His Own Grandpa?
by Farrell Till
In "Chronological Problems in the Book of Daniel," I explicated chapters 1 and 2 to show that the chronology was so convoluted that all but diehard inerrantists should see that this is a time discrepancy that probably resulted from fusing separate stories that once were independent of each other. Confused chronology, however, is not the only problem in the book of Daniel. A second example is an error that would surely not have been made if the author of Daniel had actually been a top official in the 6th-century BC Babylonian and Persian courts. The example is found in Daniel 9.
Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans--2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
A serious problem in the book of Daniel is its claim that Babylon fell to a "Darius the Mede" (Dan. 5:30-31). I will eventually get to the historicity of this mysterious "Darius the Mede," but my second error is not concerned with the issue of whether he was an actual historical character. It concerns the claim that this mysterious Darius the Mede was the "son of Ahasuerus." When the historical facts presented below are considered, the claim that Darius the Mede was the son of Ahasuerus creates a chronological problem far worse than the one in Daniel 1 and 2.
Babylon fell in 539 BC, a fact so clearly confirmed by extrabiblical records that it can hardly be disputed, so I don't need to cite evidence to corroborate this claim. Ahasuerus was the Xeres of the book of Esther, who reigned over the Persian empire from 485-465 BC. How, then, could Darius the Mede, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and allegedly ruled over it, have been the son of a king who didn't reign till 54 years later? The sensible explanation is that the writer of Daniel, who lived centuries after the events he was writing about, was confused about when and where certain 5th- and 6th-century BC rulers had lived.
In the first year of his reign, Cyrus of Persia issued a decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-3), so this decree would have been issued around 539/538 BC. The repatriation of the Jews created some conflicts with local inhabitants and rulers who are mentioned in the book of Ezra. One such conflict referred to Ahasuerus.
Ezra 4:1 When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of families and said to them, "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of King Esar-haddon of Assyria who brought us here." 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of families in Israel said to them, "You shall have no part with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to Yahweh, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus of Persia has commanded us."
This passage has to be dated after 539 BC, because it made reference to what "King Cyrus of Persia has commanded us," but as the passage continues, it shows that the conflict continued until the reign of Ahasuerus.
4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and made them afraid to build, 5 and they bribed officials to frustrate their plan throughout the reign of King Cyrus of Persia and until the reign of King Darius of Persia. 6 In the reign of Ahasuerus, IN HIS ACCESSION YEAR, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.
Notice that this text claims that the conflict between the repatriates and "the people of the land" continued throughout, the reign of King Cyrus and until the reign of king Darius, but in the accession year of Ahasuerus, the people of the land directed another complaint to their king, who at this time was Ahasuerus. Hence, Ahasuerus had to have reigned after Cyrus and Darius, who were presumably kings after "Darius the Mede." (The Darius in the passage just quoted was a Persian king and therefore not the "Darius the Mede" in the book of Daniel, who, as we will eventually see, had allegedly preceded Cyrus as king over the conquered Babylonian empire.) The problem for inerrantists, then, is to explain how a "Darius the Mede," who had conquered Babylon in 539 BC, could have been the son of Ahasuerus, a Persian king who did not begin his reign until 485 BC.
When I was a kid, a popular song was, "I'm My Own Grandpa," a little ditty that told the story of a man who married a widow, who had a daughter who married his father. As the story unwinds, the stepdaughter had a child, which made the singer his own grandpa. The song was humorous, of course, but the Bible is supposed to be inerrant and true, so maybe inerrantists can explain to us how a high official in the Babylonian and Persian courts could have made the mistake of identifying the mysterious "Darius the Mede" as the son of a Persian king who wouldn't even begin his reign till over a half century later.
There is a plausible explanation for this mistake, but inerrantists, of course, won't accept it. When the book of Daniel was edited in its final form in the 2nd century BC, the history at that time was blurred. Later on, I'll be discussing the writer's error of identifying Belshazzar as the son of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 5), a misconception of the time that was also reflected in the apocryphal book of Baruch (1:10-12), which scholars have also dated to the 2nd century BC. The apocryphal and pseudipegraphic proliferation of this era also produced works that indicated the people of that time were confused not just about the ancestry of Belshazzar but also about when Ahasuerus had lived and reigned.
