Alleymom
Reply to your last post
Marjorie
Thank you for your best wishes re Bro. Shearman and as soon as it is practicable I will ask him about zeh, it is most unlikely that he will himself post on this board but print out for him or email these postings and ask him for a definitive opinion on matters, Hebrew.
I wiil now address the issue of the period of mourning and then will comment on the poztates seventy year confusion. The two texts in Zechariah refer to a period of seventy years. The first example clearly refers to a past epochal period because of its association with elements characteristic of that period according to Jeremiah. The second example of the period has the additional element unlike the first, of annual fasting and mournings. The annual events coomenced with the Fall and were celebrated annually from that time right up to the time of Zechariah's prophecy. This latter period would be 90 years and the former was seventy years both commencing from the Fall.with a period of exile-desolation-servitude-denunciation-mourning until the Return whereupon exile-desolation-servitude-denunciation ceased. So seventy years was fulfilled in 537 with the Jews back home and still with an unfinished temple but a period of mouning continued right up to 518.
In proof of the fact that these seventy years was a past event and could not have been a present event is the simple fact that we have a seventy years A at the 2nd Darius and seventy years B at the 4th year of Darius. Now, does this mean we have two separate periods or are they the same and if there are two periods then how can they be tagged? in other words, how can they be described?
The Jonsson hypothesis is somewhat fuzzy and clearly confused on this point of chronology. I refer you to GTR, 1998, 3rd edn, pp 224-229:
Jonsson gives the folowing dates for Zechariah 1:12;
587---519 = 68 years
589---519 = 70 years
Zechariah 7:5
587---518/17= 69 years+4 mths
= 69 years +2 mths.
Therefore, the range is from 589---517= 72 years
However, the picture becomes further confused because on page 229 it is now not two periods but one period beginning from the earliest 589 down till the latest 515 which gives a maximum span of 74 years. Of course, with such a number of variable dates, numerous permutations are indeed possible and this is the tragic consequence of treating the seventy years as a present event at the time of Zechariah because such a stupid interpretation makes any chronology impossible as the above schema demonstrates. The seventy years is no lonher 'seventy ' but anything from a possible 68 years ranging to a possible 72 years. Therfore, according to the Jonsson hypothesis it can no longer be 70 literal yeras but simply a 'round number'. So when you try to argue for a present-time seventy years you are really arguing for a mythical period of time as a round number.
scholar JW