradicted by

Dio Cassius (49:23), who said that during the consular year that Josephus gives for

this event, Sossius was not involved in any military activities.

There are other indi-

cations that Josephus’s two consular years are wrong, yet the majority of subse-

quent scholars have followed Schürer in building their Herodian chronology on the

basis of these consular years.

Ant. 14.475/14.16.2, 15.7/15.1.2.

Ant. 14.389/14.14.5; Ant. 14.487/14.16.4.

W. E. Filmer, “The Chronology of the Reign of Herod the Great,” JTS n.s. 17 (1966): 287.

Josephus’s consular dates also formed the starting point for the calendar of post-exilic Sabbatical

years originated by Benedict Zuckermann several years before Schürer published his magnum opus. (Ben-

edict Zuckermann, A Treatise of the Sabbatical Cycle and the Jubilee: A Contribution to the Archaeology and Chro-

nology of the Time Anterior and Subsequent to the Captivity Accompanied by a Table of Sabbatical Years [trans. A.

Löwy; London: Chronological Institute, 1866]; orig. German ed. 1857). After a lengthy discussion of the

background of Jubilee and Sabbatical years, Zuckermann looked for an anchor point to which he could

assign one Sabbatical year in the post-exilic period. If that could be done, then prior and subsequent

Sabbatical years could be calculated over a long span of time. He thought that he found this in Jose-

phus’s consular year for the siege of Jerusalem by Herod and Sossius, calling this the “best ascertained

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 765

The Caligula statue episode is one of the many problems in Schürer’s chro-

nology. His equivocation regarding this episode, and his recognition that it was a

problem for his reconstruction, are shown in the following passage, as translated

from the 1886–1890 German edition:

Against the cycle of the Sabbath year here adopted I argued in the first edition

of this work that the year A.D. 40–41 could not have been a Sabbath year, as ac-

cording to our cycle it must have been. For the Jews omitted to sow the seed in

the last month before Caligula’s death, during November

A.D. 40, not because it

was the Sabbath year, but because for weeks they were going in great crowds to

lay before Petronius their complaints on account of the profanation threatened

to the temple (Antiq. xviii. 8. 3; Wars of the Jews, ii. 10. 5). From this it would

appear that the sowing of the fields during that year had been expected. But we

are obliged to admit that this indirect argument, when put over against other

possible explanations that may still be given, is not strong enough to overturn

the very positive proofs that have been advanced in favour of regarding this year

as a Sabbath year.

The “very positive proofs” given elsewhere by Schürer are (1) Josephus’s con-

sular years, and (2) Zuckermann’s calendar of post-exilic Sabbatical years. But

Zuckermann’s calendar took as its starting place Josephus’s mistaken consular years

for Herod. It is obvious from this passage that Schürer had no explanation for the

conflict of his chronology with the statue episode, only saying that the chronologi-

cal evidence from that episode was not consistent with the chronology that he

based, ultimately, on Josephus’s two consular dates for Herod.

2. Treatment in Vermes and Millar’s update of Schürer. For a century after Schürer’s

first publication, his history of the Jewish people in the time of Christ continued to

be considered the authoritative work in the field. During that century it was inevi-

table that new finds, and new studies based on those finds, made some of Schürer’s

scholarship outdated. Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar of Oxford University were

therefore given the responsibility of translating Schürer’s third edition into English

and updating it with more modern scholarship.

Instead of the paltry one para-

graph that Schürer devoted to Caligula’s statue in the second edition, the

fact” that he needed to construct such a calendar (p. 45). In the next two pages, however, Zuckermann

ran into difficulties with two Sabbatical years in the Hasmonean period, as derived from Josephus and 1

Maccabees. His mistranslation of the relevant texts in Josephus, and his general failure to resolve the

difficulty that resulted from his acceptance of wrong consular years from Josephus, will be dealt with

elsewhere. For the present it should be noted that Zuckermann’s Sabbatical-year calendar was accepted

by Schürer as an independent verification of his Herodian chronology, whereas it is not independent

because both rely on Josephus’s consular year mistakes for Herod. When a proper consideration is given

to the possibility that Josephus erred in the matter of consular years (and that Dio Cassius was correct),

a series of other problems related to the consensus chronology for Herod is resolved. See Andrew E.

