BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 17
September, 1990
Copyright 1990, Biblical Horizons
Why was Abel’s offering approved and Cain’s rejected? This question has been debated for many centuries. Some have argued that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not a bloody offering; others that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not from the firstfruits; others that Cain’s offering was rejected because he had an ungodly attitude; others that this event shows how arbitrary God can be. Too often, the attention of commentators has been overly focused on Moses’ description of the two offerings. Perhaps an effort to examine other details of the text of Genesis 4 will shed some light on this question.
Cain is called an `oved-adamah, usually translated as a "tiller of the ground" (Gen. 4:2). The Hebrew, however, is not so straightforward. While `avad can mean "to till" (cf. Prov. 12:11; 28:19), it is usually used in the sense of "to serve." The participial form, `oved, is used in connection with mas in Genesis 49:15, Joshua 16:10, and 1 Kings 9:21 to mean "to be a slave at forced labor." In Malachi 3:17, this form of the verb is used to describe a son who serves his father; the Lord promises to spare the remnant of Israel as a man spares his own son who serves him.
An interesting parallel to Genesis 4:2’s description of Cain is found in Zechariah 13:5. There the Lord is speaking to Israel about "that day" when the fountain of cleansing will be opened in the land, and the "unclean spirit," the idols, and their prophets will be removed. In that day, the death penalty for false prophecy will be enforced by the false prophet’s own parents (13:3). Prophets will be ashamed at their own visions, and will refuse to don the hairy robe of the prophet in order to deceive. They will deny that they are prophets, insisting instead that they are `oved-adamot, "tillers [or servants] of the soil." They will try to evade responsibility for the condition of the people of God.
Verses 4-6 have several connections with the story of Cain and Abel. First, Zechariah contrasts the prophet who dons the "hairy garment" with the "tiller of the soil." Jesus saw Abel as the first of the martyred prophets (Luke 11:50-51), and Cain was the first obed-adamah.
Second, the prophet who is the focus of these verses in Zechariah bears wounds (v. 6). When the prophet denies that he is a prophet, a skeptical hearer asks, "What are these wounds between your hands." The prophet’s response is, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends" (Zech. 13:6). The false prophet is a wounded prophet, just as Abel was a wounded and martyred prophet. He claims that he was wounded by members of his own family, just as Abel was attacked by his elder brother.
Why would a false prophet bear wounds? Here the connections between Zechariah’s prophecy and the story of Cain and Abel become more complex. The wounds of the false prophet were wounds from an ecstatic orgy, during which he cut himself to gain the approval of his idol (cf. 1 Kings 18). False prophets bear self-inflicted wounds from their attempts to manipulate God. But the true prophet also bears wounds, the wounds of martyrdom, the wounds of persecution.
Thus the conversation recorded in vv. 5-6 might be reformulated as follows:
False Prophet: I am no prophetic Abel. I am like Cain, a servant of the ground.
Skeptic: Then why do you have wounds on your hands? It looks to me as if you have been engaged in some ecstatic prophetic ritual.
False Prophet: You have found me out. I am indeed a
prophet. But I am a true prophet like Abel who was
attacked by members of His own family, not a false
prophet who tries to force God’s hand by self-inflicted
wounds.
Bringing all of this back to bear on Genesis 4, are we in a better position to understand why Abel’s offering was superior to Cain’s? The distinction in Zechariah 13 is between the true prophet and the slave of the ground. In Genesis 4, Abel is the true prophet, while Cain is a slave of the ground. What is the significance of these two descriptions?
In the context of Genesis 4, the reference to "ground" is exceedingly important. Adam had been made from the ground (2:7); after he sinned, the ground had been cursed in reference to him (3:17); in death, Adam would return to the ground (3:19). And now, Cain, the son of Adam, is said to be a servant of the ground, who brings an offering of the fruit of the ground (4:3). After Cain kills his brother, Abel’s blood cries out from the ground (4:10); God punishes Cain be saying that the ground will no longer yield its strength to him (4:12); and Cain complains that he has been driven from the face of the ground (4:14). Cain is a slave of the ground; he is of the earth, earthy.
