The books of Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah tell us the story of Judah’s return from the Babylonian Exile from the perspectives of four different people. However, because the names and titles they used for the Kings of Media and Persia were different from the Greek names we know from history, there are many conflicting opinions over which kings they were talking about.
Additionally, the chronology of Daniel’s 70-week prophecy until the Messiah would come was linked to a decree given in the year of a certain Persian King. Figuring out which king and which decree is confusing and has led to many conflicting historical theories. Some of those theories even insist that 82 to 100 years must be chopped out of the history of the Persian Empire.
In this short set of five or six posts, I will explore what I believe to be the best answers to the problems listed below and try to shed some light on the period of the Return from the Exile when Jerusalem was rebuilt from 536 to 404 BC.
The Problems
1. Who was Esther’s King? In Esther, when Ahasuerus threw the party, the Persian Empire had 127 provinces (Esther 1:1-3). That narrows it to between 513 BC when Darius conquered Scythia, and 490 BC, when Darius was defeated at the battle of Salamis after invading Greece, thus losing some of the provinces in the European theater. Darius died in October 486 BC, therefore the setting of the great feast at the opening of Esther had to be in his reign before the Battle of Salamis in 490 BC.
2. In the chronology of Esther, Vashti was deposed in the third year of the king (Esther 1:3) when the Persian Empire had 127 provinces. But Darius did not conquer India, which is mentioned in the passage, until his sixth year in 516 BC. And, Darius did not conquer Scythia, reaching the full 127 provinces, until his ninth year. Therefore King Ahasuerus in Esther was using different year dates than Darius I. This might suggest that there were two kings of Persia when the events in Esther took place. I will explore evidence that this was indeed the case.
3. Cyrus the Great gave his famous decree to allow the Jews to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem in the year 536 BC. According to Ezra 2, the first tranche of returnees came back with Zerubbabel that very year. Their work to rebuild the Temple continued until the 6th year of Darius, conventionally, 516 BC. Then in the reign of King Artaxerxes, conventionally dated to 458 BC, Ezra came to Jerusalem with a second tranche of returnees. Then Nehemiah came with a third group in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, conventionally dated to 445 BC. Nehemiah 10 lists the men who signed the covenant in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, and nearly a third of the names are also found in the list of men who returned with Zerubbabel in 536 BC, 91 years earlier. It seems impossible that any members of a group of tribal leaders in 536 BC could still be alive 91 years later, given that the Law of God did not allow men to hold leadership positions until they reached age 30 (Numbers 4:3). That appears to make the men whose names were found in both lists at least 121 years old when they signed the covenant with Nehemiah. If they were the same men, that is.
4. In Ezra 4 through 6 several kings of Persia are named who either stopped or permitted the work to complete the Temple. The first two of these, Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes appear out of historical sequence because Darius the Great was followed by his son Xerxes (Ahasuerus), and his grandson Artaxerxes. The Bible is not wrong. The two kings named in Ezra 4 were not the same as the two successors of Darius the Great. We will look at who they most likely were references to.
5. Daniel’s 69-week prophecy until Messiah the Prince does not seem to fit with the conventional chronology of Persia. We will look at a precise and elegant solution to this enigma.
6. Bonus. Queen Esther’s Grave. I will make the case that Queen Esther’s grave was excavated by archaeologists around 1900. Some of her jewelry, including her tiara and personal artifacts can be viewed in the Louvre, though they do not (yet) recognize them as belonging to Esther.
What to Expect
I will post articles with my answers to these problems one at a time, about once a month. If you have any additional questions about the chronology and name identifications in these four books, please feel free to ask in the comments, and I will add your questions to the list.
Good article