54 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

By Rodger C. Young

The Problem

From the beginning of the Davidic dynasty to the release

of Jehoiachin from prison, mentioned at the end of 2 Kings,

represents a period of about four and one-half centuries. For this

time period, the books of Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel

provide over 120 dates, lengths of reign, and synchronisms

that form the raw material for constructing a chronology for

these times. For anyone who tries to assemble these data into a

chronological scheme, it soon becomes clear that is a formidable

task. Some older interpreters handled the apparent discrepancies

in the numbers by introducing interregna, that it is, periods of

time during which no king was assumed to be on the throne.

This is like using scissors to fashion ﬁ ll-in pieces as needed for a

jigsaw puzzle that otherwise doesn

’t seem to ﬁ t together. To the

credit of these interpreters, they genuinely regarded the Bible

as the Word of God, and their aim in writing was to explain the

text and to strengthen the faith of God’s people by attempting to

produce a harmonious chronology from the received text.

However, there later arose interpreters who did not share this

goal of building up others in the faith. Their goal was to discredit

any supernatural explanation of the origin of the Scriptures and

the miracles recorded therein, replacing these matters of “faith”

with what they were quick to label as a “scientiﬁ c” approach to

religion. But the science of these writers was not the science that

brought about the scientiﬁ c revolution of modern times, because

the method of true science starts with observation, whereas

these writers started with a theory and then used that theory to

reconstruct history. They either trampled on or ignored such

observations as were beginning to come from archaeological

ﬁ ndings in the ancient Near East. Thus Wilhelm De Wette

had no archaeological ﬁ ndings or any other historical facts to

support his theory that the book of Deuteronomy was invented

during the days of Josiah (1805); the theory merely supplied

an explanation to replace the supernatural alternative, namely

that it was a revelation to Moses during Israel’s wandering in

the desert. Neither did Julius Wellhausen build his theory of

the development of Israel’s religion on a study of ancient Near

Eastern inscriptions; instead an imposition of Charles Darwin’s

evolutionary ideas and Georg Hegel

’s dialectic was used to

construct an imaginative scheme for the history of Israel and the

formation of the OT canon (1878).

Deductive Methodology as Applied

to the Problem

Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis and its later offshoots

(the socio-economic approaches,

Martin Noth’s deuteronomistic

history [1981], etc.) are examples of the deductive method.

Deduction is “inference in which the conclusion about particulars

follows necessarily from general or universal premises”

(Webster’s Ninth 1989). One universal premise of these

approaches is that the Scriptures did not come in any supernatural

God-with-man encounter or revelation, at least in the sense of

God speaking to and through Moses as stated in the Pentateuch.

Divine revelation was replaced by various explanations of how

writers from a later time fabricated stories about miracles and

revelations that they ascribed to dimly-remembered heroes from

their nation’s past. With this view of the origin of Scripture, it

would necessarily follow that the various authors who compiled

the books of Kings and Chronicles could not possibly have

handled correctly all the historical details from the time of the

Hebrew monarchs. Thus, with regard to the chronological data

in the books of Kings, scholars who followed the fashionable

ideas of higher criticism reached the following conclusions:

• Rudolf Kittel: “Wellhausen has shown, by convincing reasons,

that the synchronisms within the Book of Kings cannot

possibly rest on ancient tradition, but are on the contrary

simply the products of artiﬁ cial reckoning.”

• Theodore Robinson: “Wellhausen is surely right in believing

that the synchronisms in Kings are worthless, being merely a

late compilation from the actual ﬁ gures given.”

• Samuel and Godfrey Driver: “Since, however, it is clear on

various grounds that these synchronisms are not original,

any attempt to base a chronological scheme on them may be

disregarded.”

• Karl Marti: “Almost along the whole line, the discrepancy

between synchronisms and years of reign is incurable.”

• Cyrus Gordon: “The numerical errors in the Books of Kings

have deﬁ ed every attempt to ungarble them. Those errors are

largely the creation of the editors…the editors did not execute

the synchronisms skillfully.”

Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

Such conclusions about the unreliability of the chronological

data of the kingdom period follow logically once the

presuppositions of these scholars are granted and their deductive

method pursued. The advantage of the deductive approach is

that it is readily adaptable to whatever is currently fashionable

in intellectual circles. At present that seems to be the socio-

economic approach to historical interpretation, or perhaps the

“deuteronomistic history” theorizing of Noth. The disadvantage

of the deductive approach is that nothing is ever settled for

certain; the results obtained are as diverse as the presuppositions

of the scholars, since diverse presuppositions produce diverse

results. This is readily seen from the discordant opinions

regarding the origin of the text given by scholars who follow

the traditio-historic, socio-economic, and other literary-critical

methods that force a priori assumptions on the Biblical data.

The Inductive Method

There were, however, some scholars who followed an

inductive approach in Biblical and chronological studies.

Induction is “inference of a generalized conclusion from

particular instances—compare DEDUCTION” (Webster’s Ninth

1989). Broadly speaking, deduction starts with principles,

whereas induction starts with observation, that is, with evidence.

When studying the chronology of the Hebrew monarchies, the

following areas of evidence should be considered if an inductive

course is to be pursued:

1. There is evidence from Jewish writings that the New Year

might be reckoned from the spring month of Nisan, and other

evidence that it might be measured from the fall month of

Tishri.

An unbiased approach would consider both these

options.

2. There is evidence from the ﬁeld of Egyptology that sovereigns,

during their lifetime, occasionally invested their son with the

royal ofﬁce, thus forming a coregency.

The years of the son’s

reign might be counted from the year he became coregent

instead of from the ﬁrst year of sole reign. Some coregencies

in the Scripture are plainly stated, as in 1 Kings 1:34, 2

Kings 15:5, and 1 Chronicles 23:1. An inductive approach

should consider the possibility of coregencies, as well as the

possibility that the years of a king could be measured either

from the beginning of a coregency or from the beginning of a

sole reign.

