Scholar,
I think you are being very unfair to Alan. He is asking you one rather simple question. You are saying, in effect, that you will not answer his question unless he first answers what amounts to a hundred very difficult ones.
I believe you are also being unfair to Carl Olof Jonsson on this matter. I have corresponded with Carl on the subject to which you here refer at some length. Carl's position on this matter is that, since the Bible itself does not tell us the method or methods its writers used in recording the chronological histories of the kings of Israel and Judah, no one can say with any certainty exactly how all of the apparently conflicting chronological information contained in the books of Kings and Chronicles can be harmonized. Of course he is correct.
Several attempts to make sense out of all the chronological information given to us by the writers of these Old Testament history books have been made over the years. The only ones who have ever come close to harmonizing all the Bible tells us about when the kings of Israel and Judah reigned have been men who have paid very close attention to all of the historical synchronisms contained in the contemporary historical records of Israel's and Judah's neighboring nations. Anyone who has ever managed to come close to demonstrating full harmony within the text of scripture on these matters has only been able to do so when they have also accepted all of the dates which historians now provide to us for all of these historical synchronisms. Dates such as 853 for the battle of Qarqar, 722 for the fall of Samaria, 701 for Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem in the 14th year of Hezakiah, 605 for the battle of Carchemish and 568 for the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar. The Watchtower Society has rejected all of these dates in order to hold onto their 607/1914/Daniel 4 interpretation. By doing so, they have been unable to reconstruct the chronological histories of the Hebrew kings in a way that comes anywhere close to harmonizing the Bible's many apparently contradictory statements pertaining to when exactly all of Israel's and Judah's kings began and ended their reigns.
As I said, Carl and I have discussed several aspects of this subject matter at some length. Quite a while back we discussed the Watchtower Society's contention that the 390 years of "the sin of the house of Israel" spoken of in Ezekiel chapter 4 clearly dated the division of the kingdom 390 years before the fall of Jerusalem. In doing so Carl told me that, since this understanding cannot possibly be reconciled with all of the available biblical and extrabiblical chronological information pertaining to the reigns of Israel's and Judah's kings, it cannot be a correct understanding. He pointed out that scholars such as Edwin R. Thiele have shown that the facts of history and scripture can only be harmonized when we understand that the division of the kingdom occurred in about 930 BC. Though Thiele's work is not by any means perfect, the historical information it provides clearly shows the kingdom could not have been divided any earlier than 935 BC.
I say 935 vs. Thiele's 930 because Thiele failed to take into account what certainly appears to be a five year overlap, i.e. coregency, between Judah's Abijah and Asa. Though Thiele alluded to it himself he failed then to deal with it. The Bible tells us that Asa's days as king began with "ten years of peace." (2 Chron. 14:1,6) I believe this must refer to his years as sole king following five years as coregent. For the Bible also clearly indicates that the first war during Asa's reign was in his "15th year." (2 Chron.15:10) Thiele tells us, and I agree, that the words of 2 Chron15:19, "there was no war until the 35th year of Asa's reign," should be understood as saying "There was no war until the 35th year (since the division of the kingdom) in Asa's reign." We know this because 1 Kings 15:16 speaks of a war between Asa and Baasha "in the 36th year of Asa's reign," but Baasha's rule ended long before Asa's 36th year. (1 Kings 16:6,8) That being the case, 2 Chron. 15:19 and 1 Kings 15:16 must be referring to the number of years which had then passed from the division of the kingdom. And since Rehoboam, Judah's first king, ruled 17 years and was followed by Abijah who ruled 3 years we see that Asa began to rule 20 years after the schism. And since his first 10 years were years of peace, war must have first broken out between Asa and Baasha some 30 years after the kingdom was divided, not 35 years, unless the "10 years of peace" being referred to were the first 10 years of Asa's sole rule, following a 5 year coregency. I believe had Thiele followed this line of thinking, which he had begun in discussing these verses, he would have reached the same conclusion I have, that the division of the kingdom must have occurred, not in 930 BC, but five years earlier in 935 BC.
Through my studies I have been able to fully reconcile all apparently contradictory chronological information pertaining to the reigns of Israel's and Judah's kings in the books of Kings and Chronicles. However, after doing so I was left with a date of 935 BC for the division of the kingdom. And I was still left without a clear understanding of Ezekiel chapter 4. (By the way, Thiele completely ignored the problem of how we should understand Ezek. 4.) Carl offered me the suggestion that those 390 years might be understood to be "years of punishment" for Israel. And if we date the division of the kingdom as taking place in about 929 BC, We can understand that Israel's years of punishment then began, and we can understand that those years of punishment ended 390 years later when Babylon was overthrown in 539 BC.
