Biblical chronology dispute: Difference between revisions

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Biblical chronology dispute (view source)

Revision as of 20:25, 1 February 2018

4,228 bytes added ,  1 February 2018
Clarified and corrected Divided Kingdom section
(Corrected mischaracterization of Thiele's scholarship.)
(Clarified and corrected Divided Kingdom section)
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The first two sets of dates is exactly 45 years apart. The obvious question arises: ''Where did those forty-five years go?'' Surprisingly, the two camps agree within two years on the date of the last event, the Fall of Jerusalem.
The first two sets of dates are exactly 45 years apart. The obvious question arises: ''What is the reason for the 45-year difference?'' Surprisingly, the two camps agree within two years on the date of the last event, the Fall of Jerusalem.


The differences result from the two differing assumptions that the two camps have made. Ussher assumed:
The differences result from the two differing assumptions that the two camps have made. Ussher assumed:


# That he knew for certain the date of the death of [[Nebuchadnezzar II]]--which was 562 BC.<ref name=BritMuseum/><ref name=MNSU/><ref name=Columbia/>
# That he knew for certain the date of the death of [[Nebuchadnezzar II]]—which was 562 BC.<ref name=BritMuseum/><ref name=MNSU/><ref name=Columbia/>
# That this was also the date that Nebuchadnezzar's son [[Evil-Merodach]] began to reign.
# That this was also the date that Nebuchadnezzar's son [[Evil-Merodach]] began to reign.


From this date, he worked backward, using the meticulous dates that appear throughout I and II Kings, each of which gives a date of a king's accession with references to a year of reign of another king--except that kings of the [[Southern Kingdom]] after the conquest of the [[Northern Kingdom]] are listed only with their ages and lengths of reign, and King [[Jehoiachin]] is referenced by how many years he had been a captive when Evil-Merodach acceded to his throne. That sequence definitely places the division of the kingdoms at 975 BC, and the beginning of Solomon's reign at 1015 BC. {{Bible ref|book=I_Kings|chap=6|verses=1}} states that Solomon broke ground on the Temple in the fourth year of his reign--and that this event took place in the ''four hundred eightieth year since the [[Exodus of Israel]].'' This places the Exodus at 1491 BC. (The sequence also places the [[Fall of Jerusalem]] at 588 BC, because it happened 11 years after [[Jehoiachin]] was taken captive.)
There is, however, a problem with Ussher’s calculation at this starting point. It is known from Ptolemy’s ''Canon'' and from contract texts that Evil-Merodach’s accession year was the year that started in Nisan (a spring month) of 562 BC. This was also the 37th year of Jehoiachin’s captivity (2 Kings 25:27), so that he would have been taken captive in (562 BC + 36) = 598 BC. Ussher assumed Nisan years for all these dates and accession reckoning for Zedekiah, successor to Jehoiachin, which would end Zedekiah’s 11-year reign in 587, in agreement with some modern detailed studies,<ref>Steinmann, ''From Abraham to Paul'', pp. 162-169.</ref> instead of Ussher’s 588.


Thiele, on the other hand, made a number of assumptions from observations of Assyrian stone tablets that, he believed, warranted a ''revision'' of the king list in I and II Kings.<ref name=Pierce/> They were:
From his date of 588 BC, Ussher worked backward, using the meticulous dates that appear throughout I and II Kings and II Chronicles, each of which gives a date of a king's accession with references to a year of reign of another king—except that kings of the [[Southern Kingdom]] after the conquest of the [[Northern Kingdom]] are listed only with their ages and lengths of reign, and King [[Jehoiachin]] is referenced by how many years he had been a captive when Evil-Merodach acceded to his throne. Ussher’s calculations then placed the division of the kingdoms at 975 BC, and the beginning of Solomon's reign at 1015 BC. In order to arrive at these dates, Ussher had to make several assumptions about how to interpret the Biblical data, such as whether a given reign length or synchronism was measured from a coregency or from a sole reign. He postulated three coregencies for Judah. For Israel, he assumed three coregencies, one rival reign, and two interregna. For comparison, Thiele postulated six coregencies for Judah, and one coregency and two rival reigns for Israel. This is the area where the largest divergences are between the Thiele and Ussher camps, and the source of the 45 year difference in their dates of Solomon.  


