the chief of David's house was one removed from Zorobabel by at least six generations . . . thus proving . . . the impossibility of the descen dant's ascent from Babylon being earlier than the reign next to that of Darius Nothus, viz., that of Artaxerxes II.' This argument is fetched from the Davidic genealogy, r Chron. iii. 19-22, com pared with Ezra viii. 2. It is assumed that Hattush in both places is the same person ; now, in the genealogy, it is alleged there are at least six generations between his ancestor Zerubbabel and him, yet he accompanied Ezra from Babylon ; of course this is impossible, if between the ascent of Zerubbabel and that of Ezra are but So years (1 Cyrus to 7 Artaxerxes Longimanus). Dr. Mill (p. 152, note) mentions four ways of exhibiting the offspring of Hananiah, son of Zerubbabel •' the first, that of the common Hebrew text and our version, which, if intelligible, yet leaves the num ber of generations undetermined ; and three others, followed by ancient interpreters, and versions, which result, severally, in making Hattush sixth, eighth, and ninth from Zerubbabel. The present writer secs no reason for departing from the Hebrew text, which he finds both ' and consistent with the customary chronology. The genealogy (he thinks) proceeds thus Zerubbabel ; 2. his children, Meshullam, Hananiah, Shelomith (sister), and five others ; 3. the sons of this Hananiah are Pelatiah and Jeshaiah ; and there the pedigree of Zerubbabel ends, i. e., with the two grandsons. Then---' the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of Shekaniah ; and the sons of Shekaniah, Shemaiah ; and the sons of Shemaiah, Hattush' and five others. That is to say, the genealogist, having deduced the Davidic line through Solomon, and the regal succession down to the grandsons of Zerubbabel, proceeds to mention four other branches of the house of David, and gives a particular account of the fourth, namely, of Shemaiah, the father of that Hattush who went up from Babylon with Ezra, and was in his generation the representative of the Davidic house of And so in fact the Hattush who accompanied Ezra is de scribed (according to the unquestionably true read of the passage, viii. 2, 3 ; of the sons of Hattush, of the sons of Shekaniah ;' for the last clause is out of place as prefixed to the follow ing enumeration of the sons of Parosh,' etc. So the LXX. read it, dirt. ulav AavIS, Ebro viav Zaxavia. Kat dei. viav Npos, It.r.X.; and the apocryphal version more plainly still (1 Esdras. viii. 29) ex rwv vlav Aav4.5, Aarro)t I lexeviou.
3. The concluding argument on the same side is derived from the circumstance, that in the next ascent from Babylon after that of Ezra, and in the same reign, the principal opponent of Nehemiah in his work of rebuilding Jerusalem, was a man [Sanballat], who can be demonstrated to have con tinued an active chief of the Samaritans till the time of Alexander the Great, and to have then founded the temple on Mount Gerizim, Joseph. Antiq. xi. 8. 2-4' (Dr. Mill, a. s.) Josephus's story is that Sanballat, satrap in Samaria of Darius III., had given his daughter in marriage to a brother of the high-priest Jaddua, named Manasses, who, re fusing to put her away, took refuge with his father in-law, and became the first high-priest of the rival Temple built on Mount Gerizim by permission of Alexander, then engaged in the siege of Tyre. All which, with the marvellous romance which follows about Alexander's reception by the high-priest Jaddua, needs a better voucher than Josephus be fore it can be accepted as history. The story about Manasses and Sanballat, is clearly derived from the last recorded act of Nehemiah, his expulsion of a son of Joiada, and grandson of the then high-priest Eliashib, who was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horon ite. It is remarkable that Josephus, in his account of Nehemiah, makes no mention of this act, and does not even name Sanballat : the reason of which may be, that after referring the mission of Nehemiah, as also of Ezra, to the reign of Xerxes, to extend the life of this active chief of the Samaritans from that time to the time of Alexander, full r3o years later, would have been too absurd. So is the as sumption of Petermann, Art. Samaria,' in Her zog's Real-Eneyelop. xiii. 1, p. 367, that there were two Sanballats, one contemporary with Nehemiah, the other with Alexander, and that both had daughters married into the family of the high priest (Eliashib and Jaddua), whose husbands were therefore expelled. As to Jaddua, the fact
may be, as Josephus represents it, that he was still high-priest in the time of Alexander. The six who are named in lineal succession in Neh. xii. to, is ; Jeshua, Joiakim, Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua, will fill up the in terval ozoo years from Cyrus to Alexander. Of these, Eliashib was still high-priest in the thirty second year of Nehemiah's Artahhshashta, and later (xiii. 6. 28) ; it is scarcely possible that this could be Artaxerxes Mnemon, whose thirty-second year is removed from the 1st of Cyrus by more than i6o years, which is far too much for a suc cession of three high-priests. It does not follow from the mention of the successors of Eliashib down to Jaddua in xii. to, ff., that Nehemiah lived to see any of them in the office of high-priest, but only that these genealogies and lists were brought down to his own times by the compiler or last redactor of this book.
