testimony.doc
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Nov. 16, 2005
from the fall month of Tishri.
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An unbiased approach would consider both these
options.
2.
There is evidence from the field of Egyptology that sovereigns, during their
lifetime, occasionally invested their son with the royal office, thus forming a
coregency. The years of the son's reign might be counted from the year he
became coregent instead of from the first year of sole reign. There is some prima
facie evidence in the Scriptures for coregencies (1 Kgs 1:34, 2 Kgs 15:5; 1 Chr
23:1). An inductive approach should consider the possibility of coregencies, and
the possibility that the years of a king could be measured either from the
beginning of a coregency or from the beginning of a sole reign.
3.
There is also evidence from the field of Egyptology for the existence of rival
reigns--reigns for which the years of the pharaohs cannot be added together
because two pharaohs were ruling simultaneously from different capitals. Such a
phenomenon is reported in the Bible for the reigns of Tibni and Omri.
4.
There is evidence that there were two ways of reckoning the first year of a king's
reign--whether that year was reckoned as year one of his reign, or whether it was
reckoned as his accession or zero year. These two possibilities are called the
non-accession and accession methods, respectively. Since there is evidence for
both usages in the ancient Near East,
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a proper methodology that starts from
observations should not rule out either possibility for the kings of Judah and
Israel.
5.
The final source of evidence for the inductive method would be the texts of
Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel that give chronological data for the
kingdom period. These texts (in the MT
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) should be accepted as raw data
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b. Rosh HaSh. 1a; Josephus, Ant. I.iii.3; S. Olam 4.
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The Seder Olam, chs. 4, 11, and 12, assumes that all years for Israel's kings and judges were by given by
non-accession reckoning. This method is generally assumed in the Talmud. Babylonia and Assyria usually
used accession reckoning.
However, Assyriologists maintain that Tiglath-Pileser III used non-accession
reckoning, contrary to the customary practice in Assyria. This example serves as a warning that the choice
of whether to use accession or non-accession reckonings was quite arbitrary, and the choice was probably
made by the king himself. Applying this to Judah and Israel would suggest that whether a king used
accession or non-accession years must be addressed anew for each king; it is not sufficient to assume that
because a certain king used one method, then his successor must have used the same method. To assume
uniformity in this matter would be consistent with the deductive method of making arbitrary assumptions,
but a careful study of the scriptural data shows that it is an improper assumption.
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The
LXX
translators attempted to harmonize various readings of the MT that seemed to be contradictory,
and in doing so they produced various readings that cannot be assembled into a coherent chronology. See
Edwin Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983)