In short, the reason why the renowned priest and scribe Ezra is missing, seemingly inexplicably, from the list of “illustrious men” in Sirach 44-50, is because Ezra was the author of the book.
At least, that can be concluded from the following argument of mine, identifying Ezra as the author’s ben Sira.
Sirach 51:1, 2, 4:
“I will give thanks to you, Lord and King … for you have been protector and support to me, and redeemed my body from destruction … from the stifling heat which hemmed me in, from the heart of a fire which I had not kindled …”.
Saved “from the heart of a fire”, “hemmed in” by its “stifling heat”.
Could Sirach’s be a graphic description by one who had actually stood in the heart of the raging fire? – had stood inside “the burning fiery furnace” of King Nebuchednezzar? (Daniel 3:20)
Another translation (GNT) renders the vivid account of the Lord’s saving of Sirach as follows (Sirach 51:3-5): “… from the glaring hatred of my enemies, who wanted to put an end to my life; from suffocation in oppressive smoke rising from fires that I did not light; from death itself; from vicious slander reported to the king”.
According to the far more dispassionate account of the same (so I think) incident as narrated in Daniel 3:49-50:
… the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace beside Azariah and his companions; he drove the flames of the fire outwards, and fanned into them, in the heart of the furnace, a coolness such as wind and dew will bring, so that the fire did not even touch them or cause them any pain or distress.
Note that both texts refer almost identically to “the heart of the fire [the furnace]”.
Azariah – {who, unlike “his companions”, Hananiah and Mishael, is named here in Daniel} – I have identified as Ezra the scribe:
In this article I had noted that: “Ezra [is] a mostly obscure character throughout the Scriptures, despite his immense reputation and status …”. And also that: “… Azariah is always listed as the last of the trio (Daniel 1:6): “Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah”, variously as “Abednego” (cf. vv. 11, 19; 2:17, 49; 3:12-30), perhaps because he was the youngest …”.
To which comment, however, I had added, “… it is apparent that it is he [Azariah] who will take the leading part in the confession of guilt and the prayers”.
And that would make sense if Azariah were Ezra, for, as also noted in the article with reference to Ezra 7:1-5, “[Ezra was] … a priest in the line of Aaron, hence, potentially, the High Priest”.
So why might it be that the Daniel 3 text above names only “Azariah”, he perhaps being the youngest of the trio?
Well, if Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) chapter 51 has any relevance to the fiery furnace situation, if Sirach were Azariah-Ezra, then he himself appears to have been the one who had decided to appeal prayerfully to the Divine mercy for help and protection (vv. 6-12):
I was once brought face-to-face with death; enemies surrounded me everywhere. I looked for someone to help me, but there was no one there. But then, O Lord, I remembered how merciful you are and what you had done in times past. I remembered that you rescue those who rely on you, that you save them from their enemies. Then from here on earth I prayed to you to rescue me from death.I prayed, O Lord, you are my Father; do not abandon me to my troubles when I am helpless against arrogant enemies. I will always praise you and sing hymns of thanksgiving. You answered my prayer, and saved me from the threat of destruction. And so I thank you and praise you.
O Lord, I praise you!
The three young Jewish men, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, had had no hope whatsoever of obtaining any human deliverance. But once again Azariah alone will be the one to proclaim this (“Then Azariah stood still and there in the fire he prayed aloud”) (Daniel 3:32-33):
‘You have delivered us into the power of our enemies, of a lawless people, the worst of the godless, of an unjust king, the worst in the whole world; today we dare not even open our mouths, shame and dishonour are the lot of those who serve and worship You’.
Might Sirach 51 be an echo of this terrifying situation, when Sirach prays to God,
“You have redeemed me
[v. 3] from the fangs of those who would devour me, from the hands of those seeking my life
…
[v. 6] From the unclean tongue and the lying word –
The perjured tongue slandering me to the king.
….
[v. 7] They were surrounding me on every side, there was no one to support me;
I looked for someone to help – in vain”.
Now, just as it was found (in the “Ezra” article) that the name “Ezra” was related to the name “Azariah”, apparently a shortened version of the latter, so, I think, can the Hebrew (or Aramaïc) name, “Sira” (Greek Sirach), be plausibly connected with Azariah, a name that may appear in the El Amarna letters as Aziru, Azira (= Sira?),or Azaru.
Accordingly, in the New World Encyclopedia article, “Ben Sira”, we read:
The author is named in the Greek text (l. 27), “Jesus the son of Sirach of Jerusalem.” The copy owned by Saadia Gaon had the reading “Shim`on, son of Yeshua`, son of El`azar ben Sira;” and a similar reading occurs in the Hebrew manuscript. By interchanging the positions of the names “Shim`on” and “Yeshua`,” the same reading is obtained as in the other manuscripts. The correctness of the name “Shim`on” is confirmed by the Syriac version, which has “Yeshua`, son of Shim`on, surnamed Bar Asira.” The discrepancy between the two readings “Bar Asira” and “Bar Sira” is a noteworthy one, “Asira” (“prisoner”) being a popular etymology of “Sira.” The evidence seems to show that the author’s name was Yeshua, son of Shimon, son of Eleazar ben Sira. (“Jesus” is the Anglicized form of the Greek name Ιησους, the equivalent of Syriac Yeshua` and Masoretic Hebrew Yehoshua`.) ….
If the one whom we call Sirach was actually Eleazar ben Sira, as in this quote, then that would do no harm whatsoever to my identification, and would likely even enhance it.
Moreover, the name of Ezra’s father, Seraiah (Ezra 7:1), “… Ezra son of Seraiah …”, can easily be equated with Sira, which would give us the perfect equation:
Ezra (= Eleazer) son of Seraiah;
= Eleazer son of Sira(ch)
Of course any correlation between the young Azariah at the time of King Nebuchednezzar, and Sirach, estimated to have lived early in the Maccabean period, is quite unrealistic in terms of the over-extended conventional chronology.
My above-mentioned article on “Ezra”, though, suggests that this is possible, with the holy man living to as late as the wars of Judas Maccabeus.
While the Book of Daniel (chapter 3) will recount the story of the three young men in the burning fiery furnace in a somewhat objective and dispassionate fashion, presenting the three young heroes there as respectfully defiant before the Great King, Sirach, on the other hand, reads like a dramatic eye-witness window into the utter fearfulness and terror of the situation – a young man, who had actually experienced it, having been filled with the anxiety of expecting that he was about to lose his life in a most horrifying fashion.
In the case of the latter, King Nabonidus, I have been able to identify
(as an historical companion to the ‘Jonah incident’ article) a perfectly parallel situation between Nebuchednezzar, alienated from his kingdom, with his son
Evil-Merodach temporarily left in charge, and Nabonidus, away from his kingdom, with his son Belshazzar temporarily left in charge.
King Nebuchednezzar was likened by the prophet Jeremiah to a great Sea Monster (51:34): “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a Sea Monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out”.
No doubt the prophet had well in mind in this description the Sea Monster’s devouring, then vomiting out, of the contemporaneous prophet Jonah.
Especially considering that King Nebuchednezzar was Jonah 3:6’s “King of Nineveh”.
In the case of the latter, King Nabonidus, I have been able to identify (as an historical companion to the ‘Jonah incident’ article) a perfectly parallel situation between Nebuchednezzar, alienated from his kingdom, with his son Evil-Merodach temporarily left in charge, and Nabonidus, away from his kingdom, with his son Belshazzar temporarily left in charge:
And we know from Baruch 1: 11, 12, that Nebuchednezzar’s son was called Belshazzar.
That means that Evil-Merodach was the same person as Belshazzar.
During this time of the Great King’s sickness and alienation, the Crown Prince was not authorized to take the hand of Bel at the New Year’s feast in Babylon.
And we find this situation repeated again with Nebuchednezzar’s alter ego, Ashurbanipal, who, for many years did not take the hand of Bel.
…. Nabonidus, who is mistakenly identified as his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562 B.C.), is described as a mad king obsessed with dreams. According to the Book of Daniel, the king leaves Babylon to live in the wilderness for seven years. This depiction overlaps somewhat with Nabonidus’ own inscriptions, in which he emphasizes that he was an especially pious man who paid heed to dreams as the divine messages of the gods. Nabonidus was also infamous in antiquity for abandoning Babylon for 10 years to live in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, where he established a kind of shadow capital at the oasis of Tayma. This was a strange and unprecedented move for a Mesopotamian ruler. ….
As I see it, though, King Nabonidus was not “mistakenly identified as his predecessor Nebuchednezzar”, but he was Nebuchednezzar:
Daniel’s Mad King was Nebuchednezzar, was Nabonidus
It is known that Nabonidus’s son, Belshazzar, looked after the affairs of state during the absence of the legitimate king, his father.
William H. Shea, for instance, has written on this unconventional situation (Andrews University Seminary Studies, Summer 1982, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 135-136):
NABONIDUS, BELSHAZZAR, AND THE BOOK OF DANIEL: AN UPDATE
…. Entrusting the kingship to Belshazzar, as mentioned in the Verse Account, is not the same as making him king. The Verse Account refers to Belshazzar as the king’s eldest son when the kingship was “entrusted” to him, and the Nabonidus Chronicle refers to him as the “crown prince” through the years that Nabonidus spent in Tema [Tayma]. Moreover, the New Year’s festival was not celebrated during the years of Nabonidus’ absence because the king was not in Babylon. This would suggest that the crown prince, who was caretaker of the kingship at this time, was not considered an adequate substitute for the king in those ceremonies. Oaths were taken in Belshazzar’s name and jointly in his name and his father’s name, which fact indicates Belshazzar’s importance, but this is not the equivalent of calling him king.
There is no doubt about Belshazzar’s importance while he governed Babylonia during his father’s absence, but the question remains – did he govern the country as its king? So far, we have no explicit contemporary textual evidence to indicate that either Nabonidus or the Babylonians appointed Belshazzar as king at this time. ….
Given the pre-eminence of the name Nebuchednezzar over the less familiar one of his alter ego, Nabonidus, I would be extremely pleased to find evidence in the historical records of an illness and alienation of Nebuchednezzar qua Nebuchednezzar.
And so I have, thanks to A. K. Grayson.
For, as I wrote in my recent article:
Cyrus as ‘Darius the Mede’ who succeeded Belshazzar
I was gratified to learn of certain documentary evidence attesting to some apparent mad, or erratic, behaviour on the part of King Nebuchednezzar the Chaldean, to complement the well-attested “Madness of Nabonidus”.
This led me to conclude – based on a strikingly parallel situation – that Evil-Merodach, son and successor of Nebuchednezzar, was Belshazzar.
I reproduce that information here (with ref. to British Museum tablet No. BM 34113 (sp 213), published by A. K. Grayson in 1975):
Read lines 3, 6, 7, 11, 12, and Mas referring to strange behavior by Nebuchadnezzar, which has been brought to the attention of Evilmerodach by state officials. Life had lost all value to Nebuchadnezzar, who gave contradictory orders, refused to accept the counsel of his courtiers, showed love neither to son nor daughter, neglected his family, and no longer performed his duties as head of state with regard to the Babylonian state religion and its principal temple. Line 5, then, can refer to officials who, bewildered by the king’s behavior, counseled Evilmerodach to assume responsibility for affairs of state so long as his father was unable to carry out his duties. Lines 6 and on would then be a description of Nebuchadnezzar’s behavior as described to Evilmerodach. Since Nebuchadnezzar later recovered (Dan. 4:36), the counsel of the king’s courtiers to Evil-merodach may later have been considered “bad” (line 5), though at the time it seemed the best way out of a national crisis.
Since Daniel records that Nebuchadnezzar was “driven from men” (Dan. 4:33) but later reinstated as king by his officials (verse 36), Evilmerodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s eldest son, may have served as regent during his father’s incapacity. Official records, however, show Nebuchadnezzar as king during his lifetime.
Comment: Now, is this not the very same situation that we have found with regard to King Nabonidus’ acting strangely, and defying the prognosticators, whilst the rule at Babylon – though not the kingship – lay in the hands of his eldest son, Belshazzar?
Belshazzar: The Fictional Babylonian King Who Actually Lived
….
Belshazzar was having a party in Babylon on the night the Achaemenid Persians assumed power from the Babylonians.
He’s become a pretty popular guy in the 2,500+ years since his death in 539 BC.
At least, he’s more popular than he used to be.
That’s because many scholars long believed him to be a historical forgery and wrote him off.
This article reviews the context surrounding Belshazzar and the more recent archeological discoveries that attest to who he was and confirm the historical accuracy of the long-maligned account in the Bible.
For this to all make sense, you’ll need to mark four important Babylonian names as we go along:
Belshazzar (our protagonist)
Belteshazzar (a very similar name and a very different person)
Nabonidus (one of the reasons many doubted in a historical Belshazzar)
Nebuchadnezzar (the OG Babylonian king)
So, Who Was Belshazzar?
Belshazzar was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His name meant “Baal protect the king.”
For thousands of years he was only known in the Bible, where he is recorded as throwing quite the party.
Here’s how it’s told in the book of Daniel:
King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them.
3 So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. [Source: Daniel 5: 1–3]
Why did Belshazzar have gold and silver from Jerusalem at this party?
The answer is connected to one of our other important names: Nebuchadnezzar
Who was Nebuchadnezzar and What Was His Connection to the Party?
Belshazzar’s ancestor, Nebuchadnezzar II, was the second emperor in the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Mackey’s comment: Nebuchednezzar so-called II was actually the first.
His predecessor, Nabopolassar, was an Assyrian, Sennacherib.
Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon from 605 BC until his death in 562 BC. Belshazzar was likely his grandson, through his daughter (Nitocris).
[Note: Daniel 5 calls Nebuchadnezzar the “father” of Belshazzar, which is a generic word meaning ancestor. It’s the same word that it used in Daniel 2:23 → To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise…]
Mackey’s comment: Belshazzar was Nebuchednezzar’s direct son (cf. Baruch 1:11, 12)
Nebuchadnezzar, known to history as Nebuchadnezzar the Great, was renowned for his building prowess and his military campaigns.
