“The Annals of The World” by ‘Archbishop James Ussher’ Part #2

“Annals Of The World by James Ussher – Part #1”

Thus the Seder Olam depicts the Kingdom of Persia lasting a mere 53 years from 374 to 321 BC, rather than about 207 years from 538 to 331 BC. (9) Over the centuries, orthodox rabbis have differed somewhat in their listing of the Persian Kings, but they generally have not departed from the 52/53 year parameter established within the Seder Olam. (10) The result of this shortening of the span of the Persian Empire is that the paramount prophecy and the major foundation block of chronology, “The Daniel 9:25 seventy weeks of years,” has become dislodged! Furthermore, this shortening as perpetuated within the Seder Olam is deliberate!

While not openly admitting this, present day Jewish scholars acknowledge that there is something enigmatic (mysterious or obscure) about the Seder Olam’s dating. For example, after stating that the commonly received dates in the Ptolemaic chronology, “can hardly be doubted,” Rabbi Simon Schwab nevertheless goes on to uphold his own tradition. (11) “It should have been possible that our Sages – for some unknown reason – had ‘covered up’ a certain historic period and purposely eliminated and suppressed all records and other material pertaining thereto. If so, what might have been their compelling reason for so unusual a procedure? Nothing short of ‘Divine Command’ could have prompted those saintly, ‘men of truth’ to leave out completely all data and historic tables in such a fashion that the subsequent chronological gap could escape being noticed by countless generations, known to a few initiates only who were duty-bound to keep the secret to themselves. ” (Emphasis Schwab’s)

This is an astonishing proposal! Schwab, along with other Jewish commentators, further suggests that the reason God directed the Sages of the 2nd century AD to become involved in falsifying the data was to confuse anyone who might try to use the prophecies of Daniel to predict the time of the Messiah’s coming. (unbelievable!)  This was supposedly done to honor Daniel 12:4 which says, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” He adds that the reason the Sages had adopted the non-Jewish Seleucid Era calendar was part of the scheme to do just that, to close up the words and seal the book of Daniel. (12) Schwab also states that if the 165 years were included it would reveal that, “we are much closer to the end of the 6th Millennium than we had surmised.” (13) (Schwab mentions this date as the time when many Rabbis expect the Messiah to come.) No, if the 165 years were included, it would point to Jesus Christ in 33 AD and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD that’s why! Leon Morris says, “Why? Tradition, that’s why! Tradition is born out of denial of the truth!” But can any sincere reader accept such a flimsy reason as justification for distorting history? It actually accuses God Himself of perpetuating a dishonest deception. (Which is a lie!)

Indeed, it is manifestly apparent that the real reasons for the deliberate altering of their own national chronology in the Seder Olam were: (1) To conceal the fact that the Daniel 9:25 prophecy clearly pointed to Jesus of Nazareth as its fulfillment and therefore the long awaited Messiah; and (2) To make that seventy week of years prophecy point to Simon bar Kokhba! The Rabbis in the century immediately following Christ Jesus had a tremendous problem with so direct a prophecy as Daniel 9:24-27. This chapter speaks of Messiah’s appearing 69 “weeks” (i.e. 69 sevens) or 483 years after the going forth of a commandment to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem and its walls.

Such must either be acknowledged and his person accepted or completely erased from Jewish consciousness. The latter could be accomplished if the 69 or (70) weeks of years could some how be made  to apply to the century after the life of Christ. Then it would be possible for the Rabbis to point to another messiah who, as circumstances would have it was cut off in death some 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. (14) The 9th day of the month of Av (July/August) is a great day of fasting and sorrow for Israel. On this day in 586/588 BC the Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple and burned it to the ground. Further, the second Temple was laid waste and burned to the ground by the Romans under Titus on the same day in 70 AD, and on that very same day in 135 AD at the conclusion of a three and a half year revolt, the Romans crushed the army of the “messianic” Simon bar Kokhba (also spelled ‘Cocheba‘).

