Hippolytus of Thebes was a Byzantine author of the late 7th or early 8th century. His Chronicle, preserved only in part, is an especially valuable source for New Testament chronology.
Preserved fragments are scattered in about 40 manuscripts, mostly dealing with the Holy Family. Thus, according to the Chronicle, Jesus was crucified in AD 30, and Mary, mother of Jesus lived for eleven years longer, dying in AD 41. [1]
The Chronicle is cited twice in the "short chronological notes" compiled under Constantine V (r. 741–775). Epiphanius the Monk, writing in the early 9th century, names Hippolytus as one of his authorities on the Life of the Blessed Virgin. Another fragment reports that after the Ascension, Mary continued to live in Jerusalem in a house bought by John the Apostle with the inheritance from his father Zebedee. This tradition of a house of Mary in Jerusalem is first alluded to by Sophronius of Jerusalem (d. 638). Based on such evidence, the floruit of Hippolytus is placed roughly between AD 650 and 750.
The first edition of extant portions of the Chronicle was published by Emmanuel Schelstrate in 1692. [2] The text was again edited by Migne in Patrologia Graeca (PG 117, col. 1025–1056). Two critical editions have been published by Diekamp in German (1898) [3] and Curtin in English (2023) [4] .
Flavius Josephus was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War, he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.
Sextus Julius Africanus was a Christian traveler and historian of the late-second and early-third centuries. He is important chiefly because of his influence on fellow historian Eusebius, on all the later writers of Church history among the Church Fathers, and on the whole Greek school of chroniclers.
Hippolytus of Rome was one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and other regions of the Middle East. The best historians of literature in the ancient church, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, openly confess they cannot name where Hippolytus the biblical commentator and theologian served in leadership. They had read his works but did not possess evidence of his community. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus so styled himself. This assertion is doubtful. One older theory asserts he came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival to the bishop of Rome, thus becoming an antipope. In this view, he opposed the Roman Popes who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was reconciled to the Church before he died as a martyr.
The Annales Cambriae is the title given to a complex of Latin chronicles compiled or derived from diverse sources at St David's in Dyfed, Wales. The earliest is a 12th-century presumed copy of a mid-10th-century original; later editions were compiled in the 13th century. Despite the name, the Annales Cambriae record not only events in Wales, but also events in Ireland, Cornwall, England, Scotland and sometimes further afield, though the focus of the events recorded especially in the later two-thirds of the text is Wales.
James the Just, or a variation of James, brother of the Lord, was "a brother of Jesus", according to the New Testament. He was an early leader of the Jerusalem Church of the Apostolic Age. Traditionally, it is believed he was martyred in AD 62 or 69 by being stoned to death by the Pharisees on order of High Priest Ananus ben Ananus.
Simon the Zealot or Simon the Canaanite or Simon the Canaanean was one of the most obscure among the apostles of Jesus. A few pseudepigraphical writings were connected to him, but Jerome does not include him in De viris illustribus written between 392 and 393 AD.
The Gospel of Nicodemus, also known as the Acts of Pilate, is an apocryphal gospel claimed to have been derived from an original Hebrew work written by Nicodemus, who appears in the Gospel of John as an associate of Jesus. The title "Gospel of Nicodemus" is medieval in origin. The dates of its accreted sections are uncertain, but the work in its existing form is thought to date to around the 4th or 5th century AD.
Cerinthus was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph.
The brothers of Jesus or the adelphoi are named in the New Testament as James, Joses, Simon, Jude, and unnamed sisters are mentioned in Mark and Matthew. They may have been: (1) the sons of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph, (2) sons of Mary the wife of Cleophas and sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus; or (3) sons of Joseph by a former marriage. While option 1 is described as the "most natural inference" from the New Testament, those who uphold the perpetual virginity of Mary reject the idea of biological brethren and maintain that the brothers and sisters were either cousins of Jesus or children of Joseph from a previous marriage.
A chronology of Jesus aims to establish a timeline for the events of the life of Jesus the Nazarene. Scholars have correlated Jewish and Greco-Roman documents and astronomical calendars with the New Testament accounts to estimate dates for the major events in Jesus's life.
Egeria, Etheria, or Ætheria was a Western European Christian woman, widely regarded to be the author of a detailed account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land about 381/2–386. The long letter, dubbed Peregrinatio or Itinerarium Egeriae, is addressed to a circle of women at home. Historical details it contains set the journey in the early 380s, making it the earliest of its kind. It survives in fragmentary form in a later copy—lacking a title, date and attribution.
Anno Mundi, abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras have seen notable use historically:
The History of Joseph the Carpenter is a compilation of traditions concerning Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Family, probably composed in Byzantine Egypt in Greek in the late sixth or early seventh centuries, but surviving only in Coptic and Arabic language translation. The text bears witness to the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary.
The Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades, also called Against Plato on the Cause of the Universe, is a short treatise believed to be the work of Hippolytus of Rome. It was erroneously attributed to the Jewish historian Josephus since at least the 9th century and was first published in a translation of Josephus' works by William Whiston. As Whiston's translation is in the public domain, it appears in many present-day English editions of Josephus' work without any noting of its erroneous attribution.
The Byzantine calendar, also called the Roman calendar, the Creation Era of Constantinople or the Era of the World, was the calendar used by the Eastern Orthodox Church from c. 691 to 1728 in the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was also the official calendar of the Byzantine Empire from 988 to 1453 and of Kievan Rus' and Russia from c. 988 to 1700. This calendar was used also in other areas of the Byzantine commonwealth such as in Serbia, where it is found in old Serbian legal documents such as Dušan's Code, thus being referred to as the Serbian Calendar as well. Since Byzantine is a historiographical term, the original name uses the adjective "Roman" as it was what the Eastern Roman Empire continued calling itself.
James, son of Alphaeus was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, appearing under this name in all three of the Synoptic Gospels' lists of the apostles. He is generally identified with James the Less and commonly known by that name in church tradition. He is also labelled "the Minor", "the Little", "the Lesser", or "the Younger", according to translation. He is distinct from James, son of Zebedee and in some interpretations also from James, brother of Jesus. He appears only four times in the New Testament, each time in a list of the twelve apostles.
Sobe, also known as Sovin, was the mother of St. Elizabeth and sister of St. Anne.
Infancy gospels are a genre of religious texts that arose in the 2nd century. They are part of New Testament apocrypha, and provide accounts of the birth and early life of Jesus. The texts are of various and uncertain origin, and are generally non-canonical in major modern branches of Christianity. They include the Gospel of James, which introduces the concept of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, both of which cover many miraculous incidents from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus that are not included in the canonical gospels. Although the Life of John the Baptist focuses on John the Baptist rather than Jesus or his immediate family, it is also included in the genre as its events would be contemporary with Jesus's early life.