Steinmann, “When Did Herod the Great Reign?” NovT 51 (2009): 1–29, and Andrew E. Steinmann and

Rodger C. Young, “Elapsed Times for Herod the Great in Josephus,” BSac (2020): forthcoming.

Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (5 vols.; trans. John Macpherson;

repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), 42, 43. Original publication: Edinburgh T. & T. Clark, 1890.

Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135): A New

English Version Revised and Edited by Geza Vermes & Fergus Millar (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973).

766 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Schürer/Vermes/Millar edition devoted ten pages to events leading up to the stat-

ue episode and the episode itself.

Although this is a more satisfactory treatment than the comparative neglect in

Schürer’s first two editions, the revision is deficient in dealing with the affair’s

chronology. In one place, the authors date the coming of the Jewish embassy to the

spring of AD

40,

yet on the next page they recognize “Caligula was absent from

Rome on an expedition to Gaul and Germany from the autumn of A.D. 39 until

August A.D. 40.”

Various explanations are offered, all of which are recognized

by the authors to have difficulties: that there were two embassies, the first sent in

the fall of AD

39 and the second a year later; or that the ambassadors’ journey was

at the end of the winter of AD 39/40, after which “they waited in Rome for Caligu-

la’s return from his campaign and were received by him in the autumn of A.D.

40.”

These hypothetical scenarios can be evaluated against the testimony of the

Legatio. In the Legatio, Philo relates that the embassy traveled to Rome in the

“stormy season,” and, in the next sentences after telling of this voyage, they appear

in the presence of the emperor, with no indication of any delay or waiting period. It

is difficult to understand how this testimony of a respected ancient scholar, one

who was a participant in the events being discussed and who wrote about them less

than ten years after their occurrence, can so easily be set aside.

Equally strange is that the ten pages devoted to the troubles with Caligula lack

any reference to the difficulties that the timing of these events presents to the con-

sensus chronology for Herod the Great. The specific problem is with the Sabbatical

year that all agree was in progress when Herod and Sossius were besieging Jerusa-

lem. At least Schürer, in the first and second editions, expressed his discomfort

with the evidence from Josephus and Philo demonstrating that his Sabbatical-year

calendar was wrong. The failure of the issue to even be mentioned in the Ver-

mes/Millar edition shows that no solution had been found.

3. Treatment in Goldstein and subsequent writers. In his 1976 commentary on 1

Maccabees, Benjamin Goldstein recognized that neither Schürer nor Vermes and

Millar had dealt adequately with the challenge of the statue incident to the consen-

sus Herodian chronology. Referring to Ben Zion Wacholder’s alternative

Zuckermann’s (and consequently Schürer’s) Sabbatical year calendar, Goldstein

writes:

Wacholder (p. 168) asserts that the year from Tishri, 40 C.E., to Tishri, 41 C.E.,

could not have been a sabbatical year because Josephus in his account of the

momentous events of the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula attests that pi-

ous Jews of Judaea sowed their fields in that year (BJ ii 10.5.200; AJ xviii 7.3–

4.271—74). But Philo (Legatio ad Gaium 33–34.249–57) puts the same events,

Ibid., 389–98.

Ibid., 392.

Ibid., 393 n. 167.

Ibid.

Ben Zion Wacholder, “The Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles during the Second Temple and the Ear-

ly Rabbinic Period,” HUCA 44 (1973): 153–96.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 767

not at the time of the autumn sowing, but at the time of the spring harvest.

