Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, ???-???.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE FOR

THE BEGINNING OF THE DIVIDED KINGDOM

RODGER C. YOUNG

St. Louis, Missouri

Overview of the Work of Thiele

Edwin Thiele’s work on the chronology of the divided kingdom was first

published in a 1944 article that was an abridgement of his doctoral dissertation.¹

His research later appeared in various journals and in his book The Mysterious

Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, which went through three editions before Thiele’s

death in 1986.²No other chronological study dealing with the divided

monarchies has found such wide acceptance among historians of the ancient

Near East. The present study will show why this respect among historians is

justified, particularly as regarding Thiele’s dates for the northern kingdom,

while touching somewhat on the reasons that later scholars had to modify

Thiele’s chronology for the southern kingdom. The breakthrough for Thiele’s

chronology was that it matched various fixed dates in Assyrian history, and also

helped resolve the controversy regarding other Assyrian dates, while at the

same time it was consistent with all the biblical data that Thiele used to

construct the chronology of the northern kingdom—but with the caveat that

this was not entirely the case in his treatment of texts for the Judean kings. Of

interest for the present discussion is the observation that Thiele’s dates for the

northern kingdom had no substantial changes between the time of his 1944

article and the 1986 publication of the final edition of Mysterious Numbers.³

The initial skepticism that greeted Thiele’s findings has been replaced, in

many quarters, by the realization that his means of establishing the dates of

these kings shows a fundamental understanding of the historical issues

involved, whether regarding Assyrian or Babylonian records or the traditions

of the Hebrews. Rather than trying to cover all the dates and historical data that

have brought many scholars to this judgment, I shall focus on just one date that

¹Edwin R. Thiele, “The Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel,” JNES 3

(1944): 137-186.

²Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 1st ed. (New York:

Macmillan, 1951); 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965); 3d ed. (Grand Rapids:

Zondervan/Kregel, 1983). Unless noted otherwise, page numbers in the present article

refer to the third edition.

³In the third edition of Mysterious Numbers, Thiele moved the beginning date for

Jehu down six months from the first half of the year beginning in Nisan of 841 B.C. to

the second half of that year. In terms of the sum of years for Israel this makes no

difference, because Jehu’s accession was still in the same Nisan-based year. This change

was made to accommodate his down-dating of the reigns of the Judean kings

Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah by one year in the third edition as compared to the

second edition. The reason for this down-dating will be discussed below, in Section II.3.

1

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

is the result of Thiele’s methodology, namely that of the beginning of the

divided monarchies at the death of Solomon. This date is verified by three lines

of evidence. These lines will be shown to be fundamentally independent of

each other, and they all confirm that the monarchy split into two kingdoms at

some time in the year that began in Nisan of 931 B.C. The three lines of

evidence are the internal and external consistency of Thiele’s chronology that

was used to arrive at this date, the Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles, and the Tyrian

king list.

First Verification: Internal and External

Consistency of Thiele’s Chronology

Consistency with Ancient Practices

Thiele’s chronology is consistent with ancient practices regarding the

measurement of a king’s reign. The first such practice to be considered is how

the partial year in which the king came to the throne was reckoned; whether it

was his “accession” or “zero” year (accession counting), or whether it was to

be considered the first year of reign (nonaccession counting). Both methods

were used in the ancient Near East. Thiele’s approach was to see if the textual

data, as given by the ancient authors, were sufficient to provide the clues as to

which method these authors were using for a particular king. In the case of the

early northern kings, we read that Nadab of Israel began in year two of Asa of

Judah and reigned two years, ending in year three of Asa. He was followed by

Baasha, whose twenty-four-year reign began in Asa’s year three and ended in

Asa’s twenty-sixth (not twenty-seventh) year. The evidence then points to

nonaccession reckoning for the first northern kings. Continuing this kind of

investigation, a comparison can be made between the first kings of the divided

kingdom and the time when Ahaziah of Israel died in the eighteenth year of

Jehoshaphat of Judah (2 Kgs 3:1). The sum of reign lengths for this time for

the seven kings of Israel (ignoring Zimri’s seven days) exceeds by seven years

the sum for Judah, immediately suggesting that Judah, contrary to the practice

of Israel, was using accession years for its kings. Thiele illustrated this with a

diagram in Mysterious Numbers, and then wrote in explanation, “During this

period Israel’s totals increased by one year for every reign over the totals of

Judah. This is positive evidence of the use of the accession-year system in

Judah and the nonaccession-year system in Israel. When the lengths of reign of

the Israelite rulers are expressed in actual [accession] rather than official

[nonaccession] years, the totals of the two kingdoms are the same.”⁴

Another area where Thiele’s method is consistent with ancient practices

is in the principle that whether a given king used accession or nonaccession

reckoning was essentially an arbitrary matter. In most cases, which system to

use was probably decided by the king himself. Thus the chronological data of

the Scriptures show that during the time of rapprochement between the two

kingdoms in the middle of the ninth century B.C., Judah adopted Israel’s

⁴Ibid., 49.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

3

nonaccession method of counting, whereas at a later time a comparison of the

starting and ending years of Menahem and Pekahiah of Israel with the regnal

years of Uzziah of Judah shows that Israel eventually went to accession

reckoning. Thiele has been much criticized because of these changes in the

method of reckoning. But Thiele is not the source of the changes and their

apparent arbitrariness. The real source of the changes was the ancient kings and

recorders who decided how things were to be done in their day. If someone is

to be criticized for arbitrariness, it should be these ancient personalities, not

Thiele. The unfairness of the criticism of Thiele’s chronology because kings

changed between accession and nonaccession methods can be demonstrated

by an example from Assyria. The general rule in the inscriptions of Assyrian

kings was to use accession reckoning. Tiglath-Pileser III, however, went against

this rule and used nonaccession reckoning for his reign.⁵Thus Assyrian

inscriptions show that a change was made in the mode of reckoning for

Assyria, just as the biblical texts show that changes were made in the mode of

reckoning during the time of the divided kingdoms. Thiele’s inferences in the

matter of when accession and nonaccession counting were used were not

driven by his own presuppositions (as is the case with many who write in this

field), and his conclusion that changes could be made is consistent with ancient

practice, as demonstrated by the example of Tiglath-Pileser III.

Another parameter that must be considered when attempting to reconstruct

the chronology of the divided kingdoms is the question of coregencies. As with

the accession/nonaccession question, Thiele again followed the inductive method

of first determining the practices of ancient kings and their scribes, rather than

starting with presuppositions of what the ancients “should have” done. In this

regard, the customs of Egypt’s pharaohs have been the object of considerable

study. There are examples of coregencies in the Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom,

and later, even down to Roman times. Egyptologists consider it essential that

coregencies be taken into account when reconstructing the chronology of the

various dynasties from the records of the pharaohs. The pharaohs usually

measured their years from the start of a coregency, although according to at least

one scholar this was not an invariable rule.⁶In contrast, rabbinic scholars (the

Seder ‘Olam and the Talmud) considered that a king’s years were always measured

from the start of his sole reign. In Egypt, the fact of the coregency is sometimes

quite clearly expressed in the official records, and sometimes it must be inferred

by comparing other chronological data with the year of reign given in the

pharaoh’s inscriptions.⁷The same practice must be followed when dealing with

⁵Hayim Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria (Jerusalem: Israel

Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 232, n. 3.

⁶William J. Murnane, Ancient Egyptian Coregencies(Chicago:OrientalInstitute,1977),

76, 82, 83, regarding the coregency of Seti I and Ramesses II.

⁷E.g., the coregency of Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II is not supported by any

monuments that give corresponding dates for both monarchs, but their coregency “is

strongly supported by chronological evidence from their reigns” (ibid., 44).

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

the records from the royal courts of Judah and Israel. The coregency of Solomon

with David is plainly stated in 1 Kgs 1:32-35 and 1 Chron 23:1. Second Kings 15:5

tells us that Jotham became the effective ruler when his father was stricken with

leprosy. For other instances of coregencies in the Scriptures, we must infer the

coregency by comparing the king’s reign with other data, just as is necessary for

the pharaohs of Egypt. A comparison of 2 Kgs 1:17 with 2 Kgs 3:1 suggests that

Jehoram of Judah became coregent in the seventeenth year of his father

Jehoshaphat. Other coregencies must sometimes be inferred by a more careful

cross-checking of the data than afforded by these simple and fairly explicit

references.⁸

In the past, various interpreters have either ruled out coregencies

altogether in determining the chronology of the divided kingdom, or they have

accepted coregencies but insisted that regnal years must always be measured in

only one way, either from the start of the coregency or from the start of the

sole reign. Unlike those who started with such a priori presuppositions, Thiele

realized that the data must be allowed to tell us if a coregency was involved,

and, if so, whether a given synchronism or length of reign was measured from

the start of the coregency or from the start of the sole reign. It is of some

interest that if this procedure is followed, there is enough information in the

8

The same is true of the two periods of rival reign in the Scriptures: Omri with

Tibni and Pekah with Menahem and Pekahiah. The chronology of the first of these is

fairly straightforward, the second less so. The rivalry between Omri and Tibni began

in the twenty-seventh year of Asa (1 Kgs 16:15, 21) and ended with Omri as sole ruler

in Asa’s thirty-first year (1 Kgs 16:23). The rivalry of Pekah with Menahem and

Pekahiah is not so obvious, but once it is accepted as a possibility, the regnal data for

the kings of Israel and Judah fall into place with an exactness that extends even to the

month for Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Shallum, and Menahem. See the second edition of

Mysterious Numbers, pp. 87-88, for the meticulous and watertight logic that allows this

precision, a precision that Thiele unfortunately omitted in the third edition in his desire

to simplify things. It would be very difficult to explain this precision unless the

associated data were all in accord with history. A late-date editor could not have made

up all these interlocking figures, because although the ancients were good at making up

riddles, logic puzzles are a modern invention. Thiele’s defense of Pekah’s rivalry is well

explained (Mysterious Numbers, 129-130 of 3rd ed.), but to that defense can be added the

observation that the Hebrew (and LXX) text of Hos 5:5 must be read as “Both Israel

and Ephraim . . .”, adding to the evidence cited by Thiele that there were two rival

kingdoms in the north at just this time. There is thus a dual evidence that Pekah had set

up a rival kingdom: the various texts, including Hos 5:5, that imply two kingdoms in the

north during the time of Menahem, and the harmony of all texts for six kings of Israel

and three of Judah once it is accepted that Pekah’s twenty-year reign was reckoned

from the start of a rivalry with Menahem. There is no consensus of dates for this time

among scholars who reject the possibility of a rivalry, and it might be asked if they

would apply the same criteria and reject the inferences that Egyptologists make to

demonstrate that rival pharaohs were ruling from rival capitals at various times in the

history of Egypt. See my further discussion in “When Was Samaria Captured? The

Need for Precision in Biblical Chronologies,” JETS 47 (2004): 581-582, n. 11 (online

at <www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/jets.html>).

