Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018) 47

By Rodger C. Young

In 1650 and 1654 James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh in

Ireland, published the two parts of his history of the world,

extending from Creation until the time of the Roman emperor

Vespasian. Both parts were in Latin. An English translation

was made available in 1658, two years after Ussher’s death.

Bishop William Lloyd put Ussher’s chronology, with some of

his own modifications, in the margins of a 1701 edition of the

which he placed in 4004 BC, down to the Hebrew kingdom

period. At that point we shall leave the good archbishop and his

traveling companions as they journey farther on to the time of

the end of the Jewish commonwealth at the hand of the Romans.

Rapid progress can be made on the road from Adam to the

Flood. Using the genealogical list in Genesis 5 as it appears in

the Hebrew (Masoretic) text as his guide, Ussher calculated

the date of the Flood as AM (Anno Mundi: year of the world)

Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Did Terah’s wife have triplets, or

did he have three wives who gave birth to three individuals in

one year? How does this fit with Stephen’s statement in Acts

7:4 that Abram, at age 75 (Gn 12:4) left Haran after the death

of his father (at age 205), making Terah 130 years old when

Abram was born? Ussher wisely decided that Abram, although

named first, was not the first of the three sons to be born,

thereby placing Abram’s birth in Terah’s 130th year, AM 2008.

After this there are good highway markers down to the entry

of Jacob into Egypt. Isaac was born when Abram was 100,

Jacob’s family entered Egypt. In Galatians 3:16–17, however,

Paul says that the giving of the Law, which happened in the

year of the Exodus, was 430 years after the promise to

Abraham, or possibly after the confirmation of the promise. If

the starting point of the 430 years is the original promise to

Abraham, this reduces the time Israel spent in Egypt to 215

years (the Short Sojourn). If the 430 years measure from the

giving of the Law back to when the promise was previously

to follow Ussher on the fork he took. He decided on the Short

Sojourn and the Exodus in AM 2513. Ussher gives the BC

date for the Exodus as 1491 BC, but it must be remembered

that his BC dates are measured upward from the chronology of

the divided kingdom, while his AM dates are measured

downward from Creation. If Ussher’s dates for the kingdom

period need adjustment, then his BC dates for the Exodus and

all prior periods will also need adjustment.

year of King Solomon. For Israel, the departure from Egypt

started a new era in their history. Events were dated from this

event in Exodus 16:2, 19:1, Numbers 1:1, 9:1, 10:11, 33:38,

Deuteronomy 1:3, and finally 1 Kings 6:1. When 1 Kings 6:1 relates

that it was the 480th year of the “going-out” (Exodus), it means that

479 years passed from the departure from Egypt to the beginning

of construction on Solomon’s Temple. This date, spring of 967

BC as derived from the modern biblical-based chronology, is in

quite exact agreement with the date that archival records of Tyre

gave for that island city sending material to Solomon for

48 Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018)

continuing the yearly calendar of the Exodus era, the court

recorders of Judah and Israel measured time by the reigns of

their kings. Their records, preserved in the books of Kings and

2 Chronicles, provide the length of reign for each king, along

with a cross-synchronization to the year of reign of the

monarch in the rival kingdom. Consequently we enter not just

a forest, but a thicket of numbers for the period of the divided

four of the northern kings with their rival, Asa of Judah. In 1

Kings 15:25, Nadab of Israel is said to have begun his reign in the

second year of Asa. He reigned for two years, and was killed by

Baasha in year three (not year four) of Asa (1 Kgs 15:28).

Baasha’s 24-year reign ended when he was succeeded by his

son Elah in year 26 (not year 27 = 3 + 24) of Asa (1 Kgs 15:33, 16:8).

To continue the confusion, Elah, after a reign of two years, was

killed by Zimri in Asa’s 27th year (1 Kgs 16:10), and Zimri died

after a reign of seven days, still in year 27 of Asa (1 Kgs 16:15).

These interesting data present a choice to the interpreter.

once for the king who died in that year. This may sound

reasonable, but it introduces the problem that when reign

lengths are added to give a span of time, one year must be

subtracted from the total for each king to give the correct sum.

In contrast, a more reasonable method for anyone adding

together reign lengths is to reckon the first partial year as the

king’s “accession year” and not add it into the total of years. In

modern terms, it could be called “year zero.” With this

method, years of several kings can be added together without

having to subtract a year all along the line to get a correct total.

studies of biblical chronology published in the 1920s.

2

It was

independently discovered by Edwin Thiele, who was not

aware of Coucke’s work when he first published his

chronology of the kingdom period in 1944.

