JETS
47/4 (December 2004) 577–95
WHEN WAS SAMARIA CAPTURED?
THE NEED FOR PRECISION IN BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGIES
rodger c. young*
i. factors that produce wrong chronologies
The major factors that continue to produce confusion in the field of OT
chronology are (1) the scholar imposes his schemes and presuppositions on
the information available from the Scripture texts rather than first deter-
mining the methods used by the authors of Scripture and then accommodat-
ing his ideas to the methods of those authors; (2) even when the methods of
Scripture are determined, the scholar fails to consider all the possibilities
inherent in the scriptural texts; and (3) the scholar’s methodology lacks pre-
cision and accuracy in the expression of dates and in the calculations based
on those dates.
The first factor results in the largest amount of confusion, because the
chronologies produced are generally very free in discarding the scriptural data
that does not agree with the theories of the investigator, and those theories
and their resultant chronologies are only acceptable to the narrow group that
shares the same presuppositions about which data should be rejected.
For the second factor, the scholar may have determined the methods of
the scriptural author and then adapted his presuppositions to those methods,
but he still can overlook possibilities that are in keeping with his approach
simply because he did not think of them. This was discussed in my two pre-
vious articles.
1
In those articles, examples were given of the consequences
when a combination of factors was overlooked, and it was demonstrated that
these overlooked possibilities can resolve problems that the original author
could not adequately explain. The best-known example of this is Edwin
Thiele’s failure to consider a coregency between Ahaz and Hezekiah,
2
even
though Thiele argued for a coregency to solve problems with other reign
lengths—this will be discussed further below. Another example was the
failure of most scholars to explore non-accession reckoning for the reign of
Zedekiah, which is the main reason that many chronologies place the capture
1
Rodger Young, “When Did Solomon Die?”
JETS
46 (2003) 589–603; “When Did Jerusalem
Fall?”
JETS
47 (2004) 21–38.
2
Thiele’s conclusions are presented in
The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
, which
appeared in three editions: New York: Macmillan, 1951; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965; Grand
Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers cited are from the third
edition.
* Rodger Young resides at 1115 Basswood Lane, St. Louis, MO 63132.
journal of the evangelical theological society
578
of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar one year too late.
3
Unlike the first factor,
this kind of oversight may not be due to any willful desire to advance a theory
at the expense of the data, but because chronologists have not had the proper
methodology which allows them to state all their presuppositions and then
to lay out all the possibilities that are inherent in the combination of those
presuppositions. My previous papers explained that there exists such a meth-
odology and showed how it can be used to produce fruitful results in the
chronological and historical disciplines.
The third factor, imprecise expressions and inaccurate arithmetic, is the
subject of the present paper. Much of the advancement in science comes as
a result of the development of more precise means of measurement. It is there-
fore surprising that when the greatest biblical chronologist of the twentieth
century produced the third and final edition of his classic work on the sub-
ject, his figures were generally less precise, and the calculations by which
he arrived at his results were more obscured, than was the case in his second
edition. In the third edition, a single
bc
date was sometimes given instead
of a notation that would indicate that the time span being discussed began
in the autumn of a
bc
year and ended in the spring (or autumn) of the next
year. Despite Thiele’s explanation that this single
bc
figure was used “to
simplify the discussion,”
4
anyone who tries to use these inexact dates, and
to check Thiele’s calculations by which he arrived at the dates, will find that
the more precise figures of the second edition are easier to use. Imprecision
fosters confusion, not simplicity.
ii. the confusion caused by inexactness
As an example of the confusion that can be caused by this kind of inex-
actness, consider Thiele’s treatment of the reign of Athaliah. His dates for
3
In Young, “Jerusalem,” it was shown that the years for Zedekiah are given by the non-accession
method in both 2 Kings and Jeremiah. This was not recognized earlier because the switch to non-
accession counting came right at the end of the Judean kingdom and no simple clues are given to
indicate that the change was taking place. By applying a proper methodology that first asks how
Jeremiah and 2 Kings 25 treat the reign of Zedekiah, we can determine that the authors used
non-accession reckoning, but this still does not provide the reason for the change in the method
of counting. The reason, indeed, can be as arbitrary as the whim of the reigning king. Zedekiah
could have said, “This is the way we’re going to count my years. Don’t ask any more questions.”
Although we do not know why the change took place, if we refused to consider anything but acces-
sion years for Zedekiah we would be guilty of a Factor One error (forcing our presuppositions on
the data).
One scholar who explored non-accession counting for Zedekiah was Alberto Green (“The Chro-
nology of the Last Days of Judah: Two Apparent Discrepancies,”
JBL
101/1 [1982] 70). Green re-
jected this hypothesis when he showed that non-accession reckoning would not work for the reign
length given to Jehoiakim in 2 Kings 23:36. He then assumed that because non-accession years were
not possible for Jehoiakim in 2 Kings 23, neither were they possible for Zedekiah in Jeremiah or
2 Kings 25. Green was correct in saying that non-accession reckoning is not used for Jehoiakim
in 2 Kings, but both Jeremiah and 2 Kings use non-accession reckoning for Zedekiah. It is unfor-
tunate that Green missed this, because his article exhibits one of the best examples of attempting
to examine all the possibilities before settling on a solution to a chronological problem.
4
Thiele,
Mysterious Numbers
87, footnote.
when was samaria captured?
579
her are given in
bc
terms as 841 to 835.
5
At first glance, this seems consis-
tent with the statement on the same page giving her reign as “seven years,
non-accession reckoning, or six actual years,” because it is indeed six years
from 841
bc
to 835
bc
. However, the date for the death of Athaliah was also
specified more exactly as “some time between Nisan and Tishri of 835.” This
means her last official year by Judean (Tishri) reckoning was between
Tishri 1 of 836
bc
and Tishri 1 of 835
bc
, and her six-year (accession) reign
began in Tishri of 842, in contradiction to the last year of Ahaziah and begin-
ning year of Athaliah which Thiele calculated on a previous page as starting
in Tishri of 841
bc
.
6
When the dates are written like this in the necessarily
inexact
bc
form, a problem can be hidden and the necessary corrective steps
will not be taken. It is like de-focusing a microscope, with the result that
hidden flaws in the material being investigated are not revealed.
To avoid confusion caused by such inexact dating, scholars would do well
to adopt a notation that expresses the kind of year that was actually used
by the nation being studied. For the history of Judah, this would be a year
beginning in the month of Tishri (the autumn), whereas dates from Israel,
Babylon, or Assyria would be expressed in years beginning in Nisan (the
spring). Many writers have already done this, of course, but no uniform
method of representing Nisan-years or Tishri-years has been agreed upon.
