[790] It is supposed that Mohammed alludes to Elijah in the Qur'an, _Sura_ xxi. 85: "And Ishmael, and Idris, and _Dhu'l Kifl_ ("he of the portion")--all these were of the patient; and we made them enter into our mercy; verily they were among the righteous" (Palmer's Qur'an, ii. 53).
NOTE ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS.
I have not thought it worth while to trouble the reader with conjectures or corrections of the text, intended to remove the numerous and obvious discrepancies which the redactor of the Book of Kings leaves uncorrected in his references to the synchronism of the reigns.[791] Many of them are removed or modified when we bear in mind that, _e.g._, Nadab and Elah and Ahaziah are described as reigning "two years" each (xv. 25, xvi. 8, xxii. 51), whereas the reign of each may not have exceeded a year, or even a few months, if these months came at the end of one year and the beginning of another. Periods of anarchic interregnum, or of association of a son with his father on the throne, may account for other confusions and contradictions; but they are purely conjectural, and in some cases far from probable. Jerome, as is well known, gave up all attempts to harmonise the chronologic data as a hopeless problem. "Relege," he says, "omnes et veteris et novi Testamenti libros, et tantam annorum reperies dissonantiam _ut hujuscemodi hærere quæstionibus non tam studiosi quam otiosi hominis esse videatur_."
The Assyrians were, for the most part (though, as Schrader shows, not _always_), as scrupulously exact in their chronological details as the Jews were careless in theirs. The cuneiform inscriptions give us the following data, which may be regarded as _points de repère_, and which are not reconcilable with the received dates:--