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Regular Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Canton, IL
Posts: 124
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Darius the son of Ahashuerus?
In browsing through the different forums, I noticed that there was an earlier interest in how "Darius the Mede" could have been the son of Ahasuerus (Dan. 9:1), since Ahasuerus didn't even reign until 54 years after Babylon, according to the author of Daniel, fell to Darius in 539 BC. I tried to debate this issue with Jason Gastrich in his forum, but couldn't get much response from Jason. Here is one of our initial exchanges on the subject.
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Till:
A problem in the book of Daniel is the claim that Babylon fell to a "Darius the Mede."
Jason:
This is false. You are misquoting scripture. The scriptures don't say that Darius the Mede conquered Babylon. The scriptures say that he was appointed to power.
Daniel 9:1 "In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans"
Till:
Well, I certainly don't see that Jason's proof text says that Darius "was appointed to power." That is an expression that he is reading into the text, but let's see what else the scriptures say about this mysterious Darius the Mede.
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Daniel 5:30 That very night Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed. 31 And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.
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Till:
To argue that "Darius the Mede" was "appointed" king because the only two references to his ascension to the throne say that he "received the kingdom" and that he was "made king" over the Chaldeans, is to read into the text what is not there, but this is exactly what Jason claimed in an earlier post.
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Jason:
According to Daniel 9:1, Darius was "made the ruler." This phrase is used to indicate a person was given the throne, not that they [sic] seized it. Cyrus overthrew the Babylonians and Darius (Gubaru) was the appointed ruler.
Till:
Jason is apparently trying to quibble that the Hebrew word malek used in Daniel 9:1 was different from melak in that the former meant appointment to a kingship without having conquered the land over which one became king, whereas the latter was used to designate a king who gained the throne by conquest. If Jason had bothered to research these words first, he would have seen that they are used interchangeably to mean king and do not convey the distinction that he is arguing. Jehu, for example, "seized" the throne of Israel by leading a revolt against the royal family, but some passages about Jehu's seizure of the throne used melek in reference to Jehu's "appointment" to the kingship of Israel.
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2 Kings 9:1 Then the prophet Elisha called a member of the company of prophets and said to him, "Gird up your loins; take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth-gilead. 2 When you arrive, look there for Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi; go in and get him to leave his companions, and take him into an inner chamber. 3 Then take the flask of oil, pour it on his head, and say, 'Thus says Yahweh: I anoint you king melek over Israel.' Then open the door and flee; do not linger." 4 So the young man, the young prophet, went to Ramoth-gilead. 5 He arrived while the commanders of the army were in council, and he announced, "I have a message for you, commander." "For which one of us?" asked Jehu. "For you, commander." 6 So Jehu got up and went inside; the young man poured the oil on his head, saying to him, "Thus says Yahweh the God of Israel: I anoint you king melek over the people of Yahweh, over Israel.
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The word melek was used once more in this context (v:9) when Jehu told his friends that the son of the prophet had said that Yahweh was anointing him king [melek] over Israel. Then the men with Jehu improvised a ceremony in which they declared him king.
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2 Kings 9:11 When Jehu came back to his master's officers, they said to him, "Is everything all right? Why did that madman come to you?" He answered them, "You know the sort and how they babble." 12 They said, "Liar! Come on, tell us!" So he said, "This is just what he said to me: 'Thus says Yahweh, I anoint you king melek[/i] over Israel.'" 13 Then hurriedly they all took their cloaks and spread them for him on the bare steps; and they blew the trumpet, and proclaimed, "Jehu is king [malek]."
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Notice how the words were used interchangeably. In reference to Yahweh's anointment [appointment] of Jehu as king, the word melek was used, and this indicates that this word was used to denote a king who had been appointed. However, when the crowd blew a trumpet and proclaimed that Jehu is king, they used the word malak, which is the same word that was used in Daniel 9:1 to say that Darius was "made" king. Obviously, the words were sometimes used interchangeably and didn't necessarily convey the distinction that Jason is claiming in order to have something to quibble about.
Jason talks about "burden of proof below," so since he is claiming that none of the references above (Daniel 5:30; 9:1) meant that Darius the Mede had conquered Babylon, he has the burden of proving that the writer knew that someone else conquered Babylon and "made" Darius the king.
In support of my position, I will call the attention of our readers to Daniel 5:30 quoted above, which says that Belshazzar was killed "that very night," and then went on to say that Darius the Mede "received the kingdom." The writer most likely intended readers to understand that Darius the Mede received the kingdom, because Belshazzar was killed in an assault on Babylon.
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Jason:
He was "made king."
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Till:
And I just showed that Jason is quibbling about a distinction in malak and melek that cannot be justified. Jehu defeated the royal family of Israel to usurp the throne, yet melek was used by his men to declare him king. Both Jonathan (2 Sam. 23:17) and Saul (2 Sam. 24:20) said that they knew that David would be king [melek] over Israel, and after David had prevailed over Saul, "the men of Judah anointed David king [melek] over the house of Judah (2 Sam. 2:4), but three verses later, David said in a message to the men who had buried Saul that "the house of Judah has anointed [him] king [malak] over them."