But this did not seem like a satisfactory explanation to me. First, how was Israel punished for those entire 390 years? Second, to be consistent, Judah's 40 years of "sin" spoken by Ezekiel must then also be read as years of "punishment." So, to what 40 year period of punishment for Judah was God referring? And third, and probably most important, Ezekiel speaks of years of "sin" not "punishment" for sin.
Here is how I now sort this problem out. A solution I have discussed with Carl and which he says is quite possibly the correct solution. I believe Josephus was correct when he told us that Solomon ruled for 80 years and died at age 94. (Antiq. 7.8) I believe the Bible credits Solomon with only "40 years" because, as I found in my study of the chronology of the divided kingdom, Bible writers did not count the years of a king's reign following the time the legality of that reign was seriously challenged. Of course, the Bible is also right. Because to rule for 80 years Solomon first had to rule for 40 years. The Bible itself clearly indicates that Solomon ruled for more than 40 years. For instance, it tells us Solomon was only "a boy" when he became king and it tells us his son Rehoboam was 41 when he followed his father on the throne. It also tells us that Rehoboam's mother was an Ammonite. Now unless Solomon married an Ammonite woman when he was only a boy Solomon must have ruled for more than 40 years. We also know God promised Solomon a long life. Becoming king as a boy and ruling 40 years means Solomon would have died in his 50s, which does not add up to a long life. As Carl pointed out in TGTR, a long life in Bible times meant the same thing as it does today, 70s, 80s, or even 90s. Other factors also point to my acceptance of Josephus on this matter including the fact that he never any place else contradicts the chronological information contained in the Old Testament pertaining to the length of the reign of any other Hebrew king by more than one year. This occasional one year difference can be easily accounted for by the fact that either he or his sources were then employing a different system of reckoning than that used in Kings and Chronicles.
I believe the 390 years of the house of Israel's sin began at the end of Solomon's first 40 years as king. I believe it was then that Jeroboam, the man God had previously chosen as the ten-tribe nation of Israel's first king, fled to Egypt following his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Solomon's government. In Egypt Jeroboam was geographically unable to offer sacrifices to God at Jerusalem's Temple, sacrifices which the Jewish law required to gain God's forgiveness for sin. Since he there was no longer able to offer those sacrifices he no longer was forgiven by God for his sins, including the very serious sin he had just committed against Solomon.
And I believe those 390 years of sin continued when, after returning from Egypt to become Israel's first king in 935 BC, Jeroboam successfully persuaded the people in his new ten-tribe kingdom to follow his lead in continuing to neglect offering God the sacrifices for their sins which God's laws required in order for them to receive His forgiveness for those sins. And I believe, since the people of northern Israel continued to neglect those sacrifices all the way up to the time Babylon began its siege of Jerusalem, the years of the house of Israel's sin continued to be counted by God all the way up until that time. I think we discussed before how the term "house of Israel" was used by God to refer not just to Jeroboam and the kings who followed him on Israel's throne, but to also refer to all of the spiritual descendants of those kings, including the Jewish people who remained in northern Israel long after Samaria was captured by Assyria. See, for instance, Ezek. 8:6-12,17; 37:15-23 and Jer.31:31.
Now we come to "the sin of the house of Judah." I believe the 40 years of "the sin of the house of Judah" began in the 13th year of Josiah (Jer. 25:3), when God began to send his prophet Jeremiah and other prophets to Judah to warn them of the fact that his forgiveness for their serving other gods had run out. And I believe they ended 40 years later in the 9th year of Zedekiah (Jer. 52:4; 2 Kings 25:1) when Babylon's siege of Jerusalem began. As Jeremiah 25, beginning in verse 3 informs us, God had graciously forgiven Judah's sins up until that time. But Jeremiah told the people of Judah that God had decided He would no longer do so. Jeremiah told them that God had, from that time forward, decided to devote their land to destruction. From the 13th year of Josiah, when God's prophets told Judah His forgiveness for their sins would no longer be given to them, to the 9th year of Zedekiah, when Babylon's armies began their siege of Jerusalem, 40 years (or parts thereof) passed. I am convinced that this is the 40 years of "the sin of the house of Judah" which God counted against Judah. For the Bible is very careful to tell us that it was "in the 13th year of Josiah" that God had decided he would no longer forgive "the sin of the house of Judah."
