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!

The Chronology of Kings and Chronicles, Part 1

When someone is investigating the reliability of the Old Testament, its accurate recording of history is surely a concern that deserves analysis. After all, the God of the universe claims to be declaring the events of the world from beginning to end (Isaiah 46:8-11). If God is claiming that, then certainly His word will hold up to even the harshest scrutiny. Many, if not most, Old Testament scholars hold to historical minimalism. This means that they believe there is little, if any, actual history in the Old Testament. I don't think that is the case. But, I don't want to hold a circular position wherein I simply proclaim the Bible accurate because it is the Word of God and then, upon being asked why it is the Word of God I say; "Because it says so." What I want to do and what we, as believers, should do, is be willing to put God's word to the test. It proves reliable again and again. When there is a real sticky issue that is very hard to figure out, we can trust that we just don't have all the information we need to finish the puzzle. That is exactly what the Biblical idea of faith is: trusting in the evidence of what is seen, so that you can trust what is not seen with full confidence (Hebrews 11:1).

This is not to say that a cursory look into secular history will succinctly and thoroughly demolish all supposed historical inaccuracies in the Old Testament. It will take some serious study. One of the biggest issues of note is the chronology of the reigning kings of Judah and Israel (Northern Kingdom). When you look at the years given for the various kings in the books of 1&2 Kings and 1&2 Chronicles, they don't match. When Solomon died and the Israelite kingdom split, Rehoboam became king in Judah while Jeroboam I became king in Israel which was sometimes called Ephraim. As an example of the convoluted chronology that comes from a straightforward reading of the Bible we have the following: from Rehoboam to Jehoshaphat in Judah, there are 79 years; from Jeroboam to Ahaziah in Israel, there are 86 years. This should be the same span of time. What gives? Well, here is where it gets somewhat complicated.

Edward R. Thiele resolved most of the issues with the chronology while working on his doctoral dissertation in the 1940's. Subsequently, he wrote a book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, which you can find on google books and read most of it. I am also using a good summary of Thiele's work in The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr (chapter 9).
In 1846 an Assyrian eponym list was found. It covered from 892 to 648 BC. It gave the eponym or "man-of-the-year" each year and sometimes recorded major events in Assyrian history. Essentially, this was a kings list. In studying the list, Thiele noted 4 things that helped him to unlock a fixed date for something in Kings or Chronicles. They are as follows:

1. An eclipse of the sun which, when calculated on the Julian calendar with astronomical data turned out to be June 15, 763 BC. This gave Thiele a fixed date which he could use to calculate everything else on the eponym list.
2. The battle of Qarqar, fought between Shalmaneser III and Ahab of Israel was calculated from the eclipse to be 853 BC. But, he still didn't know when Ahab's 22 year reign began or ended.
3. 12 years later, 841 BC, the lists tell of a tribute that Jehu, king of Israel, paid to Shalmaneser III.
4. Sennacherib's 3rd campaign, when he came up against Hezekiah of Judah was 152 years from the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. The Hebrew chronology gives the same amount of years (152) and by subtraction, a date of 701 BC.

There are 2 kings in between Ahab and Jehu. They are Ahaziah (2 yrs; 1 Kings 22:51) and Joram (12 yrs; 2 Kings 3:1). This is actually 12 official years. This is due to the way Israel counted kingship years. We will discuss this in part 2. This means that 841 BC was Jehu's first year as king and thus, Thiele had a fixed date for a king of Israel. Sennacherib's campaign also gave a fixed date of 701 BC which was the 14th year of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:13). These 2 items then allowed Thiele to calculate the years of the kings of Judah and Israel. But, this is only the first hurdle and in part 2 it is going to get real complicated.

Middle Eastern Refugees

I am very saddened by the events in Syria and Iraq that have caused this mass exodus of refugees. I have seen first hand the poverty many of these refugees from Iraq have suffered through before ISIS (I served in Iraq from Sep 05-Apr 06 and from June-August 07). I can only imagine how much worse it has become. While my response as a member of the body of Christ is multifaceted, my underlying concern is the welfare of my fellow human beings who were made in the image of God and deserve my sympathy and compassion above all else; that is what God demands of me. I owe it to the Lord to care for these refugees as He has cared for me.