Bar Kokhba had been declared the long-awaited Messiah by the foremost Jewish scholar of that day, the highly venerated Rabbi Akiva (Akiba) ben Joseph. In 130 AD, Emperor Hadrian of Rome declared his intention to raise a shrine to Jupiter on the site of the Temple, (15) and in 131 he issued a decree forbidding circumcision as well as public instruction in Jewish law. (16) Having preached peace all his life, the 90 year old Akiva gave his blessing to the revolution by proclaiming that Bar Kokhba was the “star out of Jacob” and the “scepter out of Israel.” (Num. 24:17) (17)

In his 98th year Rabbi Akiva was eventually imprisoned and condemned to death by the Romans. (18) Among the many accolades heaped upon Akiva, that which elevated him as a pre-eminent authority, was the acknowledging of him as “the father of the Mishnah.” (19) Such prominence gave great weight to the Messianic expectancy Akiva placed upon Bar Kokhba. Akiva’s students became some of the most prominent sages of the following generation. Among these was Yose (Jose) ben Halafta. Akiva’s influence on Halafta is apparent from a statement made concerning his education, “it was merely said that Rabbi Akiva had been his teacher.” (20) As his mentor, Akiva’s regard for Bar Kokhba would have been thoroughly imbedded in Yose. (21) The preceding overview explains why the Seder Olam is held in such veneration and why the Jews still use it for their national dating. Yet the fact remains that it is a dishonest attempt to conceal the truth with regards to the Daniel 9:24-27 prophecy.

By removing the 164/165 years from the duration of the Persian Empire, Rabbi Halafta was able to make the 483 year Daniel 9:24-27 prophecy fall reasonably close to the years prior to the 132 AD revolt during which Bar Kokhba rose to prominence as Israel’s military and economic leader. (22) Then with Akiva proclaiming, “This is the King Messiah” (23) followed by “all the contemporary sages regarding him as the king Messiah, ” (24) the Jewish populace united behind this false hope.

Dio Cassius states that the whole of Judea was in revolt, the whole nation. To quell the rebellion, Hadrian dispatched Julius Serverus, his ablest general from Britain. The Romans destroyed 985 towns in Palestine/Israel and slew 580,000 men. A still larger number perished through starvation, disease and fire. All Judah was laid waste, and bar Kokhba himself fell while defending Bethar. (25) Even more astonishing is that, “even in later generations, despite the disappointment engendered by his defeat, his image persisted as the embodiment of Messianic hopes.” (26) Indeed, the consistent verdict of Jewish historians is: “The most important historical Messianic figure was surely Bar Kokhba.” (27)

Yose ben Halafta (28) and his fellow compilers of the Seder Olam sought to terminate the 69 “weeks of years” as close to the 132 AD revolt as possible, but they were limited as to where they could make “the cuts.” As the chronology of the Seleucid era onward was firmly fixed among the Jews, years could not be sliced from their history after 312 BC.  Since the Daniel 9:24-27 prophecy dealt with a decree that was biblically and historically issued by a Persian monarch, this left only the Persian period of history for them to exploit. The Persians had been so hated by the Greeks and later by the Moslems that these two conquerors destroyed nearly all the Persian records. This has created great difficulty in recovering their sequence of kings, the length of their reigns, and thereby their chronology. Thus, the Persian period was readily vulnerable to manipulation. (29)

The authors of this article offer the only conclusion and the only reasonable, logical deduction that can be drawn from these historical and biblical facts. I will also include an article from the ‘Encyclopedia Judaica’ on the “Seder Olam” which will help to verify these findings in my next blog. This article was compiled by; Archbishop James Ussher;  Floyd Jones, Th. D, Ph. D.; Larry Pierce; and other minor additions were added by me. I trust this will be helpful in showing why there is a difference of 243 years between the Gentile solar calender and the Jewish lunar calender. It is not just the difference between the sun and the moon it is an intentional, computational difference. However, Dan. 9:24-27 tells us that Israel’s Messiah had to come before the destruction of their Temple and that happened in 70 AD, so if it wasn’t Jesus of Nazareth then who was it?  Make sure on these last two blogs you read slowly and: “…Between The Lines…”

References & Footnotes:

1. The Seder Olam is divided into three parts, each consisting of ten chapters, (called tractates). Part One, gives the dates of the major events from the creation to the crossing of the Jordan River under Joshua’s command. Part Two, extends frrom the Jordan crossing to the murder of Zachariah, King of Israel. (II Kings 15:10. Chapters 21-27 of Part Three, extend to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the Temple and chapter 28 to the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. Chapter 29 and the first part of 30 cover the Persian period. The remainder of chapter 30 contains a summary of events from the conquest of Persia by Alexander to the 132 AD Bar Kokhba (also spelled “Cocheba“) revolt during the reign of Hadrian (AD 76-138). Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, Israel: Keter Publishing House, Ltd., 1971), Vol. 14, “Seder Olam Rabbah,” p. 1091-1092.

