Were Joshua, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah Contemporaries? A Response to Diana Edelman's Proposed Late Date for the Second Temple

Abstract

In her recent monograph The Origins of the 'Second' Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem,1 Diana Edelman proposed a drastic revision of the postexilic chronology, moving the dedication of the Second Temple from 516 b.c.e. to a time early in the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-425 b.c.e.). Her proposal results from an attempt to account for the anomaly mat, according to the present biblical record, the temple in Jerusalem was constructed in a very small city that would remain unfortified for anotiier seventy years, and she also attempts to fit the temple construction into Persian imperial policy. She proposes that Artaxerxes I initiated a single project to rebuild the temple and to fortify Jerusalem at the same time. Artaxerxes wanted to provide the temple as a place for the citizens of Yehud to worship their national god and to collect taxes for the empire. In support of her hypothesis she discounts the eight dates in the prophets Haggai and Zechariah that link them to the reign of Darius I (Hag 1:1, 15; 2:1, 10, 20; Zech 1:1, 7; 7:1), arguing mat they were calculated secondarily, based on the prophecy in Jeremiah of restoration after seventy years (Edelman, ch. 2). She also calls into question the historicity of the account of the budding of the temple in Ezra 1-6, arguing that it is based only on what could be learned from a series of biblical passages (Ezekiel 40-48; Second Isaiah; Haggai and Zechariah, including their dates; and 1 Chronicles 22-2 Chronicles 7; Edelman, eh. 3).2 Two additional chapters investigate the size of Yehud in the fifth century (ch. 4) and the archaeological data that support her hypothesis (ch. 5). Chapter 6 contains her description of the pragmatic issues that led Artaxerxes to fortify Jerusalem and rebuild die temple at the beginning of his reign. Responding to Edelman's impressive arguments throughout the book would require a monograph of nearly the same size; this note will contest only one crucial item, her attempt through genealogical research to make Joshua3 and Zerubbabel, on the one hand, and Nehemiah, on the other, near contemporaries. She makes her case for this in ch. 1 (pp. 13-79), although she locates also many other persons genealogically in this chapter.4 If her attempt to make Joshua, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah near contemporaries can be called into question, however, the more traditional date for the construction of the Second Temple, unanimously supported by Haggai, Zechariah 1-8, and Ezra 1-6, is quite likely to stand. Edelman (pp. 38-40) defends the idea that Nehemiah himself served during the reign of Artaxerxes, as in the biblical text, because of a reference to Sanballat (the arch-rival of Nehemiah in the book of Nehemiah) and his two sons in Elephantine papyrus 30, dated to 408 b.c.e., and the resultant calculations about Sanballat's relative date of birth and his age during the time of Nehemiah. I. THE CHRONOLOGICAL DATE OF JOSHUA The Bible makes the high priest Joshua, under whom the temple was built, a contemporary of Haggai and Zechariah, who advocated strongly for constructing the temple in the early years of Darius I. Joshua appears in the following genealogy of priests.5 Seraiah The last priest of the first temple, executed by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kgs 25:18-21) Jehozadak The successor of Seraiah, who was deported by Nebuchadnezzar (1 Chr 5:40-41 [Eng. 6:14-15]) Joshua (Jeshua) Identified as die son of Jehozadak (Jozadak) by Ezra 3:2 and Hag 1:1 Joiakim Neh 12:10, 12, 266 Eliashib Neh 3:1, 20-21; 12:10, 22; 13:28 Joiada Neh 12:10-11, 22; 13:18 Johanan Neh 12:22-23; Jonathan Neh 12:1 17 There are only a few fixed dates that are helpful. Seraiah died in 586; Joshua was high priest in 520, according to the standard chronology; Eliashib was high priest in 444; and Johanan was high priest in 408. Hypothetical dates of birth and deatii make this genealogy plausible. …