One of those military campaigns was through the home of the Jews.
He defeated Judah and captured the city of Jerusalem around 600 BC. The city was destroyed and the residents forcibly deported to Babylon.
This is how the beginning of the book of Daniel records the events. The treasures from the temple in Jerusalem even get a mention here.
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. 3 Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility — 4 young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians [Source: Daniel 1: 1–4]
The Jews had been living in Babylon since that time. In the Babylonian captivity they were expected to conform to the culture of Babylon and acknowledge the gods of Babylon.
It was this culture that took center stage 23 years [more like 3-4 years] after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, at Belshazzar’s party with the temple goblets.
Below is Rembrandt’s famous painting depicting Belshazzar at his banquet.
Rembrandt’s Painting of Belshazzar’s Feast
Rembrandt painted “Belshazzar’s Feast” around 1638. His only source was the Bible, since nothing else discovered in the historical record to that point attested to his existence.
The goblets make their appearance.
But Belshazzar is far more focused on the wall behind him. A disembodied hand writes on the wall. We’ll come back to those words later.
Belshazzar summoned one of the Jewish exiles, Daniel, who had a reputation for deciphering divine symbols and visions.
The Daniel credited as the author of the book of Daniel. The same Daniel who was known as Belteshazzar in Babylon.
Belteshazzar vs. Belshazzar
Belshazzar (“Baal protect the king”) was the king in Babylon the night the empire fell to the Persians. Belteshazzar (“Bel protects his life”) was the Babylonian name given to the Jewish exile named Daniel.
Mackey’s comment: Scholars say that Belteshazzar is not, in fact, a Bel name, more like, say, a Balatu- construct.
Part of the cultural assimilation process for the captive Jews was getting a new Babylonian name.
Daniel chapter 4 makes it clear that Daniel and Belteshazzar were one and the same in another account when he is called to help Nebuchadnezzar understand his dreams.
19 Then Daniel (also called Belteshazzar) was greatly perplexed for a time, and his thoughts terrified him… [Source: Daniel 4:19]
Ok, you say. These are some hard to pronounce names. The hand writing on the wall is bizarre. But the general framework of the story seems plausible. Why were the historians so hard on poor Belshazzar? Why didn’t they believe him to be real?
For that, we need to introduce our fourth Babylonian name: Nabonidus.
Who Was Nabonidus?
According to ancient historians, it was Nabonidus — not Belshazzar — who was the last king of Babylon. Here are some of those sources:
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (480–429 BC) is known as the “Father of History.” He called Nabonidus the last king of Babylon. Of note, he called him king Labynetus, which was Greek for Nabonidus.
Another Greek historian Xenophon (430–355 BC) agrees that Nabonidus was the last king of Babylon. He says that he was killed when the Achaemenid Persians took Babylon.
The Jewish-Roman historian Josephus (37–100 AD) also claimed that Nabonidus to be the last king of Babylon.
Mackey’s comment: The whole solution is to recognise Nabonidus as Nebuchednezzar, and Belshazzar, son of Nebuchednezzar, as Belshazzar, son of Nabonidus:
Daniel’s Mad King was Nebuchednezzar, was Nabonidus
Here’s Nabonidus worshipping the symbols of the sun and moon gods. He was very real and there is plenty of evidence in the archeological record to validate his existence.
What does the Bible say about Nabonidus?
Nothing. The Bible doesn’t mention him.
Mackey’s comment: The Bible has a lot to say about Nabonidus, as Nebuchednezzar.
And that seemed like a big problem for the Bible. Especially since it has a character named Belshazzar as the last king of Babylon who didn’t appear in any sources outside the Bible.
Not only did Belshazzar seem like a fiction, but it followed that the book of Daniel and the Bible as a whole was just a myth.
Here’s what more recent historians had to say about Daniel based on Belshazzar.
Criticism of Daniel
I came across the following remarks saying that Daniel has “no historical basis whatever.” Thanks to this article for compiling the quotes.
There is no historical basis whatever, on which such an account can rest. The whole must be pure fiction [Source, Cäsar von Lengerke, Das Buch Daniel, 1850]
And again, it’s called a “palpable forgery.”
But a man like Belshazzar would never have received such an ominous prediction from the mouth of Daniel, and have rewarded him for it. The whole thing is a palpable forgery, got up merely to magnify Daniel. [Source, Cäsar von Lengerke, Das Buch Daniel, 1850]
It’s the presence of Belshazzar that seems to definitively prove that the “whole story is disfigured and falsified by the author.”
The name Belshazzar is a mistaken one. The name of the last king was Nabonned. The writer has given us a mere figment instead of a real name. The whole story is disfigured and falsified by the author, who was neither an eye-witness of the occurrences, nor accurately acquainted with the history of them. [Source, Frederic William Farrar 1831–1903, Expositor’s Bible: The Book of Daniel.]
All of history knew the last king’s name to be Nabonidus! At least, that was until the Nabonidus Cylinder was discovered in the latter half of the 19th century.
The Nabonidus Cylinder
J.G. Taylor made an important discovery in the ancient city of Ur, located in southwest Iraq.
While exploring the foundation of a ziggurat in Ur, Taylor discovered four identical cuneiform cylinders. Historians estimate they had been deposited in the four corners of the ziggurat in 540 BC.
Here’s how the inscription ends:
As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, save me from sinning against your great godhead and grant me as a present a life long of days, and as for Belshazzar, the eldest son — my offspring — instill reverence for your great godhead in his heart and may he not commit ant cultic mistake, may he be sated with a life of plenitude. [Source, livius.org]
Belshazzar was redeemed! The account from the cylinders makes it clear that he was, in fact, the eldest son of Nabonidus.
But that left one more problem. The Bible calls Belshazzar a king. How could that be when Nabonidus was the king?
That mystery was unraveled by another discovery. A cuneiform tablet that was discovered in ancient Nineveh, by modern day Mosul, Iraq.
The Verse Account of Nabonidus
Years after the discovery of the Nabonidus cylinder, 45 clay tablets were discovered that detailed major events in Babylonian history.
Within these Babylonian Chronicles — now located at the British Museum — was something called called the Verse Account of Nabonidus.
Here’s what that says about the reign of Nabonidus:
…when the third year was about to begin — he entrusted the army to his oldest son, his first born, the troops in the country he ordered under his command. He let everything go, entrusted the kingship to him, and, himself, he started out for a long journey. The military forces of Akkad marching with him, he turned to Tayma deep in the west. [Source, Verse account of Nabonidus, livius.org]
Towards the end of his reign as king of the Babylonian empire, Nabonidus “turned to Tayma”, which … is in what it now northwest Saudi Arabia today. Nabonidus “let everything go” and “entrusted the kingship” to Belteshazzar.
….
This was a highly unusual arrangement.
Somehow Belshazzar, and Nabonidus, were both ruling as kings of Babylon.
Nabonidus ruling from the outskirts of the empire of Babylon. Belshazzar as king of the greatest city in the empire, which was also called Babylon.
So There Were Two Last Kings of Babylon?
Yes.
….
Belshazzar had the same royal power as his father. While not officially named as such, the Verse Account of Nabonidus makes it clear that Nabonidus gave him powers of the king.
Other documents confirm the same.
Belshazzar could grant royal privileges identical to those granted by kings. One preserved document, which regards the granting of the privilege to cultivate a tract of land belonging to the Eanna temple in Uruk, is virtually identical to similar privileges issued by Nabonidus, though it is specified to have been issued by Belshazzar. As he could lease out temple land, this suggests that Belshazzar, in administrative matters, could act with full royal power. [Source: Wikipedia]
And since Nabonidus was away in Tayma for more than 10 years, Belshazzar had plenty of time to cement his status as the authority figure in the city of Babylon.
Mackey’s comment: It needs to be noted that this was only a temporary situation until King Nebuchadnezzar returned to full power.
Years later, after he had died, his son Belshazzar, as Amēl-Marduk (Evil-Merodach), become sole ruler of the kingdom (cf. 2 Kings 25:27), for a few short years.
A position he retained until the night of the feast.
How Did Belshazzar Die?
Belshazzar died the night of his big feast.
Let’s now get back to that mysterious hand on the wall. Here is how the Bible orders the events in Daniel 5:
Belshazzar’s massive party is interrupted by the hand writing on the wall:
5 Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. 6 Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. [Daniel 5: 5–6]
Belshazzar calls for someone who can read the mysterious writing. He summons Daniel and promises him great rewards if he can read the writing. And Daniel responds making it clear he’s not interested in the rewards (Belshazzar had offered to make him the 3rd highest ruler in the kingdom).
17 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another. Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation. [Daniel 5:17]
And Daniel gives the meaning of the words: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN
23 but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. 24 “Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. 25 And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. 26 This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; 27 Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; 28 Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
And, “That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed.” (Daniel 5:30).
Can the Bible Be Trusted?
On the surface, this story seems like a perfect case study for why the Bible is only a collection of legends.
There are claims of a king who was unknown to history. Who, in fact, the historical record seemed to completely disprove based on the existence of Nabonidus.
There’s a seemingly fanciful account of a mysterious hand writing on a wall. And there’s an almost more ludicrous claim that the heavily fortified city of Babylon could fall in a single night.
After all, Babylon was had incredibly thick and high walls and was considered impregnable. The Euphrates river ran through Babylon, making it almost impervious to siege. Surely, if a city like that would fall it would make months of extended warfare. Years.
Mackey’s comment: The Bible tells only of the King, not the city of Babylon, falling in a single night.
And yet, as the years have rolled on, the evidence has proven otherwise.
As it turns out, Belshazzar did indeed exist. And he was reigning over the city of Babylon when it fell to the Medes and Persians.
Somehow, he was the last king of Babylon despite Nabonidus also having claim to the same title.
Mackey’s comment: No. Nabonidus was Nebuchednezzar.
The outlandish contention that the city could fall in a single night is validated by other sources. Both Herodotus and Xenophon talk about a surprise attack, where the Medo-Persian army diverted the Euphrates river allowing the soldiers to march into the city through the dry river bed.
What better time to do that than when all the leaders of the city are getting drunk at a massive party.
That just leaves the mysterious hand on the wall.
Like all matters of faith, there is no objective proof. There are reasons to believe. There is evidence that the overall story is beyond the natural realm. And there is also no conclusive proof.
If you don’t believe there is more to the world than what we can see, you surely cannot believe that a disembodied hand can be sent from God. You can’t believe in God at all, since He is by definition outside of natural explanation. He is supernatural.
But perhaps it makes you think.
Because the Bible, as it turns out, was the only source that had all the accurate information in one place.
Not Herodotus. Not Xenophon. Not the Babylonian Chronicles.
They all had pieces.
Only the Bible had it all. It just took over two thousand years for the rest of the archeological record to catch up.
It makes me think about other things the Bible says are true. Things that might seem fanciful. That could never be true.
But what if they are true as well? What if everything else is just a piece of the ultimate Truth? What is real Truth is found in Jesus?
What if what Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Philippi is actually going to happen one day? What if the evidence will finally all be revealed and we’ll all see that it is actually all true?
…so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [Philippians 2: 10–11]
If you’re wrestling with all of it, try asking Him.
Not the Jesus of political power or the Jesus who you hope might make you rich, but the real Jesus.
Whilst Daniel, qua Daniel, is not accorded a specific tribe, nor is he given
a genealogy, or even a patronymic, I have concluded – following the Septuagint version of Bel and the Dragon wherein Daniel is called a priest,
the son of Habal – that Daniel was a Levite, a priest.
The prophet Daniel is thought to have departed the official scene, at least, early in the Medo-Persian era (c. 555 BC): “The last mention of Daniel in the Book of Daniel is in the third year of Cyrus (Daniel 10:1)”:
“Rabbinic sources suppose that he was still alive during the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus (better known as Artaxerxes – Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 15a, based on the Book of Esther 4, 5), when he was killed by Haman, the wicked prime minister of Ahasuerus (Targum Sheini on Esther, 4, 11)”.
During the reign of Nebuchednezzar
“Daniel and his friends refuse the food and wine provided by the king
of Babylon to avoid becoming defiled. They receive wisdom from God
and surpass “all the magicians and enchanters of the kingdom”.”
Whilst Daniel, qua Daniel, is not accorded a specific tribe, nor is he given a genealogy, or even a patronymic, I have concluded – following the Septuagint version of Bel and the Dragon wherein Daniel is called a priest, the son of Habal – that Daniel was a Levite, a priest.
We read a standard version of Daniel’s life in the court of kings at Wikipedia:
The Book of Daniel begins with an introduction telling how Daniel and his companions came to be in Babylon, followed by a set of tales set in the Babylonian and Persian courts, followed in turn by a set of visions in which Daniel sees the remote future of the world and of Israel. ….
The four are chosen for their intellect and beauty to be trained in the Babylonian court, and are given new names. Daniel is given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar (Akkadian: … Beltu-šar-uṣur, written as NIN9.LUGAL.ŠEŠ), while his companions are given the Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Daniel and his friends refuse the food and wine provided by the king of Babylon to avoid becoming defiled. They receive wisdom from God and surpass “all the magicians and enchanters of the kingdom.” Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a giant statue made of four metals with feet of mingled iron and clay, smashed by a stone from heaven. Only Daniel is able to interpret it: the dream signifies four kingdoms, of which Babylon is the first, but God will destroy them and replace them with his own kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great tree that shelters all the world and of a heavenly figure who decrees that the tree will be destroyed; again, only Daniel can interpret the dream, which concerns the sovereignty of God over the kings of the earth. When Nebuchadnezzar’s son King Belshazzar uses the vessels from the Jewish temple for his feast, a hand appears and writes a mysterious message on the wall, which only Daniel can interpret; it tells the king that his kingdom will be given to the Medes and Persians, because Belshazzar, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, has not acknowledged the sovereignty of the God of Daniel. The Medes and Persians overthrow Nebuchadnezzar and the new king, Darius the Mede, appoints Daniel to high authority. Jealous rivals attempt to destroy Daniel with an accusation that he worships God instead of the king, and Daniel is thrown into a den of lions, but an angel saves him, his accusers are destroyed, and Daniel is restored to his position.