3. There is also evidence from the ﬁeld of Egyptology for the

existence of rival reigns—reigns for which the years of the

pharaohs cannot be added together because two pharaohs

were ruling simultaneously from different capitals.

Such a

phenomenon is reported in the Bible for the reigns of Tibni

and Omri (1 Kgs 16:21–22).

4. There is evidence that there were two ways of reckoning the

ﬁrst year of a king’s reign—whether that year was reckoned as

year one of his reign, or as his “accession” or “zero” year. The

two possibilities are called the non-accession and accession

methods, respectively. Since there is evidence for both usages

in the ancient Near East,

a proper methodology that starts

from observations should not rule out either possibility for the

kings of Judah and Israel.

5. The ﬁnal source of evidence for the inductive method would

be the texts of Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel

that give chronological data for the kingdom period. These

texts (in the Hebrew original

) should be accepted as raw

data (observations) unless they can be shown to be self-

contradictory or contradictory to established external dates.

From this list of observations, it is clear that the inductive

approach faces a great difﬁculty. That difﬁculty is how to handle

the various possibilities inherent in a proper treatment of all

the observations just listed and their multiple combinations.

The easy way to handle this complexity is to make simplifying

assumptions. Thus the Seder Olam and the Talmud assume that

all reign lengths are measured from the start of the king

’s sole

reign. Just the opposite assumption was made by Gershon Galil;

he assumed that all regnal years when a coregency is involved

were measured from the start of the coregency (1996: 10).

ABR File photo

Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) was a German

theologian who held teaching positions at various

institutions throughout his career. He was one of the most

signiﬁcant ﬁgures in destroying faith in the integrity of the

Scriptures. The eminent Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen has

the following to say about the “higher critical” approach of

Wellhausen and his deductive method that were used to

accomplish this: “Not only did Wellhausen (like his peers)

work in a cultural vacuum—that is how he wanted it to

be, undisturbed by inconvenient facts from the (ancient)

outside world. He resented being pointed toward high-

antiquity data from Egypt and Mesopotamia…How he

hated Egyptologists!...In due course he also lashes out at

the Assyriologists…Clearly, he resented any outside impact

that might threaten his beloved theses on the supposed

development of Israelite religion and history. And that

attitude, one can detect in his equally resistant

disciples

today” (2003: 494).

56 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

An even greater simpliﬁcation was postulated by Wellhausen,

who ruled out coregencies altogether, even the plainly-stated

coregency of David with Solomon.

The consequences of this

kind of procedure are obvious: the scholars who make such

simplifying assumptions will not agree with scholars who make

other, contradictory assumptions. The simpliﬁcations will also

produce chronologies that contradict Scriptural texts at some

point or another; the scholars will then, unjustiﬁably, claim that

the Scripture is in error because it does not ﬁt their scheme.

Successes of the Inductive Method

In contrast, scholars who have used the inductive approach

attempt to make no such a priori assumptions. Instead, they

employ Scriptural texts to determine the method used by the

ancient authors, taking into account the different archaeological

and historical evidences listed above, and not ruling out any

possibility until there are valid reasons for so doing. In the 1920s

Professor V. Coucke in Belgium determined from a careful

analysis of the data in Kings and Chronicles that Judah began

its regnal years in Tishri, whereas Israel began its regnal years

in Nisan (1928). He also determined that the reign lengths of

the ﬁrst kings of Judah and Israel were in harmony with each

other if these ﬁrst kings in Judah used accession reckoning while

their counterparts in Israel were using non-accession reckoning

to measure their years of reign.

Some years later an American scholar, Edwin Thiele,

discovered these same principles, although when he began

publishing his ﬁndings he was not aware of Coucke’s earlier

work. Thiele was able to determine the chronology of the kings

of Israel and Judah in a more satisfactory way than Coucke,

and his principal work, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew

Kings (1983), went through three editions. The chronology of the

northern kingdom, Israel, remained virtually the same through

these three editions, and Leslie McFall and other conservative

writers only have offered minor modiﬁcations such as narrowing

the date for the fall of Samaria and the end of Hoshea’s reign to

the ﬁrst half of the year beginning in Nisan of 723 BC, rather than

allowing for the full year as did Thiele. Thiele’s chronology of

the northern kingdom has stood the test of time, and in particular

his date for the beginning of the divided monarchies is widely

accepted by conservative and non-conservative scholars alike.

However, for the southern kingdom, Judah, Thiele failed

to recognize that the synchronisms of Hezekiah of Judah and

Hoshea of Israel in 2 Kings 18 imply that Hezekiah at this

time was coregent with his father Ahaz. This was a blind spot

on Thiele’s part, because he recognized that Hezekiah’s father,

grandfather, and great-grandfather had coregencies with their

fathers, and Hezekiah had a coregency with his son; why then

rule out a coregency of Hezekiah with Ahaz? But even though

many scholars pointed out this explanation for the synchronisms

in 2 Kings 18, Thiele refused to accept this solution and did not

even discuss it in the ﬁnal two editions of his book.

It remained then for others to complete the application of

principles that Thiele used elsewhere, thereby providing a

chronology for the eighth-century kings of Judah that is in

complete harmony with the reign lengths and synchronisms

given in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. The most thorough work

in this regard was McFall’s 1991 article in Bibliotheca Sacra

(1991). McFall made his way through the reign lengths and

synchronisms of Kings and Chronicles, and using an exact

notation that indicated whether the years were being measured

according to Judah’s Tishri years or Israel’s Nisan years, he was

able to produce a chronology for the divided monarchies that

was consistent with all the Scriptural texts chosen. This was the

logical outgrowth of Thiele’s work, and it attained a kind of holy

grail that had been sought for 22 centuries, namely a rational

explanation of the chronological data of the Hebrew monarchies

that was consistent with the Scriptural texts that were used to

construct that chronology, and also consistent with several ﬁxed

dates from Assyrian and Babylonian history. These ﬁxed dates

are the following:

1. The Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC, at which Shalmaneser III of

Assyria listed Ahab of Israel as one of his foes (see the further

discussion below).

