The Hunt for Ancient Israel - Essays in Honour of Diana V. Edelman - Cynthia Shafer-Elliott
Dating Haggai: Or Reframing the Context of a Prophetic Book
The Hunt for Ancient Israel - Essays in Honour of Diana V. Edelman - Cynthia Shafer-Elliott
Bob Becking [+]
Utrecht University
Bob Becking is a retired Senior Research Professor. He studied theology and semitics at Utrecht University. He has been a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church for ten years before he started teaching at Utrecht University in 1987. His most recent book is Ezra - Nehemiah (Peeters, 2018), among his many other contributions are Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity (Mohr Siebeck, 2011) and From David to Gedaliah: The Book of Kings as Story and History (Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2007).
Description
Traditionally, the Books of Haggai and Zechariah (1–8) are connected with the rebuilding of the temple in the reign of Darius I. This rebuilding would have taken place in the reign of Darius I i.e. around 520–515 BCE. In her magnificent monograph on the 'Origins of the Second Temple', Diana Edelman has challenged the chronology of the events that took place in Persian period Yehud. As far as I can see, she does not draw any conclusions as to the fate of Haggai (or Zechariah). In this paper, I would like to elaborate on the idea that the Darius mentioned in the Book of Haggai should be identified with Darius II.