On the other hand, if we can read the distinction in Zechariah 13:4-5 back into Genesis 4, we conclude that Abel’s offering was approved because he was a true prophet. He was a member of the heavenly council, not a slave of the earth. Taking this a step further, we should ask what makes Abel a true prophet, or, more precisely, what marks him as a prophet? In Zechariah 13:4, the prophet is described as one who wears a hairy garment. Abel, by contrast with Cain, wore the hairy garment of the prophet. He was covered in the skins of sacrificed animals. We seem to be led back to the conclusion that Abel’s offering was accepted because Abel offered a bloody sacrifice for atonement, and (figuratively, at least) covered himself in the skins of the sacrifice (cf. Gen. 3:21).
Abel is the first prophet and the first martyr, and the type of all later prophets and martyrs. And he is particularly a type of the One who was stripped of His prophetic garments, Who offered Himself as a bloody sacrifice for sin, Who is the garment that now clothes His people — the One Whose blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 17
September, 1990
Copyright 1990, Biblical Horizons
Last year I had occasion to work through the book of Luke as I did some work for one of my editorial clients, and this year my pastor has been preaching through Luke. Thus, I have twice been reminded of the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13), a parable that I have worried over from time to time since I was first asked to teach on it as a young teenager.
The traditional interpretation says that the steward was praised for his shrewdness, not for his dishonesty, and that Jesus was advising that we employ a kind of practicality with the things of this world. I am not at all convinced, however, that this interpretation does justice to the context of the parable in Luke. I am uneasy when all we see in Jesus’ teachings is "good advice" on the level of the Sayings of Confucius or Aesop’s Fables. Yes, the steward is praised for his shrewdness, but is that all there is to it?
I should like to suggest an interpretation that takes into account the redemptive-historical context of this parable, as well as its immediate literary and situational context. I suggest that the Master is God, the steward represents the religious leaders of Israel, and the debtors are the poor, on whom these leaders have tied great and unnecessary burdens. Accordingly, the point of the parable is that the Pharisees and other leaders need to show mercy to the poor and downtrodden, because a great revolution in the world is about to take place, a revolution that will remove them from leadership and transfer leadership to a new organ of the covenant: the Church.
At first glance, such an interpretation makes sense in terms of the overall redemptive-historical context of the gospels. Jesus frequently warns the Pharisees along such lines. But what about the actual context of the parable? Were the Jewish leaders present when Jesus told this? Was He speaking, at least partially, to them?
Luke 15:1 says that publicans and sinners were coming near Jesus and listening to Him. The next verse says that the Pharisees and scribes grumbled against Jesus for consorting with such people. This situation sets the stage for all that takes place until Luke 17:11.
First Jesus tells them (both leaders and "sinners") the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Lk. 15:3-7). He follows it with the Parable of the Lost Coin (Lk. 15:8-10). These two parables are virtually identical, except that the sheep is a living thing and symbolized those in Israel who lacked power (The symbol of the powerful in the Levitical law was the ox.), while the coin is an inanimate thing — and a piece of money.
I suggest that the next two parables expand in the fashion of dramas these two parables: the Lost Sheep into the Lost Son; the Lost Coin into the Unjust Steward.
The Parable of the Lost Son (Lk. 15:11-32) is still addressed to the mixed crowd. In this parable the father rejoices, just as the shepherd rejoiced to find his sheep. The father calls for a banquet to celebrate the finding of his son, just as the shepherd invited his neighbors to celebrate the finding of his sheep. In the Parable of the Lost Son, however, we find a new element: an older brother, who is churlish and refuses to celebrate the return of the younger brother. Now, nobody has ever doubted the "allegorical" character of this parable. The older brother, in context, signifies the leaders of Israel, the Pharisees and scribes who were listening to the parable, while the younger brother signifies the publicans and "sinners," who were returning to the Father through Jesus, but who were not being welcomed by the religious leaders of Israel. Thus, the Parable of the Lost Son extends the meaning of the Parable of the Lost Sheep by bringing in the negative reaction of the Pharisees.