Andrews University

Edwin R. Thiele (1895–1986). After a missionary career

in China between the World Wars, Thiele pursued studies

in archaeology at the University of Chicago, receiving

his PhD degree in 1943. His doctoral dissertation on the

chronology of the Hebrew kings was based on his extensive

knowledge of the history and languages of the ancient

Near East. Thiele’s approach was to endeavor, ﬁrst of all,

to understand the historical methods and conventions of

the ancient authors whose texts provide the raw data used

to reconstruct the history of the time. He also believed that

the relevant Biblical texts should be considered trustworthy

until proven otherwise. This inductive method, coupled

with the successes of the resultant chronology, have

established Thiele’s book, The Mysterious Numbers of the

Hebrew Kings, as the deﬁnitive work on the chronology

of the kingdom period. Subsequent scholars who have

followed these sound principles have needed to modify

Thiele’s chronology in only a few places, with the best-

known correction being for the reigns of the kings of Judah

in the latter half of the eighth century BC.

Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

2. The tribute of Jehu of Israel to Shalmaneser in 841 BC.

3. The invasion of Sennacherib in Hezekiah’s 14th year, 701

BC.

4. The death of King Josiah when he fought against Pharaoh

Necho, who was on his way to take Carchemish from the

Babylonians, in 609 BC.

5. Nebuchadnezzar’s initial capture of Jerusalem in 605 BC, at

which time Daniel and other Judeans were taken to Babylon.

6. The second capture of Jerusalem and its king Jehoiachin by

Nebuchadnezzar—the exact date of which is given in the

Babylonian Chronicle as 2 Adar, i.e. March 16, 597 BC.

Signiﬁ cance of the Successes of the

Inductive Method

The signiﬁ cance of Thiele’s work and its logical extension in

McFall’s article can hardly be overestimated. Consider just how

improbable such an accomplishment was when starting from

the premises of the critics who were cited earlier in this article.

They, and many others who could be quoted, believed that it

was impossible to construct a coherent and rational chronology

from the data given in the received text. The primary reason

for this belief (or unbelief) must have been because they saw

little reason to pursue all the hard work that Coucke and Thiele

had to struggle with before they determined the methods of the

Biblical authors; why spend time trying to determine if there

was a reasonable explanation of the texts when they were sure

that late-date writers, such as they supposed were the authors of

Scripture, could not have produced an accurate chronology for

long-past events?

In this conclusion they were correct, if their starting assumption

is granted. If late-date authors and editors who lived long after

the events they were describing put together the Scriptures, then

such authors and editors could not have produced the complex

chronological data found in Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, and

Ezekiel that are consistent with each other and also consistent

with several dates in Assyrian and Babylonian history. The

anti-supernaturalist critics have declared implicitly or explicitly

that these presumed writers could never give us a consistent

chronology for the kingdom period. However, such a chronology

has been produced, and so the critics have established by their

own statements that their initial assumption about the late-date

origin of the textual sources used in Kings and Chronicles was

false.

Their error can be demonstrated as follows. Imagine someone

cutting a series of arbitrary shapes out of cardboard—in the

present case, more than 120 such shapes—and then hoping that

somehow these shapes would ﬁ t together in a jigsaw puzzle.

Better than the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle is that of a logic

puzzle. Figure 1 shows a logic puzzle. The example given deals

with trying to match ﬁ ve professors with their classes and their

eccentric ideas. The clues, given in sentences one through seven,

provide sufﬁ cient information to solve the puzzle. An instructive

exercise would be to try to make up clues for this puzzle before

determining the answer to the puzzle. If this is attempted, it

will soon be concluded that late-date editors cannot just invent

clues and have them all ﬁ t together; the answer must be known

before clues can be provided that will ﬁ t together into a solution.

Furthermore a sufﬁ cient number of clues must be given so that

Michael Luddeni

Kurkh Stela depicting Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria.

Found in 1861 at Kurkh on the Tigris River in southeastern

Turkey, the inscription on the stela records the principal

events of the king’s ﬁ rst six military campaigns. The

campaign of year six, 853 BC, mentions Ahab, king of Israel,

as being part of an anti-Assyrian coalition that confronted

the Assyrians at Qarqar on the Orontes River in western

Syria. The section referring to Ahab reads, “I approached

the city of Qarqar. I razed, destroyed and burned the city

of Qarqar, his [Irhulēni, the Hamathite’s] royal city. 1,200

chariots, 1,200 cavalry, (and) 20,000 troops of Hadad-ezer

(Adad-idri) of Damascus; 700 chariots, 700 cavalry, (and)

10,000 troops of Irhulēni the Hamathite; 2,000 chariots,

(and) 10,000 troops of Ahab, the Israelite” (Younger 2000:

263). When Edwin Thiele constructed his chronology, the

date for the battle of Qarqar accepted by most Assyriologists

was 854 BC. This was one year too early for agreement

with the Biblical texts, but further investigations showed

that the Assyrian data had not been interpreted correctly,

so that 853 BC is now the generally accepted date. The

stela is currently housed in the “Assyrian Sculpture” room

in the British Museum.

58 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

Figure 1. Example of a Logic Puzzle.*

Amy takes ﬁve classes (including history) at Bimbleman University, each taught by a different professor.

At ﬁrst she was bafﬂed by the fact that each instructor (including Professor Bookwerme) has a different

eccentric pet theory, but by now she has gotten used to their digressions. Can you determine each

professor’s class and theory?

1. Amy

’s psychology professor is not Dr. Weissenhimer.

2. Her philosophy class meets just after that of the professor who claims that dinosaurs were really

aliens who got stuck here on a ﬁeld trip.

3. Her political science class meets just before the class with the professor who insists that

Shakespeare’s plays were really written by someone named Larry.