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

5

biblical texts to allow the construction of a coherent chronology for the

kingdom period. The alternative approach (ruling out coregencies, or assuming

that we know beforehand when the counting of years started) invariably

produces chronologies that are in contradiction with the biblical texts at some

point or other. But Thiele’s method of starting with observed ancient practices,

and not making arbitrary decisions, allowed the construction of a chronology

for the northern kingdom that is consistent not only with ancient practices, but

with all the biblical texts involved.⁹

The same cannot be said for Thiele’s chronology of the southern kingdom,

where Thiele rejected a coregency of Ahaz and Hezekiah that explains the

chronological synchronisms in 2 Kgs 18. But using the same principles that

Thiele used elsewhere, scholars who built on his work, such as Siegfried Horn,

T. C. Mitchell, Kenneth Kitchen, and Leslie McFall, were able to resolve the

problems that Thiele had with the kingdom of Judah in the eighth century B.C.¹⁰

One other variable in determining the chronology of the divided kingdom

that must be touched on briefly is the question of when the regnal year began.

Here there are two viable candidates that can be gleaned from the Scriptures,

rabbinic writing, and the practice of surrounding nations: either the first of

Nisan in the spring or the first of Tishri in the fall. Moses was commanded to

count Nisan as the first month (Exod 12:2), and it is always considered the

“first month,” even by those who, like the modern Jewish people, celebrate

New Year’s Day in Tishri, the seventh month. Also, the calendar year began in

Nisan in Assyria and Babylonia. But a Tishri-based year has an equally good

pedigree, besides the fact that it is observed at the present day. Josephus, the

Seder ‘Olam, and the Talmud¹¹all refer to a Tishri-based year that was observed

before the time of Moses. The Gezer Calendar (tenth century B.C.) begins with

Tishri. If we are not to force our own presuppositions on ancient society, then

we must consider both these options for the start of the year when

investigating the chronological methods of the books of Kings and Chronicles.

⁹Regarding coregencies, the evidence for their existence was quite compelling to

Nadav Na’aman, a scholar who disagrees with Thiele’s approach in other matters.

Na’aman writes, “When we compare the list of the co-regencies of the kings of Judah

and Israel, it becomes evident that the appointment of the heir to the throne as co-

regent was only sporadically practised in the Northern Kingdom. . . . In the kingdom

of Judah, on the other hand, the nomination of a co-regent was the common

procedure, beginning from David who, before his death, elevated his son Solomon to

the throne. . . . When taking into account the permanent nature of the co-regency in

Judah from the time of Joash, one may dare to conclude that dating the co-regencies

accurately is indeed the key for solving the problems of biblical chronology in the

eighth century B.C.” (“Historical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel

and Judah in the Eighth Century B.C.,” VT 36 [1986]: 91).

¹⁰Siegfried Horn, “The Chronology of King Hezekiah’s Reign,” AUSS 2 (1964):

48-49; T. C. Mitchell and Kenneth Kitchen, NBD 217; Leslie McFall, “A Translation

Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles,” BSac 148 (1991): 33-34.

¹¹Ant. I. iii.3/80, Seder ‘Olam 4; b. Rosh Hashanah 11b.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

In this case again, Thiele let the data determine which methods were used. Thus

the data for the construction of the Temple (Mysterious Numbers 51-52) and the

chronological data for the cleansing of the Temple in the days of Josiah (2

Chron 34:8-35:1) show that the years of these Judean kings could not have

been reckoned according to a Nisan calendar, and so they must have

considered the king’s year to start in Tishri. The synchronisms of Shallum,

Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah with Uzziah show that Israel’s calendar was

not the same as Judah’s. When the assumption is made that Israel was using

Nisan years, then the reign lengths and synchronisms all fall into place with an

exactitude that is seen only when a precise notation is used to express the

chronological data. This exactitude for all these kings has never been realized

by scholars who start with presuppositions that do not let the scriptural data

reveal the methods of the ancient scribes, and one of the ways their

inaccuracies and disagreements with the data are hidden is by the use of an

inexact notation.

Consistency with the Scriptural Texts

for the Northern Kingdom

In all these matters, Thiele’s knowledge of ancient practices and his reasoning

and research were clear and convincing enough that his date for the beginning

of the divided monarchy has found wide acceptance by many influential

scholars. Among these are T. C. Mitchell in CAH,¹²Jack Finegan in his

Handbook of Biblical Chronology,¹³and Kenneth Kitchen in his various writings.¹⁴

Even scholars such as Gershon Galil, who do not agree with some of Thiele’s

other dates, nevertheless accept 931 B.C. as the date for the division of the

kingdom.¹⁵This date was determined by working back from the fixed dates of

Ahab’s presence at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 B.C. and Jehu’s tribute to

Shalmaneser III in 841 B.C. By using Israel’s nonaccession counting and Nisan-

based calendar, the total of years from the division of the kingdom to the Battle

of Qarqar was shown to be seventy-eight years. Adding these to the 853 B.C.

date of the Battle of Qarqar placed the first year of the divided monarchy as the

year beginning on Nisan 1 of 931 B.C. That Thiele’s method in this was based

on sound principles is shown by the fact that, unknown to Thiele when he first

determined these matters, V. Coucke of the Grande Seminaire de Bruges had

independently, some years before, also determined that the first kings of Judah

used accession years starting in Tishri, while their counterparts in Israel used

¹²“Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu (931-841 B.C.),” CAH 3, Part 1, 445-446.

¹³JackFinegan,Handbookof Biblical Chronology, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,

1998), 249.

¹⁴E.g., NBD 219; “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 2003), 83.

¹⁵Gershon Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 14.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

7

nonaccession years starting in Nisan.¹⁶The observation that these two scholars

discovered these principles independently attests to the high probability that

these were the methods actually used by the ancient court recorders. Thiele

further demonstrated that the chronology built on these principles was

consistent with Assyrian data other than just the Battle of Qarqar, such as the

records of the campaigns of Shalmaneser V. Thiele’s chronology of the

northern kingdom is therefore internally consistent and consistent with the

scriptural texts involved, and it is externally consistent with the principles of

ancient dating methods and with various synchronisms to Israel from the

records of Assyria. There is still some disagreement among scholars about the

closing years of the northern kingdom, particularly among those who do not

recognize a rival reign for Pekah before he assassinated Pekahiah,¹⁷but no

alternative to Thiele’s dates for the beginning years of the northern kingdom

has found any consensus of scholarly support. Thiele’s careful and reasonable

scholarship in this regard (previewed, as it were, by Coucke) should be

recognized as the first and most important verification for the soundness of his

date for the division of the kingdom.

Adjustments Needed for the Southern Kingdom

But there was a fly in the ointment in the matter of Thiele’s dates for the first

rulers of the southern kingdom. As was mentioned above, Thiele’s discovery of

the methods of recording regnal years in the books of Kings and Chronicles led

to the conclusion that the division of the kingdom occurred in the year that

followed the first of Nisan, 931 B.C. The problem arose when Thiele, for some

¹⁶V. Coucke, “Chronique biblique” in Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible, Louis

Pirot ed., vol. 1 (1928), cited in Thiele, Mysterious Numbers, 59, n. 17.

¹⁷Another area of contention for those who disagree with Thiele’s dates for the

end of the northern kingdom is the tribute given by Menahem to Tiglath-Pileser III (2

Kgs 15:19-20, where Pul = Tiglath-Pileser), which Tadmor (Inscriptions, 268) dated to

738 B.C., about three and one-half years later than the death of Menahem according to

Thiele’s chronology. The inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser at Calah listed the tribute of

Menahem and other kings before describing events pertaining to 737 B.C., and this is

the basis for Tadmor’s dating the tribute to 738. Thiele expected that the publication

of Tiglath-Pileser’s “Iran Stele” would show that the tribute list from Calah was a

summary list, such asTiglath-Pileser used elsewhere (Mysterious Numbers, 162). Summary

lists combine names of those who gave tribute in various years, and if the Calah list

were a summary list, it would imply that Menahem’s tribute could have been given at

any time between 745 B.C. (the first year of Tiglath-Pileser) and 738. Thiele died in 1986

and Tadmor did not publish in full the extant portions of the Iran Stele until his book

on Tiglath-Pileser appeared in 1994. In that publication, it was shown that the tribute

list of the Iran Stele was unequivocally a summary list (Tadmor, 263). Therefore the

Calah list does not necessarily imply the 738 B.C. date for Menahem’s tribute. There is

a fuller discussion of the significance of the Iran Stele for the date of Menahem’s tribute

at the end of my article “Inductive and Deductive Methodologies As Applied to OT

Chronology,” TMSJ 18 (2007).