Hard as it may be to explain how Josephus could have been mistaken, it is hard-

er still to explain how Philo could have been in error; see F. H. Colson, Philo X,

LCL, no. 379 (1962), pp. xxvii–xxxi. The problem is still unsolved (the sugges-

tions of Vermes and Millar in Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus

Christ [New English Version] are unsatisfactory too; Philo and Josephus cannot

both be correct). But one certainly cannot take Josephus’ chronology of the

events of Caligula’s reign as a sure basis for a theory of the dates of the sabbati-

cal year.

Very strange. We don’t need to take Josephus as the authority for the chronology

of Caligula’s reign as Goldstein intimated; it is well established by Roman writers.

Goldstein recognizes that Vermes and Millar did not solve the problem that the

statue episode presents to the consensus chronology for Herod: “The problem is

still unsolved.” The whole point of the episode is lost if it did not take place in a

few months before and then shortly after January 24, AD

41, when Caligula was

murdered. So to Schürer, Vermes, and Millar we must add Goldstein among those

who have not been able to reconcile their chronology for Herod with the course of

events for Caligula’s statue. There is no problem, however, with Wacholder’s Sab-

batical-year calendar that is one year later than Zuckermann’s, so that Herod’s siege

of Jerusalem was in the summer of 36 BC and a Sabbatical year began nine months

after the death of Caligula in AD

41.

To the best of our knowledge, subsequent writers who support the Schürer

consensus have done no better. In an article intending to support the Zuckerman

Sabbatical-year calendar, Don Blosser gave considerable attention to various inci-

dents that he maintained supported Zuckermann’s calendar, such as Herod’s siege

of Jerusalem as reported in Josephus and the fall of Jerusalem to Titus in what he

reckoned to be a post-Sabbatical year.

Regarding Caligula’s statue, however,

Blosser only refers to it in his list of Sabbatical years at the end of his article, saying

that AD

40/41 was the year of the Statue of Caligula, and that this was 77 years (11

Sabbatical cycles) after the conquest of Jerusalem by Herod and 28 years (four Sab-

Goldstein’s understanding that Philo put these events in the spring is based on an admittedly con-

fusing passage, Legat. 33–34 (249–60), that deals with Caligula’s writing a letter to Petronius, who was in

Phoenicia or Judea. This was in response to the letter that Petronius had sent earlier, expressing concern

about the Jews not tilling the ground because of the statue issue. The Legatio passage in its present form

could be read as if it was already time to harvest the spring wheat crop. Caligula, however, was dead

many weeks before the harvest of AD

41, and so the letter could not have been written in the spring of

that year. Neither could it have been written in the spring of AD

40, because Caligula was in Gaul in the

first part of AD

40, not returning to Rome until August of that year (OCD “Gaius”). The remarks about

spring in section 33 and 34 of the Legatio should be interpreted in light of Caligula’s concern that, if the

coming harvest should fail because of the lack of sowing and tillage, there would be inadequate food for

the Roman legions in Syria in the spring. This was also the time that the statue was to be placed in the

Jerusalem Temple. Although it is easy to understand how the passage could be misunderstood, Josephus

and Philo are not in error about the timing of these events. They agree in dating them to the fall and

early winter of AD 40/41, well before the spring harvest.

Benjamin Goldstein, I Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 41; Garden

City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 316–17.

Don Blosser, “The Sabbath Year Cycle in Josephus,” HUCA 52 (1981): 129–39.

768 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

batical cycles) to the year before its conquest by Titus.

There is no explanation of

the evidence that the “year of the statue” could not have been a Sabbatical year.

