The Church Father's "70 years"

by Doug Mason 31 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Doug Mason

  In their letter to Lobsto regarding the neo-Babylonian chronology, the WTS wrote the following regarding the early Church Fathers:

  Less than 200 years after Josephus, several early church writers clearly accepted that the length of the desolation or exile was 70 years, and no one gives any other length for this event.

  For instance, Tatian the Assyrian (110 to 172 C.E.) in his Address of Hatian to the Greeks, chapter 36;

  Clement of Alexandria (153 to 193 C.E.) in his work The Stromata, Book I, chapter 21; and

  Irenaeus (120 to 202 C.E.) in Irenaeus Against Heresies, Book III, chapter 21, 2; Book IV, chapter 34, 4, all wrote that the Jews were exiled in Babylon for 70 years.

  So did the ancient chronologer Julius Africanus (200 to 232 C.E.) in the Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the Chronography of Julius Africanus, chapter 13, 2.

  Thus, while these ancient writers may not have been fully accurate in all the particulars, they do all agree on one point, namely, that the Jews were in captivity for 70 years, and some of these indicate that Jerusalem was desolate for the entire period.

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  The following shows what each of the Church Fathers wrote at the references that the WTS provided.

  Doug
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  Doug Mason

  TATIAN

  “Berosus, a Babylonian, a priest of their god Belus, born in the time of Alexander, composed for Antiochus, the third after him, the history of the Chaldeans in three books; and, narrating the acts of the kings, he mentions one of them, Nabuchodonosor by name, who made war against the Phœnicians and the Jews,—events which we know were announced by our prophets, and which happened much later than the age of Moses, seventy years before the Persian empire. (Tatian Address to the Greeks ch. 36)

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  Tatian is saying that Berossus wrote that the Jews’ prophets (presumably he meant Jeremiah) had announced, 70 years before the Persians (Cyrus) defeated Babylon, that Nebuchadnezzar would make war against the Phœnicians and the Jews.
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  Doug Mason

  CLEMENT

  “And in the twelfth year of the reign of Zedekiah, forty years before the supremacy of the Persians, Nebuchodonosor made war against the Phoenicians and the Jews, as Berosus asserts in his Chaldaean Histories. And Joabas, writing about the Assyrians, acknowledges that he had received the history from Berosus, and testifies to his accuracy. Nebuchodonosor, therefore, having put out the eyes of Zedekiah, took him away to Babylon, and transported the whole people (the captivity lasted seventy years), with the exception of a few who fled to Egypt. (Clement, The Stromata, Book I, chapter 21)

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  This is saying there was a period of forty years from the 12th year of Zedekiah to the end of Babylon’s supremacy. The captivity lasted 70 years, so it started some 30 years before Jerusalem was destroyed. As a side note: the WTS does not start its “70 years” until the “few had crossed the border and entered Egypt”. I believe I can show that at least 2 years, and up to 4 years, elapsed between the destruction of Jerusalem and when the Jews entered Egypt. Jerusalem fell in the 5th month (August) but the WTS starts its “70 years” in the 7th month (October)
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  Doug Mason

  IRENAEUS

  “He who, when, during the captivity of the people under Nebuchadnezzar, the Scriptures had been corrupted, and when, after seventy years, the Jews had returned to their own land, then, in the times of Artaxerxes king of the Persians, inspired Esdras the priest, of the tribe of Levi, to recast all the words of the former prophets, and to re-establish with the people the Mosaic legislation. (Irenaeus Against Heresies, Book III, chapter 21, 2)

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  How long after seventy years did they return? Is this telling us what marked the end of the Seventy Years? In the immediate context of this passage, Irenaeus writes a most fanciful story regarding the translation of their Scriptures into Greek.

  http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103321.htm
  
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  Doug Mason

  IRENAEUS

  “If any one, however, advocating the cause of the Jews, do maintain that this new covenant consisted in the rearing of that temple which was built under Zerubbabel after the emigration to Babylon, and in the departure of the people from thence after the lapse of seventy years, let him know that the temple constructed of stones was indeed then rebuilt… (Irenaeus Against Heresies, Book IV chapter 34, 4)

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  The people (not all, of course) departed Babylon after 70 years of captivity to Babylon had elapsed. How long after it ended did they (some) return? They were able to leave because Cyrus had ended their captivity by Babylon and he had permitted them to return.
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  Doug Mason

  JULIUS AFRICANUS

  “The most famous exile that befell the Hebrews, then—to wit, when they were led captive by Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon—lasted 70 years, as Jeremias had prophesied. Berosus the Babylonian, moreover, makes mention of Nabuchodonosor. And after the 70 years of captivity, Cyrus became king of the Persians at the time of the 55th Olympiad, as may be ascertained from the Bibliothecæ of Diodorus and the histories of Thallus and Castor, and also from Polybius and Phlegon, and others besides these, who have made the Olympiads a subject of study. For the date is a matter of agreement among them all. And Cyrus then, in the first year of his reign, which was the first year of the 55th Olympiad, effected the first partial restoration of the people by the hand of Zorobabel, with whom also was Jesus the son of Josedec, since the period of 70 years was now fulfilled, as is narrated in Esdra the Hebrew historian. The narratives of the beginning of the sovereignty of Cyrus and the end of the captivity accordingly coincide. (Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the Chronography of Julius Africanus, chapter 13, 2.)

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  It was 70 years of “captivity”. The captivity to Babylon ended as soon as Babylon had been defeated and Cyrus became king.

