Seeker2000

In Neh 2:1 it is stated that Nehemiah received the order to rebuild Jerusalem "in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes".

The following essay comments on the dating of this event:
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ml#traditional

1. Can someone who knows Parker & Dubberstein's Babylonian Chronology confirm whether 1 Nisan 444 BC fell on 3 April according to them?
2. If correct, does anyone have an idea how Hoehner (author of "Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ") comes to the conclusion that 1 Nisan 444 BC fell on 5 March?
3. Since the Babylonian Chronology was published in 1956, have there been attempts to date 1 Nisan 444 BC differently since then or is this still the most current level of knowledge?

Bernard Muller

Please note there is no order to rebuild Jerusalem in Ne 2:1-10. The king just issues letters for safe passage and for a supply of wood to rebuild the city gates burnt by fire.
My guess is that destruction has nothing to do with the Babylonian one long before. And the city had the temple rebuilt and inhabitants according to Ezra. A huge fire might have happen after the temple had been in operation again. The city walls and gates had been destroyed in place but often needed only repair. That means they had been already rebuilt.
I know, some Christians are using that so-called order as the one mentioned in Daniel, and from some dubious calculation, using numbers from again Daniel, miraculously arrive to around 30 AD for the Messiah entering Jerusalem.

DCHindley

According to that 1956 edition of Parker & Dubberstein, the 20th regnal year of Artaxerxes I spanned Nisanu 1 (4/13/445 BCE) to the end of Addaru (4/2/444 BCE) inclusive. The last month, Addaru, began on March 4, 444 BCE.

The table below has P&D's reconstruction of the Babylonian calendar for the reign of Artaxerxes through his 23rd regnal year:

regnal yr	NISANU-Nisan	ULULU-Elul	ULU II	TASHRITU-Tishri	ADDARU-Adar	ADD II	Hoh.
acc		8/21/465	9/20	10/19	3/15/464
1	4/13/464	9/9		10/8	3/4/463
2	4/3/463	8/29		9/27	2/22/462	3/24	1
19	3/26/446	8/21		9/20	2/14/445	3/15	18
20	4/13/445	9/8		10/8	3/4/444		19
21	4/3/444	8/28		9/27	2/22/443	3/23	20
22	4/22/443	9/16		10/15	3/13/442

Since Xerxes died in early August 465 BCE, Artaxerxes' "accession year" (the part of a calendar year from the death of the predecessor to the end of that same calendar year) ran from early August 465 to the end of Aadar (4/12/464). FWIW, accession years were included in the proceeding ruler's reighn. Thus Art's first full "regnal year" to start in the calendar year starting Nis 1 (4/13/464).

What the person at that web site is claiming is that "dispensationalists" like Hoehner manipulate the periods of reign, first by treating the year according to the Judean calendar (which starts in the month Tishri in the Fall), and second by considering the year from Tishri (10/19) 465 to the end of Elul (10/7) 464 as Art's "accession year," and third by arbitrarily omitting an intercalary month from 2nd Adar 445. I think his calendar of regnal years is as follows:

Hoeh.	TASHRITU-Tishri	ADDARU-Adar	ADD II	NISANU-Nisan	ULULU-Elul
acc	10/19/465	3/15/464		4/13	9/9
1	10/8/464	3/4/463		4/3	8/29
19	9/20/446	2/14/445		3/15	8/9
20	9/8/445	2/3/444		3/4	7/30
21	8/28/444	1/23/443	2/22	3/23	8/17
22	9/16/443	2/11/442		3/13	8/7

DCH

stephan huller

Detail like this makes the forum great. Thanks DCH

Seeker2000

Thanks for the effort, DCHindley.

I think an argument can be made for using the Judean Tishri to Tishri calendar when interpreting the dates given in the Book of Nehemiah. Neh 1:1 first mentions the month of Chislev in the 20th year. Then Neh 2:1 states that a later event took place in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes. If both dates have occurred in the same year, this only makes sense when using the Tishri to Tishri calendar, because otherwise Nisan doesn't follow Chislev.

Hoehner dates the death of Xerxes to 17 Dec 465 BC and thus he places the accession year of Artaxerxes in the period ranging from the death of Xerxes to the end of Elul (10/7) 464.

Thanks, now I understand his way of counting the years. Still I can't find a reason for omitting the intercalary month Adar II (3/15) in 445. I found Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology of his Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ using Google, but I can't find a reason for this omission in it.

Hoehner uses Sir Robert Anderson's The Coming Prince as the basis for his calculations (but uses different dates than Anderson). In it Anderson dates the events of Neh 2:1 to 1 Nisan (3/14) 445 BC. Anderson also seems to omit the intercalary month (and starts the month one day early). I can't find a reason either. In his book Anderson states the following:
Maybe Anderson wasn't aware of the intercalary month? But Hoehner must have been aware of it, he even mentions Parker & Dubberstein's Babylonian Chronology in the references section of his book. Maybe there is a reason - are there any scholars who omit this month, too? Without any reason this omission indeed appears arbitrary to me.

stephan huller

the implications of starting the secular calendar on the seventh month is messianic (= return of divine favor)

DCHindley

That's a pretty good observation! I have been studying the chronology of the events relayed in the final 2 Chapters of 2 Chronicles, Ezra & Nehemiah and 1 Esdras), and had missed that fact.

