Fall to Fall Calendar used by the scribe of Ezra 7

In this diagram one can see the four calendars existing in the time of Ezra 7 (and there were more, for the Greek calendar is not included here). The Julian one is the dates we are familiar with. The Babylonian and Persian one is always from Spring to Spring as the Chinese and Korean New Year is calculated. The Assyrians did the same. The Jews calculated not from Spring to Spring or Nisan to Nisan but from Tishri to Tishri which is the Fall to Fall reckoning.

The above sketch I got from a photocopy of Thiele’s classnotes given to me in 1973. My own addition is the Assyrian reckoning since the accession year was calculated by the Assyrians as the first year of the king and not like the Babylonians who considered it as the accession year and only the next year as the “first year” in their records. There was seemingly a rule that if the Assyria king was a usurper of the throne, then the Babylonians did not count that year in which confusion reign in the empire and also not the accession year but started in 1 when the Assyrian were already in 3. That is why an event in the time of the usurper to the throne, Sargon II was considered to be in his 9^th palu in the Babylonian reckoning but in the Assyrian reckoning it was considered the 11^th palu. It was in my reckoning the year 712 BCE but conventionally scholars opted for the year 710 BCE. The rightness or wrongness of this view is another issue that I have explained elsewhere in one of my books.

It can be seen that the Israelites left in Nisan of the 7^th year in 457 BCE to Jerusalem and arrived there 5 months later in Fall of 457 BCE or the 7^th year of Artaxerxes in Jewish counting. It is from that month that they considered that a decree was issued by Artaxerxes since it was the zone where the “rubber hits the road”. The task of the decree was to rebuilt and restore and they arrived at the zone of the rebuilding. Thus the decree was considered as issued in Fall at the very place of application of the decree. This is also the way Horn explained it in Review and Herald of 1953, April 30. The reason is that Adventist scholars works with the principle of biblical harmony and not biblical dichotomy. We do not set up two text against each other and speaks of contradictions. There is no such thing as contradictions in the Bible. That is what Rationalists and atheists and nihilists are claiming. Adventists are not Higher Critics or Rationalists that doubts the inspiration of the Bible. Therefore we harmonize the information of the Bible (Koot van Wyk).