Reading for November 7th

Read Ezra 4.6. 4.6-26: Opposition to rebuilding the Jerusalem. The author now moves from opposition to the Temple rebuilding to opposition to building a wall around Jerusalem. After a brief effort at a chronological transition, there is an exchange of memoranda between several imperial officals and King Artaxerxes 1 of Persia. As a result, the king orders the suspnsion of any rebuilding of the city, which the author then ties to opposition to the Temple. While there is no way to authenticate these memos, they have the form and general structure of know imperial memos from the Persian empire, although some elements may have been introduced to carry forward the larger purposes of the book. In verse 6: In the reiign of Ahasuerus, in his accession year: Ahasuerus, in his accession year: Ahaserus is the Hebrew version of thename of the Persian King the Greeks called Xerxes. The main royal figure in the book of Esther,Xerxes came to the Persianthrne late inthe year 486 BCE. The contents of the accusation are not specified, nor the consequences of the report. This notice serves to bring the narrative through a chronlogical sequence of Persian Kings (Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes) to the communications with Artaxerxes. Comments or Questions..