[End of quote]
Whilst this basically sums up the best known part of the career of Daniel (the Book of Daniel), there is significantly more now that will actually need to be added to the situation, I believe, from both a biblical and an historical perspective.
First of all I should like to recall my expansion of King Nebuchednezzar to include the alter ego of that mighty neo-Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. This enables for, inter alia, the historical identification of the strongly biblically-attested conquest of Egypt by Nebuchednezzar – but which is all but missing from the Chaldean records.
King Ashurbanipal is, of course, famous for his utter devastation of Egypt, all the way down to the city of Thebes (c. 664 BC, conventional dating).
Secondly, I have recently identified the prophet Daniel with the governor, Nehemiah (despite the conventional separation here of some 150 years):
This now means that the “Artaxerxes king of Babylon” of the Book of Nehemiah was Nebuchednezzar of Babylon, and not a later Persian king.
So, Daniel’s life during the reign of “Nebuchadnezzar” must now include, as well, the governorship of Nehemiah during years 20-32 of the reign of the king of Babylon, a phase not covered in the Book of Daniel (Nehemiah 5:14): “I was governor from the 20th year until the 32nd year that Artaxerxes was king. I was governor of Judah for twelve years”.
Already, even during the mid-reign of Nebuchednezzar – and not some 150 years later in the Persian era (c. 440 BC) – the utterly destroyed city of Jerusalem had begun to be re-built, thanks to the intercession of Daniel-Nehemiah, a great favourite of the king of Babylon.
Young Daniel and the Susanna Incident
“As [Susanna] was being led to execution,
God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel,
and he cried aloud:
‘I am innocent of this woman’s blood’.”
Daniel 13:45-46
Another incident that belongs to the time of Daniel’s youth, in Babylon – hence also during the reign of Nebuchednezzar – when the Jewish sage is described (in Theodotion’s version) as “a young boy [παιδαρίου] named Daniel”, is encountered in the story of Susanna.
The story reads as follows (with a few of my comments added to it):
In Babylon there lived a man named Joakim, who married a very beautiful and God-fearing woman, Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah; her parents were righteous and had trained their daughter according to the law of Moses. Joakim was very rich and he had a garden near his house. The Jews had recourse to him often because he was the most respected of them all.
Mackey’s comment: I have identified this highly “respected” Jew, Joakim, as the Mordecai of the Book of Esther, and Susanna, his wife, as Hadassah, the future Queen Esther. For, according to Jewish tradition, Mordecai was actually married to Hadassah (Esther). See e.g. my article:
Joakim and Susanna’s progression to become Mordecai and Esther
That year, two elders of the people were appointed judges, of whom the Lord said, “Lawlessness has come out of Babylon, that is, from the elders who were to govern the people as judges.” These men, to whom all brought their cases, frequented the house of Joakim. When the people left at noon, Susanna used to enter her husband’s garden for a walk. When the elders saw her enter every day for her walk, they began to lust for her. They perverted their thinking; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments. Though both were enamored of her, they did not tell each other their trouble, for they were ashamed to reveal their lustful desire to have her. Day by day they watched eagerly for her. One day they said to each other, “Let us be off for home, it is time for the noon meal.” So they went their separate ways. But both turned back and arrived at the same spot. When they asked each other the reason, they admitted their lust, and then they agreed to look for an occasion when they could find her alone.
One day, while they were waiting for the right moment, she entered as usual, with two maids only, wanting to bathe in the garden, for the weather was warm. Nobody else was there except the two elders, who had hidden themselves and were watching her. “Bring me oil and soap,” she said to the maids, “and shut the garden gates while I bathe.” They did as she said; they shut the garden gates and left by the side gate to fetch what she had ordered, unaware that the elders were hidden inside.
As soon as the maids had left, the two old men got up and ran to her. “Look,” they said, “the garden doors are shut, no one can see us, and we want you. So give in to our desire, and lie with us.
If you refuse, we will testify against you that a young man was here with you and that is why you sent your maids away.”
“I am completely trapped,” Susanna groaned. “If I yield, it will be my death; if I refuse, I cannot escape your power. Yet it is better for me not to do it and to fall into your power than to sin before the Lord.” Then Susanna screamed, and the two old men also shouted at her, as one of them ran to open the garden gates. When the people in the house heard the cries from the garden, they rushed in by the side gate to see what had happened to her. At the accusations of the old men, the servants felt very much ashamed, for never had any such thing been said about Susanna.
When the people came to her husband Joakim the next day, the two wicked old men also came, full of lawless intent to put Susanna to death. Before the people they ordered: “Send for Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah, the wife of Joakim.” When she was sent for, she came with her parents, children and all her relatives. Susanna, very delicate and beautiful, was veiled; but those transgressors of the law ordered that she be exposed so as to sate themselves with her beauty. All her companions and the onlookers were weeping.
In the midst of the people the two old men rose up and laid their hands on her head. As she wept she looked up to heaven, for she trusted in the Lord wholeheartedly. The old men said, “As we were walking in the garden alone, this woman entered with two servant girls, shut the garden gates and sent the servant girls away. A young man, who was hidden there, came and lay with her. When we, in a corner of the garden, saw this lawlessness, we ran toward them. We saw them lying together, but the man we could not hold, because he was stronger than we; he opened the gates and ran off. Then we seized this one and asked who the young man was, but she refused to tell us. We testify to this.” The assembly believed them, since they were elders and judges of the people, and they condemned her to death.
But Susanna cried aloud: “Eternal God, you know what is hidden and are aware of all things before they come to be: you know that they have testified falsely against me. Here I am about to die, though I have done none of the things for which these men have condemned me.”
The Lord heard her prayer. As she was being led to execution, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel, and he cried aloud: “I am innocent of this woman’s blood.” All the people turned and asked him, “What are you saying?” He stood in their midst and said, “Are you such fools, you Israelites, to condemn a daughter of Israel without investigation and without clear evidence? Return to court, for they have testified falsely against her.”
Then all the people returned in haste. To Daniel the elders said, “Come, sit with us and inform us, since God has given you the prestige of old age.” But he replied, “Separate these two far from one another, and I will examine them.”
This is how you acted with the daughters of Israel, and in their fear they yielded to you; but a daughter of Judah did not tolerate your lawlessness. Now, then, tell me under what tree you surprised them together.” “Under an oak,” he said. “Your fine lie has cost you also your head,” said Daniel; “for the angel of God waits with a sword to cut you in two so as to destroy you both.”
The whole assembly cried aloud, blessing God who saves those who hope in him. They rose up against the two old men, for by their own words Daniel had convicted them of bearing false witness.They condemned them to the fate they had planned for their neighbor: in accordance with the law of Moses they put them to death. Thus was innocent blood spared that day.
Hilkiah and his wife praised God for their daughter Susanna, with Joakim her husband and all her relatives, because she was found innocent of any shameful deed. And from that day onward Daniel was greatly esteemed by the people.
Mackey’s comment: From this case of wise judgment, and also from the famous incident of young Daniel’s properly recounting, and interpreting, King Nebuchednezzar’s Dream, Daniel became a legend even when he was yet a boy/youth.
That is why the prophet Ezekiel can declare ironically to the pretentious King of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:3): “You are wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you!”
The wicked and conspiring “two elders” of the above story of Susanna may possibly be the ill-fated pair, Ahab and Zedekiah, as mentioned in Jeremiah 29:21: “Thus said the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, of Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and of Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, which prophesy a lie to you in my name; Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall slay them before your eyes”.
During the reign of Belshazzar
My solution, typically, has been to shrink the conventional
neo-Babylonian sequence by identifying Nebuchednezzar with Nabonidus,
and Evil-Merodach with Belshazzar.
The Book of Daniel jumps straight from the incident of the insanity of king Nebuchednezzar (chapter 4) to the termination of the reign of king Belshazzar with the famous incident of the Writing on the Wall, followed by mention of that wicked king’s death (chapter 5).
Presumably there was a fair amount of time in between, because Belshazzar, as we shall see, reigned for at least 3-4 years, and Nebuchednezzar would experience a period of greater power after his bout of madness (Daniel 4:36): “At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before”.
King Nebuchednezzar’s son-successor is known to have been – the albeit poorly attested – Evil-Merodach (evil by name, evil by nature), or Awel-Merodach.
The name actually means “man”, or “servant, of [the god] Marduk”, nothing to do with “evil”.
But, according to the Book of Daniel, Nebuchednezzar’s son-successor was “Belshazzar” (5:1), whom, the Jewish prophet reminds (5:18): ‘Your Majesty, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor’.
The simple solution would be to identify Belshazzar as Evil-Merodach, considering that both were wicked and of short reign. And, historically, there was, in fact, a royal Belshazzar who post-dated Nebuchednezzar.
The only trouble is, this Belshazzar was a son of king Nabonidus, whose reign is conventionally dated to c. 556-539 BC, commencing some years after the death of Nebuchednezzar.
My solution, typically, has been to shrink the conventional neo-Babylonian sequence by identifying Nebuchednezzar with Nabonidus, and Evil-Merodach with Belshazzar.
This conforms secular history to the sequence of kings in Daniel.
The Jews will “pray for the life of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and for the life of his son Belshazzar, so that their days on earth may be like the days of heaven” (Baruch 1:11).
Apart from the Writing on the Wall incident in chapter 5, we learn nothing more personally about King Belshazzar. We are told in chapter 7, though, that Daniel “had a dream, and visions” in that king’s 1st year of reign (7:1-3):
In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream. Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. …”.
And again, in chapter 8, Daniel experienced “a vision” in the king’s 3rd year of reign (1-4):
In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam; in the vision I was beside the Ulai Canal. I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal, and the horns were long. One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later. I watched the ram as it charged toward the west and the north and the south. No animal could stand against it, and none could rescue from its power. It did as it pleased and became great.
Daniel, who had been exceedingly great in Babylon during the reign of Nebuchednezzar, and who was already a legend amongst his own people, appears to have faded into the background at the time of Belshazzar. It is “the queen” who has to remind the king (5:11): “There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods”.
And king Belshazzar asks Daniel who he is: ‘Are you Daniel …?’ (vv. 13-16):
“So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, ‘Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah? I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom. The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it. Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom’.”
During the reign of Darius the Mede
‘This is the inscription that was written:
mene, mene, tekel, parsin
Here is what these words mean:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians’.
Daniel 5:25-28
The prophet Daniel spells it out clearly here.
The Chaldean kingdom has now come to an end, and the Medo-Persian one will take its place.
And the Book of Daniel supplies the next specific detail (5:30): “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two”.
At first it would appear that Daniel might have been destined to live under a more serene and well-ordered ruler, after the fierce and mercurial Nebuchednezzar and his ne’er do well, son, Belshazzar. For, according to Daniel 6:1-3:
It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.
Here, at last, was a mature king who appeared to know what he was doing.
Unfortunately, however, the Babylonians, as we shall find, did not like their new king.
And they were jealous of Daniel.
What was Daniel’s status at this time?
As said, Daniel appears to have faded into the background during the reign of Belshazzar – after his phase of high exaltation during Nebuchednezzar’s reign.
That all changed, though, when Belshazzar had, in a state of fright, promised to make Daniel ‘the third highest ruler in the kingdom’ (5:16).
That begs the question, who held the second place in the kingdom?
My solution, based on my view that king Belshazzar was the same person as Evil-Merodach, is that the exiled king of Jerusalem, Jehoiachin (or ‘Coniah’), already occupied second place.
I refer to this text from 2 Kings (27-30):
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He did this on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table. Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.
This is most ominous.
Far from Daniel now settling into a period of peace and tranquility, he has been placed third in the kingdom – despite his protest (5:17) – but playing second fiddle to Jehoiachin:
that Haman who will almost succeed in having the faithful Jews annihilated.
No doubt Haman was very much to the fore when the high officials in the kingdom, faced with the possibility of Daniel’s becoming the king’s second, organised this conspiracy (6:4-5):
At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so.
They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, ‘We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God’.
The effect was that Daniel famously ended up in the den of lions, the king being constrained to carry out the sentence owing to the rigid Medo-Persian law (vv. 6-27).
In Daniel 14, there is another account of the prophet’s being consigned to the den of lions. This takes place during the reign of king Cyrus, and it is usually considered to be an incident separate to the one narrated in Daniel 6.
The background is somewhat different in that it occurs after the Babylonians had become incensed with Daniel, and with Cyrus, for the destruction of their idols, Bel and the Dragon.
There is no reason, however, why this situation cannot go hand in hand with the jealousy of the king’s high officials towards Daniel, as narrated in chapter 6.
The account in Daniel 14 is admittedly somewhat different from that in Daniel 6.
But, as we well know, the same tale when told by two different people will result in two quite distinctive accounts. And I have argued similarly in:
that the Book of Genesis offers to divergent accounts, emanating from two different sources, of the one tale of the abduction of Sarai (Sarah), wife of Abram (Abraham).
Is it likely that the prophet Daniel had to suffer two ordeals amongst the lions? On this, see my:
If Darius the Mede be identified with Cyrus, as I believe he must – and some expert scholars have come this conclusion as well (Wiseman, D. J. (25 November 1957). “Darius the Mede”. Christianity Today: 7–10) – then something momentous will occur in the 1st year of that king’s reign, and presumably before the den of lions’ incident.
Ezra tells of it, the return from captivity (1:1-4):
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem’.”
Not surprisingly Daniel’s visitation by the angel Gabriel, in that same 1st year of Darius/Cyrus, pertained to the mater of “the desolation of Jerusalem” (9:1-3, 20-23):
In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom— in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.
….
While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill— while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision …’.
According to Daniel 1:21: “… Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus”.
