Part 59 (2/2)
[20] These forty-three years for the duration of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar are, as I have just now observed, the very same number in Ptolemy's canon. Moses Ch.o.r.enensis does also confirm this captivity of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, and adds, what is very remarkable, that sale of those Jews that were carried by him into captivity got away into Armenia, and raised the great family of the Bagratide there.
[21] These twenty-one years here ascribed to one named Naboula.s.sar, in the first book against Apion, or to Nabopolla.s.sar, the father of the great Nebuchadnezzar, are also the very same with those given him in Ptolemy's canon. And note here, that what Dr. Prideaux says, at the year, that Nebuchadnezzar must have been a common name of other kings of Babylon, besides the great Nebuchadnezzar himself is a groundless mistake of some modern chronologers rely, and dest.i.tute of all proper original authority.
[22] These fifteen days for finis.h.i.+ng such vast buildings at Babylon, in Josephus's copy of Berosus, would seem too absurd to be supposed to be the true number, were it not for the same testimony extant also in the first book against Apion, sect. 19, with the same number. It thence indeed appears that Josephus's copy of Berosus had this small number, but that it is the true number I still doubt. Josephus a.s.sures us, that the walls of so much a smaller city as Jerusalem were two years and four months in building by Nehemiah, who yet hastened the work all he could, Antiq. B. XI. ch. 5. sect. 8. I should think one hundred and fifteen days, or a year and fifteen days, much more proportionable to so great a work.
[23] It is here remarkable that Josephus, without the knowledge of Ptolemy's canon, should call the same king whom he himself here [Bar.
i. 11, and Daniel 5:1, 2, 9, 12, 22, 29, 39] styles Beltazar, or Belshazzar, from the Babylonian G.o.d Bel, Naboandelus also; and in the first book against Apion, sect. 19, vol. iii., from the same citation out of Berosus, Nabonnedon, from the Babylonian G.o.d Nabo or Nebo. This last is not remote from the original p.r.o.nunciation itself in Ptolemy's canon, Nabonadius; for both the place of this king in that canon, as the last of the a.s.syrian or Babylonian kings, and the number of years of his reign, seventeen, the same in both demonstrate that it is one and the same king that is meant by them all. It is also worth noting, that Josephus knew that Darius, the partner of Cyrus, was the son of Astyages, and was called by another name among the Greeks, though it does not appear he knew what that name was, as having never seen the best history of this period, which is Xenophon's. But then what Josephus's present copies say presently, sect. 4, that it was only within no long time after the hand-writing on the wall that Baltasar was slain, does not so well agree with our copies of Daniel, which say it was the same night, Daniel 5:30.
[24] This grandmother, or mother of Baltasar, the queen dowager of Babylon, [for she is distinguished from his queen, Daniel 5:10, 13,]
seems to have been the famous Nitocris, who fortified Babylon against the Medes and Persians, and, in all probability governed under Baltasar, who seems to be a weak and effeminate prince.
[25] It is no way improbable that Daniel's enemies might suggest this reason to the king why the lions did not meddle with him and that they might suspect the king's kindness to Daniel had procured these lions to be so filled beforehand, and that thence it was that he encouraged Daniel to submit to this experiment, in hopes of coming off safe; and that this was the true reason of making so terrible an experiment upon those his enemies, and all their families, Daniel 6:21, though our other copies do not directly take notice of it.
[26] What Josephus here says, that the stones of the sepulchers of the kings of Persia at this tower, or those perhaps of the same sort that are now commonly called the ruins of Persepolis, continued so entire and unaltered in his days, as if they were lately put there, ”I [says Reland] here can show to be true, as to those stones of the Persian mansoleum, which Com. Brunius brake off and gave me.” He ascribed this to the hardness of the stones, which scarcely yields to iron tools, and proves frequently too hard for cutting by the chisel, but oftentimes breaks it to pieces.
BOOK 11 FOOTNOTES
[1] This Cyrus is called G.o.d's shepherd by Xenophon, as well as by Isaiah, Isaiah 44:28; as also it is said of him by the same prophet, that ”I will make a man more precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir,” Isaiah 13:12, which character makes Xenophon's most excellent history of him very credible.
