In Vol.1 of ?Insight on the Scriptures?, beginning on page 580 under the topic ?Darius? (1), there is a lengthy discussion about the secular historian uncertainties about the identity of Darius the Mede at the time of Babylon?s destruction. In there, the Watchtower position seems in full agreement with this uncertainty, because on page 583, (2) Darius Hystaspis (a Persian, not a Mede) is identified as the Darius in the Bible account. Now notice what they say about this other Darius:
It is particularly with regard to the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem that Darius Hystaspis figures in the Bible record. The temple foundation was laid in 536 B.C.E., but rebuilding work came under ban in 522 B.C.E. and ?continued stopped until the second year of the reign of Darius? (520 B.C.E.) (Ezr 4:4, 5, 24) During this year the prophets Haggai and Zechariah stirred up the Jews to renew the construction, and the work got under way again. (Ezr 5:1, 2; Hag 1:1, 14, 15; Zec 1:1)
See their reference to Haggai and Zechariah? Now the interesting point is this (quoting the relevant scripture texts from these prophets):
So the angel of Jehovah answered and said: ?O Jehovah of armies, how long will you y ourself not show mercy to Jerusalem and to the cities of Judah, whom you have denounced these seventy years???Zech.1:12 NWT
And:
Furthermore, it came about that in the fourth year of Darius the king the word of Jehovah occurred to Zechariah . . . And the word of Jehovah of armies continued to occur to me, saying: ?Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, ?When you fasted and there was a wailing in the fifth [month] and in the seventh [month], and this for seventy years, did you really fast to me, even me? . . . Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and a pleasant land was made desolate.?Zech.7:1, 5, 14 NWT
Anybody see an addition problem here? (607 to 522 BCE = 70 years?)
Re: Josephus
claiming the Jewish exile to be 70 years, he erred on this point and later corrected himself in his last work titled ?Against Apion? I, 21 where he quotes Berossus (a 3 rd century BC Babylonian prist/historian):
This statement is both correct and in accordance with our books [that is, the Holy Scriptures]. For in the latter it is recorded that Nabochodonosor in the eighteenth year of his reign devastated our temple, that for fifty years it ceased to exist, and that in the second year of Cyrus the foundations were laid, and lastly that in the second year of the reign of Darius it was completed.
The clincher is, of course, the Babylonian [not Persian] astronomical record VAT 4956 (now held in the Berlin Museum) that contains about 30 ?absolute dates? from the 37 th year of Nebuchadnezzar?s reign. The observations are so detailed that it allows astronomers to easily pin-point the year as 568/567 B.C.E. If one does not believe that evidence, then they have no basis for holding 539 as the year of Babylon?s destruction, since that is also calculated from an astronomical ?absolute date?. If you know his 37th year, then its elementary to deduce his first year.
~Ros