The “there” presumably refers to Babylon. From there, Daniel would have removed to Susa. But, firstly, he (as Nehemiah) had to participate in the return of the captive Jews back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2-2): “Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive to Babylon (they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to their own town, in company with Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah …”.
In the 3rd year of Cyrus Daniel will experience another revelation through a vision (chapter 10).
This was the same regnal year, the 3rd, as we read about early in the Book of Esther – in which king Cyrus is called “Ahasuerus” – when queen Vashti will be deposed (Esther 1:3): “… in the third year of his reign [Ahasuerus] gave a banquet for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the provinces were present”.
But Daniel would be, on the occasion of his visitation by Gabriel of that same year, geographically well apart from the king enthroned “in the citadel of Susa” (Esther 1:2).
For Daniel was then “standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris” (Daniel 10:4).
It would be almost a decade before the Hamanic conspiracy in the 12th year of king Ahasuerus (Esther 3:7) took its full effect.
Thus we find the Benjaminite Jew, Mordecai, now stepping into the breach.
In the March/April 2014 issue of BAR, I wrote an article on 50 people in the Hebrew Bible whose existence has been confirmed by archaeology.a At the end of the article, in a box, I also listed seven additional people. They had not three, but only two, attributes matching the Biblical person, so their identifications were not certain but were reasonable hypotheses.
Now I am pleased to report on three new people added to the 50 confirmed (of whom two have already been mentioned in BARb), and three new people added to the seven uncertain but reasonable identifications. At the end are a few interesting non-identifications.
Strongly Identified
The first real person to be added to the original list of 50 is the Biblical Tattenai (also translated Tatnai or Sisinnes), mentioned in Ezra 5:3, etc. He was the Persian governor of the province of Trans-Euphrates—literally, “Beyond-the-River,” which for the Persians meant their territory west of the Euphrates River. There are strong grounds for identifying Biblical Tattenai in a tablet of Darius I the Great, king of Persia, which can be dated to exactly June 5, 502 B.C.E. First, the letter on this tablet, which was recovered from Babylon, has long been accepted as authentic.
Second, the setting (time and place) of the Tattenai in the tablet was in Trans-Euphrates during the reign of Darius I (r. 520–486 B.C.E.). That territory included Yehud (roughly equivalent to Judah, but under Persian rule), which matches the setting of the Tattenai in the Book of Ezra chapters 5 and 6. Ezra’s Tattenai appears in Jerusalem during the last few years before the completion of the Second Temple around 516 B.C.E. Third, only one person named Tattenai would have been the Persian governor of Trans-Euphrates between 520 and 502 B.C.E. It is extremely unlikely that two different men having exactly the same name would both be governors over Trans-Euphrates, and specifically Yehud, during this very narrow time period, so that possibility is negligible. Therefore, the identification of the Biblical Tattenai in Darius I’s letter of 502 is based on singularity: One and only one person qualifies. ….
Is there archaeological evidence supporting the Bible record? In 2014 an article in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review addressed the question:
“How many people in the Hebrew Bible have been confirmed archaeologically?” The answer given: “At least 50!” One man who did not make the list in that article was Tattenai. Who was he? Let us review his brief role in the Bible record.
Jerusalem was once part of a vast Persian Empire. The city lay in an area that the Persians called Across-the-River, that is, to the west of the Euphrates. After conquering Babylonia, the Persians released Jewish captives and authorized them to rebuild Jehovah’s temple in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:1-4) Enemies of the Jews, however, opposed the project and used it as a pretext to accuse the Jews of rebelling against Persia. (Ezra 4:4-16) During the reign of Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.), a Persian official named Tattenai led an inquiry into the matter. The Bible calls him “the governor of the region Beyond the River.”—Ezra 5:3-7.
A number of cuneiform tablets bearing the name Tattenai have survived as part of what may have been a family archive. The tablet that links one member of this family to the Bible character is a promissory note dated to the 20th year of Darius I, 502 B.C.E. It identifies a witness to the transaction as a servant of “Tattannu, governor of Across-the-River”—the same Tattenai who appears in the Bible book of Ezra.
What was this man’s role? In 535 B.C.E., Cyrus the Great reorganized his dominions into provinces, one of which was called Babylon and Across-the-River. The province was later split into two parts, one of which was simply called Across-the-River. It included Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, Samaria, and Judah and was likely ruled from Damascus. Tattenai governed this region from about 520 to 502 B.C.E.
After traveling to Jerusalem to investigate the accusation of rebellion, Tattenai reported to Darius that the Jews claimed to have received authorization from Cyrus to rebuild Jehovah’s temple. Investigations in the royal archives substantiated that claim. (Ezra 5:6, 7, 11-13; 6:1-3) So Tattenai was ordered not to interfere, and he obeyed.—Ezra 6:6, 7, 13.
To be sure, “Tattenai the governor of the region Beyond the River” merits only a footnote in history. Note, though, that the Scriptures mention him and apply to him exactly the right title. That fact gives us yet another bit of evidence that archaeology repeatedly supports the Bible’s historical accuracy.
What is even more remarkable is the name of the man who accompanied Tattenai to Jerusalem, Sether-Bozana, has also been found in … records from Nippur, dating to the 38th year of Artaxerxes I (427-426 B.C.) [sic]
In the Collection of the Babylonian Section, Philadelphia, Artifacts #CBS 5174+12893 Illustration Figure 13 Line 25` mentions the man, Sether-Bozana: …. Another mention of Sether-Bozana is found in the records from Nippur dating to the 41st year of King Artaxerxes I (424 B.C.) [sic], just two years before the Biblical story in Ezra during king Darius II reign [sic]. Located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum – Part of the Nippur tablet Collection, Artifact (Ni.528) mentions Sether-Bozana (Sa-ta-bar-za-na) Figure 18 Line 26. ….
“… the plot structure itself draws a comparison between
Tattenai and Haman, backing the view expressed in Rashi
that Tattenai was indeed an enemy of the Jews”.
Zvi Ron
Zvi Ron has proposed that the situation of Tattenai, the “governor of the province of Beyond the River” in Ezra 6, is paralleled in the drama of Haman in the Book of Esther:
There is an unusual reference to Tattenai in the Geonic era work Targum Rishon to the Book of Esther. …. When Zeresh, the wife of Haman, is introduced in Esther 5:10, Targum Rishon writes that Zeresh was “the daughter of Tattenai, governor of the province of Beyond the River.” This is an idea that does not appear anywhere else in Rabbinic literature, even in Targum Sheni to Esther which generally contains more aggadic material than Targum Rishon. ….
It is not immediately clear what is the point of connecting Zeresh to Tattenai. The book Magen David, a 17th commentary on the Targum Rishon, explains that Haman had multiple wives but Zeresh was singled out for mention because she came from an important family, the family of Tattenai. …. However, a close reading of the Tattenai narrative reveals why the Targum made a connection with Zeresh.
Taking the traditional approach that Tattenai was an adversary of the Jews who wanted to halt the construction of the Second Temple, the story of Tattenai can be summarized as follows:
1. Tattenai, a government official, tried to cause harm to the Jews.
2. He turned to the Persian king for support.
3. A forgotten incident is recalled (the permission given by Cyrus).
4. Instead of receiving this support, the exact opposite result is achieved (to assist the Jews with the building of the Second Temple).
In terms of the plot structure, this “Persian backfire” story bears similarity to the story of Haman, (1) a government official who wants to kill Mordecai and (2) enlists King Ahasuerus to write a decree against the Jews. When Ahasuerus cannot sleep he is (3) reminded of how Mordecai saved his life. Ultimately Haman’s plan fails and (4) the exact opposite result is achieved, Haman must honor Mordecai and he is ultimately hanged on the wooden beam he had intended to hang Mordecai from.
This basic plot structure is also seen in Daniel chapter 6. There (1) government officials try to get Daniel in trouble with the king (Daniel 6:6). They (2) trick Darius into writing a decree that outlaws prayer (Daniel 6: 14). Daniel is rescued from death in the lion’s [sic] den, and (4) the king orders the officials to be put to death in the lion’s den (Daniel 6:25). In the Daniel story there is no element of the “forgotten incident”, however there is an element of the king having a sleepless night (Daniel 6:19) as in Esther 6:1. Additionally, there is a reverse parallel in that Daniel is in trouble for bowing in prayer (Daniel 6:11) and Mordecai is in trouble for refusing to bow (Esther 3:2).
The Tattenai/Haman parallel is particularly strong as both narratives not only contain a “forgotten incident” element, they even use a similar term regarding it, the sefer zichronot (book of records, literally “book of memories”) in Esther 6:1 and the decree of Cyrus, called a dichrona (memorandum, an Aramaic term parallel to the Hebrew zichron) in Ezra 6:2. Additionally, the punishment Darius issues for interfering with the building of the Temple, I also issue an order that whoever alters this decree shall have a beam removed from his house, and he shall be impaled on it and his house confiscated (Ezra 6:11), recalls the punishment of Haman, So they impaled Haman on the beam (Esther 7:10) and Mordecai was put in charge of Haman’s property (Esther 8:2). Furthermore, as in the punishment stated by Darius, the beam that Haman was impaled on was from his house (Esther 7:9). Note that “impaling was a Persian practice…generally reserved for the most serious crimes, especially sedition,” … adding an additional irony to the Tattenai reversal. While initially Tattenai accused the Jews of possible rebellion, Darius responds that failure to support the construction of the Temple will in fact make him accountable for treason!
The Targum was sensitive to this parallel between Tattenai and Haman, and so further connected the narratives by making Zeresh the daughter of Tattenai. When we read, There Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had befallen him. His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him: ‘If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish stock, you will not overcome him, you will fall before him to your ruin’ (Esther 6:13), the question arises, how was Zeresh so sure that Haman would not be able to succeed against a Jew? The answer provided by the Targum is that she knew this from her own experience, seeing her father fail against the Jews at the time of the rebuilding of the Temple. ….
Mackey’s comment: In my estimation, Haman had already been executed before Darius’s response to Tattenai.
Zvi Ron continues:
From this perspective, the plot structure itself draws a comparison between Tattenai and Haman, backing the view expressed in Rashi that Tattenai was indeed an enemy of the Jews.
CONCLUSION Despite the fact that in the Tattenai narrative “the officials give the impression of being about their regular business, reporting on possibly significant developments in the territory under their jurisdiction, and having no axe to grind in local disputes between Judeans and Samaritans” and that the language used “is not charged with any antagonism,”… as noted by Malbim, we have seen that the plot structure of the episode links Tattenai to Haman, an idea reflected in Targum Rishon, and leads to the understanding that Tattenai is indeed to be counted among the many adversaries of the Jews.
“And Mordecai the Jew was next in rank to King Ahasuerus. He was a man
held in respect among the Jews, esteemed by thousands of his brothers, a man
who sought the good of his people and cared for the welfare of his entire race”.
Esther 10:3
With the assistance of a significantly revised Neo-Babylonian dynasty through to the early Medo-Persian period, I have been able historically to identify the wicked King Belshazzar of Daniel 5 as King Evil-Merodach, son of Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’, and the un-named second ruler in Belshazzar’s kingdom as Jehoiachin (or Coniah), whom Evil-Merodach had exalted over the other princes in Babylon (2 Kings 25:27-30).
These are all historically verifiable kings.
Now, if Jehoiachin (Coniah) is also, as I have identified him:
then that leads us into the Book of Esther, and to Mordecai, who, with Queen Esther herself, would expose the machinations of this Haman.
Is there any evidence that this Mordecai, too, was a real historical person?
There may be. David J. Clines, in his article “The Quest for the Historical Mordecai”:
https://www.academia.edu/2454296/The_Quest_for_the_Historical_Mordecai , writes of one “Marduka” in Susa during the Persian period whom various scholars have considered as a possible candidate for Mordecai. I am interested here in what Clines writes about these various opinions, since Clines himself seems pre-disposed to dismiss the Book of Esther as merely “a romance”:
…. it appears to be necessary to insist that evidence for a Persian official at Susa named Marduka, if that is really what we have, is next to useless in any debate about a historical Mordecai. For if on other grounds it seems probable that the book of Esther is a romance and not a historical record, it is quite irrelevant to the larger question of the historicity of the writing to discover that one of its characters bears a name attested for a historical person. Fictitious characters usually do. ….
Clines tells of these other estimations of Marduka:
In the standard works, commentaries, encyclopaedias and monographs, wherever the historicity of the Book of Esther is discussed, there is usually to be found some reference to the possible extra-biblical evidence for Mordecai. Here is an extract from a typical encyclopaedia article in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible:
Reference must be made to a single undated cuneiform document from the Persian period, found at Borsippa, which refers to a certain Marduka who was a finance officer of some sort in the Persian court at Susa during the reign of Xerxes I. While a connection between such an individual and the Mordecai of the book of Esther is in no sense established, the possibility of such a historical event as is related in Esther cannot be dismissed out of hand. ….
Carey A. Moore, the author of the Anchor Bible commentary on Esther, is a little more positive about the implications of the reference to Marduka. This official, who ‘served as an accountant on an inspection tour from Susa’, could be, he suggests, ‘the biblical Mordecai because, in all likelihood, Mordecai was an official of the king prior to his being invested in [Est.] 8.2 with the powers previously conferred on Haman’. To Moore, ‘at first glance all of this seems rather persuasive, if not conclusive’. While he is indeed careful to point out the uncertainties that surround the identification of Marduka with Mordecai, he nevertheless concludes that
since the epigraphic evidence concerning Marduka certainly prevents us from categorically ruling out as pure fiction the Mordecai episodes in the Book of Esther, it is safest for us to conclude that the story of Mo[r]decai may very well have to it a kernel of truth. ….
Robert Gordis, rather more boldly, appears to have no reservations whatever about the identification of Mordecai with Marduka.
