BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 85
May, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
1. In Luke 4:20 we read that after Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, "the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him." This is usually taken in a psychological sense: They were amazed at Jesus somehow. I suggest that, as always, a merely psychological reading is a modern invention. Reading theologically, we recall that the eye is the organ of judgment in Genesis 1 and throughout Scripture, while the ear is the organ of reception. This is why our relationship to God is through the ear, not through the eye. When the text says that they fixed their eyes on Jesus, it says that they prepared to judge Him, to evaluate His message. This, as I understand it, was fairly typical: a sermon was evaluated and discussed after it was delivered. But Jesus turned the tables on them: He passed judgment on them, and then they tried to kill Him.
2. The word Armageddon in Revelation 16:16 comes from two Hebrew words: Har (mountain) Magedon (?). Virtually without exception the word magedon is associated with the plain of Megiddo, where the battle in Judges 4-5 was fought. Since there is no mountain there, this is supposed to be an idealized location.
In fact, however, there is a much more likely association. The Hebrew word mo`ed means "assembly." The reverse apostrophe stands for the letter `ayin, which today is pronounced with a mere glottal stroke, but anciently was a hard guttural. Har Moged would mean Mountain of Assembly, a reference to the assembly at Mount Sinai, and to its replacement, Mount Zion.
This suggestion comes from C. C. Torrey and is advocated by M. G. Kline. Isaiah 14:13 speaks of Har Moged as the Mount of Assembly that the "king of Babylon" sought to ascend.
There remains the problem of the -on at end of moged. It is a long "o" (o-mega), which in Greek indicates the genitive plural. Perhaps, using the poetic license He uses elsewhere in Revelation, Jesus is making the word plural so that the phrase means Mountain of Assemblies, for He is Lord of Hosts (plural) – though in that case, since it is said to be a Hebrew word, one would expect the Hebrew plural ending (-im).
Whatever the case, it seems far more likely that the reference is to God’s Mount of Assembly than to the battle of Megiddo, though there may be an "overtone allusion" to the latter here as well. Thus, the great battle of Revelation 16:12-16 is fought in God’s presence, for in truth it is He who has gathered them together.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 85
May, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
Many of you have purchased Jordan’s Behind the Scenes: Orientation in the Book of Revelation (Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 19). A number of typographical errors have come to light, thanks to alert readers:
p. 6, line 7: "Creature" should be "Creator"
p. 8, line 2 after diagram: "west, eastward" should be "east, westward"
p. 11, last paragraph, line 4: "Job 37:33" should be "Job 37:22"
p. 26, line 9: "Jacob" should be "Isaac"
p. 29, next to last paragraph, line 5: "the fact that" is doubled
p. 32, paragraph 3, lines 3 & 4: "Revelation 22" should be "Revelation 21" both times
p. 36, paragraph 2, line 2 should begin, "the north celestial pole, the polar region"
p. 36, paragraph 2, line 3 should begin, "the pole"
p. 45, center of page, "Polar Star" should be "polar region"
p. 63, line 6: "The is" should be "This is"
p. 72, line 3 from bottom: last word should be "is", not "it"
p. 77, line 12: "10:36" should be "10:26"
p. 78, paragraph beginning "Which," line 5: "Palesting" should be "Palestine" and "probably" should be "probable"
p. 82, paragraph 3, lines 3-4: change "a thing" to "an object"
p. 82, paragraph 3, line 6: delete first "of"
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 85
May, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
Pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is often formulated along dispensational lines. The Holy Spirit’s work in the Old Testament, we tend to think, was earthly, concerned with political and military leadership, while in the New Testament the Spirit’s work has to do with mediating salvation achieved by Christ. The Spirit’s work in the Old Testament was functional, oficial, and earthly; His work in the New is spiritual, soteriological, and heavenly. I am far from denying that there are discontinuities in the Spirit’s work; clearly, before Christ died and rose again, the Spirit could not have communicated to us the power of His resurrection or given us a share in the New Creation. Indeed the Spirit’s presence and work is so dramatically enhanced by the "glorification" of the Son in His death and resurrection that John can comment that the Spirit "was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified" (Jn. 7:39). Still, it is a basic error to introduce too sharp an historical discontinuity in the work of the Spirit. A covenantal approach insists, on the contrary, that the pattern of His working in the Old Covenant provides the framework for understanding His working now.