The book of Tobit, for example, which has been identified as another 2nd-century BC work, anachronistically put Ahasuerus into the time of the Babylonian/Median conquest of Assyria. Tobit, was allegedly a captive who had been exiled to Nineveh in the time of Shalmaneser, which captivity occurred in 721 BC.
Tobit 1:1-2 This is the story of Tobit son of Tobiel, son of Hananiel, son of Aduel, son of Gabael, son of Raphael, son of Raguel, of the family Asiel, of the tribe of Naphtali. In the time of King Shalmaneser of Assyria, he was taken captive from Thisbe, which is south of Kadesh-naphtali in Upper Galilee above Hazor, beyond the road to the west, north of Peor.
Apocryphal Tobit, then, was set some 180 years before Babylon fell to the Persians. Like sections of Daniel, Tobit was also written in Aramaic, which had become the language of the Jews by the 2nd century BC. In 612 BC, the Babylonian/Median alliance captured Nineveh and eventually defeated the Assyrian empire. The book of Tobit anachronistically claimed that Ahasuerus was the leader of the Medes during this battle.
Tobit 14:14 At the age of a hundred and seventeen he [Tobias, Tobit's son] died, greatly respected. 15 Tobias lived long enough to hear of the destruction of Nineveh by king Ahasuerus of Media and to see the prisoners of war brought from there into Media. He praised God for all that he had done to the inhabitants of Nineveh and Asshur; before he died, he rejoiced over the fate of Nineveh, and he praised the Lord God who lives for ever and ever.
The Medes did participate in the conquest of Nineveh, but the Median army was not led by Ahasuerus, who was not even a Mede. He was a Persian, and he didn't live until almost two centuries later. The Medes were led in the conquest of Nineveh by Cyaxeres, as reported in A. K. Grayson's translation of The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle, which was a part of the Babylonian Chronicle 3.
The king of Akkad mustered his army and marched to Assyria. The king of the Medes marched towards the king of Akkad and they met one another at [...]u. The king of Akkad and his army crossed the Tigris; Cyaxares had to cross the Radanu, and they marched along the bank of the Tigris. In the month Simanu, the Nth day, they encamped against Nineveh.
By the second century BC, somehow the historical lines had apparently become blurred as to when and where Ahasuerus had lived and reigned. Hence, the writer of Daniel mistakenly identified his "Darius the Mede" as the son of Ahasuerus "of the seed of the Medes," just as the writer of Tobit had thought that Ahasuerus rather than Cyaxeres was the Median king who had conquered Nineveh. This is a mistake that would surely not have been made if Daniel had really been written by a high official in the Babylonian and Persian courts of the 6th century BC.
Inerrantists, of course, will always dream up "explanations" of discrepancies. A popular "solution" to this one is a claim that Ahasuerus was not a name but a title like king or pharaoh. This was the track taken by Stephen Miller in his commentary on Daniel.
Darius the Mede (probably an alternate title for Cyrus) is described as the son of "Xerxes," better rendered as "Ahasuerus" (so KJV, NRSV, NASB). Ahasuerus is an approximation of the Hebrew, which in turn is an approximation of the Persian term. "Xerxes" is the Greek name. Like Darius, Ahasuerus probably was a title, not a personal name (Broadman & Holman, 1994, p. 240).
A footnote at this point in Miller's commentary referred readers to D. J Wiseman's Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel and J. E. Goldingay's Daniel, but otherwise Miller quoted no evidence and gave none himself to support the claim that Ahasuerus was not a name but only a royal title. Wiseman and Goldingay are both generally supportive of the traditional view of Daniel. Wiseman, for example, defended the unlikely claim that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were the same person. Hence, he theorized that Daniel 6:28, which says that "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius the Mede and in the reign of Cyrus the Great," has been mistranslated.
The basis of the hypothesis is that Daniel 6:28 can be translated "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even (namely or i. e.) the reign of Cyrus the Persian" ("Some Historical Problems in the Book of Daniel," p. 12).
I have checked various translations, and I can find none that support Wiseman's hypothesis. The translation of the Jewish Publication Society renders this verse the same as do other translations: "Thus Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and during the reign of Cyrus the Persian." That Wiseman would postulate such a tenuous view is indicative of his determination to defend the traditional view of Daniel, so it is not at all surprising that he would also defend the claim that Ahasuerus was a title and not a personal name. When biblicists have to string together so many iffy "explanations" in order to find harmony and historical accuracy in the Bible, that is a good indication of just how unlikely their inerrantist belief is.
