Nehemiah bridges Persia and Greece
by
“Years later, when it
pleased God, the Persian emperor sent Nehemiah back to Jerusalem, and Nehemiah
told the descendants of those priests to find the fire. They reported to us
that they had found no fire but only some oily liquid. Nehemiah then told them
to scoop some up and bring it to him”.
2
Maccabees 1:20
This
verse from Second Maccabees greatly intrigues me because, according to it,
governor Nehemiah of the Persian era was in contact with priests of the
Maccabean era.
Consider
what this means from a chronological point of view.
Nehemiah,
customarily dated to c. 445 BC, the Persian era, is said to have been
personally in touch with “priests” of the Hellenistic era.
The
“us” to whom these priests “reported” were, as we learn at the beginning of
this Maccabean chapter, “the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea” (1:1), these living
in “the year 169” of the Greeks (1:7), which date, we are told, “corresponds to
143 B.C”.
Nehemiah
must have been extraordinarily old these three centuries (445-143) later!
Poor Nehemiah really gets played around with. As if three centuries of life span were not enough for him, “he” re-emerges later, supposedly – still as an agent of Persia – in the C7th AD. See my article:
Two Supposed Nehemiahs:
BC time and AD time
Now
that is really stretching things!
“Two Sanballats”
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“If we are to put any confidence in the story of
Josephus, then there must have been at least two Sanballats, and probably two
Jadduas, and at two different times a son of a high priest must have married a
daughter of a Sanballat”.
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Conventional
patterns of history are famous for having to invent extra persons of the same
name (e.g. a “Sanballat” I, II and III; a “Jaddua” I and II) in order to bridge
over-inflated chronological estimations. Thus we read in an article,
“Ezra-Nehemiah”
http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/ezra-nehemiah/
http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/ezra-nehemiah/
…. Neither language nor style can be assigned as a
ground for asserting a date later than the 5th century BC as the time of the
composition of the book. A much stronger reason against placing the final
redaction of the books at so early a time is the mention of a Jaddua among the
high priests in Nehemiah 12:11,22, it being assumed that this is the same
Jaddua whom Josephus mentions (Ant., XI, viii, 4) as having filled the
high-priestly office in the time of Alexander the Great. In view of the fact
that Josephus is the only source of information as to the period between 400
and 300 BC, it seems unfair to accept what he says as to the existence of this
Jaddua, while rejecting substantially all the rest of the same chapter in
Josephus which tells about Sanballat, Manasseh and Alexander’s meeting with
Jaddua. Inasmuch as the Sachau papyri, written in the 17th year of Darius
Nothus, that is, in 410-408 BC, mention the sons of Sanballat the governor of
Samaria, the Sanballat who was their father must have lived about 450 BC. The
same papyrus mentions Jehohanan (Johnnan of Nehemiah 12:22) as the high priest
of the temple at Jerusalem, and Bagohi (Bagoas) was the Persian governor of
Jerusalem in 410-408 BC. Since, according to Nehemiah 13:6, Nehemiah was
governor in 434-433 BC, the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, Bagoas would be perhaps
his immediate successor. If we are to put any confidence in the story of
Josephus, then there must have been at least two Sanballats, and probably two
Jadduas, and at two different times a son of a high priest must have married a
daughter of a Sanballat. While this is not impossible, it seems better to
suppose that Josephus has confused matters beyond any possibility of disentanglement,
and we might be justified in throwing over entirely his account of a Sanballat,
a Manasseh, and a Jaddua as living in the year 330 BC, when Alexander conquered
Syria. As far, of course, as the Jaddua of Nehemiah 12:11,22 is concerned, he may
well have been high priest as early as 406 BC, and have continued to serve till
330 BC. On the other hand, another of the same name, probably a grandson, may,
for all we know to the contrary, have been high priest in 330 BC. ….
Such
painful duplicating ceases to be necessary within my revision, according to
which the Medo-Persian kingdom is to be greatly streamlined, enabling for
Nehemiah himself to become a bridge between it and the Hellenistic period
inaugurated by Alexander the Great.
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