p. 8 | Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 2, 1912

Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy

By William Ambrose Spicer

The Hand of God in History—No. 8

Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy

The Greek Olympiads and 457 B. C.

The Greek love of athletics led to the establishment of an era of chronology that bears witness in confirmation of the year 457 B. C. as the seventh of Artaxerxes, when the decree to Ezra went forth.

Beginning with July, 776 B. C., the Olympic games were celebrated every four years. The period from one contest to the next was counted an Olympiad. Bliss says:—

An Olympiad is a cycle of four years, and the years are reckoned as the first, second, third, or fourth year of any given Olympiad. The Olympic games consisted of various athletic sports, a record of which was kept at Elis, and the names of the victors inserted in it by the presidents of the games. These registers are pronounced accurate by ancient historians, and are complete, with the exception of the 211th Olympiad, “The only one,” says Pausanias, “omitted in the register of the Eleans.”—“Sacred Chronology,” page 23.

This register, running through the centuries, afforded Greek writers a chronological system for recording dates of events. An event was said to have occurred in such a year of a certain Olympiad. And the year might be further designated by the name of the archon (chief magistrate) of Athens, who occupied office during that year.

At various points the Greek history touches the Persian in a way to give us dates in Persian history. Xerxes the Great of Persia, father of Artaxerxes, had failed in his mighty effort to subdue Greece. His great campaign had been predicted in prophecy. The angel said to Daniel, in the days of Darius, ruler in Babylon, when Cyrus was king of Persia:— “Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.” Dan. 11:2.

Xerxes was this fourth king. The order was, (1) Cambyses, (2) Smerdis, (3) Darius Hystaspes, (4) Xerxes. And Xerxes did “stir up all against the realm of Grecia.” His was the mightiest army that has ever yet marched on earth. But he met defeat. The decisive blow was struck by the Greeks in the famous naval battle of Salamis, where Xerxes, from a lofty throne on shore, saw three hundred eighty Greek ships break in pieces his own fleet of over seven hundred. The king fled across the Hellespont into Asia, and never again did a Persian army set foot in Europe. The time of Grecia was near at hand.

This campaign of Xerxes made his life and death a subject of Greek history. So he is not only in the canon of Ptolemy, but in the record by the Olympiads. Diodorus, a Greek historian who lived in the first century B. C., has a reputation for frequent inaccuracy as to dates (see Holm’s “History of Greece,” Vol. II, page 102), but he gives very definite testimony to the death of Xerxes. He found it recorded in the Greek history under the archonship of Lysitheus. Lysitheus was the archon, or magistrate, of Athens in the fourth year of the 78th Olympiad, which began July, 465 B. C. See Clinton’s “Fasti Hellenica,” page 42. William Watkiss Lloyd, an English writer on Greek history, says:—

The date of the death of Xerxes is one of the most happily certified points in the chronology of these times, and supplies a limit for the dates of several events in Greek history proper. Diodorus assigns it to the archonship of Lysitheus (July, 465 B. C., to July, 464 B. C.).—“The Age of Pericles,” Vol. I, page 356.

Somewhere between those two dates, according to the Olympiads, Artabanus, captain of the guard, had Xerxes assassinated. Artabanus ruled seven months (this time being counted with the years of Xerxes in the chronology), and then came Artaxerxes to the throne, in 464 B. C. This agrees entirely with the record of the canon, and makes the seventh year of Artaxerxes 457 B. C.

Sir Isaac Newton, the great mathematician and scientist, made an analysis of Greek and other records bearing witness to 457 B. C. as the seventh year of Artaxerxes. For the famous discoverer of the law of gravitation was an earnest student of prophecy and of the greatest of all sciences—the science of salvation. In his work on the “Prophecies of Daniel,” he gives various independent lines of proof for the date 457 B. C. Reference to three of these must suffice:—

1. He shows that soon after an anniversary

of his accession, Xerxes began to march his army over the Hellespont into Europe, “in the end of the fourth year of the 74th Olympiad,” which ended in June, 480 B. C. Newton continues:—

In the autumn, three months after, on the full moon, the sixteenth day of the month of Munychion, was the battle of Salamis, and a little after that an eclipse of the sun, which, by the calculation, fell on October 2. His [Xerxes’s] sixth year, therefore, began a little before June, suppose in spring, An. J. P. [Julian period] 4234 (B. C. 480), and his first year consequently in spring, An. J. P. 4229 (B. C. 485), as above. Now he reigned almost twenty-one years, by the consent of all writers. Add the seven months of Artabanus, and the sum will be twenty-one years and about four or five months, which end between midsummer and autumn, An. J. P. 4250 (B. C. 464). And at this time, therefore, began the reign of his successor, Artaxerxes, as was to be proved.—Part I, chap. 10.

2. Again he takes the writings of Africanus, a Christian of the third century:—

The same thing is also confirmed by Julius Africanus, who informs us out of former writers that the twentieth year of Artaxerxes was the one hundred fifteenth year from the beginning of the reign of Cyrus in Persia, and fell in with An. 4, Olympiad 83 [the fourth year of the 83d Olympiad]. It began, therefore, with the Olympic year soon after the summer solstice, An. J. P. 4269 (B. C. 445). Subduct nineteen years, and his first year will begin at the same time of the year An. J. P. 4250 (B. C. 464), as above.

3. The last line of proof that we have space to refer to is based on testimony as to the death of Artaxerxes. It will be more easily followed if we quote more fully than Sir Isaac Newton does from the authority cited; and indeed the story is an interesting one apart from its contribution to chronology. It is from the “History of the Peloponnesian War,”—really a contest between Sparta and Athens,—written by Thucydides. Writing of the winter season of 425-424 B. C., he says:—

During the ensuing winter, Aristides, son of Archippus, one of the commanders of the Athenian vessels which collected tribute from the allies, captured at Eion, upon the [river] Strymon, Artaphernes, a Persian, who was on his way from the king [Artaxerxes] to Sparta. He was brought to Athens, and the Athenians had the despatches which he was carrying, and which were written in the Assyrian character, translated. . . . The chief point was a remonstrance addressed to the Lacedæmonians by the king, who said that he could not understand what they wanted. . . . If they meant to make themselves intelligible, he desired them to send to him another embassy with the Persian envoy. Shortly afterward the Athenians sent Artaphernes in a trireme [galley] to Ephesus, and with him an embassy of their own; but they found that Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, had recently died; for the embassy arrived just at that time.—Book 2, par. 50; on Jowett’s Translation, page 278.

As all this happened “during the winter,” it is evident that the envoys from Greece on the way to the king, and the embassy from Persia announcing the king’s death, met in Ephesus in the early months of 424 B. C.; and that the death of Artaxerxes must have occurred toward the end of 425 B. C. Sir Isaac Newton shows that his precise reign was thirty-nine years and three months. Counting this time back from the end of 425 B. C., the beginning of his reign comes in the latter half of 464 B. C., just as we have seen by other witnesses.

This is but a rough calculation, based on an estimate of the reasonable time elapsing, related to the exact chronology of Ptolemy’s Canon as the “log” reckoning of a ship is relating to the sure observation by the sun or stars. But it is interesting as showing how fragmentary details fit into the record of chronological history.

The testimony of the Olympiads agrees with that of Ptolemy’s Canon in fixing the year period within which Artaxerxes began to reign. And just where the testimony of history is uncertain—as to the season of the year—the voice of Inspiration speaks.

The year in which the great commission was granted to Ezra to restore and build Jerusalem was 457 B. C.

W. A. S.