Which Zechariah was murdered in the temple?
Posted on Feb.07, 2009. Filed in 2 Chronicles, Matthew, Zechariah. Average rating: 6.5 / 10 (Rate It).
Jesus frequently rebuked the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. In one of his more vehement attacks, he refers to the death of the martyr Zechariah, who was stoned in the temple having delivered a rebuke from God against idolatry. Jesus, though, seems to confuse his Zechariahs; he says that this happened to Zechariah son of Barachiah, when it actually happened to Zechariah son of Jehoiada.
Jesus’ rebuke is recorded by Matthew:
‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, “If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.’ [Matthew 23:29-36 (NRSV)]
The death of Zechariah is recorded in 2 Chronicles:
Then the spirit of God took possession of Zechariah son of the priest Jehoiada; he stood above the people and said to them, ‘Thus says God: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has also forsaken you.’ But they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord. [2 Chronicles 24:20-21 (NRSV)]
The Zechariah to whom Jesus refers, Zechariah son of Barachiah, is the author of the book bearing his name:
In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah… [Zechariah 1:1a (NRSV)]
So which Zechariah was murdered in the temple, the son of Jehoiada or the son of Barachiah?
N.B. All posts are written in a style sympathetic to the claim of Biblical error, even in cases where the author ("Errancy") disagrees with the claim. See the About page for the site's philosophy.
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February 7th, 2009 on 12:24 pm
It strikes me that this is another instance of the Abiathar/Ahimilech problem, where Jesus (or the gospel author) just mentions the wrong man.
You could say that perhaps Zechariah son of Berechiah also died in this way (his death isn’t mentioned in the OT, I think) but that’s grasping at straws.
February 9th, 2009 on 9:14 am
There are two Zechariahs in this tangle. The son of Jehoiada lived in the 9th century BC. The son of Barachaiah lived in the 6th century BC. This mistake would be akin to my confusing Edward the Confessor with Edward Longshanks (the later was named after the former, but that’s one hell of a confusion).
The first Zechariah lived in the First Temple period and the second Zechariah lived in the Second Temple period.
Jesus accuses the priests of killing the second Zechariah. The first Zechariah was killed by officials of Judah who wanted to worship pagan deities, not by priests.
Jesus says that the second Zechariah was killed between the sanctuary (holy of holies) and the altar. A place only priests could go. The first Zechariah, though killed on temple grounds, must have been killed in an area accessible to non-priests.
There is thus, quite a difference between the murder that Jesus recounts and the Murder recounted in II Chronicles. At some point, you’ve got to assume that Jesus is referring to a different murder than the murder of the first Zecheriah.
Here’s a thought experiment for you. Suppose that Jesus had said, “from the blood of righteous Abel, to the blood of the prophet of God whom you (priests) murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” Would you still assume that he was talking about the Zechariah of II Chronicles?
I would not. I would think he was referring to the murder of a prophet that was well-known to his contemporary listeners, but whose murder was not recorded in a form that came down to us.
Does the fact that Jesus identifies the victim of this second murder as the second Zechariah make that assumption any less plausible?
February 9th, 2009 on 12:54 pm
I see this suggestion that the later Zechariah also died in the temple as too much of a coincidence. An error is much, much more likely.
There’s another good reason to think Jesus was trying to refer to the 2 Chronicles event: in the Hebrew ordering, 2 Chronicles was the last book of the OT.
So Abel is the first murder mentioned in the OT, and Zechariah (of 2 Chronicles) was one of the last. This makes Jesus’ comment nicely symmetrical.
(I’m indebted to the NIV Study Bible for this point.)
February 9th, 2009 on 4:30 pm
Were it simply the father of Zechariah that Jesus got wrong then the charge of unlikely coincidence would be stronger. But the fact is that there are a number of important details that he got ‘wrong’.
As a general point it seems obvious that as the number of ‘errors’ that you perceive in a person’s account of some event expand you have to start thinking that he’s not talking about the same event that you are.