I suggest that the next parable, that of the Unjust Steward, follows in this same vein. We notice in Luke 16:1 that at this point in the conversation Jesus turns to His disciples and it is to them expressly that He tells this story. When the story is complete, however, we find that the Pharisees and scribes are still present and have been listening intently. They scoff at the parable. Jesus turns to them and condemns their attitude. He goes on to tell the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which in context must allude to the Pharisees once again. The event comes to an end in Luke 17:1-10, with Jesus warning His disciples about stumbling blocks who harm the weak and poor — once again a clear allusion to the religious leaders of Israel.
We have established that the Pharisees and scribes are very much in view throughout this section of Luke, and thus may very likely be in view in the Parable of the Unjust Steward. Let us now apply this interpretive hypothesis to an exegesis of the parable itself.
Luke 16:1. A certain rich man (God) had a steward (the religious leaders of Israel), and the steward was reported as squandering the rich man’s possessions. This means that the scribes and Pharisees (and Sadducees and priests, etc.) had abused their offices, misusing the gifts God had given them for their own pleasure instead of ministering these gifts to the people. Notice that the immediate reaction of the Pharisees in verse 14 is to scoff, because they "were lovers of money."
Luke 16:2. The master (God) calls the steward (Jewish leaders) to account, and informs them that they will no longer be his stewards. This is exactly what Jesus did throughout His ministry. He was constantly calling the leaders to account, which was why they hated Him so intensely. The message of the gospel was that a new Kingdom was coming, and that stewardship would be given to new leaders.
Luke 16:3-4. Now we see that this steward is wise. He determines to make friends with those he had formerly abused, so that when he is removed from office "they will receive me into their homes." The wise Pharisee will befriend the publicans and sinners, because they are the ones who will receive the new Kingdom. Their "homes" are the Church. If the Pharisees and scribes want to have a place on the other side of the coming judgment, they had better secure a place in the Church now, by repenting and showing kindness to those they formerly had exploited.
Luke 16:5-7. The wise steward reduces the debts owed by the poor to the master. (Notice that this action is not called unjust or dishonest in the parable.) In common life reducing the debts might be foolish, but even in common life a master might praise the shrewdness of the steward, as happens in the parable. In spiritual life, however, this is not foolish at all. The Pharisees were guilty of adding many burdens ("debts") to the law, and of increasing the bondage of the poor. Jesus had earlier condemned the Jewish leaders for just this: "Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers" (Lk. 11:46). Notice how the steward in the parable says, "I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg" (Lk. 16:3). The steward has been laying burdens on men that he himself does not wish to shoulder.
The "lawyers" are in the same class as the scribes and Pharisees, as a comparison of Luke 11:46-52 with Matthew 23 will show. The lawyers were unwilling even to touch the burdens, which shows that the "burdens" have to do with additions to the laws of uncleanness ("touch not, taste not, handle not") — which is exactly what the Oral Law additions were all about. Many kinds of violations of the laws of uncleanness were technically "debts" or "trespasses" [same word], and required a monetary payment to the Temple for restoration (Lev. 5:14 – 6:7) — money that went into the coffers of the religious leaders! Thus, adding to the laws of uncleanness was financially profitable to the religious leaders.
With this background in mind, we can understand even more clearly the nature of the "debts" mentioned in the parable. The bondage placed on the people by the scribes and Pharisees often involved real financial hardship. To a certain degree the poverty in Israel was due to the fact that these men robbed the poor by means of religious trickery, such as charging exorbitant prices for sacrificial animals at the Temple (Luke 19:46), persuading people to cut off their parents and leave them in poverty (Mark 7:9-13), and cajoling widows into giving them their money (Luke 20:47). Publicans (tax farmers) robbed the people by taking exorbitant taxes, but this was mere oppression. The religious leaders robbed the people by teaching lies as the Word of God, which was blasphemy. They were far worse than the publicans.