In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit "came" upon individuals to equip them for particular tasks, for ministry within Israel. The Spirit on Moses was distributed to seventy of the elders of Israel so they could share in the burden of leading the people (Num. 11:16-17). Yahweh’s Spirit was on Othniel when he served as a judge (Jud. 3:10), on Gideon to resist the invasion of Midianites, Amalekites, and the sons of the East (Jud. 6:34), and on Jephthah when he fought the Ammonites (Jud. 11:29). At the Spirit’s incitement, Samson burned against and defeated the Philistines (Jud. 13:25; 14:19; 15:14). The Spirit came on Saul when he met a group of prophets and later when he heard about the Ammonite attack on Jabesh-Gilead. In the latter case, he moved in the power of the Spirit to deliver the city (1 Sam. 10:10; 11:6). When David was anointed as king-designate by Samuel, the Spirit came on him mightily (1 Sam. 16:13), and it was in the power of the Spirit that David defeated Goliath, sparking a great Israelite victory, and later rose to the throne of Israel. In these and other cases in the Old Testament, the Spirit’s work is to equip the leaders of God’s people for service to the community of God’s people.
In the New Covenant, there is certainly a "democratization" of the Spirit’s ministry. Pentecost announces the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that the Spirit would be poured out upon "all flesh." Through the Spirit, all believers have been made not only prophets, but priests and kings in Christ. Though the gifts of the Spirit are distributed more widely, they are not different in kind and purpose from what they were under the Old Testament. It is still the Spirit’s work to equip men and women for service in Israel. By the Spirit we are incorporated into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), and equipped for ministry to the body (1 Cor. 12:4-7). As Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas has pointed out, the body of Christ as described in 1 Corinthians 12 consists of the various ministries and ministers of the church. It is not that there is an organization or community called the church, to which certain functions and gifts are later added; the community is constituted by the variously gifted ministers equipped by the same Spirit to serve the common good. It is not that we possess the Spirit who gives life, and then the Spirit later adds gifts for service; there is no such thing as membership in the church that is not also ministry to the church.
Membership in the body of Christ by the Spirit does not merely mean that we have a status or position but also that we have a vocation to service. We are not prophets, priests, and kings for ourselves but for one another. As prophets, we have access to the Lord’s council to offer intercession and to receive the word that can edify others; as priests, we are called to guard and maintain the house of God; as kings, we are equipped for battle and called to self-sacrificing service. Even the fruits of the Spirit are not merely moral virtues that we possess for ourselves – whatever could that mean in any case? – but are the virtues required for peaceful, righteous, and truthful living in the new human race that is the church. The Spirit mediates salvation to us, but being saved is inseparable from a life of ministry. It is not that we are saved and then at some second stage begin to serve. Service in the power of the Spirit is the very form of life in Christ (Phil. 2:5-11).
Taking the Old Testament pattern as our guide, we should understand too that the Spirit is not a guaranteed endowment, if that is taken to mean that we cannot lose the Spirit no matter how we live. If we assume that there is a sharp difference between the Spirit’s work in the Old Covenant and His work in the New, then the Spirit’s departure from Saul in the Old Testament presents no problem. If Saul was clothed in the Spirit "only" in an "oficial" capacity, then the Spirit’s desertion of him does not have implications for the Spirit’s work under the New Covenant. Saul had the Spirit temporarily and conditionally; we have the Spirit permanently and unconditionally. In fact, 1 Samuel makes it clear that the gift of the Spirit affected Saul’s heart; the Spirit was not "only" given for official business. As Saul left Samuel following his anointing, "God changed his heart" (10:9); Saul hated and fought against the Lord’s enemies (11:6-11); and Saul dealt mercifully with those who had opposed his coronation (11:12-13). Saul did not persevere, refusing to listen to the voice of the Lord’s prophet and eventually dining at the table of demons in the house of the witch of Endor. From the evidence of Scripture we are led to surmise that Saul was not eternally elect, but that is not our business. The fact that he did not persevere does not cancel the witness of Scripture that the Spirit’s coming on him "changed his heart." With Saul, the Spirit’s work was oriented both to "personal transformation" and to "ministry," and indeed the two were inseparable. Again, the Spirit’s work in the New Testament is on the same model. The Spirit both gives us new hearts and equips us for ministry, but if we, like Saul, grieve the Spirit with our impenitence and ingratitude, He will leave us (1 Sam. 16:14; cf. Eph. 4:30).