This lack of a common nomenclature for the basic building blocks of the
trade is rather strange. It is a hindrance to the unambiguous expression of
ideas and an impediment to progress in the field. Compare this with the sit-
uation in other areas of research, for example in the field of chemistry. Once
chemists had formulated the basic concept of an element, symbols were agreed
upon to represent the various elements. Then a convention for formulas was
developed in order to express the interaction between elements to form com-
pounds. In chronology, these basic steps have not been taken; there is no
standard way to express those two fundamental building blocks of the bib-
lical chronologist, the Tishri year and the Nisan year. Another fundamental
building block is the six-month time period representing the overlap of a
Nisan year from Israel (or Babylon) and a Tishri year from Judah. Along
with a common nomenclature for these basic concepts, there should be a stan-
dard method of writing elapsed-time formulas, one that demonstrates clearly
whether the time is measured in an accession or non-accession sense.
Perhaps at some meeting of an archaeological or historical society there
will be a sufficient number of scholars present who want to bring uniformity
to this field, and they will be able to establish a standard. Until that is done,
it would be a benefit to all readers if the writer of a technical article would
first declare a simple method of expressing both Tishri and Nisan years, and
then adhere to that symbolism through the development parts of the paper,
in particular those parts dealing with synchronisms
. At the end, after all
5
Ibid. 104.
6
The resolution of this difficulty is explained in my “Solomon” paper. Thiele’s ending date for
Athaliah is correct, but the regnal years of Ahaziah and the previous kings of Judah must be moved
back one year.
journal of the evangelical theological society
580
the “chronology arithmetic” has been worked out, the resultant dates could
be displayed in a
bc
format, if that is desirable.
In the present paper the expression “931n” will be used to represent the
year beginning on Nisan 1, 931
bc
and ending the day before Nisan 1, 930
bc
.
“931t” will represent the year beginning Tishri 1, 931
bc
and ending the day
before Tishri 1, 930
bc
. The six-month overlap of these two dates will be
written as 931t/930n. The overlap of 932t and 931n will be written as 931n/
931t. When an elapsed-time figure is given in non-accession terms, then the
accession equivalent will be used in formulas with “(acc)” following; thus a
king who began in 931t and reigned for eleven years by non-accession reck-
oning would have his terminal date calculated as 931t
-
10 (acc) = 921t. All
this may be called the “Nisan/Tishri” notation.
In the three sections following, these conventions will be applied to the
chronological data in the Scriptures for the eighth century
bc
. This will not
affect the precise dates given in Thiele’s second edition for the last kings of
Israel, except that it will narrow the end of Hoshea’s reign to the first half
of 723n. The regnal dates of Judean kings will then be calculated based on
the dates from Israel and the Scripture texts. For these Judean kings, it will
be shown that there is a general consensus among several writers who have
attempted to set straight the confusion introduced when Thiele rejected the
scriptural synchronisms between Hezekiah of Judah and Hoshea of Israel.
Thiele’s rejection of the Hezekiah/Hoshea synchronisms has puzzled many
commentators. The synchronisms are explained readily enough by positing
a coregency between Ahaz and Hezekiah. Thiele assumed that Hezekiah’s
predecessors in the eighth century—Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz—had co-
regencies with their fathers, so why not Hezekiah? Several authors put forth
this rather obvious solution, among whom were Kenneth Kitchen and T. C.
Mitchell, Siegfried Horn, Harold Stigers, R. K. Harrison, Leslie McFall, and
Eugene Merrill.
7
All of these authors except McFall and Merrill published
before Thiele’s third edition was printed, and the
NBD
article (Kitchen and
Mitchell) appeared before Thiele’s second edition, as did the Horn article.
Yet in neither the second edition nor the third did Thiele address the solu-
tion—even to refute it—that all of these authors offered, namely an Ahaz/
Hezekiah coregency that ended with the death of Ahaz in approximately
716
bc
. This is especially puzzling since Thiele knew Horn personally, and
both men were on the faculty of Andrews University at the same time. In vari-
ous places in
Mysterious Numbers
, Thiele chides those who do not accept
the principle of “dual dating,” that is, counting regnal years from the begin-
ning of a coregency, which explains so many otherwise contradictory reign
lengths and synchronisms. Yet the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency, which makes
7
K. A. Kitchen and T. C. Mitchell in
NBD
217; S. H. Horn, “The Chronology of King Heze-
kiah’s Reign,”
AUSS
2 (1964) 48–52; Harold Stigers, “The Interphased Chronology of Jotham,
Ahaz, Hezekiah and Hoshea,”
BETS
9/2 (1966) 88–90; R. K. Harrison,
Introduction to the Old
Testament
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969) 734; Leslie McFall, “Did Thiele Overlook Hezekiah’s
Coregency?”
BSac
146/584 (Oct–Dec 1989) 400–402; Eugene H. Merrill,
Kingdom of Priests
(Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1987) 410.
when was samaria captured?
581
sense out of the one area where he rejected biblical inerrancy, was apparently
never treated as an option.
8
In order to undo the confusion that this introduced into the chronology of
the eighth century
bc
, we must carefully review the Scriptures that allow
us to reconstruct regnal dates for this period for both Israel and Judah.
iii. dates for the last kings of israel
Our starting point will be the fall of Samaria. Thiele’s argument
9
that
this occurred in 723n during the reign of Shalmaneser V will not be repeated.
From this date, the reigns of the six last kings of Israel will be derived. In
the text of the third edition of
Mysterious Numbers
, the calculation of precise
dates for these kings is omitted; only the years (
bc
) are given. The following
discussion will reconstruct the precise dates in a fashion similar to that of
Thiele’s second edition, but will add information from the Hoshea/Hezekiah
synchronisms (rejected by Thiele) so that the terminal date for Hoshea can
be specified more precisely.
The year 723n when Samaria fell was Hoshea’s 9th year (2 Kgs 18:10), so
his first year was 732n, when he slew his predecessor, Pekah. All these last
kings of Israel used accession reckoning.
10
The contention of Cook and Thiele
that Pekah, in Gilead, began a rival reign to Menahem’s rule in Samaria
after Shallum’s death will be accepted here as the only solution that has ex-
plained adequately the chronological data associated with Pekah.
11
Pekah’s
8
“Thiele’s omission of Hezekiah’s coregency in the third edition of his book is inexcusable,
given the number of reviews that were published following the appearance of his work in 1951
and 1965 challenging his treatment of 2 Kings 17–18. Several reviewers pointed Thiele in the right
direction by suggesting a coregency for Hezekiah, which made perfectly good sense of the text as
it stood . . . and which conformed to Thiele’s own principles of interpreting similar data. Horn noted
the fact that such a coregency was suggested as long ago as 1905 and 1911.” Leslie McFall, “A Trans-
lation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles,”
BSac
148/589 (1991) 33, 34.
9
Mysterious Numbers
chapter 8.
10
Ibid. 105.
11
The interested reader is referred to H. J. Cook, “Pekah,”
VT
14/2 (1964) 121–35, and to
Thiele,
Mysterious Numbers
129–32. However, Thiele and Cook could have said more about one
verse in Hosea that clearly distinguishes Israel and Ephraim as different entities at the time that
Hosea wrote, and which therefore provides a definitive biblical support for the brief existence of
two rival kingdoms in the north. That verse is Hosea 5:5, which appears as follows in the MT:
wy=n;p:B} laEr;c‘yeAˆag] hn;[:w]
µn;/[“Bæ Wlv‘Kâ:yi µyir'p}a<w] laEr;c‘yiw]
:
µM:[I hd:Why]AµG' lvæK:
for which a literal translation is
And the pride of Israel testifies against him (to his face).