For him, the attestation of the names Marduka and Mrdk … is ‘the strongest support thus far for the historical character of the book’. …. He writes:
A Persian text dating from the last years of Darius I or the early years of Xerxes I mentions a government official in Susa named Marduka, who served as an inspector on an official tour … [T]he phrase yōšēbbĕša‘arhammelekh, ‘sitting in the king’s gate,’ which is applied to Mordecai repeatedly in the book, indicates his role as a judge or a minor official in the Persian court before his elevation to the viziership.
The conclusion to be drawn is rather obvious:
That there were two officials with the same name at the same time in the same place is scarcely likely. ….
From Edwin M. Yamauchi we even gain the impression that the identification of Marduka with Mordecai has now become the consensus scholarly view:
Mardukâ is listed as a sipîr (‘an accountant’) who makes an inspection tour of Susa during the last years of Darius or early years of Xerxes. It is Ungnad’s conviction that ‘it is improbable that there were two Mardukas serving as high officials in Susa.’ He therefore concludes that this individual is none other than Esther’s uncle. This conclusion has been widely accepted. ….
Siegfried H. Horn concurs:
The result of this disco[c]very has been a more favorable attitude toward the historicity of the book of Esther in recent years, as attested by several Bible dictionaries and commentaries published during the last decade. ….
So secure is the identification of Mordecai with Marduka in his eyes that he can even invite us to reconstruct the personal history of Mordecai on the basis of what we know about Marduka:
It is quite obvious that Mordecai, before he became gatekeeper of the palace, must already have had a history of civil service in which he had proved himself to be a trusted official … the trusted councillor of [t]he mighty satrap Uštannu, whom he accompanied on his official journeys.
Since my re-setting of Mordecai’s engagement with Haman has it occurring far earlier than the standard time for it, in the reign of “Xerxes” (C5th BC) – and nearer to the return from Captivity – it thus becomes necessary to demonstrate a compatible revised chronology of Marduka.
Now there was a man that dwelt in Babylon, and his name was Joakim:
And he took a wife whose name was Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah,
a very beautiful woman, and one that feared God. For her parents being just,
had instructed their daughter according to the Law of Moses. Now Joakim was
very rich, and had an orchard near his house: and the Jews resorted to him,
because he was the most honourable of them all.
Daniel 13:1-4
When in the process of searching for greater information about Mordecai in the Bible it occurred to me that a possible candidate for him might be Joakim the well-respected husband of Susanna.
Admittedly, I have very little to go on here, considering the brevity of the information provided about Joakim in the Story of Susanna.
Joakim was apparently a Jew, as was Mordecai (Esther 2:5): “Now in the citadel of Susa there lived a Jew called Mordecai son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin …”, and a man of great standing.
Joakim, as “a man that dwelt in Babylon”, was apparently also of the Babylonian Captivity, as was Mordecai (2:6), “who had been deported from Jerusalem among the captives taken away with Jeconiah king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”.
Joakim was a contemporary of a young Daniel, who figures prominently in the Story of Susanna (Daniel 13:45). Mordecai was taken into captivity about a decade after Daniel had been, “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah” (Daniel 1:1).
{That does make for a very tight chronology for Daniel, though, who was apparently still “a young boy”, or a “young youth”, or “young man”, in the Story of Susanna}.
Joakim “was very rich”. Mordecai, according to The Legends of the Jews (V. 4), “became a wealthy man”.
Joakim, since his house was used for “matters of judgment” (Daniel 13:6), may himself have been a judge, as we found was likely the case with Marduka (= Mordecai?).
Joakim is a figure very much in the background in the Story of Susanna, in which young Daniel comes to the fore. And Mordecai, too, tended to work quietly behind the scenes, advising his niece, Queen Esther, whilst Haman and King Ahasuerus will take centre stage.
Joakim was well respected by many amongst the Jews, he being “the most honourable of them all”. And this we read similarly about Mordecai (Esther 10:1-3):
King Xerxes imposed tribute throughout the empire, to its distant shores. And all his acts of power and might, together with a full account of the greatness of Mordecai, whom the king had promoted, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Media and Persia? Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Xerxes, preeminent among the Jews, and held in high esteem by his many fellow Jews, because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews.
“The Talmud says that this must be a euphemism, since wives,
not daughters, sleep in men’s “bosoms”.”
Following on my identification of the well-respected Jew in Babylon, Joakim, with the Jew, Mordecai, and his wife Susanna, with Esther, I find further Jewish testimony in favour of Mordecai as the husband of Queen Esther. Thus, for instance, professor B. Barry Levy has written: http://thetorah.com/what-was-esthers-relationship-to-mordechai/
What was Esther’s Relationship to Mordechai?
Biblical, Traditional, and Not-So-Traditional Interpretations
What was the biological relationship between Esther and Mordechai? Were they cousins or uncle and niece? And was Mordechai Esther’s adoptive father or even her husband?
The Biblical Evidence: Cousins and Adoptive Father
Esther 2:7 He (=Mordechai) was foster father to Hadassah—that is, Esther—his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The maiden was shapely and beautiful; and when her father and mother died, Mordechai adopted her as his own daughter.
According to the Megillah, Esther is the daughter of Mordechai’s uncle, and thus, Esther and Mordechai are first cousins. When she was orphaned, Mordechai adopted her.
Ostensibly, that should close the matter, but as almost anyone who has visited a school at Purim time (or has discussed the matter with his children or grandchildren) knows, it is not that simple.
Mordechai as Esther’s Husband
תנא משום רבי מאיר: אל תקרי לבת אלא לבית.
A Tanna taught in the name of R. Meir: “Read not ‘for a daughter’ [le-bat], but ‘for a house’ [le-bayit].”
וכן הוא אומר ולרש אין כל כי אם כבשה אחת קטנה אשר קנה ויחיה ותגדל עמו ועם בניו יחדו מפתו תאכל ומכסו תשתה ובחיקו תשכב ותהי לו כבת.
Similarly, it says: But the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had brought up and reared; and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own morsel, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.
משום דבחיקו תשכב הוות ליה (לבת) [כבת]? אלא (לבית) [כבית] – הכי נמי לבית.
Because it lay in his bosom, was it like a daughter to him? Rather what it means is like a wife; so here, it means a wife.
The Talmud presents a two-step argument.
A. The term bat is understood as bayyit, which often carries the meaning “wife” in rabbinic exegesis. In fact, a common word for “wife” in the Talmud’s Aramaic is “דביתהו,” meaning “of his house.” The second generation Amora Yossi ben Chalafta, actually sites this as “good practice” (Ruth Rabba, parasha 2):
א”ר יוסי בן חלפתא מימי לא קריתי לאשתי אשתי ולביתי ביתי אלא לאשתי ביתי ולביתי אשתי
R. Yossi ben Chalfta said: “Never in my life have I referred to my wife as ‘my wife’ or my house as ‘my house.’ Rather, [I always refer to] my wife as ‘my house’ and my house as ‘my wife.’”
B. To support this reading, the Talmud sites Nathan’s parable of the poor man with his pet sheep, which he allowed to sleep in his “bosom” and treated like a “daughter.” The Talmud says that this must be a euphemism, since wives, not daughters, sleep in men’s “bosoms.” Hence we see that the word בת can refer to a wife.
A Linguistic Buttressing of the Midrash
Rabbi Meir presents us with an al tiqre-style midrash, which substitutes one word for a similar-sounding biblical one.
True, the words bat and bayyit don’t sound all that alike, but it may be that a phonetic variant is at work undergirding this midrash. Specifically, certain pieces of evidence point us to the probability that in many dialects of Hebrew (and Aramaic) the yod was actually pronounced more like the glottal stop (a slight throat click) of an aleph than as an English Y.
Biblical proper names beginning with the letter yod were often rendered in other languages as if they began with aleph, suggesting that that is how they were actually pronounced. A good example is Yisra’el, transcribed as Isra’el in Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and other languages.[2]
Ancient Samarian ostraca spell “wine” as ין, not יין, though the Greek cognate oinos may be evidence of the yod’s presence.[3]
In various targumim we also find third-person imperfect verb forms that are spelled with initial aleph, not the expected yod.[4]
Mishnah Baba Qama 1:1 states כל שחבתי בשמירתו… as opposed to כל שחייבתי. The Talmud (b. BQ 6a) suggests that the tanna was a Jerusalemite and therefore spoke with a clipped yod.[5]
Thus, bat and bayyit may have been phonetically equivalent to the authors of the midrash, perhaps even sounding identical. Thus, to a listener, Mordechai taking Esther le-bat could have carried either or both of these meanings.[6]
Mordechai as Esther’s Uncle
No traditional rabbinic text claims that Mordechai was Esther’s uncle, but the idea has both popular currency[7] and support in early texts. The earliest source for this may be Josephus, who writes:
Now among the many who were gathered together, there was found in Babylon a girl who had lost both parents and was being brought up in the home of her uncle (θεῖος), his name being Mordechai (Antiquities of the Jews, 9:198).[8]
The same interpretation appears in Jerome’s Latin translation (the Vulgate), which says that Esther was the daughter of Mordechai’s brother (filiae fratris) in 2:7 and similarly refers to Avichayil, Esther’s father, as Mordechai’s brother (Abiahil fratris Mardochei). The Vulgate is the standard biblical text used by Catholics, and thus in the Catholic tradition Esther is described as Mordechai’s niece.
As Josephus has not had the same effect on popular culture as the Vulgate, it seems likely that the Jewish sources that describe Mordechai as Esther’s uncle may have been influenced by the Catholic version of the biblical text, though they are probably not aware of this.
Conclusion: Influence of Outside Sources
If in the case of Esther and Mordechai, the use of the Vulgate is unintentional (i.e., picked up unconsciously from the surrounding culture, perhaps as a consequence of the age disparity between them).
Nevertheless, when we comb through rabbinic texts, we can see that many medieval rabbis (even some Ashkenazim) made use of “non-traditional” sources,[9] including the Septuagint, the Peshitta, the Apocrypha, and, yes, even the Vulgate.
Delores Elliott from Courtenay, British Columbia wrote:
Dear Rabbi,
We are confused. Some Rabbis contend that Esther was Mordecai’s wife and if she was, that raises a lot of legal questions and yet in Holy Scriptures we cannot find anything except that she was raised by him and that she was like his daughter! Help! Am I missing something here? Thank you so much. We enjoy your answers and have been collecting them in a notebook to refer back to for answers.
Dear Delores Elliott,
The Book of Esther says, “And he adopted Haddasah, i.e., Esther…and when her mother and father died, Mordechai took her to him as a daughter.” (Esther 2)
There are three apparent snags in this verse. First, since the verse says that Mordechai “adopted Haddasah,” why does it seem to repeat the fact that he “took her to him as a daughter?” Isn’t that the same thing? Second, there is no legal status of “adoptive parent” in Judaism; that is, you raise an orphan girl in your home, but you don’t “take her as a daughter.” Finally and most notably, “took her to him” is always used in the Torah to refer to marriage.
Literally, then, the verse is saying that he married her.
Why does it use the term “daughter?” The terms “sister” and “daughter” are common expressions of endearment, as we see in other places in the Torah (e.g., Ruth 2:8, Shir Hashirim 4:9) and Talmud (e.g., Shabbat 13b). The idea is that a husband and wife should develop a loving and giving relationship as one naturally has with one’s child and sibling.
So, it’s not hard to see how the Talmudic Sages saw in this verse support for the oral tradition that says Mordechai, Esther’s cousin, was also her husband.
According to Rabbinic traditions, the two lustful elders who accused Susanna were the same persons as two wicked judges referred to and named by the prophet Jeremiah (29:21-23):
“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says about Ahab
son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying lies
to you in my name: ‘I will deliver them into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will put them to death before your very eyes. Because of them, all the exiles from Judah who are in Babylon will use
this curse: ‘May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the
king of Babylon burned in the fire.’ For they have done outrageous things
in Israel; they have committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives,
and in my name they have uttered lies—which I did not authorize.
I know it and am a witness to it,’ declares the Lord”.
The colourful account of Susanna and the two elders is well summarised by Jennifer A. Glancy of the Jewish Women’s Archive:
The brief, self-contained story of Susanna appears in Greek but not Hebrew manuscripts of the Book of Daniel. Most modern editions of the Bible include it among the Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books as Daniel 13. Although readers will respond to and remember most vividly Susanna and her predicament, the story’s conclusion emphasizes Daniel’s emergence as a young figure of wisdom. On account of this, some ancient Greek versions place the Book of Susanna before Daniel 1.
The text first introduces Joakim, a wealthy man living in the Babylonian diaspora (Greek for “scattered abroad,” Jews who lived outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile of 587 b.c.e.). Joakim, however, plays a minimal role in the unfolding of the story.
Susanna’s introduction defines her in terms of her relationships to two men, as wife of Joakim and daughter of Hilkiah, and tells that she is beautiful and righteous and was trained “according to the law of Moses” by her parents (vv. 2–3).
Joakim’s house functions as a courthouse for the Jewish community.
Two elders who serve there as judges separately develop lustful feelings toward Susanna, whom they spy walking in the garden when the house empties at midday for the community to go to their own homes for lunch (vv. 8–12). One day the two elders catch each other lingering behind in order to watch Susanna, and they conspire together to entrap her (vv. 13–14).
On a hot day Susanna decides to bathe in the garden (v. 15). She believes herself to be alone with her maids because the elders have concealed themselves (v. i6). When Susanna sends her maids away to bring ointments for her bath (vv. 17–18), the elders reveal themselves and try to coerce her into sexual relations. They say that, unless she lies with them, they will testify that she sent her maids away in order to be with a young lover (vv. 19–21). Susanna’s dilemma is this: to submit to the elders is to disobey the law of Moses, which she has been raised to follow, but to resist the elders is to invite the death penalty for adultery (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). She articulates her decision, “I choose not to do it; I will fall into your hands, rather than sin in the sight of the Lord” (v. 23). Susanna cries aloud, and so do the elders (v. 24). Their shouting attracts members of the household (v. 26), specifically identified as “servants,” who, when they hear the elders’ story, are “very much ashamed, for nothing like this had ever been said about Susanna” (v. 27).