Despite Goldstein’s comment that the problem the Caligula statue presents to

the Schürer chronology is still unsolved, there is a simple solution: consider that

Josephus’s consular years for Herod’s investiture by the Romans and, three years

later, the siege of Jerusalem, might be in error. Then develop a chronology that

does not depend on Josephus’s consular years and see if it agrees with other chron-

ological markers in Josephus and elsewhere related to Herod. There is, after all,

another historian, Dio Cassius, who wrote extensively about events related to

Rome and Judea in this time. As Filmer pointed out,

Dio said that in the consular

year corresponding to 37 BC,

the Romans accomplished nothing worthy of note in Syria. For Antony spent

the entire year in reaching Italy and returning again to the province; and Sosius,

because anything he did would be advancing Antony’s interests rather than his

own … spent the time in devising means, not for achieving some success and

incurring his enmity, but for pleasing him without engaging in any activity. (Dio

49:23)

Schürer apparently thought that the testimony of Dio regarding the non-

activity of Sossius in 37 BC could be discarded because Dio put the conquest of

Jerusalem a year earlier, an untenable position.

That, however, represents a mis-

reading of Dio. In the relevant passage referring to events in the consulship of

Claudius and Norbanus (38 BC),

Dio deals with Mark Antony’s siege of Antio-

chus at Samosata, which all agree took place in the year 38. In the course of the

same paragraph, Dio introduces Sossius as the governor that Antony appointed for

Syria and Cilicia. Further describing Sossius, he mentions that he was the one who

subdued the Aradii “and also conquered in battle Antigonus … and reduced him

by siege when he took refuge in Jerusalem.” The paragraph ends with a statement

that Antony entrusted the government of the Jews to “a certain Herod,” an event

that happened three years before the siege of Jerusalem. Dio, therefore, was not

placing all these events in the same year, as Schürer implied. After this aside ex-

plaining who Sossius was, Dio returns to his main narrative about Antony and his

struggle against the Parthians. The testimony of Dio that contradicts Josephus’s

consular years therefore should not be discredited by any interpretation that has

him dating the capture of Jerusalem to 38 BC, and appropriate weight should be

given to his statement that, in the consular year corresponding to 37 BC, “the Ro-

mans accomplished nothing of note in Syria.”

See the discussion below; Jerusalem fell to Titus in a Sabbatical year, not a post-Sabbatical year.

Filmer, “Chronology of Herod the Great,” 287.

Schürer, History (Macpherson translation), 396 n. 11.

49:22.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 769

IV. THE SABBATICAL YEAR FOR THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

Virtually all historians who deal with the calendar of post-exilic Sabbatical

years place great weight on the testimony of the Seder ‘Olam regarding a Sabbatical

year associated with the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. The principal author of

the Seder ‘Olam, Rabbi Yose ben Halaphta, was a disciple of the renowned Rabbi

Akiba. Akiba (ca. AD

50–135 or later) was a young man when this calamity hap-

pened. Akiba’s knowledge of when it occurred would have been of great interest to

Rabbi Yose, whose primary concern in the Seder ‘Olam (hereinafter SO) is chronol-

ogy. His chronological scheme is accepted as authoritative in the Tosefta and both

Talmuds,

all of which quote verbatim (in Hebrew) the SO 30 passage cited be-

low.

There is no discussion of alternative views, showing that the quotation from

SO 30 was considered authoritative on this subject, backed, as it was, by eminent

and credible witnesses and authorities. The passage in SO 30 regarding the Sabbati-

cal year associated with the fall of Jerusalem appears as follows in Guggenheimer’s

translation:

R. Yose says: A day of rewards attracts rewards and a day of guilt attracts guilt.

You find it said that the destruction of the first Temple was at the end of Sab-

bath, at the end of a Sabbatical year, when the priests of the family of Yehoiariv

was [sic] officiating, on the Ninth of Ab, and the same happened the second

time. Which song did they sing? (Ps. 94:23) “He repaid them for their evil

deeds … .”

