User talk:NormanOrr

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 * Please feel free to delete this message from your user-talk page after viewing... Ashcraft - (talk) 13:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Thiele, Edwin R.: Original chronological scheme
First, you could make things a lot easier by signing any message you leave on a talk page. Four tildes ( ~ ) will do it. As it is, I checked the history of the mods to my page in order to find you. The way we carry out discussions between users, not related to any particular page, is to leave messages on each other's User Talk page, as you did. "Watching" each other's page is discouraged, unless the users involved know one another well.

Now about Thiele's scheme: Yes, I would be interested in any insight you could provide as to how Thiele came up with this synchronies. I still maintain that these were forced, and dreadfully so. But I also believe that I know where he went wrong.

Larry Pierce, translator of The Annals of the World, will never admit it, but in fact Assyrian records have too many synchronies with Hebrew kings to ignore. The problem: Martin Anstey (Romance of Chronology) knew back in the turn of the century that a large chunk of the Assyrian Eponym Canon was missing. Anstey calculated that 51 names were missing; Floyd Nolen Jones (The Chronology of the Old Testament) tentatively calculated 45. I believe that 45 is the correct number. Furthermore, those 45 lie between Adad-nirari III and Shalmaneser IV, and begin with the king that Jonah visited, shortly after the accession of Jeroboam II in the Kingdom of Israel.

I believe that Ahab did participate in the Battle of Qarqar, on the side of Ben-hadad II, and that coalition beat Shalmaneser III.

I believe that Shalmaneser III accepted a tribute from a King of Israel--but that king was Jehoram, not Jehu. Jehu would have told Shalmaneser to go chisel another rock--but Jehoram might have paid up, and that might be why Jehu could get the generals to follow him in what amounted to mutiny--or barratry, a defection of the officers, not the grunts.

I believe that Jehoahaz of Israel had a synchrony with another king of Assyria, and that king was none other than Adad-nirari III.

But I also believe that Asshur-dan III, not Tiglath-Pileser III, was the "Pul" or "Vul" who demanded and got a tribute from King Menahem.

I believe that Tiglath-Pileser did what he said: had Pekah killed and Hoshea installed in his place. But I also believe that for the first nine years of his headship of northern Israel, Hoshea held the post of provincial governor, not the title of king. Nor do I believe that Pekah and Menahem began their reigns in the same year. They couldn't have&mdash;because Pekah was one of Pekahiah's officers. Besides: by that scheme, the 39th year of Uzziah, and the 52nd year of Uzziah, would have to be one and the same year--because Pekah is described as having died in the twentieth year of Jotham.

Also: yes, there was a period of anarchy in the Kingdom of Israel between the death of Jeroboam II and the accession of Zachariah. At least one prophet predicted exactly that state of affairs.

Putting it all together, I agree with Jones: 45 years of Assyrian history are missing--X-ed out by Tiglath-Pileser III in his quest to purge his country's collective memory of an episode during which the people forgot the "gods" of their ancestors. Such "memorywashing" happened in Egypt; Tiglath-Pileser was simply more thorough than Thutmose III was. George Orwell predicted that a totalitarian government would do the same thing in modern times, and even suggested mechanisms by which they might do it; see Nineteen Eighty-four.

The trouble was that Tiglath-Pileser did his memorywash so well that even modern-day Assyriologists refuse to admit that such a thing happened, or even could have happened. But you must remember: we have one, and only one, fixation of a date in the Assyrian Eponym Canon: the Year of Bur-Sagale, or 763 BC, synchronized with a total eclipse of the sun. (And even that is tentative.) So we have no reason to suppose that 45 years of Assyrian history are not missing--and every reason to suppose that we can lock in the number of years between the division of the kingdoms (975 BC) and the destruction of the Temple (586 BC). That's 390 years. Ezekiel gave us that number. We have no reason to suppose that the 390 years began with the accession of Solomon to his throne. So forcing Biblical chronology to conform with an incomplete Assyrian chronology is unwarranted.

Not to mention that the forcing causes such absurdities as assuming that Uzziah was made viceroy of the Kingdom of Judah by Amaziah eight years before he, Uzziah, was born. Or that "the people" somehow elected Uzziah as viceroy of the kingdom when Uzziah was sixteen. Viceroys are not elected; they are appointed! (There's a worse problem: Jehoahaz I is assumed under the first Thiele scheme to have sired his son Hezekiah when he was only a year old--a physical and medical impossibility. His child marriage at the age of 11, and his siring of a son at that age, are remarkable enough.)

By all means, send me what you have worked out about Thiele's work. It's useless to judge anyone's work without knowing the full particulars. I doubt that this will change my opinion of it, but one never knows.--TemlakosTalk 23:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thiele, Sargon, and Sennacherib
Norman:

Thanks for the messages.

Actually, I see no reason to move the Fall of Samaria away from 721 BC. I tend to agree, however, that Sargon II and Sennacherib largely ruled together. Actually, I think, as Floyd Nolen Jones does, that Sennacherib attacked the Kingdom of Judah twice--first as Tartan, or C-in-C, of Sargon's army, and next as co-regent. By the way, "Tartan" and "Rabshakeh" are office titles. "Tartan" means C-in-C and "Rabshakeh" means "grand vizier," a sort of administrative overseer--more steward than viceroy.

I think where you and I might differ is that I still maintain that 45 years of Assyrian history are missing.

We can't ignore Sargon, for this reason: Isaiah mentioned him by name. Also, the name Sargon means "true king" or "the king." So I start to wonder whether the English translators of Jeremiah's prose (II Kings) simply forgot that Jeremiah was translating the name of Sargon into Hebrew.--TemlakosTalk 12:22, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to send you a copy of the timeline file relating to the period of the kings for you to have a look over. As I mentioned, I have put together what I consider to be Thieles original chronological pattern. I guess one of the main points that I am trying to make, is that he did come up with a pattern based on the scripture data before he changed it to that which was later published.

I think that this in and of itself is something significant. I place great importance on the bible as a valid source of historical information. If thiele was able to work out a pattern that was consistant with the bible, then I think it is worth the effort to bring this out from the bottom of his studie notes, where every one can have a chance to look at it. Thiele did include graphs in his book which he used to describe how the synchronisms might look. Then he would go into detail to show how he thought they should look, in support of his modified chronology.

His first pattern, which was not published, is different than his modified one which was published.

--NormanOrr 07:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)normanorr--NormanOrr 07:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)6 july 2010