Introduction

In Chapter 1 I presented genealogical evidence from the book of Nehemiah that I think demonstrates that Zerubbabel and Nehemiah lived within twenty-five years of each other and were either successors to the office of governor in Yehud or had overlapping commissions, with Nehemiah serving as an overseer of public works during Zerubbabel's term as governor. Dates in the Elephantine papyri tend to indicate that Sinuballit I had been governor of Samerina during the reign of Artaxerxes I, not during the reign of Darius, which in turn suggests that the temple-rebuilding headed by Zerubbabel took place under Artaxerxes I, not under Darius.

In Chapter 2, I argued that the dates in the books of Haggai and Zechariah were added secondarily by an editor in order to interweave the two separate but parallel accounts of the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem in the Persian era. I proposed that he derived his dating to the early reign of Darius I by applying the principle of prophetic fulfillment. Specifically, he assumed that Jeremiah's prophecy of seventy years of destruction for Judah during Neo-Babylonian rule referred more broadly to the length of time that Jerusalem would lay devastated after its destruction in 586 BCE. Then, using oral or written traditions associated with Darius, which confirmed the king had rebuilt temples, he set the initial work in year 2, after Darius had managed to establish temporary peace in his empire, and used contextual clues within various prophecies to select day and month dates.