Both Israel and Ephraim will stumble in their sin;
Judah also stumbled with them.
Thiele and Cook noticed the plural “them” in the third line, showing that Israel and Ephraim
were considered separate entities in the second line. But neither of these commentators remarked
on the construction of the second line, where “Israel” and “Ephraim” are both preceded by a
vav
.
This is the normal mode of expressing “both . . . and” in Hebrew, and it shows that the construc-
tion “Israel, even Ephraim” taken by many translations is not warranted. The
lxx
translates this
literally, using
kaÇ . . . kaÇ
, which is the Greek way of expressing “both . . . and.” This verse then
journal of the evangelical theological society
582
twenty-year reign and the rivalry with Menahem began in 732n + 20 = 752n.
This year is called the thirty-ninth of Uzziah in 2 Kings 15:17. The year-
figure for Uzziah must be reckoned from a coregency with his father Ama-
ziah, and so this will be taken as a non-accession number, as with other
coregencies.
12
But the question arises: did Menahem begin in the first half
of the year (752n/752t) or in the latter half (752t/751n)? If the former, then
Uzziah’s thirty-ninth year by Judean (Tishri) reckoning was 753t and his
starting year was 753t + 38 (acc) = 791t. If the latter, then Uzziah’s starting
year was 752t + 38 (acc) = 790t.
790t is not possible as a starting date for Uzziah for the following reason.
His fiftieth year, in which Menahem died (2 Kgs 15:23), would then be 790t
-
49 (acc) = 741t, which has no overlap with the end of Menahem’s ten-year
reign in 752n
-
10 = 742n. A 791t starting date for Uzziah puts his fiftieth
year in 742t, which overlaps 742n in 742t/741n. This marks the end of Men-
ahem’s reign and the beginning of Pekahiah’s.
12
Thiele (
Mysterious Numbers
109, 111) desired to bring the beginning of the Amaziah/Uzziah
coregency as close as possible to the beginning of the Jehoash/Jeroboam II coregency in Israel,
and so he used accession reckoning when calculating the beginning of Uzziah’s coregency, contrary
to his practice for coregencies elsewhere. Although this is possible, there is nothing that requires
it, and for the sake of consistency we shall treat synchronisms to the reign of Uzziah as non-
accession numbers. Thus Thiele would reckon the thirty-ninth year of Uzziah, when Menahem
began, by subtracting 39 from 792t, whereas we shall reckon it in a non-accession sense by sub-
tracting 38 from 791t.
is a direct substantiation of the existence of two distinct kingdoms in the north when Hosea wrote,
and the verses related to Pekah, Menahem, and Pekahiah in 2 Kings show the identity of the rival
rulers.
The objections to Pekah being a rival to Menahem usually center on Pekah’s position as an
officer in the army of Pekahiah, Menahem’s son and successor (2 Kgs 15:25). But there is nothing
inherently unreasonable about two rivals reaching a détente under which one contender accepts
a subordinate position, and he then bides his time until the opportunity comes to slay his rival (or
his rival’s son) in a coup. Once the rivalry had begun, the external threat (Assyria) provided com-
pelling reasons for a détente.
Events in the life of Thutmose III of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty have several resemblances to
the career of Pekah. On the death of Thutmose II, there was some confusion about the succession
to the throne. Thutmose III, the heir apparent, was the son of a minor wife of the deceased mon-
arch and was still a child. The chief wife, Hatshepsut, had no male offspring. Within a few years
after the death of her husband, Hatshepsut had become more than just a guardian regent for her
stepson. She assumed the full pharaonic regalia and had herself crowned as pharaoh. Like Pekah,
Thutmose III found that he had a rival for the throne, and he was subjugated under a more power-
ful personage, in this case his stepmother. Like Pekah, Thutmose after a few years was given a
position as commander in the army. Like Pekah, he strengthened his hand in this position until one
day there came a chance to seize the throne. It is possible that Thutmose killed his stepmother.
There is no direct evidence of this, but the circumstantial evidence is that Hatshepsut’s mummy
has never been found, and the new pharaoh defaced her monuments, erasing her image from them.
Like Pekah, Thutmose also dated his years from the beginning of the time when the rivalry began.
Thus the campaign in his first year of full possession of the kingdom is dated in his monuments
to his twenty-second year, whereas anyone who recognized Hatshepsut as a legitimate pharaoh
would have called it his first year. Further, as in the case of Pekah, the full story of this rivalry
and why Thutmose’s first year is also his twenty-second year is not spelled out in the extant records
of the time, but must be inferred as a reasonable deduction from the records we do have.
Do those who reject the Menahem/Pekah rivalry as improbable also reject as improbable this
reconstruction from Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty that Egyptologists use to explain the regnal dates
of Thutmose III? How do they explain Hosea 5:5?
Two Lines Long
when was samaria captured?
583
Zechariah’s reign began in the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah (2 Kgs 15:8),
that is in 791t
-
37 (acc) = 754t. He reigned six months, which must have
crossed the 753-Tishri boundary, since his successor Shallum started in the
thirty-ninth of Uzziah (2 Kgs 15:13); so we start Zechariah’s reign in 753n/
753t and end it in 753t/752n.
Zechariah
Elul 753 – Adar 752
Shallum
Adar 752 – Nisan 752
Shallum killed Zechariah and reigned one month, at the end of which he
was assassinated by Menahem. Previously we had determined that Menahem
began in 752n. This means that Shallum, beginning in 753t/752n and there-
fore before Nisan of 752, must have started his one-month reign in Adar (the
month before Nisan) of 752, ending in Nisan of 752. The starting date for Men-
ahem and his rival Pekah was therefore Nisan 752. The dates for Zechariah,
starting six months before Shallum, were Elul (the month before Tishri,
approximately September) of 753 to Adar of 752.
Menahem
Nisan 752 – 742t/741n
Pekahiah
742t/741n – 740t/739n
Menahem’s reign was shown to end in 742t/741n. His son Pekahiah’s two-
year reign ended in the fifty-second of Uzziah (2 Kgs 15:23, 27), which was
791t
-
51 (acc) = 740t. By Nisan reckoning the two years ended in 742n
-
2
= 740n, so the overlap is 740t/739n for the death of Pekahiah by the hand of
Pekah.
The synchronisms between Hezekiah and Hoshea, given in 2 Kings 18,
will now be used to establish the years for Hezekiah and then to specify more
exactly the dates for Hoshea.
Hezekiah’s coregency with Ahaz began in the third year of Hoshea, which
was 732n
-
3 = 729n (2 Kgs 18:1). If it was in the first half of the year, then
by Judean reckoning Hezekiah began in 730t; if it was in the second half of
Hoshea’s third year, then it was 729t. But 730t is not possible, since it makes
Hezekiah’s fourth year to be 730t
-
3 (acc) = 727t, which has no overlap with
Hoshea’s seventh year, 732n
-
7 = 725n, as required by 2 Kings 18:9. Start-
ing Hezekiah in 729t gives his fourth year as 729t
-
3 (acc) = 726t, which
overlaps 725n in 725n/725t. Therefore the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency began
in 729t, or more exactly, 729t/728n.
Samaria was captured in Hezekiah’s sixth year, 729t
-
5 (acc) = 724t (2 Kgs
18:10). This overlaps with the date that Thiele had established, 723n, in 723n/
723t, showing that Samaria fell and Hoshea was killed in the first half of
the year. This interesting conclusion reinforces the well-reasoned claim of
Olmstead, Thiele, and Tadmor that it was Shalmaneser and not Sargon who
captured Samaria.
13
Since Samaria fell before Tishri 1 of 723
bc
, Sargon’s
accession in Tebeth of 722n (December 722
bc
or January 721
bc
) was at
least fifteen months later.
13
Ibid. chapter 8. Using the same reasoning regarding the sixth year of Hezekiah, Leslie
McFall (“Translation Guide” 35) also concluded that the date of Hoshea’s death could be re-
stricted to 723n/723t.
journal of the evangelical theological society
584
Pekah
740t/739n – 732t/731n
Rival to Menahem, Nisan 752
Hoshea
732t/731n – 723n/723t
Hoshea’s accession is placed in the twentieth year of Jotham by 2 Kings
15:30. Twenty years before 732n is well before the death of Uzziah (see 2 Kgs
15:23, 27), so we are justified in assuming that Jotham’s twentieth year is
measured from the beginning of a coregency with Uzziah and is therefore a
non-accession figure. The Uzziah/Jotham coregency thus began in either 733t
+ 19 (acc) = 752t or 732t + 19 (acc) = 751t. The first alternative is not pos-
sible, since there is no overlap of 752t with the second year of Pekah in
which Jotham began to reign (2 Kgs 15:32), which was 752n - 2 = 750n. The
second alternative, 751t, overlaps 750n in 750n/750t, which must therefore
define the start of the Uzziah/Jotham coregency. A further consequence is
that Jotham’s twentieth year, in which Hoshea began, must be 751t - 19 (acc)
= 732t. Overlap of this figure with the 732n time frame that was established
earlier for Hoshea’s accession restricts that date to the six-month interval
732t/731n. This marks also the death of Pekah, whose beginning date of Nisan
752n was derived earlier, as was the date of his assassination of Pekahiah
in 740t/739n.
The table for the last six kings of Israel may now be filled in as below.
These dates are in agreement with those of Thiele’s second edition except
that the date of Hoshea’s death is narrowed from 723n to 723n/723t. The text
and table in Thiele’s third edition give dates in terms of bc years, which was
a step backward in exactness and in providing testability of the figures.
iv. kings of judah in the eighth century bc
Dates for the last six kings of Israel may now be used to establish begin-
ning and ending dates for the kings of Judah in the eighth century bc.
Amaziah
796n/796t – 767n/767t
1. Amaziah. Amaziah began in the second year of Jehoash (2 Kgs 14:1),
which was 798n - 2 = 796n (Thiele’s dates will be used for Jehoash and Je-
roboam II). His accession year, by Judean reckoning, could have been either
Table 1. Dates for last six kings of Israel
King Began rivalry Began sole reign Ended
Zechariah 753 Elul (Sept.) 752 Adar (March)
Shallum 752 Adar 752 Nisan (April)
Menahem 752 Nisan 742t/741n
Pekahiah 742t/741n 740t/739n
Pekah 752 Nisan 740t/739n 732t/731n
Hoshea 732t/731n 723n/723t
when was samaria captured? 585
797t or 796t. 796t is ruled out because Amaziah’s fifteenth year, in which
Jeroboam II began (2 Kgs 14:23), would then be 796t - 15 = 781t,
14
which has
no overlap with the established date of 782n for the beginning of Jeroboam’s
sole reign. Starting Amaziah in 797t makes his fifteenth year to be 782t,
which overlaps Jeroboam’s starting year in 782t/781n. Amaziah thus began
his reign in 796n/796t. Since he ruled for twenty-nine years, his last year
must have been 797t - 29 = 768t. This can be refined further by placing it
in the twenty-seventh year from the beginning of the Jehoash/Jeroboam II
coregency (2 Kgs 15:1), which was 793n - 26 (acc) = 767n. The overlap is 767n/
767t for the death of Amaziah.
Uzziah
767n/767t – 740t
Coregent 791t
2. Uzziah. The beginning of his coregency with Amaziah was estab-
lished in Section III as 791t. His fifty-two year reign ended in 791t - 51
(acc) = 740t. His sole reign began on the death of his father in 767n/767t.
3. Jotham. Jotham began as coregent with Uzziah in 750n/750t, as was
determined in the discussion of Hoshea. His son Ahaz was installed in the
seventeenth year of Pekah (2 Kgs 16:1), which was 752n - 17 = 735n. In some
sense it must have been considered that this date marked the termination
of the effective rule of Jotham, because Jotham is only given sixteen years
by the reference in 2 Kings 15:33, which would end his reign in 751t - 15
(acc) = 736t. The overlap with the seventeenth of Pekah, 735n, is 735n/735t
for the termination of Jotham’s sixteen years. However, Jotham did not die
at that time, because a twentieth year is ascribed to him by the synchronism
to Hoshea in 2 Kings 15:30.
Thus, according to one record, Jotham reigned only sixteen years, ending
when Ahaz came to the throne, while according to another record he was
alive and was considered the king at least four years beyond that date. This
suggests that 735n/735t did not mark the start of a normal coregency, but
the events of that year were more in the nature of a coup, brought about by
a faction which feared the growing power of Assyria. In this regard, Thiele
wrote that “[i]n 735 it is altogether likely that a pro-Assyrian group felt
itself strong enough to force Jotham into retirement and to place Ahaz on
the throne. Although Jotham continued to live to his twentieth year (II Kings
15:30), 732/31, it was Ahaz who directed affairs from 735.”
15
Ahaz and his
court represented a pro-Assyrian policy that was in contrast to the anti-
Assyrian policies of Jotham who preceded him and of Hezekiah who followed.
14
It can be shown by synchronisms between Judah and Israel that the reign of Amaziah must
be measured in an accession sense. My “Jerusalem” article showed that the thirty-one years of Jo-
siah (2 Kgs 22:1) were also by accession reckoning. As a consequence, it will be assumed that the
regnal years for the intervening kings of Judah whose reign lengths are measured from their sole
reign (Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Amon) are expressed in the same way.
