CHRONOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. The arrangement of OT events in time, including their dates and correlation with secular history.
Outline
I. Principles of chronology. To date the events of the OT serves both to clarify their sequence in Biblical history and to emphasize their reality in time and space. Proper procedures, however, are necessary for achieving accuracy.
A. Authority. Evangelical Christians are committed to Biblical inspiration; cf. Christ’s designation of Genesis 2:24 as equivalent to the words of God the Creator (Matt 19:5). The authority of the historical and chronological assertions of the OT is thus accepted, as well as that of any NT references that have a bearing upon them. Restorations of original readings, that are made possible by the LXX or by other ancient texts and VSS, are welcomed; but no humanly devised conclusions, whether they are based on ancient secular records or conscious emendations of OT data (as in Jos. Antiq. or LXX; cf. E. R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 1st ed., chs. IX, X) or on more modern systems (e.g., the famous dates of Archbishop Ussher, 1650-1654, still found in the mg. of many Bibles), may legitimately be opposed to the testimony of the inspired Word of God.
B. Evidence. In OT times Israel’s months indicated the seasons: Abib, “fresh [barley] ear” (Lev 2:14), thus designated the initial month of spring (Exod 23:15; Deut 16:1). Each month, moreover, seems to have had thirty days (Gen 8:3, 4; cf. 7:11); but by adding either five or six days at the end of a year, or a thirteenth intercalated month after several years, Israel’s calendar continued to reflect true solar years (contrast Egypt’s system of a slowly shifting New Year; J. Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, pp. 21-44). Originally “the end of the year” seems to have occurred after the fall harvest, in September (Exod 23:16; 34:22); but from the Exodus onward Passover (spring) marked “the first month of the year” (12:2). Israel later returned to the fall—cf. modern “Jewish New Years” or the ancient Gezer Calendar (q.v.)—yet the Mosaic month-numberings were retained, so that, paradoxically, the regnal years of the Judean kings began in their seventh month. This may be demonstrated Biblically from the dates that are associated with the seven-year building of Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:1, 37, 38), from the second month in his fourth year to the eighth month in his eleventh year: for Solomon’s fifth year had to have begun that same fall, in the seventh month, so that when the Temple was finished six years and one month later, it was still in its seventh year of work. If the fifth year of Solomon had not commenced until the following spring, first month, it would have extended itself well into an eighth year and have been so designated. Cf. also 2 Kings 22:3, where an event in Josiah’s eighteenth year is followed (23:23) several months later by a Passover (first month) in the same eighteenth year.
Concerning then the precision and the completeness of such Biblical evidence, occasional OT dialogues do involve round numbers, such as “three hundred years” (Judg 11:26) or “four hundred years” (Gen 15:13). But in its chronological records no such imprecision can be demonstrated. Thus Abraham’s begetting of Isaac at the rounded age (?) of one hundred (Gen 21:5) was preceded by the latter’s conception when Abraham was ninety-nine (17:1-24); the “forty year” judgeship of Gideon (Judg 8:28) was followed by precisely three years of misrule under Abimelech (9:22) and twenty-three years of judgeship by Tola (10:2); and David’s reign of “forty years” (2 Sam 5:4) breaks down into seven years, six months, at Hebron and thirty-three years at Jerusalem (v. 5). As for the completeness of the Biblical data, certain events, e.g. in the life of the prophet Elisha, cannot be dated exactly; but the overall OT chronological framework has been established, e.g. that they all occurred during dated reigns from Ahab to Jehoash in Israel. Exceptions involve only the very earliest materials, prior to Abraham, and perhaps also the era of the judges (see below, II-A and VII-A).
C. Absolute dating. Except for the wilderness period and a few citations thereafter, in which events were dated from Israel’s one great exodus experience, the OT employed only relative reference points, such as the seventy-fifth year in the life of a certain patriarch. In no case, moreover, is there material that enables us to connect the OT data with our own absolute reckoning of numbered years b.c. and a.d.—even Daniel’s 483 years (69 weeks of years, Dan 9:24-27) to the Messiah remain uncertain as to their precise beginning and ending (though see below, XIII). Recourse is thus necessary to nearby, non-Israelitish, cultures that do furnish absolute dates.
The years of Babylonia’s rulers from 747 b.c. down to the second Christian cent. were accurately recorded in The Canon of Ptolemy, a Gr. geographer and astronomer of Egypt, c. a.d. 70-161. Ptolemy also recorded and dated by reign over eighty verifiable astronomical phenomena, such as the eclipses of the moon on 17 March 721 b.c. and 16 July 523 b.c. Similarly, the neighboring Assyrians maintained “eponym” lists, in which each year was assigned the name of an important official. Since the lists include also an eclipse of the sun, on 15 June 763 b.c., the whole can be dated, from 892 to 648 b.c. Furthermore, since Sargon II of Assyria at one point assumed the throne of Babylon, and since this comes out to the year 709 b.c. in both The Canon of Ptolemy and in the eponym lists, the accuracy of both sources is established. Prior to 892 b.c., Assyrian king lists revert to about 2000 b.c. They become fairly reliable from the dynasty of Adasi (c. 1700 b.c.) onward, with a margin of error of less than ten years after 1400 b.c. Similar lists from Egypt, which can be cross-checked with the Assyrian and with other astronomical observations, produce dates of c. 2133-1990 b.c. for Dynasty XI, of 1990-1786 b.c. for XII (Middle Kingdom) “with only a negligible margin of error” (CAH rev., pp. 4, 12, 13), and of 1570-1085 b.c. for XVIII-XX (New Empire).