4. Professor Smartalecq believes that gravity is a hoax perpetrated by the hot-air balloon industry;

Professor Noetalle does not teach history.

5. Amy’s psychology professor ﬁrmly believes that the lunar landing was faked on a North Dakota

prairie.

6. As one professor orated about dinosaurs, Amy slipped out to attend her next class, led by Dr.

Eguehedd.

7. The history professor, who isn’t Dr. Weissenhimer, believes that the earth is ﬂat.

Biology

History

Philosophy

Political

Psychology

Dinosaurs

Earth is ﬂat

Gravity

Lunar landing

Shakespeare

Bookwerme

Eguehedd

Noetalle

Smartalecq

Weissenhimer

Dinosaurs

Earth is ﬂat

Gravity

Lunar landing

Shakespeare

Puzzle is from Scott McKinney, “Academia Nuts,” in Dell Logic Puzzles (Norwalk CT: Dell Magazines, Dec. 2001): 10.

reserved. Visit www.dellmagazines.com for more of your favorite puzzles.

someone else can solve the puzzle.

This illustration is relevant to the Bible’s chronological texts

related to the divided monarchies. These texts form, in every

respect, a logic puzzle. They provide approximately 124 clues

to help determine a chronology of the time, compared to the

nine clues in the seven sentences of the logic puzzle of Figure 1.

Since a little experimentation will show that we cannot produce

arbitrary clues that will give any good chance of success for a

simple logic puzzle of nine clues unless we know the answer

beforehand, then how could someone produce 124 clues that

make up the Scriptural logic puzzle, and have all these clues

consistent with each other, unless he or she already knew the

answer and then was very careful to give a sufﬁcient number of

clues to lead to the answer?

How do you solve a logic puzzle like that of Figure 1? One

way is to try various combinations to see if they ﬁt the clues

given. But even a fairly simple logic puzzle like this offers so

many ways to combine things that our patience gives out. In

Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

frustration, then, we take a bold step: make assumptions! Surely no professor

of philosophy would believe that gravity is a hoax, and any professor of

biology would know that dinosaurs evolved from frogs and after that they

evolved into birds and ﬂ ew away. After a few more such bold assumptions,

it will be possible to work out a solution. When that solution conﬂ icts with

some of the clues originally given (and it almost inevitably will), we can

declare that the original clues are mistakes introduced by an incompetent

editor who did not know the facts of the case. This is similar to the authors

cited earlier who could not solve the chronological puzzle and who then

declared that the Scriptural texts contained numerous errors.

The other way to solve the puzzle is to use the inductive method. That

is, start with the clues given and see if they can be combined to give a

reasonable solution, without trampling on the clues or throwing out some of

Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria 859

–824 BC, discovered by Englishman Henry Layard at Nimrud

(Biblical Calah), Iraq, in 1846. Each of the four sides is carved with ﬁ ve registers depicting people in different types of

clothing representing various countries controlled by the Assyrians. They are bringing costly articles of tribute and exotic

animals as offerings to the king. Above and below the scenes are lines of text detailing events in Shalmaneser III’s reign

down to his 31st year. The second register from the top shows Jehu, king of Israel, bringing tribute to Shalmaneser

III, an event not recorded in the Bible. Jehu’s tribute was in Shalmaneser’s 18th year, whereas the Battle of Qarqar, at

which Ahab was present, was in Shalmaneser’s sixth year. The 12 years between these two events were just enough to

ﬁ t in the two kings of Israel who reigned between Ahab and Jehu. These synchronisms allowed Thiele to give absolute

BC dates for the last year of Ahab (853 BC) and the ﬁ rst year of Jehu (841 BC), thus enabling him to construct the

chronology of the northern kingdom backward from Ahab to Jeroboam I and forward from Jehu to the fall of Samaria.

The obelisk is in the “Assyrian Sculpture” room of the British Museum.

Michael Luddeni

Close-up of Jehu before Shalmaneser III on the Black Obelisk.

Jehu is seen bowing in humility before the Assyrian king, followed

by his attendants bearing tribute. The accompanying inscription

says , “I received the tribute of Jehu (Ia-ú-a) (the man) of Bît-Humrî

[House of Omri]: silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden goblet,

golden cups, golden buckets, tin, a staff of the king’s hand, (and)

javelins(?)” (Younger 2000: 270). Jehu was not literally Omri’s

son; many times the Assyrians referred to countries by the

name of the founder of the ruling dynasty at the time of their ﬁ rst

acquaintance with it, regardless of which dynasty was currently

in power (Younger 2000: 267 n. 5). In reality, Jehu usurped the

throne of Israel by assassinating Joram, grandson of Omri (2 Kgs

9:14–26). He ruled 841–814 BC and paid tribute to Shalmaneser

in the ﬁ rst year of his reign. Beyond its historical signiﬁ cance, the

Black Obelisk provides the only depiction we have of an Israe

lite

king, or any other Israelite named in the Bible.

Michael Luddeni

60 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

them, as in the deductive method. This will be

the more difﬁcult way to proceed. But when it

comes up with a solution, one that is consistent

with all the clues given, who can doubt that it

is the right method? And who can doubt that

the Thiele/McFall chronology of the divided

kingdom that made sense of all the date-

formulas chosen in Kings and Chronicles is

to be preferred over the chronologies of those

writers who followed the deductive method

and introduced several assumptions in order to

justify their schemes? These were assumptions

that Thiele and McFall did not need to make,

since they were basically constrained to only

the observations that were necessary for the

inductive method. Would not all calm and

rational minds conclude that a solution that is

consistent with the data and which makes the

fewest assumptions is preferable to solutions

that are not consistent with the data and that

make several unjustiﬁed assumptions?

Here then is a great mystery: the Author

of the chronological puzzle in Kings and

Chronicles knew the answer, and He was

careful to provide enough clues so that the

answer could be found after suitable mental

exercise. The chronological texts of the

kingdom period are revealed as an example

of something quite awesome: purposeful

design. In other words, Intelligent Design.