15
Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 2d ed. 127.
journal of the evangelical theological society586
The reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were marked by this bitter
factionalism over the policy toward Assyria, and also over the accommoda-
tions that were made to foreign customs and religion during the time of Ahaz
(2 Kgs 16; 2 Chr 28). Although Thiele saw that such factionalism explains
why one record gave Jotham sixteen years and another record gave him
twenty years of reign, he did not see that it also explains why in one place
the reign of Hoshea is synchronized with Ahaz (2 Kgs 17:1), whereas other
records synchronize Hoshea with the anti-Assyrian kings, Jotham (2 Kgs
15:30) and Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:1, 9, 10). The court records made during the
days while Ahaz was in control are responsible for the synchronism of Ho-
shea to Ahaz and the granting of only sixteen years to Jotham. With the re-
ligious and political reform that took place after Hezekiah took full control,
however, the viewpoint prevailed that Jotham was still a legitimate ruler
until his twentieth year. This same viewpoint recognized Hezekiah as a
legitimate ruler during the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency and synchronized
events in the reign of Hoshea of Israel with the years of Hezekiah (2 Kgs
18:9, 10), even though Ahaz was the senior partner in the coregency during
those years.
16
Whereas Thiele discarded the Hoshea/Hezekiah synchronisms as an
error and the invention of a later redactor, the proper understanding of
these records shows that they reflect the political situation of the time. The
fact that the pro-Ahaz synchronisms have been preserved at all after the
ultimate triumph of the anti-Assyrian policy under Hezekiah indicates
strongly that the final editor of Kings was preserving official court records
from the days of Ahaz as well as the later records from the days of Hezekiah.
Thiele provided the insight that the sources of the Books of Kings were
the annals kept by the schools of the prophets, with one or more schools
active in Judah and one or more in Israel.
17
This is certainly consistent with
the general idea that the principal authors, and certainly the final editors,
of the various books of the Bible were holy men of God who were led by the
Holy Spirit. At the same time, these prophets who gave us the Books of
Kings must have been careful in their writings to reflect the official policy in
their days regarding who was the legitimate ruler and when he began to
reign. The “book of the annals of the kings of Judah” and the “book of the
annals of the kings of Israel,” to which repeated references are made in
16
In ad 15, the Romans deposed Annas from the office of high priest and installed in his place
his son-in-law Caiaphas. Many Jews, however, continued to consider Annas as the legitimate holder
of the office. This difference in viewpoint regarding who was the high priest is reflected in the
Gospels and Acts, and is one of the many evidences that these accounts were not written in a later
generation when people had no direct knowledge of the times. It would be a very shallow criticism
to maintain that the divergence over who was to be called high priest in the Gospels and Acts was
due to mistakes by the authors. In the same way, the difference in viewpoint regarding who was
the legitimate king in the days of Ahaz reflects accurately the turmoil of the period. It would defy
reason to maintain that the tension inherent in these records and reflecting the two opposing fac-
tions of the times could have been contrived by a later editor. More specifically, it is most unlikely
that the pro-Ahaz and anti-Jotham synchronisms could have originated at any time later than
the death of Ahaz and the reforms of Hezekiah in 716t.
17
Mysterious Numbers chapter 10.
when was samaria captured? 587
Kings, sound like the titles of official court records rather than the titles of
records kept by the prophets themselves.
18
The phrase used to describe these
sources, (hdwhy) larcy yklml µymyh yrbd rps, is similar to that used for court
records from the days of David (1 Chr 27:24) as well as the court records of
Persia (Esth 2:23, 6:1, 10:2). The prophets who wrote the Books of Kings, then,
had access to the official court records of Israel and Judah, but they kept
their own records which included a moral evaluation of each king’s reign, as
Thiele maintained. The vacillation regarding “who’s on first” was inherent in
the court records, explaining why one set of synchronisms in Judah favored
Jotham and Hezekiah while another favored Ahaz.
A similar situation held for references to rulers of the northern kingdom.
Some synchronisms recognized Pekah as the legitimate ruler while others
recognized Menahem and Pekahiah. According to Thiele, “While Pekah ruled
in Gilead, Menahem was on the throne in Samaria, and Jotham’s accession
could have been synchronized with him. The reason why Pekah was recog-
nized in the synchronism of Jotham’s accession was probably because of his
strong anti-Assyrian stand, as against the conciliatory attitude of Menahem.
Judah at this time was strongly anti-Assyrian.”
19
It is again the factional-
ism preserved from the official court records that explains the conflict over
who was recognized as legitimate ruler during the Pekah/Menahem rivalry.
Jotham
740t – 735n/735t
Coregent 750n/750t
Deposed 735n/735t, died 732t
To conclude Jotham’s dates, we notice that his sole reign must have begun
when Uzziah died, in 740t. For now, we shall assume that the last year men-
tioned for Jotham, his twentieth, was also the year of his death (732t). This
assumption will be shown to be reasonable in the discussion for Ahaz.
Ahaz
732t – 716t/715n
Coregent 735n/735t
4. Ahaz. The date when Jotham was deposed and Ahaz took the throne
was established above as 735n/735t. Ahaz’s death may be established as
occurring fourteen years before the invasion of Sennacherib in the first half
of 701n (2 Kgs 18:13), that is in 702t + 14 = 716t. This date may be further
restricted to the first half of 716t, because Hezekiah’s reforms started at the
beginning of Nisan 715 (2 Chr 29:3, 17–19), at which time Ahaz is spoken of
as if he were no longer alive (2 Chr 29:19).
20
His sixteen years of sole reign
18
Siegfried Horn came to a similar conclusion. “The compilers of the books of Kings and Chron-
icles used official sources containing chronological data. Except in a few cases (see below Group
I and II) these data were taken over and incorporated into Kings and Chronicles without changes
and without any attempts to harmonize them with each other.” Horn, Hezekiah’s Reign 42.
19
Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 132.
20
McFall, “Translation Guide” 36.
journal of the evangelical theological society588
(2 Kgs 16:2) started in 716t + 16 = 732t. This establishes the fact that 732t
was indeed the year that Jotham died and gives legitimacy to his kingship
during the last four years of his life. By the “documentary hypothesis” we
have advocated above, any record such as 2 Kings 16:2 that recognized these
last four years for Jotham must have come from the annals of the anti-
Assyrian and anti-Ahaz court that prevailed after the death of Ahaz. Ahaz
is given sixteen years in these annals, measuring from the start of his sole
reign, instead of the twenty or twenty-one years that he would be credited
with if the counting started from 736t, when he deposed Jotham. Whether the
alternate starting date of 736t was ever used to measure the years of Ahaz’s
reign will be discussed below, in the section dealing with 2 Kings 17:1.
Hezekiah
716t/715n – 687t
Coregent 729t/728n
5. Hezekiah. Hezekiah’s sole reign began at the death of Ahaz in 716t/
715n. His coregency with Ahaz started in 729t/728n, as was shown in the dis-
cussion of Hoshea. His reign was twenty-nine years long; this does not give
sufficient time if measured from 729t, so it must measure from the start of
his sole reign.
21
His death occurred in 716t - 29 = 687t.
Dates for the eighth-century kings of Judah are shown in Table 2. The
ending date in parentheses for Jotham is the date he was deposed, as dis-
cussed above—it was the date the court recorders under Ahaz considered that
his effective kingship ended.
v. the troublesome passage 2 kings 17:1
For the six kings of Israel and the five kings of Judah in the discussion
above, a complete chronology was developed without making use of a syn-
21
Hezekiah’s age of twenty-five years cannot refer to the time when he became coregent with his
father, because Ahaz would not have been old enough to have a twenty-five-year-old son at that
time. The age of twenty-five for Hezekiah must refer to the start of his sole reign in 716t, as does
the twenty-nine year figure for the length of reign. This means that Hezekiah was twelve years
old in 729t, the year he became coregent. Later, Hezekiah was to choose his own successor and
coregent “at the earliest opportunity . . . when Manasseh was twelve (2 Kings 21:1), when he had
become gadol” (Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 177).
Table 2. Dates for the kings of Judah, Amaziah through Hezekiah
King Began coregency Began sole reign Ended
Amaziah 796n/796t 767n/767t
Uzziah 791t 767n/767t 740t
Jotham 750n/750t 740t (735n/735t) 732t
Ahaz 735n/735t 732t 716t/715n
Hezekiah 729t/728n 716t/715n 687t
when was samaria captured? 589
chronism in 2 Kings 17:1 that relates the reign of Hoshea of Israel to the
twelfth year of Ahaz. Thiele wrote regarding this verse that it erroneously
placed the accession of Hoshea twelve years beyond its proper time,
22
and he
then used it as a key to explain what he regarded as a series of blunders
performed by the final editor of the Books of Kings. It would have been better
if Thiele had accepted it as a text that needed emending because of a copy-
ist’s error, instead of using it as a reason to reject the plainly stated syn-
chronisms between Hezekiah and Hoshea in 2 Kings 18.
A more cautious approach was taken by Siegfried Horn. Horn has been
mentioned above as one of the authors who accepted the Ahaz/Hezekiah co-
regency implied by the synchronisms of 2 Kings 18. But regarding 2 Kings
17:1, Horn wrote that “[o]ne text of my former Group II, 2 Ki 17:1, remains
unsolved as far as the chronological data it contains are concerned . . . the
figure given in 2 Ki 17:1, stating that Hoshea became king in Ahaz’ 12th year,
does not agree with the chronological scheme proposed here, and I have no
better solution at the present time than to suggest that the figure 12 is a
scribal error for three or four.”
23
Later events were to show the wisdom of
Horn’s caution.
In most English translations, 2 Kings 17:1 associates the beginning of the
reign of Hoshea with the twelfth year of Ahaz. The problem with this is that
other verses, as we have developed above, begin the Jotham/Ahaz coregency
in 736t. If 732t/731n, when Hoshea began, was the twelfth year of Ahaz,
then his starting year for a coregency should have been 732t + 11 (acc) = 743t.
Ahaz would then have three starting years: 732t for his sole reign based on
the death of Jotham; 735n/735t based on the beginning of a coregency with
Jotham in the seventeenth of Pekah (2 Kgs 16:1); and this new date, 743t,
twelve years before Hoshea’s first year.
Measuring twelve years back from 732t at least made sense out of the
anomalous synchronism, and so the year 743t was posited as the real begin-
ning of the Jotham/Ahaz coregency and 735n/735t was regarded as another
stage in the coregency when Ahaz took full control. Given the strife between
the pro-Assyrian and anti-Assyrian factions at the time, this solution seemed
reasonable. It was proposed by Kitchen and Mitchell (Ahaz coregent from
744/43 bc, senior partner from 735), and adopted by R. K. Harrison (same
dates and explanation as Kitchen and Mitchell), by Harold Stigers, and by
Eugene Merrill.
24
These authors thus agreed that the first phase of the co-
regency between Ahaz and Hezekiah was to be dated twelve years before
the accession of Hoshea.
Four years after the publication of Siegfried Horn’s article in which he
expressed his perplexity with 2 Kings 17:1, Horn as editor published an
22
Ibid. 137.
23
Horn, Hezekiah’s Reign 51, 52.
24
Kitchen and Mitchell, NBD 220; Harrison, Introduction 734, 736; Stigers, “Interphased
Chronology” 86, 87; Merrill, Kingdom 403. Stigers measured Ahaz’s sixteen years from 736/35 bc
rather than from the death of Jotham in 732t, so he introduced another date, 720/719 bc, to end
those sixteen years, at which time Stigers said he became king “emeritus.”
journal of the evangelical theological society590
article in the AUSS by Edmund Parker which dealt specifically with this
text.
25
Parker’s idea was simple and seemingly audacious: the synchronism
to Ahaz’s twelfth year referred not to the beginning of the reign of Hoshea,
but to its end.
Before investigating the reason for Parker’s claim, let us see how the
numbers come out. We have already established from other texts that the
Jotham/Ahaz coregency began (at least in one sense) in 735n/735t. If we treat
this like any other coregency, then the twelve years should be taken as a
non-accession figure, so that the twelfth year of Ahaz was 736t - 11 (acc) =
725t. Since this has no overlap with the last year of Hoshea, 723n, should we
reject Parker’s interpretation without further investigation?
Recall that, according to our “documentary hypothesis” about the faction-
alism of the time and its influence on the court records, there were two com-
peting ways of reckoning who was the legitimate authority in Judah during
the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The pro-Jotham and pro-Hezekiah
faction synchronized the reign of Hoshea with Jotham (2 Kgs 15:30) and also
with Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:1, 9, 10). On the other hand, the pro-Ahaz court
synchronized the reign of Hoshea with Ahaz (2 Kgs 17:1), and did not rec-
ognize Jotham as regent during the last four years of his life (2 Kgs 15:33;
compare 15:30). For these court recorders of Ahaz, 735n/735t did not mark
the beginning of a coregency—it marked the beginning of a “sole reign,” even
though Jotham was still alive. The year 724t, in which the court of Ahaz
learned of Hoshea’s death, was for them not the thirteenth year of Ahaz, as
it would be by the non-accession reckoning for a coregency, but his twelfth,
by accession reckoning for a sole reign. In short, the same court recorders who
did not recognize Jotham as a legitimate king after 735n/735t also started
counting Ahaz’s years in an accession sense from that time, making his
twelfth year to be 724t, which overlaps Hoshea’s last year in 723n/723t and
again indicates that Hoshea died, and Samaria was destroyed, in the first
half of 723n. (Parker came to the same conclusion that Samaria fell in the
first half of 723n, although he did not enter into any discussion of accession
versus non-accession counting.)
Parker’s argument that 2 Kings 17:1 refers to the end of Hoshea’s reign,
not its beginning, is based on a careful look at the Hebrew text for the verse,
and requires some understanding of the tense system of Hebrew verbs. Let
us consider this last issue first.
