Conclusion:
The wall was definitely built in 444 B.C. and I
have adjusted my calendar from 445 B.C. to 444 B.C. to reflect this finding.
(Thanks to Steve Clarke for his input.)
The Bible is a self-contained book; it has its own answers. We do not need to go outside of the Bible to seek understanding of what God has written. We do not need to get into various seminarian rules of interpretation, we just simply have to faithfully (and therein lies the difficulty due to our flesh) rely on God who causes us to search out the details with prayer; and God in His providence will give us the understanding in our human minds that He already gave to the mind of the new man which prompted the searching in the first place so that all the glory comes full circle back to God!
Now, let us
look at the first time reference in Nehemiah:
Ne 1:1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah.
And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was
in Shushan the palace,
We see
Nehemiah starts off in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (445 B.C.) and it is
the month of Chisleu. We find that Chisleu is the ninth month of the Biblical
Calendar (which starts in March-April of the Gregorian Calendar, with the month
of Abib or Nisan):
Zec 7:1 And it came to pass in the fourth year of
king Darius, that the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah in the fourth
day of the ninth
month, even in Chisleu;
The month
“Chisleu” corresponds therefore to November-December of the Gregorian Calendar.
So Nehemiah starts off somewhere in November-December timeframe of 445 B.C.
The next
time reference in Nehemiah is:
Ne 2:1 And it came to pass in the month Nisan, in
the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him:
and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been beforetime
sad in his presence.
So, we see
that it is still the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, but notice it is now Nisan
which is the first month of the Biblical Calendar:
Es 3:7 In the first month, that is, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of king
Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to
day, and from month to month, to the twelfth month, that is,
the month Adar.
This means
that the Biblical Calendar is now in a new year (time having progressed from
the ninth month of the previous Biblical year to the first month of the new
Biblical year) and the Gregorian Calendar is now at March-April 444 B.C.
(having similarly progressed from November-December 445 B.C.)! Then we read
that the wall was completed in fifty two days in the month Elul (the sixth
month of the Biblical Calendar, which corresponds to August-September of the Gregorian
Calendar), the year still being 444 B.C.:
Ne 6:15 So the wall was finished
in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in
fifty and two days.
This
conclusion is also supported by the secular evidence found on Wikipedia
Encyclopedia Online:
“He arrived in Jerusalem
in the 20th year of Artaxerxes I, (445/444 BC)[3]
with a strong escort supplied by the king, and with letters to all the pashas of the
provinces through which he had to pass, as also to Asaph, keeper of the
royal forests, directing him to assist Nehemiah.” See: Nehemiah - Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
Now,
notice that we have covered all of the chapters of Nehemiah 2, 3, 4, and 5 and
now we are in chapter 6 for the next time reference and in this time reference
God does not give us the reference to the year of reign of Artaxerxes. Why is
this so? The reason is that the sixth month “Elul” falls in the twenty-first
year of Artaxerxes, his year of reign changed after the fifth month of the
Biblical Calendar (somewhere between July-August of the Gregorian Calendar). To
further demonstrate this finding, let us look at Artaxerxes a few years
earlier:
Ezr 7:8 And he (i.e., Ezra) came to
Ezr 7:9 For upon the first day of the first month began he to
go up from
From the
above passages we can see that the first to the fifth Biblical months are in
the seventh year of the reign of King Artaxerxes, so we know that the seventh
year did not change until after the fifth month of the Biblical Calendar.
Additionally,
we see this fact also in the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. From the verses
below we ascertain that He started as King in the third year of the reign of
King Jehoiakim of
Da 1:1 In the third year of the reign
of Jehoiakim king of
Jer 25:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all
the people of Judah in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of
Babylon;
From secular
evidence, Nebuchadnezzar started to reign solo in Summer of 605 B.C. (fourth
year of King Jehoiakim and about the sixth month “Elul”) but he was coregent
with his sick father the year before which was the third year of the reign of
King Jehoiakim. Although, here we went outside of the Bible, we did so to show
that the secular evidence supports what we already found in the Bible.
Now
in case there is doubt that Nehemiah could have left Babylon in the twentieth
year of Artaxerxes and completed the wall in only 52 days, we should remember
that the completion of the wall was by Divine providence on the first hand:
Ne 2:8 And a letter unto Asaph the keeper of the
king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the
palace which appertained to the house, and for the wall of the city, and
for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, according to the
good hand of my God upon me.
Also,
one should bear in mind that the Persian emperors were military strategists and
would have kept stock piles of resources at convenient locations throughout
their empire for the rapid defense of their kingdom and so resources for the
wall needed not come from
Conclusions:
1. The wall of
2. The Biblical months
after 587 B.C. are still determined as they were before that time and the start
of the year in the Biblical Calendar remains unchanged being around March-April
of the corresponding Gregorian year.
3. The Chaldean Calendar
used in the Bible which references the year of reign of the Chaldean monarchs
that ruled over
4. The Biblical references
to months during the years of the reign of Chaldean/Persian monarchs are really
months of the Biblical Calendar that fall within the year of reign stated. For
example, the fifth month and seventh day below is referring to the Biblical
year of the 11th year of the reign of King Zedekiah of
2Kgs 25:8 ¶ And in the fifth month, on the seventh day
of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king
of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of
Babylon, unto Jerusalem.
Also,
this fifth month (July 587 B.C.) would be close to the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s
19th year of reign as he began to reign in the Summer of 606 B.C.
Below
are the timepaths given to me by Steve Clarke relating to 444 B.C.:
[444 BC – AD
33 = 4 x 7 x 17
444 BC – AD
1988 = 11 x 13 x 17
Thus the
terminus ad quem of the paths are the beginning and ending years of the 1955
year church age. 23 x 5 x 17]
The
end.
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