Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: The Joy(s) of Biblical Chronology (Part II)

TITLE: Patterns and Coherency in Biblical Dates

More on some of the little-known delights of Scripture.

For part I, see the link below. Otherwise, please scroll down.

https://twitter.com/JamesBejon/status/1258900687460728833

In the present series of threads, I want to (try to) illustrate the coherency of the Bible’s chronological details.

In particular, I want to consider the Bible’s year-stamps, i.e., references to ‘the Xth year of Y’, where Y denotes some kind of era.

Last time round, we covered the antediluvians, Egyptian-born Israelites, and Judges,

which isn’t bad progress for a few tweets.

Here, we’ll pick up the story with the era of the Kings.

The regnal figures in the book of Kings have been the subject of much study over the years, and no little puzzlement.

Initially, they’re relatively straightforward to follow.

But the reigns of Judah and Israel’s kings soon (appear to) drift out of sync with one another;

that is to say, the synchronisms inherent in the text soon become unsynchronisable (Thiele 1983:33–42).

The reason is twofold.

First, due to co-regencies in the reign of Israel’s kings (Steinmann 2011:127–1701)—a phenomenon well-attested in other kingdoms.

And, second, due to the disintegration of Israel’s administration.

In the aftermath of Solomon’s reign, Israel splinters into two kingdoms, each with its own centre of worship and administration.

The calendar established in Solomon’s day (based on Tishri-years and grounded in Solomon’s accession-date) hence becomes the calendar of Judah alone, and, from then on, each kingdom reckons time in its own way (McFall 1992).

A (potentially) pivotal moment/event in the dissolution of Israel’s calendar is recorded in 1 Kings 12.

Jeroboam is said ‘to invent a month independently’ (חדש אשר בדא מלבד) and to institute a northern kingdom feast ‘on the 15th day of the 8th month’,

which is said to be ‘like the feast in Judah’ (1 Kgs. 12.32–33).

Is the similarity between Jeroboam’s feast and the feast of Tabernacles a coincidence?

It doesn’t seem so.

Rather, the text of 1 Kings 12.32–33 seems to describe a paganised version of the feast of Tabernacles viewed from the perspective of a calendar which is a month ahead of it—an idea we’ll now consider in more detail.

Suppose Jeroboam chose to intercalate independently of Judah. That is to say, suppose Jeroboam chose to insert an extra month into the northern kingdom’s calendar, as newly-liberated kingdoms frequently do. (Why? Because they can.)

And suppose Jeroboam then observed the feast of Tabernacles in Bethel (rather than in Jerusalem).

From the perspective of Judah’s calendar, Jeroboam’s feast would have taken place in the 8th month (rather than the 7th month),

and could hence explain what we read in 1 Kgs. 12.

That is to say, the text of 1 Kgs. 12 could simply reflect the southern kingdom’s perception of the (newly-liberated) northern kingdom’s feast of Tabernacles.

Either way, at some point in Jeroboam’s reign, the northern and southern kingdoms’ calendars uncouple.

And, soon afterwards, our author’s synchronisms fail,

since, when our author equates the Xth year of the king of Judah with the Yth year of the king of Israel, his date-stamps are grounded in two different calendars (and methods of year-count).

Once that principle has been recognised, however, what seem to be fundamentally incoherent histories snap into alignment,

and the date-stamps preserved in the book of Kings can be shown to exhibit coherent patterns.

The southern kingdom turns out to consistently reckon in Tishri years, while the northern kingdom reckons in Nisan years (Young 2005:245–246).

To mark the establishment of his dynasty, Jeroboam institutes a non-accessional calendar,

which is characteristic of the system in Egypt (Kitchen 2001), where he holes out before his rise to power (1 Kgs. 11.40ff., 12.2).

(Egypt may even have sponsored Jeroboam’s reign in some way: 1 Kgs. 14.25.)

One of the date-stamps employed in Asa’s reign is predicated on a base-date of the inauguration of the southern kingdom (Thiele 1983:87ff.).

The southern kingdom includes co-regency figures in its year-counts, while the northern kingdom never does (Young 2005).

And the co-regencies implicit in the southern kingdom’s date-stamps can generally be shown to be consistent with its narrative. (For details, cp. Thiele and Young.)

For instance, towards the end of his life, Asa instates Jehoshaphat as his co-regent, which he presumably does in light of his (fatal) illness (1 Kgs. 15, 2 Chr. 16).

Jehosophat does the same for Jehoram, presumably in light of the perilous battle he is about to enter (in which he does almost die: 1 Kgs. 22).

Uzziah/Azariah is instated as a co-regent long before Amaziah (his father) dies, which may have happened when Amaziah was absent from his kingdom (2 Kgs. 14, 2 Chr. 25.1–26.1).

Uzziah instates Jotham as his co-regent long before his death, presumably because he is afflicted with leprosy and forced to live in isolation (2 Kgs. 15a).

And Jotham may have instated Ahaz as his co-regent as Rezin and Pekah began to close in on him (2 Kgs. 15b w. 16a).

(Comparably good reasons for the instatement of a co-regent can’t be found in the case of most other kings’ reigns.)

At the same time, the way in which certain kings’ reigns interlock reveals informative patterns.

Consider, for instance, how Ahab and Jehoshaphat begin to name their heirs after one another (possibly by the assignment of throne names) after their families intermarry:

As such, the date-stamps in the book of Kings exhibit a coherent pattern,

and are consistent with the details and tenor of the narrative in which they are found.

THE POST-EXILIC ERA

Finally, then, we come to the post-exilic era.

The post-exilic era is part of ‘the times of the Gentiles’.

Consequently, Scripture reckons years either by reference to the reign of Gentile kings or by reference to the dates of Israel’s exile and return.

We read of the 25th year of the exile (Ezek. 40), the 1st year of Cyrus (2 Chr. 36.22, Ezra 1.1), the 2nd year of Israel’s return (Ezra 3.8), the 2nd year of Darius (Zech. 1.1), the 7th year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7.8), and so on.

And Luke continues the same system in the NT, since he dates his narrative not by reference to Herod’s reign, but by reference to Caesar’s (Luke 3.1).

Meanwhile, the Canaanite month names mentioned prior to the exile (‘Abib’ in Exod. 13.4, and ‘Ziv’ and ‘Bul’ in 1 Kgs. 6.1, 38) are replaced by Mesopotamian month names (‘Nisan’, ‘Adar’, etc.),

as one would expect given Mesopotamia’s influence on Israel’s culture.

Nevertheless, dates can sometimes be seen to retain a Jewish character.

Nehemiah, for instance, refers to ‘Nisan in the 20th year of Artaxerxes’ (Neh. 2.1), which appears to postdate Kislev of the same year (1.1).

If so, Nehemiah must have date-stamped his memoirs in accord with Tishri-year calculations, per the Judahite rather than the Mesopotamian system.

Either way, the date-stamps employed in post-exilic literature are consistent with the existence of a Jewish nation under Gentile rule.

It may also be possible to detect a sequence of Sabbatical years in the Bible’s post-exilic literature,

since Sabbatical-year-related activities seem to take place at seven-yearly intervals.

On the 21st day of the 7th month (i.e., at the end of the feast of Tabernacles), Haggai receives a prophetic word.

And two months later Haggai asks Israel if their seed is still in their barns (Hagg. 2), which one might not expect it to be outside of a Sabbatical year (though the situation and relevant syntax is complex).

In the 5th month of the year, Ezra sets out from Babylon in order to teach the word of God in Jerusalem,

in which case he would probably have arrived in Jerusalem in the 6th month (in time for a 7th month assembly).

And, in Nehemiah’s day, Ezra reads the law at a public assembly in the 7th month (Neh. 8.2 w. 2.1, 6.15, 13.6), per the command of Deut. 31.10ff.

These dates can plausibly be connected by a Sabbatical cycle (shown below),

which happens to synchronise with the post-exilic Sabbatical cycle reconstructed by Zuckermann on the basis of texts such as Maccabees, Josephus, and the Talmud (Zuckermann 1857).

That Haggai and Ezra reckoned in the manner I have suggested above cannot be proven.

Nevertheless, that the activities of Hagg. 2, Ezra 7, and Neh. 8 can, potentially, be connected together by an independently attested Sabbatical cycle seems noteworthy.

A BRIEF ASSESSMENT

In sum, then, the ‘year-stamps’ inherent in the text of Scripture form a coherent and apparently authentic pattern.

We do not find, for instance, accurate or unified measurements of time in periods where Israel’s society lacked any centre administration (e.g., in the era of the Judges),

nor do we find vague measurements of time where we would expect to find precise ones (e.g., in the books of Kings and Chronicles, which are replete with specific regnal figures),

and nor do we find later calendrical conventions (such as Babylonian month names) imported back into earlier texts.

Meanwhile, at times of transition (such as the time of the exodus), we find traces of multiple calendrical systems.

In the aftermath of major events (such as the exodus and the division of the kingdom), we find those events employed as the base-dates of eras.

And we find messiness/complexity where we would expect to find it (e.g., in the days of the divided kingdom).

THE END (FOR NOW)