OT events may then be assigned absolute dates whenever they are mentioned in these other datable records. The Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem in his eighth year (2 Kings 24:12) can be dated precisely to 16 March 597 b.c. The Assyrian Shalmaneser III’s contacts with Kings Ahab and Jehu can be dated 853 and 841 b.c. respectively; and, while neither contact is mentioned in the Bible, the fact that between Ahab and Jehu appear two other kings that occupy exactly twelve years proves that 853 must have been the last year of Ahab and 841 the first of Jehu. Counting backward from these dates, one establishes Solomon’s death and the division of the kingdom in 930 b.c. and the Exodus in 1446 b.c. (1 Kings 6:1). Among the more significant of the OT’s absolute dates are these:
II. Primeval. Pre-Abrahamic chronology is based upon two sets of genealogical data (Gen 5 and 11:10-26), separated by the Noachian Flood.
A. Antediluvian. Even pagan Sumer. legend preserved the memory of extended life spans prior to the Flood; eight kings are reputed to have reigned 241,200 years! (T. Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List [1939].) The variant figures found in two pre-Christian texts of the OT, namely the LXX and the Samar., seem also to be products of human distortion, though of a less drastic character. While the Heb. MT lists a minimum of 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood (see below), the LXX presents 2,242; and the Samar., only 1,307. The former, e.g., adds 100 years whenever the Heb. states that a patriarch begat his first son before the age of 150, while the Samar. reduces by 100 the three who begat after 150.
To interpret the MT figures, however, Ussher chose to adopt a minimal methodology, counting for each individual only the years prior to the birth of his first son. This theory of overlapping patriarchs produced his famous date of 4004 b.c. (more accurately, 4,175) for the creation. Other interpreters have preferred to compare the two sets of ten antediluvian and postdiluvian patriarchs with the three sets, each of fourteen ancestors, in the genealogy of Christ (Matt 1:1-17) and have concluded that just as the latter could omit three generations (v. 8, “Joram begat [an ancestor of] Uzziah”; cf. Ezra 7:3’s omission of six generations that are found in 1 Chron 6:7-10) so Genesis may have omitted a number of links as well. A theory of disconnected patriarchs could thus allow Adam to be dated 100,000 b.c. or earlier. While granting unlimited freedom for anthropology, it leaves the Bible’s detailed lists of figures as generally pointless and also posits an unusually high proportion of omitted links. A third method of interpretation adduces W. F. Albright’s observation that ancient Near Eastern peoples “dated long periods by lifetimes, not by generations” (BASOR, 163 [1961], 50; cf. K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and OT, p. 54). In Genesis 15, Israel’s 400 years in Egypt (v. 13), which actually covered some 10 generations (1 Chron 7:25-27), is said to entail four such lifetime generations (v. 16). Applied to Genesis 5, this counting by “successive” patriarchs would mean, e.g., that while Adam begat an ancestor of Seth when he was 130 (Gen 5:3), Seth (5:6-8) actually arose as Scripture’s next prominent figure only after Adam’s full life of 930 years (5:4). Adam would then, theoretically, date from 10,000 b.c. or earlier; but, since Seth was prob. not born in the immediate year of Adam’s death, man’s creation may perhaps be dated 15,000 b.c., or c. a millennium before the famous Lascaux cave paintings (JASA, 11:1 [1959], 8, though cf. 17:2 [1965], 43-47). Some scholars have sought to account for the antediluvian life-spans, which average over 900 years, as “the period during which the family had prominence and leadership” (John D. Davis, A Dictionary of the Bible, 4th ed., p. 134); but the names in Genesis seem to reflect actual individuals (cf. 9:28, 29). Their decreasing longevity may have been due to a progressive manifestation of the effects of sin (Prov 10:27).
B. Postdiluvian. Ussher’s “overlapping” method of interpretation allowed only 353 years from the Flood to the birth of Abraham in 2166 b.c. (see below, IV-A). A flood of 2519, however, is difficult to harmonize with the known historical periods of Egypt and Mesopotamia, which develop steadily from 3000 b.c. onward. It would also imply that Shem, with the rest of Abraham’s postdiluvian ancestors (except Reu), were still living in 2166 and that Noah himself had died only three years previously (Gen 9:28). More likely is the system of successive counting, which would put the Flood at least 3,284 years before Abraham, as follows:
>How long Terah lived in Ur of the Chaldees after the birth of Abraham in 2166, is not stated in Scripture; but the latter would presumably have lived for some time under the great Sumer. Dynasty III of Ur, whose founding under Ur-Nammu is dated c. 2113 b.c. (CAH rev., p. 30).
III. Patriarchal. Four generations of Heb. patriarchs are described in Genesis 12-50.
A. Abraham. At the age of seventy Abraham’s father Terah begat his first son, presumably Haran, for Haran appears considerably older than the two other brothers who later married or joined in partnership with Haran’s children (11:27; 12:4). Terah was 130 when Abraham was born, for Abraham was seventy-five when he left for Pal. after Terah’s death at an age of 205 (11:32; Acts 7:4). While incredible by modern standards (cf. the objections of E. F. Harrison, in Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible, p. 249), such age does correspond to the more slowly developing patriarchal life as a whole; cf. Sarah’s comparative beauty (12:11) when she was ninety (17:17) or even older (20:2). It is not invalidated by the emphasis laid by the Genesis narrative on Abraham’s advanced age (100) when he fathered Isaac, for there the unique feature was the previous sterility of his marriage (11:30; 17:17). Abraham subsequently had children, when over 137 (23:1; 24:67-25:2).