But why did God forgive Judah for so long, and hold only this final 40 year period of their sin against them? And why did God hold all 390 years of the house of Israel's sin against them? The answer is a simple one which I have already alluded to. The people of Judah, aided by their Levite Priests, for the most part, faithfully offered God all the sacrifices His law required in the way it required them to do so. Because they did so, God overlooked their sins just as He had promised them He would. Because God forgave their sins up until the 13th year of Josiah he could not count their years of sin before that time against them. Thus God counted only Judah's final 40 years of sin. But He counted all 390 years of "the sin of the house of Israel." For "the house of Israel" had not offered God the sacrifices for their sins which His law required them to do.
There is even a lesson for us here. God will as He has promised, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, completely overlook our many years of sin and not count them against us. But even this forgiveness of His has limits. We cannot use the undeserved kindness of God, which Christ bought for us with His own blood, as an excuse to go on living immoral lives. The people of the house of Judah did that. And "40 years" before Babylon besieged Jerusalem the forgiveness God had for so long given them, a forgiveness bought by the blood of bulls and goats, ran out.
Of course this understanding requires that we understand Jeroboam to have been "a young man" ( Josephus Antiq. 7.8 ), probably in his early 20s, when he rebelled against Solomon and fled to Egypt, that he was a middle aged man, probably in his early 60s, when he returned home to become northern Israel's first king, and that he was an old man, probably in his early to mid 80s, when he died after ruling for "22 years." - The Bible tells us that Ahijah the prophet once had no trouble seeing well enough to tear a coat into twelve pieces. This was when he first met Jeroboam, before Jeroboam's flight to Egypt.(1 Kings 11:30) However, it informs us that later on, during Jeroboam's reign as king, "Ahijah could not see. His sight was gone because of his age."(1 Kings 14:4) I believe this is because over 40 years passed between these two events in the life of Ahijah.
This understanding of scripture also requires that we recognize the fact that the "Shishak" to whom Jeroboam fled (1 Kings 11:40) was not the same "Shishak" who plundered Jerusalem's Temple "in Rehoboam's 5th year". (2 Chron. 12:2) I believe Jeroboam fled to Shoshenq I and it was Shoshenq II who later plundered Jerusalem's Temple. Why? Because Egyptian history tells us that Shoshenq I did not rule long enough to have his reign include both of these events which were, according to this understanding, separated by some 45 years. It also tells us that Shoshenq II ruled only about one year. By recognizing Shoshenq II as the Pharaoh who plundered Jerusalem in Rehoboam's 5th year, and having previously established 935 BC as the date when the kingdom was divided, we can date the one year reign of Shoshenq II to 931 BC. Then, following the standard chronology for the history of Egypt's Pharaohs we find that the reign of Shoshenq I began some 55 years earlier, in 986 BC and ended some 21 years later in 965 BC, during which time I believe Shoshenq I gave refuge to Jeroboam who fled to him in 975 BC.
This understanding of Bible chronology and Egyptian history also dates the Exodus to 1491 BC and tells us that Tuthmosis III was then Egypt's Pharaoh. A Pharaoh who, in his 30th year,( which would be 1491 BC according to this understanding ) "received an ambassador from an unidentified Asiatic land who came to pay him homage." ( A History Of Ancient Egypt by Nicholas Grimal, pg. 215 ) I believe this was probably Moses. Egyptian history also tells us that eighty years earlier Pharaoh Ahmose was ruling Egypt, the Pharaoh who began a new dynasty after ridding Egypt of the Hyksos kings. Ahmose then would be understood to be the "new king who arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph." (Ex. 1:8) Notice the similarity between the names of Ahmose and Moses. Could Ahmose's daughter have chosen the name she did for her adopted son partly to honor her father?
I could go on with all of this. There is of course much more interesting information here. But I've probably already written way to much. As you can see, you've asked Alan a much more complex question than he has asked you. Besides, you and I and Carl all believe that the Bible is God's word. Alan does not. So Alan could simply answer your question by saying that the Bible's historical records of the Hebrew kings are full of errors. That is how most nonbelievers respond to the challange you have made to Alan. You, however, as a Christian, are the one who should be willing to defend your beliefs "to anyone who demands a reason for the hope that you have." (1 Pet. 3:15)
Mike
