The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The 20 th Year of Artaxerxes 383
Xerxes with Darius by stating that Darius died one year after this
appointment of Xerxes as his successor. Herodotus says:
Xerxes, then, was publicly proclaimed as next in succession to
the crown, and Darius was free to turn his attention to the
war. Death, however, cut him off before his preparations
were complete; he died in the year following this incident and
the Egyptian rebellion, after a reign of thirtysix years, and so
was robbed of his chance to punish either Egypt or the
Athenians. After his death the crown passed to his son
Xerxes.
What we find, then, is that Darius appointed Xerxes his successor
one year (not ten!) before his own death. Further, Herodotus does not say
that Darius appointed Xerxes his coregent, but his successor. (Note, for
instance, the wording of the passage quoted by the Watch Tower
Society in Aubrey de Sélincourt's translation in the Penguin Books).
In the preceding paragraphs, Herodotus explains that a common
rule among Persian kings before they went out to war was to
appoint their successors to the throne, in case they themselves
would be killed in the battles. This custom, he says, was also
followed by Darius.
The Watch Tower Society, then, quotes Herodotus completely out
of context, leaving out the subsequent sentences that refute their
claim. Incredibly, they introduce this forgery by terming it "solid
evidence"!
Other "solid evidence" presented in their Bible dictionary in
support of the coregency is of the same quality, for example the
bas-reliefs found in Persepolis, which Herzfeld in 1932 felt
indicated a coregency of Xerxes with Darius. (Insight 2, p. 615) This
idea, however, is dismissed by modern scholars. The very fact that
the crown prince is pictured as standing behind the throne shows that
he is not a king and a coregent, but an appointed successor.
Second, no names are found on the relief, and the conclusion that
the man on the throne is Darius and the crown prince is Xerxes is
nothing but a guess. J. M. Cook, in his work on the history of
Persia, argues that the crown prince is Artobazanes, the oldest son
of Darius. (Cook, The Persian Empire, New York 1983, p. 75) Other
modern scholars, such as A. B. Tilia and von Gall, have argued that
the king cannot be Darius but must be Xerxes, and that the crown
prince, therefore, is the son of Xerxes! (Cook, p. 242, ftn. 24)