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

reason he never explained, assumed that the division of the kingdom occurred not

just at sometime in that year, but in the latter half of the year. With this

assumption, the first year of Rehoboam, according to the Judean regnal year that

began in Tishri, was the year that began in Tishri of 931 B.C. But if the division of

the kingdom had occurred some time between Nisan 1 and Tishri 1 of 931, then

Rehoboam’s official accession year would have started in Tishri of 932, not Tishri

of 931. In terms of the Nisan/Tishri notation that can be used for exactness here,

the two possibilities for Rehoboam’s accession year are 932t and 931t, where the

“t” stands for a year beginning in Tishri of the B.C. year indicated. Jeroboam’s

accession year, which began in Nisan according to the practice of all the northern

kings, can be written as 931n.¹⁸If Thiele had used an exact notation like this

instead of the ambiguous convention of 931/30, then perhaps he would have

seen the fly in the ointment earlier than he did. Sometime after the publication of

the second edition of Mysterious Numbers, either Thiele discovered the problem or

it was pointed out to him. His attempt to fix it resulted in the changes of his

chronology that appeared in the third edition. Since this is a small matter of only

one year, and since the problem was obscured by Thiele’s lack of a precise

notation, Thiele’s dates will be translated into the Nisan/Tishri notation in order

to demonstrate the disparity.

In all three editions of Mysterious Numbers, Thiele gave the beginning year

for Asa as 911t. This was based on a chronology of Judah that worked down

from Rehoboam’s assumed accession in 931t (i.e., starting in the latter half of

931n), followed by Rehoboam’s seventeen-year reign and Abijah’s three-year

reign. The coregency of Asa with his son Jehoshaphat was assumed to begin in

Asa’s thirty-ninth year, in keeping with the illness that Asa contracted in that

year (2 Chron 16:12). By Judah’s accession reckoning, Asa’s thirty-ninth year

would be 911t – 39 = 872t. Thiele, however, had calculated the beginning of

Jehoshaphat’s twenty-five years by reckoning upwards from the time of

Ahaziah of Judah and Jehu of Israel. The latter’s accession year was fixed by the

tribute to Shalmaneser in 841 B.C., and the calculations working from this date

indicated that Jehoshaphat began his coregency in 873t, not the 872t derived

when working down from Rehoboam. The disparity was perhaps obscured by

Thiele’s notation (in the second edition) that the Asa/Jehoshaphat coregency

began in 873/72, which the casual reader might think meant “some time in 873

or some time in 872,” and so pass over what was really a one-year

inconsistency. The court recorders of Israel and Judah were keeping a strict

calendar, as can be shown by all the other synchronisms that work out exactly,

¹⁸Leslie McFall introduced a similar exact notation in which his 931Apr is

equivalent to 931n and 931Sep (931Oct would have been better) is equivalent to 931t

(“Translation Guide,” 3-45). It is regrettable that Thiele never adopted a more precise

notation such as this. It is even more regrettable that it is still not adopted by many who

write in this field. When an author writes that Jeroboam began to reign in 931/30, does

this mean in the year starting on Nisan 1 of 931 B.C., or the year starting on Tishri 1 of

931? Or does it mean at some time in either 931 or 930 B.C. and the author doesn’t

know which year?

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

9

and so it would be inconsistent if there were a one-year inaccuracy here and

nowhere else.

Thiele later became aware that his beginning year for Jehoshaphat was one

year too early, as compared with the thirty-ninth year of Asa. Whenever it was

that Thiele realized that there was a problem, he would have been faced with

three options: (1) move the beginning of the Asa/Jehoshaphat coregency down

one year to 872t, which would necessarily also place the following kings of

Judah one year later; (2) abandon the idea that the coregency necessarily started

in the same year as Asa’s illness began;¹⁹or (3) preserve the coincidence of the

year of illness with the beginning of the coregency by moving the start of Asa’s

reign one year earlier, to 912t, so that his thirty-ninth year would match the

beginning of Jehoshaphat’s coregency as given in the first and second editions

(i.e., 873t). This last option, if carried out thoroughly, would have resulted in

the adjusted chronology supported in my paper on the date of Solomon’s

death,²⁰which places that event in 932t, implying with it corresponding

adjustments for all these first kings of Judah. It would also have meant that the

court recorders of Judah and Israel recognized fully the way that regnal years

were recorded in the other kingdom. In Thiele’s (and McFall’s) system, the

court recorders recognized when the other kingdom’s calendar year began, but

they imposed their own choice in the accession vs. nonaccession question on

the data for the other kingdom. Option (3) also would have preserved the

agreement between the onset of Asa’s illness and the installation of

Jehoshaphat as coregent. For these reasons, Thiele would have done better to

choose option (3) and move the regnal years of Asa and his predecessors back

one year, rather than moving Jehoshaphat and those who followed him down

one year (the first option). As it is, his solution of moving them down one year

led to a conflict at the point where he stopped moving the years forward, in the

reigns of Ahaziah and Athaliah. In Thiele’s third edition, he wrote that

Athaliah’s reign ended “at some time between Nisan and Tishri of 835. . . .

That gave Athaliah a reign of seven years, nonaccession-year reckoning, or six

actual years.”²¹Writing this in a precise notation means that her ending year was

836t, so that her starting year was 842t. This is in conflict with Thiele’s ending

date of 841t for her predecessor, Ahaziah. Thiele’s solution of moving the

starting dates of Jehoshaphat through Athaliah one year later is therefore not

acceptable. Section III below will provide another reason why the proper

solution to Thiele’s one-year inaccuracy for the first kings of Judah would have

been to move Asa and his predecessors, including Solomon, one year earlier.

In order to accommodate his revised dates for Jehoshaphat, Jehoram,

¹⁹This option was taken by McFall (“Translation Guide,” 17-19). McFall thereby

avoided Thiele’s error, and his chronology for the first kings of Judah is internally

consistent, unlike Thiele’s attempted resolution.

²⁰Rodger C. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” JETS 46 (2003): 589-603 (online

at <www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/jets.html>).

²¹Thiele, Mysterious Numbers, 104.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

Ahaziah, and Athaliah in Judah, Thiele’s third edition moved the date of the

beginning of Jehu’s reign six months later, thus making it consistent with his

new dates for Ahaziah of Judah, who was killed by Jehu at the start of Jehu’s

reign. This move, from the first half of the year, starting in Nisan of 841 B.C.

to the second half of that year, did not change the sum of reign lengths of the

northern kingdom, because for calculation purposes Jehu still began in the

same Nisan-based year. This minor change is the only modification in the years

of the northern kings that Thiele made from his first publication in 1944

through the rest of his writings until his death in 1986. There are two other very

minor adjustments to the dates of the northern kingdom that need to be made:

the first is that if we accept the Hezekiah/Hoshea synchronisms of 2 Kgs 18

that Thiele rejected, then the synchronism of 2 Kgs 18:10 can be used to

restrict the death of Hoshea to the first half of 723n rather than allowing for

the full year as Thiele did.²²The second minor adjustment, already mentioned,

is that Thiele was not justified in assuming that Jeroboam I began to reign in

the second half of the year 931n; his reign could have begun at any time in this

year. However, because of the time lapse between Solomon’s death and the

division of the kingdom, Thiele’s date of 931n for the beginning of the divided

monarchy should still be maintained.²³

It follows that Thiele’s date of 931n for the start of the divided monarchy

was fully justified, and it is only his placing of Solomon’s death after Tishri of that

year that needs to be rejected. It could even be said that the date for Jehu’s

accession in Thiele’s first and second editions of Mysterious Numbers is more

probable than the six-month adjustment in that date that appeared in the third

edition, and hence it can be argued that there has been no reason to change any

of these dates for the northern kingdom since they first appeared in Thiele’s

introductory article in 1944,²⁴except for the slight refinement for the death of

Hoshea to the first half of 723n and the slight “anti-refinement” for the start of

Jeroboam to 931n rather than restricting it to the latter half of that year. With

these very minor adjustments, the dates for the northern kings are internally

consistent with themselves and with the synchronisms given to the southern

kingdom. It has already been shown that Thiele’s chronology is built on principles

that can be demonstrated to have been operative in the ancient Near East. The

work of Coucke and Thiele in applying these principles to the understanding of

the biblical texts has earned the respect of many in the scholarly world, and it may

safely be said that the Thiele (or Thiele/McFall) chronology of the divided

kingdom has won wider acceptance than any alternative chronology for the time.

The chief criticisms of Thiele’s method have come from those who built their

²²This adjustment is shown in McFall, 35.

²³Although Solomon died before Tishri of 931, it was a few weeks or months

before Jeroboam returned from Egypt and the division of the kingdom occurred. We

do not know whether this time crossed the Tishri 1 boundary. Consequently, we cannot

determine in which half of 931n Jeroboam became king of the breakaway tribes.