3

and Thiele’s conclusion was shown when Thiele listed the

lengths of reigns of the first seven kings of Israel down to the

death of Ahab. If it was assumed that both kingdoms were

using accession reckoning, the sum of years for Israel came

Such a success would have given Thiele or anyone else

encouragement to continue their investigation. Before going

on, however, an important observation should be made:

Jeroboam, first ruler over the northern ten tribes, is shown to

be an innovator. He had changed from the Judean system by

reckoning his reign according to the non-accession method

used in Egypt, where he had fled for refuge after fleeing from

be taken into account, instead of assuming that chronological

methods were necessarily the same in both kingdoms. A

further novelty was his starting the regnal year in Nisan

instead of in Tishri as in the southern kingdom. This six-month

offset explains what would otherwise be minor mismatches in

synchronizing links between the two kingdoms. Since the

month in which the year began is a controversial subject, the

Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018) 49

construct the chronology of the kingdom period down to its

end at the hand of the Babylonians. It is important to see how

he did this. He avoided the temptation to start with accepted

dates in Assyrian or Babylonian history and then derive a

biblical chronology from those dates. Instead, he began with

the biblical data and sought to determine if they fit into a

pattern that was harmonious, without assigning the pattern to

cause it to conform to preconceived ideas of what it ought

to be at those points. . . . The aim was to produce a system,

if possible, in which the reigns of the kings were arranged in

harmony with the data on both the synchronisms and the

lengths of reign. Then, on the completion of such a pattern,

I meant to test the results by a comparison with the

established dates of contemporary history.

All biblical chronologies must tie into a fixed point in order

to establish absolute (BC) dates. Those of Ussher and Thiele

are no exceptions. Thiele chose the Battle of Qarqar, at which

Ahab died shortly after the Battle of Qarqar.

At the time Thiele began his investigations, the majority of

Assyriologists accepted 854 BC as the date of the Battle of

Qarqar. When Thiele used this date for the battle and Ahab’s

subsequent death at Ramoth-Gilead in the same year, he found

that the chronology he had derived from biblical reign lengths

and synchronisms did not match the important synchronism

between Hezekiah’s 14th year and the invasion of

Sennacherib, which was quite firmly fixed by Assyrian data as

occurring in 701 BC. Many would, at that point, say that the

853, not 854. After a study of various copies of the Assyrian

Eponym Canon from which this date was derived, as well as

the Khorsabad King List that had recently been published, he

established the shorter chronology as the correct one, and

published the revised Assyrian Eponym Canon—the very

backbone of Assyrian chronology—in all three editions

revision of the Assyrian Eponym Canon is now accepted by

change explained by Strand is that Thiele’s biblical

chronology required that Samaria and its king Hoshea fell to

the Assyrians in 723 BC. Strand summarized the situation that

confronted Thiele as follows:

When Thiele entered into his chronological chart the date

for the fall of Samaria and the dethronement of Hoshea, the

toward the end of December 722, was the monarch who

defeated Hoshea and brought the northern Hebrew nation to

its end. . . . And once more he [Thiele] turned his attention

to the pertinent Assyrian data, noting also that at least one

prominent Assyriologist, Albert T. Olmstead, had already

adopted 723 as the correct date.

period. Having established the pattern, he then tried to match it

against certain accepted dates in Assyrian history, only to find

that there were small discrepancies with dates accepted by

most Assyriologists. Further research showed it was the

commonly accepted Assyrian dates, not the biblical data, that

needed adjustment. The majority of Assyriologists have now

accepted corrections that were originally derived from Thiele’s

careful study of the biblical data. Egyptologists use Thiele’s

dates for Rehoboam, son of Solomon, along with the

synchronism of 2 Chronicles 12:2, to refine the chronologies of

50 Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018)

when, in 1958, Hayim Tadmor published a study of Sargon’s

annalistic records that showed that he did not engage in any

military activity in the west (i.e. toward Israel) until 720 BC.

What needs to be recognized is that Thiele was correcting

Assyrian dates with eminent scholarship that has been

recognized as such by the Assyrian academy, and these

corrections were based on the biblical data.

tributary kings, including Menahem, just before an entry

relating events in the monarch’s ninth year, 737 BC. The

assumption was made that the tributes were all given in the

preceding year. But this would not necessarily follow if the list

was a summary list, such as were common in the ancient Near

East. Thiele, still confident in his chronology based on the

Bible, maintained that the list of tribute payers must be a

and professor at the Grootseminarie Brugge (Grand Séminaire

that the kingdom divided in the year beginning in Nisan of 931

BC, in exact agreement with Thiele’s date, although Coucke’s

method of determining the date was radically different from

Thiele’s. Coucke’s years for Solomon, one year earlier than

Thiele’s, have been verified by their agreement with the Jubilee

and Sabbatical cycles.

Babylonians, summer of 587 BC, is in agreement with all the

biblical texts involved,

BC) and Ussher (588 BC).

Tiglath-Pileser III received tribute from Menahem of Israel in 738

BC, it must have seemed very bold, even foolhardy, for Edwin

Thiele to claim that this date could not be correct because it did

not agree with the biblical data. Thiele had such confidence in

the historical accuracy of the Bible’s numbers for the kingdom

period that he concluded that the Assyrian tribute list from which

Assyriologists drew their conclusion about the tribute must be a

summary list, rather than a year-by-year account. The

publication of the text of the Iran Stela, eight years after Thiele’s

Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018) 51

summary list, so that Menahem’s tribute was made before his

death in 742/41 BC. Thiele’s position was vindicated with the

publication of the Iran Stela of Tiglath-Pileser in 1994, eight

dated earlier than 738 came from the mention of tribute from

Tuba’il (=Ithobaal II) of Tyre. Hayim Tadmor argued that

Tuba’il’s successor was on the throne of Tyre in 738 BC, implying

that the tribute from Tyre, and probably from Menahem also, was

earlier than 738

against the accepted view of most Assyriologists, and when

new evidence appeared, it vindicated Thiele.