For those unfamiliar with the controversy regarding this passage, the above

quotation would seem to end the argument: the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans

was in the latter part of (“at the end of”) a Sabbatical year. The Sabbatical year

would have begun in Tishri of AD

69, with the destruction of the Temple occur-

ring ten months later, in Ab (July/August), AD 70. This is consistent with

Wacholder’s Sabbatical-year calendar, not Zuckermann’s, so that the Sabbatical year

associated with the siege of Jerusalem was 37t BC, not Schürer and Zuckermann’s

38t. The consequence is that Josephus’s consular years for the event must therefore

be rejected, and the consular year statement of Dio be accepted as accurate: Herod

and Sossius’s siege of Jerusalem took place in the summer of 36 BC, not a year

earlier as in the Schürer chronology.

The controversy, however, centers on the translation, or interpretation, of this

passage from the Seder ‘Olam. Many translations of the SO, Tosefta, and Talmudic

presentations interpret the crucial phrase about the Sabbatical year so as to say that

it was “the year after” a shemitah, rather than the latter part of (Guggenheimer: “at

the end of”) a shemitah. Other translations of the same passage into English agree

with Guggenheimer’s rendering. In what follows, it will be shown from what Rabbi

Yose says elsewhere in the SO that Guggenheimer’s translation is correct, and

H. Guggenheimer, Seder Olam: The Rabbinic View of Biblical Chronology (Northvale, NJ/Jerusalem:

Jason Aronson, 1998), ix.

t. Ta‘an. 3:9; y. Ta‘an. 4:5; b. ‘Arak. 11b, 12a; b. Ta‘an. 29a.

770 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

therefore the SO, the Tosefta, and both Talmuds testify against the Zucker-

mann/Schürer Sabbatical-year calendar, supporting instead Wacholder’s calendar.

In this discussion, the various other “coincidences” cited by Rabbi Yose for

the two Temple burnings are usually ignored: that it was the same day of the week,

that the same priestly family was officiating, and that the same hymn was being

sung. These seem like fanciful extrapolations of the three coincidences that both

Temple burnings occurred on the same day of the same month and in the same

year of a Sabbatical cycle.

Therefore the focus here will be on the phrase that

Rabbi Yose uses to associate both Temple burnings with a Sabbatical year: it was

      ,motsae shevith. Motsae is the plural participial form of the common verb

yatsa, to go out or to go forth. There is nothing in this verb or any of its declensions

that suggests the idea of “after,” as would be required by those who interpret the

phrase to mean “after a seventh year (Sabbatical year).”

Josephus, an eyewitness of the burning of the Second Temple, says it took place on the tenth of

Ab: “and now, in the turning of the ages, that fatal day had come, on the tenth of the month Lous [Ab],

the very day it was burned long ago by the king of Babylon” (J.W. 6.250/6.4.5). The explanation in the

Talmud of why Rabbi Yose dated both burnings to the ninth of Ab (b. Ta‘an. 29a) is not satisfactory.

Putting the burning on the ninth of the month is contrary to Josephus for the Second Temple and Jer

52:12 for the First Temple. The reason for the slight adjustment in the SO is apparently because the Bar-

Koseba rebellion came to an end on the ninth of Ab, AD

135, and Rabbi Yose’s mentor, Rabbi Akiba,

saw the messianic hopes he pinned on Bar-Koseba dashed when Bar-Koseba was killed and his fortress

taken on that date. By a slight adjustment of one day, the ninth of Ab could be associated with other

calamities that came upon the Jewish nation, including the two Temple burnings. See the discussion of

the days for the two Temple burnings in Rodger C. Young, “The Parian Marble and Other Surprises

from Chronologist V. Coucke,” AUSS 48:2 (2010): 243–44 n. 46, and Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul,

166–67.