So then, the formerly unjust steward is undergoing a change of heart, or at least a change of mind. He trusts the word of the master and acts on it. Jesus is advising the Pharisees to do the same. He is advising them to believe Him when He tells them that their days are numbered. He is advising them to make peace with those they have been oppressing.
Luke 16:8. The master praised the steward for acting shrewdly. Just so, Jesus says, if you Pharisees stop oppressing the poor and make peace with them, God will praise you. Jesus goes on to say that the sons of this age are shrewder in dealing with each other than are the sons of light. This seems to be a further rebuke to the Pharisees, implying that a gentile in this situation would have the sense to take the precautions Jesus has been describing, while the Jewish leaders (the "sons of light") are too blind to do so.
Luke 16:9. Jesus tells them to make friends be means of the Mammon of unrighteousness, that when it fails "they" may receive you into eternal dwellings. Who is the "they?" In context, it is the debtors (v. 4). The poor are going to inherit this new Kingdom, and in a sense it will be up to them whether or not the Pharisees get in. Jesus says to the Pharisees that they had better remove the burdens they have put on the poor, and make peace with them, so that they may enter the coming Kingdom.
Luke 16:10-12. Here we have more "sayings." Those who are faithful in little will be given more. If you cannot handle Mammon, who will give you true riches? We can take these out of context and they are still true, but we need to see them in their redemptive-historical context in order to get the Gospel-content out of them. Confucius might have said these same things, after all. What is different about Jesus’ saying them? It is this: In context it is the religious leaders who have "much." They have not been faithful in the small thing (the Old Covenant) so they will not be given the large thing (the New Covenant). They had abused the financial aspect of their religious office by using religion to rip people off, and so they are going to lose their office.
Luke 16:13. Jesus says you cannot love two masters: God and Mammon. True, but we dare not rip this out of context. The righteous religious leader in Israel and in the Church was and is obliged to deal with money — money from Trespass Offerings in the Old Covenant and money from tithes and offerings in the New Covenant. The problem Jesus was addressing in this parable is that the scribes and Pharisees had let love of money get the better of their offices as teachers of the people.
Luke 16:14. This is immediately clear when the Pharisees scoff at Jesus’ parable precisely because they are lovers of money.
Luke 16:15-18. Here Jesus continues the theme. Our interpretation of the Parable of the Unjust Steward enables us to see continuity between it and what Jesus says here. In verse 15 Jesus calls them down from their high office because it is wrongfully maintained. In verse 16 Jesus informs them that the new Kingdom is dawning and if they have any sense at all they will force their way into it (by heeding the lesson of the Parable of the Unjust Steward). In verse 17 Jesus tells them that God’s law (given through Moses) will stand, implying that their Oral Law additions will not stand. Finally in verse 18, Jesus completes the turning of the tables on them by condemning them for adultery. The Pharisees were into sexual sin in a big way, and while they multiplied the laws of uncleanness in order to collect trespass money, they loosened the laws of sexuality in order to practise serial polygamy. By the time Jesus is done with them, it is clear that it is the Pharisees and scribes who are at the bottom of the moral pile, not the publicans and sinners.
(The reference to adultery seems out of context, but the larger context is Malachi, where the post-exilic religious leaders are condemned for all the same sins Jesus later condemned in the scribes and Pharisees. See in particular Malachi 2:13-16. The importance of Malachi to the background of New Testament teaching is not sufficiently appreciated. Compare the five charges in Romans 2:21-23 with (in order): Malachi 2:7; 3:5+8; 2:14; 1:6-8; 2:9.)