There is no other explanation for how

all these texts can ﬁt together, and how

a sufﬁcient number have been given

so that the chronology can be solved

without having to resort to the arbitrary

assumptions of the deductive method. But

just as opponents of Intelligent Design

overlook the truth due to blind faith in their

own presuppositions, so practitioners of the

deductive method will never see the design

inherent in the chronological texts of the

kingdom period unless they are willing

to give up their wrong approach and their

wrong presuppositions regarding the origin

of the text.

Some Reﬁnements to the

Thiele/McFall System

In speaking of the Thiele/McFall

chronological system, it was stated above

that it was consistent with all the texts

that McFall used to build his chronology.

However, McFall did not use some texts

out of the approximately 124 of an exact

nature that are the clues for this period.

My own efforts were directed toward

examining all these additional texts and

making it the ﬁrst priority to determine

the methods of the authors of Scripture.

In order to manage all the data and their

possible combinations without making a

priori assumptions, it was necessary to

introduce the method of Decision Tables

that I had made use of in my work as

a systems analyst. Decision Tables

had proved invaluable in handling the

complexities of the last major system

that I designed at IBM. Fresh from

this experience, I saw that Decision

Tables could be used to explore all

the combinations of the chronological

parameters that were presented earlier

in this article. Decision Tables allow

the exploring of all possibilities that are

consistent with the investigator

’s basic

assumptions, and they show which

combinations of those assumptions

are not compatible with the data. The

“data,” in this case, are the texts being

studied and ﬁxed dates from Assyrian

and Babylonian history. The method

of Decision Tables is entirely logical,

and, if used properly, entirely impartial;

it provides the ﬁnal step that is needed

in the inductive methodology for

examining these chronological texts.

The ﬁrst contribution that was made

by the use of Decision Tables was a

resolution of some discrepancies in

Thiele’s ﬁgures for the regnal years of

Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah, and Athaliah

(Young 2003: 598–99; Young 2004b:

578–79). The second contribution

dealt with the end of the monarchic

period, utilizing texts in Ezekiel that

were not used by McFall in building

his chronology. Ezekiel’s texts show

that non-accession years are to be

used for Zedekiah, contrary to the

assumption of Thiele and McFall

that Zedekiah’s years are given by

accession counting. A continuation

of this analysis showed that all the

Scriptures in Jeremiah, Ezekiel,

2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles are in

harmony for Zedekiah’s reign, and

all show that it ended at the fall of

Jerusalem in the summer of 587 BC

(Young 2004a

). Decision Tables

provided the only convenient way to

handle all these texts in a consistent

manner. When this method is used, all

124 items of exact chronological data

for the period of the Hebrew kingdoms

combine to produce a consistent and

harmonious chronology for a period

Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Photo ©

The Israel Museum, by Ardon Bar Hama

Iran Stela depicting Tiglath-Pileser III.

Broken into pieces sometime in the past,

the three pieces seen here were acquired

on the antiquities market in western Iran.

Superimposed on the approximately

life-size ﬁgure of the king is a record of

events through his ninth year, 737 BC.

Fragment 1, Column IIIA, lists “Menahem

of Samaria” as having paid tribute to

Tiglath-Pileser. The publication of the

stela in 1994 demonstrated that the 738

date accepted by most Assyriologists for

Menahem’s tribute was in conﬂict with

this new information. Thiele’s date for the

tribute (743 or 742 BC), as derived from

the Biblical texts, was shown to be entirely

consistent with the Iran Stela.

Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

of over 400 years.

Skeptics may assert that the harmony of these Scriptures is

all an artifact of the method of Thiele and those who followed

him, even though that harmony was achieved without making

the various a priori assumptions that characterize the deductive

method. Arguing that the method of Thiele and McFall was an

artiﬁ cial approach would be like maintaining that a logic puzzle

of 124 clues could be put together in an artiﬁ cial and arbitrary

way that did not agree with the original design. Anyone who

doubts this should try to make up clues for the simple puzzle in

Figure 1 without knowing the answer. The clues will generally

fail to ﬁ t together unless the person giving the clues knows the

answer and is very careful to make all clues consistent with that

answer. Similarly, the chronological puzzle could never have

been put together by Thiele and those who followed him if the

original data were not authentic, that is, true to history. Errors in

the original data, such as would be predicted by any theory of

limited inspiration, would have meant that neither McFall nor

anyone else could have combined all 124 exact statistics into a

coherent and rational chronology. But this is exactly what has

been accomplished by the scholarly and logical application of

the inductive method.

Why Is the Problem So

Complex?

But why is the problem

so complicated? Why has

it taken over two millennia

until the work of Coucke,

Thiele, McFall and others

has given us a solution for

the chronological texts in

Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah,

and Ezekiel? And why must

a proper methodology to

handle all these data include

the use of Decision Tables

in order to eliminate wrong

assumptions and to show all

the possibilities that must

be explored before the best

solution can be determined?

The same questions

regarding methodology could

be asked of any non-trivial logic

puzzle. It would be very difﬁ cult to

solve the logic puzzle of Figure 1 without ﬁ rst learning how to

use the grid that is included below the puzzle. All puzzle-solvers

learn to use these grids. They are really Decision Tables. In

the same way, Decision Tables, so invaluable for solving logic

puzzles, must be used for the vastly more important analysis of

the complicated chronological data of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Kings,

and Chronicles.

This does not answer the question of why the data are so

complex that it is necessary to be very careful to use a logical

methodology that includes Decision Tables in order to handle

them and to show which combinations are feasible and which

produce contradictions. One might as well ask why it is necessary

to master the methods of calculus to gain even a preliminary

understanding of the motions of the planets, and beyond that

to master both Special and General Relativity if more exact

reﬁ nements in planetary and satellite motion are to be handled.