²⁴Thiele, “Chronology,” 184.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

11

chronologies on preconceived theories, rather than on the demonstrated practices

of the ancient scribes. But there is no general agreement on a chronology of the

divided kingdom among those who follow this path of starting with

presuppositions, nor will any ever be achieved. The diverse presuppositions

offered by these scholars necessarily produce diverse results.²⁵

Second Verification: The Jubilee and Sabbatical Cycles

The Dates of the Jubilees

A good portion of my own work has focused on the Sabbatical and Jubilee

cycles. There are several facets to this. One facet was establishing that the

Hebrew text of Ezek 40:1 implies that a Jubilee was scheduled to begin at the

time Ezekiel saw the vision that occupies the last nine chapters of his book.

This was the subject of my previous article in AUSS.²⁶Another article, in WTJ,

examined rabbinic traditions (Seder ‘Olam and the Talmuds) regarding this

Jubilee in the days of Ezekiel.²⁷These traditions stated that Ezekiel’s Jubilee

was the seventeenth Jubilee, and they placed another Jubilee forty-nine years

earlier, in the eighteenth year of Josiah. It was shown that rabbinic traditions

could not have invented this date by back-calculating from Ezekiel’s Jubilee

because the known calculation methods of the early rabbis were incapable of

correctly calculating the years from Josiah to the vision of Ezek 40–48. Both

the WTJ article and the AUSS article gave extensive documentation on why the

Jubilee cycle was forty-nine years, citing the second-century B.C. Book of Jubilees

and literature from Qumran, and also establishing the forty-nine year cycle by

arguments based on practical and textual matters related to the Jubilee.

The two papers determined the date of the last two Jubilees according to

the Julian calendar, and then gave evidence that the times of the Jubilees were

known to Israel’s priests ever since the entry into Canaan. Since the Jubilee was

identical to the seventh Sabbatical year, the establishment of the date of

Ezekiel’s vision as occurring on the tenth of Tishri²⁸(November 2²⁹), 574 B.C.,

²⁵For a critique of the deductive method used by the majority of Thiele’s critics—a

method that unfortunately dominates much of biblical interpretation—see my

“Inductive and Deductive” article.

²⁶Rodger C. Young, “Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective for Seven Wrong Ideas in

Biblical Interpretation,” AUSS 44 (2006): 265-283.

²⁷Rodger C. Young, “The Talmud’s Two Jubilees and Their Relevance to the Date

of the Exodus,” WTJ 68 (2006): 71-83.

²⁸Jubilee and Sabbatical years began in the month of Tishri (b. Rosh HaShanah 1a).

Ordinary Sabbatical years began on the first day of the month, but in a Jubilee year the

New Year’s Day (Rosh HaShanah) was on the tenth of the month (Lev 25:9-10). Ezekiel’s

vision was on Rosh HaShanah and also the tenth of the month (Ezek 40:1, Heb.).

²⁹My “Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective” paper, 271, n. 12, incorrectly adjusted thisdate

by one day from the date that would be derived from the tables of Richard Parker and

Walter Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.-A.D. 75 (Providence: Brown

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

allows a complete calendar of pre-exilic Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles to be

constructed. Projecting this calendar backward in time shows that the first year

of the first Jubilee (and Sabbatical) cycle was the year beginning in Nisan of

1406 B.C. According to Lev 25:1-10, counting for the Jubilee cycles was to start

when Israel entered Canaan, and so the Jubilee cycles establish Nisan of 1406

as the date of crossing the Jordan. The exodus, forty years earlier, was in 1446

B.C. The chronological note of 1 Kgs 6:1 states that Temple construction began

479 years after this, in the second month of the 480th year of the exodus era,

which would be in the spring of 967 B.C. The same verse says that this was the

fourth year of Solomon. Since Judean regnal years began in the fall, Solomon’s

fourth year was therefore 968t, and his fortieth and last year was 932t. This

overlaps the first six months of the year 931n that Thiele established for the

beginning of the divided kingdom, thereby providing another demonstration

that Thiele’s assumption that Solomon died in the latter half of this year, not

in the first half, was not justified. As mentioned earlier, that assumption led

Thiele into problems that he never resolved. It is this date, 931n, that is in exact

agreement with the dates for Solomon derived from the Jubilee cycles, as long

as we do not try to put Solomon’s death on or after Tishri 1 of that year.

The date of the death of Solomon, as calculated from the Jubilee cycles,

is thus in agreement with Thiele’s determination that the year beginning in

Nisan of 931 B.C. was the first year of the divided monarchy. The two methods

of deriving these dates agree.

Are they independent? The method of Jubilees does not rely on any reign

length, synchronism, or date as given in the Scriptures except the single date

that can be derived for Ezekiel’s vision, along with the associated data that help

us to fix that date. Once that vision is established as occurring on the Day of

Atonement, 574 B.C., the calendar of Jubilee cycles establishes that Nisan of

1406 B.C. began a Jubilee cycle. Alternately, by the reign-length method, the

reign-length data of the MT that establish Solomon’s fourth year as beginning

in Tishri of 968, when combined with the chronological notice of 1 Kgs 6:1,

give 1406 as the year of entrance into Canaan. Based on the Jubilee cycle length

of forty-nine years, there is only one chance in forty-nine that 1406 B.C. would

begin a Jubilee cycle, as Ezek 40:1 leads us to expect. The tradition of the

Talmud and the Seder ‘Olam that Ezekiel’s Jubilee was the seventeenth Jubilee

would make 1406 not just the beginning of a Jubilee cycle, but the beginning

of the very first cycle, thereby providing additional evidence that counting for

the Jubilee and Sabbatical years began at that time. The dates of Solomon,

along with the dates of the exodus, are thus confirmed by both the method of

reign lengths and the method of Jubilees. The Jubilees method does not use

University, 1956), 28. I have since learned from an astronomer that the time between

the technical new moon and the first visibility of crescent is longer than I had been

assuming, and so the NASA tables of new moons are basically in agreement with the

tables of Parker and Dubberstein. The same correction would apply to the date given

in n. 8 of p. 269 of the article.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

13

reign lengths, and the reign-lengths method does not use Jubilees, in

establishing these dates. The two methods are independent, and they agree.

The Dates of Pre-exilic Sabbatical Years

During the same year when the two papers on the Jubilees were published, my

two-part article on pre-exilic Sabbatical years appeared in the Jewish Bible

Quarterly.³⁰This dealt with the well-documented rabbinic tradition that the

burning of the First Temple by the Babylonians and the burning of the Second

by the Romans both happened in the “latter part” (motsae) of a Sabbatical year.³¹

This would imply that a Sabbatical year began in Tishri of 588, nine months

before Jerusalem fell in the summer of 587 B.C. In order to determine if the

tradition that 588t was a Sabbatical year is correct, this date was correlated with

the mention in Scripture of activities that would normally be associated with a

Sabbatical year. The first of these was the release of slaves by Zedekiah during

the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem (Jer 34:8-10), for which I built on the work

of William Whiston, Cyrus Gordon, and Nahum Sarna.³²Sarna’s work used the

chronological note of Ezek 30:20-21 and other texts to date the emancipation

to Tishri of 588, which agrees with the tradition that Jerusalem fell in a

Sabbatical year when we correctly place the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. The

second activity associated with a Sabbatical year was the reading of the Law to

the people in the eighteenth year of Josiah (2 Kgs 23:1-2), an activity that was

commanded for a Sabbatical year in Deut 31:10-11. The eighteenth year of

Josiah was 623t, which was thirty-five years, or five Sabbatical cycles, before the

Sabbatical year 588t, so 623t was also a Sabbatical year.

Second Chronicles 17:7-9 relates another instance of the public reading of

³⁰Rodger C. Young, “Seder Olam and the Sabbaticals Associated with the Two

Destructions of Jerusalem,” JBQ 34 (2006); Part I: 173-179; Part II: 252-259. In order

to keep the discussion simple, no attempt was made in this two-part article to relate the

Sabbatical years to the Jubilee. The timing of the pre-exilic Sabbatical years can be

determined independently of their timing based on the Jubilees, but the two methods

agree on the timing of the Sabbatical years.

³¹Seder ‘Olam 30; t. Ta’anit 3:9; y. Ta’anit 4:5; b. ‘Arakin 11b; b. ‘Arakin 12a; b. Ta’anit

29a. As discussed in my “Seder Olam and the Sabbaticals” article, Part I, some

translations of these passages into English mistranslate the passage to say that the

burning of the Temples occurred in the year after a Sabbatical year.

³²William Whiston, “Dissertation V, Upon the Chronology of Josephus,” Josephus:

Complete Works, trans. Wm. Whiston (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1964), 703; Cyrus Gordon,

“Sabbatical Cycle or Seasonal Pattern?” Or 22 (1953): 81; Nahum Sarna, “Zedekiah’s

Emancipation of Slaves and the Sabbatical Year,” Orient and Occident: Essays Presented to

Cyrus H. Gordon on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Harry Hoffner Jr.