[2] This leave to build Jerusalem, sect. 3, and this epistle of Cyrus to Sisinnes and Sathrabuzanes, to the same purpose, are most unfortunately omitted in all our copies but this best and completest copy of Josephus; and by such omission the famous prophecy of Isaiah, Isaiah 44:28, where we are informed that G.o.d said of or to Cyrus, ”He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid,” could not hitherto be demonstrated from the sacred history to have been completely fulfilled, I mean as to that part of it which concerned his giving leave or commission for rebuilding the city Jerusalem as distinct from the temple, whose rebuilding is alone permitted or directed in the decree of Cyrus in all our copies.
[3] Of the true number of golden and silver vessels here and elsewhere belonging to the temple of Solomon, see the description of the temples, chap. 13.
[4] Josephus here follows Herodotus, and those that related how Cyrus made war with the Scythians and Ma.s.sagets, near the Caspian Sea, and perished in it; while Xenophon's account, which appears never to have been seen by Josephus, that Cyrus died in peace in his own country of Persia, is attested to by the writers of the affairs of Alexander the Great, when they agree that he found Cyrus's sepulcher at Pasargadae, near Persepolis. This account of Xenophon is also confirmed by the circ.u.mstances of Cambyses, upon his succession to Cyrus, who, instead of a war to avenge his father's death upon the Scythians and Ma.s.sagets, and to prevent those nations from overrunning his northern provinces, which would have been the natural consequence of his father's ill success and death there, went immediately to an Egyptian war, long ago begun by Cyrus, according to Xenophon, p. 644, and conquered that kingdom; nor is there, that I ever heard of, the least mention in the reign of Cambyses of any war against the Scythians and Ma.s.sagets that he was ever engaged in all his life.
[5] The reader is to note, that although the speeches or papers of these three of the king's guard are much the same, in our Third Book of Esdras, ch. 3. and 4., as they are here in Josephus, yet that the introduction of them is entirely different, while in our Esdras the whole is related as the contrivance of the three of the king's guards themselves; and even the mighty rewards are spoken of as proposed by themselves, and the speeches are related to have been delivered by themselves to the king in writing, while all is contrary in Josephus. I need not say whose account is the most probable, the matters speak for themselves; and there can be no doubt but Josephus's history is here to be very much preferred before the other. Nor indeed does it seem to me at all unlikely that the whole was a contrivance of king Darius's own, in order to be decently and inoffensively put in mind by Zorobabel of fulfilling his old vow for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple, and the restoration of the wors.h.i.+p of the ”one true G.o.d” there. Nor does the full meaning of Zorobabel, when he cries out, 3 Esd. 4. 41], ”Blessed be the G.o.d of truth;” and here, ”G.o.d is true and righteous;” or even of all the people, 3 Esd. 4. 41, ”Great is truth, and mighty above all things;” seem to me much different from this, ”There is but one true G.o.d, the G.o.d of Israel.” To which doctrine, such as Cyrus and Darius; etc., the Jews' great patrons, seem not to have been very averse, though the entire idolatry of their kingdoms made them generally conceal it.
[6] This strange reading in Josephus's present copies of four millions instead of forty thousand, is one of the grossest errors that is in them, and ought to be corrected from Ezra 2:61; 1 Esd. 5:40; and Nehemiah 7:66, who all agree the general sum was but about forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty. It is also very plain that Josephus thought, that when Esdras afterwards brought up another company out of Babylon and Persia, in the days of Xerxes, they were also, as well as these, out of the two tribes, and out of them only, and were in all no more than ”a seed” and ”a remnant,” while an ”immense number” of the ten tribes never returned, but, as he believed, continued then beyond Euphrates, ch. 5. sect. 2, 3; of which mult.i.tude, the Jews beyond Euphrates, he speaks frequently elsewhere, though, by the way, he never takes them to be idolaters, but looks on them still as observers of the laws of Moses. The ”certain part” of the people that now came up from Babylon, at the end of this chapter, imply the same smaller number of Jews that now came up, and will no way agree with the four millions.
[7] The history contained in this section is entirely wanting in all our other copies, both of Ezra and Esdras.
[8] Dr. Hudson takes notice here, that this kind of bra.s.s or copper, or rather mixture of gold and bra.s.s or copper, was called aurichalc.u.m, and that this was of old esteemed the most precious of all metals.
[9] This procedure of Esdras, and of the best part of the Jewish nation, after their return from the Babylonish captivity, of reducing the Jewish marriages, once for all, to the strictness of the law of Moses, without any regard to the greatness of those who had broken it, and without regard to that natural affection or compa.s.sion for their heathen wives, and their children by them, which made it so hard for Esdras to correct it, deserves greatly to be observed and imitated in all attempts for reformation among Christians, the contrary conduct having ever been the bane of true religion, both among Jews and Christians, while political views, or human pa.s.sions, or prudential motives, are suffered to take place instead of the Divine laws, and so the blessing of G.o.d is forfeited, and the church still suffered to continue corrupt from one generation to another. See ch. 8. sect. 2.