Susanna’s trial occurs on the following day at her home, described as “the house of her husband Joakim” (v. 28). Susanna comes before the two elders and the people, accompanied by her parents, her children, and other unspecified relatives—her husband is not mentioned (vv. 29–30). The lascivious elders ask that she be unveiled so that they may continue to look at her (v. 32). Those who weep with her weep at this disgrace (v. 33), which in Theodotion’s version amounts to an unveiling of Susanna’s face. (The NRSV follows Theodotion, an alternate Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.) In the Septuagint version, Susanna is stripped naked, in accordance with ritual Jewish law (Ezek 16:37–30; Hos 2:3–10). The elders proceed with their accusations (v. 34). They claim that they saw Susanna in the garden, embracing a young lover whose strength enabled him to elude them as they attempted to detain him; they further claim that Susanna has refused to cooperate in naming the lover (vv. 36–41a). Because of the credibility of the elders in the community, the assembly believes them and condemns Susanna to death (v. 41b).
No one offers testimony on Susanna’s behalf. She, however, turns to heaven for help, crying aloud to God that she is innocent (vv. 42–43). The text records, “The Lord heard her cry” (v. 44). Just as Susanna is being taken to her death, God stirs “the holy spirit of a young lad named Daniel” (v. 45). Announcing that he cannot be part of Susanna’s execution (v. 46), he asks the assembly for the right to cross-examine the elders (vv. 47–49). Before the reassembled court, Daniel separates the two elders and questions each about the location of the lovers’ intimacies. The first elder identifies a mastic tree (v. 54) as the site of the illicit coupling, and the second elder identifies an evergreen oak (v. 58). Daniel thus reveals their deceit and the innocence of Susanna, “a daughter of Judah,” a descendant of southern Judah (v. 57). The two elders are then sentenced to the fate they intended for their victim: death (v. 62).
… the first half of the story rests on a tradition regarding two elders (Ahab and Zedekiah) who seduced certain women by persuading them that they would thus become the mother of the Messiah. This tradition has its origin probably in Jer 29:21-23, where it is said that Yahweh would sorely punish Ahab and Zedekiah because they had “committed villany in Israel,” having “committed adultery with their neighbours’ wives” ….
On the basis of all of the above, we may be able to give names to Susanna’s ill-fated accusers:
Ahab and Zedekiah.
The German orientalist, Georg Heinrich August Ewald (d. 1875), had thought that the account of the two lustful elders who were infatuated with Susanna must have been inspired by a Babylonian tale involving the goddess of love and two old men.
Once again, however, this is a case of biblical historians and commentators presuming that a given biblical story was inevitably dependent upon a pagan myth (or myths) of a similar theme.
Ewald (Geschichte(3), IV, 386) believed that [the story of Susanna] was suggested by the Babylonian legend in which two old men are seduced by the goddess of love (compare Koran 2 96). ….
Looking at this Koran (Qur’ān) reference, 2:96, I find:
And you will surely find them the most greedy of people for life – [even] more than those who associate others with Allah . One of them wishes that he could be granted life a thousand years, but it would not remove him in the least from the [coming] punishment that he should be granted life. And Allah is Seeing of what they do.
Whilst I myself am unaware of the Babylonian legend to which Ewald referred, I would find it very intriguing if this Babylonian “goddess of love” was Ishtar herself – as I think she must have been.
My reason for saying this will become clear later, as I proceed to develop a wider identity for Susanna in a biblical context.
Commentators have picked up some striking likenesses between the story of Susanna (in the Book of Daniel) and the drama surrounding Queen Esther.
G.J. Steyn, for instance, has discovered some “striking similarities” between, not only Susanna and Esther – of relevance to this present article – but also including the Jewish heroine, Judith. Here I take just two short portions from Steyn’s most insightful article (pp. 167-168):
Esther requests that her people fast and pray three days and nights for her and then she will approach the king without being summoned by him – which is against the royal custom. If she then dies, she dies (4:16). Esther then uses her mightiest weapon, her beauty, as an instrument to save her people.
Judith took a similar decision as Esther by going voluntarily into the presence of the very man who seeks to destroy her people. She went forth, out of the city gates and down the mountain (10:9-10). Her beauty gave her entry past the soldiers (10:14, 19, 23), right into the tent of Holofernes, the chief captain of the Assyrian army (10:17, 20-21). She stays three days in the camp (12:7) and beheaded Holofernes the fourth night, passing again by the Assyrian soldiers.
Susanna knows very well that whatever her decision would be, she is destined to die (Sus 1:22). She “sighed” (… Sus 1:22) and “cried with a loud voice” (… Sus 1:24). She chose to turn down the advances of the two elders rather “than to sin in the sight of the Lord” (… Sus 1:23).
and:
TRUST IN GOD AND PRAYER
Esther approached God in her moments of fear and anxiety and expressed her trust in God. This becomes clear from the contents of her prayer in LXX Addition C (14:1-19): “… she prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and said: O my Lord, you alone are our King. Help me in desolation – not having a helper, but you. For my danger is in my hand (… 14:3-4); “You are righteous, O Lord!” (… 14:7); “O King of the gods and of all powers” (… 14:12).
Judith confesses her trust in the Lord when she spoke to the elders of the city … (Jud 8:20). Her trust in God surfaces again in her prayer … (Jud 9:7-8).
Susanna too, approached God in her moment of fear on her way to be executed. She prays to the “everlasting God” (… Sus 1:42) who knows all secrets and who knows the false witness that was borne against her (Sus 1:42-43).
Having previously touched briefly upon the similarities between the story
of Susanna (in the Book of Daniel) and the drama narrated in the Book of Esther, I take matters a step further here, testing a possible identification of Susanna
with Esther.
Those “striking similarities” between Susanna and Esther, previously noted, might lead one to consider whether there might even be an actual identification of person here as well.
I seem to find solid arguments for and against such a conclusion.
Joakim
The connecting linkbetween the two dramas may be (if accurate) my identification of Joakim with the great Mordecai.
Such a connection, however, would also raise some real queries with regard to Queen Esther.
She, generally considered to have been a
beautiful (2:7)
young
virgin, (2:2)
raised as a daughter by Mordecai (2:7), would now, all of a sudden, need to be significantly reconsidered as a, still
beautiful, but
not so young,
married woman
with kids (“her children”, 1:30 Sus. RSV).
Such an apparently unorthodox reconsideration of the famous biblical queen is not, however, without its support (at least regarding Esther’s marriage to Mordecai) in Aggadic tradition. According to, for instance, Tamar Meir’s article “Esther: Midrash and Aggadah”, this tradition “casts the Biblical narrative in a different light”:
The Babylonian tradition maintains that Esther was Mordecai’s wife. Esth. 2:7 states: “Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter [literally: took her le-vat],” which the midrash understands as: Mordecai took her le-bayit, that is, as a wife (BT Megillah loc. cit.). This exegesis casts the Biblical narrative in a different light. Esther was taken to the royal harem despite her being married, which further aggravated her sorry condition. This also leads to a different understanding of Mordecai’s involvement, as he walks about in the royal courtyard out of concern for his wife.
[End of quote]
There may have been some unusual situation here.
And there was indeed, according to an article, “Thematic irony in the story of Susanna”:
This first episode consists of the introduction to Susanna (1−4), which includes the introduction of her family, her husband and the two elders (5−6), as well as the emergence of the conflict (7−14).
In particular, it focuses on Susanna’s beauty and godliness on the one hand and the elders’ wickedness on the other hand. In this comparison lies the irony. The episode contains, as will be demonstrated shortly, remarkable ironic words, expressions and incidents. Most of these ironic utterances consist of the reversed use of social conventions.
The first ironic expression concerns the relationship between Susanna and her husband, expressed by the verb λαμβάνω [to take, to acquire] (cf. v. 2). There is no doubt that, in the context of the ancient Jewish patriarchal society, this verb portrays a marital relationship between husband and wife in terms of possessor and possession (Di Lella 1984:332−334, 1995:39; see also Liddell & Scott 1996:1026; Delling 2000:5; Bauer et al. 2000:583). In this environment, λαμβάνω would normally indicate the ascendancy of the husband over his wife and presupposes the insertion of the woman in her husband’s family (Fuller 2001:339) and not the contrary.
The use of λαμβάνω in this case, however, seems to contradict these established patriarchal practices.
In actual fact, the relationship between Susanna and her husband, as depicted in the story, does entail the prominence of the woman. Firstly, according to the story, Jewish identity is related to the practice of the Law of Moses, piety (Kanonge 2009a:381). It is strange that nothing is said about Joakim’s piety. Besides, Susanna has a genealogy, or at least her father is named, but Joakim’s father does not appear (Moore 1977:94). In Biblical traditions, ‘genealogies can express social status, political power, economic strength, legal standing, ownership …’ (Wilson 1979:19). To have no genealogy is to be less important in a community. It seems, from this story and specifically from verse 63, that Susanna is more important in the community than her husband. In fact, according to the abovementioned verse (63), she is not inserted in her husband’s family, but the contrary is assumed. According to Archer (Ilan 1993:55), women named after their father were either ‘divorced or widowed’. This is not the case here. Indeed, Susanna is being prioritised here at the expense of her husband. It is remarkable that the normal familial order, as accepted in patriarchal societies, is changed with the reading as follows: Σουσαννας μετὰ Ιωακιμ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς [Susanna with Joakim her husband]. This order is unusual in patriarchal traditions where the husband is supposed to take the lead in everything. There is an overturned use of social conventions.
….
Susanna, living as she did during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, would seem to have been far too early for her – according to conventional estimations – to be identifiable as Queen Esther, supposedly living deeply into Persian history.
My streamlined version of the Chaldean to Medo-Persian history, though, as outlined in this article and developed elsewhere, for example in:
has greatly shortened the chronological distance between king Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’ and the Medo-Persians, with Nebuchednezzar’s death occurring, now, only a handful of years before the emergence of Darius the Mede – he, in turn, being my choice for the Book of Esther’s great monarch:
King Ahasuerus
Darius the Mede was already an old man when he came to the throne (Daniel 5:31): “So Darius the Mede received the kingdom at about the age of sixty-two”.
Any consideration of the age of Queen Esther – which will be an issue in this present article – may need to factor in the age of the Great King whom she married.
Although historical chronology is no longer a major issue according to my revised context, the actual age of participants in the drama – the young Daniel, and lovely Susanna in connection with Queen Esther – will be. It has already been determined that Queen Esther, if she were also Susanna, would have been a married woman with children of her own, and, hence, not a virgin.
That her husband was none other than Mordecai himself – which comes as quite a surprise – is borne out, though, as we have learned, by an Aggadic tradition.
Ages of Daniel, Susanna (and Esther)
Taking the Vulgate Latin version of the story of Susanna in the Book of Daniel, we find Daniel himself described as puer junior, which would appear to indicate an extremely young male, and which is translated as “young boy”. According to my Latin dictionary junior equates with juvenis. Though this description tends to indicate a male up to the age of 17, it is “frequently used of older persons … 20th – 40th year”.
That gives us a lot more leeway in the case of Daniel.
Say he was, as some estimate, 14-15 years of age when taken into captivity, his intervention in the case of Susanna could have occurred – in light of the above “20th-40th year” – as late as approximately the 25th year of Nebuchednezzar.
Susanna, with children, must have been, say, 20 at the time, and, if so, about 38 at the death of Nebuchednezzar. By about the 3rd year of Ahasuerus (Esther 1:3), when she – if as Esther – was chosen, she would have been in her 40’s – likewise when married in the 7th year (2:16).
King Ahasuerus would have been, by then (his 7th year), nudging 70.
The Vulgate gives the females chosen for the king as (Esther 2:3) puellas speciosas et virgines.
The Septuagint Greek has, for the same verse, κοράσια (young women) άφθορα, which can mean “unblemished”. When Tamar (Themar) is called a “virgin” in the Greek II Kings 13:2, the word used is a different one, “parthenos” (παρθένος).
Esther herself is never directly referred to as a virgin. She is pulchra nimis et decora facie (“exceedingly beautiful and becoming”).
In Esther 2:7, “Esther [is] … quoque inter ceteras puellas”. The Latin word puella (singular) may indicate married or not.
And in Esther 2:9, the short-list is now septem puellas speciosissimas (“seven most beautiful women”).
The outstanding woman, Esther, had made an early impression (2:8-9):
Esther also was taken to the king’s palace and entrusted to Hegai, who had charge of the harem. She pleased him and won his favor. Immediately he provided her with her beauty treatments and special food. He assigned to her seven female attendants selected from the king’s palace and moved her and her attendants into the best place in the harem.
Presumably eunuch Hegai’s action was prompt and ‘immediate’ because he had appreciated the true quality of Esther, and not because – as necessitated in the case of the woman who went to the plastic surgeon because she had a wrinkled face and crow’s feet (but came out with wrinkled feet and a crow’s face) – she had lost her looks.
Women in their 40’s can still be beautiful.
Having accounted for the tricky matter of age, those similarities between the story of Susanna and the Book of Esther that we have already discussed – and those between Susanna and Esther – can now really kick in.
In both cases we encounter a beautiful and pious woman, a Jew (cf. Susanna 13:57; Esther 2:7), who had been taught the Law by her parents (cf. Susanna 13:3; Esther 14:5), who, as we read previously, trusted fully in the Lord, and was prepared to die rather than to compromise herself.
My conclusion in this article has been that the Susanna in Daniel became
Queen Esther. But this conclusion now presents us with three names:
Susanna, Hadassah and Esther, since, as we are informed (Esther 2:7): “… Hadassah … was also known as Esther”.
Making Sense of the Names
There are a stream of similarities running through the Story of Susanna and the Book of Esther.
The Story of Susanna commences (13:1):
“Now there was a man that dwelt in Babylon, and his name was Joakim …”.
Whilst, according to Esther 2:5:
“Now there was in the citadel of Susa a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, named Mordecai …”.