Were I to say that the son of Robert E. Lee shot the President in the head, you might think I was making a mistake (John Wilkes Booth was no relation to Robert E. Lee). If I add that he did it with a rifle, you might still think that I’m really mistaken. When I add that he did it in Dallas from the sixth floor of a book depository warehouse while the President drove by in his motorcade, you’ve got to start suspecting that something has gone terribly wrong in the conversation. Of course, I was talking about Lee Harvey Oswald, son of Robert E. Lee Oswald, and the President in question was JFK, not Lincoln.
Unfortunately, I have no formal way to test when you reach that point in any conversation. Have we reached that point in Matthew 23?
It’s also worth noting that Jesus wasn’t the only one to make this ‘mistake’ if mistake it be. An Aramaic translation/commentary on the Book of Lamentations (called Targum Lamentations by the scholars) mentions the murder in the temple of Zechariah son of Barachiah son of Iddo. Obviously, Lamentations was written well before the second Zechariah, and the verse in question (Lam. 2:20) makes no reference to any Zechariah. So this was an addition by the commentator. Did the commentator also make a mistake? Or was he deliberately referring to the murder of the second Zechariah? Is this evidence of a common mistake in Jesus day? Or is it evidence of a common tradition about the death of the second Zechariah?
February 9th, 2009 on 4:45 pm
BTW, the book written down by Zechariah was (along with Haggai and Malachi) one of the last books in the OT chronologically. As such, his murder would have been one of the last murders of Biblical figures. So Abel and the second Zechariah make nice rhetorical ‘bookends’ that way as well.
February 9th, 2009 on 7:27 pm
I think the differences between Jesus’ version and the 2 Chronicles version are rather minor. Are you sure these officials in 2 Chronicles can’t be priests?
The Targum thing is quite interesting. Do we know when it was written?
(By the way, according to http://www.targum.info/meg/tglam.htm it reads “Zechariah son of Iddo”, but that’s close enough I guess, since the more famous Zechariah is indeed grandson of Iddo…)
February 10th, 2009 on 7:04 am
Some responses.
1. On the Form of the Argument:
It’s not surprising to me that we’re going to have some diversity of opinion here. As I’ve already noted, I have no formal way to determine that a speaker’s account of an event has diverged from the known facts of the event so much that you realize that the speaker isn’t giving an account of the event at all. I imagine that the ‘tipping point’ is going to vary widely and depend a lot on the assumptions you bring to the judgment.
2. Could The First Zechariah’s Killers be Priests?
The operative verse here is verse 21: “So _they_ conspired against him and at the command of the king _they_ stoned him to death in the court of the house of the LORD.” The question is “Who are they?” In context, “they” refers either to the officials of Judah or to the people. If its the former, then the killers cannot be priests because only members of the tribe of Levi could be priests. If it’s the latter, the killers would still include both Levites and non-Levites (which squares with the killing occurring in the courtyard…in Solomon’s temple, the only area open to non-priests).
3. The Targum Lamentations.
Please note that I am not in any way trying to identify this work as authoritative. All I was trying to argue for was that Jesus was not alone in the claim that the second Zechariah was murdered in the temple. The work was written in the first century. It’s possible, but unlikely, that it was written by a rabbi with inerrantist leanings regarding the words of Christ.
February 10th, 2009 on 1:45 pm
“Jesus was not alone in the claim that the second Zechariah was murdered in the temple”
Yes, but if you go here… http://targuman.org/files/Brady_TgLam_DPhil.pdf
…you’ll get a reasonable argument that the Targum is itself referring to the 2 Chronicles Zechariah, not the other one…
February 11th, 2009 on 1:45 pm
Brady’s argument is, more or less, the same argument given here. The similarity between the TgLam commentator’s description and the events of II Chronicles make it likely that the commentator intended to refer to II Chronicles.
Note this difference: the commentator does not address his remarks to priests as if _they_ did it. Nor does he mention that the killing occurred somewhere other than the outer courtyard. In isolation, then, the argument that the commentator simply made a mistake seems, if anything, even stronger than the case against Jesus.
But nothing is ever in isolation. Against the argument that the commentator made a mistake is the fact that _he_ wasn’t alone in his ‘error’. And the person we know of that agrees with him (Jesus) described the event in a way that seems to diverge from the events of II Chronicles.