A simple way to test the Ahasuerus-was-a-royal-title "explanation" of this problem is to substitute king or his majesty or some other "royal title" for Ahasuerus to see how the disputed text then reads.
Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of the king, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans--2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
The author of Daniel claimed that "Darius the Mede" became the king of Babylon (Dan. 6:1-2,6-8). If Darius was a king, how likely would it have been that the writer of Daniel, in a time when the establishment of lineal ancestry was considered important, would have identified "Darius" as just the "son of the king"? Back when thrones were generally passed from father to son, readers would have surmised that if Darius was a king, then he was very likely the son of a king. In that era, a writer would surely have gone beyond just saying that someone was the son of "the king" and would have given the name of that king.
Another way to test this "explanation" is to analyze biblical passages where Ahasuerus was used to see if the contexts support the claim that it was only a title like king. This alleged "title" occurs throughout the book of Esther.
Esther 1:1 This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasuerus who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. 2 In those days when King Ahashuerus sat on his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, 3 in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers.
Here the word was used three times. Was it being used as a "royal title" or a name that a specific king was known by? If inerrantists say that it was just a royal title, then they will be arguing that two royal titles (king and Ahasuerus) were used one after the other in verse 2 to refer to whoever this monarch was in the time of Esther. That would have been somewhat like the writer of Exodus referring to Egypt's king as "king pharaoh."
Esther 1:9 Furthermore, Queen Vashti gave a banquet for the women in the palace of King Ahasuerus.
Was this a name or just a "royal title"? If inerrantists say that it was only a royal title, they will again be arguing that a double royal title (somewhat like king king) was used in this verse in reference to the monarch ruling at the time.
Esther 1:13 Then the king consulted the sages who knew the laws (for this was the king's procedure toward all who were versed in law and custom, 14 and those next to him were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven officials of Persia and Media, who had access to the king, and sat first in the kingdom): 15 "According to the law, what is to be done to Queen Vashti because she has not performed the command of King Ahasuerus conveyed by the eunuchs?"
Once again, if inerrantists claim that Ahasuerus was just a royal title in verse 15, that will mean that they think two royal titles, one after the other, were used in reference to this monarch. Since no actual name other than Ahasuerus was used in the book of Esther in reference to this monarch, they will also be claiming that this king's actual name was never used in the entire book.
Esther 1:16 Then Memucan said in the presence of the king and the officials, "Not only has Queen Vashti done wrong to the king, but also to all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus.
Here's the same problem again. Was the writer of this book just using a "royal title" in reference to this monarch, or did he intend for his readers to understand that Ahasuerus was the name of this king? Did the writer just consistently use two consecutive "royal titles" (like king king or king his majesty) in reference to this monarch? Inerrantists who think so should take notice of the fact that when speakers in the examples being quoted referred to the royal position of the monarch in question, they referred to him by the title of king. Why would Memucan in the verse quoted immediately above have spoken of the wrong done to "the king" and then in the same breath refer to "all the peoples who are in the provinces of King Ahasuerus"? If Ahasuerus was only a title, like king, why didn't he just speak of the wrong done to the king and then to all the peoples who are in the provinces of the king? Why did he double up on royal titles in the second reference to this monarch?
Esther 1:17 For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands, since they will say, "King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come."
Was the writer claiming that the women in the kingdom would say, "The King King commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come," or did he mean that the women would say that a king named Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come? The answer seems rather obvious, but those who still want to hold out for biblical inerrancy should also ask themselves if Vashti was the name of the queen or if it too was just another royal title. If Vashti was the name of this queen, would it not be likely that the speaker who referred to her by affixing her royal title before her actual name was doing the same when he referred to her husband as "King Ahasuerus"?
Esther 1:19 If it pleases the king, let a royal order go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes so that it may not be altered, that Vashti is never again to come before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she.
We have the same situation again. If inerrantists claim that Ahasuerus was just a "royal title" in this verse, they will be arguing that two royal titles were used one after the other in reference to this monarch.