In this article I have identified, as one, this “Joakim” in Babylon with this “Mordecai” in Susa.
The Babylonian (Chaldean) era had come and gone and Joakim, now as Mordecai, lived under a Medo-Persian king, in Susa. The great man had two names, the one Hebrew, Joakim (i.e., Yehoyaqim,יְהוֹיָקִם , “raised by God”), and the other his given Babylonian name: “The Talmud (Menachot 64b and 65a) relates that his full name was “Mordechai Bilshan” (which occurs in Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7). Hoschander interpreted this as the Babylonian marduk-bel-shunu meaning “Marduk is their lord”, “Mordecai” being thus a hypocorism”.
In the same way we can account for the name, “Esther”, the foreign name given to our heroine in Babylonian captivity (as in the Story of Susanna). The name is generally considered to derive from the Mesopotamian goddess (of fertility, love, war, sex and power), Ishtar, the same as the biblical Astarte.
Previously, I had referred to Ewald’s view that the account of the two lustful elders, who accused Susanna, had its counterpart in a legend involving the Babylonian “goddess of love”, who I presumed to be Ishtar. Thus I wrote:
Whilst I myself am unaware of the Babylonian legend to which Ewald referred, I would find it very intriguing if this Babylonian “goddess of love” was Ishtar herself – as I think she must have been. My reason for saying this will become clear later in this article, as I proceed to develop a wider identity for Susanna in a biblical context.
My conclusion would be – unlike Ewald’s – that the Babylonian legend had derived from the Story of Susanna. And this Susanna, I have argued, became Queen Esther, whose name arose from the pagan “goddess of love”, Ishtar.
Queen Esther, Ishtar-udda-sha (“Ishtar is her light”) and, thereby, Hadassah (-udda-sha), had the Hebrew name of Susanna, the husband of Joakim (= Mordecai).
That leaves us to account for the name “Susanna”, literally meaning “lilly”.
Susan is a feminine given name, from French Susanne, from Late Latin Susanna, from Greek Sousanna, from Hebrew Šošanna, literally meaning “lily“,[1] a term derived from Susa (Persian: Šuš), a city in southwest Iran that was the ancient capital of the Elamite kingdom and Achaemenid empire.[2]
“Easter begins by upsetting our expectations”, according to pope Francis.
Our God is a God of surprises. He upsets our ancestral traditions, good as some of those may appear to be. ‘You have heard it said …. But I tell you’.
Pray for your enemies; don’t lust after any person; restrain your anger.
The Hebrews thought that they had God pretty well worked out (as do today’s Fundamentalist Christians; ISIS; theoretical physicists). He was basically like they were. All you need to say is ‘’God [Allah] wills it”, and He just falls into line. He made us in his own image and likeness. Why not now re-make him in ours?
Scientists can turn God into a complex (though completely meaningless) mathematical equation, then declare that they have Him fully defined.
Job’s three friends, likewise, had God all (mathematically) cut and dried:
The Lord rewards the good and punishes the wicked – even in this life.
That idea was still circulating at the time of the Apostles (cf. John 9:1-3), who themselves apparently had not learned the lesson of their ancient Book of Job.
No, that old saying is clearly not true, exclaimed the righteous Job, who had grown up with this kind of thinking, but who now had serious cause to reject it. He was righteous – {had not God even declared him to be such?} – yet here was God attacking Job as if he were His own mortal enemy.
Well, you must have strayed from your formerly righteous ways, declared the three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. So now God is justly punishing you. Repent and return to what you were like before, and all will be well with you again, and with your family.
It was left to the wise young Elihu (was he the contemporary prophet Ezekiel?) to correct these three older ‘sages’, and to serve as something of a bridge between Job and God.
…..
But why focus so much upon the prophet Job in an article presumably about Habakkuk?
Well, you see, Habakkuk was Job!
Habakkuk (a name only a mother could love) was grappling with the same sort of problem that had so occupied the mind of Job (also of Jeremiah). Basically, it was ‘the problem of evil’, which a quick glance at the Internet tells is this:
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil
and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.
Specifically, Job-Habakkuk was wondering why God, who the prophet dearly wanted to be God, and to act like God (Habakkuk 3:2):
I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known [,]
had seemingly ceased to act like a just God (Habakkuk 1:2-4):
‘How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted’.
We know what you are capable of, Lord. Have not our ancestors passed on to us the accounts of your mighty deeds, such as at the time of the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus. Here we are today oppressed by, not the Egyptians any more, but by those horrible Chaldeans. ‘Do those mighty things again in our day, in our time make them known’.
Had not the Chaldeans, with their basest of kings, Nebuchednezzar (Prayer of Azariah 1:9): ‘And thou didst deliver us into the hands of lawless enemies, most hateful forsakers of God, and to an unjust king, and the most wicked in all the world’,
who were making life miserable for Habakkuk and his compatriots, been the same people who had despoiled the hapless Job at the beginning of his troubles? (Job 1:17):
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,
‘The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels
and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’
This is clear evidence that the elderly Job (young Tobias of the Book of Tobit) had belonged to the same era of Habakkuk, the era of the Chaldeans, and not – as many think and argue – to the Ice Ages, or to the time of the ancient Hebrew patriarchs, or, perhaps, to the Judges.
That name, Habakkuk (close your eyes now and try to spell it).
Habakkuk (חֲבַקּוּק) is not actually a Jewish (Hebrew) name.
It is Akkadian, khabbaququ, the name of a garden herb. We would expect Tobias (Job) to have had an Akkadian name in Nineveh, just as Daniel and his three companions were given Babylonian names (Shadrach looks Elamite, Shutruk).
Strangely, Habakkuk, had never been to Babylon.
Thus he tells the angel, who is about to take him by the hair – the first ever [h]air flight to southern Iraq: ‘Sir, I have never seen Babylon …’.
Daniel 14:33-36:
Now the prophet Habakkuk was in Judea; he had made a stew and had broken bread into a bowl, and was going into the field to take it to the reapers. But the angel of the Lord said to Habakkuk, ‘Take the food that you have to Babylon, to Daniel, in the lions’ den’. Habakkuk said, ‘Sir, I have never seen Babylon, and I know nothing about the den’. Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown of his head and carried him by his hair; with the speed of the wind he set him down in Babylon, right over the den.
As a young man, Tobias, living in Nineveh, had needed an angelic guide, archangel Raphael, to show him the way to “Media” and “Ecbatana” (Bashan), beyond Charan (Haran) (Tobit 11:1, Douay). No doubt the same angel who lifted into the air an older Tobias-Job (= Habakkuk) and carried him to Babylon.
Again, presumably the same being as Job’s mysterious Advocate in heaven (Job 16:19).
the Magi of Matthew 2 definitely could not have been from Persia.
Nor were they likely to have been, as I concluded, non-Israelites:
“Now, from what has gone before, I think that there must be a very good chance that these, too [the Magi] – however many of them there may have been – must have been Israelites, albeit ‘enlightened’, rather than foreigners (gentiles), Persians or Nabateans”.
Even the suggestion that the Magi were Zoroastrians may smack of a Hebrew element.
The Arabic-Christian legends identify Baruch with Zoroaster, and give much information concerning him. Baruch, angry because the gift of prophecy had been denied him, and on account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, left Palestine to found the religion of Zoroaster. The prophecy of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, and of his adoration by the Magi, is also ascribed to Baruch-Zoroaster (compare the complete collection of these legends in Gottheil, in “Classical Studies in Honor of H. Drisler,” pp. 24-51, New York, 1894; Jackson, “Zoroaster,” pp. 17, 165 et seq.). It is difficult to explain the origin of this curious identification of a prophet with a magician, such as Zoroaster was held to be, among the Jews, Christians, and Arabs. De Sacy (“Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi,” ii. 319) explains it on the ground that in Arabic the name of the prophet Jeremiah is almost identical with that of the city of Urmiah, where, it is said, Zoroaster lived. However this may be, the Jewish legend mentioned above (under Baruch in Rabbinical Literature), according to which the Ethiopian in Jer. xxxviii. 7 is undoubtedly identical with Baruch, is connected with this Arabic-Christian legend.
As early as the Clementine “Recognitiones” (iv. 27), Zoroaster was believed to be a descendant of Ham; and, according to Gen. x. 6, Cush, the Ethiopian, is a son of Ham.
It should furthermore be remembered that, according to the “Recognitiones” iv. 28), the Persians believed that Zoroaster had been taken into heaven in a chariot (“ad cœlum vehiculo sublevatum”); and according to the Jewish legend, the above-mentioned Ethiopian was transported alive into paradise (“Derek Ereẓ Zuṭṭa,” i. end), an occurrence that, like the translation of Elijah (II Kings ii. 11), must have taken place by means of a “vehiculum.”
Another reminiscence of the Jewish legend is found in Baruch-Zoroaster’s words concerning Jesus: “He shall descend from my family” (“Book of the Bee,” ed. Budge, p. 90, line 5, London, 1886), since, according to the Haggadah, Baruch was a priest; and Maria, the mother of Jesus, was of priestly family. ….
[End of quote]
The captivating tale of the Magi has been absorbed by other ethnicities-religions.
“At last, in 1937, various expeditions were dispatched from Lhasa to seek out
the holy child according to the heavenly omens, in the direction indicated.
Each group included wise and worthy lamas of highly distinguished status
in the theocracy.
In addition to their servants, each group took costly gifts with them …”.
Interestingly, too, “the holy child” was aged 2 (cf. Matthew 2:16).
Which Israelites could the Magi have been?
We know at least the when of the Magi, the beginning of AD time, reign of Herod.
We also know the where, that they were “from the east” (Matthew 2:1-2):
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’.
If they were Israelites, as I believe they must have been, then what was their east?
Presumably they, like the prophet Job, were living east of the River Jordan (Job:1:2): “[Job] was the greatest man among all the people of the East”.
His home, traditionally, was in Hauran, Ausitis (Uz), where lived the bene qedem.
In the Book of Tobit, it is called “Ecbatana” (Bathania) (Tobit 7:1), which is Bashan.
According to Jewish Virtual Library, article “Kedemites or Easterners”:
KEDEMITES OR EASTERNERS (Heb. בְּנֵי קֶדֶם (benei kedem, bene qedem), adjective qadmoni, קַדְמֹנִי; Gen. 15:19) is a general designation for the peoples living on the eastern border of Syria and Palestine, from as far north as Haran (Gen. 29:1–4) to as far south as the northern end of the Red Sea (Gen. 25:1–6). In Israelite ethnology, all these peoples, and the Ishmaelites as well, who ranged from the border of Egypt to Assyria (i.e., the Middle Euphrates), and who included the inhabitants of Tema and Dumah (Gen. 25:12–18), were all related.
Their center of dispersion was the Middle Euphrates region – called Aram-Naharaim (Gen. 24:10; Deut. 23:5), Paddan-Aram (Gen. 28:2, 5, 6, 7; 31:18 (or Paddan, Gen. 48:7)), “the country Aram” (Hos. 12:13), or simply Aram (Num. 23:7). From here Abraham and Lot moved to Canaan (Gen. 12:5). Lot eventually moved to Transjordan and became the ancestor of Moab and Ammon (Gen. 19:30ff.), while Abraham became the ancestor of all the other Kedemites, including the Ishmaelites, and of the Israelites as well. His son Isaac and the latter’s son Jacob-Israel married wives from Abraham’s original home-land, where Jacob even lived for 20 years.
Hence the confession, “My father was a wandering/ fugitive Aramean who migrated to Egypt” (Deut. 26:5). The Israelites acknowledged all those peoples as their kin in contrast to the Canaanites. The Kedemites enjoyed among the Israelites a great reputation for wisdom. Not only does David quote a Kedemite proverb which he characterizes as such, but the wisdom of the Kedemites is rated only lower than Solomon’s though higher than that of the Egyptians (I Kings 5:10), and Isaiah represents the Egyptian king’s wise men as seeking to impress him by claiming descent from sages of Kedem (this, not “of old,” is the meaning of qedem in Isa. 19:11). ….
[End of quote]
Now, given my re-dating of the Nativity to the time of Judas Maccabeus:
Religious war raging in Judah during the Infancy of Jesus
then we might expect to find the Magi amongst Transjordanian allies of the Maccabees.
In I Maccabees 5 we read of Judas and his army crossing over the Jordan to deliver oppressed Jews, and there occurs the very interesting reference to “the land of Tobias” – that being (the Greek version of) the name of Job.
Also mentioned here is Dathema, that is apparently right in Job-ian territory (Bashan):
DATHEMA ( 1Ma 5:9 ). A fortress in Bashan. It may perhaps be the modern Dâmeh on the S. border of the Lejâ district, N. of Ashteroth-karnaim.
And so we read (vv. 9-23):
Now the nations in Gilead gathered together against the Israelites who lived in their territory and planned to destroy them. But they fled to the stronghold of Dathema and sent to Judas and his brothers letters that said, ‘The nations around us have gathered together to destroy us. They are preparing to come and capture the stronghold to which we have fled, and Timothy is leading their forces.
Now then, come and rescue us from their hands, for many of us have fallen, and all our kindred who were in the land of Tobias have been killed; the enemy have captured their wives and children and goods and have destroyed about a thousand persons there’.
While the letters were still being read, other messengers, with their garments torn, came from Galilee and made a similar report; they said that the people of Ptolemais and Tyre and Sidon and all Galilee of the gentiles had gathered together against them “to annihilate us.” When Judas and the people heard these messages, a great assembly was called to determine what they should do for their kindred who were in distress and were being attacked by enemies. Then Judas said to his brother Simon, ‘Choose your men and go and rescue your kindred in Galilee; Jonathan my brother and I will go to Gilead’. But he left Joseph, son of Zechariah, and Azariah, a leader of the people, with the rest of the forces in Judea to guard it, and he gave them this command, ‘Take charge of this people, but do not engage in battle with the nations until we return’. Then three thousand men were assigned to Simon to go to Galilee and eight thousand to Judas for Gilead.