Jastrow gives a one-word definition of  : “exit.” This agrees with a rather literal definition

from the etymology, “going-out.” He cites one passage from the Tosefta and five passages from the

Talmud, but in two of these passages he renders a slightly different meaning so as to give “the night

following the Sabbath,” and “the night following a Holy Day.” Nevertheless, examination of a few

passages Jastrow cites leads to a different conclusion—that 

is a reference to the ending of a period

of time, not to a subsequent period. These passages are: 1. b. Ḥul. 15a:      

    

... Rabbi Yoḥanan Hasandlar says: [If he cooked food on the Sabbath] unwittingly, it may

be eaten up to the conclusion of the Sabbath by his fellows, but not by him … This discussion is about food cooked

on the Sabbath. Yoḥanan appears to be saying that if someone cooked food unwittingly on the Sabbath

[whatever that might mean—perhaps being unaware that it was a Sabbath day?] that the food could be

eaten by others without violating the Sabbath regulation, but could not be eaten by the cook.

2. b. Beṣ 30b; b. Šabb. 45a: ...       ... …it is prohibited to gain benefit

[from eating sukka ornaments] until the conclusion of the last festival day. This is a treatment concerning the nuts

and fruits that were used to decorate a booth during the Feast of Tabernacles. It appears to allow eating

of these during the conclusion of the final day of the festival when the booth would be dismantled.

3. b. Roš Haš. 9a: ...      … and the harvest of the Sabbatical Year which is

concluding up to the conclusion of the Sabbatical Year. This is a discussion of sowing and harvesting during the

Sabbatical Year. In Roš Haš. 9a the rabbis are prohibiting cheating that might occur by sowing a field

immediately before the Sabbatical Year’s beginning in Tishri (discussed earlier in 9a) and then reaping

the harvest during the Sabbatical Year. Since the law in Lev 25:5 prohibits only reaping crops that grew

up by themselves () during the Sabbatical Year, one might argue that it was permitted to harvest

these crops, since they were sown and, therefore, were not crops that were . Thus, in the second

part of the Sabbatical year that is “going out” (, i.e., from Nisan to Tishri), harvesting such sown

fields is also prohibited up to the conclusion of the Sabbatical Year.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 771

An equally strong, or even stronger, argument in favor of Guggenheimer’s

(and others’) translation that renders this phrase to designate the latter part of a

Sabbatical year is found from what Rabbi Yose wrote elsewhere in the Seder ‘Olam.

It goes as follows: In SO 25, Rabbi Yose says that Jehoiachin’s exile began “in the

middle of a Jubilee cycle, in the fourth year of a Sabbatical cycle.” Jehoiachin was

taken captive on the second of Adar, 597 BC, which was in the Jewish regnal year

(and agricultural year) beginning in Tishri of 598 BC

(598t).

The city was captured

in the summer of 587 BC, eleven Tishri-based years later.

If 598t was the fourth

year of a Sabbatical cycle (SO 25), then 595t would have been a Sabbatical year, as

would 588t. The latter is the year in which Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. What-

ever his other faults in calculating elapsed years, Rabbi Yose was very conscious of

how the Jubilee and Sabbatical years interacted with his chronological scheme, and

so this shows what Rabbi Yose meant when he said that both Temples were burnt

in the       of a Sabbatical year: it was the latter part of that year.

The argument that this is the correct interpretation of SO 30 can be rein-

forced by other passages in the Seder ‘Olam in conjunction with the finds of modern

scholarship for the chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period. Rabbinical scholar-

ship, including that of Rabbi Yose, could not have anticipated these results because

it always reckoned the lengths of reigns of the kings of Judah in an inclusive (non-

accession) sense. Rabbi Yose makes this inclusive reckoning explicit in SO chapters

4 and 12. Turning to Rabbi Yose’s interest in the Jubilee cycles, he relates in SO 24

that a Jubilee was observed in the 18

year of King Josiah, and in SO 11 that Eze-

kiel saw the vision that occupies the last nine chapters of his book at the beginning

of a Jubilee year.

