The opening verses of Daniel (1:1-2) assert that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, successfully besieged Jerusalem in “the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah” (NIV, v.1), with the result that Jehoiakim was delivered into his hand and various treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem were removed from there to the temple of Shinar in Babylon. Although the carrying of captives from Jerusalem to Babylon is not explicitly mentioned in these two verses, the next few verses refer to the “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning” (NIV, v.4) who evidently were brought from Jerusalem for the purpose of being trained to enter the king’s service. The clear implication is that these young men were brought to Babylon at the same time as the treasures from the Temple. Critical scholars have advanced a number of arguments that dispute the historical accuracy of Daniel’s opening verses. I have condensed their arguments into the following group of six:

1. Historical evidence fails to indicate that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem at any time during the reign of Jehoiakim, which lasted from 609 until 598. The first siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians did not occur until 597.

2. Although Nebuchadnezzar did conduct a military campaign to the north of Judah in 605, when he was still the crown prince, he could not have besieged Jerusalem before being called home upon the sudden death of his father, Nabopolassar, in August of that year. Consequently, Daniel 1:1 has to be in error even if one corrects that verse to read “the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim,”

3. Daniel 1:1 conflicts with Jeremiah 25:2 and 46:2, which state, respectively, that the fourth year of Jehoiakim was Nebuchadnezzar’s first year and that Nebuchadnezzar defeated the army of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish (in what is now southern Turkey) in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Since Nebuchadnezzar did not ascend to the Babylonian throne until some months after the battle of Carchemish, which occurred in 605, and since Jeremiah must be correct about the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Daniel 1:1 has to be in error.

4. Since Nebuchadnezzar could not have ascended to the Babylonian throne as early as Jehoiakim’s third year, Daniel 1:1 errs in calling him the ”king of Babylon” at that time.

5. Beginning with its first verse, the Book of Daniel consistently misspells the name “Nebuchadrezzar” as “Nebuchadnezzar.” While the “n” spelling is the more popular one in the oldest texts of the Old Testament, the “r” spelling is actually correct. Would not a real prophet Daniel who presumably wrote the book named after him have known how to spell the name of the monarch he served?

6. Since Nebuchadrezzar did not besiege Jerusalem during the reign of Jerusalem, Jehoiakim could not have been delivered into his hand as claimed in Daniel 1:2. Neither would articles from the Temple have been turned over to Nebuchadrezzar since that would have required the surrender of Jerusalem. The author of Daniel seems to have relied on 2 Chronicles 36, which conflicts with 2 Kings 24 and must be in error.

A complete refutation of these arguments would require an article whose length would far exceed what can be presented here. I have written a much longer paper that refutes them in full, but its public presentation will have to wait for the proper time and place. I am thinking of producing another book on Daniel to complement my recently published The Four Kingdoms of Daniel. That book would consist of several essays on selected topics pertaining to Daniel that I believe to be of interest to those who want to learn more about the case for accepting the book’s authenticity.

In this article I shall deal only with the refutation of the first two of the six arguments listed above. My refutation of these two arguments will not be complete, largely because space limitations dictate that I avoid examining the alleged conflict between 2 Kings 24 and 2 Chronicles 36 that constitutes argument six. I will take up that supposed conflict either in a later article posted on this site or included in my second book on Daniel. As for argument three, it is not at all difficult to reconcile the third year of Jehoiakim of Daniel 1:1 with Jeremiah 25:1 and 46:2, and I intend to perform that service in the near future in an article posted on this site. Argument four is mere fluff and needs no rebuttal. Argument five is easily countered by pointing out that while the “r” spelling is indeed preferable, the “n” spelling was also used and was undoubtedly the spelling employed by the Jewish scribes who copied worn-out scrolls. The appearance of the “n” spelling in the Book of Daniel as it has come down to us thus does not mean that a sixth-century Daniel who served the kings of Babylonia would have used that spelling.

Although liberals insist that Nebuchadnezzar could not have besieged Jerusalem in 605, it is historically documented that he conducted a military campaign in that year that took him far from Babylon and must have brought him into or near Judah. Carchemish was about 390 miles north northeast of Jerusalem. That may seem like a great distance, but the Babylonians pursued the retreating Egyptians far southward after the battle, and they surely penetrated into lands claimed by Judah. What is in dispute is whether or not Nebuchadnezzar could have led his army against Jerusalem.