And there is this. The commentator mentions that Zechariah was the high priest and was killed on the day of atonement. The one day of the year when he would have been between the altar of incense and the holy of holies…the exact location that Jesus said that Zechariah was killed (Jesus said “between the altar and the sanctuary”).
And the first point I made applies here in spades. The commentator was making his remarks on a passage that had been written hundreds of years before the author of Zechariah was even born. As I said at the outset, that’s one hell of a confusion even for an itinerant rabbi like Jesus. It’s more than that for a rabbinical scholar commenting on a book he’s presumably an expert on.
This mistake would _not_ be akin to you or I confusing Edward the Confessor and Edward Longshanks. It would be akin to a professor of British History confusing Edward the Confessor and Edward Longshanks.
It might help to remember that the name “Zechariah” sounds weird to us, so the idea that two guys named Zechariah were both killed in the temple seems incomprehensible. But in reality “Zechariah” was about as common as “Edward”. Jesus uncle was named Zechariah.
Suppose I tell you that a guy named Ed was killed by an angry mob in front of St. Patrick’s in New York City in 1880. I follow this story with another story about another guy named Ed who was killed behind the altar of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2002 by his fellow priests. I don’t believe that your first response would be “That’s too much of a coincidence, their both being named Ed, you must be talking about the same murder!”
February 11th, 2009 on 2:38 pm
“It would be akin to a professor of British History confusing Edward the Confessor and Edward Longshanks.”
No, I’m sure he knew what Zechariah he was talking about – he just forgot the name of the man’s father.
February 11th, 2009 on 3:47 pm
One more thing…
“It might help to remember that the name “Zechariah” sounds weird to us, so the idea that two guys named Zechariah were both killed in the temple seems incomprehensible.”
I could accept that two guys named Zechariah were killed in the temple, but there are only a few Zechariahs mentioned in the OT (I’m aware of three).
Of these three, you’re claiming that two of them died in this way; which is a much bigger coincidence.
i.e. the claim is not just that two people who were called Zechariah died in the temple. That would be reasonable.
The claim is that two out of three people who were called Zechariah, and mentioned in the OT, died in the temple.
February 11th, 2009 on 5:23 pm
Actually, I just did a quick Google search. It appears that Zachariah is, with Azariah, the most common biblical name and is given to 30 different individuals (most of them are probably OT figures…I think that Jesus’ uncle is the only NT Zachariah). Zechariah is just an alternate spelling of that name, and I’m sure that the 2 Zechariahs we’ve been talking about are included in the “Zachariah” name total.
February 11th, 2009 on 6:02 pm
“No, I’m sure he knew what Zechariah he was talking about – he just forgot the name of the man’s father.”
Had the commentator called Zechariah, Zechariah the son of Judah (or some such), I might buy that argument, but he called him the son of Iddo. Clearly that name refers to the minor prophet, not the pre-exilic Zechariah. Again, a huge mistake for a rabbinical scholar.
To be sure, scholars of every age have been guilty of some real howlers, so I don’t want to push that line too far. My argument here is not meant to be conclusive, but merely to add weight to my overall case.
BTW you are right about this, that the TgLam commentator says “son of Iddo” when it seems “grandson of Iddo” would be more accurate. Does that, in itself call the commentator’s scholarship into question, so that an Edward the Confessor/Edward Longshanks confusion might be possible?
I think not. Figures in Hebrew geneologies can sometimes be skipped. It may be that only figures of note will be included. Iddo may well have been the more notable figure (which would partially explain the fact that Zechariah identifies himself as the son of Barakiah, the son of Iddo). The TgLam commentator may have simply skipped over Barakiah altogether for the same reason.
February 11th, 2009 on 8:02 pm
Hmm yes, I may have gotten this Zechariah business badly wrong… I’ll have to look into how many there actually are.
February 12th, 2009 on 1:00 am
Interesting discussion.
I do find the difference between Jesus’ “whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” and 2 Chronicles’ “they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord” striking.
I’m not quite sure what to make of the idea that Targum Lamentations offers independent testimony to Zechariah son of Barachiah being killed in the temple. On the one hand, its “because he told you not to do evil before the Lord” fits with the idea that it’s actually about Zechariah son of Jehoiada; on the other hand, “on the Day of Atonement” isn’t anywhere in 2 Chronicles, so may indicate that a different event is being referred to.
