sages missing out the reign lengths of several Persian kings during the Persian Empire's rule over Israel. Modern scholars tally ten Persian kings whose combined reigns total 208 years. By contrast, ancient Jewish sages only mention four Persian kings totaling 52 years. The reigns of several Persian kings appear to be missing from the traditional calculations. Azariah dei Rossi was likely the first Jewish authority to claim that the traditional Hebrew dating is not historically precise regarding the years before the Second Temple. Nachman Krochmal agreed with dei Rossi, pointing to the Greek name Antigonos mentioned in Pirkei Avot 1:3 as proof that there must have been a longer period to account for this sign of Hellenic influence. dei Rossi and Krochmal argued that when the length of a historical period was unknown, Seder Olam Rabbah took the method of assuming the shortest possible length. Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport noted that the traditional Jewish chronology, when combined with another rabbinic tradition, places the Exodus from Egypt at exactly 1000 years prior to the Seleucid era (known in Jewish sources as "Minyan Shtarot"). He suggests that the authors of the traditional Jewish chronology intentionally omitted years from the Persian period in order to obtain this round number, with the intent that Jews who previously had counted years from the Exodus would be able to easily switch to the Seleucid era system used by Greek rulers at the time. David Zvi Hoffmann points out that the Mishnah in Avot (1:4) in describing the chain of tradition uses the plural "accepted from them" even though the previous Mishnah only mentions one person. He posits that there must have been another Mishnah mentioning two sages that was later removed. Shimon Schwab interpreted to Biblical words "seal the words and close the book" () as a commandment to obscure the Biblical chronology, so that it would not be possible to accurately calculate the time of the Messiah's arrival. Thus, according to Schwab, the traditional Jewish calendar intentionally omitted years from the Persian period. However, Schwab later withdrew this suggestion for numerous reasons. A 2006 article in Ḥakirah journal suggested that the sages were concerned with the acceptance of the Mishnah. There existed a rabbinical tradition that the year 4000 marked the close of the "era of Torah". Thus, it is proposed, the sages arranged the chronology so that the redaction of the Mishnah should coincide