(Neukirchen: Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer, 1973), 144-145. Although the original

intention of the law for the release of slaves was that it was to be done after six years

of service as measured from when the service started (Deut 15:12), in later years it

became customary to associate the release with a Sabbatical year, a custom that Sarna,

148, demonstrates by citing the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

the Law. Jehoshaphat, in the third year of his reign, commissioned various

officers, Levites, and priests to read the Torah in all the towns of Judah. The

only two synchronisms given to Jehoshaphat’s reign, in 1 Kgs 22:51 and 2 Kgs

3:1, measure the years from the start of his sole reign, and so his third year in

2 Chron 17:7-9 should probably be measured in the same way, rather than from

the start of his coregency with Asa. In keeping with the regnal years for

Jehoshaphat,³³Jehoshaphat’s sole reign began in 871t and his third year was

868t. According to the calendar of pre-exilic Jubilee and Sabbatical years, this

was not only a Sabbatical year; it was also the eleventh Jubilee.³⁴Jehoshaphat’s

action is in keeping with one of the purposes of the Sabbatical year. Field work

was forbidden (the ground was to lie fallow), but other kinds of work and

activity were allowed, unlike the weekly Sabbath, when no laborious work was

to be done. Freed from labor in the fields, the Israelite who was obeying the

Law could have devoted his time to improving his home, developing some art

or craft, or study, and here the study of the Law of God would surely take

preeminence, even as came to be the case for the Sabbath day. Consistent with

this, Deut 31:10-13 ordains that at the very onset of a Sabbatical year, in the

Feast of Tabernacles, the Law was to be read to everyone, thereby giving an

example of one of the activities that the people could profitably undertake

during the year when they were freed from ordinary agricultural pursuits.

Determining that Jehoshaphat’s third year was a Sabbatical year therefore helps

us to understand the motivation behind the king’s commissioning of teaching

teams for the cities of Judah. It shows that the command in the book of

Deuteronomy to expound the Law in a Sabbatical year was known and

respected as the Word of God in the time of Jehoshaphat.³⁵It also suggests that

the timing of the Sabbatical years, when this teaching was to be done, was

known. Further, this offers another demonstration in support of 871t as the

beginning of Jehoshaphat’s sole reign, instead of the chronology of Thiele and

McFall that places Jehoshaphat’s reign one year later, which was ruled out

above on other grounds. Finally and most importantly, the fact that this year

fits the calendar of Sabbatical and Jubilee years that can be constructed from

the start of counting in 1406 B.C. is one more evidence that Israel really did

³³Advocated in Section II.3 above, and in Young, “Solomon.”

³⁴Interestingly, Ferdinand Hitzig maintained that the year that Jehoshaphat sent

forth the teachers of the Law would have been a Jubilee year (Geschichte des Volkes Israel

[Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1869], 1:9 and 198-199). Hitzig’s opinion is cited approvingly by

Otto Zöchler in Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,

1960), commentary on 2 Chron 17:7.

³⁵Similar references to events that presuppose Israel’s possession of the Mosaic

legislation are found in all the historical books of the OT, as far back as the book of

Joshua. In Josh 8:34, the book of the Torah is named explicitly, as in the present

passage (2 Chron 17:9). Marvelous indeed are the convolutions of those whose

presuppositions rule out the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and who therefore

must find some way to assign these passages to the cleverness of a late-date

deuteronomist or his ephemeral daughters (dtr1, dtr2, . . .).

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

15

enter the land in that year, with the book of Leviticus in its possession.

Although various individual activities that were part of the Sabbatical and

Jubilee years (such as the forgiving of a debt or the release of a slave) are

known in the ancient Near East, it is only in the book of Leviticus that we find

any credible candidate for the legislation that instituted these activities on a

nationwide and repeating basis.

Although either of these two activities (the release of slaves or the reading

of the Law) could have come about, due to special circumstances, in a non-

Sabbatical year, yet the fourth instance of activities associated with a Sabbatical

year, that of Isa 37:30 and its parallel passage in 2 Kgs 19:29, refers to an

activity that would never have been performed except in a Sabbatical year. That

activity was the voluntary foregoing of sowing and reaping for a full year. In

Isaiah’s prophecy, the Assyrians had destroyed the crops of the first year, and

the defeat and departure of the Assyrian army came too late in the year for

planting. Nevertheless, the people were enjoined not to plant in the next year,

which would have no explanation unless that year were a scheduled Sabbatical

year. Although the reference here is more definitely to a Sabbatical year than in

the other three cases, yet the year involved is more difficult to determine,

largely because of the perennial problem of whether there were one or two

invasions of Sennacherib. By the one-invasion theory, the Assyrians would have

invaded in early 701 B.C., and the siege would have lasted until after planting

time in 701 B.C., i.e., into 701t by Judah’s calendar. This would imply that 700t,

the second year of Isaiah’s prophecy, would be a Sabbatical year, and indeed

this was the case, since 700t is sixteen Sabbatical cycles before the Sabbatical

associated with the fall of Jerusalem in 588t. Most theories advocating a second

invasion allow that the second invasion could have been in either 688 or 687

B.C. Since 686t was a Sabbatical year, this favors putting the second invasion in

the spring of 687, with the defeat of the Assyrians occurring sometime after the

fall planting of that (Julian) year. It is unfortunate that the Sabbatical years do

not allow us to make a clear choice between the one-invasion and two-invasion

theories, but they do indicate that 687, not 688, should be the preferred year for

those who hold to a second invasion.

Agreement of the Calendars of Jubilees

and Sabbatical Years

This discussion of pre-exilic Sabbatical years was necessary to show that in

those instances in which scholars have identified activities that would have been

carried out in a Sabbatical year, in each case the year involved is compatible

with the year of Ezekiel’s Jubilee. Since every Jubilee year was also a Sabbatical

year (the Jubilee being identical to the seventh Sabbatical year), a calendar of

pre-exilic Sabbatical years can be constructed from Ezekiel’s Jubilee and

Josiah’s Jubilee without any reference to the scriptural allusions to Sabbatical

years in the times of Isaiah, Josiah, or Zedekiah, and also without any reference

to the tradition that Jerusalem fell in a Sabbatical year. Similarly, the time of the

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

Sabbatical years can be established from the tradition that Jerusalem fell in a

Sabbatical year and from the scriptural allusions to Sabbatical years, without any

reference to the Jubilees. But the two methods agree: Ezekiel’s Jubilee and

Sabbatical year was fourteen years after the Sabbatical year that started in the

fall of 588 B.C., during which (in the summer of 587) Jerusalem was destroyed

by the Babylonians. The most firm, and best attested, of all these evidences for

pre-exilic Sabbatical and Jubilee years is the Jubilee established by the Hebrew

text of Ezek 40:1. Nevertheless, the rest of the evidences for their observance

add their cumulative weight to the thesis that Israel’s priests knew the times of

the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles, and they kept track of them all the time that

Israel was in its land. In addition, the counting of these cycles must have started

when Israel entered the land, as was commanded in Lev 25:1-10.³⁶This is the

only satisfactory explanation that has emerged to date of how the priests knew

the times that the Jubilees and Sabbatical years were to be observed during the

monarchic period, and how all the dates that can be ascertained for these events

are in harmony with the start of counting in 1406 B.C., the date that the people

of Israel entered the land of Canaan and began counting the years, as

commanded in the book of Leviticus.

The calculation of the timing of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles is

independent of the chronology of the kingdom period established by Thiele

and other scholars who refined his dates, such as Siegfried Horn and Leslie

McFall. Thiele, Horn, and McFall accepted 586 B.C. as the date of the fall of

³⁶Rabbinic tradition, as embodied in the Talmud (b. ‘Arakin 12b, 13a; b. Kiddushin

40b) is that counting of the Jubilee cycles and Sabbatical cycles was deferred until

fourteen years after the entry into Canaan. This tradition was derived from Seder ‘Olam,

chap. 11. The Seder ‘Olam is the acknowledged source of the chronological methods of

the Talmud, and most of its chronological ideas were uncritically accepted as

authoritative by the compilers of the Talmud. The reason for the fourteen-year delay

in Seder ‘Olam, chap. 11, is that Rabbi Yose (primary author of the Seder ‘Olam) had the

idée fixe that the total time that Israel spent in its land must come out to an exact

number of Jubilee cycles. If that had been the case, then we should have expected that

587 B.C., when the exile began, would have been at the end of a Jubilee period.

However, Rabbi Yose cited Ezek 40:1 as designating the time of the seventeenth

Jubilee, and since he knew this was fourteen years after the city fell, he presumed that

counting had been delayed for fourteen years so that he could account for the fourteen

years between the fall of the city and the observance of the seventeenth Jubilee. He also

mentioned the previous Jubilee, in the time of Josiah. As much as he would have liked

to put these last two Jubilees fourteen years earlier in order to be consistent with his idée

fixe, Rabbi Yose could not do it because he knew these were historical dates, not dates

that came from his own calculation. Rabbi Yose’s reasoning in this is altogether

confused, starting as it does from a wrong presupposition. An adequate analysis of his

treatment of pre-exilic Jubilee and Sabbatical years, and the difficulties that the genuine

Jubilees in the days of Josiah and Ezekiel presented to him, has never been published.

This is in spite of the fact that the chronological methods of the Seder ‘Olam are the

basis not only of the chronological systems of the Talmud, but also of the present Anno

Mundi reckoning of the Jewish people.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

17

Jerusalem. This date is not compatible with any of the chronological data of

Ezekiel related to Jerusalem’s last days, a point that I have stressed at some

length elsewhere because of its importance in showing that Jerusalem fell in 587

B.C., not 586.³⁷Therefore, the starting point for the calculation of Solomon’s

years, as determined from the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles, is not in agreement

with Thiele’s date for the fall of Jerusalem. Neither Thiele’s chronology nor the

reign lengths of the MT were used in deriving Solomon’s regnal years from the

Jubilee cycles and Ezek 40:1, but the result reached agrees with both Thiele’s

chronology (for the northern kingdom, not the southern) and with the reign

lengths upon which that chronology was built. The two methods are

independent.³⁸

Third Verification: The Tyrian King List

Overview of the Tyrian King List

Josephus, quoting a certain Menander of Ephesus,³⁹gives a list of the kings of

Tyre from the time of Hiram, contemporary of David and Solomon, down to

Pygmalion, who is known from classical authors to have begun his reign in the

latter part of the ninth century B.C. The anchor point at the bottom of the list

is the seventh year of Pygmalion, the year in which Pygmalion’s sister Dido left

Tyre, after which she founded the city of Carthage. The events involving

Pygmalion and Dido and the founding of Carthage are described by classical

authors, and their narrations tie these events to the Roman calendar and the

Greek Olympiads.

