The Fate of Agrippa in the Yosippon

First, the reason you couldn’t find much about Agrippa I is that he is mainly brought in to fix the date of accession of Agrippa II. THIS SECOND one is the important one for your purposes. He does figure in the index. Have another look. The reason you can’t find the reference to him being the Anointed mentioned in Daniel is that Flusser puts this pericope in an appendix. He does this because what he publishes is a very specific recension. He has chosen this recension because it is the earliest attested in extant documents. Note carefully that being the earliest attested doesn’t make it the earliest in origin. On the contrary, this passage on Agrippa is in the Venice edition of 1644, critically edited from very good mss., as well as the Mantua edition of 1535 independently edited from other good mss., , and the Constantinople edition of 1610, independently edited from still other good mss. Its content is such that it couldn’t possibly be a late interpolation; but its content is equally well what might be deleted as being too uncomfortable. Flusser’s edition is not, strictly speaking, a critical edition of the book, but rather an exact edition of one recension. The other lines of transmission are still needed.

Look in Flusser’s edition in vol. 1, p. 277 to 287, Agrippa’s long exhortation to make peace, over ten pages of text; p. 296 bottom and 297 top, the twenty-year reign of Agrippa II and the destruction of the Temple in the twentieth year of his reign on the 9th Av [= Venice ed. ch. LXV near the end]; p. 450 bottom, in an appendix [= Venice ed. ch LXXVII end] , the explicit quote from Daniel XII: 11 with the specific references to Daniel IX and XII and the figures from both chapters for the calculation of the dates and the identification of Agrippa with the Anointed in Daniel.

You might well wonder how the death of Agrippa can have two different dates in the one recension, but interestingly neither recension says explicitly that Agrippa died in the twentieth year of his reign or at the time of destruction of the Temple, whereas the statement accompanying the references to Daniel is explicit in saying Agrippa and Monobaz were executed three and a half years before the destruction. The two passages when read together could be taken to mean the Anointed and his only heir were executed in Rome three and a half years before the destruction, on the basis of systematic slander; then the Temple was inevitably destroyed three and a half years later, in what ought to have been the twentieth year of Agrippa, except that he had been cut off. Here is the third interpretation of the expression “cut off”. (a) Agrippa, the Anointed, was cut off by being killed. (b) The Anointed line of descent was cut off by the execution of Monobaz. (c) The kingship of the second Moses was cut off, so the Temple had no reason to exist. So the end came not upon the destruction of the building but upon the end of Agrippa, as was unequivocally shown by the end of the Sabbath offering on the day of his death and the evidence of that end the following Sabbath, when there was no offering. Here is Easter Sunday with the completion of the process the following Sunday, St. Thomas’s day, Low Sunday, Quasimodo, IN REVERSE. (Remember the Resurrection was exactly at the end of the Sabbath, at sunset on our Saturday. This is the correct time. The Greeks are wrong). The death of Agrippa was on the exact day of the last offering. This end of the Temple service AND END OF ITS REASON FOR EXISTENCE WAS THE DIRECT RESULT PREDICTED IN DANIEL OF SUCH AN ACT, just as the Tamid ended a week after their execution, as a consequence of their execution. Now we can see why the ghost of the past had to be removed by the permanent desecration of the building. BOTH PASSAGES ARE WELL SEPARATED FROM THE ACTUAL ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION AT THE END OF THE BOOK, thus hiding the implications.

This should be useful. I’ll look up what is said about Agrippa’s sister Veronike [= Latin Veronica] later. And yes, this really is what she is called in Flusser’s text. The printed editions have made a pseudo-correction to the form Berenike in the Talmud.