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When Did Solomon Die?
JETS 46/4 (Dec. 2003) |
Edwin Thiele's date of 931 BC for the beginning of the divided monarchies has stood the test of time since it was introduced over 60 years ago. This paper examines the possibility that Solomon died before Tishri of that year, instead of on or after Tishri 1 as Thiele assumed without explaining why. This six-month correction fixes errors in Thiele's chronology of Judean kings, and also makes the date of the Exodus calculated from 1 Kgs 6:1 to be in exact agreement with the date of the Exodus as calculated from the Jubilee cycles. |
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When Did Jerusalem Fall?
JETS 47/1 (March 2004) |
The method of Decision Tables was used in the Solomon paper to sort through all the confusing possibilities and to show which ones are valid and which produce contradictions with the texts involved. In this paper, the method is applied to all Scriptures in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles relating to the date of Jerusalem's fall to Nebuchadnezzar. It is shown that all texts involved are in harmony with themselves and with each other, and the only year possible for Jerusalem's fall is 587 BC. |
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When Was Samaria Captured? The Need for Precision in Biblical Chronologies
JETS 47/4 (Dec. 2004) |
This paper gives the chronology of the eighth century BC. It sorts out the mess that Thiele made when he rejected the Hoshea/Hezekiah synchronisms of 2 Kgs 18. The results are similar to those obtained by other conservative scholars, as is emphasized in this paper. The new contributions of this paper are its formalizing the notation used for dates that was presented in my two earlier papers, and its discussion of the reasons why precision is important in chronological studies. |
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Tables of Reign Lengths from the Hebrew Court Recorders
JETS 48/2 (June 2005) |
This is sort of my magnum opus. It avoids the tedium that was necessary to establish the chronology of the kingdom period, since that was dealt with in the previous three papers. It focuses instead on the theological significance of this work on chronology done by myself and by those whose scholarship I followed and built on. The four tables at the end are meant to demonstrate the accuracy and believability of all Scriptural texts dealing with the chronology of the kingdom period. |
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The Talmud's Two Jubilees and Their Relevance to the Date of the Exodus WTJ Spring 2006 |
This expands on the idea presented in the Solomon paper regarding the Jubilees. It shows that the remembrance of the Jubilees in the Talmuds, the Seder Olam, and in the Hebrew text of Ezek 40:1 allows a complete calendar of pre-exilic Sabbatical and Jubilee years to be constructed. This calendar shows that Israel's entry into Canaan, when counting started for these cycles, must have occurred in Nisan of 1406 BC, with the Exodus therefore in 1446 BC. This calculation of the date of the Exodus is independent of the method of calculating the date based on 1 Kgs 6:1, although both give the same date. Therefore counting must really have started at that time. The conclusion is drawn that the Book of Leviticus was in existence in 1406 BC, since no reasonable alternate source for the laws of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles has ever been postulated, and nations of the ancient Near East are known to have put ritual and cultic matters like this in writing. |
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Seder Olam and the Sabbaticals Associated with the Two Destructions of
Jerusalem
Jewish Bible Quarterly First Part Jul-Sep 2006 Second Part Oct-Dec 2006 |
These articles are really an extension of my work on Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles that showed that a complete calendar of such cycles for the pre-exilic period can be constructed. However, to avoid controversy and to keep the papers fairly short, I do not mention the Jubilee cycles here--only the Sabbatical cycles. These papers look into ancient Jewish records that declare that the destructions of both temples (the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC and the Second Temple by Titus in AD 70) happened in a Sabbatical year. The original Hebrew of these sources is examined, and conclusions are drawn from this rather than from various erroneous translations of these texts into English. Scriptural texts that reinforce the conclusion that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in a Sabbatical year are also given. |
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Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective for Seven Wrong Ideas in Biblical Interpretation
AUSS Fall 2006 |
The ideas I put forth in my previous papers can sometimes be used to analyze very specific problems or specific Biblical texts that are difficult to interpret. These ideas are 1) The use of an exact notation for dates that matches the calendar methods in use in ancient Israel and surrounding nations, 2) The use of Decision Tables to determine which of several possible interpretations best explains the text being studied. This article applies these techniques to an in-depth analysis of Ezekiel 40:1. By properly understanding the Hebrew in this verse and exploring its implications for chronology, several conclusions can be drawn, extending even so far as establishing the date of the composition of the Pentateuch. |
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Inductive and Deductive Methods As Applied to OT Chronology
TMSJ 18/1 (Spring 2007) |
This is an overview of the developments of conservative scholars in the field of OT chronology. The approach and successes of these scholars is contrasted with the methods and lack of consensus among scholars with a low view of the inspiration of Scripture. The article ends with a discussion of why the date that Hayim Tadmor gives for the tribute of Menahem of Israel to Tiglath-Pileser III cannot be the correct date. Tadmor's date is used by many scholars as a reason for not accepting the integrity of the biblical chronological data for the time, yet Tadmor's reasoning requires a distortion in the translation of the relevant Assyrian texts. |
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Three Verifications of Thiele's Date for the Beginning of the Divided Kingdom
AUSS Fall 2007 (no link) |