In 1 Samuel, there is a parallel between the Spirit’s presence in the tabernacle and His presence in the king. In chapters 1-4, we have an account of the perversity of the priests and the consequent capture of the ark, a story summarized by Phinehas’s wife as a story of "Ichabod," the departure of the glory-Spirit from Israel. In chapters 10-15, we have the same story at an individual level: The Spirit comes to dwell with Saul but Saul’s sins drive the Spirit out and Saul too becomes Ichabod, slain on the slopes of Gilboa. The parallel between the glory’s presence among the people in His house and the Spirit’s presence with the individual, Saul, works out the symbolism of the tabernacle. Since the Lord’s house is an architectural image of the person, the pattern of the Spirit’s presence in the tabernacle and temple manifests the pattern of His presence in and with persons. As the Spirit departed from Saul, so the Spirit departed from His dwelling place among the people, leaving the house desolate.
The fact that the Spirit can and will depart from impenitent individuals and communities does not undermine the promise of the Spirit’s perpetual presence with the church. It remains true, as Irenaeus said, that "where the church is, there is the Spirit." In 1 Samuel, the glory’s departure is not the end of the story: The Lord fights for Israel while the ark is in exile, and the ark is eventually returned and the glory enthroned in Jerusalem. At the individual level, the Spirit leaves Saul to dwell in one after God’s own heart. Similarly, in Ezekiel 11:22-25 the cloud abandons the defiled temple, but it moves east – to accompany the faithful remnant into exile. So too in the New Testament, the Spirit will abandon faithless individuals and unbelieving churches, and will go outside the gates, into the catacombs, to dwell with the rag-tag remnant of those who cleave to Him in humility and faith. The pattern is the same in both Testaments; the Spirit’s presence with the true Israel was as permanent and abiding in the Old Testament as in the New. The threat of the Spirit’s departure from the impenitent is just as real today as it was for Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
One benefit of seeing the Holy Spirit’s work in the New Covenant in the light of the Old Testament is the aid it gives us in understanding the relation of the Spirit and baptism. Baptism is associated consistently with the gift of the Spirit, but Reformed theology has hesitated to make an identification of the baptized with the Spirit-endowed. Primarily, this is done to protect the sovereignty of the Spirit who bloweth where He listeth. But does the Spirit want or need this kind of protection? To say that the Spirit is present and works apart from the instituted sacraments is different from saying that the Spirit is not always present and active in the instituted sacraments. The first is an affirmation of God’s sovereign freedom; the second seems a hypernominalist claim that God is free to violate His own promises. Is it a manifestation of God’s freedom for Him not to be where He promises to be? I hardly think so.
If the Spirit has promised that He will be present and active at the water of baptism, then we can be certain that He, the Spirit of truth, will be there. And there is indeed a promise of the Spirit’s presence with the water: Peter promised on Pentecost that those who were baptized would receive the Spirit (Acts 2:38); Paul says that we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12:13); by God’s grace He saved us by the "washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit" (Tit. 3:5). As G. R. Beasley-Murray puts it, for the New Testament "baptism is the supreme moment of the impartation of the Spirit and of the work of the Spirit in the believer" (Baptism in the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962], p. 275).