I could go on an on with examples that show that the distinction that Jason is trying to make between malak and melek cannot be justified by the way the words were used in the Old Testament. They were at times used interchangeably, so there is nothing in the use of malak in Daniel 9:1 to prove that the writer meant that someone else conquered Babylon and "appointed" Darius to the kingship. Indeed, 5:29-30 says that Belshazzar was killed that very night and that "Darius the Mede" received the kingdom. In other words, Darius the Mede received the kingdom as a result of events in which Belshazzar was killed. That sounds like a forcible overtaking to me, and I fail to see "appointed to power" in these verses.
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Till:
Ahasuerus was the Xeres of the book of Esther, who reigned over the Persian empire from 485-465 BC.
Jason:
This is debatable. How do you know that Esther and Daniel are referring to the same Ahasuerus?
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Till:
I will answer this below when I come to Jason's second resort to this old inerrantist quibble that says, in effect, same name but different individuals.
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Till:
How, then, could Darius the Mede, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and allegedly ruled over it, have been the son of a king who didn't reign till 54 years later? The sensible explanation is that the writer of Daniel, who lived centuries after the events he was writing about, was confused about when certain 5th- and 6th-century BC rulers had lived.
In the first year of his reign, Cyrus of Persia issued a decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-3), so this decree would have been issued in 539/538 BC. The repatriation of the Jews created some conflicts with local inhabitants and rulers that are mentioned in the book of Ezra. One such conflict referred to Ahasuerus.
Jason:
How do you know the Ahasuerus in Ezra is the same one in Daniel? or the same one as in Esther? You're making these wild claims, so you have the burden of proof.
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Till:
This quibble is about as lame as if I should demand that Jason prove that the Moses who was mentioned in Jeremiah 15:1 was the same Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt. The fact that writers who referred to "Moses" after his death gave no indication that they meant some person other than the Moses of the exodus is reason enough to conclude that Jeremiah 15:1 was referring to that Moses. The same principle applies to Ahashuerus. Since all biblical references to Ahashuerus gave no indications at all that anyone but the Ahashuerus was intended, that is reason enough to conclude that the writer of Daniel was referring to this person. The fact that he was writing over three centuries after the time when Ahashuerus lived and reigned would account for his confusion about when he reigned.
The following quotation from <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=967&letter=A">the Jewish Encyclopedia</a> gives a scholarly opinion of the identity of Ahashuerus, "the father of Darius the Mede," that is generally shared by all but those who feel a deep emotional need to find inerrancy in the Bible.
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2. Father of Darius the Mede (Dan. ix. 1).G. B. L.
�*In Rabbinical Literature:
Ahasuerus, the Persian king of the Book of Esther, being identified by the rabbis with the one mentioned in Dan. ix. 1 as father of Darius, king of Media, and with the one mentioned in Ezra, iv. 6, is counted as one of the three kings of Biblical history who ruled over the entire globe, the other two being Ahab and Nebuchadnezzar (Meg. 11a; Targ. Sheni on Esth. i. 2 has four, counting also Solomon among them; see Meg. 11b). He was wicked from the beginning to the end of his reign. Upon the slanderous report of the Samaritans he stopped the work, begun under Cyrus, of the rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra, iv. 6; Esther R. intro.)....
Pir e Rabbi Eliezer, xi., in accordance with Targ. Sheni on Esther, at the beginning, counts ten kings as rulers over the entire globe: God, Nimrod, Joseph, Solomon, Ahab, Ahasuerus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander the Great; then, as the ninth, the Messiah; and last, God Himself again. It is also said there that Ahasuerus was the wealthiest of all the kings of Persia and Media; that he is mentioned in Daniel (xi. 2), where it is said: "The fourth shall be far richer than they all"; and also that he set up couches of gold and silver in the thoroughfare of his capital to show all the world his riches; all the dishes and vessels he used were of gold, while the pavement of his palace was entirely of precious stones and pearls.
Despite the fact that both Josephus ("Ant." xi. 6) and the Septuagint refer to Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes, modern scholars, such as Keil ("Commentary to Esther"), Bertheau, and Ryssel ("Commentary to Esther"), Wildeboer ("Kurzer Hand-Kommentar," 1898), Sayce ("Higher Criticism and the Monuments," p. 469), and Schrader ("K. A. T." p. 375), are agreed that Xerxes and none other is meant by Ahasuerus, and this for various reasons: (1) Ahasuerus is the attempt of the Hebrew to represent the Persian Khshayarsha, the aleph being prosthetic just as it is in A ashdarpenim (Esth. iii. 12), where the Persian is Kschatrapawan (Wildeboer, in loco). The Greek represents it by Xerxes. (2) The description that Herodotus gives of the character of Xerxes corresponds to the Biblical and, later, the midrashic picture�*vain, foolish, fickle, and hot-tempered. (3) The king must be a Persian; for the whole atmosphere is Persian. The court is at Shushan, and the officers are Persian. (4) Between the third and seventh years of his reign Ahasuerus is lost to view in the Biblical account; but that was just the time when Xerxes was engaged in the invasion of Greece.
