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Book Of Esther - Time Line & Persian Kings

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jdl4ever:
I am certain that there was a king named Ahashverosh in the time of the Megilla which was written by Mordecai but we are uncertain of who he was due to the passage of time as he can be one of many Persian kings in a 150 year period.  It all depends on when the destruction of the first temple was, which is disputed.  It can be 586 BC or 421 BC or even somewhere in between.  The Greek historical names and the Persian historical names found in archives may not be the common names of the Kings at the time that they reined.  In my humble opinion, historians may have duplicated the number of Persian kings and erred since many were known by several names.

I MADE CORRECTIONS TO MY PREVIOUS POST AND LOOKED AT THE TALMUD ALSO

jdl4ever:
According to the Artscroll commentary on the talmud and being based on the Talmud, Tanach, Seder Olam and Rashi, this is what happened:  This Seder Olam view differs a lot from the secular calender.

CHRONOLOGY (correct me if my math is wrong converting Jewish to secular dates):
__________________________________________________________
Nebuchadnezzar-    3319-3363 or 442-398  B.C.E. Destroyed Jerusalem
Evil Merodach-       3363-3386 or 398-375 B.C.E.  Freed King Yechonyah
Belshazar-             3386-3389 or 375-372 B.C.E.  Last Babylonian King
Darius the Mede-    3389-3390 or 372-373 B.C.E.  Defeated Belshazar- First Persion King
Cyrus-                  3390-3393 or 373-371 B.C.E.  Authorized Return of Exiles and Rebuilding of Temple
Ahasuerus:            3393-3407 or 371-354 BC  Husband of Esther
Darius the Persion:  3407-3442 or 354-329 B.C.E.  Esther's son; authorized temple's reconstruction

This is the traditional view.  Many Jews of the modern day accept the secular view of events that the Temple was destroyed in 586 B.C.E. and the line of Kings is in line with the secular historical record. 
 

jdl4ever:

--- Quote from: Yacov Menashe Ben Rachamim on March 04, 2007, 12:30:44 PM ---All my information on this is from Moshe Lerman, who used to post on Kahane.org. I told him to come on JTF but he prefers to post on Revava, even though he is not like the Revava people. He is a Scientist and writes brilliant Torah articles.

If you go strictly by The Seder Olam, you are ignoring over a hundred years of The Persian Empire which is reduced to about 50 years.

Also, this solves the problem of the dating of The Book of Judges. There is supposed to be about 400 years from Joshua to King David. The Seder Olam places King David in the 800's B.C.E. even though he reigned from 1010-970 B.C.E.. King Solomon then reigned to 930 B.C.E.. This problem is solved by dating The Exodus in the 1400's B.C.E. and not 1313 of The Seder Olam and not 1280 B.C.E. of Secular Historians. This also proves The Exodus in Egyptian archaeological records, despite the claim by "higher critics" that there is no archaeological recored of The Ten Plagues.



--- End quote ---
This view has many problems as well; more so than the traditional view.  It contradicts the Talumd. It makes no sense that years can be simply deleted.  It makes it impossible for Mordechai to be a captive from Judea since he would be almost 200 years old.  It also makes it impossible that there were survivors from the first temple who witnessed the completion of the second temple as stated explicitly in the Tanach.  It also messes up the 490 year prophesy in Daniel and the 70 year prophesy stated by an earlier prophet (I think Yechezkal).

jdl4ever:
I do not like Lerm's post.  It sounds like the Roswell conspiracy that crazy UFO people have that they believe that an alien spacecraft landed in the 1940's.  Only a crazy person would think that the Jews did not know what year they were living in and that the year could have been changed by one member of the Great Assembly.  Laws were only past by the agreement of most of the Great Assembly to begin with and no one would dare change the date.  You know how picky us Jews are about changing things.  That would have resulted in a revolution if anything like that was proposed and the proponents would have been hanged for being heretics! 

According to the rule of Occum's razor, there is absolutely no need to assume that the Jewish calender was changed.  The jewish calender is correct.  The only thing in question is which date on the Jewish calender was the first temple destroyed since everything hinges on that.  Either you think that the Talmud and the ancient commentaries made a mistake and the first temple was really destroyed in 586 B.C.E. which many Jews think since it is possible that events in ancient history may have not been known with absolute certainty especially in the hardships of exile so a 167 year gap is not so bad. Or you accept the view of Seder Olam and the Talmud that the first temple was destroyed in 421 B.C.E. and believe that the Sages were very careful with dates as they always were since dates have historical significance.

jdl4ever:
Yacov, the six days of creation can not be compared to jewish history because a million jews were living at any given time and you can't say that a million jews simply forgot the calender year and some Rabbi made up a new calender.  Being a rationalist, this makes no sense at all and is a crazy idea so I don't see what logic you see in this idea.  None of the Rabbis ever considered this a possablity, not even the modern day ones. Creation was only witnessed by G-d and given to us in the bible in cryptic form so it is up to the Rabbis to interpit it and find its true meaning.   

 I think that David ruled in the 800's.

Yacov, Jews believe that the books of the Prophets were divinely inspired (the writers had Ruach Hakodesh) and therefore, there dates and historical references must be correct.  Yes, they could be round numbers and probably are but they can't be wrong. 

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