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testimony.doc

Nov. 16, 2005

Here then is a great mystery: the Author of the chronological puzzle in Kings and

Chronicles knew the answer, and He was careful to give us enough clues so that an

answer could be found after suitable mental exercise. The chronological texts of the

kingdom period are revealed as an example of something quite awesome: purposeful

design. Intelligent Design. There does not seem to be any other way to explain how all

these texts can fit together, and how a sufficient number have been given so that the

chronology can be solved without having to resort to the arbitrary assumptions of the

deductive method. But just as opponents of Intelligent Design grasp at straws with a sort

of blind faith that their own presuppositions must be right, so the masters of the deductive

method will never see the design inherent in the chronological texts of the kingdom

period unless they are willing to give up their wrong approach and their wrong

presuppositions regarding the origin of the text.

WHY IS THE PROBLEM SO COMPLEX?

But why is the problem so complicated? Why has it taken over two millennia until the

work of Thiele, Horn, McFall and others has given us a solution for the chronological

texts in Kings and Chronicles? And then in the June issue of JETS we have a systems

analyst telling us that even these scholars have missed a few points, so that it is necessary

to learn how to use Decision Tables if we are to properly analyze the data.

My use of Decision Tables arose when I retired in 2003 and decided that the first major

effort of my retirement would be to check the reasoning that went into Edwin Thiele's

chronological work, and to see if all his underlying assumptions, as well as his method of

development, were valid. I soon realized that the interactions possible between all the

parameters made this a very complex problem. However, the last major system I

designed at IBM required Decision Tables to resolve its complexity. Fresh from this

experience, I found that Decision Tables allowed me to uncover what Thiele had

overlooked, first in combining all the parameters that had to do with the beginning of the

divided kingdom,

and second in combining all the parameters having to do with the fall

Rodger C. Young, Tables of Reign Lengths from the Hebrew Court Recorders, JETS 48/2 (2005): 238.

The outcome was my paper When Did Solomon Die? JETS 46 (2003): 589603.