2. Jack Moorman, Bible Chronology: The Two Great Divides, (Collingswood, NJ: Bible For Today Press, 1999), p. 10-15. Moorman’s research was a primary source for this expose’.

3. Encyclopedia Judaica, “Seder Olam Rabbah.” p. 1092.

4. Ibid.

5. Not having access to Seder Olam for this expose’ the numbers are those recorded by Moorman. As his source occasionally reckoned exclusively or inclusively, so did he. Most Jewish dates may be confirmed in Jack Finegan, ‘Handbook of Biblical Chronology’ (Peabody MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998), p. 130.

6. Moorman, Bible Chronology: The Two Great Divides, p. 12.

7. Ibid.

8. Martin Anstey, The Romance of Bible Chronology (London: Marshall Bros., 1913), p. 23-24.

9. Moorman, Bible Chronology: The Two Great Divides, p. 12.

10. Ibid. p. 13.

11. Simon Schwab, Dr. Joseph Breuer Jubilee Volume, “Comparative Jewish Chronology,” (New York, NY: Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society, Philipp Felheim Inc., 1962), p. 188.

12. Shimon Schwab, Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History, “Comparative Jewish Chronology” (lakewood, NJ: CIS Pub., 1991), p. 270-272.

13. Schwab, Dr. Joseph Breuer Jubilee Volume, p. 190-191.

14. Of course no such admission by any of the Jewish Sages can be cited, but the facts are obvious.

15. Dio Cassius, Roman History, Vol. Viii, Loeb (2000) Bk. 69, p. 447.

16. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Caesar and Christ, Volume 3 (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1944), p. 548.

17. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 2, “Akiva,” p. 489.

18. Durant, The Story of Civilization, Caesar and Christ, p. 548-549.

19. Akiva made a preliminary gathering and formulation of the material for the six orders (containing 63 chapters or tractates) of that religious code which was the heart of the Talmud. Near the end of the 2nd century, Judah ha Nasi completed the work. Moorman, Bible Chronology: The Two Great Divides, p. 14.

20. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 16, “Yose ben Halafta.” p. 852.

21. Ibid. p. 853. Yose ben Halafta’s own influence may be seen in that some of his writings were included in Judah ha Nasi’s final editing of the Mishnah, and his name is mentioned in 59 of the 63 tractates. Though referred to in the Mishnah and Talmud, Halafta’s ‘Seder Olam’ is not a formal part of that work. Nevertheless, it is a work of Talmudic authority, and to openly contradict it would be unthinkable to orthodox Jews. as Rabbi Schwab stated: “…our traditional chronology is based on ‘Seder Olam‘ because of the authority of its author. it is therefore quite inconceivable that any post-Talmudic teacher could possible ‘reject’ those chronological calculations which have been the subject of many a Talmudic discussion.” (Schwab, Dr. Joseph Breuer Jubilee Volume, p. 186). Thus it is that the Seder Olam is held in such high esteem and is still used by the Jews for their national dating.

22. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 4, “Bar Kokhba,” p. 230.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid. p. 231.

25. Dio Cassius, Roman History, Vol. VIII, Bk. 69, p. 449-450; Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 548.

26. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 4, “Bar Kokhba,” p. 231.

27. Ibid., Vol. 11, “Messiah,” p. 1410.

28. Not only do Jews venerate Jose/Yose because the Seder Olam had its origin in his school, he is regarded with a near superstitious reverence. This may be seen in that it was said: “that he was worthy of having the prophet Elijah reveal himself to him regularly in order to teach him.” Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 16, “Yose ben Halafta,” p. 853.

29. Yet despite all that has been said concerning the Jews veneration for Jose, the Encyclopedia Judaica forthrightly admits: “The most significant confusion in Jose’s calculation is the compression of the Persian period, from the rebuilding of the Temple by Zerubbabel in 516 BC to the conquest of Persia by Alexander, to no more than 34 years.” (Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 14, “Seder Olam Rabbah,” p. 1092).

“The Annals of The World” by ‘Archbishop James Ussher’ Part #2 – 11/6/12 (Appendix G: Seder Olam Rabbah)