YEAR OF THE LORD 900–915.
JOSEPPUS. NOTITIA.
(Bibliotheca Gallandiana, vol. XIV, Proleg. p. m.) There is agreement among the writers—to say nothing of the opinion of Cave, who thinks that the name of the man Joseph was perhaps created from the title of the first chapter, scribbled in the margin, by which Josephus Hebrew was indicated as the author of that subject matter, to which later, for the purpose of distinguishing him from the Jew, the appellation of Christian was attached. Fabricius (a) suspects that he lived no earlier than the end of the 11th century, based on chapter 136, in which Hippolytus Thebanus is cited. Cave (b) refers him to the year of Christ 420. Our own Gallandius has recorded him in his adversaria as dating to the year of Christ 1000. From Fabricius’s preface it is clear that Oudin wrongly confused our Joseph with Gorionides; Lambert, likewise, is mistaken, for he believes he pertains to Josephus Flavius. Cave, in the location already cited, confesses at one point that he made him the same person as Joseph of Tiberias, mentioned by Epiphanius (c). Such great dissension among the learned provides us also with the opportunity to inquire after the truth, if it be possible. Let us endeavor, therefore, to extract the matter from Josephus himself, so that we may be able to state something at least more plausible.
II. Our author then, writing in the very first chapter under number 15, speaking of Phaleg, says: "There are completed from Adam until him 3000 years, so that it is the half of the time of the present constitution in the cycle of six millennia." Therefore Joseph was writing still within the sixth millennium, and, at the latest, in the final year of that sixth millennium. Furthermore, since the Greeks, according to their historical era—of which Africanus is the author—record the birth of Christ in the year of the world 5500, and that epoch follows behind the vulgar era by eight years; whence from their own civil Greek era the same day of the birth of Christ is recorded as the year of the world 5508, it follows that Joseph was writing at most in the year of Christ 492, or if you prefer to follow the ecclesiastical Greek era of Panodorus, which asserts that Christ was born in the year of the world 5494, our Joseph wrote in the year 507 of the vulgar era, as we have noted in its proper place at the end. But indeed, we are not forced by this manner of speaking of Joseph to determine the year precisely, and much less do we have the necessity of thinking that he was the last of the sixth millennium. It suffices, if we are necessarily compelled on account of "present" to assert that he must not be placed beyond the sixth millennium. He can, therefore, pertain to the fifth, fourth, or third century; yet his age is not to be fixed further than that. Cave felt the force of this argument, whose other observations here we shall subjoin.
III. The last heresy which Joseph mentions is the Anthropomorphite heresy. Now that began around the year of Christ 399. Let our Joseph, therefore, pertain at least by this argument to the beginnings of the fifth century. Fabricius (d) opposes this argument, saying that Joseph could not have run beyond the heretics of the fourth century because he had Epiphanius before his eyes. But what a jejune and cold reasoning this is, everyone feels, in a man who was already aging in the 11th century, whose plan it was to write a handbook or repository for the memory of such matters. Would Fabricius have proposed Epiphanius before his eyes at this age if he had embarked upon a labor of such a sort? Would he also have concluded the chapter, as Joseph does, saying: "These are therefore the heresies which have arisen against the holy Church"? It is added that Joseph commemorates only sixty-two heresies, but Epiphanius eighty. Epiphanius wrote his *Ancoratus*, as Fabricius himself notes, in A.C. 373, and therefore twenty-six and more years before the Anthropomorphites arose according to Cave’s opinion. He could not, therefore, have had Epiphanius before his eyes, nor does he pertain to any time beyond the beginning of the fifth century.