Doug Mason
Post 203
If you truly enjoy our discussion then behave yourself or I will terminate my conversation with you and converse only with Alan F.and Jeffro when he is on board.
You ask a question about Ezra 3:8 which my research at the present simply indicates that the second month of the second yearof their coming to the house of the true God which is locate in the following year in the spring of 536 with the laying of the temple foundation. My research shows no reason to change this opinion for in fact the NIV Bible in the footnote indicates that year could have commenced with Nisan rather than Tishri in the year 537 BCE. I plan to examine thorughly what scholarship has to say on the meaning of this verse before advancing a solid opinion on the matter. Have you made such a thorough examination of the exegesis of this most important verse? If not then you should and so shoud Alan F.
I do not have a model but I agree with the model presented by the celebrated WT scholars presented in numerous publications over the last five decades and it is this model that I believe is correct. Other models presented by yourself and others including Alan F, I reject because these omit the reign of Darius and defy 'common sense'.
I reject your assertion that the first year of Cyrus was of Tishri reckoning rather scholarship is unaminous that the first year of Cyrus used by Ezra was counted from the spring and ran from Nisan 538 to Nisan 537 BCE and there are good reasons why Ezra must have used the Nisan reckoning in this instance. I also reject your assertion concerning my misuse of Darius for I fully concur with our stated concerning Darius as an important in the determination of the precise year for the Return in 537 BCE.
Tishri was the seventh lunar month of the sacred calender but the first of the secular calender used by the Israelites.
I am not troubled by the fact that scholars and those who presented the information in the NIV Bible used the word 'probably' in determing which month the Jews left Babylon. The Bible simply does not give us all of the data so we have use those facts that are available and construct an intelligible history of those events and when this is done it is plainly proved that the Jews returned home by the seventh month of the year 537 BCE which the NiV agrees by means of that chart. and that in the second month of 536 BCE the foundations of the temple were laid. This is exactly what the celebrated WT scholars have told you.
This does not mean that we accept everything that this NIV Bible says on chronology because other matters that you have raised are subject of much dispute and we have an alternative view. If this is a 'pick and choose' then so be it for we are not concerned. Christendom's scholars including SDA's get some things right but many wrong and those correct matters we embrace and utilize which is the nature of scholarship.
At the end of your post you ask impertinent questions which I will not respond publicly. Leave me your telephone number for I will ring you and answer you privately. That is the fair and decent thing to do. Are you up for it?
scholar JW