# That a king identified as [[Jehu]] paid tribute to King [[Shalmaneser III]] of [[Assyria]] in 841 BC, as (he further assumed) the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III attests.
In studying Ussher’s reasoning, it becomes clear that one of the major features contributing to the difference is the interregna, since both scholars used basically the same method in determining when the Biblical data called for a coregency. Ussher began an eleven-year interregnum at the death of Jeroboam II of Israel and an eight-year interregnum between Pekah and Hoshea, the last two kings of Israel. In the two scriptures involved, 2 Kings 15:8 and 2 Kings 15:30, the Hebrew original says that the successor was actually reigning in the same year that the predecessor died. The Hebrew verb used cannot honestly be interpreted in any other way, and so this issue of the interregna has become problematic for Ussher’s chronology. As mentioned before, Thiele had no need of interregna; his interpretation of the Biblical texts does no violence to 2 Kings 15:8 and 2 Kings 15:30, whereas Ussher’s interpretation is not consistent with the meaning of these texts.
# That a king identified as [[Ahab]] contributed a sizeable portion to a coalition force that fought against Shalmaneser III in a major battle at [[Qarqar]] in 853 BC.
# That [[Sennacherib]] invaded the [[Southern Kingdom]], in the days of King [[Hezekiah]], in 701 BC.


All these dates presented serious problems for a strict reading of I and II Kings--primarily because Ussher calculated King Jehu as having acceded to the throne of Israel (and also killed King [[Ahaziah]] of Judah) in 884 BC.<ref>[[James Ussher|Ussher]], ''[[The Annals of the World|op. cit.]], pgh. 535</ref> Thiele solved this problem by ''moving forward the date of Jehu's campaign'' from 884 BC to 841 BC.<ref name=Thiele>[[Edwin R. Thiele]], ''The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings'', Chicago, IL, 1943. Reprinted in 1983, 283 pages, unknown format. ISBN 0310360102</ref> That movement alone accounts for 43 of the 45 years by which the Ussher and Thiele dates of the Exodus and the Temple are discrepant.
{{Bible ref|book=I_Kings|chap=6|verses=1}} states that Solomon broke ground on the Temple in the fourth year of his reign—and that this event took place in the ''four hundred eightieth year since the [[Exodus of Israel]].'' This places the Exodus at 1491 BC when using Ussher’s dates for Solomon.


Having done that, Thiele evidently saw no reason to change the stated chronology of the Divided Kingdoms between Solomon's death and Jehu's ascendancy. But he compressed greatly the history of the [[Northern Kingdom]] beyond Jehu, specifically by:
It is well known that Ussher’s dates for the kingdom period have not found verification from archaeological discoveries and the reading of inscriptions from the Ancient Near East. This information was not available in Ussher’s time. As explained on the [[Thiele|Edwin R. Thiele]] page, Thiele also initially had trouble matching his Biblically-derived dates with the Assyrian data, but further investigation showed it was the dates commonly accepted by the Assyrian academy that were in error, not the Biblical dates as derived by Thiele. Assyriolgists have generally accepted the corrections that Thiele found would be necessary in order to reconcile Assyrian dates with God’s Word. This is one of the strongest affirmations of the correctness of Thiele’s way of interpreting the rich and complex chronological data of the kingdom period.


# Assuming that the [[viceroy]]alty of [[Jeroboam II]] ran concurrently with his total reign, which Ussher did not.
The following list shows how Thiele’s Bible-based chronology disagreed at some points with the commonly accepted Assyrian dates, but Thiele “stuck by his guns” and showed that it was the interpretation of the Assyrian texts that was in error, not the texts from the Bible. The events are:
# Eliminating the two interregna immediately following the deaths of Jeroboam II and [[Pekah]].
# Assuming that Pekah and [[Menahem]] began their reigns together and that Pekah simply wiped out the short-lived "House" of Menahem after building a rebel power base for twelve of the twenty years he is supposed to have reigned.


