Artaxerx´es, Artachshast. The word, which is supposed to mean great king, is the title under which more than one Persian king is mentioned in the Old Testament.
The first Artachshast is mentioned in Ezra 4:7-24, as the Persian king who, at the instigation of the adversaries of the Jews, obstructed the rebuilding of the Temple, from his time to that of Darius, king of Persia. According to the arguments adduced in the article Ahasuerus this king is the immediate predecessor of Darius Hystaspis, and can be no other than the Magi an impostor, Smerdis, who seized on the throne B.C. 521, and was murdered after a usurpation of less than eight months (Herod. iii. 61-78).
As to the second Artachshast in the seventh year of whose reign Ezra led a second colony of the Jewish exiles back to Jerusalem (Ezra 7:1, sq.), the opinions are divided between Xerxes and his son Artaxerxes Longimanus, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any certain conclusion on the subject.
The third Artachshast is the Persian king who, in the twentieth year of his reign, considerately allowed Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem for the furtherance of purely national objects, invested him with the government of his own people, and allowed him to remain there for twelve years (Nehemiah 2:1, sq.; 5:14). It is almost unanimously agreed that the king here intended is Artaxerxes Longimanus, who reigned from the year 464 to 425 B.C.
This Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature is a 6 volume set in 1 book. It has over 2Read More
John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
Wikipedia