Luke 16:19-31. Here is the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Lazarus was covered with sores and could come no closer than the gate. The Rich Man dressed in purple and fine linen every day — Jesus’ hearers would have seen an allusion to the High Priest here. The Rich Man represents the Jewish religious leaders: He is "rich" in privilege, and as we have seen, also rich in ill-gotten wealth. Lazarus represents the poor, here described as a leper. Like the publicans and "sinners," he associates with dogs (gentiles). Of course, the Rich Man is not exactly the High Priest, and the sores of Lazarus are not exactly leprosy, but I submit that no Jewish listener in Jesus’ audience could have failed to make these two connections. We can apply this to rich and poor in all areas of life, but the first application is to the life of the Church.
Luke 17:1-10. This closes the sequence. Jesus tells His disciples that it will be horrible for those who oppress the poor, in the religious sense, on the day of judgment. He tells them to rebuke each other if they see each other becoming like the Pharisees and scribes. He tells them never to forget that they are unworthy slaves of God, and warns them not to take up the airs of the Pharisees and scribes.
We noted above that the Parable of the Unjust Steward was addressed directly to the disciples, though within earshot of the Pharisees. It was Judas in particular who needed to hear this parable, but he failed to heed its warning. Beyond Judas, however, Jesus was addressing the New Covenant Church of all ages. He knew that the Pharisees would not hear and heed, and so He only let them listen in to the advice He would have given them. The advice is still for us: We had better not be guilty of legalistically adding to the word of God, and we had better not be guilty of using religion as a way to exploit the poor, or else the kingdom will be taken from us as it was taken from them.
I stated that I think that the Parable of the Unjust Steward carries forward the idea of the Parable of the Lost Coin. In general that is because both deal with money. Let me suggest some other possible correspondences, however. The ten silver coins possibly represent the woman’s dowry, the legacy of her husband (Luke 15:8). This is the same as the money entrusted to the steward by the master.
The woman loses one of the coins of her possession (or possibly legacy). Just so, the steward — the Jewish religious leader — has lost sight of his duty. The woman lights a lamp (the knowledge of God) and sweeps the house (as at the Feast of Unleavened Bread she removes all the old leaven, all the "dirt," from her home). By heeding the lamp (the Word) and cleaning up her life, she finds the lost coin. Just so, the Pharisee, if he heeds the lamp of Jesus’ words and cleans up his life, will find the lost coin of his stewardship and be received into the habitations of the coming Kingdom.
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 2, No. 9
September, 1990
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1990
By James B. Jordan
We come now to what some have called the "Gordian Knot" of Biblical chronology: the period of the kings of Israel and Judah. We do not have a summary figure that tells exactly how long this period of time was. The book of Kings provides the years each king reigned, and cross-references to the reigns of the Kings in the other kingdom, but sometimes these are in apparent conflict. Thus, Biblical chronologers have studied the problem assiduously, and satisfactory solutions to virtually all the vexing questions have been put forth in the past.
Martin Anstay writes that "there is not a single difficulty that has not been satisfactorily cleared up in standard works by able Chronologers from the Chronicle of the Old Testament by Dr. John Lightfoot, in the 17th Century, to Willis J. Beecher’s Dated Events of the Old Testament . . . in our own day." (Anstay, Chronology of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Kregel, (1913) 1973], p. 169.) Some of the curious problems are summarized by the aforementioned John Lightfoot: "Divers such passages as these you will find in this story of the Kings. Ahaziah 2 years older than his father (2 Chr. 22:2), Baasha fighting 9 years after he is dead (2 Chr. 16:1), Jotham reigning 4 years after he is buried (2 Ki. 15:30), Joram crowned King in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat (2 Ki. 1:17 + 1 Ki. 22:51), and in the 22d year of Jehoshaphat (2 Ki. 8:16), and after Jehoshaphat’s death (2 Chr. 21:1)." (Cited by Anstay, p. 170.) There are excellent and credible explanations for each of these curiosities, and the interested reader is invited to consult Anstay’s work for them.