What brought the army of Pharaoh Necho II so far northward in 605 was that Necho had formed an alliance with the Assyrians, who were engaged in a desperate struggle to hold out against Nabopolassar, the ruler of Babylonia. A few years earlier, in 612, an alliance of the Babylonians, the Medes, and a group of Scythians had destroyed Nineveh. Nabopolassar then continued the attack on Assyria with the intention of obliterating it. In 609, he drove the Assyrians out of their fortress at Harran, located 220 miles west and slightly north of Nineveh. The Assyrians and their Egyptian allies then set up a fortress at Carchemish, located on the west side of the Euphrates about 60 miles west of Harran.

In order to get to Carchemish in the year 609 BC, the Egyptian army had to pass through Judah. When it did so, king Josiah of Judah foolishly challenged the Egyptians on the plains of Megiddo and paid for his mistake with his life and the defeat of his army. Josiah was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, who was the popular choice, but Necho II deposed him and replaced Jehoahaz with his older brother, Eliakim, whom Necho renamed Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:29-35 and 2 Chron 35:20-36:4). Note that this means that Jehoiakim was a vassal of Necho II, to whom he owed his crown.

Nebuchadnezzar was designated “crown prince” in 607 and promptly became an active military commander. In 605, he assumed command of the Babylonian army in the west, and in the spring or early summer of that year, he decisively defeated Necho II and the Assyrians at Carchemish. The Babylonians pursued the fleeing Egyptians and were engaged in mopping up operations somewhere far south of there when the news reached Nebuchadnezzar, probably late in August 605, that his father had died. Just where Nebuchadnezzar was when he received the news is not know. He returned to Babylon as quickly as he could, which means that he hastened across the desert, and he arrived in Babylon on 6/7 September 605 after a journey that must have taken twelve to fifteen days.

Although a collection of clay tablets in the British Museum known as the “Babylonian Chronicle” records considerable detail about Nebuchadnezzar’s activity in the west in 605 and the next few years, it does not mention an attack against Judah. Critical scholars have seized upon this fact to claim that there was no siege of Jerusalem at the time indicated in Daniel 1:1. They insist that it was militarily impossible for Nebuchanezzar to have besieged Jerusalem before the battle of Carchemish and highly unlikely that he could have done so during the interval between the battle and the time he received the news of his father’s death. And while Nebuchadnezzar returned to the west to confront his Egyptian adversaries and exploit the lumber resources of Lebanon on several occasions during the next few years, any siege of Jerusalem during that time would have fallen well after “the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim.” It is the contention of critical scholars that Nebuchadnezzar not only failed to besiege Jerusalem during Jehoiakim’s third year, but that he failed to do so at any time during that king’s reign, which ended in 598.

A serious problem for the liberal side of the argument over the historicity of Daniel 1:1 is that after his decisive victory at Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar had both the motive and the power to intimidate and threaten the ruler whom Necho II had installed on the throne of Judah. The Egyptians no doubt retreated to the security of their frontier forts in 605, but they remained a potent threat. Nebuchadnezzar therefore needed to take some action to neutralize Jehoiakim. Although Daniel 1:1 states that he besieged Jerusalem during the third year of Jehoiakim, not that he invaded Judah, it seems plausible that the term “besieged” could be applied to a strong show of force and that Jehoiakim capitulated rather than attempt to resist at a time when his Egyptian sponsor was hardly in a position to come to his aid. After all, Jehoahaz evidently had capitulated to Necho II without a siege. Why is it not plausible to believe that Jehoiakim would have done likewise, especially since, unlike Jehoahaz, he was allowed to retain his crown?

Two Kings 24:1 states that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah during the reign of Jehoiakim. Consequently, liberals generally concede that Nebuchadnezzar must have come to Judah at some time during Jehoiakim’s reign, though not necessarily in 605. They insist, however, that no siege of Jerusalem occurred during Jehoiakim’s reign and that no Jews were taken from Jerusalem to Babylon during that time. It is logical to believe that the invasion mentioned in 2 Kings 24 occurred in 605, but it must be conceded that the text does not force that conclusion.

