ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF. One of the longest of the books of the Old Testament known as the Minor Prophets. The book itself tells us (chap. i. 1) that Zechariah was the son of Berechiali, son of Iddo. In the book of Ezra (chaps. v. 1; vi. 14) he is said to have been the son of Iddo. It appears from the same book that the prophet Zechariah was contemporary with Haggai (see HAGGAI, BOOK OF). The book of Zechariah itself assigns dates to some of the prophecies contained in it. Chapter i. 1-6 is said to have been written in the eighth month of the second year of Darius (Hystaspis), that is to say, in November 520 B.C. Chapters i. 7-vi. 8 are said to have been written in the eleventh month of the same year, that is to say, in February 519. Chapters vii. viii. are said to have been written in the ninth month of the fourth year of Darius, that is to say, in December 518. These chapters are concerned with the rebuilding of the Temple and the Messianic hopes associated with it. They may well have been composed by Zechariah and have constituted the original book of Zechariah. The remaining chapters bear a different character, and would seem to have been the work of two other authors. Some scholars have been led by references in chapters ix.-xi. to Ephraim (ix. 10-15; x. 7: xi. 14), diviners (x. 2), and Assyria (x. 10), to assign them to a period previous to the fall of Samaria. Chapters xii.-xiv., with their reference to false prophets (xiii. 2-6) and the absence of any reference to the Northern Kingdom, have been assigned to the closing years of the Judaean Kingdom (seventh century B.C.). A number of scholars, however, now regard both these sections as post-exilic. The
reference to the Greeks in chapter ix. vs. 13 has sug gested to some that the oracles in chapters ix.-xiv. were composed during or after the period of Alexander the Great (between 332 and 280 B.C. Whitehouse points out that there are many reminiscences of older oracles (cp. xiv. 8 with Ezekiel xlvii. 1-12). He thinks that " prob ably some old pre-exilian oracles belonging to the eighth and seventh centuries have been worked into the texture of these prophecies in chaps. ix. ff." Cornill favours the view that chapters ix.-xi. were composed by a contemporary of Hosea or Isaiah. He thinks that all the arguments brought forward in favour of the time of Hosea and Isaiah " receive an entirely satisfactory explanation if the authorship is attributed to a later secondary writer, who was steeped in the ideas of Ezekiel and dependent upon that prophet." In Cornill's opinion, the post-exilic composition of chapters xii.-xiv. also is indisputable. The idea which dominates this section, of a violent attack by all the heathen upon Jerusalem and God's people, was first coined by Ezekiel under the impression produced by the actual destruction of Jeru salem and the Temple. " Ch. xiv. 8 also is obviously an exaggerated imitation of Ezek. xlvii. 1-10, while the specially Deutero-Isaianic type of language is equally in evidence in xii. 1 and xiv. 16, and xiii. 1 goes back to Numb. xix." See C. Cornill, Intr.; G. H. Box; O. C. Whitehouse; C. F. Kent, The Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of Israel's Prophets, 1910.