"How can I repay the Lord for all the good He has done for me?" Psalm 116:12

The first idea that must be discussed is our care for foreigners and sojourners. God's word is clear that we are to care for those who have left their home country and are seeking a new life in ours. In particular, Exodus 22:21 says: "You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." And again in Leviticus 19:33-4; "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." There are 2 things to highlight about these verses. First, in the passages that these verses are contained in, they are surrounded by laws concerning the treatment of your fellow man in general. This means, for the most part, they are part of the moral law, not the hygiene or ceremonial law. This means that they aren't merely specific to Israel for that time and place, they are paradigmatic for how we should love our neighbor for all time, in all places. Second, God offers wrath if we do mistreat the sojourner (Exodus 22:23-4). This shouldn't be what motivates us to care for these refugees, but it let's us know how serious God is when He says, "don't wrong a sojourner". The take home point is that I think we should be taking in as many of these refugees as we can responsibly manage. Responsibly manage means 2 things to me: security and money.

I share the concerns of many of my fellow citizens. I don't want anyone to get killed by an Islamic radical who has slipped in through the refugee process. What happens when we let tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. into the country? Even if we vet them, and from what I understand our top security agencies and officials say we cannot properly vet them due to a lack of intelligence on the ground in Syria and Iraq in particular, some terrorists are going to get through and at least attempt to attack our citizens. I have seen a wide range of statistics speaking to the amount of military aged males that are in the refugee populations, but, I am not necessarily concerned with that aspect of the debate. To my knowledge, God's word doesn't offer specific guidance in this area. In my view we have to return to what we can glean from scripture. We are to love and help the sojourner. In my opinion, this means presuming individual refugees to be innocent until proven guilty. We should vet them as best we can no matter how long that takes. I have read some estimates that are from 18-24 months. So be it. If we cannot find out if what they are saying is true during the vetting process, we should assume they are telling the truth and let them in. Yes, I realize that means people might die because a terrorist slips in. That is a risk I am willing to take. I understand if you disagree with that. The take home point is that I think there are serious security issues that must be dealt with, but the welfare of the refugee is the greater matter. The 2 extremes of opinion: "no refugees at all" and "just let them in" are both wrong. There should be a concern for both sets of the bearers of the imago Dei: refugees and US citizens.

Yes, I did say money up there. This is something that hardly anyone is talking about. Part of responsibly bringing in thousands of refugees is paying for it without debt. Our politicians from all parties have been irresponsible for decades with money. It cannot continue forever. We will go bankrupt eventually. When that happens we will not be able to be the generous country we have been throughout our history. I want to use a  few verses from Proverbs with the understanding that I am not attempting to stretch them too far. Proverbs 13:22 says: "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous." I am not saying this is about hoarding money for only my family or only citizens of the US. This is about being responsible with the abundance God has given us so that we can bless others. Debt isn't being responsible. Proverbs 22:7 says: "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender." I am only an etheldoulos (voluntary slave or more properly, bondservant) to one master, Jesus Christ. Borrowing money, whether nationally or personally, makes us slaves. Slaves have no say in how they live. We can't be effective givers as individuals or as a country when we are in bondage. The take home point is that we, as a country and as individuals, should be fiscally responsible in how we provide for these refugees. I believe the government should be totally removed from the refugee resettlement process except the vetting and immigration portion. I think there are an abundance of aid organizations, both Christian and those with other affiliations, that deal with this sort of thing all the time. They would be much better suited to handling these refugees and they would most likely do it more efficiently than our government. I also say all this about money knowing that the body of Christ will rise to the challenge of financially supporting refugee resettlement efforts so that we, as a nation, don't have to borrow money.

I am not going to offer pejoratives or ad hominem attacks on people who are concerned about their safety. It is natural to be concerned for your life. I am also not going to get upset at people who are letting their emotional compassion dominate every other concern. I see both sides and I think there is a responsible middle ground that is both compassionate, fair, and that takes into account the suffering, the security, and the financial concerns of both the refugees and US citizens.

In conclusion, I think we as members of the body of Christ should remember 2 things. We have a commission (Matt 28:16-20) to make disciples. A group of people that are starving spiritually without the Gospel are coming to our front door. What a great opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. Of course, this also means we had better prepare ourselves to defend the Christian worldview from Islamic arguments such as; "Jesus isn't God, just a prophet" and to present reasons Islam doesn't satisfactorily answer the ultimate questions in life. I had to say that. This is an apologetics blog after all. Finally, our lives here on Earth are a precious gift from God. We should be concerned with our well-being and safety, but not to the point that we forget that our citizenship is ultimately in heaven (Phil 3:20), not here. Our focus should be where our Lord told us to put it in Luke 12; eternity.