These dates must have been based on historical remembrance

rather than later rabbinic calculation, because the inclusive method of the rabbis

Moreover, in regard to the SO passage, it is implausible to make the “goings-out” of a Sabbatical

year to refer, not to sometime around the end (“exit”) of that year, but to the time of Temple burnings

near the end (the tenth month) of the next year, which is the consensus understanding of the passage in

SO 30. While these arguments against the consensus (mis)translation of SO 30 are substantial, the defini-

tive evidence that defeats the consensus interpretation is Rabbi Yose’s clear and consistent chronology

of Sabbatical and Jubilee years, as discussed in the main text.

The argument about Jehoiachin’s exile beginning in the fourth year of a Sabbatical cycle was first

published in Rodger C. Young, “Seder Olam and the Sabbaticals Associated with the Two Destructions

of Jerusalem: Part 1,” JBQ 34 (2006): 178. The further agreement of the Jubilee years with the Sabbatical

year in which Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians is not mentioned in the JBQ article.

D. J. Wiseman, Chronicle of Chaldean Kings (London: British Museum, 1956), 33.

For the demonstration from both biblical and Babylonian records that Jerusalem fell in 587 BC,

not 586, see Rodger C. Young, “When Did Jerusalem Fall?,” JETS 47 (2004): 21–38.

That Ezekiel’s vision was at the beginning of a Jubilee year is also indicated by the Hebrew text of

Ezek 40:1. Ezekiel said that he saw his vision on Rosh HaShanah (New Year’s Day), and it was also on

the tenth of the month. Rosh HaShanah was on the tenth of the month (the Day of Atonement) only at

the start of a Jubilee year (Lev 25:9, 10). Since Israel’s priests knew when the Jubilee year was due, it

would also be logical to assume that they kept track of which Jubilee it was, making it reasonable that

the Seder ‘Olam preserved correctly that it was the 17

Jubilee. That would date the entry into the land, at

which time Israel was commanded to start counting for the Jubilee/Sabbatical cycles (Lev 25:2–4), to

1406 BC. The same year is derived from 1 Kgs 6:1 independently of the Jubilee cycles. The “coinci-

dence” shows that Israel’s priests started their counting at that time, with the consequence that the

Mosaic legislation was in effect in 1406 BC.

772 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

would only give 47 years between the two jubilees, rather than the correct 49 years

(623t to 574t BC) given by modern scholarship and calculated independently of any

reference to the Jubilee cycles.

Israel’s priests, one of whom was Ezekiel, must

have been keeping track of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles, as it was their duty to

do even when the people ignored the stipulations in the Torah regarding these

years, so that, when Ezekiel saw his vision on the Day of Atonement, 574 BC, he

knew that it was the beginning of a Jubilee year.

It was demonstrated above that when SO 30 declared that Jehoiachin was tak-

en captive in the fourth year of a Sabbatical cycle, this showed that the passage

must be interpreted so that the Tishri-based year in which Jerusalem fell to the

Babylonians was a Sabbatical year. To this must be added the evidence of the Jubi-

lee cycles, as given in the Seder ‘Olam. Ezekiel says that he saw his vision 14 years

after the city fell (Ezek 40:1). Since this was a Jubilee year, then 14 years earlier

would have been a Sabbatical year. The same argument applies to the previous Ju-

bilee, in the 18

year of Josiah: from 623t to 588t is 35 years, or five Sabbatical

cycles.

It is always possible to dismiss all statements related to Jubilee and Sabbatical

years in the Seder ‘Olam, and their later citations in the Tosefta and the Talmuds, as

unhistorical; unbridled skepticism about ancient authors is regarded as evidence of

“impartiality” in some circles. But at the very minimum, the present excursus

shows that it is improper to translate SO 30 to say that the Temples were burnt in a

post-Sabbatical year. Rabbi Yose was definitely saying that both burnings were in

Sabbatical years. With this realization, those who support the Schürer consensus

for the year in which Herod and Sossius captured Jerusalem can no longer appeal

to SO 30 to support their position. The SO passage, and its repetition in the Tosefta

and Talmuds, unequivocally support a Sabbatical-year calendar that places the siege

in the summer of 36 BC.

