Menander of Ephesus

"This Menander wrote the Acts that were done both by the Greeks and Barbarians,[1] under every one of the Tyrian kings, and had taken much pains to learn their history out of their own records."

One such theme was the antiquity of the Jewish people, for which Josephus summoned Menander and several other non-Jewish historians to support his case.

"[5] After ending his quotation from Menander with this sentence, Josephus summarizes Menander's list of kings as follows: The whole period from the accession of Hirom (Hiram) to the foundation of Carthage thus amounts to 155 years and eight months; and, since the temple at Jerusalem was built in the twelfth year of King Hirom's reign, 143 years and eight months elapsed between the erection of the temple and the foundation of Carthage.For a discussion of the importance of this passage in establishing the chronology of the kings of Tyre, see below, and also the Pygmalion and Hiram articles.

[6]The author of this passage, Jacob Katzenstein, makes two other comments that suggest that Josephus was not merely putting forth his own writing and ideas under Menander's name: The regnal years and the life-spans of the rulers are not given in round numbers, so there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this tradition.

Moreover, Josephus does not digress from listing the kings of Tyre even to comment on Ethbaal (Ithobal), the father-in-law of Ahab, although he is mentioned in the Bible.

Josephus's citations of Menander contain references to Shalmaneser (V), Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, kings of Assyria that are well known both from Biblical texts and also from numerous Assyrian inscriptions.

These inscriptional evidences for lesser-known kings not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible have therefore been taken as lending credence to Menander's writings.

This reference in Menander is unique not only for its chronological correlation of the time between Hiram and Pygmalion, but also because virtually all texts of Josephus/Menander that have come down to us, including the citations of Josephus's work in other writers, have preserved this total of 143 years and eight months from the start of construction of Solomon's Temple, in the 12th year of the reign of Hiram (Against Apion 1.18/126), until Dido's flight.

This is in contrast with the lengths of reign for the individual monarchs between Hiram and Pygmalion, for which there is considerable variance in the copies of the various texts.

This triple redundancy has preserved the total of years from Hiram to Dido as originally recorded, even though the various extracts of Menander found in Josephus, Eusebius, Syncellus, and Theodotion disagree in other matters, due to the error of copyists through the centuries of written transmission.

Based on a citation from Strabo (17.3.14-15) plus a fragmentary ancient Greek text describing Dido's various time-consuming activities after she left Tyre but before the people of North Africa granted her permission to build a city, Peñuela contends that eleven years elapsed between her flight and the foundation (or possibly, dedication) of the city, thus explaining the apparent discrepancy between Trogus and Timaeus in this matter.

There is some slight uncertainty here because neither Josephus, Menander, or Pompeius Trogus, in the texts that have come down to us, relate which calendar they were using for reckoning the years: Roman, Macedonian, or Phoenician.

[13]First Kings 6:1 says that Temple construction began in the spring month of Ziv (Iyyar in the modern Jewish calendar) in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon.

H. Barnes had also arrived at the date of 968/67 BC for the beginning of construction of the Temple, based solely on the Tyrian data of Menander.

Unknown to Moore and Barnes, in the 1920s the Belgian scholar Valerius Coucke had likewise deduced that construction on Solomon's Temple began in 968/67 BC, based on the same Tyrian data used by Moore and Barnes, but also utilizing information from the Parian Marble and other classical sources to confirm and refine this date.

This is an additional demonstration of the trustworthiness that can be assigned to Josephus's citations of Menander, whose writings were used by the scholars listed above to date the beginning of Temple construction in 968/67 BC.

For many modern scholars, the agreement of these two methods, exact within one year, has caused a new appreciation of the works of the ancient historian Menander, as preserved in the writings of Josephus.