We have now to consider the light which pro fane history has thrown on the events of these times.
The canon of Ptolemy the mathematician, who flourished about the commencement of the Chris tian era, consists of a catalogue, arranged in chronological order, of the kings of Babylon, commencing with Nabonassar, who reigned B.C. 747, and ending with Nabonned, B.C. 556. Ac cording to this catalogue, Nabopolassar (NaPov who died B.C. 625, was succeeded by Nabocolassar (NagoKoXdo-apos), B.C. 6o5. This Nabocolassar is therefore presumed to be the Nebuchadnezzar of Scripture (for the canon of Ptolemy, see Table Chronologique des lOgnes, etc., par l'Abbe Halmy, Paris 1819). Nabopolassar, the father of Nabocolassar, is supposed to have been the first Chaldrean monarch of Babylon, and to have disunited it from the Assyrian empire, of which it had hitherto formed a part (Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth). According to a fragment of Alexander Polyhistor, reported by Syncellus in his Chronographia, it was this sovereign who destroyed the city of Nineveh, B.C. 612, which, according to Eusebius (Chroit., p. 46), he effected in conjunc tion with Astyages, the eldest son of Cyaxares, king of the Medes (see also Tobit xiv. i5, where the latter is named Assuerus). The following ex tract, preserved by Josephus, from the lost Chal dman history of Berosus, priest of the temple of Bel (a.c. 268), will be found to throw considerable light on the Scripture narrative : When his father Nabuchodonosor heard that the governor whom he had set over Egypt and the places about Ccele Syria and Phoenicia, had revolted from him, while he was not himself able any longer to undergo hardships, he committed to his son Nabuchodono sor, who was still but a youth, some parts of his army, and sent them against them. So when Nebuchodonosor had given him battle, and fought with the rebel, he overcame him, and reduced the country from under his subjection and made it a branch of his own kingdom. But about that time it happened that his father Nabuchodonosor fell ill, and ended his life in the city of Babylon, when he had reigned twenty-one years ; and when he was made sensible that his father Nabuchodonosor was dead—having settled the affairs of Egypt and the other countries, and also those that concerned the captive Jews, and the Phoenicians, Syrians. and Egyptians, and having committed the conveyance of them to Babylon to certain of his friends—he hastily crossed the desert, with a few companions, into Babylon. So he took .upon him the manage ment of public affairs, and of the kingdom which had been kept for him by one of the chief Chal dieans, and he received the entire dominions of his father, and appointed, that when the captives came, they should be placed in colonies in the most proper places of Babylonia' (Anti'. x. I 1. i).
It will be observed that both Nebuchadnezzar (styled by some the Great) and his father are here equally named Nabuchodonosor, but, in the cita tion of the same narrative from Berosus by Jo sephus (Cont. Apron., i, 19), the father of Nebu chadnezzar is called Nabolassar (NapoNcio-o-apos), corresponding nearly with the Nabopolassar of Ptolemy : which has induced some to suppose the name Nabuchodonosor in the former citation to be an error of transcription. Some foundation has thus been afforded for considering Nebuchadnezzar as a general name for Babylonian sovereigns (Prideaux, Connect.) ; this, however, is considered by Whiston as a groundless mistake (Whiston's 7asephies, note on chap. xi.) It is by no means improbable that the similarity of the two names may have led to their being sometimes confounded. The conqueror of Nineveh is also called by the name of Nebuchodonosor in Tobit xiv. 15 (in the Greek, for the Latin ends with ver. 14), and is on this account styled by some, Nebuchadnezzar the First, a designation first applied to him by Rabbi David Gans, under the age of the world, 3285. Alber considers (Inst. Herm. V T., vol. ii. chap. xv.) that the Nabuchodonosor of Judith was not one of the legitimate sovereigns who flourished before the Persian domination, but that both he and Arphaxad were governors of provinces, who had rebelled against the Persians, and assumed those names, and that the pretended Nebuchad nezzar, or Nebuchadnezzar the Third, was reduced to order upon the failure of his expedition under Holofernes. By this rather hazardous conjecture, whereby he further maintains, in contradiction to Bellarmine (De Verb. Del), that the book of Judith refers to a period posterior to the exile, he endea vours to prove that the history of Judith is his torically true, in opposition to Jahn, who regards it as a fiction According to Ptolemy's canon, the reign of Na bocolasar is made to commence two years later than that of the Nebuchadnezzar of Scripture. Many attempts have been made to reconcile this discrepancy, but the solution generally received assumes that the first capture of Jerusalem (Dan. i. i) took place during the last years of the reign. of Nabopolassar, in the expedition mentioned by Berosus (ut supra), and that the canon of Pto lemy dates the commencement of his reign from the death of his father, when he became sole king of Babylon (De Wette's /ntrod., sec. 253, note).