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  • From: Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel and history
  • Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:44:29 -0800 (PST)

Dear Rolf,

I apologize and didn't mean to suggest that your argument rests on the
meaning of a single word. However, more importantly than me reading through
Hebrew Jeremiah in its entirety, something I have done many times, there is
also the traditional understanding of "the land as desolate waste without men
and animal" for 70 years found in the commentaries and Seder Olam. The Sages
have also read through Hebrew Jeremiah in its entirety many times but do not
share your conclusion about the 70 years.

This of course doesn't mean you are wrong, but it does mean there is no
a-priori reason to accept a conclusion that 70 years of desolation without
men and animal is meant to be taken literally and so must mean a land without
a single inhabitant or animal from the day the Temple was destroyed, and the
exile commenced, to the 1st year of Cyrus. That does not square with the
archealogical record anyway. Score one for the Sages.

Because of the statements in Zech 1:12-21, I don't think it is special
pleading to say that even after the Exiles returned to Jerusalem and Judea
and built homes in the 1st year of Cyrus, they, or at least the prophets
among them, still regarded Jerusalem as a desolate waste so long as the
Temple remained unfinished and in ruins. As the Sages would undoubtedly say,
the Temple in ruins is the equivalent to Jerusalem utterly desolate and
without man or beast.

Tory Thorpe
Modiin, Israel







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