Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 20/09/2005 14:02, banyai AT t-online.de wrote:

> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
>  
>
> > > If the dates proposed by Kitchen and others for Sheshonq are off by a few
> > > decades, this would force Thiele, Tadmor, Galil etc. to 
> > >      
> > Thiele etc cannot adjust their dates because they have a full set of 
> > data. By comparison the dates the Egyptologists have are based on very 
> > scanty data. I predict that they will find new data which will force 
> > them to adjust some of the details of their reconstruction - but they 
> > will manage to make compensatory adjustments to get back to the Thiele 
> > etc date for Shishak.
> >    
>
> While I can but nick approvingly over your last sentence, I must however 
> criticise a little Thiele´s methodical approach, which is false, and thus 
> shutter your belief in his results.
>  

My point still stands even if Thiele's method is utterly wrong, for 
there is still far more quality data in the Bible than has ever been 
found in Egypt.

> ...
> He failed to observe that coregencies are stated plain in the biblical text and occur always in the cases where a repetition of the regnal formula occurs (once at beginning of the text dealing with the reign of the king - once at closing the story of the king). All these cases without exception can be identified both from the circumstances invoked in the text as well on synchronistic reasons as situations as a coregency occured. It is therefore very important to avoid any suplementary unwarranted assumptions of coregencies. 
>  

You are falling into the same fallacy with biblical data that Kitchen 
has fallen into with Egyptian data: the assumption that co-regencies can 
only occur when there is explicit evidence for them. Admittedly there is 
more likely to be explicit evidence in the detailed biblical narrative 
than in the random collection of inscriptions which makes up the 
Egyptian evidence. But the biblical data becomes self-contradictory if 
you don't allow for co-regencies which are not made explicit - or else, 
less probably, long interregna. Thiele's method, as I understand it, 
introduces co-regencies only where they are in fact required to make the 
biblical data consistent - and that is a reasonable method for the 
divided kingdom period because the synchronisms between the two kingdoms 
would give evidence for any co-regency long enough to affect the data.

> In fact it can be shown, that the contradicting synchronistic statements in 
> the biblical material concerning the later monarchy, stem exactly from an 
> attempt of the biblical redactor to adjust his data with the Assyrian data. 
> He had statements concerning certain contacts between Israel/Juda and 
> Assyria, but was not able to arrive to a synchronism, because his data and 
> the assyrian data diverged already by 18 years (a moon period). So he created 
> a second set of synchronisms between Israel and Juda, bringing both 
> chronologies down by 18 years and thus reestablishing synchronisms with 
> Assyria.
>  

This suggestion implies the author or redactor of Kings to have had a 
quite unbelievable sophistication in his understanding of calendar 
systems from several centuries before his time, as well as to have had 
improbable access to Assyrian documents.

> ...
>
> A further great problem is for Thiele to recognise the cases, when reigns are 
> counted involving the first regnal year or, instead, involving just the years 
> of independent reign (thus ignoring the first regnal year still shared with 
> one´s predecessor). Instead he launches an undemonstrated theory concerning 
> different New Year dates in Israel and Juda, ...

There is evidence quite apart from the chronology for variation in New 
Year dates.

> ... 
>
> The purpose of chronology is to avoid as much as possible the mix of data: 
> that is mixing data of different sources - assyrian, egyptian, hebrew, etc. 
> The ideal is to obtain at first independent chronologies, which can later be 
> adjusted. We are able on such a basis to recognise in each case which of the 
> sources is faked, thus contributing to a missalignment.
>  

Thiele provides an independent Hebrew chronology which is actually far 
more detailed than the Egyptian one.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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