I could continue with this and quote the other 19 places where Ahasuerus was used in the book of Esther, but why swat a gnat with a sledgehammer? Anyone who checks those other references (2:1,12,16,21; 3:1,6,7,8,12; 6:2; 7:5; 8:1,7,12; 9:2,20,30; 10:1,3) will see that in every case, Ahasuerus was used right after the word king except in 3:6 and 9:30 where it appeared in reference to the "kingdom of Ahasuerus." Any reasonable person can read these passages and see that the writer was obviously using Ahasuerus as the name of a specific monarch who reigned in Persia at this time and not as a royal title.
Except for the 28 times that the word Ahasuerus appeared in the book of Esther, it was used only two other times: Ezra 4:6 and Daniel 9:1. Let's look at its usage in context in Ezra.
Ezra 4:1 When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of families and said to them, "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of King Esar-Haddon of Assyria who brought us here." 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of families in Israel said to them, "You shall have no part with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to Yahweh, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus of Persia has commanded us." 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and made them afraid to build, 5 and they bribed officials to frustrate their plan throughout the reign of King Cyrus of Persia and until the reign of King Darius of Persia. 6 In the reign of Ahasuerus, in his accession year, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. 7 And in the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam and Mithredath and Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia; the letter was written in Aramaic and translated. 8 Rehum the royal deputy and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows 9 (then Rehum the royal deputy, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the envoys, the officials, the Persians, the people of Erech, the Babylonians, the people of Susa, that is, the Elamites, 10 and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province Beyond the River wrote--and now 11 this is a copy of the letter that they sent): "To King Artaxerxes: Your servants, the people of the province Beyond the River, send greeting. And now 12 may it be known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city; they are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. 13 Now may it be known to the king that, if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be reduced. 14 Now because we share the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king, 15 so that a search may be made in the annals of your ancestors. You will discover in the annals that this is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from long ago. On that account this city was laid waste....
This passage, which described conflict that the returning Jewish exiles had with the inhabitants of the region, mentioned five kings: Esar-Haddon of Assyria, Cyrus of Persia, Darius of Persia, Ahasuerus of Persia, and Artaxerxes also of Persia. Were these names or just "royal titles"? Will inerrantists try to argue that Esar-Haddon was not the name of an Assyrian king, that Cyrus was not the name of a Persian king, that Darius was not the name of a Persian king, and that Artaxerxes was not the name of a Persian king? In each case, the "royal title" king was used in reference to these monarchs, so if inerrantists argue that Ahasuerus was just a "royal title," they will be arguing that Ezra used the specific names of four different kings in this passage but referred to the fifth one by just a "royal title." How likely is that? To so argue, inerrantists will be contending that Ezra was saying "in the days of King Esar-Haddon... in the reign of King Cyrus... in the reign of King Darius... in the reign of Artaxerxes... and in the reign of 'the king,' or 'his highness,' or 'his majesty,' in the first year of his reign," etc., etc., etc. Since, according to the quibble being analyzed, Ahasuerus was just a Persian royal title and since Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes were all Persian kings, readers would have been somewhat confused when the writer of the text quoted above stopped using actual names and said, "In the reign of the king...." Wouldn't they have wondered, "In the reign of what king?"
Who can believe that this was what Ezra was doing, that he specifically named four different kings but referred to a fifth one by just a "royal title"?
The only other reference to Ahasuerus in the Bible is in Daniel 9:1, the passage in dispute.
Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans--2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
Since Ahasuerus in all of the examples quoted above was obviously used as the name of a specific monarch, for this "title quibble"--which, as we noticed above, was championed by the inerrantist Stephen R. Miller--to be right, one would have to think that, in the 30 times that it was used in the Bible, this is the only place where Ahasuerus was used as a "royal title" instead of the name of a specific monarch. That would have inerrantists arguing that Daniel 9:1 should read like this:
In the first year of Darius son of a king (or a monarch or an emperor or some such), by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans....
Needless to say, this "interpretation" puts an absurd strain on the text, but this is the kind of straining that inerrantists must resort to in order to "explain" obvious errors in the text of Daniel.
Stephen Miller appropriated Wiseman's claim that Ahasuerus "may have been 'an ancient Achaemanid royal title'" [Daniel 176], except that Miller seemed convinced in several parts of his commentary that Ahasuerus was an Achaemanid royal title and not that it just "may have been" a royal title. This term was derived from Achaemenes, who was the eponymous ancestor of the Achaemanid dynasty. He was credited with having unified Persia in the 7th century BC. Since Cyrus was Persian, one must wonder why the author of Daniel would have applied "an ancient Achaemanid royal title"--if indeed Ahasuerus was such a title--to the king who expanded the Persian empire as far east as India and left it in a strategic position for his successors Cambyses II and Darius I to push its western borders on to Macedonia and Libya. After all, the writer of Daniel clearly emphasized in the passage above (9:1) that Darius was a Mede. Why would he have said that he was "of the seed of the Medes" (KJV) or as the NRSV, says, "by birth a Mede" if this Darius was actually Cyrus, who was Persian? Even more puzzling is why he would have used an ancient Persian royal title in reference to someone who was "by birth a Mede." Well, of course, inerrantists have a straw to grab here too, because, they claim, Cyrus's mother was Mandane, a Median princess and daughter of the Median king Astyages, but this marriage is by no means historically certain. It depends on the accuracy of a claim made by Herodotus, which some ancient historians think may be legendary. For the sake of argument, however, let's assume that Cyrus's mother was a Median princess. Why would that have made the son of a Persian king, born in Persia, "a Mede by birth"? That kind of logic would have made Obed, the grandfather of David, a Moabite, because his mother Ruth was a Moabitess (Ruth 1:3-4; 4:13-21). Likewise, the sons of Joseph--Manasseh and Ephraim--would have been Egyptians, because their mother was an Egyptian (Gen. 41:50-52). Judah's son Shelah would have been a Canaanite, because his mother was a "Canaanitish woman" (Gen. 46:10), and members of the Shaulite branch of the tribe of Simeon (Num. 26:13) would also have been Canaanites, because Shaul's mother was also a "Canaanitish woman" (Gen. 46:10; Ex. 6:15). Even Judah's twin sons Perez and Zerah (Gen. 38:24-30), would have been Canaanites, because their mother Tamar, by implication of where Judah lived at the time of their conception and birth, would have been a Canaanitess. According to 1 Chronicles 3:1-3, the mothers of three of David's sons were foreigners, so the same logic that inerrantists use to make Cyrus a Mede would make these sons of David the same ethnicity as their mothers.
The force of this quibble depends entirely on the tenuous theory that "Darius the Mede" and "Cyrus" were one and the same person, but Cyrus was not "of the seed of the Medes" or "by birth a Mede." He was a Persian, and the writer of Daniel described him as such when he was unequivocally referring to his ethnicity (Dan. 6:28). As noted above, the author of Daniel specifically said that "Darius the Mede" was "by birth a Mede," so he was obviously emphasizing his ethnic origin; therefore, if Miller's spin on Daniel 6:28 is correct, it would have this verse meaning: "So Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius [the Mede], even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." Only a desperate biblical inerrantist would say that this interpretation of the verse makes any logical sense, because a more plausible interpretation is that the writer was emphasizing that Cyrus was a Persian as opposed to Darius, whom he had just identified as a Mede.
In the history section of his "defense of Daniel," which he entitled "Daniel Doings," Robert Turkel also appropriated Wiseman's attempt to retranslate Daniel 6:28 to make Cyrus and Darius the Mede the same person. He basically recycled Wiseman's and Miller's quibbles, but he did include a couple of other points, which he supported with his usual way of inserting bracketed references to writers who agreed, in this case, that Cyrus and Darius were the same person. I will wait until my article on the historicity of Darius the Mede to reply to that part of his "defense." Here I will address only the brief paragraph that defended the claim in Daniel 9:1 that "Darius the Mede" was the "son of Ahasuerus." As usual, his only defense of this claim was an author who thought that this was no discrepancy.
According to Whitcomb's theory, Gubaru was born in 601 B.C. to Ahasuerus, a Mede, and was appointed by Cyrus as governor over Babylon and the "Region beyond the River."
And the evidence that proves this is what? If this is a verifiable historical claim, why didn't Whitcomb or Turkel cite and quote the ancient Near Eastern documents that confirm this? Earlier in this article, I linked readers to a translation of The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle to show that the general who led Median forces in this military campaign was Cyaxerxes and not Ahasuerus as incorrectly reported in the apocryphal book of Tobit. Further along in this article, I link readers to Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions that confirm that Belshazzar was an actual historical person who was the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, so if there are such records that will confirm that Gubaru was the son of a Mede named Ahasuerus and that Cyrus made him king of Babylon, why didn't Whitcomb or Turkel quote them and link readers to sources where they can be read?
He [Gubaru] assumed the kingship over this territory when Cyrus himself withdrew from Babylon, and appointed his own supervisors over his dominion, holding the power of life and death over them.
There are records that indicate that Gubaru was made governor of Babylon when Cyrus left there after the first year of Persian occupation to make his permanent residences in Susa and Ecbatana, but there are no records that Gubaru was ever made the "king of Babylon." Turkel seems to think that citing a scholar who agrees with him is enough to establish his position, but there are scholars who disagree with Whitcomb's position that Cyrus made Gubaru the king of Babylon, as the following quotation from an article at the Biblical Horizons website shows.
In 1881, Babelon advanced the view that Darius the Mede was Gubaru, the governor of Babylon during the early Persian era. This theory was strengthened and given classical form by John C. Whitcomb in 1959. Whitcomb, Darius the Mede (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed). Recent discoveries have introduced several problems with this theory. First, references to Gubaru as governor of Babylon do not appear until the 4th year of Cyrus, and continue to the 5th year of Cambyses. The general that took the city of Babylon was also named Gubaru, but he died three weeks after the conquest of the city. It appears that a confusion between these two men lies behind the idea that Gubaru the Governor took charge of Babylon immediately after it was taken. Second, newly available cunieform evidence makes it clear that Cambyses became vice-ruler in charge of Babylon only a few months after the conquest. It is impossible that there should be a third ruler, also called "king." Moreover, if Gubaru were governor of Babylon, under Cambyses, who was under Cyrus, then what was the post Daniel was being considered for in Daniel 6? It seems clear that Daniel was being considered for the post of governor of Babylon! On the problems with the Gubaru identification, see William H. Shea, "Darius the Mede: An Update," Andrews University Seminary Studies 20 (1982):229-247. (This article is not Shea's latest word on the Darius problem; see below.)
Shea is a defender of the view that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Persian were the same person, and I will be responding to this claim in "Darius the Mede." I will save further comments until then on this straw that some inerrantists have grasped. At this point, I just wanted readers to see that many Bible-believing authors see serious problems in Whitcomb's claim that Gubaru was "Darius the Mede." Turkel needs to do more than just cite or quote an author on this issue, because it is highly controversial even among those who believe that the Bible is "God's word."
There is a far more logical reason to think that the author of Daniel simply made a historical mistake in claiming that Babylon fell to the Medes. In a time when there were no libraries or internet for a writer to use in researching his subject, writers had to depend on tradition and legends, so historical mistakes were not uncommon in their accounts of events in the distant past. We have already noticed, for example, that the second-century BC author of the apocryphal book Baruch thought that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father. The verses below were in a letter that accompanied a contribution that the princes, nobles, and elders still in Babylon had collected for the priests in Jerusalem.
Baruch 1:10 They said: Here we send you money; so buy with the money burnt offerings and sin offerings and incense, and prepare a grain offering, and offer them on the altar of the Lord our God; 11 and pray for the life of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and for the life of his son Belshazzar, so that their days on earth may be like the days of heaven. 12 The Lord will give us strength, and light to our eyes; we shall live under the protection of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and under the protection of his son Belshazzar, and we shall serve them many days and find favor in their sight.
Extrabiblical Akkadian and cuneiform inscriptions found in Babylon provide reliable evidence that Belshazzar was in reality the son of king Nabonidus, so however the impression that he was the son of Nebuchadnezzar may have originated in the second century BC, we now know that it was incorrect. In Beasts, Horns, and the Antichrist, Brodrick D. Shepherd quoted Samuel Driver's opinion of why historical inaccuracies have occurred so often in second-century BC manuscripts.
Until the establishment of the Seleucid era, in 312 BC, the Jews had no fixed era whatever; and a writer living in Jerusalem under Antiochus Epiphanes would have very imperfect materials for estimating correctly the chronology of the period here in question (S. R. Driver, "The Book of Daniel,"Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. 139, quoted by Shepherd).
Shepherd went on to cite other examples of historical inaccuracy that Driver had identified.
