Guide to Biblical Chronology
£18.50
This Guide to Biblical Chronology aims to explain why different chronological proposals exist for the reigns of kings of Israel and Judah and how the conflicting chronological data preserved in the Books of Kings have come into being.
This Guide to Biblical Chronology aims to explain why different chronological proposals exist for the reigns of kings of Israel and Judah and how the conflicting chronological data preserved in the Books of Kings have come into being.
The first step is to reconstruct older chronological data so that synchronisms are in harmony with each other. Only then can the chronological data be related to extrabiblical documents; such a comparison reveals a good degree of correspondence. This means that the chronological records of the kings of Judah and Israel during the period between 930 and 586 BCE must have based on reliable annalistic records from royal archives.
After the destruction of Samaria, synchronic chronological presentations of the history of Judah and Israel were composed and the Deuteronomistic editors used them. They drew their own conclusions from the source material and created a chronology of their own, which sometimes led to the contradictions we can detect in the present form of the Hebrew Bible.
Another important result is that the 480-year period mentioned in 1 Kings 6 and the 300-year period in Judges 11 are also based on the pre-Deuteronomistic chronological tradition even though they are not based on archival material and are therefore unreliable figures.
The Guide to Biblical Chronology also deals with postbiblical Jewish chronology, showing that there were in existence two different and competing chronological systems. One was based on Daniel 9.24-27 and followed by Josephus, and the other was first advanced by Demetrius the Chronographer in the late third century BCE and was then followed in the Damascus Document from Qumran and in Second Baruch .
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| Table of Contents | 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THE CHRONOLOGICAL DATA OF THE ISRAELITE AND JUDEAN KINGS 3. RELIABILITY OF THE SYNCHRONIC TRADITION OF THE ISRAELITE AND JUDEAN KINGS 4. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LAST JUDEAN KINGS 5. THE ABSOLUTE BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF KINGS 6. THE POSTBIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY AND THE SEVENTY YEAR-WEEKS IN THE BOOK OF DANIEL 7. THE DEUTERONOMISTIC CHRONOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR EARLY ISRAEL 8. THE PRIESTLY CHRONOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FROM ANNO MUNDI TO THE PATRIARCHS 9. CONCLUSIONS |
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Ernst Axel Knauf, Review of Biblical Literature. –
The slim volume is a competent introduction to the thorny field of biblical chronology and a welcome addition to the collection of basic tools for the student of Hebrew Scriptures. The introduction reviews previous chronologies from Albright (1945) to Galil (1996). Contradictions within the biblical data found creative responses within this scholarly tradition, some of which might look a bit too creative from the present point of view. The introduction concludes with the presentation of four problem areas that require decisions before a biblical chronology can be compiled: the date of the New Year in Israel and Judah; the question of the accession year; the question of co-regencies (never mentioned in the Bible with the exception of David and Solomon [1 Kgs 1:1–2:10] and Uzziah and Jotham [2 Kgs 15:5] but frequently assumed in previous chronologies); and the textual evidence, especially discrepancies between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint.