lethargic_man | Antiquities of the Jews, fit the twelfth

About the building of the new Temple, Josephus says (XI.4.81):

Now the priests and Levites, and the elder part of the families, recollecting with themselves how much greater and more sumptuous the old temple had been, seeing that now made how much inferior it was, on account of their poverty, to that which had been built of old, considered with themselves how much their happy state was sunk below what it had been of old, as well as their temple. Hereupon they were disconsolate, and not able to contain their grief, and proceeded so far as to lament and shed tears on those accounts; but the people in general were contented with their present condition; and because they were allowed to build them a temple, they desired no more, and neither regarded nor remembered, nor indeed at all tormented themselves with the comparison of that and the former temple, as if this were below their expectations; but the wailing of the old men and of the priests, on account of the deficiency of this temple, in their opinion, if compared with that which had been demolished, overcame the sounds of the trumpets and the rejoicing of the people. spacer

But that's not what Ezra 3:10-13 says! It's really quite a touching moment in the Bible:

When the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the LORD, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the LORD, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks "to the LORD; because He is good, for His mercy endures for ever" toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were old men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. וְיִסְּדוּ הַבֹּנִים אֶת־הֵיכַל ה׳ וַיַּעֲמִידוּ הַכֹּהֲנִים מְלֻבָּשִׁים בַּחֲצֹצְרוֹת וְהַלְוִיִּם בְּנֵי־אָסָף בַּמְצִלְתַּיִם לְהַלֵּל אֶת־ה׳ עַל־יְדֵי דָּוִיד מֶלֶךְ־יִשְׂרָאֵל׃ וַיַּעֲנוּ בְּהַלֵּל וּבְהוֹדֹת לַה׳ כִּי טוֹב כִּי־לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵל וְכָל־הָעָם הֵרִיעוּ תְרוּעָה גְדוֹלָה בְהַלֵּל לַה׳ עַל הוּסַד בֵּית־ה׳׃ וְרַבִּים מֵהַכֹּהֲנִים וְהַלְוִיִּם וְרָאשֵׁי הָאָבוֹת הַזְּקֵנִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ אֶת־הַבַּיִת הָרִאשׁוֹן בְּיָסְדוֹ זֶה הַבַּיִת בְּעֵינֵיהֶם בֹּכִים בְּקוֹל גָּדוֹל וְרַבִּים בִּתְרוּעָה בְשִׂמְחָה לְהָרִים קוֹל׃ וְאֵין הָעָם מַכִּירִים קוֹל תְּרוּעַת הַשִּׂמְחָה לְקוֹל בְּכִי הָעָם כִּי הָעָם מְרִיעִים תְּרוּעָה גְדוֹלָה וְהַקּוֹל נִשְׁמַע עַד־לְמֵרָחוֹק׃

Incidentally, this serves as a nice rebuttal to those who claim no one got beyond middle age in ancient times. True, the average life expectancy may have only been thirty-something or forty-something, but that was due to high infant mortality. Once you got beyond that, the sides of the age pyramid were not vertical, as they are in our society—people could die at any age—but some got through to old age, and as we see here there were "many" old people who had seen the First Temple before its destruction living to see the foundations of the Second being laid seventy-one years later.

On to the Esther story. XI.5.120:

Moreover, there was now in Babylon a righteous man, and one that enjoyed a great reputation among the multitude. He was the principal priest of the people, and his name was Esdras. He was very skillful in the laws of Moses, and was well acquainted with king Xerxes. He had determined to go up to Jerusalem, and to take with him some of those Jews that were in Babylon; and he desired that the king would give him an epistle to the governors of Syria, by which they might know who he was.

I don't know how Josephus dates Ezra to Xerxes when the the Bible clearly says (Esther 7:1-8):

Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah [...] went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him. [...] He came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. וְאַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה בְּמַלְכוּת אַרְתַּחְשַׁסְתְּא מֶלֶךְ־פָּרָס עֶזְרָא בֶּן־שְׂרָיָה [...] עָלָה מִבָּבֶל וְהוּא־סֹפֵר מָהִיר בְּתוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה אֲשֶׁר־נָתַן ה׳ אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיִּתֶּן־לוֹ הַמֶּלֶךְ כְּיַד־ה׳ אֱלֹהָיו עָלָיו כֹּל בַּקָּשָׁתוֹ׃ [...] וַיָּבֹא יְרוּשָׁלִַם בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַחֲמִישִׁי הִיא שְׁנַת הַשְּׁבִיעִית לַמֶּלֶךְ׃

Moving on, in XI.6.184 Josephus identifies Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes, following the tradition of the Apocryphal Book of Esther. Most scholars disagree, though, and identify him with Xerxes. Now, all three names have been dragged through a linguistic hedge backwards, as Greek lacked many of the sounds in the Persian such as š (like "sh" in English).

Persian	Hebrew	Greek	English
Ḫšayāršā		Ξέρξης	Xerxes
Ḫšayāršā	Ăḥašwērôš	Ασουηρος	Ahasuerus
Artaḫšaça	Artaḫšaste	Ἀρταξέρξης	Artaxerxes

Personally, what I suspect happened to create the name Ahasuerus was Ḫšayāršā → אֲחַשְׁיַרְשׁ^*‪ → ‬ אֲחַשְׁוַרְשׁ^†‪ → ‬ אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹשׁ^‡‪ → ‬ אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ.

* Other foreign words and names beginning ḫ- also get an initial /ă-/ in Hebrew, e.g. ḫšaθrapāvan (satrap) → אֲחַשְׁדַּרְפָּן.

† Scribal error due to the resemblance between י and ו.

‡ Corrupt tradition as to what the vowels were, which would at the time only have been oral tradition.

There are other odd names in the Greek: Hăthāch becomes Acratheus; Ḥarvonāh becomes Sabuchadas. Of course, these are Persian names, so possibly if you go to the Persian original it becomes more obvious how such different Hebrew and Greek forms can arise.

[Please comment at my collected Book XI notes post, on Dreamwidth for preference, or on LiveJournal.]

Josephus notes