Driver points out similar chronological errors made by the Jewish historian Josephus and the Hellenistic Jew Demetrius: 1) Josephus errs by some 30 years in reckoning 639 years between the second year of Cyrus (537/536 BC) and the destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70). 2) He errs by 60 years in reckoning 434 years from the end of the Captivity (538 BC) to the reign of Antiochus Eupator (164-162 BC). 3) He errs by 50 years in reckoning 481 years from the end of the Captivity to the time of Aristobulous (105/104 BC). 4) Demetrius errs some 70 years in reckoning 573 years from the Captivity of the ten tribes (722/721 BC) to the time of Ptolemy IV (222 BC).
Shepherd also quoted Frederick W. Farrar's observation that the error by Demetirus was very similar to chronological miscalculations in the book of Daniel.
In other words, he [Demetrius] makes as nearly as possible the same miscalculations as the writer of Daniel. This seems to show that there was some traditional error in the current chronology; and it cannot be overlooked that in ancient days the means for coming to accurate chronological conclusions were exceedingly imperfect ("The Book of Daniel," The Expositor's Bible, vol. 4: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1956, p. 423, quoted by Shepherd).
To visualize just how difficult historically accurate reporting of both events and chronology would have been in a time when there were no libraries or internet, one has only to imagine how many mistakes a modern author would make writing a record of, say, colonial New England, which was settled almost 400 years ago, if he had no library references to consult and had to rely almost entirely on word-of-mouth traditions that had been passed along through four centuries. I say "almost entirely," because the author of Daniel did have at least one source to consult. He had the sacred Jewish literature, which like modern inerrantists, he would have believed was divine in its origin, and he apparently had or at least claimed a familiarity with the book of Jeremiah.
Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans--2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
If the author of Daniel thought that the book of Jeremiah contained "the word of Yahweh," then, like his modern inerrantist counterparts, he would have believed that whatever this book had prophetically said about the destruction of Babylon must have happened, and Jeremiah had prophesied that Babylon would be destroyed by the Medes.
Jeremiah 51:11 Sharpen the arrows! Fill the quivers! Yahweh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose concerning Babylon is to destroy it, for that is the vengeance of Yahweh, vengeance for his temple. 12 Raise a standard against the walls of Babylon; make the watch strong; post sentinels; prepare the ambushes; for Yahweh has both planned and done what he spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon. 13 You who live by mighty waters, rich in treasures, your end has come, the thread of your life is cut. 14 Yahweh of hosts has sworn by himself: Surely I will fill you with troops like a swarm of locusts, and they shall raise a shout of victory over you. 15 It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. 16 When he utters his voice there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain, and he brings out the wind from his storehouses. 17 Everyone is stupid and without knowledge; goldsmiths are all put to shame by their idols; for their images are false, and there is no breath in them. 18 They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish. 19 Not like these is Yahweh, the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things, and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; Yahweh of hosts is his name. 20 You are my war club, my weapon of battle: with you I smash nations; with you I destroy kingdoms; 21 with you I smash the horse and its rider; with you I smash the chariot and the charioteer; 22 with you I smash man and woman; with you I smash the old man and the boy; with you I smash the young man and the girl; 23 with you I smash shepherds and their flocks; with you I smash farmers and their teams; with you I smash governors and deputies. 24 I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea before your very eyes for all the wrong that they have done in Zion, says Yahweh. 25 I am against you, O destroying mountain, says Yahweh, that destroys the whole earth; I will stretch out my hand against you, and roll you down from the crags, and make you a burned-out mountain. 26 No stone shall be taken from you for a corner and no stone for a foundation, but you shall be a perpetual waste, says Yahweh. 27 Raise a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations; prepare the nations for war against her, summon against her the kingdoms, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz; appoint a marshal against her, bring up horses like bristling locusts. 28 Prepare the nations for war against her, the kings of the Medes, with their governors and deputies, and every land under their dominion. 29 The land trembles and writhes, for the Lord's purposes against Babylon stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant. 30 The warriors of Babylon have given up fighting, they remain in their strongholds; their strength has failed, they have become women; her buildings are set on fire, her bars are broken. 31 One runner runs to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to tell the king of Babylon that his city is taken from end to end: 32 the fords have been seized, the marshes have been burned with fire, and the soldiers are in panic. 33 For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden; yet a little while and the time of her harvest will come. 34 "King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me; he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me like a monster; he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has spewed me out. 35 May my torn flesh be avenged on Babylon," the inhabitants of Zion shall say. "May my blood be avenged on the inhabitants of Chaldea," Jerusalem shall say. 36 Therefore thus says Yahweh: I am going to defend your cause and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea and make her fountain dry; 37 and Babylon shall become a heap of ruins, a den of jackals, an object of horror and of hissing, without inhabitant. 