Thiele also greatly compressed and telescoped the reigns of [[Amaziah]], [[Uzziah]], and [[Jotham]] of the [[Southern Kingdom]] to force them to synchronize with this reworked chronology of the Northern Kingdom.<ref name=Holman>"Chronology of the Biblical Period," in ''Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary,'' Chad Brand, Charles Draper, Archie England, ''et al.'', eds., Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003, pp. 291-5 ISBN 0-80542-836-4</ref>
# That a king identified as [[Jehu]] paid tribute to King [[Shalmaneser III]] of [[Assyria]] in 841 BC, as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III attests. Previous to Thiele’s studies, the majority of Assyriologists dated the tribute one year earlier. Thiele’s study of the Biblical data led him to investigate the reasoning of the Assyrian academy in deriving this date. His one-year correction for Jehu’s tribute, and the regnal years of Shalmaneser, is now accepted by Assyriologists.
# That a king identified as [[Ahab]] contributed a sizeable portion to a coalition force that fought against Shalmaneser III in a major battle at [[Qarqar]] in 853 BC. Again, Thiele’s chronology as derived from the Biblical historical books required that the tribute was in 853 instead of in 854, the date held by the majority of the Assyrian academy. In all three editions of his ''Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings'', Thiele published his revision of the Assyrian Eponym Canon that allowed the Assyriologists’ dates to match those derived from the Bible. This has been a great testimony to the reliability of the Bible’s chronological data ''when interpreted correctly''.
# That [[Sennacherib]] invaded the [[Southern Kingdom]], in the days of King [[Hezekiah]], in 701 BC. The date is well established from Assyrian records, and it is consistent with Thiele’s chronology.
#That Menahem of Israel gave tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III at some time between the Assyrian’s first year of reign, 745 BC, and the death of Menahem, which Thiele placed in 742/41 BC. Tiglath-Pileser’s original name was Pul (2 Kings 15:9), as has been established from Babylonian<ref>Edwin R. Thiele, ''The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings'' (3d ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), p. 141, n. 4.</ref> and Phoenician<ref>In the Phoenician Incirli Stela, Tiglath-Pileser’s name is written as פאל (Stephen A. Kaufman, “The Phoenician Inscription of the Incirli Trilingual: A Tentative Reconstruction and Translation,” MAARAV 14.2 [2007], pp. 7–26).</ref> records. The tribute was challenged by Floyd Nolen Jones, who wrote, “Thus, there is no Assyrian historical text which says or even infers that Tiglath-Pileser collected tribute from Menahem of Israel, although almost all scholarly sources proclaim that he so did.”<ref>Jones, ''Chronology of the OT'', p. 172a.</ref> This statement is false. The text of the Iran Stela, published in 1994, says explicitly that Tiglath-Pileser received tribute from Menahem of Samaria. Ussher’s dates for Menahem, 772 to 761 BC, would make it impossible for him to give tribute to Tiglath-Pileser, who reigned from 745 to 727 BC. This problem with Ussher’s dates has never been resolved by the “Ussher camp.” It arose in part because of Ussher’s interregnum that not only produced conflict with Assyrian dates, but, more importantly, with the Hebrew text of 2 Kings 15:30. This and Ussher’s other unwarranted interregnum have contributed to the 45-year divergence between Ussher’s dates and those of modern scholarship.


Ussherites contend that while Ussher assumed the primacy of Scripture, Thiele assumed the primacy of secular historical records (what Ussher called "profane history"). Pierce in particular contends that Thiele had no grounds, according to the accepted canons of Biblical scholarship, to impart different meanings to verses that follow the same pattern without sufficient reason--an argument that [[Occam's razor|William of Occam]] might have made. Even if Thiele did have such grounds, Pierce maintains that Thiele's clues, such as they are, are not even grounded in anything approaching certainty. Ussherites also question Thiele's math--for example, Thiele seems to have assumed that Uzziah, whom II Kings states was 16 years old when he began to reign, was granted a viceroyship fully eight years before he was born! A later disciple of Thiele then claimed that what Thiele actually meant was that Uzziah became ''viceroy'' at sixteen, not ''sole ruler'' at sixteen. But McFall, according to Pierce, then proceeded to alter the text of Scripture itself,<ref>{{Bible ref|book=II_Kings|chap=14|verses=21}} and {{Bible ref|book=II_Chronicles|chap=26|verses=1}}</ref> a proposition Pierce denounced as outrageous.
All these dates presented serious problems for Ussher’s interpretation of the chronological data of I and II Kings and II Chronicles—as shown by Ussher calculating King Jehu as having acceded to the throne of Israel (and also killed King [[Ahaziah]] of Judah) in 884 BC.<ref>[[James Ussher|Ussher]], ''[[The Annals of the World|op. cit.]], pgh. 535</ref>
 
Other areas contributing to the 45-year difference are as follows.
 
# Thiele calculated that the 41-year reign of Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23) was measured from his appointment as coregent, while Ussher preceded these 41 years with an 11-year coregency, thus making a total of 52 years for Jeroboam in Ussher’s system.
# Thiele’s chronology has no need of the two interregna immediately following the deaths of Jeroboam II and [[Pekah]]. These interregna cannot be supported by a literal and faithful reading of the two Scriptures involved, as mentioned above.
# Thiele determined, following some previous scholarship, that Pekah and [[Menahem]] began their reigns together and that Pekah simply wiped out the short-lived "House" of Menahem after building a rebel power base for twelve of the twenty years he is supposed to have reigned.
 
Some Ussherites contend that while Ussher assumed the primacy of Scripture, Thiele assumed the primacy of secular historical records (what Ussher called "profane history"). But anyone who has read, and understood, Thiele’s works will know that this is quite the opposite of the facts.


== A Synoptic Table ==
== A Synoptic Table ==
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