Does anyone say that these laws are not valid, just because it

takes effort and discipline to understand them? Perhaps we

would have liked the Scriptures, in matters of chronology, to be

easier to understand, so that there would not have been so many

interpreters declaring that the Scripture is in error simply because

these interpreters were incompetent in determining the

methods of the authors of Scripture.

In matters essential to our salvation

the Scriptures are plain enough that

a wayfaring man, though a fool, need

not err therein. But in other areas such

as the one presently under discussion,

God’s ways are not our ways, and His

thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

It was not in the Holy Spirit

’s design

to make all portions of Scripture easy

to understand. It was in His design

to make all Scripture so it is without

error.

Successes of the Inductive

Method with Respect to

External Dates

The Scriptural chronological

puzzle cannot stand in isolation. For

any solution to be credible, it must

match several ﬁ xed dates from the

histories of the surrounding nations. Therefore

it is important to determine which of these dates are

truly “ﬁ xed,” and which are open to question because of

possible misinterpretations of the relevant data.

Michael Luddeni

Babylonian Chronicle for 605–595 BC, obverse. Lines 1–11 of the front of the Babylonian Chronicle tell of

Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Egypt at Carchemish in 605 BC while he was still crown prince. The same battle is alluded

to in Jeremiah 46:2. As the Egyptian army under Pharaoh Neco II was moving north to engage the Babylonians,

Josiah “marched out to meet him in battle” at Megiddo and was killed (2 Kgs 23:29

–30; 2 Chr 35:20–27). By August,

Nebuchadnezzar had advanced far enough into southern Palestine to claim treasures and hostages in Jerusalem,

Daniel and his friends being the most noteworthy (2 Kgs 24:1; 2 Chr 36:6

–7; Dn 1:1–6). Nebuchadnezzar was then

informed of his father Nabopolassar

’s death on the eighth of Ab (August 15/16, 605 BC) and immediately returned to

Babylon where he was crowned king on the ﬁ rst of Elul (September 6/7, 605 BC). The translation and publication of

this Babylonian text showed that the dates accepted by William Albright and other scholars for the Battle of Carchemish

were two or more years too late and that Thiele

’s date, as derived from the Biblical data, was correct.

62 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

After exerting considerable effort to determine the principles

of the ancient Hebrew court recorders whose records are cited in

Kings and Chronicles, Thiele produced a relative chronology for

the kings of Judah and Israel that was not tied to external dates

and which therefore was not expressed in terms of BC years. He

then made this into an “absolute” calendar by choosing two dates

in which Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria, had contact with the

kings of Israel. In his sixth year, Shalmaneser III listed Ahab of

Israel as one of his foes at the Battle of Qarqar. Twelve years

later in Shalmaneser III

’s 18th year, the famous Black Obelisk

shows tribute being received from Jehu, king of Israel, with

what is apparently the ﬁgure of Jehu himself bowing at the feet

of the Assyrian monarch. The advantage of these two references

in Shalmaneser’s annals was that the 12 years between the

mention of Ahab and the mention of Jehu gave just enough time

for the two kings who ruled between Ahab and Jehu, assuming

non-accession reckoning for Israelite kings. This means that

Shalmaneser’s sixth year was Ahab’s last year and his 18th year

was Jehu’s ﬁrst year.

When Thiele began his studies, most Assyriologists dated

Shalmaneser’s sixth year to 854 BC and his 18th year, the

year of Jehu’s tribute, to 842 BC. However, when Thiele used

these dates as the anchor points with which to assign BC years

to his chronology, he found that the 14th year of Hezekiah, in

which Sennacherib threatened Jerusalem (2 Kgs 18:13; Is 36:1),

came out as one year earlier than the 701 BC date that seemed

well established for the Assyrian incursion. The Biblical data

could not be made compatible with this date without extensive

emendation of the pertinent texts. Which was wrong, the

Biblical data or the dates given by the majority of Assyriologists

for Shalmaneser’s reign? On further investigation, Thiele

found a minority opinion, held by some European scholars,

which placed the regnal years of Shalmaneser one year later,

an adjustment that brought agreement between Thiele’s Biblical

chronology and the Assyrian records. Thiele developed further

the correction of these European scholars, resulting in a revision

of the Assyrian Eponym Canon that he published as an appendix

in all three editions of Mysterious Numbers. Thiele’s revised

Canon is now generally accepted by Assyriologists. This was

the ﬁrst of a string of successes in which the Biblical data, as

interpreted by Thiele, were able to bring clarity and resolution to

disputed areas in the chronology of Assyria and Babylonia.

As illustrated above, scholars who do not have a high

opinion of the historical credibility of Scripture invent fanciful

reconstructions of the origin of the Biblical text based on anti-

supernaturalistic presuppositions. This is in contrast with the

proper scientiﬁc approach that was described by Gary Byers

in a previous issue of Bible and Spade (1999: 9), an approach

that starts with observation, continues with the construction of

a hypothesis, and then devises means to test that hypothesis.

In the scientiﬁc method, the ﬁnal step in testing a theory is to

determine whether it can predict new phenomena that were

not part of the observations used in formulating the theory. An

example of this was Einstein’s prediction, based on his Theory

of General Relativity, that light passing by a massive object

such as a star would deviate slightly from a straight-line path.

This phenomenon had not been noticed previously but it was

observed when an appropriate experiment was performed,

thereby validating the theory.

In historical studies, experiments like this cannot be performed

to verify a theory as in the physical sciences. Something closely

analogous to it occurs, however, when a historical theory is

shown to be consistent with new data that were not available

when the theory was formulated. This happened when Thiele

found that his chronology disagreed with the conventional

Assyrian chronology for the reign of Shalmaneser III, but further

study showed that the conventional chronology was wrong and

Thiele’s chronology was correct.

