700-586 B.C. Babylon Rises

Introduction

 

700 

Book of Isaiah compiled/written (700-680), Isaiah writes in his book:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1-2) [see 29 A.D. for when Jesus reads this aloud in Nazareth’s synagogue, announcing Himself as the Messiah around 730 years later]

– Sennacherib, King of Assyria, builds “Palace Without a Rival” in Nineveh and makes the city magnificent, “From about 700 B.C. there are no further major chronological problems [in Egypt’s chronology of kings/history] both because of the proliferation of the source material, and synchronisms with neighboring countries.” (UTP 190)

– In Korea, bronze comes into use for making daggers, mirrors and other objects (BHK 17)

699   – The Book of Isaiah is being written

698   – The Book of Isaiah is being written

690   – Pharaoh Taharka begins his rule in Egypt (Mizraim in Hebrew, Noah’s

grandson through Shem), and is crowned in Memphis, he is identified in the

Bible as “Tirhakah king of Ethiopia” in 2 Kings 19:9, who confronted

Sennacherib, king of Assyria who was campaigning in Judah at the time. He is accurately called king of Ethiopia, because he was a Nubian king who had invaded Egypt. The word Ethiopia in the Bible is always translated from the Hebrew word “Kush,” meaning Nubia (Sudan) to the south of Egypt. (UTP 190), Micah’s prophetic ministry to Judah ends (ASB 1483)

681   – Esarhaddon becomes king of Assyria (UTP 190/209)

680   – Book of Isaiah completed, all his prophecies of the Messiah are now

written down and waiting (“The Isaiah Scroll” c. 100-75 B.C. from

Qumran is the earliest complete copy we have of Isaiah’s book and it is

identical to the one we have in our Bibles today—if it can go over 2,000

years without scribal or printing error, I think it could survive the first

500 years without scribal error, when it was much closer to the original

date of authorship)

671   – Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, attacks Egypt and tries to take out Pharaoh

Taharka (UTP 190/209)

669   – Ashurbanipal becomes king of Assyria, in his library is found a Flood

Narrative, which is part of the larger story of the Epic of  Gilgamesh; in it,

a man is told by a God to build a boat and put pairs of animals onboard, as

well as his wife and family, they are tossed about for seven days in a storm,

after which they send out a dove, a swallow and a raven, the last of which

does not come back, when the floodwaters recede, they end up on a tall

mountain and man offers sacrifices to the gods (13)

667   – Esarhaddon attacks Egypt and tries to take out Pharaoh Taharka again (UTP

190)

664   – Pharaoh Taharka dies and is buried in a pyramid he had prepared for himself

in Kush (Nubia/Sudan)

630   – Habakkuk begins his prophetic ministry to Judah (ASB 1483)

631   – Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, dies

626   – Neo-Babylonian Dynasty begins (after the Assyrian domination),

Jeremiah’s ministry in Judah begins and he starts writing his book

612   – Nineveh (capital of the Assyrian Empire) falls

608   – King Jehoiakim ascends to the throne in Judah (see note on Dan. 1:1, 1384)

605   – King Nebuchadnezzar II begins his rule of Babylon, first deportation of

Jews (Daniel among them) from Jerusalem to Babylon, Habakkuk’s prophetic

ministry to Judah ends (ASB 1483)

604   – King Nebuchadnezzar II’s dream of a statue that details all the world

dominating empires all the way up to their ending:

“In the time of those kings (the ten kings, last world empire), the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (Dan. 2)

600   – The Cretan poet Epimenides writes his poem Cretica, a poem that Paul the

Apostle quotes centuries later on Mars Hill at Athens in the late 40’s A.D. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), “In the late Formative (or Pre-Classic) period, Olmec hegemony gives way to a number of other regional groups, including the Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations, all of which share a common Olmec heritage.” (history.com, Mexico Timeline)

597   – The Lachish Ostraca are written, letters written on pottery shards

by a Judahite officers during the Babylonian take over of Judah, one of them

reads that the officer is waiting for the signal fires of Lachish, and that those

of Azekah are not visible—these two cities were the last to fall before

Jerusalem was destroyed, one of the letters reports that Coniah, son of

Elnathan, had traveled to Egypt to obtain military assistance, this relates to

Jeremiah 37:6-8 where it says that Zedekiah, King of Judah, believed that

Egypt would help them out of trouble, but the Lord had declared otherwise:

The pharaoh’s army would not stave off the Babylonian onslaught (18 of the

Lachish Ostraca were found in 1935, and 3 more in 1938, they are now

housed in the British Museum) (1252)

590   – Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II) of Persia (Iran) is born (according to E.B., 590-

580)

587   – More of the Lachish Ostraca are written     

586   – First Temple and the city of Jerusalem is destroyed by Babylon, Iron

Age II ends (specifically in Israel)