The beginning student of NT Greek or modern Russian quickly learns that
these languages have a system of tenses that is more specific or precise than
the system of verbal tenses in English. A consequence of this is that some-
times there is a loss in precision in translating from Greek or Russian into
English. Usually the student has little difficulty in grasping the concept of
a more specific tense system, however much trouble he or she may have in
learning the actual paradigms of the tenses. When it comes to biblical He-
brew, an opposite phenomenon occurs: the Hebrew tense system is far less
specific than we are accustomed to in Indo-European languages. To express
25
Edmund A. Parker, “A Note on the Chronology of 2 Kings 17:1,” AUSS 6/2 (1968) 129–33.
when was samaria captured? 591
action-in-time, the Hebrew verb has basically two modes, perfect and im-
perfect, plus a participial form that can be used to express action in the
present. As a general rule, the perfect tense expresses an action in the past
and the imperfect an action in the future, and this means that the Hebrew
perfect may be translated by any of the English past tenses, with the con-
text determining the appropriate translation. For example, læh… can mean
either “walked,” “had walked,” “was walking,” or even “began to walk.” The
paradigm shift to this lack of specificity is harder to understand for someone
whose native language is an Indo-European tongue than is the shift to a
language which has a more precise tense system, such as Greek or Russian.
With this background, let us consider the Hebrew verb læm:, which is in
the perfect form. The identical form of the verb, in both written appearance
and pronunciation, is commonly translated into English as “reigned” or “began
to reign,” depending on the context. It may also be rendered as “had reigned,”
which is a reasonable translation in places like Genesis 36:31 and Joshua
13:10, 12. Thus the niv of Joshua 13:12 reads as follows: “. . . Og in Bashan,
who had reigned in Ashtoroth and Edrei . . .”
In 2 Kings 17:1 there is only one verb, despite various English transla-
tions that supply a second verb that is not in the Hebrew. Writing out a literal
rendering into English that leaves untranslated the single verb in the sen-
tence, and ignoring any questions of punctuation, we would have, “In the
twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah l æm: Hoshea son of Elah in Samaria over
Israel nine years.” Parker’s contribution was to suggest that læm: here should
be translated “had reigned,” making this a comment referring to the end of
Hoshea’s reign rather than to its beginning. He was followed in this inter-
pretation by Leslie McFall, who had written his doctoral dissertation on the
Hebrew verbal system.
26
We have already observed that this solution is con-
sistent with a beginning of the reign of Ahaz in 736t. It also avoids the prob-
lem of Jotham having a coregency with both Uzziah and Ahaz between 743t
and 740t. Since it is always context that determines whether læm: should be
translated “began to reign,” “reigned,” or “had reigned,” the broader context
here favors “had reigned,” which is entirely allowed by the rules of Hebrew
grammar and the ambiguity of Hebrew tenses.
The solution of Parker and McFall therefore does not require two stages
in the transfer of power from Jotham to Ahaz, as is required by the solution
of Kitchen and Mitchell et al. It is the interpretation that has been adopted
in the present paper (Table 2), but those who are more comfortable with trans-
lating the ambiguous læm: as “began to reign” should not have any problem
with the idea that all this implies is an extra starting date for Ahaz in 743t.
Both viewpoints preserve the coregency (in some sense) of Jotham and Ahaz
from 735n/735t to 732t, and allow the sole reign of Ahaz to begin in 732t and
his death to occur in 716t. This essential agreement should not be obscured
by a difference in opinion on the proper translation of læm: in 2 Kings 17:1.
If a comparison is made among the chronologies of the various authors
cited above who accept the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency and the Pekah/Menahem
26
McFall, “Hezekiah’s Coregency” 398; “Translation Guide” 33.
journal of the evangelical theological society592
rivalry, it will be seen that the divergence on the interpretation of 2 Kings
17:1 represents the only major difference in their regnal dates for the eighth
century bc. This uniformity does not result from a thoughtless copying of
each other’s ideas; it results because the Scriptures provide the necessary
information so that these dates may be derived by anyone who accepts their
testimony.
vi. reasons for precision in chronological expressions
The derivation of starting and ending dates for the various kings discussed
above has given as an example of how precise dates may be derived from the
scriptural data. Following are the reasons for carrying out this kind of care-
ful analysis, seeking always to maximize the precision that can legitimately
be derived from the data.
1. For clarity. The treatment of Athaliah’s reign cited at the beginning
of this paper shows the difficulties and errors that can arise or be hidden
when our language and symbols are not precise.
2. For cross-checking of numbers. The reasoning that established that
Menahem began in Nisan of 752 bc was only possible because the reign
lengths of each of the kings whose reigns affected Menahem’s were written
out in as precise a manner as the data permitted. Writing out the dates pre-
cisely allows us to follow the reasoning. It is also necessary for the kind of
logic that eliminates wrong conjectures—see the discussion above that ruled
out 790t as a possible starting date for Uzziah, in favor of 791t.
3. For vulnerability. If we feel confident that our theories are correct, we
ought to express them in a way that affords maximum vulnerability—that
is, that makes them easiest to disprove if they are not correct. One way to
do this is to provide all the precision to which our theories lead. It then be-
comes easy to disprove the theory if it is wrong—just demonstrate that its
numbers are in error. By way of comparison, in the early part of the twen-
tieth century the theories of quantum mechanics predicted the fine structure
of some hundreds of emission lines from the hydrogen atom with very specific
numbers. These predictions were eminently vulnerable: showing that if any
of the emission lines was missing or not where it was predicted to be would
have meant that there was something wrong with the basic presuppositions
of quantum mechanics.
Vulnerable in this sense does not mean weak. The proper kind of vulner-
ability will produce confidence and strength when the idea being tested is
true. Thus Paul declares Christianity to be “vulnerable” by his great state-
ment that “if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith
is also vain” (1 Cor 15:14, kjv). Christianity can be disproved by disproving
the resurrection of Christ. The vulnerability of this doctrine is really its
strength—it should be easy to disprove it if it is not true. But the validity of
the case for the bodily resurrection of Christ is shown not only by the failure
of all attempts to explain away the historicity of the event, but by the trans-
One Line Long
when was samaria captured? 593
formed lives of many who set out to disprove this central doctrine of Chris-
tianity but instead became convinced that it was true. The skeptic should
beware of approaching the “vulnerable” (or falsifiable) doctrine of Christ’s res-
urrection with an open mind lest he, like many before him, turn into a flam-
ing evangelist for the truth.
4. For confidence in our chronological scheme. The quantum mechanical
model of the hydrogen atom, mentioned above, led to predictions for the emis-
sion spectrum that were verified to the finest detail by the most sensitive spec-
trometers available. Thus the “vulnerability” of these predictions, and their
subsequent verification, produced great confidence in quantum mechanics as
an explanation of physical reality. Similarly, if our chronological scheme is
as precise as we can reasonably make it, and if the dates it gives are both
internally consistent and consistent with well-established external dates, then
we have much more confidence that our theories are correct than if we had
given only a general range of dates. An example of the usefulness of such
precision was Thiele’s conclusion that according to his chronology, the Battle
of Qarqar must have been fought in 853 bc and not 854 bc, a conclusion in
which he was vindicated and which greatly strengthened his (and others’)
confidence in his chronological ideas.
5. For using the biblical chronology to settle extra-biblical dates. Ken-
neth Strand warns against the misconception that Thiele, in order to derive
his chronological system, started with extra-biblical dates from Assyria and
elsewhere and then attempted by trial-and-error to fit the chronological ref-
erences in Scripture to these external dates.