There have been other instances where new data, unknown

when Thiele ﬁrst published his ideas, have veriﬁed the

chronology derived from the Biblical data while demonstrating

that interpretations which contradicted the Biblical data were

mistaken. An example is Thiele’s conclusion that Samaria fell to

Shalmaneser V in 723 BC and not to Sargon II in 722 or later, as

was accepted by the majority of Assyriologists when Thiele ﬁrst

published his results. Thiele’s date was veriﬁed in 1958 when

Tadmor published a study of Sargon’s records showing that

Sargon had no campaigns in the west in 722 or 721 (1958: 38).

Another vindication came when Donald Wiseman published

the Babylonian Chronicle (1956: 66–75), showing that

Nebuchadnezzar’s ﬁrst attack on Jerusalem came in 605 BC,

in agreement with Thiele’s date for that event but contrary to

William Albright and other scholars who placed the event in 603

BC or later. Finally, Thiele had predicted that when the full text

of the extant portions of the “Iran Stele” of Tiglath-Pileser III was

published, it would show that the date that most Assyriologists

gave for Menahem’s tribute to Tiglath-Pileser, 738 BC, was based

on an improper interpretation of the previously-deciphered text

dealing with the tribute. Thiele’s expectation was veriﬁed when

Hayim Tadmor published the full text of the Iran Stele in 1994,

eight years after Thiele’s death (1994: 260–64).

An Argument for Inerrancy

All this demonstrates that a method that starts with the

Scriptural texts and assumes they are correct until proven

otherwise is the correct method to use in historical research,

whereas the deductive method that is usually followed by

rationalist critics of the Bible is ineffective for determining an

accurate interpretation of historical events. More than that, their

methodology is basically unscientiﬁc and irrational.

Another important point should not be overlooked. It is that

the inductive approach to the chronological data of Scripture

could never have succeeded unless the data it was examining

—

the texts dealing with reign lengths and synchronisms in

Kings,

Chronicles, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel

—were authentic. It was

mentioned previously that there are approximately 124 such exact

statistics in these six major books of the Bible. The rationalist

critics cited earlier were sure that these statistics could not all

be correct. For scholars who were predisposed toward a low

view of inspiration, the abundant and complex chronological

data of the Hebrew monarchies was the one place where they

were sure that not just one, but numerous errors of fact could

be found. But thorough and sound scholarship, based on an

inductive approach, has shown that all these data are authentic.

Theories of an errant Scripture cannot explain this accuracy. The

authenticity of approximately 124 exact statistics in six major

books of the Bible, covering more than 400 years of history, is

Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

exactly what would be expected if the doctrine of inerrancy is

true and all doctrines of limited inspiration that assume errors in

the historical statements of Scripture are false.

This of course does not prove that the Scripture is inerrant. A

“proof” of inerrancy would have to establish all facts external to

the Bible and then show that all Biblical texts touching on these

issues are true. This is impossible. The doctrine of inerrancy will

never be established by showing that certain Biblical statements,

previously disputed, have been shown by further scholarship

to be correct, even though, historically, this has happened in

numerous interesting instances. Instead, those of us who hold to

the doctrine of inerrancy do so because it is a major theological

truth stated in the Scripture itself (Dt 8:3, Pss 12:6, 93:5, 111:7,

8, 119:89, 140, 160, 2 Tm 3:16, Ti 1:2), because it is clearly the

position of our Savior, who knows all things (Mt 5:18, Lk 16:17,

24:25, Jn 10:35, 17:17), and because God promises blessing to

those who believe His Word (Gn 15:6, 2 Chr 20:20, Rom 4:3,

Jas 2:23).

Philosophically, we would expect that if God exists, then

He would ﬁnd some way to communicate to His creatures a

revelation (such as the Bible) that was completely trustworthy.

And yet we are thinking creatures, so that we look for a way

to test the validity of any such purported revelation. The

chronological details of the Scripture offer such an opportunity

for investigation. The fact that all these texts ﬁt into a rational and

believable chronology amounts to a mathematical demonstration

that, with a high degree of probability, the Scripture’s complex

and abundant data dealing with the chronology of the kingdom

period are correct.

There are many areas of Scripture where the nature of the

material will not allow such a mathematical demonstration. The

statements showing that the patriarchs lived longer than is now

the norm provide one such topic; currently there is no way to

either prove or disprove the Bible’s testimony in this regard. Yet

when we ﬁnd that the Bible is trustworthy in the areas that can

be checked by careful scholarship using a logical (inductive)

methodology, then we can be conﬁdent that in those areas where

we cannot do such checking, or where difﬁculties appear that

are not yet fully explained, when the full truth is known it will

vindicate the truthfulness of the eternal and inerrant Word of

God. It was completely unexpected by the critics cited at the

beginning of this article that one day the chronological texts

that they thought contained multiple errors, thereby proving a

defective Scripture, have instead become a testimony both to the

inerrancy of God’s Word and to the folly of the critics.

Notes

This article is a modiﬁed version of my “Inductive and Deductive Methods”

paper (Inductive and Deductive Methods as Applied to OT Chronology,

The

Master’s Seminary Journal [TMSJ ] 18.1 [Spring 2007] 99–116), and is presented

here with the kind approval of the editors of

TMSJ. The TMSJ paper was adapted

from a presentation at the annual conference of the Evangelical Theological

Society, Valley Forge PA, November 2005. The present article differs from the

TMSJ version in the last section. In the TMSJ version, this was devoted to a

discussion of the date of Menahem’s tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III. The present

version replaces this with a discussion of the relevance of the successes of the

inductive method to the question of the integrity of Scripture.

See also the inﬂuence of the would-be anthropologist Edward Tylor on

Wellhausen, as documented in Richardson 1981: 141–42. Richardson’s entire

chapter entitled “Scholars with Strange Theories” shows the tremendous harm

that theological and sociological theorizing that was not based on observation

had in the ideologies and wars of the 20th century.

