Nope, the priestly years are not from Seder Olam Zuta. Its chronology for kings is hopelessly wacked out anyway. Useless. So I'm back to the "pulled out of a hat" opinion for your chart. It may be consistent with the fragments of information available, but it remains conjecture.
The following may be out of sequence as far as your posts go. I want to keep the subjects together.
So, do you personally go with the Darius II verson? You really don't think it's plausible that Josephus simply made a parallax error when lining up events with a list of Persian names?
I think it is a viable possibility that Darius II was meant. There seem to be good arguments for both sides. Josephus (or the sources he uses) simply gets things wrong sometimes.
Thanks for all the research you've put into this matter.
It's unchartered territory for me and you're making me work
It's more likely that there was just two people named Sanballat during the period of more than a century, as indicated in my second green-highlighted post.
Hmm. Then there would have to be two 'Bagoases' as well. There's no mention of the feisty military general from Art. III's time being involved with Jewish affairs outside of Josephus. He always seemed busy with more important things like regaining control of Egypt for the Persians or increasing his power in the empire or bumping off his kingly masters (Diodorus). Besides, the one already governor of Judea late in Darius II's reign would have been a doddery, old guy by Art. III's time.
So this would mean one 'Johanan,' two different 'Bagoases' and two different 'Sanballats' - wouldn't that be 'special pleading' too?
There's a bit of mental gymnastics involved in assigning Eliashib's grandson a position at the temple "with his own chamber!" at the same time as his grandfather. It seems more likely that he had his own chamber during his own tenure as High Priest, during the 7th year of a later king.
What later king? They don't say Johanan was high priest yet - just that he was old enough to have a prominent, responsible position in the temple.
Josephus doesn't say Johanan had responsibilities in the temple at that time. What Josephus does say is that Ezra went out of the temple and then into the chamber of Johanan, which doesn't indicate anything official about either Johanan or his chamber. As indicated in my previous post about the possible age of Johanan, he would probably have been an infant in the 7th year of Artaxerxes I. It is entirely consistent that Ezra, just after he'd dismissed foreign wives and children, might go to the room of a child - particularly the [grand]son of the High Priest - to have a cry.
Naah. I don't buy the 'went into the child's room to have a cry' angle. LOL. C'moooon. It wouldn't have been noteworthy that, while he was there, he didn't eat or drink anything ... unless the kid had had his own larder installed. LOL. Priests had chambers around the temple area with different functions. Cp. Ezra 8:29 and Neh. 13:4, 5.
[From a later post] The person who Josephus calls Johanan (when he quotes Ezra 10:6), but who Ezra calls Jehohanan, probably isn't the same person as the person who Josephus calls John. Therefore, J[eh]ohanan may actually have been a son (as stated by Ezra) of Eliashib (therefore, a brother of Joiada and uncle of Joh[ana]n) rather than Eliashib's grandson (as assumed).
That's a possibility too. I've seen it posited somewhere that this J[eh]onanan might have been the son-in-law of Sanballat that was sent away (Neh. 13:28). Furthermore, the Eliashib of Ezra 10:6 may not even be the same one from Neh. 12 & 13.
This doesn't alter the fact that Johanan was High Priest in the 14th year of Darius II, though it does support the idea that his tenure began around that time.
The idea that his tenure began around that time is pure speculation. You don't know whether he was at the beginning, middle or end of his tenure by Darius yr. 14.
You'll be happy to know (thrilled, I'm sure) that for my final version of the chart I will be marking certain ranges of years as approximate.
[Re: Why 6 years for Darius?] Only as a comparison to what I'd already charted.
? Don't follow.
Commentaries: You provided 5 out of 7 that go for Darius III. So? I've already given you 1 that favors Darius II, another one that is undecided; you have given another 2 which say Darius II, and I can find other commentaries and dictionaries to bring that number to match your 5 and more.
New Bible Dictionary (3rd ed. 1996, InterVarsity Press), 'Darius,' p. 257:
3. Darius II (Nothus), who ruled Persia and Babylon (423-408 BC), called 'Darius the Persian' in Ne. 12:22, perhaps to distinguish him from 'Darius the Mede'. Since the father of Jaddua the high priest is mentioned in an Elephantine papyrus c. 400 BC, there is no need to assume that this Jaddua was the high priest who met Alexander in 332 BC and that the Darius here meant is Darius III (Codomanus), who reigned c. 336-331 BC.
Holman OT Commentary (2005, B&H Publishing), p. 257:
12:22-23 ... There are varying opinions about which Darius this refers to, but it was probably Darius II.
Eerdman's Commentary on the Bible (2003), 'Nehemiah' (Lester L. Grabbe), p. 327:
(This was easier than typing it out.)
No doubt there are other ones that prefer Darius III as well. All this shows is that determining the identification of 'Darius the Persian' remains one knotty chronological problem among many in Ezra-Nehemiah with no easy, neat solutions and with reputable scholars divided on the matter.
Btw, the Barnes one wasn't really Barnes (why do they do that? *sigh*). He only did Job, Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel. His Notes were incorporated into one 14 vol. work which bears his name, but other commentators' works supplemented what Barnes didn't do. The Nehemiah section actually comes from F.C. Cook.