Its all very uncertain and unsatisfying, but I’m at least persuaded that there’s room for doubt here; perhaps Jesus was right after all.
February 12th, 2009 on 6:35 am
“On the one hand, its “because he told you not to do evil before the Lord” fits with the idea that it’s actually about Zechariah son of Jehoiada.”
One more remark and I think I’m probably done.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Zechariah son of Barachiah _was_ killed in the temple as Jesus’ and the TgLam commentator’s remarks suggest. Chances are that that the people who killed him in that manner were not terribly good people (even before they killed Zechariah). Chances are also good that they killed Zechariah because he was somehow standing in the way of their desire to do even more evil. One way he might have done that–and a way that would have been in keeping with his role as a prophet–is that he might have spoken out against them.
True he might have stood in the way of their evil in some other fashion, and they might have killed him because of that. But I don’t think that it’s a stretch at all to think that the reason he was killed was because “he told [them] not to do evil before the Lord”. As such, the similarity of the _motives_ in the killing that the TgLam commentator describes and the killing of Zechariah Ben Jehoiada is not all that persuasive.
February 12th, 2009 on 8:14 am
Not a stretch at all, I was just looking at Targum Lamentations for echoes of 2 Chronicles 24:20-21 that might indicate that that was its source. The closer the content and wording of the two, the more likely it is that Targum Lamentations is describing the death of Zechariah son of Jehoiada.
As I said in my previous post, though, Targum Lamentations contains two details, one that matches 2 Chronicles and one that isn’t found there. That doesn’t really help; we get two small clues, but each points in a different direction.
February 12th, 2009 on 2:47 pm
Because fair is fair, I should mention some items that problemetize _my_ argument. I didn’t mention them earlier because they didn’t occur to me earlier (I was too busy _developing_ said argument).
I have all along been equating “altar” with “altar of incense” and “sanctuary” with “holy of holies”. This correlates very strongly with the murder of a high priest by other priests on the day of atonement (per TgLam). Virtually no one would ever be there except the high priest on the day of atonement.
But what if we assume Jesus was using the word “altar” to refer to the “altar of sacrifice”? That’s not a stretch at all. At the time of the first Zechariah the altar in question was, I believe, in the priests-only area of Solomon’s temple near the entrance to that area. The word “sanctuary” might still refer to the holy of holies, or it might just refer to the indoor area of the temple. This would include the holy of holies, but would also include the area called the holy place, where you have all the ‘indoor’ priestly stuff like the lamps, the show bread, the incense and what have you.
Either way, we’re still talking about a murder that would have been done in the priests-only area of the temple. But, given this understanding of “altar” and “sanctuary”, the murder Jesus describes might have occurred in the outdoor area for the priests. To tie in with the II Chronicles language, you might even call this area a “courtyard” for the priests.
We still have a murder of a priest by other priests. So it still diverges from the II Chronicles account, which seems to have non-priests involved in the murder. But this murder is not so strongly linked to the high priest on the day of atonement. This would tend to weaken TgLam’s and Jesus’ mutual support.
(Of course, shifting back to support of my argument, TgLam’s identification of the day tends to make me think that my first impression about Jesus’ meaning of “altar” and “sanctuary” was correct.)
A second complimentary attack on my argument is that it is fair and reasonable to assume that the murderers of Zechariah would not be too picky about obeying the “Priests Only” signs posted in various places in the temple. So that problemetizes the parts of my argument that depend on the fact that the first Zechariah’s murderers included at least some non-priests. Maybe there were non-priests among the murderers, and maybe they stormed into the priests-only court of the temple in spite of the prohibition and stoned poor Zechariah to death. Now, most everything in Jesus’ account, _except_ the paternity of Zechariah, more-or-less squares with the idea that the Zechariah in question was the first Zechariah.
If the errantist can successfully argue for these points, then he’s in the best position to say that that one remaining point of disagreement is an error either on Jesus’ part (worst case for inerrancy), or on Matthew’s part (still bad) or on some later copyist’s part (least bad case).
Having said all this, none of these points induces me to abandon the defense of inerrancy I have been giving on this issue.