All this makes good sense in the light of the Old Testament pattern. We can affirm that the Spirit is active and present in baptism, that the Spirit comes to dwell in the baptized, without falling into the error of claiming that all who are baptized are eternally saved and secure regardless of their lack of faithfulness. The Spirit comes to dwell in us at baptism but the Spirit’s continuing presence in and with us is conditional, as it was with Saul, on our response of faithfulness (which is, in turn, dependent on the Spirit’s gift of persevering faith). In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul alludes to the temple/tabernacle model developed above and connects it with baptism. We are called to keep our bodies holy, undefiled by harlotry and fornication, because our bodies are "members of Christ" (6:15) and "a temple of the Holy Spirit" (6:19). When did we become "members of Christ" and "temples of the Holy Spirit"? According to 6:11, the transition from being unrighteous to being members of Christ is the moment when we were "washed, sanctified, and justified," the first of these evidently being a reference to baptism. Baptism is our consecration as temples, dwelling places of the glory-Spirit. (This characterization of baptism is hardly new: Gregory the Great insisted that every baptized Christian was a priest with the daily duty of stoking up the fire on the altar of his heart, and Pope Innocent III, among others, explicitly linked baptism to the dedication of the temple.) Thus, the Spirit comes to dwell in our bodily temple when we are baptized, but the temple of our body can become defiled – particularly, in 1 Corinthians 6:18, with fornication – and the Spirit, Ezekiel 9-11 makes clear, will not continue to dwell in a defiled house.
As in the Old Covenant, then, the endowment with the Spirit at baptism does not guarantee His permanent presence. We can grieve the Spirit. The Spirit can depart from us. It is possible to commit blasphemy against the Spirit, and remain unforgiven. It is only as we walk humbly, penitently, confessing and renouncing our sins, that the Spirit will remain with us.
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 8, No. 5
May, 1996
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1996
by James B. Jordan
2. The Setting of the Book of Esther
Up to now we have assumed what we must prove, that the king in Esther is Darius the Great. While Biblical chronologists have usually taken this position, commentators on the book of Esther have often taken others as the king. One view, which as far as I know has never had very many advocates and has none now, is that Esther’s king was Artaxerxes Longimanus. Another, which also has few advocates, is that the king is Cambyses. The most popular view is that he is Xerxes.
The reason Xerxes is favored is that Ahasuerus is thought to be the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Xerxes, both corruptions (in different directions, obviously) of the Persian Khshyarsha. Yet the Xerxes position encounter insuperable obstacles when the text is taken seriously, as we shall see, and the fact is that more than one Persian monarch was called Khshyarsha, for it is more of a title (like Pharaoh) than a name.
After Cyrus took Babylon, he ruled for about 8 years. Following him was Cambyses, who ruled for about 8 years also. This by itself makes him problematic for the book of Esther, because Esther runs down to the 12th year of Ahasuerus. Darius followed Cambyses, after a brief time of chaos, and ruled 34 years. Then came Xerxes, for 21 years, and Artaxerxes the Long-handed, for 41 years. Such, at least, is the current reconstruction of the early Persian imperial reigns.
A. Xerxes
As noted, the Hebrew word Ahasuerus is the same as the Greek word Xerxes. This link has led many commentators to assume, simplistically I’m afraid, that they must be the same man. By itself, this is not enough, though, because Daniel 9:1 says that "Darius" was the son of Ahasuerus, and this Darius is Cyrus. Thus, there was more than one Ahasuerus.
Other arguments favoring Xerxes, are these:
1. The period during which Xerxes was occupied with his Grecian campaign seems to correspond to the four-year gap in the book of Esther (1:3; 2:16).
2. The banquet held in Ahasuerus’ third year seems to correspond to that held at Xerxes’ great council (Herodotus 7:8).
3. The palatial details attested to in Esther seem identical to those archaeologically uncovered at Susa, Xerxes’ capital.
These arguments, and other lesser ones, are, however, far from decisive:
1. Darius also was involved in campaigns in the early years of his reign.
2. There were rebellions at the beginning of Darius’s reign, which took him a couple of year to put down, after which we can expect that he held a festival.
3. Susa was a capital city of Persia under Cyrus and Cambyses, but particularly under Darius, who built his palace there. The palace in Esther 1, however, is almost certainly not the one Darius built, for it was evidently built later in his reign. Susa, though, had been an important city for a long time, and there unquestionably was a palace of some sort there already.
Evidence in the Bible, however, makes the Xerxes identification impossible. To understand this, we must first make a detour into the book of Ezra-Nehemiah (which is really one book). I shall review here material initially presented in my earlier study of this subject, published in Biblical Chronology 3:2-5.
