Demetrius the Chronographer
Demetrius the Chronographer · Historical & Religious Figures
The earliest known Hellenistic-Jewish writer, chronologist of the biblical past
IIIe siècle av. n. è., Alexandrie, Égypte ptolémaïque — IIIe ou IIe siècle av. n. è., Alexandrie
Alexandrie
Demetrius the Chronographer is recognized among Jewish contributors to Historical & Religious Figures — The earliest known Hellenistic-Jewish writer, chronologist of the biblical past
Origins and early life
Demetrius the Chronographer was a Jew of Alexandria who wrote in Greek under Ptolemy IV, between about 221 and 204 BCE — the earliest Hellenistic-Jewish writer whose work is known to us, and thus the beginning of a tradition that runs through Eupolemus and Artapanus to Josephus.
Work and career
This fiche says plainly how we know he was Jewish: no ancient source states it, and scholars infer it, by a consensus that is solid and uncontested, from his subject and from his exclusive fidelity to the Septuagint, the Greek Bible of the Alexandrian Jews. His book, On the Kings of Judaea, survives only in six fragments quoted by Alexander Polyhistor and preserved by Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria, but they show what he did: with a mathematician's care he took the genealogies and dates of Scripture, from the patriarchs to the Exodus, and worked out their chronology — how old Jacob was when he entered Egypt, how many years separated the flood from Abraham — answering the questions a Greek-educated reader would ask, and giving the Jews of Alexandria a history as old and as exact as those of the nations around them. Of the man himself nothing else is known. The historian is the work.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetrius_the_Chronographer
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The earliest known Hellenistic-Jewish writer, chronologist of the biblical past
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetrius_the_Chronographer