The problem of determining the original names and reign lengths of these

kings has been a matter of considerable scholarly study. As would be expected

from the difficulties of transmitting such a list of kings and regnal years over

the centuries from the original writing until modern times, there is some

variation in the names and individual reign lengths in the various copies of

Josephus and those who quote Josephus (Eusebius, Syncellus, and Theophilus

of Antioch). A thorough examination of the efforts made by scholars to

interpret the reigns of the Tyrian kings was made by William H. Barnes, and it

is his work that forms the basis for the present comments on the relevance of

these Tyrian kings to the date of the beginning of the divided kingdom.⁴⁰

³⁷See my detailed analysis of this issue in “When Did Jerusalem Fall?” JETS 47

(2004): 21-38 (online at <www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/jets.html>), and “Ezekiel 40:1

As a Corrective,” 267-270.

³⁸Of course, they are dependent in the sense that they are both built on the correct

chronology of the time. This is the only adequate explanation yet offered for why the

two methods agree.

³⁹Against Apion I.xvii-xviii/117-126.

⁴⁰William H. Barnes, Studies in the Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel (Atlanta:

Scholars Press, 1991). Barnes cites and gives credit to many scholars who preceded him

in the analysis of the Tyrian king list. He particularly relies on the study of J. Liver, “The

Chronology of Tyre at the Beginning of the First Millennium B.C.,” IEJ 3 (1953): 113-

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

One of the names in the Tyrian king list has been verified from an Assyrian

inscription that records various kings who gave tribute to Shalmaneser III in that

monarch’s eighteenth year, 841 B.C. According to the work of J. Liver, E. Lipi½ski,

Frank Cross, and Barnes,⁴¹the name of the Tyrian king in Shalmaneser’s list, Ba’li-

manzer, is to be identified with Balezeros in the list of Menander/Josephus, a name

separated by one other king (Mattenos) from Pygmalion, the last king listed by

Menander/Josephus. Measuring back from the time of Pygmalion across the reign

of Mattenos showed that Balezeros would have been on the throne in 841 B.C.,

the time of Shalmaneser’s eighteenth year. Therefore the Tyrian king list is

independently verified, for this late period at least, by an inscription from Assyria.

The synchronism to Assyria also demonstrates that Josephus, following the

Roman author Pompeius Trogus (first century B.C.), was summing the years so

that they ended with the departure of Dido from Tyre in the seventh year of the

reign of Pygmalion, 825 B.C., rather than ending them with the 814 date derived

from other classical authors for the founding of Carthage. If Pygmalion’s seventh

year had been in 814 instead of 825, then Balezeros could not have reigned as

early as 841. Consequently 825 must represent the date of Dido’s departure from

Tyre, and not, strictly speaking, the year when she founded Carthage. This much

seems indicated in the expression that Menander/Josephus used, saying that “It

was in the seventh year of [Pygmalion’s] reign that his sister took flight, and built

the city of Carthage in Libya.” ⁴²

Redundancy of the Account

Not all scholars, however, have been willing to accept the chronology given by

the Tyrian king list. Those who hesitate to accept it can point out that the sum

of the reigns of the kings from Hiram through Pygmalion varies somewhat

among the various copies of Josephus, and in no case does it add up to the 155

years that Josephus gives for the total from the accession of Hiram,

120; and the article of his thesis advisor, Frank M. Cross Jr., “An Interpretation of the

Nora Stone,” BASOR 208 (1972): 17, n. 11. The dates of Cross and Barnes for

Solomon’s reign and the start of construction of the Temple are identical to Liver’s.

⁴¹Liver, 119; E. Lipi½ski, “Ba’li-Ma’zer II and the Chronology of Tyre,” Rivista degli

studi orientali (RSO) 45 (1970): 59-65, cited in Barnes, 46; Cross, 17, n. 11; Barnes, 46-48.

⁴²Against Apion I.xviii/125 (Thackeray, LCL). Barnes, 51-52, clarifies that the

seventh year of Pygmalion should be understood as referring specifically to the year of

Dido’s departure from Tyre. He writes that the text of Menander that Josephus was

following “probably stated only that Elissa (also known as Dido) fled Tyre in the

seventh year of Pygmalion’s reign, not that she founded Carthage in that year.

Nevertheless, Josephus himself, probably relying on Pompeius Trogus, did specifically

date the founding of Carthage to the same year as Elissa’s departure from Tyre, i.e. the

seventh year of Pygmalion, or 825 B.C.E.” Barnes is following here J. M. Peñuela, “La

Inscripción Asiria IM 55644 y la Cronología de los reyes de Tiro,” Sefarad 14 (1954): 28-

29 and nn. 164-167. Pompeius Trogus dated Dido’s flight to seventy-two years before

the founding of Rome (753 B.C.).

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

19

contemporary of David and Solomon, until the seventh year of Pygmalion. The

various spellings of the names and the slightly varying reign lengths of the

individual kings, as found in the extant MSS of Josephus (and also in Eusebius,

Syncellus, and Theophilus), are all to be expected. These are discussed by

Barnes, but this is not the relevant issue as far as the larger chronological issue

is concerned. The important issue is the overall number of years. In this, Barnes

expresses some surprise that virtually all MSS agree:

It should be emphasized that this exact figure of “155 years and 8 months”

from the accession of Hiram (Eiro)mos) to the founding of Carthage is attested

in virtually all of the textual witnesses (in Syn[cellus] it is not explicit, but see

below; Eus ex gr alone reads “155 years and 18 months,”⁴³cf. above, note

i). This textual unanimity is all the more striking when one considers that

none of the regnal figures as now extant in the various texts add up to this

figure (all except Eus Arm fall short.)⁴⁴

The unanimity of these sources regarding the total years from Hiram to

Dido’s flight is a natural consequence of the redundancy in Josephus’s account.

Redundancy is used by information engineers (and authors!) to guarantee the

correct transmission of a text or of any other information. When there is only

one datum to be transmitted for a given item, then the presence of “noise”

during the transmission can cause that datum to be lost or distorted. But if a

piece of information is sent multiple times, and especially if it is expressed in

more than one way, then the likelihood of correct transmission is greatly

enhanced. In the case of transmission of ancient texts, “noise” can arise from

the errors or deliberate changes of copyists, as well as from a poorly preserved

text from which the copy was made.

The text of Josephus for the Tyrian kings has redundancy, and this is what

has preserved the all-important totality of years from the corruption of copyists’

errors. In the following quotes from the Against Apion passage, I have italicized

the redundant words:

For very many years past the people of Tyre have kept public records,

compiled and very carefully preserved by the state, of the memorable events

in their internal history and in their relations with foreign nations. It is there

recorded that the Temple at Jerusalem was built by King Solomon 143 years

and eight months before the foundation of Carthage by the Tyrians.”

After this citation from the Tyrian records, Josephus introduces Menander

of Ephesus, and cites the list of kings derived from him. He quotes Menander

as follows: “It was in the seventh year of [Pygmalion’s] reign that his sister took

flight, and built the city of Carthage in Libya.” After this quotation, Josephus

continues in his own words:

⁴³This cannot be original. If this were the correct total, it would have been written

as 156 years and six months. The original reading must have been 155 years and eight

months, consistent with all other manuscripts.

⁴⁴Barnes, 44.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

The whole period from the accession of Hirom [sic] to the foundation of

Carthage thus amounts to 155 years and eight months; and since the temple at

Jerusalem was built in the twelfth year of King Hirom’s [sic] reign, 143 years and eight

months elapsed between the erection of the temple and the foundation of Carthage.⁴⁵

The redundancy in these passages is what prevented the corruption of the

total years during the transmission of these texts over the centuries. The

redundancy extends to more than just the repetition of the figure of 143 years and

eight months for the time from the start of construction of Solomon’s Temple

until Dido left Tyre. The 143 years is in agreement with the 155 years assigned for

this time from Hiram’s accession until Dido’s departure, minus the twelve years

from Hiram’s accession until the building of the Temple. Not only is there

repetition of the 143 years, but the other two numbers express the same total by

their difference. The whole passage in Josephus must be viewed in light of this

fortuitous multiple redundancy. If it had not been constructed this way and we

had only one number for the time between the construction of the Temple and

the seventh year of Pygmalion, then we would have as much uncertainty about

this figure as we do for some of the individual lengths of reign.

It could be argued that although the redundancy in Josephus’s writing has

preserved correctly the total years for the Tyrian kings, this redundancy applies

only to what is preserved in the writings of Josephus, not to what he received

from Menander or the Tyrian court records. According to Christine Tetley,

whose chronology is contradicted by the Tyrian King List, the list was

corrupted between the time it was recorded by Menander or the official Tyrian

record-keepers and the time it was cited by Josephus some hundreds of years

later.⁴⁶If this were true, then the redundancy that has preserved correctly the

total of years from Hiram to Pygmalion would only be a redundancy that

preserved the figures that Josephus had before him, but these figures were

corrupted (according to Tetley) before they got to Josephus.