In evaluating the likelihood that Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judah occurred in 605, it is relevant to consider how Necho II dealt with Jehoahaz. According to 2 Kings 23:31-34, Necho placed him in chains after a reign of three months and took him to Riblah (a city some seventy miles north of Damascus). From there he was taken to Egypt, where he died. Adding insult to injury, Necho imposed a huge indemnity payment on Judah. These actions by Necho were pretty much standard operating procedure in the ancient world when dealing with defeated and potential adversaries, yet the liberal position on Nebuchadnezzar amounts to holding that if he invaded Judah at all during the reign of Jehoiakim, he procured neither hostages, nor precious metals, nor temple articles, but contented himself instead with some kind of verbal commitment that provided no punishment for its violation other than the threat of a future invasion.

The scenario offered by critical scholars simply does not fit the reality of the brutal world of the Middle East of ancient times. It is far more realistic to believe that Nebuchadnezzar marched straight to the capital of Judah in order to bring that nation under his heel. Necho II had taken the king himself as a hostage and imposed an indemnity payment as punishment for Judah’s opposition. Is it not reasonable to believe that Nebuchadnezzar similarly demanded hostages and treasure from a ruler whom his enemies had installed? Although Necho II may very well have required Judah to furnish him with troops, I know of no evidence indicating that Jehoiakim himself actively opposed the Babylonians. Logically, therefore, Nebuchadnezzar’s treatment of Judah at this time should have been relatively lenient by comparison with that of Necho II. Taking a few young men from prominent families and some temple articles to symbolize the superiority of the Babylonian gods seems an appropriate course of action under the circumstances.

Adding force to this argument is Jeremiah 25, which contains the first statement of Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years of servitude to the king of Babylon (This prophecy is restated in somewhat altered form in Jeremiah 29.). Jeremiah 25 opens as follows: “The word came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon” (NIV, v.1). Since Jeremiah 46:2 states that Necho’s army was defeated at Carchemish in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, one can infer that “the word” imparted to Jeremiah in chapter 25 was received by him in 605. According to that “word,” Judah and the surrounding nations were destined to serve the king of Babylon for a period of seventy years (v.8-12). Jeremiah 25 does not state explicitly when the period of servitude was to begin, but since the “word” came to Jeremiah in 605, a logical inference is that the prophecy of the seventy years should be dated from that year, the year in which Judah and the surrounding nations were effectively incorporated into the Babylonian Empire. Logical it may be, but it is an inference that liberals typically avoid making. They prefer instead to have Jeremiah’s seventy years start running from 597 or later, 597 being the year when Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and carried Jehoiakim’s successor, his son Jehoiachin, into exile to Babylon.

Although the amount of information provided by the Babylonian Chronicle on the campaign of 605 is not very great, the Chronicle does state that following the battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar conquered “the whole region of Hamath.”2 That, of course, raises the question of just where was Hamath? Donald J. Wiseman, the conservative biblical scholar who ranks as the leading authority on the Babylonian Chronicles, has stated that Hamath extended far enough south to include the city of Riblah, located slightly over 200 miles from Jerusalem. Riblah became the chief Babylonian stronghold in what is now southern Syria.3 In all probability, it was from Riblah that Nebuchadnezzar launched the expedition against Judah mentioned in 2 Kings 24:1. The big question for our purposes is did he do so in 605 or somewhat later? The Chronicle allows the date for the battle of Carchemish to be set at some time between the middle of April and the middle of August in 605,4 but snce it credits Nebuchadnezzar with having had time to take at least “the whole region of Hamath” before being recalled to Babylon, it seems unlikely that the battle could have been fought later than the early part of July.