The chronological problem in Ezra-Nehemiah boils down to this: On the one hand, the name lists in these two books lead us to expect that all the events in them took place in the reign of Darius; while on the other hand, the text calls the Persian emperor under whom Ezra and Nehemiah lived by the name "Artaxerxes," and Artaxerxes I (Artaxerxes Longimanus) reigned many years after Darius. We can resolve this problem one of two ways. The first is to strain the information given in the name lists in order to make it fit, this approach being the common one today. This gives us a long chronology for Ezra. The other way of resolving the problem is to hold that "Artaxerxes" in Ezra-Nehemiah is simply another name for Darius, giving us a short chronology. The long chronology is the establishment view today among both unbelieving and evangelical commentators. The short chronology has always been favored by Biblical chronologists.
In Ezra 1-2, we read that immediately after Cyrus’s decree (536 B.C.), a group of exiles returned from Babylon to begin work on the Lord’s Temple. Among these were "Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai" (Ezr. 2:2). Nehemiah 7:7 gives the same list: "Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamiah, Mordecai." Who is this Nehemiah who returned with the first group of exiles? Most expositors hold that he cannot be the same as the Nehemiah who wrote Nehemiah, because the latter Nehemiah was still alive over 100 years later. We must ask, however, if this interpretation makes sense. Was Ezra trying to confuse his reader by mentioning some other Nehemiah in Ezra 2:2? More, was Nehemiah trying to confuse us by mentioning some other Nehemiah in Nehemiah 7:7?
If we look at Nehemiah 3:16 we read about "Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, official of half the district of Beth-zur." This is clearly another Nehemiah, and that is why we are told who his father was. Nehemiah the governor carefully distinguishes this Nehemiah from himself. Surely he would have done the same in Nehemiah 7:7, if that Nehemiah had been someone other than himself.
We ought to assume that the Biblical writers were trying to communicate, not confuse. The reference to "Nehemiah" in Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7 should be taken as strong evidence that the short chronology is correct. Nehemiah returned with the exiles and was present for the initial altar building under Joshua and Zerubbabel. At some later date he returned to Persia to serve King Darius/Artaxerxes.
Notice also that Mordecai is mentioned in Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7. In the absence of any other qualifier, we should assume that this is the Mordecai, the great and renowned Mordecai of Esther 10:3. This identification would shorten the chronology as far as the book of Esther is concerned. If Mordecai were an adult when Cyrus came to the throne, Xerxes came to the throne about 52 years later, making Mordecai very old. As we shall see, however, Mordecai was alive when the initial exile took place.
In Nehemiah 10 we are given a list of the priests and Levites who signed the covenant renewal document prepared by Nehemiah (Neh. 9:38). The names on this list are identical with those who returned to Jerusalem at the time of Cyrus’s decree. If the long chronology were correct, there would be a 91-year gap between these two events. According to the short chronology, there are only about 34 years between the two events.
Those who returned with Those who signed with Zerubbabel in the Nehemiah in the 1st year of Cyrus 20th year of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 12:1-9) (Nehemiah 10:1-12)
Priests
1. Seraiah Seraiah
2. Jeremiah Jeremiah
3. Ezra (Azariah)
4. Amariah Amariah
5. Malluch (Malluchi) (Malchijah)
6. HattushHattush
7. Shechaniah (Shebaniah) Shebaniah
8. Rehum (Harim) Harim
9. Meremoth Meremoth
10. Iddo –
11. Ginnetho Ginnethon
12. Abijah Abijah
13. Mijamin Mijamin
14. Maadiah (Maaziah)
15. Biglah Biglai
16. Shemaiah Shemaiah
17. Joiarib –
18. Jedaiah –
19. Sallu (Sallai) –
20. Amok –
21. Hilkiah –
22. Jedaiah –
Levites
1. Jeshua Jeshua
2. Binnui Binnui
3. Kadmiel Kadmiel
4. Sherebiah Shebaniah
5. Judah (Hodijah, cp. Ezr. 2:40, 3:9)
6. Mattaniah –
7. Bakbukiah –
8. Unni –
(and 12 others)
Of the 8 Levites who are mentioned as returning with Zerubbabel, 5 are mentioned as signing the covenant with Nehemiah. Of the 22 priests who returned with Zerubbabel, 15 signed the covenant with Nehemiah. It is quite natural that 20 out of 30 men who returned with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus should still be alive 34 years later. It is not reasonable to suppose that they would be alive 91 years later.
