Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/818

 CHRONOLOGY

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CHRONOLOGY

assuree qu'on le croit commun6ment. Elle aurait besoin d'etre raccordee avec la chronologic assyrienne" (It is plain that the chronology of the period of the kings of Israel and Juda is not so settled and ascer- tained as is commonly supposed. It must be made to accord with the Assyrian chronology). There are certainly textual errors among the numbers. Com- paring IV Kings, viii, 26, with II Chron. (D. V. Paral.), xxii, 2, we find that in the former, Ochozias is said to have been twenty-two years old when he began to reign, in the latter, forty-two. Nor can a critical writer say that the chronicler was ill-informed; one of the prin- ciples of Wellhausen and all his school is that Kings was the principal source of Chronicles. Is not this an obvious case of text-corruption? How else, too, can we account for the fact that the Book of Kings gives the sum of the reigns of the kings who reigned from Roboam to the death of Ochozias as 95, whereas it gives the sum of the years from Jeroboam to the death of Joram as ninety-eight, though Jeroboam came to the throne the same year as Roboam, and Ochozias died the same day as Joram? For if the writer of Kings made use of all the clever artificial devices, with which he is credited by critical writers, it is quite incredible that such an obvious error should have been committed by him. And so it may be said of his giving as the sum of the years from the acces- sion of Jehu of Israel to the fall of Samaria as 143 years, whilst he gives the interval between the accession of Athalia of Juda (who began her reign in the same year as Jehu) and the same event as 16.5 years.

A development in the method of recording dates seems to have taken place among the Jews during this period. Events were dated in Babylonia by the reign of the kings; in Assyria, regular officials were ap- pointed every year, called limmi, by whose name the year was known, just as the consuls in Rome and the eponymous archons in Athens. Lists of the limmi for the years 91)9-666 B. c. have been discovered (Sayce, "Early History of the Hebrews", 147). This chrono- logical system affected the Jews ; records or chronicles were thus kept among them, and are frequently re- ferred to in the Book of Kings. So, too, we read, among the lists of royal officials, of a recorder or chronicler. It is true an objection is sometimes raised (cf. Hastings, Diet., I, 400), that the references are not to the Clironicles themselves, but to works based in some way upon them. This, however, seems a purely gratuitous assertion. That the references are to the Book of Chronicles, and not simply to the chronicles, would seem to imply no more than that the chronicles of the different kings were in some way united so as to form a single volume, of which it is quite possible that copies were made. Nor is it ex- travagant to suppose that great efforts would have been made to save the royal records at the destruc- tion of Samaria, especially as there was a royal offi- cial, called the chronicler, who would have had care of them.

If we come now to the actual figures themselves, there is not a serious divergency between them and the results of profane history, whilst in many cases they correspond exactly. What we should naturally expect is. that the farther back we go, the more gen- eral would be the knowledge of chronology shown, and so we find it is in regard to the history of the kings. That for the most pari fractions of a year are

neglected, makes it clear that the writer dealt in round

numbers. Anil yet We find that from the death of Solomon to the accession of Athalia ami Jehu, who began to reign in the same year, there is only a di- vergency of three years in 00 between the Kingdoms of Juda and Israel; whilst from that date to the destruction of Samaria the difference is only 21 years on the oilier side. So thai the total difference, in a period of about 2.V> years, is one of only 10 years.

But then it cannot be admitted that this is a pure error. Many writers say that the deficiency in the length of the years of the kings of Israel is to be sup- plied by the introduction of two interregnums in the list of the kings of Israel, perhaps one after Jeroboam II, the other after Phacee; or again, that two of the kings of Juda reigned contemporaneously with their fathers. It cannot be pretended that, the true explanation has been found. The practical point is that the student is at liberty to throw what light he can on the prob- lem from external sources; and that the chronology of the Book of Kings, as it now stands, is quite ade- quate for the purposes for which it was supplied. One thing is certain, that the equation of Cheyne's "Encyclopaedia Biblica" (I, 779) is a mere carica- ture: "This table shows that at the end of the 258th year after the division of the kingdom, there had elapsed 25S synchronistic years, 241 ^ years of reign in Israel, and 260 such years in Juda; and we have thus the singular equation 258 = 241 -fa = 260." No doubt this is very clever; whether it is equally in- structive, from the point of view of serious history, is another matter. Let one illustration show: in III Kings, xv, 1, we are told that Abiam reigned over Juda in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam. King of Israel. In verse 9 we are told that, after his death, recorded in verse 8, Asa his son became king, in the twentieth year of Jeroboam. In the second verse we read of Abiam that "he reigned three years in Jerusalem". Now what does Cheyne's "Encyclo- paedia" do in the "singular equation"? Computing the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth year of Jeroboam, according to the modern fashion, it puts them down under one heading of the equation as two years, then under another heading it gives the same period, computed, as is known perfectly well, accord- ing to the old Jewish fashion, as three years; and, having finally drawn up in this way three different lists of figures, it works out "a singular equation". — No wonder; yet the writer, apart from the passage in question, must have known that from the fourth to the sixth year of Ezechias was counted as three years by the Jews (IV Kings, xviii. 0. 10). and that from Friday to Sunday was likewise reckoned as three days (Luke, xxiv, 7).

In places the chronology of the kings is far from clear. What light is thrown upon it by the chronol- ogy of the surrounding nations? Egypt may be left out, because little help can be got from it. Sayce says of its chronology that "it is more disputable even than that of Israel." ("Hebrews", 453.) But bringing to our help the fragment of the Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus, the foundation of the Temple may be fixed, according to Sayce, for about the year 969, which would be very near the date given above. Having fixed the year when the Temple was begun, we know that Solomon reigned from 973 to 936, and David from 1013 to 973. So, to speak roughly, the revolt of the Ten Tribes must have taken place some- where about the year 936.

Although St. Jerome says, in writing to the priest Vitalis, that to dwell on such matters is rather for a man of leisure than for a studious person, still we must confess it would be satisfactory to know how the general discrepancy arose between the Biblical dales and the corresponding Assyrian dates from the accession of Roboam to the taking of Samaria. We have fixed roughly the date of the revolt of the Ten Tribes for t he year 936 B. C. Hut the traditional dale is 075. and if we follow the dates for the kings down to the taking of Samaria, it will be found that the usual interpretation of the Biblical chronology makes those dales about 10 years earlier than is pos- sible according to the Assyrian chronological canon. Thus King Achab of Israel reigned from 918 to 896; but in the Assyrian inscriptions hi- is said to have been present at the Battle of Karkar in 854. Ozias