Specific correlations of Abraham with secular chronology have not been established. The patriarch did have dealings with an unnamed Egyp. pharaoh (12:10-20) shortly after his entrance into Canaan in 2091 b.c., presumably a minor ruler of the 10th Dynasty before its fall to the contemporaneous Dynasty XI of Thebes in the S. Shortly thereafter occurred the raid upon Pal. (ch. 14) by Amraphel and his allied monarchs from Elam and Babylonia. Their names represent valid Elamite and Akkadian forms; but, though their activity in Trans-Jordan suggests a date prior to 1900 b.c., they remain historically unidentified. Amraphel was once equated with the famous lawgiver of the 1st Dynasty of Babylon, Hammurabi, but the latter’s downwardly revised dates of 1726-1686 now render this impossible. Evidences of seasonal occupation in the Negeb of S. Pal. suggest dates for the patriarchs between “c. 2100 and 1800 b.c.,” but not before or after these dates (Kitchen, op. cit., p. 49).
B. Isaac comes into patriarchal chronology as follows:
C. Jacob. While the date of Jacob’s flight from Pal. is not directly stated in the OT, his age of seventy-seven may be deduced from the chronology of Joseph, as indicated above, and it did have to be some time after his twin brother Esau’s fortieth birthday in 1966 b.c. (Gen 26:34) and the further aging of their father Isaac (27:1).
D. Joseph. The unnamed pharaoh who elevated Joseph in 1885 would have preceded the great Sesostris III, the seventh year of whose thirty-eight year reign “can be pinpointed [by astronomical data] with great probability to 1872 b.c.” (CAH rev., p. 12). The Egyp. tone of Joseph’s record confirms this date at the peak of the Middle Kingdom (Dynasty XII) rather than one later, in the period of foreign (Hyksos) invasion that followed (cf. SOTI, pp. 205-208).
IV. Egyptian.
A. Israel’s descent. The MT of Exodus 12:40 sets the duration of Israel’s stay in Egypt at 430 years. Hence, if the Exodus is dated at 1446 b.c. (see B, below), the descent would be dated 1876; and Abraham’s entrance into Canaan would have to be placed 215 years before that (130 years for Jacob, plus 60 more for Isaac, plus 25 more for Abraham prior to Isaac’s birth) at 2091 b.c., and his birth at 2166. The LXX of Exodus 12:40, however, reads, “The time that the sons of Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan (was) 430 years,” which is supported by the Samar., and hence may have been the original wording. If so, this would mean that since Jacob (Israel) and his sons had been in Pal. for thirty-three years before their removal to Egypt (between Joseph’s sixth and thirty-ninth birthdays, Gen 31:41), this then would leave 397 recorded years for the actual Egyp. sojourn and dates the descent in 1843 b.c., as proposed above in I and II. This latter figure seems better to suit Scripture’s rounded references to the Egyp. period. In Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:6 the “four hundred years” is closer to 397 than to 430, and esp. in Acts 13:19 ASV the phrase, “about four hundred and fifty years,” is closer to 443 (the 397, plus 40 years in the wilderness, plus 6 years for the conquest up to the division of Canaan, Acts 13:18, 19) than to 476, which would have suggested, “about five hundred.” These references also oppose the reconstruction of Ussher, who followed a variant LXX reading which extended the 430 years of Exodus 12:40 to include the dwelling in Egypt and Canaan of the sons of Israel, “they and their fathers.” Ussher, following this latter reading began his counting with Abraham’s first entrance into Canaan, leaving only 215 for the Egyp. sojourn. He was prob. influenced by Galatians 3:17 ASV, which speaks of the law at Sinai (soon after the Exodus) coming 430 years after the promise of “a covenant confirmed by God.” Since this last v. may refer to God’s confirmation of the covenant promise to Jacob at his return to Canaan in 1909 (Gen 35:9-12) rather than to its initial Abrahamic revelation in 2091, it should not be invoked in opposition to the uniform testimony of Genesis 15:13; Acts 7:6; and 13:19 to Israel’s four centuries in Egypt (cf. M. Kline, WTJ, 27 (1964), 7). This much time seems also to be required for Israel’s increase from one household to several million people (Exod 12:37; cf. KD, II:28-30), for the 8,600 known male descendants of Levi’s son Kohath at the time of the Exodus (Num 3:28), and for the ten generations that grew up in Egypt (1 Chron 7:25-27).
B. Israel’s Exodus. At what point in history did Egypt begin its systematic oppression of Israel? The pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Exod 1:8) is not named. That he might have been Aahmes I, the founder in 1570 of Dynasty XVIII and of the New Empire, is suggested by this ruler’s hatred of the foreign (and Sem.) Hyksos, whom he expelled in 1567 (cf. 1:9, 10). That the oppressive pharaoh might have been the first of these same Hyksos, who occupied the E Delta from c. 1730 on, would be favored by the ruthlessness of these conquerors toward those in Egypt, by their location at Avaris (near Pithom and Raamses, 1:11), and by the lengthy oppression that Scripture suggests (cf. Gen 15:13, and J. Rea, ETSB, 3 [1960], 60, 61) combined with their known founding of a temple at Avaris in 1720 b.c. (CAH rev., pp. 13, 14).
The whole preceding chronology of the OT depends upon the date that one assigns to the Exodus. Its season was in the first month of spring (Exod 12:17, 41), after Moses’ return to Egypt during the Nile inundation of the preceding summer (7:24; 8:6). Scripture states further that Solomon’s Temple was founded during April/May “in the 480th year after the [Exodus]...in the 4th year of Solomon’s reign” (1 Kings 6:1). This latter year began in the fall of 967, so that a counting back of 479 years would produce the date of October, 1446 b.c. Since New Year’s Day had meanwhile been shifted into the fall from the springtime (see above, I-B), the Exodus must actually have occurred in April, 1446 (cf. J. Finegan’s hypothesis of how one year must presumably have been extended to the following season, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, p. 203; if, however, one were to assume a consistently springtime New Year’s, then the 480th year before April/May, 966, would seem to fall in 1445, cf. SOTI, p. 212). This date in the mid-15th cent. b.c. is confirmed by the statement of Jephthah, spoken over a cent. before Solomon’s Temple, that in his day Israel had been settled in Pal. for 300 years (Judg 11:26), with of course forty more years of wilderness wandering before that. A similar time lapse is required by the Biblical assignment of over three centuries to the Judges; and it is confirmed archeologically by the dating of the destruction of Canaanite Hazor in the second half of the 13th cent. (CAH rev., p. 68), which would again place the beginning of the Judges in the early 14th cent. (see below, VII-C) and the Exodus in mid-15th. This in turn correlates well with the 1400 b.c. invasion of Canaan by people whom the Egyp. Amarna letters call “Habiru” (see VI) and with the fall of Canaanitish Jericho, which simply cannot be dated much beyond this point (VI; cf. FLAP, pp. 118, 159).
The majority of modern scholars dismiss 1 Kings 6:1 as an exaggerated, or even artificial, “twelve generations of forty years each” (FLAP, p. 212) and prefer a 13th rather than 15th cent. b.c. date for the Exodus. The older identification of Rameses II (1304-1237) as the pharaoh of the oppression and of his son Merneptah (1237-1225) as the pharaoh of the Exodus has now been generally abandoned; cf. the discovery of a stele dating from the latter’s fifth year, which speaks of his defeating Israel in Pal. Negative critics rather identify Rameses II as pharaoh both of the oppression and of the Exodus (despite Scripture’s reference to the death of the oppressor shortly before the Exodus, Exod 4:19). Their arguments, primarily archeological, are these: In Canaan, a number of cities, such as Bethel, Debir, and Lachish, are known to have been destroyed in the latter 13th cent.; Lachish, indeed, revealed an inscribed, smashed bowl, seemingly dating to the fourth year of Merneptah. In Trans-Jordan, the border fortifications of the nations which opposed Israel’s entrance into Canaan (Num 20:20, 21; Deut 2:9) appear to have developed only after 1300 b.c. Finally, in Egypt, the rebuilding of the Hyksos store-city of Raamses, where Israel was oppressed (Exod 1:11), was not undertaken until the accession of Rameses II in 1304. Each of these arguments is open to question. The destruction of Canaanitish cities in the time of Deborah (1215 b.c.) in no way prohibits their previous subjugation by Joshua in 1400 (cf. the repeated defeats of Bethel in Josh 8:17 and Judg 1:12). Evidences for a Trans-Jordanian sedentary occupation between 1550 and 1250 b.c. are mounting (cf. G. Lancaster Harding, PEQ [Jan.-June, 1958], 10-12); and God could have ordered His people to bypass Edom and Moab, whether these peoples had yet erected border fortifications or not. Finally, any attempt to correlate Rameses II with the store-cities of Exodus 1:11 leads to confusion. If the oppression at Raamses did not begin until after 1304, then, no matter how Moses’ birth, growth, and decades of exile to Midian be reduced, Israel’s Exodus simply cannot be made to precede “the middle of the 13th cent. b.c.”; and its subsequent forty years in the wilderness, despite the OT’s careful year by year counting, must be treated as “a conventional round number for what was actually a somewhat briefer time” (FLAP, p. 120). But if, on the other hand, the liberal date of 1290/1280 be adopted for the Exodus (IDB, I; 584), with Moses’ birth eighty years earlier (Exod 7:7; cf. Deut 34:7), and with the oppression extending indefinitely before that, then the enslavement at Raamses loses all possible contact with Rameses and might even date back to the time of his Hyksos ancestors (Rea ETSB, 3 [1960], 62, 63). In any event, the Biblical date of 1446 b.c. accords well with the death of the famous conqueror Thutmose III, whose reign is assigned to 1504-1450 by means of astronomy (CAH rev., pp. 17, 18) and whose building projects near Goshen and use of Sem. slaves is well-documented (SOTI, pp. 215-219). The pharaoh of the Exodus would thus have been his son and successor, Amenhotep II, while Moses’ early protector and royal benefactress may have been Thutmose’s equally famous aunt, regent, Hatshepsut, as indicated below:
V. Wilderness. Israel remained in the wilderness forty years, but only thirty-eight years were actually spent in the “wanderings” (Deut 2:14), commencing after “the time of the first ripe grapes” (Num 13:20), in 1445 b.c.:
VI. Conquest. The Tell el-Amarna tablets of Egypt have preserved a body of diplomatic correspondence, sent to Amenhotep III (1417-1379, CAH rev., pp. 18, 75) by a group of Canaanitish vassel-princes, pleading for aid against the invading “Habiru.” While this latter force may have embraced elements beyond the Biblical Hebrews (cf. Eber’s position as a remote ancestor of Abraham, Gen 11:16-26), their reported deeds of conquest and destruction parallel the known activities of Joshua and his early successors so closely that a correlation is probable. Furthermore, the last Egyp. royal scarabs discovered at Canaanitish Jericho belong to Amenhotep III; and, while the general lack of Late Bronze evidence from Jericho demands a certain caution in appealing to data from this site (cf. NBD, pp. 215, 216), it appears significant that the Mycenaean pottery which is characteristic of 1400-1200 is practically non-existent at Jericho (city IV).
The luxury loving Amenhotep III conducted an initial campaign in Nubia but seems then to have desisted from military activity, leaving the impoverished and disorganized Canaanite princes to protect themselves as best they might. Scripture states simply that “Joshua made war a long time with all those kings” (Josh 11:18), but a chronology becomes ascertainable from the OT references to Caleb. Since this leader had been forty-five at the time of Moses’ sending out of the spies (in 1445 b.c.) and since he was eighty-five at Joshua’s final division of the land (14:7, 10), this latter event must be dated in the year 1400. Joshua eventually died at an age of 110 (24:29). Had he been in his mid-fifties at the time of the Exodus—for he was Moses’ military commander at the time (Exod 17:9) and appears to have been considerably older than Caleb (Josh 13:1; 14:11)—it would suggest the following tabulation:
VII. Judges.
A. Basis. (1) Since Scripture furnishes no precise temporal connection between Joshua and the Judges, dates for the latter must be calculated by counting backward from the kings who followed them. Even assuming that Saul’s inauguration is datable to 1043 b.c. (see below, VIII-A), one is still faced with ambiguities concerning the rule of Samuel, who was his immediate predecessor and the last of the judges. If the period in 1 Samuel 7:2 of “twenty years” and Israel’s lamenting “after the Lord” is equated with Samuel’s leadership (HDB, I: 399), then 1063 marks the overthrow of the Philistine oppression that preceded Samuel (1 Sam 7:7-14) and makes possible a tentative dating for the rest of the events of the period. (2) Certain sections of Judges record events that had only local significance and that overlap events in other areas: e.g., while the Philistines were overwhelming Israel on the W coast, the Ammonites were simultaneously oppressing the Trans-Jordanian tribes in the E (Judg 10:7). Samuel’s judgeship succeeded directly upon the Philistine domination; hence, the terms of Jephthah, who fought Ammon, and of the three minor judges that followed (10:17-11:15) must have run concurrently with the forty year Philistine oppression (13:1). (3) A given period of oppression or deliverance may embrace more than one judge. For example, Ehud’s eighty year peace (3:30) is supplemented by a description of Shamgar, who “also delivered Israel” (v. 31). The OT record, however, assigns no separate period of deliverance to Shamgar but continues—“And after Ehud died...the Lord sold them...” (4:1, 2). So also the twenty-two years of Jair (10:3) seem best to be subsumed under the twenty-three of his predecessor Tola, who alone is said to have arisen to “deliver Israel” (10:1); and much of Eli’s judgeship (1 Sam 4:18), together with all of Samson’s (Judg 16:31), belong under the forty years of Philistine oppression; for Samson, in reality, accomplished no deliverance at all but simply “judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years” (15:20).
B. Statistics. Judges covers 339 years (cf. 11:26), as follows:
The appendix to the book (Judges 17-21) belongs to the period of moral chaos that preceded the first oppression (1382 b.c.), for the migration of the Danites in chs. 17; 18 is mentioned in the Book of Joshua (19:47), which must have been composed shortly after Joshua’s own death (Josh 5:1; 6:25; cf. the priority of Judges 18:12 to 13:25), and in ch. 20 Aaron’s grandson Phinehas was still serving as high priest (v. 28).
C. Correlations. Although the Book of Judges furnishes no explicit contact with contemporaneous secular history, the above listed dates do suggest a series of plausible correlations with it. Among the Amarna letters are appeals from a Canaanite king Abdi-Hepa of Jerusalem to Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten; prob. 1379-1361, CAH rev., p. 19), which describe the city as in imminent danger of conquest by the Habiru. The Biblical King Adonizedek, whom Joshua defeated and executed, c. 1405 b.c. (Josh 10:1-27), must therefore have been one of Abdi-Hepa’s immediate predecessors. The fulfillment of Abdi-Hepa’s forebodings may then have been realized at the conquest of Jerusalem by the tribe of Judah, after the death of Joshua in 1390 (Judg 1:8), though his fears might also be explainable were he among the Jebusites who reoccupied the city shortly thereafter (v. 21).
A theory first proposed by John Garstang (Joshua-Judges, pp. 51-66) is that Israel’s alternating periods of oppression and of deliverance correspond to the absence or presence of political control in Pal. by the rival powers of Egypt to the SW, and of the Hitt. empire in the N. Israel’s oppression from 1382-1374 by Cushan-rishathaim of Mesopotamia may thus have constituted but one phase of Hitt. encroachment upon the disintegrating Pal. empire of Amenhotep III and IV, while Israel’s forty year rest under Othniel (1374-1334) would parallel Pal.’s stability when once within the sphere of influence of the great Hitt. rulers Suppiluliuma and Murshilish II (accession in 1344, CAH rev., vol. 2, p. 36). The following eighteen years of Moabite oppression may then match the uncertainty of the times which climaxed in a reoccupation of Pal. by a revitalized Egypt occurred under Seti I (1318, p. 20). It hardly appears accidental that the eighty year rest (1316-1236) inaugurated by Ehud attaches so closely to the peace that was enforced by the treaties of Seti and of Rameses II (1304-1237) with the Hittites. An ensuing decay on the part of both empires, followed by the final collapse of the Hittites in the face of barbarian invasion, seems to have opened the doors for the twenty-year Canaanite revival, and oppression of Israel, while the preservation of the latter part of Deborah’s four decades of prosperity (1216-1176) may have been due, in part, to the strong rule of Rameses III (c. 1199-1168, loc. cit.) of the new 20th Dynasty, the destroyer in c. 1191 b.c. (p. 75) of those invading sea peoples, whose Philistine remnants were so strongly to oppress Israel a cent. later. Decadence, however, characterized the later course of Dynasty XX, and Israel was left to face the chaos created by invading Midianites from the E. A significant confirmation of this dating is furnished by the presence of Mycenaean IIIb pottery (1300-1200 b.c.) in the ruins of the final Canaanite city of Hazor (see above, IV-B), which campaigned against Deborah and Barak. The only time within this period during which Egyp. control was sufficiently withdrawn to permit such activity had to have been just before or after Merneptah (1237-1225): “Hence Baraq is to be dated in the second half of the thirteenth century” (CAH, rev., p. 68).
VIII. United kingdom.
A. Saul. 1 Samuel 13:1 speaks of Saul’s age upon accession (though the precise numeral has been lost) but does not indicate his total reign; its next reference, to “two years,” seems to go with the following v. and indicates that the battle of Michmash occurred two years after this accession (13:1, 2 ASV). The RSV, however, treats this figure as a corrupted statement of total reign: “He reigned...and two years over Israel.” The NT states that God gave Saul to Israel “for the space of forty years,” after which He raised up David to be their king (Acts 13:21, 22); but liberal expositors usually reject the NT testimony and limit Saul’s kingship to twenty and two, or even ten and two (IB, II:946) years. This, however, is manifestly impossible in the light of Saul’s being a “young man” at his accession (1 Sam 9:2) and yet having a fourth son who had reached the age of thirty-five at the time of Saul’s death (2 Sam 2:10; cf. Kitchen, op. cit. pp. 75, 76).
A more serious question concerning the forty years of Acts 13 is whether it embraces only Saul’s individual reign or whether it includes also the seven years of Philistine domination, with vassal rule by his son Ish-bosheth, until the time of David’s accession over all Israel (2 Sam 2:10, 11) in 1003 b.c. The latter alternative, leaving thirty-three years for Saul himself (1043-1010), appears more reasonable, since Jonathan, who had become a hero at Michmash in the opening years of Saul’s reign (1 Sam 13:1-3), was still David’s intimate friend in 1010 b.c. at its close. Since David was then thirty years old (2 Sam 5:4, b. 1040 b.c.), Jonathan would hardly seem to have been more than twenty years his senior; and if Jonathan were b. in 1060 he would have been nineteen at Michmash in 1041 and his father Saul c. thirty-five (?). The events of Saul’s later career and of his relationships with David are not precisely dated by the OT, until David’s final flight from Saul in 1012 b.c. (1 Sam 27:7); but they may be approximated as follows:
B. David’s later career,as outlined above, is likewise subject to some conjecture. Jonathan’s crippled son Mephibosheth had been five at the death of his father and grandfather in 1010 (2 Sam 4:4); but since Mephibosheth had a young son of his own when he came to David’s court (9:11) this latter fact must bring the climactic events that surround 2 Samuel 9 down to c. 995 b.c. To this period also belong major parts of the appendix to 2 Samuel (chs. 21-24), such as David’s song of rest (ch. 22; cf. v. 1 with 7:1) or his census (ch. 21; for v. 7 must come after Mephibosheth’s discovery, but before Absalom’s revolt, 16:8). If the sins of David and his son Amnon came to light c. 990 (11:2-13:22), then Absalom’s revolt would date to c. 979, as above.
C. Solomon. Shortly before his death in 970 b.c. David ordered his son Solomon anointed over the united kingdom (1 Kings 1; 1 Chron 23:1). While Solomon’s coregency appears to have been brief, if it was counted at all (P. van der Meer, The Ancient Chronology of Western Asia and Egypt, p. 72), it yet established a significant precedent in Judah; for Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Azariah, Jotham, and Ahaz were to be granted coregencies with their fathers, and apparently for the same reason: to guarantee their succession and to insure the throne’s stability, in contrast to the kaleidoscopic history of N Israel, where only one such instance appears. Solomon’s chief foreign contacts were his building arrangements with Hiram king of Tyre (Ahiram I, 986-935 b.c.) and his marriage to an Egyptian princess (1 Kings 3:1; 9:16), perhaps a daughter of Siamun, the last pharaoh but one of the 21st Dynasty, which terminated in 945 b.c.
IX. Divided kingdom.
A. Basis. After the division of Solomon’s kingdom in 930 b.c. each king’s reign continued to be correlated with that of his neighbor, producing “contemporary chronological materials of the greatest accuracy and the highest historical value” (Thiele, 2nd ed., p. 26); e.g., W. F. Albright’s attempt to shift Solomon’s death to 922 serves only to introduce confusion (ibid., pp. 60-62). This scriptural system operated upon the following bases:
(1) The N kingdom “predated” its reigns; i.e., it assigned no accession year to a given ruler but rather reckoned the year of his enthronement both as his own first year and as the last of his predecessor. For example, Nadab’s reign, which is said to be two years, began in the second year of Asa of Judah, but his successor Baasha’s reign began in Asa’s third; and the successor to Baasha’s twenty-four year reign began, in turn, in Asa’s twenty-sixth (1 Kings 15:25, 33; 16:8). Judah, on the other hand, “postdated,” designating the latter part of a year in which a ruler died as the accession year of his successor and only the year following, as his successor’s first. This situation prevailed until 848 b.c., when Jehoram of Judah, who was allied with N Israel and whose wife Athaliah was the actual daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, adopted Israel’s predating system; cf. the old system illustrated in 2 Kings 9:29 and the new in 8:25 (ibid., p. 35). These vv. also demonstrate how each scribe would follow his own reckoning system in dating the other kingdom too. Both nations shifted to postdating in 796 b.c., perhaps due to Assyrian influence (ibid., pp. 37, 38); for the very nomenclature of accession years corresponds to the Akkad. resh sharruti.
(2) As indicated above (I-B), Judah’s secular year began in the fall; Solomon’s death, and the commencement of Rehoboam’s accession year, occurred at some point after Sept./Oct. (the month Tishri), 931 b.c., hereinafter indicated by the sign 930* b.c. In N Israel, however, Jeroboam, in line with his other deliberate departures from the Judean calendar (cf. 1 Kings 12:32, 33), shifted to a spring, March/April (the month Nisan) New Year. This parallels the custom of Babylonia, Assyria, and esp. Egypt, with which he had close contact (11:40; 12:2; cf. ibid., p. 30). Israel’s movedup, springtime New Year is demonstrated Biblically by 1 Kings 15:1, in which Abijam’s accession to the Judean throne in Rehoboam’s seventeenth year is dated in Jeroboam’s eighteenth, which must have begun in Nisan, indicated 913#, while Rehoboam’s seventeenth had still to run until Tishri.
(3) The following interpretative bases concern coregencies (see above, VIII-C) during the divided kingdom period. (a) The years of coregency are regularly included in the totals for the respective reigns. The fact that the five-year coregency of Jehoram of Judah with his father Jehoshaphat (proved by the designation of the year 852* b.c. in terms of both father and son, 2 Kings 1:17 and 3:1) was not counted in Jehoram’s eight year total (8:17) can only be described as a “variation” (ibid., p. 70). (b) The Book of Kings records each ruler in a sequence determined by the beginning of sole reign rather than of co-regency (vs. Thiele, ibid., pp. 138, 189). Jehoram’s (8:16-19) sole reign in 848 is listed after Joram of Israel (3:1-3), 852, even though the former’s coregency began in 853. (c) “Co-regencies commence with the first rather than accession years” (ibid., p. 159), a principle violated by Thiele in assigning an accession year to Azariah’s coregency with Amaziah (to bring it back to Tishri, 792 b.c., ibid., pp. 75, 83; contrast his 1st ed., p. 71, in which he lists this event as 791/790).
On these bases, the following chronological reconstruction appears:
B. Correlations. In addition to contacts in 853 and 841 of Ahab and Jehu with Shalmaneser III of Assyria (see above, I-C), the following dates fit into the above table: in 925*, Rehoboam’s payment of tribute in his fifth year (1 Kings 14:25) to Shishak I of Egypt (c. 945-924 b.c., NBD, p. 1181), as A. Malamat observes, “not long before Pharaoh’s death” (BA, 21 [1958], 99); in 857 and 856, Ahab’s two victories over Benhadad II of Syria (20:29; 22:1) and in 853 his death at the latter’s hands (22:35), the date of which is confirmed by the known Assyrian battle at Qarqar earlier that same year; in 803 b.c., Jehoahaz’s deliverance from Syria by a “savior” (2 Kings 13:5), meaning the Assyrian Adad-nirari III’s subjugation of Damascus; in 743, Azariah’s unsuccessful confederacy against Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, resulting in Menahem’s tribute (15:19; cf. Thiele, 2nd ed., pp. 90-117); in 733 or 732 the captivity of three and one-half N tribes to Assyria (15:29); and in 725-722, from the seventh to the ninth years of Hoshea, the final three-year siege and fall of Samaria to Shalmaneser V (18:9, 10; cf. the Babylonian Chronicle, 1.28), though Sargon II, who succeeded to the Assyrian throne in Dec., 722, later claimed this honor and may have participated in the campaign.
C. Difficulties. (1) 2 Chronicles 15:19 states that Asa had no war (“no more war,” KJV, though cf. the italics) up to his thirty-fifth year but that he was attacked by Baasha of Israel in his thirty-sixth (16:1); yet by that time Baasha had been dead for over ten years (1 Kings 16:18). The Chronicler’s figures must be understood either as dates for Asa counted from the division of the kingdom, back in 930 (ibid., p. 60), or as a miscopying for his fifteenth and sixteenth years, since the fifteenth was an actual time of warfare, with Zerah the Cushite (2 Chron 14:9; 15:10), in 895* b.c. (2) When 1 Kings 16:23 records how Omri began to reign in Asa’s thirty-first year (880*), this must refer to Omri’s reign in Samaria, after the death of his rival Tibni (v. 22; ibid., p. 64); for while Omri actually commenced his reign in Asa’s 26th year (885) he did make the move to Samaria from Tirzah in his sixth year (v. 23), or 880*.
(3) 2 Kings 15:30 states that Hoshea succeeded Pekah (732) in Jotham’s “twentieth” year. Jotham’s reign totalled only sixteen years (v. 33), which must mean that he continued to live on for some time after an official surrender of the throne to his coregent-son Ahaz in 736. Jotham’s independent spirit (2 Chron 27:3-6) may well have been opposed by a party favoring submission to Assyria (ibid., pp. 127, 131). (4) The reckoning of Pekah’s twenty-year reign, according to the records of N Israel (2 Kings 16:7), from this same date (732) assigns him an accession year of 752. Jotham, whose twentieth year was also 732, is said to have begun the first year (751) of his coregency with his leprous father Azariah (v. 5) in the second year of Pekah (v. 32) and to have ended his sixteen-year reign (736) in Pekah’s seventeenth (15:1). This indicates that, in S records, Pekah must not have been credited with an accession year and that 752 must have been taken as Pekah’s first year, presumably as a coregent with Menahem. For Pekah’s twenty-year reign has to include the twelve years of the preceding dynasty of Menahem (ten years, accession in 752) and Pekahiah (two years); because his undisputed reign, in Samaria, began only in Azariah’s fifty-second year (15:27, commencing Tishri, 740) and was terminated by Hoshea eight years later (in 732, as is known from the Assyrian records). Pekah presumably claimed their years as his own; indeed, he may have possessed certain sovereign powers among his Gileadites (15:25) from 752 onward (ibid., p. 124). Whether or not the final editor of 2 Kings was aware that Pekah’s twenty years were to be reckoned from this earlier point cannot be determined with certainty. That the inspired writer placed his descriptions of Pekah’s and Jotham’s reigns (vv. 27-38) after those of Menahem and Pekahiah (vv. 17-26) demonstrates only that the commencement of the sole reigns must have come in that order—actually in 752, 742#, 740#, and 739* respectively (see above, A-3-b). His awareness that Pekah’s period of full power, commencing in the year before Azariah’s death (v. 27), had to have been preceded by a coregency is proved, in any event, by his knowledge of Jotham’s appointment as coregent with Azariah (v. 5) and of Pekah’s own rise to power almost two years before that (v. 32).