So Simon went to Galilee and fought many battles against the nations, and the nations were crushed before him.
He pursued them to the gate of Ptolemais; as many as three thousand of the nations fell, and he despoiled them. Then he took the Jews of Galilee and Arbatta, with their wives and children, and all they possessed and led them to Judea with great rejoicing.
Note, moreover, the likeness to the Book of Job 1:16, 17 and 18: “While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said …”, to:
“While the letters were still being read, other messengers, with their garments torn, came from Galilee and made a similar report …” (I Maccabees 5:14).
Did the Magi, like Job’s first generation of children, perish amidst turmoil, or were they still to be found living amongst those “rejoicing” Jews whom Judas Maccabeus led safely “to Judea”? King Herod no longer cast his dark shadow over the kingdom.
Perhaps some Magi had perished at the hands of Timothy, and some had survived.
One can only guess at this stage.
Tobias (Job) had benefitted from family inheritances (Tobit 14:13): “He took respectful care of his aging father-in-law and mother-in-law; and he buried them at Ecbatana …. Then he inherited Raguel’s estate as well as that of his father Tobit”.
He, as Job, would see to it that all of his surviving children likewise benefitted (Job 42:12-15):
The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
Now, in my much shortened revision, there was not much time lapse at all between late Job and the Birth of Jesus Christ.
There are common elements with Job and the Magi; the East; wisdom; purity of gold (e.g., Job 23:10); camels (presumably); expecting a Redeemer (Job 19:25); wealth.
Job (Tobias), whose father, Tobit, had quoted the prophet Amos (Tobit 2:6), would surely have known the Messianic prophecy of Micah, who was this very Amos:
God can raise up prophets at will – even from a shepherd of Simeon
Micah’s prophecy had famously been repeated to King Herod after the Magi had arrived in Jerusalem (Matthew 2:3-6):
When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the Law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea’, they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written:
“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel”.’
Of course the Magi already knew it, but they had gone directly to Jerusalem presuming (I think) that the royal Babe had now grown and would be ensconced in Jerusalem.
Why did the Magi take so long to leave their home?
Perhaps this was due to the turmoil of war that was raging in Israel at the time.
Tobit (1:15) tells his son, Tobias, of the roads being unsafe for travel during the reign of Sennacherib, king of Assyria.
Possibly, the Magi picked up (some of) their gifts for the Messiah in Jerusalem.
It is interesting that the name of one of Job’s daughters, Keziah, or Cassia (42:14), has a close connection with frankincense and myrrh:
“Cassia features in folklore medicine often. It is even included in the Bible with Myrrh, Frankincense, and other oils and herbs”.
Did Matthew (2:11) have Job 42:11 in the back of his mind when writing of the Magi’s visit to “the house”?
All [Job’s] brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. … each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
The road taken by the Magi from “the land of Tobias” to Jerusalem was not to be the way that these wise men (and women?) would return (Matthew 2:12): “… having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route”, avoiding Jerusalem this time.
Intending to head NE, did they make a switch eastwards from the Central Ridge Route to the King’s Highway?
Readers with a good knowledge of ancient biblical roads may be able to help out here.
Conclusion
The when of the Magi – the beginning of AD time, reign of King Herod ‘the Great’ (Maccabean era in my revision).
The where of the Magi – they were “from the east” (Matthew 2:1-2), the Bashan region.
The who of the Magi – certainly enlightened Israelites, likely family of the prophet Job.
Part Two:
What was the bright Star that the Magi saw?
‘Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?
For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him’.
Matthew 2:2
While some of the best efforts to interpret the Magi Star have concluded, as we have read in:
that it was a planet, say, Venus or Jupiter, none, I think, has been able fully to explain it in its precise detail – for example, the fact that “it stopped” (Matthew 2:9):
“After [the Magi] had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was”.
At last I have found an article that, for me, makes proper sense of the Nativity Star.
Matthew Ervin, in December 2013, explained it as the Glory of God.
He uses the word, Shekinah, which, however, is not found in the Bible.
I would prefer:
Glory of the Lord (כְבוֹד יְהוָה), Chevod Yahweh (e.g. 2 Chronicles 7:1).
Theories as to what the Star of Bethlehem was are myriad. The usual answers look to celestial objects ranging from real stars to comets. Indeed, the inquiry has been so wide sweeping that virtually every object appearing in the sky has been posited as the Bethlehem Star. However, when Scripture is examined the identity of the Star is evident. The Greek ἀστέραor astera simply identifies a shining or gleaming object that is translated as star in Matthew 2:1-10. The magi specifically referred to it as, “His star” (v. 2). In addition, the behavior of this Star alone is enough to discount any natural stellar phenomenon. The Star led the magi from the east to the west [sic] toward Jerusalem (vv. 1-4). Then the Star moved from the north to the south in Bethlehem (v. 9). The Star would disappear and then reappear before it finally came to hover over where Jesus was staying (vv. 7-9).
If not a regular stellar object then what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? The synoptic narrative in Luke’s Gospel provides an answer:
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
Luke 2:8-9 (ESV)
The glory of the Lord here is a powerful example of the Shekinah Glory.
This type of glory is a visible manifestation of God’s presence come to dwell among men. The Shekinah was often accompanied by a heavenly host (e.g. Ezek. 10:18-19) and so it was at the birth of Christ (Luke 10:13). The Shekinah Glory declared Messiah’s birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-11). The Star of Bethlehem likewise declared to the magi that Messiah had arrived (Matt. 2:9-10). No doubt this is because Matthew and Luke were describing the same brilliant light in their respective gospels.
Although the Shekinah takes on various appearances in Scripture, it often appears as something very bright. This includes but is not limited to a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), a burning bush (Ex. 3:1-5; Deut. 33:16), a pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. 13:21-22), a cloud with lightning and fire (Ex. 19:16-20), God’s afterglow (His “back”) (Ex. 33:17-23), the transfiguration of Jesus (e.g. Matt. 17:1-8), fire (Acts 2:1-3), a light from heaven (e.g. Acts 9:3-8) and the lamp of New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23-24).
It was the Shekinah Glory that dwelled in the Holy of Holies. It was last in Solomon’s temple but departed as seen by Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4-19; 11:22-23). Haggai prophesied that the Shekinah Glory would return to the temple in Israel and in a superior way (Hag. 2:3; 2:9). And yet it would seem that this never happened for the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Perhaps though the Shekinah did return. The Star of Bethlehem was the Shekinah Glory declaring the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and residing in His person. And why not? The Messiah was prophesied to come as a star (Num. 24:17), and Jesus is called the, “bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16). ….
[End of quote]
It would be most fitting for the prophet Haggai to foretell the return of the Glory cloud.
For Haggai (an abbreviated name) was my Habakkuk, the Akkadian name of Tobias (= Job) from his years spent in Nineveh:
I once read an intriguing article that valiantly attempted to identify Luke’s Shepherds, at the Nativity, with Matthew’s Magi.
Upon examination, h0wever, the two entities appear to be really quite different – geographically speaking, for one.
But what, I think, can now be identified as one, thanks to Matthew Erwin, is the Glory beheld by both the Shepherds and the Magi:
… when Scripture is examined the identity of the Star is evident. The Greek ἀστέραor astera simply identifies a shining or gleaming object that is translated as star in Matthew 2:1-10. The magi specifically referred to it as, “His star” (v. 2). In addition, the behavior of this Star alone is enough to discount any natural stellar phenomenon. The Star led the magi from the east to the west [sic] toward Jerusalem (vv. 1-4). Then the Star moved from the north to the south in Bethlehem (v. 9). The Star would disappear and then reappear before it finally came to hover over where Jesus was staying (vv. 7-9).
If not a regular stellar object then what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? The synoptic narrative in Luke’s Gospel provides an answer:
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. Luke 2:8-9 (ESV) ….
The shining Glory
God’s glory had been manifest, according to Matthew Erwin, in the Flaming Sword of Genesis; to Moses, in the Burning Bush, to the Exodus Israelites in the Pillar of Cloud; and to Israel, again, in the first Temple.
But it had departed at the time of the Babylonian Exile and had not returned when the second Temple was completed.
Matthew Erwin has really sewn this up:
It was the Shekinah Glory that dwelled in the Holy of Holies.
It was last in Solomon’s temple but departed as seen by Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4-19; 11:22-23). Haggai prophesied that the Shekinah Glory would return to the temple in Israel and in a superior way (Hag. 2:3; 2:9). And yet it would seem that this never happened for the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Perhaps though the Shekinah did return. ….
The family of Job-Tobias knew, from what we now have written in Tobit 13, that the Glory of the Lord was going to return after the return from Exile.
Job, as Haggai, now in his late old age, had advised the people, disappointed at the sight of the second Temple, that the Glory of the Lord would return.
And return again it did, with the Birth of Jesus Christ, the New Temple, who would render obsolete the old stone Temple (pope Benedict XVI).
In other words, the second Temple was only ever to be temporary, and would be dramatically replaced (destroyed even) by He who is the true Temple of God.
The Shepherds saw the Light at close hand and were able to go directly to the stable. Their guiding Light conveniently stopped, just as the shining Cloud was wont to do during the Exodus (Numbers 9:17): “When the cloud moved from its place over the Tent, the Israelites moved, and wherever the cloud stopped, the Israelites camped”.
The Magi saw it at a distance from Bethlehem. They had long been expecting it.
Their ancestor, Tobit, had foretold its return, and his son, Haggai, confirmed it much later.
The Magi, who – as descendants of Job, as I think – were undoubtedly clever and educated, did not really need, though, to be able to read the heavens and constellations (as Job almost certainly could, Job 38:31-33) to identify the Star.
They were expecting it and they simply had to wait until they saw it.
This was a manifestation for Israel, to be understood by Israel, which is a solid reason why I think that the Magi mut have been Israelites, not gentiles.
The Nativity Star of relevance to Israel determines the ethnicity of Matthew’s Magi.
Conclusion
The when of the Magi – the beginning of AD time, reign of King Herod ‘the Great’ (Maccabean era in my revision).
The where of the Magi – they were “from the east” (Matthew 2:1-2), the Bashan region.
The who of the Magi – certainly enlightened Israelites, likely family of the prophet Job.
The Star of the Magi – the Glory of the Lord.
The resplendent Christ Child appeared again, with his holy Mother, at Pontevedra, Spain, 10th December, 1925 “elevated on a luminous cloud”.
“If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved … I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.”
As Fatima scholar Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité tells us, this first secret of Our Lady “is a sure and easy way of tearing souls away from the danger of hell: first our own, then those of our neighbors, and even the souls of the greatest sinners, for the mercy and power of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are without limits.”
The promise of Our Lady to return was fulfilled in December 1925, when 18-year-old Lucia was a postulant at the Dorothean convent in Pontevedra, Spain. It was here, during an apparition of the Child Jesus and Our Lady, that She revealed the first part of God’s plan for the salvation of sinners: the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays of the month.
Lucia narrated what happened, speaking of herself in the third person – perhaps, in humility, to divert attention from her role in the event:
“On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to her [Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said:
“‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’
“Then the Most Holy Virgin said:
“‘Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess … receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.’”
The Great Promise and Its Conditions
As Fatima author, Mark Fellows, noted:
“The Blessed Virgin did more than ask for reparatory Communion and devotions on five First Saturdays: She promised Heaven to those who practiced this devotion sincerely and with a spirit of reparation. Those who wonder whether it is Mary’s place to promise eternal salvation to anyone forget one of Her illustrious titles: Mediatrix of all Graces.” ….
Our Lady promises the grace of final perseverance – the most sublime of all graces – to all those who devoutly practice this devotion. The disproportion between the little requested and the immense grace promised reveals the great power of intercession granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls. Furthermore, this promise also contains a missionary aspect. The devotion of reparation is recommended as a means of converting sinners in the greatest danger of being lost.
Much has been written on the Five First Saturdays devotion.
Therefore, here I provide only a brief summary of the conditions.
The First Saturday of five consecutive months: This request was the culmination of a whole movement of devotion, consistent with a series of papal decisions giving the forerunners of this new devotion: a. The 15 Saturdays in honor of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary (plenary indulgence granted by Pope Leo XIII, 1889). b. The 12 First Saturdays of the month (officially approved by Pope St. Pius X, 1905). c. The Devotion of Reparation on the First Saturdays of the month (new indulgences granted by Pius X, 1912). At Pontevedra we see two new elements: the reduction of the number of Saturdays required; and assurance of receiving at the moment of death “all the graces necessary for salvation,” instead of merely indulgences for the remission of punishment for sins already pardoned. Knowing our inconstancy, Our Lady asks for only five Saturdays – the number of decades on our Rosary.
Confession: Though the confession is not required to be made on the First Saturday itself … it is preferable – as far as possible – that it be made on a day close to the First Saturday.
Communion of Reparation: Frère Michel tells us: “The Communion of Reparation, of course, is the most important act of the devotion of Reparation. All the other acts center around it. To understand its meaning and significance, it must be considered in relation with the miraculous Communion of autumn 1916; already this Communion was completely oriented to the idea of Reparation, thanks to the words of the Angel.” ….
Recitation of the Rosary: In each of the six apparitions of 1917, Our Lady asked the children to pray the Rosary every day.
The 15-minute meditation on the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary:In addition to praying the Rosary, Our Lady asks for a separate 15 minutes of meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary. But, as Sister Lucia has explained, not all 15 Mysteries need to be meditated upon each month. One may, by their choice, meditate on only some of the Mysteries each month. ….
The intention of making Reparation: As Sister Lucia has written, this condition is the principal one, and concerns the general intention with which all the other five conditions must be fulfilled. They must each be accomplished “in the spirit of Reparation” towards the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Without this general intention, without the desire to make Reparation to Our Lady to console Her, all these external acts are by themselves insufficient to obtain the magnificent promise of obtaining, at the moment of death, all the graces necessary for salvation. ….
Daniel returned to Jerusalem as governor Nehemiah 