There can therefore be no doubt that the monarch whose name passed among the Hebrews as Ahasuerus was the one known as Khshay rsh in the Persian inscriptions and among the Greeks as Xerxes. The Babylonian tablets spell his name Khisiarshu, Akhshiyarshu, etc. An Aramaic inscription ("C. I. S." ii. 1, 122) spells it
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Whether there are any references to Ahasuerus in the Old Testament which are really historical is a serious question. The Ahasuerus of Dan. ix. 1, the father of Darius "of the seed of the Medes," is as unknown to history as is his son. Probably both are the confused ideas about Persian kings of a badly informed writer (see "Journal of Bibl. Lit." xvii. 71). In like manner the reference to Ahasuerus in Ezra, iv. 6 occurs where Cambyses or Darius is to be expected, if the statement is historical, and is no doubt the result of the ignorance of a late writer (emphasis added).
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Notice that the Jewish Encyclopedia was honest enough to admit that the biblical confusion over Ahashuerus was probably due to "badly informed writers." I addressed this same point in my first post.
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Till:
(T)he Bible is supposed to be inerrant and true, so maybe Jason can explain to us how a high official in the Babylonian and Persian courts could have made the mistake of identifying the mysterious "Darius the Mede" as the son of a Persian king who wouldn't even begin his reign till over a half century later.
I have a plausible explanation, but Jason, of course, won't accept it. When the book of Daniel was edited in its final form in the 2nd century BC, the history at that time was blurred. Later on, I'll be discussing the writer's error of identifying Belshazzar as the son of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 5), a misconception of the time that was also reflected in the apocryphal book of Baruch (1:10-12), which scholars have also dated to the 2nd century BC. The apocryphal and pseudipegraphic explosion of this era also produced works that indicated the people of that time were confused not just about the ancestry of Belshazzar but also about when Ahasuerus had lived and reigned.
The book of Tobit, for example, which has been identified as another 2nd-century BC work, anachronistically put Ahasuerus into the time of the Babylonia/Median conquest of Assyria. Tobit, was allegedly a captive who had been exiled to Nineveh in the time of Shalmaneser (1:2), which captivity occurred in 721 BC. Like sections of Daniel, Tobit was also written in Aramaic, which had become the language of the Jews by the 2nd century BC. In 612 BC, the Babylonian/Median alliance captured Nineveh and eventually defeated the Assyrian empire. The book of Tobit anachronistically claimed that Ahasuerus was the leader of the Medes during this battle.
Tobit 14:14-15 At the age of a hundred and seventeen he [Tobias, Tobit's son] died, greatly respected. Tobias lived long enough to hear of the destruction of Nineveh by king Ahasuerus of Media and to see the prisoners of war brought from there into Media. He praised God for all that he had done to the inhabitants of Nineveh and Asshur; before he died, he rejoiced over the fate of Nineveh, and he praised the Lord God who lives for ever and ever.
The Medes did participate in the conquest of Nineveh, but the Median army was not led by Ahasuerus, who was not even a Mede. He was a Persian, and he didn't live until two centuries later. The Medes were led in the conquest of Nineveh by Cyaxeres, but somehow the historical lines had apparently become blurred by the 2nd century BC as to when exactly Ahasuerus had lived and reigned. Hence, the writer of Daniel mistakenly identified his "Darius the Mede" as the son of Ahasuerus "of the seed of the Medes."
This is a mistake that would surely not have been made if Daniel had really been written by a high official in the Babylonian and Persian courts of the 6th century BC.
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In typical fashion, Jason has completely ignored this part of my original post in this thread. It provides overwhelming evidence to support the quotation above from the Jewish Encyclopedia. Badly informed authors, writing centuries after the fact, were confused about who lived when. That is a far more plausible explanation than Jason's same-name-but-different-persons quibble. Since the biblical text gives no indication at all that the Ahasuerus in Daniel 9:1 was a person different from the Ahasuerus mentioned in other books in the "inspired, inerrant word of God," and since evidence is overwhelming that later writers were confused about 6th-century BC history, this puts the burden on Jason to support his same-name-but-different-persons quibble. He can't just assert that there were two Ahashueruses; he must give reasonable evidence that there were two of them and that Daniel 9:1 was referring to one who lived earlier than the Ahashuerus in Esther and Ezra.
However, readers should not hold their breaths until Jason gives reasonable evidence to support his assertion.
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I will post later a second article that I wrote after Jason seemed to lose interest in the debate.
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05-03-2005, 10:02 AM
