[526] The chief authorities for this period are as follows:—A. Ancient: the inscriptions of Nabonidus, last native King of Babylon, Cyrus and Darius I.; the Hebrew writings which were composed in, or record the history of, the period; the Greek historians Herodotus, fragments of Ctesias in Diodorus Sic. etc., of Abydenus in Eusebius, Berosus. B. Modern: Meyer’s and Duncker’s Histories of Antiquity; art. “Ancient Persia” in _Encycl. Brit._, by Nöldeke and Gutschmid; Sayce, _Anc. Empires_; the works of Kuenen, Van Hoonacker and Kosters given on p. 192; recent histories of Israel, _e.g._ Stade’s, Wellhausen’s and Klostermann’s; P. Hay Hunter, _After the Exile, a Hundred Years of Jewish History and Literature_, 2 Vols., Edin. 1890; W. Fairweather, _From the Exile to the Advent_, Edin. 1895. On Ezra and Nehemiah see especially Ryle’s _Commentary_ in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools_, and Bertheau-Ryssel’s in _Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch_: cf. also Charles C. Torrey, _The Composition and Historical Value of Ezra-Nehemiah_, in the _Beihefte zur Z.A.T.W._, II., 1896.
[528] Havet, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, XCIV. 799 ff. (art. _La Modernité des Prophètes_); Imbert (in defence of the historical character of the Book of Ezra), _Le Temple Reconstruit par Zorobabel_, extrait du _Muséon_, 1888-9 (this I have not seen); Sir Henry Howorth in the _Academy_ for 1893—see especially pp. 320 ff.
[529] Another French writer, Bellangé, in the _Muséon_ for 1890, quoted by Kuenen (_Ges. Abhandl._, p. 213), goes further, and places Ezra and Nehemiah under the _third_ Artaxerxes, Ochus (358—338).
[531] Kuenen, _De Chronologie van het Perzische Tijdvak der Joodsche Geschiedenis_, 1890, translated by Budde in Kuenen’s _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, pp. 212 ff.; Van Hoonacker, _Zorobabel et le Second Temple_ (1892); Kosters, _Het Herstel van Israel_, in _Het Perzische Tijdvak_, 1894, translated by Basedow, _Die Wiederherstellung Israels im Persischen Zeitalter_, 1896.
[536] As Kuenen shows, p. 226, nothing can be deduced from Ezra vi. 14.
[537] P. 227; in answer to De Saulcy, _Étude Chronologique des Livres d’Esdras et de Néhémie_ (1868), _Sept Siècles de l’Histoire Judaïque_ (1874). De Saulcy’s case rests on the account of Josephus (XI. _Ant._ vii. 2-8: cf. ix. 1), the untrustworthy character of which and its confusion of two distant eras Kuenen has no difficulty in showing.