Modern commentators get around this problem by saying that the names in Nehemiah 10 are family names, not personal names. That is, they are the names of the priestly courses established by the men living at the time of Zerubbabel, not the names of individuals. This is a wholly gratuitous assertion without any foundation in the text. First of all, a number of the names in Nehemiah 10:1-27 correspond to the personal names found in Nehemiah 3. Secondly, if family names or names of priestly courses are in view, then the two lists should be identical, which they are not. Of course, if it is a proven fact that the Artaxerxes of Nehemiah is Artaxerxes Longimanus, then some such explanation of Nehemiah 10 becomes necessary, but as we are seeking to show, there is good reason to suppose that the Artaxerxes in Nehemiah is in fact Darius. Therefore, Nehemiah 10 can stand without procrustean interpretations being forced upon it.
Moreover, the post-exilic Jewish community was very concerned with genealogy, as 1 Chronicles 1-8 shows. The lists of names in Ezra-Nehemiah make the same point. Additionally, this concern is shown in Ezra 2:62, where we read, "These searched their ancestral registration, but they could not be located; therefore, they were considered unclean and out of the priesthood." If genealogy is so important, why would there be "gaps" and mere "family names" included? Clearly, the concern was to establish who was who, generation by generation. The oft-heard assertion that there are gaps in the genealogies is offered far to glibly. The only reason we know of a few gaps is that they are filled in other places. (!)
In the essays mentioned above, I discussed the line of high priests from Jeshua forward, showing that the short chronology does far better justice to the information we are given than does the long chronology. I also discussed the genealogy of Ezra, and made the same point. I shall not repeat those extended discussions here.
We have looked at the prima facie evidence for a short chronology in Ezra-Nehemiah, a chronology that assumes that the Artaxerxes of Ezra 7ff. and Nehemiah is in fact Darius. There is only one argument against this evidence, and that is that the Artaxerxes referred to must be Artaxerxes Longimanus, who lived after Xerxes, who followed Darius. If this is true, then the data that seems to indicate a short chronology must be reinterpreted along the lines of all modern commentaries.
Though we know little about the Persian empire, culture, and history, the chronology of the early emperors seems fairly well established. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses in 529 B.C. (I shall use conventional B.C. dates in this essay), who reigned for seven and a half years. Cambyses had apparently put his brother Smerdis to death in order to secure the throne, but upon Cambyses’ death, a certain "Smerdis" claimed the throne. Evidently this Pseudo-Smerdis was a Magian priest named Gomates or Gaumata. He reigned for half a year until being deposed by Darius.
Darius reigned 36 years (521-486 B.C.) and was followed by Xerxes, who reigned for 21 years (485-465 B.C.). He was followed by Artaxerxes Longimanus ("the Long-Handed"), who reigned for 40 years (464-423 B.C.). His successors, according to secular sources, were Darius II, Artaxerxes II, Artaxerxes III, Arogus, and Darius III.
Most expositors of Ezra and Nehemiah take it that Haggai, Zechariah, Jeshua, and Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple and altar in the early years of Darius I’s reign, as recorded in Ezra 1-6. This carries us down to 515 B.C., the sixth year of Darius. Then we skip 57 years down to 458 B.C., the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus (Ezra 7:1, 8). The events of Nehemiah take us down to the 33d year of Artaxerxes (Neh. 13:6), 431 B.C.
Bible chronologists such as Lightfoot, Anstey, and Faulstich and some of the older commentators (like John Gill), have criticized this approach. First, it looks a bit suspicious to move from the sixth year of Darius to the seventh of Artaxerxes Longimanus (Ezra 6-7). Second, names like Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes were held by more than one person.
Beyond this, third, we don’t know that the Jews called these rulers by the same names the Greeks did. After all, the Israelites called Tiglath-Pileser (a formal name) by his personal name Pul (2 Ki. 15:19, 29). The Israelite king called Uzziah by Isaiah and the Chronicler is called Azariah in 2 Kings 15. Darius king of Persia is called the king of Assyria in Ezra 6:22. Cyrus is called Darius in Daniel. All of this indicates a certain fluidity of identification, especially when it comes to royal figures.