By a careful study of the chronological methods of the Scriptural authors, Edwin Thiele established that the divided monarchy began in the year that started in Nisan (roughly April) of 931 BC. My "Solomon" paper refined this to say that Solomon died before Tishri (roughly October) of that year. His last official year of reign therefore began in Tishri of 932. The Jubilee data, in conjunction with 1 Kings 6:1, establish this date, independently of the work of Thiele. Compleletely independent of either of these two methods, the list of Tyrian kings found in Josephus (and tied to Roman data for the founding of Rome) gives the date of 932 BC for the death of Solomon, plus or minus two years at the most, according to the work of J. Liver, Frank Cross, and Wm. Barnes. This paper compares these three methods of arriving at this crucial date and shows that the three methods are fundamentally independent. The consequences are not only that the date is firm, but that the complex and profuse chronological data of the Scriptural history are completely trustworthy. This is a finding that was unanticipated by liberal scholarship, with its low view of the inspiration of Scripture and its mistaken historical methods. |
| Review of Tetley, "Reconstructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom" AUSS Fall 2007 |
Thiele's method of determining the chronology of the divided kingdom has been characterized as "too complicated." The problem was not with Thiele; the problem is that we must first understand the methods that ancient scribes, both Hebrew and non-Hebrew, used in recording chronological information. When did their year begin? Did they use accession or non-accession reckoning? And so on. In order to reduce the complexity that such an approach involves, Christine Tetley attempted to make simplifying assumptions and thereby produce a "reconstructed chronology." Her book is also an extensive attempt to give credence to LXX variations of chronological data in Kings and Chronicles. My review evaluates whether these approaches have met with any success. |
| A Critical Analysis of the Evidence from Ralph Hawkins for a Late-Date Exodus-Conquest
JETS 51:2 (June 2008) |
(With Bryant Wood, archaeologist and chief editor of Bible and Spade) The Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal has published various articles regarding excavations at a site on Mt. Ebal. Zertal identifies a large structure at this site, dated to 1200 BC or slightly later, as the altar described in Josh. 8:30-31. If this identification were true, it would place the entry into Canaan about 1200 BC and the Exodus in 1240 BC. In the March 2007 issue of JETS, Ralph Hawkins advocated Zertal's identification. Since a date this late cannot be reconciled with the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6:1 or the chronology of Judges, Hawkins denigrates the reliability of the chronological data of the books of Kings and Judges. In our response, Bryant shows that the object that Zertal identifies as Joshua's altar is in the wrong place, of the wrong size and shape, and in the wrong time period to be identified with Joshua. My part of the article summarizes several of my articles listed above and explains why these research papers, in conjunction with other scholarly works, now provide a formidable argument for the historical exactness of the chronological data of the Scriptures, contra Hawkins and the authorities he cites. |
| Evidence for Inerrancy from an Unexpected Source: OT Chronology
Bible & Spade Spring, 2008 |
Dr. Wood asked to reprint in Bible and Spade my talk at the Nov. 2005 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. This has already been reprinted once, modified somewhat at the end, in TMSJ (the "Inductive and Deductive" article). With permission of the editors of TMSJ, it appears in Bible and Spade with a different ending. Instead of discussing Menahem's tribute, the new ending emphasizes the theological significance of the accuracy of the chronological details of the OT. |
| Evidence for Inerrancy from a Second Unexpected Source: the Jubilee and Sabbatical Cycles
Bible & Spade Fall, 2008 |
The Jubilee implied by the Hebrew text of Ezek 40:1 allows a calendar of Jubilee and Sabbatical years to be constructed. This calendar is exactly consistent with the date of 1406 BC for the entry into Canaan that is derived from 1 Kings 6:1 and Thiele's date for the division of the kingdom. This two-fold precision establishes the historical accuracy (i.e. inerrancy) of all the Scriptural texts that Thiele used to derive the time of the division. It also establishes that the book of Leviticus that instigated the observance of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles must have been in existence in 1406 BC. Until unbelieving scholarship can give a better explanation of these facts, the only intellectually honest conclusion is that Leviticus is a revelation from God to His servant Moses--a precept repeatedly and emphatically stated in the book itself.
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| Revision by Leslie McFall to his chronology of Judean kings August, 2008 |
In August 2008, Leslie McFall added to his website a revised table of the chronology of the kings of Judah (click here to view), with the caption, The suggestion that Solomon died between Nisan (April) and Elul (August) 931 B.C. was first put forward by Ro[d]ger Young, "When Did Solomon Die?" JETS 46 (2003) 589-603. Consequently, the first four Judean kings (from Rehoboam to Jehoshaphat) have been moved back one year. The implication of this minor, but very important, shift does away with Th[ie]le's suggestion that Judah's system was imposed on Israel's for these four kings by the biblical scribes.One slight correction to this: Solomon could have died any time in the year preceding Tishri of 931 BC, rather than his death happening in just the latter six months of that year, as explained in ''Table of Reign Lengths,'' footnote 3. McFall is recognized in Jack Finegan's Handbook of Biblical Chronology as the foremost living authority on the chronology of the Hebrew kingdoms, so that the Handbook adopts the Thiele/McFall chronology for this period. McFall still maintains a 586 date for the fall of Jerusalem. |
| Date modified | Change made |
| Apr 06, 2008 | Add "Evidence for Inerrancy from a Second Source." |
| May 03, 2008 | Add link to "Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective" article. |
| July 07, 2008 | Add link to "Evidence for Inerrancy (1)" article, now in print. |
| Aug 26, 2008 | Add link to "Response to Hawkins" article, now in print. |
| Sept 01, 2008 | Add notice about recent chronological update by Leslie McFall. |
| Nov 04, 2008 | Add link to "Evidence for Inerrancy (2)" article, now in print. |
| Nov 18, 2008 | Add link to review of "Reconstructed Chronology" by M. C. Tetley. |
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