The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah.

Miller, J. Maxwell

By GERSHON GALIL. Studies in the History of Culture of the Ancient Near East, vol. 9. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1996. Pp. 200 + 35 tables. HF1 102, $66 (cloth).

The chronological data for the kings of Israel and Judah embedded in 1-2 Kings are seductive but never entirely satisfying. The figures seem authentic and precise, the sort of information that might have been derived from official sources. Also they fit reasonably well with data provided by Assyrian and Babylonian sources. They do not quite "add up," however, either internally or in relation to the Assyrian and Babylon sources. Moreover, the chronological notations recorded in 1-2 Kings are part of a more comprehensive chronological structure that extends back to Genesis, places Creation approximately six thousand years ago, attributes fantastic life spans to Methuselah and others, dates Noah and the Great Flood, and so on. It is not without clear warning signals, therefore, that one undertakes to calculate absolute dates for the Israelite and Judean kings on the basis of the biblical figures. Any such attempt calls for a package of hypothetical explanations for the apparent contradictions, and still it is necessary to "adjust" or reject at least some of the biblical figures. Recognizing all of this, Galil advances a chronology that, in his opinion, "is successful in reconciling approximately 90% of the biblical and external data, making use of a relatively simple set of principles" (p. 9).

Galil's dates fall well within the range of those calculated by others and already generally accepted today. Solomon's death usually is dated between 932 and 922 B.C.E., for example; Galil settles on 931-930. Omri's accession to the throne has been dated 886 B.C.E. (Andersen), 885 B.C.E. (Thiele, Miller and Hayes), 882 B.C.E. (Begrich, Jepsen), and 876 B.C.E. (Albright); Gall calculates 884. Hezekiah's accession has been dated 727 B.C.E. (Miller and Hayes), 726 B.C.E. (Begrich, Jepsen), 716 B.C.E. (Thiele), and 715 B.C.E. (Andersen, Albright); Galil makes this 726. Everyone places the final destruction of Jerusalem in either 587 or 586 B.C.E.; Galil calculates 586. Thus the distinctiveness of Galil's study is not so much the resulting chronology as his period-by-period discussion of the issues and the many innovative suggestions he makes along the way.

As for the principles that guide his calculations, they seem to be basically as follows: (1) Galil favors the Massoretic figures and devotes a full chapter to addressing J. D. Shenkel's arguments for the superiority of some of the figures provided by the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint.

(2) Galil is confident that the core of the chronological data provided by the Massoretic tradition for 1-2 Kings is accurate, yet recognizes that the editors have introduced some calculations of their own. Accordingly, he objects to the approach of E. R. Thiele and others who assume the accuracy of the Massoretic figures in spite of their internal contradictions, use these figures to develop an interlocking package of hypothetical explanations for the apparent contradictions, and then, because their conjectures explain the figures, claim that they are correct (p. 4).

(3) Galil also rejects the widely held view (first proposed by J. Wellhausen) that the chronological notations presented throughout Genesis-2 Kings as a whole presuppose a schematic view of time, a four thousand year era from Creation to the Maccabean revolt, and 480 years from the building of the temple to its rededication. Otherwise he does not address literary-critical issues, consider whether the Massoretic figures may have been subjected to more than one stage of editing, or explore the possibility that factors other than chronological accuracy may have influenced the editing process. Basically, he proceeds to develop a system that incorporates as much of the recorded data as possible, and to explain how the editors might have calculated the stray figures that refuse to fit the system (such as 2 Kings 18:13, which places Sennacherib's campaign in Hezekiah's fourteenth year).

(4) Galil surmises that Israel must have used a Tishri to Tishri calendar while Judah was using a Nisan to Nisan calendar.

(5) Israel apparently employed an antedating system for recording the length of their kings' reigns through the ninth century, but then shifted to a postdating system at the beginning of the eighth century. Judah, on the other hand, must have used a postdating system.

(6) There were what amounted to coregencies in both kingdoms, and the length of a king's reign was counted from the time of his coronation, whether this occurred during the lifetime of his predecessor or after his death. In addition to utilizing these principles, Galil concludes that the regnal years recorded for two of the kings, Pekah of Israel and Jehoash of Judah, apparently were calculated retroactively. After ascending the throne in Samaria, Pekah may have recounted the years of his reign beginning with the year that he was appointed an official over Gilead. Jehoash's reign, on the other hand, would have been calculated retroactively to include the years of Athaliah's rule.

Galil offers a number of other innovative solutions to longstanding chronological problems, such as the apparently conflicting biblical and Babylonian data for Zedekiah's reign and the two Babylonian conquests of Jerusalem. While Babylon and Judah almost certainly would have been using basically the same calendar at the time, Galil raises the possibility that their respective calendars nevertheless may have varied by as much as a month, depending on how the Babylonians and Judeans intercalated the lunar months to keep them in line with the solar year. This suggests that "Zedekiah counted his years from his coronation, which occurred - according to the Babylonian calendar - at the beginning of the month of Adar, and according to the calendar of Judah, at the beginning of Nisan. This proposal resolves the biblical and external chronological data for the period under discussion and provides an opportunity for possible reconstruction of the events in the last years of the kingdom of Judah" (p. 115).

Tables and appendices provide easily accessible summaries of the biblical and related chronological data for the Israelite and Judean kings. The book serves as a very readable introduction to several modern chronologies based on these data (special attention to those of Begrich, Thiele, Albright, Tadmor, and Hughes). Also it must be said that Galil's chronology is entirely plausible. Yet it is the nature of the problem that any chronology constructed from the available data necessarily involves working assumptions and judgment calls. Whether Galil's chronology is any more convincing than the others depends, therefore, on whether one agrees with his approach and choices. I have three main concerns. First, Galil pays so little attention to literary-critical aspects of Genesis-2 Kings, especially the possibility that schematic notions of time guided the editing process. Second, while recognizing that some of the biblical figures must be secondary editorial calculations, he relies on accommodating principles in deciding which figures are authentic and which are secondary calculations. Third, his "simple principles" really add up to a fairly large package of assumptions that are derived largely from the data they are designed to explain. In spite of his disclaimer, therefore, Galil's approach turns out to be very similar to Thiele's, and his dates are calculated with the same overconfident precision.

J. MAXWELL MILLER EMORY UNIVERSITY