This is not likely. Redundancy, thus guaranteeing accuracy, must also be

attributed to the figures that Josephus used when he wrote Against Apion. The

redundancy here is of a slightly different sort, but in its way it is fully as

effective as the various cross-checks—the 155 years, the twelve years, and the

143 years—that have been preserved in Josephus’s writings. Josephus (Against

Apion I.xvii/108) cited the records of the Tyrians as showing that 143 years and

eight months passed between the start of construction of Solomon’s Temple

and the founding of Carthage (i.e., Dido’s flight). According to Josephus, such

records were still extant when he wrote. After this citation of the Tyrian

records, Josephus went on to cite Menander, giving the reign lengths of the

various Tyrian kings for this span of time. Menander’s lengths of reign must

have added up to the total given in the Tyrian records when Josephus copied

⁴⁵Josephus, Against Apion I:xvii-xviii/107-126 (Thackeray, LCL).

⁴⁶M. Christine Tetley, The Reconstructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom (Winona

Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 171. See my review of Tetley’s work on pp? of this issue of

AUSS.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

21

them, although these individual numbers, as mentioned above, were prone to

later corruption in the copies of Josephus that have come down to us. But

when Josephus had his copy of Menander before him, there must have been

agreement, and redundancy, between the individual reign lengths given by

Menander and the overall sum that was given in the Tyrian records, and

probably also between Menander’s individual reign lengths and his sum of

years. Redundancy therefore preserved the correct totals until Josephus could

examine them. After Josephus transcribed these numbers, his multiple ways of

specifying the total number of years provided a second framework of

redundancy, one which preserved this total down to our time.

Other Criticisms of the Tyrian King List

One reviewer of Barnes’s treatment of the Tyrian king list comments that

“[t]he chronological calculations for the founding date of the temple in

relation to the founding of Carthage come from Josephus, who lived in the

first century C.E. and who used the Bible as a reliable source for ancient

Judahite chronology, taking its statements at face value.”⁴⁷The reviewer goes

on to further express her disdain for both Josephus and the Scripture as

sources for historical information, but the only substantive criticisms of the

Tyrian king list are her comments that there were two dates given by classical

authors for the founding of Carthage, and that the list would necessarily have

developed copyists’ errors through transmission over time. Both these

concerns were dealt with at length in the preceding section. Such negative

comments about the Bible and Josephus, however, do remind us to check our

sources and consider whether there might have been any reason to doubt the

veracity of these accounts. For the scriptural account, the only bits of

information used in constructing a chronology from the Tyrian king list are

that the Temple was built in Solomon’s fourth year, and that Solomon ruled

forty years. Although minimalists may challenge whether the First Temple

ever existed or whether there was a king named Solomon, this is hardly the

approach of rational scholarship. Neither does there seem to be any cogent

reason for disbelieving the Bible’s statements that Solomon reigned forty years

and Temple construction began in his fourth year of reign. Turning to the

credibility of the information from Josephus, we can ask if there was any

reason for Josephus to falsify the Tyrian data. Was there a historian named

Menander, and did he write about the Tyrian kings? If not, Josephus would

have been making a claim that would be seen as false by any learned person

in his day, and this was just the audience for whom he was writing. Granted

then that the writings of Menander were known, would Josephus have quoted

them wrongly? Again, he would have lost his credibility by so doing, and what

possible motive could he have for it? Would he claim that the Tyrian records

were in existence in his own day for anyone to examine if that were not so?

It is not enough to just express disbelief in these matters; the proper method

⁴⁷Diana Edelman, review of Barnes in JNES 54 (1995): 158.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

of criticism must be to explain how Josephus (and the Bible) could have

falsified the relevant data, and give the motives for their doing so.⁴⁸

One scholar who usually does not start with the unproven presuppositions

of radical scholarship, but instead builds his historical interpretations on the

sound findings of archaeology, is Kenneth Kitchen. In his field of specialty

(Egyptology) there are few scholars who have such an in-depth knowledge of

ancient customs and practices. We then might expect a fair criticism of the

Tyrian king list from this outstanding scholar. In his review of Barnes’s book,

Kitchen wrote the following regarding the Tyrian king list:

It is worth pointing out here that the Tyrian list is known only in imperfect

copies via Josephus almost a millennium after its span (c. 980-800 B.C.

globally), in Greek, in an indifferent textual tradition and subject to two rival

dates for the founding of Carthage (814 or 825 B.C.). This is a very poor

starting-point to presume to adjust the far more detailed, far longer, better-

connected, and basically more reliable chronological schema in Kings,

transmitted in its own language. Barnes (largely relying on Cross as mentor)

opts for 825 B.C. for Carthage’s founding–which has at least a 50% chance

of being correct, and may be.⁴⁹

The concern about “imperfect copies” that came to Josephus “almost a

millennium after its span” was considered in the preceding section, where it was

shown that these concerns were irrelevant because what is important is the

redundancy that guaranteed that the correct overall length of time would be

preserved. Josephus’s redundancy, in turn, explains the otherwise amazing fact

that virtually all extant copies of Josephus, Eusebius, Syncellus, and Theophilus

agree on the number of years from Hiram and Solomon to the flight of Dido.

It is also not important that Josephus and Menander wrote in Greek, therefore

raising questions about the form of the names of the individual kings; all that

is important for the overall span of time is that the famous names of Solomon,

Hiram, Pygmalion, and Dido can be recognized. Regarding the “50% chance”

for which date to use for the founding of Carthage, Barnes, as quoted above,

showed quite convincingly that it was the earlier date, the date of Dido’s

departure from Tyre, that was intended by Menander, and this has been

⁴⁸A contrast to the above-mentioned reviewer’s skepticism of Josephus’s citations

of Menander and Dius (another Hellenistic historian) regarding the Tyrian kings is given

in H. Jacob Katzenstein, The History of Tyre (Jerusalem: Goldberg’s Press, 1973) 79-80.

Katzenstein writes, “Dius calls Solomon ‘the sovereign of Jerusalem’ (o` tur, annoj

`Ierosolu,mwn) while Menander refers to him as ‘the king of Jerusalem’ (o` I` eorosolu,mwn

basileu,j). This appellation is clear proof of the Tyrian source of these passages, for the

kings of the Phoenician coast, who ruled principally over one city, looked upon

Solomon as a monarch of a city, like themselves; nor did Josephus correct this ‘flaw’,

even in an account where he endeavors to exalt the greatness of Solomon. Great weight

must be attached to the testimony of Dius and Menander as cited by Josephus, for

these are the only mentions of Solomon’s name in a foreign source—perhaps a Tyrian

source that stems from the time of Solomon himself!”

⁴⁹Kenneth Kitchen, review in EvQ 65 (1993): 249.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

23

confirmed by the tribute of Balezeros to Shalmaneser III. In vindication of

Liver, Cross, Barnes, and the other scholars who worked with the data of the

Tyrian king list, it must be said that all of Kitchen’s concerns have been fairly

met, and that neither Kitchen nor any other reviewer has provided an adequate

reason to reject the usefulness of this list for determining the date of the

founding of Solomon’s Temple. It is curious that Kitchen is so half-hearted in

support of the Tyrian king list when its chronology agrees with the dates that

he accepts for Solomon (NBD 219; On the Reliability, 83).

Chronology of the Tyrian King List

Dating Dido’s flight in 825 B.C., Barnes adds the 143 years (and eight

months?⁵⁰) and derives 968 for the beginning of Solomon’s Temple. He

concludes:

Some adjustment of the regnal totals (or, less likely, of the names) of the

Tyrian kings may be required as further evidence comes to light (especially

from Mesopotamia), but for the present we may conclude quite confidently

that the Tyrian king list of Menander as preserved in Josephus’ Contra

Apionem, 1:117-26, coupled with the dated reference in Shalmaneser’s annals

to the Tyrian king Ba’li-manzer and the date of Pompeius Trogus for the

founding of Carthage, provide a firm external synchronism for biblical

chronology, and particularly for the dating of the founding of Solomon’s

temple in 968 (the twelfth year of Hiram of Tyre), as well as the dating of

Solomon’s accession to 971. A variation of a year or two is possible, of

course, especially in the light of our ignorance of Phoenician dating

practices,⁵¹but I seriously doubt that an error of more than two years either

⁵⁰The odd eight months represent the short reign of Phelles, who was four kings

before Pygmalion. Josephus (and perhaps Menander) exhibits a certain ineptitude in

handling these eight months. When doing the summation, they should either be

reckoned as a whole year, or they should not enter into the total. When we are told that

Zimri reigned over Israel for seven days, and Zechariah and Shallum for six months and

one month respectively, that does not mean that the total of years for all kings of Israel

was so many years plus seven months and seven days. The Tyrian king list is

constructed in the same way that is seen in the lengths of reign of the kings of Judah

and Israel, in that the king is given a full year when his reign crossed a new-year

boundary. The only cases where a finer division of time is given is when the king ruled

less than one year. Liver, 118, n. 16, is of the opinion that the eight months of Phelles

“are included in the last year of his predecessor and the first year of his successor, and

we do not need to count them again in the total.”