February 12th, 2009 on 3:59 pm
I’d been assuming that “courtyard” referred to the outer area of the temple; I hadn’t realised that there was an inner courtyard too, the “court of the priests”. I should have checked a map of the temple sooner.
With this being located between the altar of burnt offerings and the sanctuary, Jesus’ description “whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” does seem to fit “stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord” after all.
That removes what I thought was the most compelling reason for thinking that Jesus wasn’t referring to the death of Zechariah son of Jehoiada.
October 27th, 2009 on 8:57 am
This is the top rated thread and errancy couldn’t find a problem with inerrancy?
Simply accept the word of the Lord it was Zechariah son of Barachiah and Luke felt no need to mention his name which rounds out the OT books nicely. There is a spiritual message always. God loves to blow out peoples’ expectations. There you are looking at the court killing of Zecheriah in Chronicles but it is only in the courtyard. It doesn’t say where in the courtyard. Maybe they intended to kill the Zechariah son of Barachiah like Zecharia in Chronicles like the good old times. But this time they killed Zechariah son of Barachiah between the court yard and the sanctuary (Holy Place with its Holy of Holies)
Jesus was trying to show the OT is not according to the Jewish only books, but all the books of the OT.
I don’t think a copying mistake. I’m convinced it was a spiritual message to include more books of the OT and not just the Jewish books.
October 27th, 2009 on 10:02 am
Thanks for your comments, Parture. To be clear, my current view is that this is problematic, even if an error can’t be proven beyond all doubt.
If you disagree with the current ratings, and think that this is less serious than some other apparent problems, then please go ahead and use the ratings system to register your views. I’d be interested to see what you think.
May 17th, 2010 on 2:59 pm
I know I’m a little late here, but I have something that seems relevant. (I apologize if someone else has already mentioned this. I read about half the comments, and only skimmed the rest, and I didn’t see anything about it.)
Codex Sinaiticus (considered to be the world’s oldest (complete) Bible actually lacks the phrase “son of Berekiah” (although a later scribe wrote it into the margin, apparently in an effort to bring Sinaiticus into alignment with other manuscripts.)
I’m including a photo of it here, if anyone wants to see it for themselves. At the end of the second line you’ll see “ZAXAPIOY” (”Zachariah”) and then in the margin the added phrase “YIOY” (son of) “BAPAXIOY” (”Barakiah”). The third line then picks back up with “who you murdered.”
(In other words, the oldest complete Bible we have, originally read “Zachariah who you murdered” with no further details.)
http://s591.photobucket.com/albums/ss359/hobopotato/?action=view¤t=ZechariahMatt23_35.jpg
May 17th, 2010 on 11:07 pm
The Codex is 4th century. I’ve heard it argued that there are first century fragments of Matthew (though not of this passage). Somewhere between those early fragments and the complete 4th century Bible, there’s got to be some well preserved copies of Matt 23. If some of those also show “son of Berekiah” as an addition, then we are really heading toward the idea that “son of Berekiah” was an early scribal error. It’s conceivable that the error crept in based on the Targum Lamentations tradition, which would be a very interesting development.
For the reasons I’ve already stated, I’m more inclined to think that there were 2 Zecheriahs murdered in two different temples.
May 19th, 2010 on 12:39 pm
Wisdom – Papyrus 77 [dated about 200 AD] contains Matthew 23:35, but I’m not sure if it has that portion [it's very fragmented]. It’s not especially relevant though, as I have other sources specifically stating that the only other Greek manuscripts lacking “υιου βαραχιου” are:
Miniscule 59 [13th century] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuscule_59
Lectionary 6 [1265 ad] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectionary_6
Lectionary 13 [12th century] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectionary_13
and Lectionary 185 [11th century] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectionary_185
Eusebius also omits the phrase, but I can’t find any details on which writing that occurs in. It would have been writen around the beginning of the fourth century, in any event.
So, for what it’s worth, Sinaiticus is the oldest I can come up with on this. But again, unless P77 contains this verse, it’s the oldest witness anyhow.
Here’s P77 if you want it: http://163.1.169.40/gsdl/collect/POxy/index/assoc/HASH015b/a36e9077.dir/POxy.v0034.n2683.b.01.hires.jpg