Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: The Joy of Biblical Chronology (Part III)

TITLE: Patterns & Coherency in Biblical Time-Stamps

Next up in our ‘Joy of Chronology’ series, then, the Jubilee cycle.

The chart below conveys the basic point.

For those with questions, please scroll down.

The Biblical record of Israel’s stay in Canaan can be shown to be predicated on a regular Sabbatico-Jubilee cycle.

In order to establish its course, the first thing we need to do is establish the duration of Israel’s (initial) stay in Canaan,

which is where the fun starts as we have to delve into the details of the matter.

Happily, a large chunk of our work has already been done for us,

since the author of 1 Kings 6.1 assigns the construction of the Temple to the 480th year of the exodus.

We simply, therefore, need to establish the length of the interval between Solomon’s rise and Jerusalem’s fall.

To do that, however, we can’t simply total up all the reigns recorded in Kings and Chronicles (due to the existence of co-regencies), as we’ve seen.

But, thankfully, the dates of Solomon’s rise and of Jerusalem’s fall can be established in other ways.

Specifically, the start of Solomon’s reign (i.e., Solomon’s 1st year as it is reckoned in Kings and Chronicles) can be dated to the year 971t/970t,

where the letter ‘t’ denotes a Tishri-to-Tishri year, i.e., a fall-to-fall year (or, for English speakers, ‘autumn-to-autumn’).

Meanwhile, the fall of Jerusalem can be dated to July 587 BC (Young 2004).

Granted these two dates, three derivative claims can be inferred.

First, the exodus took place between 479 and 480 years prior to the 2nd month of Solomon’s 4th year—i.e., April/May of 968t/967t BC—, which yields a date for the exodus of Nisan 1446 BC.

Second, by extension, Israel entered Canaan in Nisan 1406 BC (i.e., 1446 BC + 40 years),

at which point they observed their 40th Passover and began to eat the produce of Canaan, i.e., crops they hadn’t sown (Josh. 5, 24.13).

As such, 1406t/1405t BC notionally became (we may assume) the first year of a Sabbatico-Jubilee cycle.

Or, to put the point another way, 1407t/1406t notionally became a Jubilee year.

Third, by further implication, the last pre-exilic Jubilee cycle ran from 623t/622t to 574t/573t, where 623t/622t = 1407t BC + (16 x 49).

Note: That the Jubilee cycle began as soon as Israel entered Canaan is consistent with Moses’s command (Lev. 25.2ff.) as well as with (certain statements in) the Seder Olam.

And, contra the claims of some commentators, the Jubilee needn’t be seen as a later Priestly concept.

One-off Jubilee-esque years in which slaves are released and debts annulled are known to have been proclaimed in various ANE cities since the 3rd mill. BC (Bergsma 2007:19–29).

Recurrent Jubilee-esque years are known to have been observed in Egypt since the time of the Old Kingdom (Hornung 1991), though their periodicity remains unclear.

And the text of Lev. 25 appears to contain a number of archaic terms.

Examples include מוך = ‘to be(come) poor’ and לצְמִיתֻת = ‘permanently’,

neither of which occur outside of Lev. 25 in Scripture, yet have cognates in 13th cent. Ugaritic texts.

Particularly instructive is the stock Ugaritic clause «ṣamid adi dariti» = ‘lié pour toujours’,

which occurs in numerous legal texts and exactly parallels the Hebrew לצמיתֻת … לדֹרֹתיו (Lev. 25.30) (so Rabinowitz 1958).

(«ṢMD» may be a local term, since it is not attested with the sense ‘to bind’ in Mesopotamian legal texts: Van Soldt 2010:95.)

The term ‘Jubilee’ (יובל) is also worthy of note, since it is not explained in the text of Lev. 25 (or elsewhere), and its etymology hardly speaks for itself. As such, its use in Lev. 25 suggests it is a term which the text’s readers are already familiar with.

Let us return, then, to our calculation.

We have established three dates: dates for the start of the Jubilee cycle, the rise of Solomon, and the fall of Jerusalem.

These three dates are supported by at least three independent lines of evidence.

First, the chronological data contained in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

As Thiele et al. have shown (cp. above), a consistent and continuous Judahite king list can be constructed from the data contained in Kings and Chronicles,

which runs from Solomon’s 1st year through to the year of Jerusalem’s fall.

Second, the chronological data contained in the book of Judges.

Given the data contained in the book of Judges, a plausible history of Israel’s early years in Canaan can be reconstructed,

which runs from Joshua’s division of the land of Canaan through to the end of Abdon’s judgeship in Ephraim (in c. 1062 BC), at which point Samuel takes over the reins (to be demonstrated later).

Third, the chronological data contained in Ezekiel, which we’ll now consider in some detail.

Ezekiel’s final vision is dated to ‘the 25th year of the exile’, which places it in the year 574t/573t BC.

And, significantly, the superscript of Ezekiel’s final vision identifies ‘the 25th year of the exile’ as a Jubilee year.

Ezekiel says he received his vision both ‘on the 10th day of the month’ and ‘at the head of the year’ (בראש השנה) (Ezek. 40.1).

How can both of these statements be accurate?

Why would Ezekiel refer to the 10th day of a month as ‘the head of the year’?

The most plausible answer—which is the answer proffered in Rabbinic texts (e.g., b. Arakin 12a)—is as follows:

because the year in question was a Jubilee year, which began, as it always does, on the day of Atonement, i.e., on the 10th day of Tishri (Lev. 25.8–11).

Ezekiel’s vision would, therefore, have coincided with Israel’s 17th Jubilee, which is exactly what is implied in Seder Olam 11.

Granted these claims, Ezekiel’s rather enigmatic date-stamp in 1.1 can, perhaps, be unravelled.

Ezekiel dates the start of his ministry simply to ‘the 30th year’, which Ezekiel’s editor (who refers to Ezekiel in the third person) equates with ‘the 5th year of Jehoiachin’s exile’ (1.2–3).

But the 30th year of what?

The answer is ‘the 30th year of Ezekiel’s Jubilee cycle’.

Ezekiel’s Jubilee-to-Jubilee cycle runs from 623t/622t to 574t/573t BC (inclusively).

As such, Ezekiel’s 30th year = the year 623t/622t BC + 29 years, i.e., 594t/593t, which is the 5th year of Jehoachin’s exile.

Next up, more on the accuracy of the Jubilee cycle.

THE END (FOR NOW).