(5) The year of Hoshea’s accession, Jotham’s “twentieth” (732), is also described as Ahaz’s twelfth (2 Kings 17:1). After eight years of power, Jotham must therefore have associated his son Ahaz on the throne with himself, so that his ninth year became Ahaz’s first as coregent. Though rejected by Thiele as “artificial” and as a “fictitious overlap” (ibid., pp. 120, 136), such an appointment seems plausible in view of Judah’s impending defeat before Tiglath-pileser that same year, of Azariah’s now hopelessly leprous condition (he died four years later in 739*), and of Jotham’s later surrender of full power to his son (see 3 above), in 736. Some have wished to advance Jotham’s ouster into 735* (Thiele, p. 128); and Hoshea’s accession year did run from 732 into the spring (Nisan) of 731, with the result that Jotham’s twentieth and Ahaz’s twelfth year just might have commenced early in 731*. Since four years of Hoshea—his accession, first, second, and third—are correlated with five years of Ahaz—his twelfth through sixteenth—Ahaz’s twelfth has to correspond to the earlier half of Hoshea’s accession year (before the fall, Tishri, of 732); and his sixteenth, to the latter half of Hoshea’s third year (after Tishri, 729; or, 728*).
From the Creation of Adam to the Flood: 1656 Years
From the Flood to the Call of Abram: 427 Years
From the Call of Abram to the Death of Joseph: 286 Years
From the Creation of Adam to the Death of Joseph = 1656 + 427 + 286 = 2369 Years. This 2369 years is not the time from the creation of the world, but from the creation of Adam, Anno Hominus. Adapted from Scroggie, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption.
Israel in the Wilderness
From Egypt to Sinai The Encampment at Sinai From Sinai to Shittim\nExodus 12:37-19:2 Exodus 19:3-Numbers 10:10 Numbers 10:11-Joshua 2
The Age of the Monarchy
Over 500 Years. B.C. 1095-586
United Kingdom Divided Kingdom
Single Kingdom
Saul to Solomon
Rehoboam to Hoshea Hezekiah (6th) to Zedekiah\n120 Years
253 Years
136 Years\nB.C. 1095-975 B.C. 975-722
B.C. 722-586
2 Kings 18:13-25:21\n1 Chron. 10-2 Chron. 9 2 Chron. 10-28 2 Chron. 29-36:21
The Three Captivities of the Israelites
Egyptian Assyrian Babylonian\nB.C. 1706-1491 B.C. 722- B.C. 606-536\n215 Years 70 Years
885 years between the end of the first captivity and the beginning of the last
The Return From Babylon
First Stage Second Stage Third Stage\nUnder Under Under
Zerubbabel Ezra Nehemiah\nB.C. 536 B.C. 458 B.C. 445
(6) The date of Hezekiah’s accession is the most problematic in OT chronology. Three major reconstructions have been proposed, each with its own difficulties. (a) While 2 Kings 18:1 locates Hezekiah’s regency in the above-mentioned year of 728*, v. 2 restricts his reign to a total of twenty-nine years; and, since the accession of his son Manasseh is definitely placed at 697*, Hezekiah’s own official accession could not have occurred before Tishri (727). The simplest approach is to assume an unexplained lapse of something over one year, perhaps due to the chaos surrounding Ahaz’s last days (2 Chron 28:5-23); cf. Thiele’s proposal, to assume a regency “taking control of affairs” (1st ed., p. 116) in order to account for a period not otherwise assigned. Four objections, the first three of which are subordinate, have, however, been raised by Thiele and others. (i) Scripture is said to be silent about contacts between Hoshea and Hezekiah (Van der Meer, op cit., p. 77); but the OT does repeatedly correlate their two reigns (2 Kings 18:1, 9, 10); on the other hand, it indicates no attempted contacts, of any sort, with Judah on the part of Hoshea. (ii) It is said that Hezekiah’s invitation for the Ephraimite “remnant that are escaped...out of the hands of the king of Assyria” (2 Chron 30:1, 6 ASV) to participate in the Judean Passover of May, 725 (Hezekiah’s first official year; cf. 29:3; 30:2), could not have been issued prior to Samaria’s fall in 722; but since part of N Israel had already been taken captive by the Assyrians in 733, and since Hoshea had to face their final three-year siege of his capital from 725 on (2 Kings 17:5; 18:9), Hezekiah’s invitations must have caught him when he was helpless to resist them—they may even have been encouraged by Shalmaneser, as an instrument for undermining the N’s solidarity. (iii). An official accession year for Hezekiah in 726* is said to create a series of impossible birthdates. Actually, however, the data is this:
J. McHugh has thus revised Hezekiah’s birthdate downward by ten years, assuming that an accession age of fifteen was “easy to confuse” with twenty-five (VT, 14 [1964], 452). While the above-listed ages of fatherhood are quite young, they are not without parallel in the Orient. Thiele notes King Azariah’s birth occurring when his father was fifteen (2nd ed., p. 206) and cites even modern data on the supposed excellence of marriage “when the boy is but ten or eleven years old” (ibid., p. 128). (iv). The more serious objection to Hezekiah’s accession in 726* is the OT’s mention of Sennacherib’s attack of 701 b.c., occurring in connection with Hezekiah’s fourteenth year (Isa 36:1); but see below, X-B.
(b) Thiele advocates reducing Hezekiah’s accession to 715*