semiopen

Thanks for the explanation Toto.

Not knowing much about Christian works, I tend to refrain from posting on these topics (for some reason my lack of knowledge on Jewish works doesn't stop me from posting on those), however the OP seemed simple enough, the Christian (and Jewish) canon is close to 100% pseudepigraphical and to my knowledge doesn't mention dates (certainly not as we know them).

The relatively clear answer is that dates from a common frame of reference were not "invented" yet.

Roger's original reply was interesting, but I suspect he quoted sources that were later than 2nd century CE. Further he dealt with author's signing and dating their manuscipts as opposed to putting dates in the text, which also seems off topic despite the OP's delight in the reply.

Amaleq13

Might need a Wayback Machine for that one. Haven't seen him around the forum in a while.

semiopen

Fro what it's worth,

Nehemiah 1:1

There is commentary on what the twentieth year means, which is peculiar because:

Nehemiah 2:1

seems to clarify it, but there are some talmudic issues about when a new year is added to the regin of a king. I think the month of Nissan increments the counter.

Note how the Hebrew months have names as opposed to the earlier books.

This line has some interesting commentary -

Nehemiah 2:6

The question, of course, is who the queen is. These range from Esther, who some say was the King's mother, to a female dog that the king was having sex with. The dog is dervied from the unusal hebrew word that is translated queen. I think the truth is somewhere in between.

Roger Pearse

While I was working on the Chronicle of Eusebius (in the form revised by Jerome), this issue became painfully apparent. Prior to this work by Eusebius, ancient chronological works usually dated events by the regnal year of the ruler. Eusebius somehow had to turn all of these into calendar years. What made this worse was that different countries used different months, the year started at different times, and ... kings could rule for less than a year, and ascended the throne at different times. He had a very good bash, but got it wrong by a year somewhere in the 3rd century (as James of Edessa remarks in his own continuation written in the 8th century).

The relevance of this is that actually giving a "date" that meant something was not as simple as AD and BC make it today.

Dogophobe.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

semiopen

The word used for "queen" is shaigal, which is unusual. This in Daniel 5:2 is translated king's wife or queen by Rashi and in Deuteronomy 28:30 it is concubine.

The suggestion of the shaigal being a canine is from Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Rosh Hashanah 4a.

http://www.daatemet.org.il/issues.cfm?ISSUE_ID=247

Seems like a pretty good site.