The Chronology of Kings and Chronicles, Part 2

In part 1, we learned that Edward R. Thiele, in his PhD dissertation and book entitled; The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, acquired fixed dates for 2 events in the chronology of ancient Israel by using Assyrian eponym lists covering the years 892-648 BC. These 2 events were the rise of Jehu to the throne of Israel (Northern Kingdom) in 841 BC and Shalmaneser III's invasion of Judah during the 14th year of Hezekiah in 701 BC. From there, Thiele was able to calculate the dates for the reigns of every king in Judah and Israel. However, it was not without complication. As I said yesterday, the Assyrian lists and the foothold dates were only the first layer of confusion. Today, we will discuss 3 procedures that Thiele discovered in trying to piece together a chronology for these kings.

The first of these is recognizing when Judah and Israel started their respective calendar years. Judah began their year in the month of Tishri (our September/October) while Israel began their year in the month of Nisan (our March/April). This complicates things because a regnal year in Israel would overlap 2 regnal years in Judah. Also, both of these calendars would overlap 2 of our years (Jan-Dec). An illustration is in order. This comes from Thiele's book, page 45.




Each wedge with the month labeled is the beginning of the year. Judah is on top with Israel on bottom. What you can see here is that  year 2 in Israel covers part of years 2 and 3 in Judah. So while Judah has counted 2 years, Israel has only counted one.

The second chronological procedure has 4 layers of confusing. This has to do with accession year and non-accession year dating. Non-accession year dating means that the year a king comes to power counts as the first year. For instance, if Hezekiah became king in June of 715 BC, that short time, from June to August, would count as year one. Year two would start in the month of Tishri (our Sept/Oct). On the other hand, if we use accession year dating, we would wait until the new year to start counting his reigning years. Using the same example, June of 715 BC, Hezekiah's year one would not start until Tishri, about 3 months after he had ascended to the throne. At this point you might be saying; "Great, which one did the kings use? This isn't so hard." Well, the 2 kingdoms, for most of their existence, used the opposite system of counting regnal years. This is the second layer of this one rule.

Judah used accession year dating from Rehoboam until Jehoshaphat. Remember, this means they counted the first year from the beginning of the new year. Israel used non-accession year dating from Jeroboam I to Ahaziah. Essentially, during this time, Israel counted an extra year compared to Judah. The chart below, from Walter Kaiser's book, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant?, page 123 demonstrates this principle and clears up our counting of the years from the beginning of part 1 of this series.

Judah Years Israel Years Actual years Rehoboam 17 Jeroboam I 22 21 Abijah/Abijam 3 Nadab 2 1 Asa 41 Baasha 24 23 Jehoshaphat 18 Elah 2 1 Omri/Tibni 12 11 Ahab 22 21 Ahaziah 2 1 Total years 79 86 79
This is not the end of the accession and non-accession year discussion. Our 3rd layer consists of the fact that when relations became good between the kingdoms, Judah switched to a non-accession year system. This lasted from Jehoram to Amaziah. As a result, we must take off a year for each of those kings. Finally, both kingdoms for unknown reasons used accession year dating after this until they were no more. For Judah, that is from Azariah to Zedekiah and for Israel, that is from Jeroboam II until Hoshea.
Our final chronological procedure is that each kingdom used its own system when counting the years from the other kingdom. If we look at the chart above, this means that Israel counted Rehoboam's reign as 18 years with non-accession year counting. The final piece of this complicated puzzle is the figuring of co-regencies (when a father and son ruled during the same year) and overlapping reigns from multiple "kingdoms" in the north due to infighting between rivals. In other words, some of the years in Kings and Chronicles are really counted twice. Next week, I will finish this 3 part series. Enjoy your holiday! God bless you!