An example of this approach is found in Fager 1993. Fager followed the teaching

of Karl Marx that social position determined one’s political and philosophical

outlook, and he used this idea to reconstruct how Israel’s priests fabricated the

Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation in order to promote their own interests.

His approach led him to divide the Jubilee legislation (Lev 25:8–55) into four

strata from different time periods, which he displays by printing the text in four

different type formats. See the criticism of Fager’s work in Lefebvre 2003: 8, 17.

Lefebvre starts with an examination of the text as it is, instead of imposing an

anti-supernaturalistic theory on it, and he ﬁnds that the Jubilee and Sabbatical-

year legislation is a coherent and uniﬁed whole.

All quotes are from Thiele 1963: 124–25.

Rosh HaShanah 1a; Josephus, Ant. I.iii.3; Seder Olam 4.

See, for example, Redford 1965: 116; Der Manuelian 1987: 24; Ball 1977:

272–79.

Modern Egyptologists believe that whole dynasties of pharaohs were ruling

simultaneously, such as the 9th and 10th Dynasties with the 11th, or the 16th and

17th with the 15th, even though the overlap is not stated in Manetho’s king-lists

or in the Turin Canon of Kings (Kitchen 1986: xxxi).

The Seder Olam, chaps. 4, 11, and 12, assumes that all years for Israel’s

kings and judges were given by non-accession reckoning. This method is

generally assumed in the Talmud. Babylonia and Assyria usually used accession

reckoning. Tiglath-Pileser III, however, used non-accession reckoning, contrary

to the customary practice in Assyria. This example serves as a warning that the

choice of whether to use accession or non-accession reckoning was arbitrary,

and the choice was probably made by the king himself. Applying this to Judah

and Israel would suggest that whether a king used accession or non-accession

years must be addressed anew for each king; it is not sufﬁcient to assume that

because a certain king used one method, then his successor must have used the

same method. To assume uniformity in this matter would be consistent with the

deductive method of making arbitrary assumptions, but a careful study of the

Scriptural data shows that it is an improper assumption.

The translators of the LXX (Greek translation of the Old Testament) attempted to

harmonize various readings of the Hebrew text that seemed to be contradictory,

and in doing so they produced various readings that cannot be assembled into a

coherent chronology without postulating multiple arbitrary emendations. For a

demonstration of the failure of attempts to produce a coherent chronology from

LXX variations from the Hebrew text, see Young 2007b.

Wellhausen was followed in this presupposition by two of the more recent

authors of chronological studies of the OT: Hughes 1990: 99, 103, and Tetley

2005: 117. After such rejection of well-established practices from the ancient

Near East in order to make things simpler, these scholars ﬁnd it necessary to

make a plethora of secondary assumptions in order to explain the disagreements

of their systems with the data.

Among the many scholars who have accepted Thiele’s date for the beginning

of the divided monarchies are Mitchell 1991b: 445–46; Walvoord and Zuck

1983: 632; McFall 1991: 12; MacArthur 1997: 468; Galil 1996: 14; Finegan

1998: 246, 249; and Kitchen 2003: 83.

This article on the date of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians is useful

in showing the technique used to determine the chronological methods of the

various Biblical authors who dealt with the closing years of the Judean monarchy,

and then showing, once these methods are determined, that all Scriptures dealing

with dates for this period are in agreement.

These 124 exact statistics are summarized in four tables at the end of Young

2005: 245–48. The purpose of the tables is to show that all synchronisms and

reign lengths in the six relevant Biblical books are precise, without need of

alteration from the numbers given in the Hebrew text, and without any need

of special pleading for the reasonableness of the resultant chronology. Writers

whose schemes do not ﬁt the Biblical data often contend that the reason for the

lack of ﬁt in their scheme is that the Biblical numbers are only approximate.

64 Bible and Spade 21.2 (2008)

This contention ﬂies in the face of what we know about the ofﬁcial court records

of the ancient Near East, particularly those from Assyria and Babylonia, and

the great concern that the priests of these nations had in keeping an accurate

calendar.

Despite the evidence of the Iran Stele showing that Menahem’s name was

in a “summary list” of tribute, and thus could not be used to date the tribute

to a speciﬁc year, Tadmor did not abandon his earlier position that the tribute

was in 738 BC. This contradicts Thiele’s date for the death of Menahem in the

six-month period before Nisan of 741 BC. In order to maintain the 738 date,

Tadmor gives an unsupportable translation of the relevant text in the Assyrian

Eponym Canon (1994: 268). For the details, which are somewhat technical, see

my original version of this article (2007: 113

–15). A less extensive critique of

the 738 BC date for the tribute was presented in Mitchell 1991a: 326. Although

Mitchell wrote before the full translation of the Iran Stele was published, he

nevertheless recognized that the argument placing the tribute in 738 BC was

weak, and he preferred instead 743 or 742.

Bibliography

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1991 A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and

Chronicles. Bibliotheca Sacra 148: 3–45.

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1991a Israel and Judah from the Coming of Assyrian Domination until the

Fall of Samaria, and the Struggle for Independence in Judah (c. 750–

700 B.C.). Pp. 322

–70 in Cambridge Ancient History 3, Part 2, ed.

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MI: Zondervan/Kregel.

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–556 B.C.) in the British

Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum.

Young, Rodger C.

2003 When Did Solomon Die? Journal of the Evangelical Theological

Society 46: 589–603.

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heological

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Rodger C. Young received a BA degree in physics from

Reed College, Portland OR, and BA and MA degrees in

mathematics from Oxford University, where he was a

Rhodes Scholar. In addition, he has done graduate work in

theology and Biblical languages at Nazarene Theological

Seminary, Kansas City MO. Mr. Young has worked as

a computer application developer and

systems analyst at Monsanto and IBM.

Following his retirement in 2003 he has

devoted himself to the study of Biblical

chronology and has authored a number of

articles on that subject. Mr. Young

’s articles

can be accessed at

http://home.swbell.net/

rcyoung8/papers.html.