27
Thiele’s actual procedure was
quite different: first he tried to establish the methods of dating used in the
Scriptures, and from this he determined how the scriptural reign-lengths fit
together among themselves. According to Thiele, “Only when my arrangement
was completed would I insert dates that would give me information concern-
ing the overall passage of time.”
28
Feeling confident that he had constructed
a viable chronology based on the Hebrew text, Thiele discovered that his
chronology required that the Battle of Qarqar was fought in 853 bc, as men-
tioned above. Also, the Fall of Samaria was required to take place under Shal-
maneser V and not under Sargon II, as was believed by most Assyriologists.
The fact that Thiele’s dates for these events are now generally accepted shows
the respect that his work has gained among historians. More than that, it
has shown that his figures were not artificial and contrived (as those who
do not understand his methods have maintained), but represented a well-
disciplined approach to determining the principles used by the biblical writers
and then developing a chronology based on those principles.
Thiele, then, concentrated on developing the internal consistency of his
chronological system, and only after it was developed were checks made
against extra-biblical data. Strand mentions three other extra-biblical events
27
Kenneth A. Strand, “Thiele’s Biblical Chronology As a Corrective for Extrabiblical Dates,”
AUSS 34/2 (1996) 295–317.
28
Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 122.
journal of the evangelical theological society594
for which Thiele’s chronology provided dates that became widely accepted
by historians: Nebuchadnezzar’s first attack on Jerusalem in 605 bc, Jehoi-
achin’s captivity in 597 bc, and the destruction of Jerusalem, which Thiele
(incorrectly) dated to 586 bc.
29
Once a biblical chronology is established so that we may have confidence
in it, and we have done a credible enough job so that historians from outside
the biblical field have confidence in it, then that biblical chronology can be
used to establish dates in the histories of the surrounding kingdoms, or it
can be used to decide between alternate dates when there is disagreement
among scholars in the field of Near Eastern antiquities. This is all the more
reason to have dates that are precise and a chronology that can be demon-
strated to be internally consistent.
vii. conclusion
(1) Using precise dates and exact formulas sometimes provides insights
that would otherwise be missed. An example is the observation that if we
accept Parker’s and McFall’s interpretation of 2 Kings 17:1, then the twelve
years for Ahaz in that verse must have been measured in an accession sense,
as would be done by the court recorders in the days of Ahaz who did not rec-
ognize Jotham as coregent after 736t. This, in turn, reinforces the theory
that there were two different viewpoints represented in the synchronisms of
2 Kings 15–18, and these viewpoints were inherent in the original court
records and were preserved by the final editor of Kings. Another example of
the value of precision is the restricting of the date for the fall of Samaria to
the first half of 723n.
(2) The factionalism of the time explains why one set of records empha-
sizes Ahaz and minimizes Jotham and Hezekiah in synchronisms to Israel,
while another set does just the opposite. The pro-Assyrian faction was also
more likely to recognize Menahem and Pekahiah in Samaria, while the other
faction was more likely to recognize their anti-Assyrian rival, Pekah. These
insights lend credibility to the idea that the figure of twenty years for Pekah
is not an error or a later false claim on Pekah’s part, but represents a legiti-
mate rivalry that was recognized by one of the record-keeping factions. This
difference in viewpoint was not glossed over by any later harmonizing edi-
tor. Indeed, the clash of opinions represented by these various texts argues
in favor of their derivation from the official court records of the time, rather
than their being the erroneous interpolations of a later redactor.
(3) Perhaps the most important contribution of the present paper is in
showing that there is a general agreement about the chronology of Judah
29
Strand, “Corrective” 310–13. See my “Jerusalem” article for the correct date of 587 bc for
the destruction of Jerusalem. Although the primary reason for Thiele’s wrong date probably was
his failure to consider non-accession reckoning for Zedekiah, he would have seen that the 586
date could not possibly be maintained if he had been more accurate and explicit in his treatment
of Ezekiel 40:1. The only date that this text allows when precision is used is 587 bc. This affords
another example of the need for explicit, precise formulas in the development of chronologies for
a culture that uses a calendar system different from our own.
when was samaria captured? 595
and Israel for the eighth century bc among those scholars who recognize the
Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency and the Menahem/Pekah rivalry, and who have
accepted fully the received text in building their chronologies. The small dif-
ferences in their dates, it is suggested, can usually be resolved by adopting
more precise methods of expressing time units and synchronisms. It is further
suggested that most of these chronologies are converging to the figures rep-
resented in Tables 1 and 2. Indeed, those for Table 1 have been stable for
over half a century.
30
There has been no such convergence of opinion among
scholars who begin their studies with presuppositions that the scriptural
data is not allowed to be correct, and who then declare that the Scripture is
in error and needs emending to make it consistent with their scheme.
31
Along with the lack of agreement among these artificial schemes, it should
be noted that none of them has had the success that Thiele’s chronology for
Israel has had in correcting erroneous dates in the history of Assyria.
(4) All the tedious chronology arithmetic of the present paper, plus the
necessary consideration of various viewpoints, should not obscure one essen-
tial fact: that it is possible to construct a chronology of the nations of Judah
and Israel in the eighth century bc which is not in irreconcilable conflict with
any of the scores of scriptural texts that refer to this period. More than that,
these texts are given in such a way that the dates for each king—the begin-
ning date of his coregency (if any), the beginning date for his sole reign, and
the date of his death—may be determined to within six months in most cases,
and in some cases to the actual month. There is an ambiguity in many of the
texts, to be sure; it is only by painstaking work that we can determine whether
a given synchronism, for instance, refers to the start of a sole reign or a co-
regency. But all the information is there that allows us to resolve the ambi-
guities, as long as we have the patience to persevere and we use a proper
methodology that extracts all the precision that is inherent in these “mys-
terious numbers.” It is indeed amazing that if we do not resort to the short-cut
of correcting the relevant texts to fit our schemes, then a precise chronology
for the kings of Judah and Israel can be constructed without the necessity
of declaring that any of the underlying texts are in error or that they repre-
sent a statement that cannot be reconciled with the history of the time.
30
Thiele’s table of dates for the kings of Israel in his third edition (1983) shows no change from
the same table published in his first edition (1951). These are dates for which Thiele accepted all
the biblical synchronisms and reign lengths as authentic, and fifty years of examination have not
required that his dates for the northern kingdom need changing except by making them slightly
more precise, as was demonstrated for Hoshea in this article, or by the contention that Thiele was
not justified in restricting the start of the reign of Jeroboam I to the second half of 931n, as was
shown in my “Solomon” article.
31
Strand (“Corrective” 317) displays a table of eight scholars who published their chronologies
before Thiele published his. All these eight altered the biblical data to fit their schemes. Summariz-
ing what the table shows, Strand wrote, “. . . there is no basic agreement among the eight scholars
themselves . . . not even one of them has a preponderance of correct information.” If the disagree-
ments are less among more recent scholars who hold to the various radical documentary hypotheses,
it is largely because the successes of Thiele and those who followed him have greatly restrained
the tendency to declare the scriptural texts in error.
