The Chronology of Ezra 7 (SIEGFRIED H. HORN & LYNN H. WOOD)

Elephantine. [8] The Bible also indicates, through the information given by Nehemiah, that the Jews in Palestine counted the years of Artaxerxes I according to their own civil calendar, which began in the fall (Tishri).

Those who have accepted Nehemiah's statements as reliable source material have held that his method of dating the reigning years of a Persian king according to a fall-to-fall calendar was not due to his idiosyncrasy but was a common practice among the Jews, which can be traced back from Nehemiah's time to the reign of King Solomon.

From these indications the conclusion can be reached that the years of Artaxerxes 1 were counted

by Ezra and Nehemiah according to their own system, so that each of his reigning years was the same according to the Persian and Jewish systems of reckoning during one half year but differed during the other half year.

Two key problems. The establishment of the correct dates for the events described in Ezra 7, with which this study is concerned, hinges on two key problems. The first one is to determine whether the Jews of Nehemiah's time actually reckoned the years of the Persian kings according to their own civil fall-to-fall calendar. The second problem is to find the exact time of Artaxerxes' accession, in order to determine whether the reigning years in the Jewish fall-to-fall reckoning ran earlier or later than the corresponding Persian years.

Evidence for the Jewish fall-to-fall calendar-The first problem existed since the reliability of Nehemiah's statements has been challenged, and it was thought by many scholars that scribal errors might be involved in his figures. It was therefore desirable to obtain extra Biblical dated Jewish documents to give us more information about the Jewish calendars. Although hundreds of thousands of dated cuneiform tablets are available for the establishment of the Babylonian calendar, which was used also by the Persians, and hundreds of documents inform us about the ancient Egyptian calendar, only a few well-preserved Jewish documents of the 5th century BC were available until very recent times for the Jewish calendar.

The recent discovery, in the Brooklyn Museum, of 8 fairly well-preserved, dated Aramaic papyri of the same period has increased to 14 the number of double-dated documents available for a reconstruction of the Jewish calendar. Though this is still a small number in comparison with the wealth of material that sheds light on the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, these papyri are nevertheless of great importance for the study of the chronology of Ezra, since they all come from the same period. [9] Although all of these 14 documents bear double dates-Jewish and Egyptian-ten of them mention the year number of the Persian king only according to the Egyptian system of reckoning, which was apparently a legal requirement in Egypt, where the writers of these documents lived. They naturally do not throw any light on the Jewish calendar. Two papyri contain the Jewish as well as Egyptian year numbers, showing a difference of one year between them in each case. Unfortunately, both of them come from a portion of the year in which there was no difference between the year numbers in the Persian and Jewish systems of reckoning, and the difference between the Egyptian and Persian systems of reckoning was equal to the difference between the Egyptian and Jewish systems.

Two papyri contain the reigning year number of the Persian king according to the Jewish system of reckoning, but one of them again comes from that portion of the year when there is no difference between the Persian and Jewish way of reckoning reigning years, so that this papyrus contains once more no proof for a different method used by the Jews. One of the newly discovered papyri, however, which contains only the reigning year of the Persian king according to the Jewish way of reckoning (Kraeling 6) [10] comes from that half year which lies between Nisan and Tishri, when there was a difference between the Persian and Jewish reigning numbering. Hence, it shows clearly that the Jews used a fall-to-fall calendar in their reckoning of reigning years of Persian kings, as Figure 4 illustrates. [11] The only other explanation for this papyrus would be the assumption of a scribal error, an explanation that has also been used by higher critics for the statements of Nehemiah that point to a fall-tofall calendar of the Jews. Since the new papyrus, however, forms an independent support for Nehemiah's practice, there is no reason to assume the existence of scribal errors in either case-the book of Nehemiah or the Elephantine document. The new evidence thus shows clearly that the Jews in Elephantine used a fall-tofall calendar as their contemporaries in Judah did.

The accession of Artaxerxes determined. The solution of the second problem is needed in order to determine whether this reigning year of Artaxerxes 1 according to Jewish reckoning preceded or followed that of the Persians.' If he began to reign between Nisan and Tishri, the following Jewish New Year would come before the Persian New Year. Hence Jewish years would run 6 months ahead of the Persian years, for the Jews, beginning the first year of the king in Tishri, counted it as such while it was still the accession