If Nebuchadnezzar had sufficient time to be personally involved in taking Hamath, an area that evidently encompassed most of modern Syria, it seems advisable to exercise caution before claiming that he could not have invaded Judah before returning to Babylon August of 605. One can easily envision a scenario in which the Babylonian army raced ahead after Carchemish to seize the strategic point of Riblah and then used that location for thrusts in whatever direction seemed advisable. To send a strong force from Riblah to Jerusalem, a straight-line distance of just over 200 miles, would probably not have taken more than two weeks (assuming a pace of only 15 miles per day). This seems quite feasible within the allowable time constraints. Moreover, once the Babylonians reached Riblah, the two most obvious military objectives within their reach would have been to neutralize Phoenicia and Judah. One can readily understand, therefore, why liberals insist that the word “besieged” in Daniel 1:1 must be taken literally and why they assume that Jehoiakim would not have capitulated without a fight.

A further complication is that Wiseman’s translation of the Babylonian Chronicle to mean that Nebuchadnezzar conquered “the whole region of Hamath” before returning to Babylon is not altogether certain. It has been pointed out to the author, for example, that the relevant passage in the Chronicle could be construed to indicate a fallback by Necho II from all of Hamath to the Egyptian border.5 In other words, Nebuchadnezzar’s acquisitions of territory immediately after Carchemish were not necessarily limited to Hamath. Moreover, recall that the seventy years prophecy of Jeremiah 25 is fully compatible with the belief that Judah and the surrounding lands were either conquered or required to acknowledge Babylonian overlordship at that time.

Providing additional support for belief that Daniel 1:1 is historically accurate is the relevant commentary of Berossus, a Babylonian priest-historian of the third century BC who wrote in Greek. His original writings have been lost, but they have been preserved, in part, through incorporation into the work of Flavius Josephus, the great Jewish historian of the first century AD (c. 37-c. 100). According to Josephus, Berossus wrote that upon learning of his father’s death, Nebuchadnezzar “set the affairs of Egypt and the other countries in order, and committed the captives he had taken from the Jews, and Phoenicians, and Syrians, and of the nations belonging to Egypt, to some of his friends” and then crossed the desert to Babylon.6

It is arguable that the Jews, Phoenicians, and Syrians could have been captives taken from auxiliary forces furnished to Necho II before the battle of Carchemish, but this interpretation is not the only one possible or even the most plausible one. Josephus adds that Nebuchadnezzar “ordered the captives to be placed as colonies in the most proper places of Babylonia” and that he adorned various temples in Babylonia with spoils taken from the war.7 This suggests that the captives were to be pressed into the service of the Babylonian state rather than be treated as ordinary prisoners of war or sold into slavery. The depiction of events by Berossus as stated by Josephus also seems fully compatible with Daniel 1, which records the taking of treasures from the Temple and deals primarily with how Daniel and his companions were trained for service in the Babylonian court.

Critical scholars have sought to devalue the value of the work of Berossus. Their rationalization for doing so rests primarily upon the fact that Berossus was grossly inaccurate in his explanation of how the war between Babylonia and Egypt developed. According to Berossus, the war arose as a revolt by a rebellious governor whom Nabopolassar had placed over Egypt and parts of Coele-Syria (southern Syria) and Phoenicia against Babylonian rule.8 Such a claim is, of course, ridiculous since there is no other historical evidence whatsoever indicating that Egypt became subject to Babylonian rule. If Berossus was so badly mistaken on that point, the critics ask, why should we trust him on other matters? This mistake about how the war between Egypt and Babylonia developed is uncharacteristic of the work of Berossus, which generally checks out very well when matched with other sources. Wiseman suggests that the error “probably stemmed from his treatment of Nebuchadrezzar’s western campaigns in the light of Seleucid interests.”9 Berossus was a subject of the Seleucid empire, whose primary opponent for a long time was Ptolemaic Egypt. The implication here is that his patrons wanted a version of history in which Egypt was portrayed as an inferior nation whose destiny was to be ruled by the successor to the Babylonian Empire. In conclusion, it seems to me that when one takes into account the historical and biblical evidence and applies logic to the analysis, the case for believing that Nebuchadnezzar “besieged” Jerusalem in the summer of 605 after the battle of Carchemish is very strong. He had every reason to bring Judah under his heel, and he had the time to do so. Exactly what happened in the summer of 605 remains a matter of conjecture to some extent, but if we could find a jury of truly open-minded scholars to weigh the evidence and render a verdict, I would be confident of the result.

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