[10] This Jewish feast of tabernacles was imitated in several heathen solemnities, as Spanheim here observes and proves. He also further observes presently, what great regard many heathens had to the monuments of their forefathers, as Nehemiah had here, sect. 6.
[11] This rule of Esdras, not to fast on a festival day, is quoted in the Apostolical Const.i.tutions, B. V., as obtaining among Christians also.
[12] This miserable condition of the Jews, and their capital, must have been after the death of Esdras, their former governor, and before Nehemiah came with his commission to build the walls of Jerusalem. Nor is that at all disagreeable to these histories in Josephus, since Esdras came on the seventh, and Nehemiah not till the twenty-fifth of Xerxes, at the interval of eighteen years.
[13] This showing king Xerxes's epistles to G.o.d, or laying them open before G.o.d in the temple, is very like the laying open the epistles of Sennacherib before him also by Hezekiah, 2 Kings 19:14; Isaiah 37:14, although this last was for a memorial, to put him in mind of the enemies, in order to move the Divine compa.s.sion, and the present as a token of grat.i.tude for mercies already received, as Hayercamp well observes on this place.
[14] It may not be very improper to remark here, with what an unusual accuracy Josephus determines these years of Xerxes, in which the walls of Jerusalem were built, viz. that Nehemiah came with his commission in the twenty-fifth of Xerxes, that the walls were two years and four months in building, and that they were finished on the twenty-eighth of Xerxes, sect. 7, 8. It may also be remarked further, that Josephus hardly ever mentions more than one infallible astronomical character, I mean an eclipse of the moon, and this a little before the death of Herod the Great, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 6. sect. 4. Now on these two chronological characters in great measure depend some of the most important points belonging to Christianity, viz. the explication of Daniel's seventy weeks, and the duration of our Savior's ministry, and the time of his death, in correspondence to those seventy weeks. See the Supplement to the Lit. Accorap. of Proph. p. 72.
[15] Since some skeptical persons are willing to discard this Book of Esther as no true history; and even our learned and judicious Dr. Wall, in his late posthumous Critical Notes upon all the other Hebrew books of the Old Testament, gives none upon the Canticles, or upon Esther, and seems thereby to give up this book, as well as he gives up the Canticles, as indefensible; I shall venture to say, that almost all the objections against this Book of Esther are gone at once, if, as we certainly ought to do, and as Dean Prideaux has justly done, we place this history under Artsxerxes Longima.n.u.s, as do both the Septuagint interpretation and Josephus. The learned Dr. Lee, in his posthumous Dissertation on the Second Book of Esdras, p. 25, also says, that ”the truth of this history is demonstrated by the feast of Purlin, kept up from that time to this very day. And this surprising providential revolution in favor of a captive people, thereby constantly commemorated, standeth even upon a firmer basis than that there ever was such a man as king Alexander [the Great] in the world, of whose reign there is no such abiding monument at this day to be found any where. Nor will they, I dare say, who quarrel at this or any other of the sacred histories, find it a very easy matter to reconcile the different accounts which were given by historians of the affairs of this king, or to confirm any one fact of his whatever with the same evidence which is here given for the princ.i.p.al fact in this sacred book, or even so much as to prove the existence of such a person, of whom so great things are related, but upon granting this Book of Esther, or sixth of Esdras, [as it is placed in some of the most ancient copies of the Vulgate,] to be a most true and certain history,” etc.
[16] If the Chaldee paraphrast be in the right, that Artaxerxes intended to show Vashti to his guests naked, it is no wonder at all that she would not submit to such an indignity; but still if it were not so gross as that, yet it might, in the king's cups, be done in a way so indecent, as the Persian laws would not then bear, no more than the common laws of modesty. And that the king had some such design seems not improbable, for otherwise the princ.i.p.al of these royal guests could be no strangers to the queen, nor unapprized of her beauty, so far as decency admitted.
However, since Providence was now paving the way for the introduction of a Jewess into the king's affections, in order to bring about one of the most wonderful deliverances which the Jewish or any other nation ever had, we need not be further solicitous about the motives by which the king was induced to divorce Vashti, and marry Esther.
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