This evidence from rabbinic literature showing that AD

69t was a Sabbatical

year necessarily implies that the consular dates given by Josephus for Herod’s in-

vestiture by the Romans and the siege of Jerusalem must be rejected, and along

with them, Zuckermann’s calendar of post-exilic Sabbatical years that was built on

Josephus’s consular dates. Other Sabbatical years then fall into harmony: the Sab-

batical years associated with Judas Maccabeus’s siege of Beth-Zur and, 28 years

later, John Hyrcanus’s siege of Ptolemy in the Hasmonean period,

and the non-

Sabbatical nature of AD 40t, the year of the Caligula statue episode. This is quite a

sequence of events that are in agreement once the simple expedient is taken of con-

That the Jubilee cycle was 49 years, not 50 years as might be suggested by a cursory reading of

Lev 25:8–11, is generally accepted in current scholarship. Some writers, however, maintain that the

Jubilee followed the seventh Sabbatical year and was also the first year of the next seven-year cycle. This

would preserve the cycle length of 49 years but would have the land fallow for two consecutive years.

See the refutation of this interpretation, showing that two fallow years in succession were never intended

in the legislation, in Jean-François Lefebvre, Le jubilé biblique: Lv 25 — exégèse et théologie (OBO 194; Göt-

tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 159–61.

1 Macc 6:20, 49, 53; Ant. 13.235/13.8.1; J.W. 1.60/1.2.4.

CALIGULA’S STATUE FOR THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE 773

sidering that Josephus’s consular years for Herod might be mistaken, and credibility

should be given instead to the consular years of Dio Cassius.

V. CONCLUSION

It is unlikely that advocates of the consensus chronology for Herod will make

the simple adjustment of moving Herod’s (and Sossius’s) siege of Jerusalem one

year later based on the evidence of the Sabbatical years, as reasonable as it might

seem based on what has been presented above about the inadequacy of the Zuck-

ermann calendar. To do so would move Herod’s death to 3 BC according to the

Nisan-based calendar and inclusive reckoning of the consensus approach, or to 2t

BC if Tishri-based years are used along with the non-inclusive reckoning that Jose-

phus uses consistently for other elapsed times in the reign of Herod.

Either of

these alternatives would mean that Herod’s death was after 4 BC, the year to which

Herod’s three sons dated the start of their reign, thus supporting the thesis of

Filmer (and others) that the three sons backdated their reigns to a time before the

death of their father and their assuming fully independent responsibility as tetrarchs.

Any of these adjustments would mean that the consensus view is no longer tenable.

A discussion of antedating for Herod’s sons is beyond the scope of the pre-

sent paper. Neither is it possible to cover all aspects of the long-continuing Zuck-

ermann-Wacholder controversy regarding the calendar of Sabbatical years in the

post-exilic period. It is hoped, however, that advocates of the Zucker-

mann/Schürer Sabbatical-year calendar will consider seriously the challenge that

Seder ‘Olam chapter 30, which is often cited in support of their position, presents to

their chronology when it is understood as Rabbi Yose meant it to be understood. It

is also hoped that all who are concerned about having the correct chronology for

the birth and subsequent ministry of our Lord will recognize the challenge that

Caligula and his statue present to the consensus chronology for Herod the Great,

and will look anew at the chronological implications from ancient and credible au-

thors—Josephus and Philo—who described this remarkable episode in the life of

the Jewish nation.

For the demonstration that Josephus consistently used non-inclusive (accession) reckoning for

the elapsed times in Herod’s chronology, see Steinmann and Young, “Elapsed Times for Herod the

Great” (forthcoming). That Herod’s final year was 2t BC is consistent with Filmer’s date for his death at

some time between the total lunar eclipse of January 9/10 1 BC and the start of Passover on April 8 of

that year.