Interestingly for Bernard's case that the epistle of Barnabas was composed under Nerva, apparently Peter Richardson and Martin B. Shukster (in a 1983 article entitled Barnabas, Nerva, and the Yavnean Rabbis) and James Carleton Paget (in a 1994 book entitled The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background) have argued that the Jews had high hopes under Nerva that the temple might be rebuilt. I have no access either to the article or to the book at present, but from poking online a bit it would seem that the argument centers the coin minted under Nerva which bears the inscription: Fisci Iudaici Calumnia Sublata:Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2017 5:15 pmDoes this evidence not tend to compromise your case? The quotation characterizes the source for Hadrian's intention to rebuild the temple as a "Jewish legend" (about Rabbi ben Hananiah). Then it refers to Epiphanius, who contradicts this "legend" when he writes, "Hadrian made up his mind to (re)build the city, but not the temple." Then it mentions the many other Christian sources which insist that the Jews intended to rebuild the temple themselves. Is there no better evidence?Michael BG wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2017 4:55 pmI am not sure what you are asking for. In this thread page 8 I wrote,On page 10 I wrote,It is possible that Barnabas was written in either 130 or 131 CE after the Emperor Hadrian had agreed to the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple. This would be why the author wrote that the rebuilding was happening now.I have just found thisIt seems that their enemy destroyed it and the servants of the enemies are going to rebuilt it. If the enemy is the Romans, then the servants of the enemy are the workers of the Romans. This would fit 130 /131 CE when Hadrian had announced he was going to rebuild the Temple.HADRIAN
By: Richard Gottheil, Samuel Krauss
Roman emperor (117-138). … Afterward he seems to have avoided conflict with the Jews and to have granted them certain privileges. … and Jewish legend says that R. Joshua b. Hananiah was on friendly terms with him, and that Hadrian intended to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem (Gen. R. lxiv.). This agrees with the statement of Epiphanius ("De Mensuris et Ponderibus," § 14) that the emperor commissioned the proselyte Akylas (Aquila)—who, according to the rabbinical legend, was related to him—to supervise the building at Jerusalem, this of course referring to the city and not to the Temple. Other Christian sources, as Chrysostom, Cedrenus, and Nicephorus Callistus, say that the Jews had intended to build the Temple themselves; but a passage in the Epistle of Barnabas (xvi. 4)—though its interpretation is disputed among scholars—seems to indicate that the Jews expected the pagans to rebuild the Temple.
(http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7015-hadrian)
This inscription may be translated, "malicious prosecution of the Fiscus Iudaicus has been abolished." The Fiscus Iudaicus (or Fiscus Judaicus) was the tax leveled on Jewry in place of their tithing to the Jerusalem temple after it had been destroyed in 70. Some interpret this coin as meaning that the tax was abolished under Nerva (apparently to be reinstated by Trajan, since receipts from Egypt which I recently came across in volume 2 of the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum seem to indicate that the tax was still being paid after Nerva, at least as late as 116 or so), but most (I think) interpret it simply as a reform of systematic abuses of the taxation. The idea would be that Nerva did something favorable (toward Jews) with the tax, and that this spurred Jewish expectations that the temple would soon be rebuilt. But the whole thing seems pretty tenuous to me. The scenario seems possible, but hardly a smoking gun.
But the idea that Hadrian intended to rebuild the temple, thus jiving with two key verses in Barnabas, also seems tenuous to me so far:
* The word γίνεται ("it is happening") at the beginning of verse 4 is present in several defective Greek manuscripts which all hail from the same exemplar and is represented in the Latin translation, but is absent from codices Sinaiticus and Hierosolymitanus.
Also possibly relevant, of course, is the following:
Are there any other indications of a date for this epistle? What is missing?
Ben.