All I can say is that Babylon used a spring Epoch for its civil calendar and for counting regnal years. Judeans who remained behind presumably used the Babylonian civil calendar under the Babylonians and as a Persian satrapy, but historically they had used a fall epoch for regnal years before the Babylonian captivity and after the end of Persian rule.

Alexander the Great introduced the region to the Macedonian lunar calendar, which also has a fall epoch, in 311 BCE. The Syrian Greek generals changed some of the month names and adopted the Babylonian intercalation scheme, creating the "Syro-Macedonian" calendar. Maybe the assumption of a fall epoch calendar in Nehemiah chapters 1 & 2 with relation to the Persian rule of Babylon, when it should be a spring epoch, is an anachronism and suggests the story of Nehemiah's return was created in the Hellenistic period.

One of the things P&D does is cite the first or last few tablets that are dated by these kings to give evidence for the beginnings and endings of their reigns. The one that records the death of Xerxes is dated to somewhere between the 14th and 18th day of the 5th month (Abu), in his 21st year (465/464).

Artaxerxes' accession "year" would then start somewhere between 8/4 to 8/8/465 and run from then to the end of Addaru on 4/12/464. The Initial part of Xerxes' 19th year (3/25/465 to 8/3-7/465) AND Artaxerxes' accession "year" would be cited as Xerxes' full regnal year.

How does Hoehner come up with 12/17/464 as the date of Xerxes' death?

The Coming Prince was originally published in 1881.

Both the Babylonian and Judean lunar calendar intercalated 7 lunar months in 19 year cycles. At Babylon, the year to be intercalated was determined using a template of intercalations that was established about 481 BCE. In each 19 year cycle they occurred in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th & 19th year, usually as a second Addaru but occasionally a second Ululu.

An intercalated 2nd Addaru in the Babylonian calendar in the 19th year of Artaxerxes is certain, and it started 3/15/464 per P&D's calculations. It is attested in an unpublished economic text in the Free Library of Philadelphia , mentioned by Sachs in a 1952 article in JCS VI (p. 114, n20), and in Aramaic papyrus Crowley 13 discussed in a 1954 article in JNES XIII (pp. 11-12. Of course this would not likely be known to Sir Robert Anderson in 1881.

That being said, in Rabbinic literature (after the destruction), the rabbis seemed to believe that the Nasi (the prince/ethnarch over the Jews) intercalated the extra months by judging whether the month Nisan would fall too early without an intercalation to allow barley to grow enough for the required grain offering. As Rabbi Jacob Neusner would warn us, though, Rabbinical literature is more likely to tell us what their ideal practice should be more than it represents what was actually done before the destruction.

So it is possible for the Judean and Babylonian intercalary months to differ from each other by a month. As Jews and Babylonians both used observation to determine the start of the first day of a month, if the sky was overcast or atmospheric conditions bent the light from the star enough, the observation may not coincide with the calculated first visibility of the moon by a day either way.

DCH

Seeker2000

That's a good idea for explaining the use of a fall epoch. One would have to look for further clues in the text that might place its origin in the Hellenistic period. Or maybe the use of a fall epoch could be the result of a later redactor from the Hellenistic period who thought he was correcting a mistake?

He gives no explanation of himself for this date. This is the reference he cites for it:
S. H. Horn and L. H. Wood, "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13 (January 1954): 13:9

I haven't checked yet if it is available online anywhere.

That makes a lot of sense. I also had the impression that Anderson was not aware of it, because he only had the Royal Astronomer check the moon phases for March, but not for April.

Maybe that is the reasoning Hoehner uses. He doesn't explicitly mention it though. Maybe he left out an explanation as he felt that this could be used to attack his calculation of Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy because, if this was indeed his reasoning, it depends on the assumption that the Judean intercalary month differed from the Babylonian calendar in that specific year.

Seeker2000

I did some further online research and found a section regarding the intercalary month in the Hebrew calendar on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_...civil_calendar
I couldn't find "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine" by Horn and Wood online, only others commenting on it.

This rather dubious looking website talks about it:
http://www.harvardhouse.com/propheti...new/assume.htm

The book Sixty-Nine Weeks of Daniel, Chapter 9: An Examination of the Proposed Dates by Robert R. Armstrong M D cites a passage from Horn and Wood and comments on it (p23-24):
http://books.google.de/books?id=4JiS...page&q&f=false

DCHindley

This is P&D's exact statement for this intercalary Month: "[the unpublished economic text indicating a second Addaru in the 19th year of Artaxerxes I is] supported by Aramaic papyrus Cowley 13 for which see S H Horn and L H Wood, JNES XIII[1954] 11-12".

It seems that Hoehner and Parker-Dubberstein must have interpreted this evidence in completely different ways.

You are probably right there. I think making the evidence fit the theory was more important to Hoener than following the evidence wherever it leads.

Doesn't Hoener also assume some sort of a "prophetic year" of 360 days without intercalary days, or something like that? I'm not sure off the top of my head, but Ptolemy the astronomer (2nd century) also used 360 day "Egyptian" economic years to simplify calculations of long periods of time (He would adjust the total of such "years" with a correction factor for the missing intercalations). In Egypt, 360 day "years" (12*30) were used for things like loans or land lease contracts that ran for several years.

DCH