• The awignment of 20 yeara to Samuel Is an Inference from 1 S T'. Thi' piriod of Israel't desire for the Lord is regarded as represeniui;: Saniuel's Judgeship, and ceasing when the people desir^-d ami ciiose a kini^.
t The iiliove scheme is Nrtldeke's. Moore (Judgea, p. xll f.) omits Siiut as being to a Judwan writer an illegitimate sovereign and assigns, after LXX, 2U years to Eli, and conjecture* 40 ytan each for Joehua and SamueL
400 CHRONOLOGY OF OLD TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF OLD TriST.
centuries after the earlier events narrated. The writer of tliese books, it is true, refers constantly to ' the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah,' and ' to the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel,' as sources of his information. But it is not known whether he had access to ori^'inal royal records or only to two historical works based in some way upon them. Probably the latter, be- cause (1) it IS unlikely that the State records of the N. kingdom were preserved and brought to Jems. ; (2) the references are not to the chronicles or annals themselves, but to the buuk of the chronicles ; and (3) it is difficult to account for the statements of the writer in reference to dates of accession and lengths of reigns, if he had access to original records.
1 and 2 K give a complete list of the mon- archs of Judah and Israel, and the length of their reigns in years from Solomon to the fall of Samaria and of Jerusalem. The commencement of eachreign is dated by the year of the reign of the contem- poraneous King in the other kingdom. This mode of cross-reckoning is e^'idently that of the biblical writer, for it is scarcely possible that in either kingdom the year of the king of the other king- dom should be used to fix the date of its own king. An examination of the synchronisms leads to a similar conclusion. From the construction of the Heb. sentence in many instances the synchronisms appear to be an addition to a statement of the sunple duration of a reign, and they seem in some instances to reveal an attempt at an adjustment of two unequal series of numbers. Rehoboam and Jeroboam came to the throne at the same time, also Athaliah and Jehu. The sums of the years of the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah between these two dates should be the same. That of Israel, however, as is seen in the following table, exceeds that of Judah by 3 years. (Thf 7 days of the reign of Zimri are omitted, for that week naturally was reckoned as belonging either to the reign of Elah or Omri. ) : —
Rehoboam .
. 17
. 82
Abijam . .
. 3
Nadab .
. 2
Asa . . .
. 41
Baasha. .
. 24
Jehoshaphat
. £5
Elah .
. 2
Joram . . •
. 8
Omri .
. 12
. 1
Ahab .
. 22
Ahaziah
. 2
Joram .
. 12
95 I
98
Since thelengthsof the reigns are expressed in even years, and since actual reigns must have embraced fractions of a year, it is apparent that these years are calendar years. The question now arises whether the calendar year in which a king died was reckoned as his own last year and the 1st year of his successor, or whether the Ist year of his successor began with the following new year. The former method of pre-datinq introduces the confusion of a calendar year being reckoned as belonging to two reigns ; and yet it is in accordance with the Heb. usage, which reckoned fractions of time as full units. For example, the siege of Samaria, which began in the 4th and ended in the 6th year of Hczekiah, is said to have lasted 3 years (2 K IS"'-). There is also the familiar exaniple of ' the 3 days ' of Christ's being in the grave. The latter method of post-dating was the usual one of the Assyrians. With them the general practice was to count the regnal years from the new year's day after the accession, and to call the perioil between the accession and the 1st new year s day ' the beginning of the reign ' ; while the year from the new year's day was called ' the 1st year,' and the followint; ones were numbered successively from it. Which of these methods was systemati- cally used by the Hebrews cannot now be decisively
determined. Possibly, neither of them consistently or entirely. The Talm. testities apparently to the method of pre-dating (Wieseler, Vhron. Synopsis,
&il), and this has often been assumed as the eb. method. Jer. and Ezk., however, post-dated, and many scholars (Diilmann, Stade, ^^ ellhausen, and others) believe this to have been the Heb. method. The \vriter or compiler of 1 and 2 K, as will be seen from the following table of syn- chronisms, used both methods : —
Rehobown . . 1 17 In ISth of Jeroboam Jl K IW), Abljam ... 1
In 20th o( Jerobown (1 K U»),Am . . . a) 3 1
t
1 Jeroboam. 17
18 19
20 21
22. 1. Nadab is Znd of Aw a K 16^). 1. 2. Baasha in 3rd of Aia (1 K