Names are frequently used significantly in the Bible. For instance, the name Melchizedek, king of Salem (Gen. 14:18-20), is explained and exegeted by the author of Hebrews: "first of all, by translation [of `melchi-zedek’] King of Righteousness, and then also King of Salem, which means King of Peace." The use of various names on different occasions would be for literary and theological reasons. Thus, it is possible that the Jews called Darius by the name Artaxerxes on some occasions, and indeed possible (yea, likely) that they also called him Ahasuerus.
These names are not necessarily personal names, but are most likely throne names or even titles. It used to be thought that Xerxes means "king" and Artaxerxes means "high king." This is based on a statement in Herodotus, "In Greek, the name Darius means the Doer, Xerxes means the Warrior, and Artaxerxes means the Great Warrior" (Herodotus, The History 6:98; trans. David Grene; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987; p. 448). The Persian for Xerxes is Khshyarsha or Ksharsa, "which seems to correspond to the modern Persian shyr-shah, lion-king" (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature I:116). Artaxerxes "is a compound, the first element of which, arta – found in several Persian names – is generally admitted to mean great; the latter part being the Zend Khshethro, king" (ibid., I:440).
J. M. Cook, The Persian Empire (New York: Schocken, 1983; p. 45), says that Xerxes perhaps means "hero among kings," clearly a throne name. Artaxerxes means "kingdom of justice," again clearly a throne name (idem). We can compare this word "Artaxerxes" with the Egyptian "Pharaoh," which means "great house."
Darius (Persian Dareyavesh) means "he who holds firm the good" (Cook, idem). Others give something like "he who enjoys good things" (Richard Frye, The Heritage of Persia; New York: World, 1963; p. 92).
According to Carey Moore (Esther, Anchor Bible 7B, Garden City: Doubleday, 1971; p. 3), Ahasuerus means "chief of rulers." Ahasuerus is generally thought to be the same word as Xerxes. Thus, it is very likely that Darius could have been called Artaxerxes and also Ahasuerus (Xerxes).
In summary:
Darius = The Doer of Good
Xerxes = Hero Among Kings
Artaxerxes = King of Justice
Ahasuerus = Chief of Rulers
It is interesting to note that the Inscription of Xerxes at Persepolis reads in part as follows: "I am Xerxes the great King, the King of kings, the King of the land where many languages are spoken; the King of this wide earth, far and near, the son of King Darius the Achaemenian. Says Xerxes the great King: By the grace of Ormazd I have made this portal. . . . Says Darius the King: May Ormazd protect me and my empire, and my work and my
father’s work." Here we see that Xerxes calls himself Darius. This proves that these Persian monarchs were sometimes called by different names. (Full inscription found in Martin Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament; Grand Rapids: Kregel, [1913] 1973; p. 262.)
The fact that a given king called himself and was called by more than one name sheds light on the fact that the Apocrypha and Josephus call these kings by various names. Josephus calls the "Artaxerxes" of Ezra-Nehemiah "Xerxes," but says he reigned 28 years, which was not the case with the second Xerxes, who attacked Greece; he reigned only 21 years. Similarly, Josephus calls Esther’s king "Artaxerxes." (Josephus, Antiquities, Book 11; for a full and helpful discussion, see Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament, pp. 263ff.) In the Apocryphal additions to Esther, her king is called "Artaxerxes."
What all of this shows can be summarized as three points:
1. The Persian monarchs used more than one name for themselves, and these were all throne-names having descriptive meanings.
2. The Greeks called these monarchs by one name each, but this is no reason to assume that anyone else did.
3. In interpreting the Bible, we have to be open to the fact that the Jews had their own names for these kings, and that the Jews lived much closer to Persian culture than did the Greeks. It is very likely that the Jews used these throne-names with the same kind of fluidity as the Persians.
4. Thus, it is simplistic to read Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther in the "light" of Greek historical records regarding the Persians.
5. We have to take the Biblical references in their Biblical contexts, and on that basis try to ascertain which monarch is in view.
(to be continued)
