Had a problem with entering the last post. I am doing a re-entry. Hope the layout works. Sorry for the double post.
| Ok, so going back to the Jer 25:12 passage, here taken from the KJV Jeremiah 25:1212 And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord , for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. Here are some verses that show up in later text: Ezra provides the following (Strong numbers in superscripts) Ezr 6:1 Then 116 Darius 1868 the king 4430 made 7761 a decree 2942 , and search 1240 was made in the house 1005 of the rolls 5609 , where 8536 the treasures 1596 were laid up 5182 in Babylon 895 . Ezr 7:6 This Ezra 5830 went up 5927 from Babylon 894 ; and he [was] a ready 4106 scribe 5608 in the law 8451 of Moses 4872 , which the LORD 3068 God 430 of Israel 3478 had given 5414 : and the king 4428 granted 5414 him all his request 1246 , according to the hand 3027 of the LORD 3068 his God 430 upon him. Ezr 7:9 For upon the first 259 [day] of the first 7223 month 2320 began 3246 he to go up 4609 from Babylon 894 , and on the first 259 [day] of the fifth 2549 month 2320 came 935 he to Jerusalem 3389 , according to the good 2896 hand 3027 of his God 430 upon him. Ezr 7:16 And all 3606 the silver 3702 and gold 1722 that thou canst find 7912 in all 3606 the province 4083 of Babylon 895 , with 5974 the freewill offering 5069 of the people 5972 , and of the priests 3549 , offering willingly 5069 for the house 1005 of their God 426 which [is] in Jerusalem 3390 : Ezr 8:1 These [are] now the chief 7218 of their fathers 1 , and [this is] the genealogy 3187 of them that went up 5927 with me from Babylon 894 , in the reign 4438 of Artaxerxes 783 the king 4428. Nehemiah has some similar episodes. Neh 13:6 But in all this [time] was not I at Jerusalem 3389 : for in the two 8147 and thirtieth 7970 year 8141 of Artaxerxes 783 king 4428 of Babylon 894 came 935 I unto the king 4428 , and after 7093 certain days 3117 obtained I leave 7592 of the king 4428 : Both of these books indicate that civil society, prosperity and legal procedures continued to be cond ucted in Babylon under Persian authority with acknowledgment that the Persian king was king of Babylon. Having completed a couple of secular courses on the ancient mideast, it was generally understood that Babylon was one of three serving capitals for the Persian Empire. Fore Alexander the Great it was primary. He died there. In the KJV, it is not stated that the king of Babylon was Chaldean. I'll leave that for further study based on the Hebrew text. But if the Jeremiah's original statement was to that effect, we also observed earlier that a genuine Chaldean was not ruler of Babylon when the Persians attacked. It was an Assyrian. There is one more book that has some bearing on this subject, which I would like to bring up again, illustrted by Daniel 9:1 "In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans..." Daniel goes on to tell how he is still waiting for the Judeans to return to their homeland after 70 years. It sounds very much like the narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah, but perhaps earlier, of a Persian monarch possibly providing safe passage for another potential party of Judeans headed back to Jerusalem. Earlier than Ezra, I would agree, but look at it more closely. The only connection to Darius the Mede that I can find in a non-Biblical source is a contemporary of Ezra - Thucydides. In his history of the Peloponnesian wars, he describes the Persians attacking the Greek mainland in the conflict of several decades before as Medes over 50 times, he claims that their Greek allies had become "Mede-ized. The force they defeat at Marathon was under the command of Darius I, successor to Cyrus. Darius wrote his epitaph on the walls of the Iran mountain pass at Behistun, claiming his Persian ancestry with an undertaking that rivals Mt. Rushmore, but with considerably more text to peruse. It was deciphered in the 19th century. Only those of Greek heritage would be confused by whether Darius was a Mede or a Persian - which would be the case in the 2nd century Hellenistic outpost of Jerusalem under Antiochus V - Epiphanes. Odd also that Persians would have a succession of Dariuses as monarchs, adopting a name for their line that supposedly originated with the earlier Medean. Roughly Darius is the English transliteration of the Persian name, Dariush, its meaning is "he possesses" or "rich and kingly". I wonder what the name is supposed to mean in the Mede language? Anything? |