  One could check whether a Tishri calendar or a Nisan calendar is intended and whether an accession-year system or a non-accession-year system was in mind. It should be possible to calculate the BCE date equivalent of Olympiad 55, year. The accepted starting point is 776 BCE for Olympiad 1, year 1.
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  Doug Mason

  EUSEBIUS

  http://rbedrosian.com/euseb8.htm

  After this, during [the next] 70 years, the Babylonian captivity of the Jews occurred and the destruction of the [temple's] site. According to the Bible, this ended in the second year of King Darius of Persia, which was during the 65th Olympiad [B.C. 520, 519, 518, 517]. …

  The captivity lasted for seventy years, and ended in the second year of Darius Hystaspes, who had become king of the Persians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. …

  There was a period of 70 years from the destruction of the temple until the second year of Darius. …

  At this point one might inquire: Why does it state in the beginning of the book of Ezra [1.1]? …

  Furthermore, subsequent [passages] indicate that freedom [was given] to the Jews [at that point] and that it was Cyrus who ordered that the temple be rebuilt. From this one would assume that it was during the time of Cyrus, rather than Darius, that the 70 years of captivity came to an end.

  To this I reply that the prophecies refer to two [distinct] 70-year periods.

  The first began with the destruction of the temple and ended, as Zechariah stated, in the second year of Darius.

  The second extends from the enslavement of the Jews to the capture of Babylon and the destruction of the Chaldean kingdom. This began in the time of the prophecy and ended with Cyrus, as Jeremiah recorded.

  [Jeremiah] further predicted [Jeremiah 29.10]. … All this came to a head during the time of Cyrus.

  The period of the enslavement [of the Jews] should not be reckoned from the [time of the] destruction of the temple, but earlier—from the second year of [the reign of] Jehoiakim, king of the Jews, when Nebuchadnezzar the king of the Babylonians enslaved them. [It could be reckoned] even earlier, from the time when the prophet Jeremiah first began to prophesy. From that time until the siege [of Jerusalem] and the burning of the temple 40 years elapsed, and 70 years until the first year of Cyrus.

  From the start of Jeremiah's prophesying until Cyrus' reign, the first 70 years [period] elapsed.

  However, from the destruction of the temple until Cyrus, 30 years elapsed, while it was in the second year of Darius that [the other] 70 years was completed. [The temple] was restored in the eighth year of Darius.
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  Half banana

  It is highly likely that the Church Fathers would have wanted to perpetuate the traditional expression of "seventy years" exile. The early Church fathers had a mission, sometimes a political mission, to establish the ground works for their new religion and in the fourth century, to establish Catholic Christianity.

  For an illiterate majority it would have been a given that Jeremiah's words had come true since that was the prevailing belief of Jews. For all mankind, the universe was divided into the mundane and spiritual; earthly and heavenly. This incorporated everyday acceptance of the of magic and the miraculous, where today it would be dismissed as folk tale. Prophetic utterances were taken as evidence of a numinous world.

  In most pre-enlightenment history as with any human vision of the past the tendency is to polarise events and fudge the time for the sake of creating a shape and a memorable definition to the narrative. The Bible writers most certainly encapsulate the methods of storytellers.

  Jeremiah arrived on the scene at the time when the the mythical history of Israel and Judah (Solomon and co) becomes historically verifiable i.e. the King Josiah.

  Secular history finds no obvious 70 year period of exile and desolation. The attacks on Jerusalem clearly happened after Babylon had become the dominant power By 609 BCE. One of the sieges of Jerusalem was in 597 BCE when Jehoiakim and his son Jehoiachin were taken along with the Israel's elite.The major military siege and destruction of Jerusalem was completed by 586BCE. Jerusalem however was then desolated but the land especially to the north (Benjamin) has archaeological occupancy layers. No one outside JWs and the book of Ezra can find a seventy year desolation of Jerusalem

  Jeremiah--if he was a real person, would have lived through the time of the Babylonian sieges. I wonder, how would his knowledge of contemporary events have shaped his prophecy?

  At the bottom of it all is the attempt to fit history into prophecy, which is an irrational cause of enquiry.
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  peacefulpete

  I wrote this post years ago. :

  Much time has been expended trying to make sense of the 70 years of desolation claimed in parts of the Bible with no success. I have in the past presented what i feel was evidence that the so called desolation was in fact 49 years in duration and was know as such by one of the authors of Daniel. This is the conclusion drawn by most Bible commentaries and reference works. Also the matter of what actually happened verses the Bible's description of "empty land" has been posted here before. It has also been suggested by a number of authors that the significance of certain numbers (eg.3,7,10,12) to ancient superstitious peoples is reason enuf to interpret the 70 (7x10)as literary rather than literal. I ran across an interesting piece of parallelism in Babylonian texts.

  "Seventy years, the reckoning of it's destruction which He had inscribed, the merciful God Marduke, as soon as his heart had calmed down, reversed the order (of the sign) and ordered it's resettlement after eleven years." Babylonian Inscription of Esarhaddon

  The cuneiform text seeks to rationalize Babylon's destruction by Sennacherib as an act of punishment by Marduke but yet explains the early restoration of the city as an act of compassion on Marduke's part. The 70 year motif is nonetheless interesting.

  
  
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  peacefulpete

  http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/meso/blackstone.html

  It took a while to locate the Esarhaddon text online as it was in a book that I have sold.