It appears, then, that there are no sufficient rea sons for calling in question the correctness of the commonly-received view, that the Darius by whom the edict of Cyrus for the rebuilding of the temple was confirmed, was Darius Hystaspes, whereas the assumption that he was Darius Nothus is attended with insuperable difficulties. The inducement to adopt this latter view is the consideration that the seventy hebdomads of Dan. ix., which end in the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 71, cannot be begun otherwise than by an edict in the second year of Darius Nothus' (Dr. Mill, u.s., p. 166, note). It is hardly necessary to remark that the fall of Jerusalem belongs to the year 7o, to which from the second year of Darius Nothus (423-22 The.), are 491 years at least. That Dr. Mill does not allege this as an argument is, not from any doubt of its truth and cogency—but from regard to the general principle, that history should interpret prophecy, and not be determined by it.' The son of Hystaspes, ninth in the succession of the Archmmenids, as he styles himself in the Behis tun Inscription (comp. Herodot. vii. II), was third descendant from the younger brother of Cambyses, father of Cyrus. Cambyses having died without issue, and no other son of Cyrus surviving, Darius was hereditary successor to the throne, to which, as Herodotus relates, he was elected on the death of the pretended Smerdis. In the Canon, the date of his accession is 521 and the length of his reign 36 years, both points confirmed by Hero dotus (vii. 1-4), according to whom he died five years after the battle of Marathon (therefore 485 B.c.), after a reign of thirty-six years (also attested by an Egyptian inscription, Rosellini, Mon. Storiei, ii. 164). So, his second year would begin 520 B.C. But in the biblical reckoning, followed by Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra, the epoch must have been somewhat later. For it was not until after the suppression of the Babylonian revolt—which, with the siege of nineteen months, beginning in his first year, besides the campaign before it (see the Behis tun inscription), must have occupied two years, that the sovereignty of Darius was confirmed, and the records in Babylon would be accessible for the search mentioned in Ezra vi. t. Hence it is probable that the • seventy years' spoken of by Zechariah were complete from the destruction of the first temple (588-518 s.c.), and that the move ment for resuming the work of rebuilding the temple, was stimulated by the consideration that the predicted time of indignation against Jeru salem had exactly run its course. The benefits conferred by Darius upon the Jews are not men tioned in his inscriptions. Of the satrapies, twenty in number, into which he formed the empire, Palestine would be part of the fourth, including Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. The fourth king of Persia, who should be far richer than they all, and by his strength through his riches should stir up all against the realm of Grecia ' (Dan. xi. 2), may be Darius, if the pseudo-Smerdis is reckoned, but the description better suits Xerxes. See Hit zig in the .Kgf. exeget. Hdb. inloc.
3. ' Darius the Persian,' incidentally mentioned in Neh. xii. 22, is supposed by Gesenius, Lex. s.v. to be Darius II. (Nothus). The mention of Jaddua immediately preceding makes it more probable that Darius III. (Codomannus) is meant — the king who lost his empire to Alexander the Great, 336 B.C. He is named as king of the Persians and Medes' in r Maccab i. r.—H. B.