The release of Jehoiachin by Evil-Merodach occurred 562 or 561 B.C. Jeremiah had then been dead twenty years.
This book is not the work of one author. The thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth chapters were not written by the same person. Much of the thirty-eighth is a mere repetition of the thirty-seventh; and yet the two are so filled with discrepancies that it is impossible to accept both as the writings of the same author.
Jeremiah, it is declared, wrote both Kings and Jeremiah. He could not have written the concluding portion of either. The last chapter of 2 Kings and the last chapter of Jeremiah are the same, and were written after the time of Jeremiah.
Ezekiel.
The period assigned for Ezekiel’s prophecies is that beginning B.C. 595 and ending B.C. 573. Christians assert that the first twenty-four chapters of the work were written before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The whole work was undoubtedly written after this event.
The Talmud credits its authorship to the Great Synagogue. If this be correct, Ezekiel had nothing to do with its composition; for he was not a member of the Great Synagogue. Ewald, while claiming for him the utterance of its several prophecies, believes that the book in its present form is not his work, but that of a later author.
Referring to Ezekiel, Dr. Oort says: “In his case, far more than in Jeremiah’s even, we must be on our guard against accepting the written account of his prophecies as a simple record of what he actually said” (Bible for Learners, vol. ii, p. 407).
Zunz, a German critic, not only contends that the book is not authentic, but declares that no such prophet as Ezekiel ever existed.
While it must be admitted that the internal evidence against the integrity and authenticity of Ezekiel is weaker than that of the other books thus far examined, it can be confidently asserted that Bible apologists have been unable to establish either. One damaging fact they concede: no other writer of the Bible ever mentions the book or its alleged author.