Lecture Summaries: 24 May, 2007

Where did the dates for the rebuilding of the Persian-era temple in Jerusalem in the books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah originate? They are almost universally accepted at face value, but probably should not be. It is widely acknowledged that dates in the prophetic books are not original but part of the editorial framework. The author of the account of the rebuilding of the temple has relied on the dates in Haggai and Zechariah, as well as texts envisioning the rebuilding of the temple in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel for his current account of who built the temple and when. It appears that the dating to the reign of Darius has been determined by a construal of two texts in Jeremiah that predicted 70 years of desolation for Judah and Jerusalem as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem and the first temple by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 to the time that the temple would be rebuilt, 70 years later. The reported date for the rededication of the temple falls in the final month of the 70^th calendar year (515 BCE). I will propose that the temple would have been rebuilt at the time when the provincial seat was moved from Mizpah to Jerusalem, under Artaxerxes I in ca 450 BCE. It would have served as the local treasury and as a place of worship for the native deity, from which the Persian king could have derived a sizeable return by taking a percentage of the profits generated from the sacrifices and related activities.