⁵¹For the Phoenicians, we would face the same chronological questions that

Coucke and Thiele had to face when constructing the chronology of the kings of Israel,

such as when they started the regnal year. This by itself, if we knew the answer for Tyre,

could make a difference of one year when trying to be more exact in tying Tyrian

chronology to the reign of Solomon. It is also not certain which calendar Pompeius

Trogus was using in dating Dido’s flight to seventy-two years prior to the founding of

Rome. A final slight uncertainty of one year is the statement in Ant. VIII.iii.1/62 that

Temple construction began in the eleventh year of Hiram, not twelfth as in Against

Apion. The figure in Against Apion is probably to be preferred, because this was written

24

SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

way is likely. Reckoning the date of the disruption of the United Monarchy

is more problematic: Solomon’s biblical 40 year reign is probably a round

number (although unlikely to be far off from the exact figure); therefore the

date of 932 (assuming ante-dating practice) should be reasonably accurate,

. . . At this juncture, it is sufficient to emphasize the following fact: extant

extra-biblical sources point with a high degree of precision to the year 968

as the date of the founding of the Solomonic temple, and any future

reconstruction of the biblical chronology of the Divided Monarchy must

reckon seriously with this datum.⁵²

Barnes is using B.C. years here, and he is deliberately not entering into a

discussion of the month in which the regnal year started, either for Solomon

or for Hiram. With these necessary inexactitudes in mind, he believes that the

Tyrian data allow 932 B.C. to be specified for the start of the divided

monarchies, within a possible error of only one or two years. My own research

on the date of Solomon’s death arrived at the Judean year beginning in Tishri

of 932 B.C.⁵³The biblical data, whether or not someone wants to accept them,

allow this degree of precision. Their agreement with the Tyrian data can only

strengthen the case for the accuracy of both sets of data—the years of Hebrew

kings as interpreted by Thiele, and the years of Tyrian kings as given by

Menander and Josephus.⁵⁴

Are these two traditions independent? Throughout the writings of

Josephus, he shows that his chronological information and methods were not

capable of determining the correct span of time over a period as long as this

unless he had some independent and reliable source such as the Tyrian king list.

He certainly could not have figured out the years from Pygmalion to Solomon

by adding the years of the Judean kings or the Israelite kings. Josephus did not

relate the flight of Dido to the reign of a Hebrew king, and so the Tyrian king

later than the passage in Antiquities, and it has the advantage of the redundancy (the

difference of 155 years and 143 years).

⁵²Barnes, 54-55. Barnes’s dates for the founding of the Temple and for Solomon’s

regnal years follow Liver, 120, and Cross, 17, n. 11.

⁵³Young, “Solomon,” 589-603. I was not aware of the evidence from the Tyrian

king list when I wrote this article.

⁵⁴It apparently has not been noticed that the Tyrian king list, as transmitted by

Josephus, demonstrates that the court records of Tyre measured the reigns of kings in

an accession sense, the same as was the practice for the first kings of Judah. If the years

had been by nonaccession reckoning, then Menander/Josephus would have made a

subtraction of one year from the sum of reign lengths for each king in the list. Since a

simple sum was assumed, with no allowance for such a subtraction, accession years

must have been used in the Tyrian records. All chronologists should take into account

this additional evidence in favor of accession years for the first kings of Judah, just as

they should take into account the data for the reigns of Nadab and Baasha, mentioned

earlier, that show that Israel at this time was using nonaccession reckoning. If we are

too enamored of our own theories we will miss valuable clues like this that indicate how

the ancient scribes kept their records.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

25

list is not tied to Hebrew chronology at its lower end; instead, it is tied to

Roman and Greek calendars by the classical authors. There is no correlation of

this list with the chronological data of the Scriptures except the connection to

Solomon at the upper end. The Tyrian data are therefore an independent

witness to the dates of Solomon, and scholars such as Liver, Peñuela, Cross,

and Barnes have given credence to the trustworthiness of Solomon’s dates that

can be derived from Thiele’s date for the division of the kingdom. None of

these scholars had set out to verify Thiele’s date for the beginning of the

divided monarchy; Barnes has his own chronology in which he makes various

assumptions that conflict both with the biblical data and with Thiele’s

interpretation of those data. Even though Barnes does not wholeheartedly

endorse Thiele’s methodology, Barnes’s study of the Tyrian king list is a

vindication of Thiele’s work, especially with regard to Thiele’s establishing the

date of the beginning of the divided monarchy as the year beginning in Nisan

of 931 B.C.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Three Methods

The strengths and weaknesses of the three ways of arriving at the date of the

division of the kingdom may be summarized as follows, working in reverse

order from the above presentation.

•

The strong point of the Tyrian king list is the redundancy that guaranteed

the preservation of the 155 years from Hiram’s accession and the 143

years from his twelfth year to the time of Dido’s flight. One weakness, as

mentioned above, is the uncertainty of when the calendar year started for

the kings of Tyre or how that matched the calendar (probably Roman) that

Pompeius Trogus used in measuring seventy-two years between Dido’s

flight and the founding of Rome. The date of the founding of Rome is

itself somewhat uncertain, but it seems probable that Pompeius Trogus

was using the date given by Varro (116-27 B.C.), which was April 21, 753

B.C. Finegan writes: “From the middle of the first century B.C. onward, the

era based on Varro’s date (and hence known as the Varronian era) was the

most widely accepted reckoning and that used by the chief Roman

writers.”⁵⁵Because of the uncertainties mentioned, the chronology of the

Tyrian king list is less precise than the other two ways of determining the

date of the division of the monarchy. Nevertheless, the interpretation of

Liver, Cross, Barnes, and the writers cited by them seems to be the most

reasonable interpretation of the relevant data, and the list of Tyrian kings

is a credible means of establishing Solomon’s dates and hence the date for

the division of the kingdom.

•

The strong point of the method of Jubilees and Sabbatical cycles in

determining the date of the division of the kingdom is the redundancy of all

the information that allows the construction of the calendar of pre-exilic

⁵⁵Finegan, 99.

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SEMINARY STUDIES 45 (AUTUMN 2007)

Sabbatical and Jubilee years. One part of this redundancy is the exegesis of

the pertinent scriptural texts (including Ezek 40:1 that establishes the time of

the last Jubilee) and their general agreement on the evidence of pre-exilic

Sabbatical and Jubilee years. A second part of the redundancy is the

consistency of the traditions related to Ezekiel’s Jubilee, Josiah’s Jubilee, and

the fall of Jerusalem in a Sabbatical year. Binding these together like cement

is the agreement of both tradition and exegesis of scriptural texts with the

rhythmic repetition of the Sabbatical years, a rhythm that late-date editors

could not have invented. The methods of calculation from after the exile

could not even correctly calculate the forty-nine years back from Ezekiel’s

Jubilee to the Jubilee in Josiah’s eighteenth year, much less project these

cycles accurately back to the Sabbatical year in Isaiah’s day or to the entry of

the people into Canaan that started the counting for the cycles. The other

strong point for this method is its precision: it allows the final year of

Solomon to be precisely dated to 932t, as discussed above. The weak points

might be listed as (1) it depends on the authenticity of the 480-year figure of

1 Kgs 6:1, which many scholars have rejected for one or another unjustified

reason, and (2) it relies somewhat, although not entirely, on the tradition that

Ezekiel’s Jubilee was the seventeenth Jubilee, whereas the number of this

Jubilee is not given in Scripture. Regarding item (1), the fact that accepting

the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6:1 as authentic gives agreement with the other two

methods of calculating the time of the division of the kingdom should be

sufficient for impartial scholars to accept that the 480 years are historically

correct. Scholars who do not think it is authentic need to explain how the

date of entry into Canaan that can be deduced from it just happens to be an

exact number of Jubilee cycles before Ezekiel’s Jubilee. Regarding item (2),

the argument was given in my previous writing that if the priests in Ezekiel’s

day knew which year it was in a Sabbatical cycle, and which Sabbatical cycle

it was in a Jubilee cycle (both of which they manifestly did know), then they

likely would also have known which Jubilee it was, since the Jubilee and

Sabbatical cycles were used in ancient times, and even down to the medieval

period, as a long-term calendar.⁵⁶These two “weaknesses” are therefore

entirely reasonable assumptions. They are in harmony with the other

evidences that the timing of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years was known all

the time that Israel was in its land. The various data regarding the Jubilee and

Sabbatical years agree with the calendar of such years that can be constructed

simply from giving the proper date of Ezekiel’s vision in Ezek 40:1. How

this agreement has come about has not yet been adequately explained except

by the thesis that the priests were counting the cycles ever since the entry

into the land in 1406 B.C., as they were commanded to do in Lev 25:1-10.

•

The strong points of Thiele’s method of arriving at 931n for the start of

the divided monarchies have been discussed at length in Section II above.

These are (1) the agreement of the methods of reckoning years assumed

⁵⁶Young, “Talmud’s Two Jubilees,” 78-80.

THREE VERIFICATIONS OF THIELE’S DATE . . .

27

by Thiele with ancient practice, and (2) the fact that Thiele’s method of

arriving at this date makes sense of all the biblical texts involved, with no

need of emendations or the major unwarranted assumptions (such as no

coregencies) used by Thiele’s critics. The only weaknesses of Thiele’s

approach were pointed out as his (minor) unwarranted assumption that

Rehoboam began to reign in the latter half of 931n, and his lack of a

precise notation.

The three methods agree: the first year of the divided monarchy was the

year that began in Nisan of 931 B.C., i.e., 931n in the Nisan/Tishri notation.

The demonstrated fact that these three methods are fundamentally

independent, yet agree with such precision, means that all three methods are

basically sound. The work of Edwin Thiele in establishing this date (in point of

time the first method published) must then be recognized as one of the most

significant contributions ever made in understanding and explaining a difficult

biblical topic. The corroboration of this date, as derived from the regnal data

of Kings and Chronicles, by two other independent methods has repercussions

in the fields of redaction history, historical accuracy of biblical dates, the

question of LXX or MT priority in the books of Kings, and questions regarding

the date of the exodus. If a revolution in thinking is needed in some of these

areas because of this manifest success of Thiele in interpreting the

chronological texts of Scripture, then so be it.