Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Tory,

It seems to me that we are approaching the point we have little new 
data to supply, so below are my last comments.

> Dear Rolf,
>
> My name is Tory, not Thory.
>
> >  There were different viewpoints among ancient writers
> >  regarding the length of the exile. Josephus has both 70 years and
> >  50 years, The Sibylline Oracles has 7 decades, the Testament of
> >  Moses has 77 years, and Seder Olam quotes Rabbi Judah who believed
>  > the exile lasted 52 years. So, we cannot trust the ancient sources.



> Although the ancient sources are not without problems let us not 
> miss that Josephus corrected his 70 years from the destruction of 
> the Temple to the 1st year of Cyrus to 50 in his later work. Neither 
> Josephus or Rabbi Judah had access to the Canon of Ptolemy for the 
> length of the Neo-Babylonian period subsequent to the destruction of 
> Jerusalem. Yet their numbers pretty much agree with Ptolemy's year 
> count.

RF:
To use the word "correction" in connection with Josephus is not quite 
correct, because it requires that the first number was wrong, and 
neither of us know why Josephus used two different numbers. Ptolemy 
(2nd century C.E.) refers to an older chronology. Evidence for this 
chronology can possibly be seen in astronomical tablets whose 
celestial positions evidently are backward calculations made 
centuries later. For example, of the three astronomical tablets 
ascribed to Artaxerxes I, two contain positions that are 
approximately correct for the particular years 1 an 11 of Artaxerxes 
I, but not absolutely correct. Such inaccurate positions are the 
hallmark of backward calculations. The third tablet has accurate 
positions, but the information in this tablet shows that the 
traditional chronology regarding Artaxerxes I is wrong. This means 
that the two tablets with calculated positions agree with Ptolemy's 
chronology, while the one that evidently contains observations 
disagree with Ptolemy. This would suggest that in the last centuries 
B.C.E. a chronological scheme similar to Ptolemy's chronology 
existed, but this chronology contained errors.  This chronology may 
have been conveyed to Jospehus and used in his later work. So there 
may have been a link between Josephus and Ptolemy after all. And if 
this was the correct chronology,   rabbi Judah was wrong, because he 
used the number 52.

> >  The words of Zecharia 7:5, by mentioning the fast in the
> >  seventh month suggest that the 70-year period started with the
> >  murder of Gedaljah (2 Kings 25:25). The temple was destroyed and
> >  Jerusalem was in ruins, and only a few poor people may have remained in
> >  the land.
>
> If there was even a single person, poor or not, still remaining in 
> the land following the destruction of the Temple and the beginning 
> of the Exile, we are precluded from interpreting "desolate waste 
> without man or animal" as lasting 25566.954 days. Even a few poor 
> folk require animals to work the land they have been left on. Thus 
> statements like "desolate waste without man or animal" is intended 
> as prophetic hyperbole, as per the Sages, because the Temple was 
> utterly destroyed and left in ruins. It was in a very real sense the 
> end of the world.
>
> >  In 2 Chronicles 36:21 we learn that the the land was
> >  desolate for 70 years as a sabbath rest. Then in v. 22 the
> >  decree of Cyrus is mentioned, and it is said that this decree came
> >  "in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah. The
> >  book of Ezra starts with the same decree, and in chapter 3 we learn
> >  that in the 7th month the people lived in their cities and the altar
> >  was erected. Now the situation was reversed, and the land was no
> >  longer a desolate waste.
>
> I will agree that from the viewpoint of the biblical authors the 
> land was to them desolate for 70 years as a sabbath rest. This just 
> tells us the thinking of the writers, not necessarily what was 
> actually happening on the ground. But this desolation they describe 
> is clearly tied up by them with the condition of the Temple, the 
> House in Jerusalem, not just what was happening in the farmer's 
> field or in the towns. The land was by the writers deemed a desolate 
> waste keeping its sabbaths for as long as there was no functioning 
> Temple. In the 1st year of Cyrus we see not the end of this mythic 
> desolation of land without a single person or animal but the 
> beginning of its end when the king of Persia issued a decree calling 
> for the rebuilding of the Temple.
>
> >  Thus, the returning of the people to their land is
> >  connected with the end of the 70 years. The reason why all
> >  these clear words are not accepted, as we can see in several
> >  commentaries, is that they are at odds with the traditional
> >  Neo-Babylonian chronology.
>
> I don't think Josephus or Rabbi Judah had any notion of what 
> "traditional Neo-Babylonian chronology" was, and absolutely not 
> Rabbi Judah. And yet they both give about the same year count as we 
> do today for the Neo-Babylonian period following the destruction of 
> the Temple, and this without any help from Ptolemy and his 
> king-list. And I don't believe the words of Jeremiah are any less 
> clear if we understand them as apparently Josephus and Rabbi Judah 
> did, i.e. not overly pedantic.

RF:
To have "about the same year count" is not enough. Neither Josephus 
nor rabbi Judah "counted" years, but they built on traditions - 
Josephus using a 70-year and a 50-year tradition, and rabbi Judah 
using a 52-year tradition. These two traditions are mutually 
exclusive.

> >  Then back to Zecharia, who two times (1:12 and 7:5)
> >  mentions the period of 70 years. Do these verses show that the
> >  70 years still lasted in the days of Zechariah. If so, there must have
> >  been two different periods of 70 years, because the first mentioning
> >  of the 70 years was uttered in Darius' 1st year, and the second
> >  was uttered in his 4th year.
>
> Looks to me to be one and the same 70-year period, alluded to in the 
> 2nd (not 1st) year of Darius and again in the 4th year of this king.
>
> >  The NIV misleads the readers in 7:5 by adding the word "past"
> >  (for the past 70 years). The Hebrew text has the demonstrative
> >  pronoun before "70" in both cases, and this requires an antecedent.
>
> The demonstrative merely shows that a predicted 70-year period was 
> known. Because we were still fasting in the fifth and seventh months 
> when Darius I reached his 4th regnal year as king of Persia, it is 
> obvious that "this 70 years" was still in progress at that time. To 
> say that Zechariah was refering to a 70-year period that ended 
> previous to the 4th year of Darius I think turns 7:5 on its head. 
> The main thrust of Zechariah's words throughout the book seems to be 
> to inspire the returnees to finish what they started and rebuild the 
> Temple, i.e. bring "this 70 years" to an end.

RF:
As you know, a Hebrew QATAL form can be translated by English perfect 
and by simple past; it can signal that actions were terminated in the 
past or that particular actions continue in the present.  In 
Zechariah 7:5 we find two QATALs, and we cannot know whether the 
fasting and lamenting were past actions that were terminated or 
whether they continued in the days of Darius I. This means that your 
argument that according to Zechariah the view of the people was that 
"these 70 years" still lasted in the days of Darius I, is invalid. To 
uphold the argument you need at least one passage that unambiguously 
says so. Because no such passage exist, I accept the view found in 
Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel and the Chronicler that the land was a 
desolate waste for a full 70 years, that the period started when 
Gedaliah was murdered, and that it ended when the people returned to 
Jerusalem and Judah and the land was no longer desolate.




> Tory Thorpe
> Modiin, Israel


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo