Hello
Marilyn, pardon me for jumping into your discussion with Steve but I
have some information that you might think pertinent to the timing of
Herod’s death. You mentioned there was only one fast that fit Josephus’s
narrative that being the fast of Esther, but there is another fast that
fits this narrative. Here is the quote from Josephus:
Antiquities of the Jews - Book XVII, XI: 4
“Now
it happened, that during the time of the high priesthood of this
Matthias, there was another person made high priest for a single day,
that very day which the Jews observed as a fast. … But Herod deprived
this Matthias of the high priesthood, and burnt the other Matthias, who
had raised the sedition, with his companions, alive. And that very night
there was an eclipse of the moon.”
The
fast Josephus referred to with the highest probability is Asarah
B’Tevet, the single day fast that occurs on 10 Tevet in either December
or January every year. It is a day of grief and mourning over the
beginning of the siege of Jerusalem
by Nebuchadnezzar in 588 B.C. This fast has been observed by the Jews
from the time they returned from Babylonian exile to this day.
On
the other hand, the Fast of Esther was not observed at the time of
Herod but became a custom during the Middle Ages, as noted in the
article below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_of_Esther#cite_note-0
“The
Fast of Esther (Ta'anit Ester, Hebrew: תענית אסתר) is a Jewish fast
from dawn until dusk on Purim eve, commemorating the three-day fast
observed by the Jewish people in the story of Purim. It is a common
misconception that this fast was accepted by the Jews for all future
generations during the time of Esther, as it is stated in the Book of
Esther: They had established for themselves and their descendants the
matters of the fasts and their cry (Esther 9:31). This verse actually
refers to the four fasts which relate to mourning for the Temple. Rather, the source for the fast is a Minhag (custom) dating from the Gaonic period (early medieval era).”
There
was only one year in this timeframe that had a lunar eclipse on a fast
day shortly before Passover, that being 1 B.C. with the eclipse
appearing on January 9.
ybic … Oliver