38 Like lions they shall roar together; they shall growl like lions' whelps. 39 When they are inflamed, I will set out their drink and make them drunk, until they become merry and then sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, says Yahweh. 40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats. 41 How Sheshach is taken, the pride of the whole earth seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations! 42 The sea has risen over Babylon; she has been covered by its tumultuous waves. 43 Her cities have become an object of horror, a land of drought and a desert, a land in which no one lives, and through which no mortal passes. 44 I will punish Bel in Babylon, and make him disgorge what he has swallowed. The nations shall no longer stream to him; the wall of Babylon has fallen. 45 Come out of her, my people! Save your lives, each of you, from the fierce anger of Yahweh! 46 Do not be fainthearted or fearful at the rumors heard in the land--one year one rumor comes, the next year another, rumors of violence in the land and of ruler against ruler. 47 Assuredly, the days are coming when I will punish the images of Babylon; her whole land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall fall in her midst. 48 Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, shall shout for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north, says Yahweh. 49 Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, as the slain of all the earth have fallen because of Babylon. 50 You survivors of the sword, go, do not linger! Remember Yahweh in a distant land, and let Jerusalem come into your mind: 51 We are put to shame, for we have heard insults; dishonor has covered our face, for aliens have come into the holy places of the Lord's house. 52 Therefore the time is surely coming, says Yahweh, when I will punish her idols, and through all her land the wounded shall groan. 53 Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify her strong height, from me destroyers would come upon her, says Yahweh. 54 Listen!--a cry from Babylon! A great crashing from the land of the Chaldeans! 55 For Yahweh is laying Babylon waste, and stilling her loud clamor. Their waves roar like mighty waters, the sound of their clamor resounds; 56 for a destroyer has come against her, against Babylon; her warriors are taken, their bows are broken; for Yahweh is a God of recompense, he will repay in full. 57 I will make her officials and her sages drunk, also her governors, her deputies, and her warriors; they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, says the King, whose name is Yahweh of hosts. 58 Thus says Yahweh of hosts: The broad wall of Babylon shall be leveled to the ground, and her high gates shall be burned with fire. The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing, and the nations weary themselves only for fire. 59 The word that the prophet Jeremiah commanded Seraiah son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, when he went with King Zedekiah of Judah to Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign. Seraiah was the quartermaster. 60 Jeremiah wrote in a scroll all the disasters that would come on Babylon, all these words that are written concerning Babylon.
Isaiah had also prophesied that Babylon would fall to the Medes.
Isaiah 13:1 The oracle concerning Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw.... 17 See, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. 18 Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children. 19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. 20 It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; Arabs will not pitch their tents there, shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there. 21 But wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance. 22 Hyenas will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged.
Under the conditions described above, when writers had no library or internet sources that they could consult but had been culturally conditioned to believe that their sacred literature had been given to them by their national god Yahweh, someone familiar with the works of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah would have assumed that whatever they had prophesied about the downfall of Babylon would have surely come to pass. The author of Daniel, writing centuries after the fact, accordingly assumed that Babylon had fallen to the Medes, just as the prophets had predicted. In reality, the Median empire had been conquered by Cyrus of Persia in 550 BC, a decade before Babylon fell to Persian forces. There was no slaughter or complete destruction as predicted by both Isaiah and Jeremiah, because the Persian army, after defeating the Babylonian army along the Tigris River to the north, had encountered almost no resistance when it entered Babylon. Cyrus proved to be a magnanimous ruler, who respected the religions and other rights of his conquered subjects, so certainly he didn't massacre young men and children or destroy the city and leave it to be populated by wild animals.
The author of Daniel, writing long after the fact, obviously didn't know the facts about the actual fall of Babylon, and so he theorized that the city had to have been conquered by the Medes; hence, he attributed its conquest to "Darius the Mede" and made the additional mistake of assuming that he was the son of a Median king named Ahasuerus, who other second-century BC writers mistakenly thought had figured prominently in Median conquests.
These are historical mistakes that would surely not have been made if the author of Daniel had actually been an important Babylonian/Persian official at the time when all the events he wrote about were happening.
Go to Part Three.
