JMO, but I think that the Jewish people suddenly got a better "handle" on time concerning life spans and CYA'd their previous misconceptions concerning the length of a year with the "YHWH changed the life span" myth.
Frannie
Did our ancestors really live for hundreds of years?
by pennycandy 43 Replies latest jw friends
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peacefulpete
The above consensus that the chronolgies of the OT were contrived upon the Greek concept of a 'great year' is confirmed by the Talmud :
It has been taught in accordance with R. Kattina: Just as the seventh year is one year of release in seven, so is the world: one thousand years out of seven shall be fallow, as it is written, And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day,' and it is further said, A Psalm and song for the Sabbath day,34 meaning the day that is altogether Sabbath — 35 and it is also said, For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.36
The Tanna debe Eliyyahu teaches: The world is to exist six thousand years. In the first two thousand there was desolation;37 two thousand years the Torah flourished;38 and the next two thousand years is the Messianic era,39
Sanhedrin 97a
This shows a lingering Rabbinic belief that the Age of the messiah was to come after 4000 years from Adam. Those responsible for the edited chronology of the OT believed (or wanted others to believe) that the events surrounding the rededicationj of the temple signalled the new age.
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Leolaia
PP....I'm going to play the skeptic to Thompson's analysis and ask whether it is likely that the redactor (or whoever would have imposed this Hasmonean system on the text) would have accurately known that 374 years had elapsed from Cyrus to the Temple's rededication. I ask this because the third-century BC Jewish historian Demetrius, the second-century BC book of Daniel (ch. 9), and the first-century AD historian Josephus all blundered in representing the length of the Persian period (such that Daniel was 67 years off, Demetrius was 73 years off, and Josephus was 32, 40, or 48 years off depending on which passage you read).
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peacefulpete
I'll leave the chronology to you Leolaia, but the above explanation was apparently first Wellhasen's proposal. I wrote in the margins (5 years ago)of Thompson's book that E.L. Curtis repeated the idea and more recently M.D. Johnson 1969 and C.Kuhn 1961 mention this scenario. I find the idea very compelling even if the details can be calculated differently.