The research of Thiele has been dealt with at some length

because it presents a challenge to the chronology of Archbishop

Ussher. The chief modern proponents of the Ussherian

slightly Ussher’s chronology. Since Ussher’s dates increasingly

diverge from those of Thiele for the period just preceding the

fall of Samaria and earlier, it was incumbent on Ussher’s

modern advocates to address Thiele’s scholarship. How they did

this is very unfortunate, as shown in the following quotes.

First, from Floyd Nolen Jones:

And, from Larry Pierce:

It is almost incredible that such statements could be made in

light of the background to Thiele’s work that was documented

the basic principles that guided him. His error with respect to

Hezekiah, however, can never justify the quotes just cited in

misguided attempts to justify the Ussherian system. Is it too

much to ask for a public recantation of these statements so

they will no longer mislead those who have not read Thiele?

Menahem are 772 to 761; Jones varies only slightly, 772 to

762. These dates are inconsistent with Menahem giving

tribute to Tiglath-Pileser, although the tribute is mentioned

both in the Bible (2 Kgs 15:19) and in Assyrian inscriptions.

How do Ussher’s defenders explain the contradiction?

Jones maintains that the “Pul” who received tribute from

Menahem in 2 Kings 15:19 was not Tiglath-Pileser, but

that, because the annals ascribed to Tiglath-Pileser were

found in a jumbled state, the inscription mentioning

Menahem’s tribute may have come from Asshur-Dan III. He

writes: “Thus, there is no Assyrian historical text which says

or even infers that Tiglath-pileser collected tribute from

Menahem of Israel, although almost all scholarly sources

proclaim that he so did.”

24

52 Bible and Spade 31.2 (2018)

The falseness of Jones’s statement has already been

established: the Iran Stela, which contains information similar

to the annals found at Tiglath-Pileser’s palace in Calah, names

Jones devotes considerable effort to discredit any and all of

the Assyrian data from the time of Tiglath-Pileser and earlier.

He disparages the Assyrian Eponym Canon and its year-by-

year account. His tirade against all Assyrian data, pp. 145–160

of Chronology of the OT, should be compared with Thiele’s

reasoned and well-documented discussion of the multiple

sources that corroborate the accuracy of the Assyrian Eponym

Canon in the period of most interest for verifying or

contradicting Ussher’s chronology, i.e. the eighth and ninth

centuries BC.

The tribute of Menahem to Tiglath-Pileser

attempts to denigrate any Assyrian data that contradict

Ussher’s chronology, such as the presence of Ahab as a foe of

Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar and the tribute from

Jehu in Shalmaneser’s 18th year, as recorded on the Black

Obelisk. Ussher’s dates for Ahab, 918 to 897 BC, are too

early for the accepted dates for Shalmaneser, 859 to 824 BC,

so Ussher’s advocates cast doubt on both the legitimacy of

these contacts and the conventional dates for Shalmaneser.

endeavor, it will be shown even if all the Assyrian data were

ignored, Ussher’s chronology of the eighth and ninth

centuries BC requires an interpretation of certain biblical

texts that cannot be sustained.

Before those texts are examined, some general comments

on Ussher’s method are in order. Ussher was not hostile to

“secular” data. His Annals has more material taken from

original language, and he endeavored to make this

information available to the English-speaking world, much

as Rollin did for the French-speaking world. The biblical

history was important to him, of course, and he fully

included the Bible’s history as part of his writing. But as

suggested by the page count above, he was interested in far

more history than was contained in the sacred record.

For a chronology of world history, the Bible offers a

framework that extends back to the beginning, whereas most

Greek and Latin authors could only extend their chronologies

unavailable to Ussher. For the early periods before Herodotus

and other Greek historians, he therefore quite naturally used the

Bible to construct a chronology for those times. In this, he was

following in the footsteps of Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. AD 260

–340) and Julius Africanus (ca. AD 160–240), who also used

the Bible’s chronological data to give a framework for their

histories of the world. All three of these Christian historians

extensively used material from “pagan” (i.e. non-Christian and

non-Jewish) writers in their histories.

Would Ussher have used findings from ancient Assyrian

Ussher’s minor problems gets somewhat technical, that section

can be skipped over by anyone who is not interested in the fine

details of how ancient recorders measured the years of their

kings. The major problems can be understood without reference

to these fine details. They will be discussed in the section

labeled “Ussher’s Gaps.”

determined, at the first new moon after the spring equinox. The

Talmud, and the Mishnah upon which it is based, were

compiled several hundred years after the last native king had

ruled in Judah. Ussher acknowledged that there was a tradition

of an older year that began in the lunar month Tishri that

started after the fall equinox and which Josephus said was used

for affairs other than the observance of the religious festivals