In recent years, the labors of traditional Biblical chronologists have not been taken seriously. The reason for this is that the chronology of the Ancient Near East that has been devised by secular scholars does not square with the data found in the books of Kings. The chronology in the Hebrew books of Kings is about 50 years longer than the chronology of the nations round about Israel, as reconstructed by secular scholarship.
In 1951, a Seventh-Day Adventist scholar named Edwin R. Thiele published a study titled The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Published by the prestigious University of Chicago Press, Thiele was widely heralded as having solved the problem of the chronology of Kings in a way that rescued the reliability of the Hebrew text while dovetailing with the "short chronology" of secular opinion. Thiele’s work was revised slightly for publication by Eerdmans in 1965, and again in an edition from Zondervan in 1983.
Although Thiele seeks to defend the Bible as much as possible, it is clear that what he regards as more reliable is the chronological data that comes from the nations around Israel; that is, the currently-reigning interpretation of that data. Thus, the Bible says that the interval between the fall of Samaria and Sennacherib’s invasion is only eight years (2 Ki. 18:10, 13), while according to Assyrian dating there ought to be 21 years between these two events. Thiele gerrymanders the text of the Bible in an extremely speculative way in order to correct this problem. What he should have done is take another look at Assyrian records.
Thiele banks heavily on eclipse data, which as we have seen is quite untrustworthy (Biblical Chronology 2:1). Slight changes in the rotation and revolution of the earth, called "accelerations," mean that the farther back in time we go, the farther out of synch our calculations of the time and place of eclipses will be. The eclipse recorded in the 10th year of Ashur-dan III might not have been on 15 June 763 after all.
Thiele also regards the canon of Ptolemy as "completely reliable." We shall have to return to Ptolemy later in this series, but for now we make the point that Ptolemy’s list of reigns, written around A.D. 150, is not at all beyond question, as Robert R. Newton’s The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1977) demonstrates. It seems likely that Ptolemy invented regnal dates and manipulated astronomical data in order to support his theories of celestial mechanics. Unfortunately, Ptolemy’s questionable work has influenced chronologists ever since he wrote it, even though his chronology is seriously contradicted by the records of the Jews and the Persians.
Speaking of the Jewish historian Josephus, Anstay writes that "since his account of the closing years of the Persian Empire agrees with that of the National Persian Traditions incorporated in the poem of Firdusi, and with that of the National Jewish Traditions preserved in the Sedar Olam, he [Josephus] stands as a witness against the longer Persian Chronology of Ptolemy, now universally accepted" (Anstay, pp. 22-23). If we reject Ptolemy and go with the shorter chronologies used by men closer to the scene of the disputed events, then the chronology of the ancient Near East must be shortened by a century. This means that the synchronisms between Israel and the surrounding cultures are called into question, and this calls Thiele’s work into question in this area.
My point here is that the relatively clear testimony of Scripture is set aside by Thiele in favor of questionable pagan writings. The Hebrews had by far the most highly developed sense of history of anyone in the ancient world, and it stands to reason that their chronology should be taken more seriously than that of anyone else. Unfortunately, the reverse if the case today.
We can and must say, of course, that Dr. Thiele’s intentions were honorable, even if his methodology is open to serious criticism.
Thiele’s Odd System
The books of Kings record the number of years that each king reigned. There are two questions concerning this chronological information that need to be answered. The first is whether the king’s reign is dated from the first month of the lunar year (Nisan, in the spring), or from the first month of the solar year (Tishri, in the fall). Chronologists have debated this question for centuries.
The second question is whether the king’s accession year is counted as year one or year zero. For instance, if we use the accession-year method, then the first year of the new king is the same as the last year of the old king. In that case, when we add up the numbers, we have to subtract one year because of the overlap. If, however, we use the nonaccession-year method, then the first year of the new king is the next year after the last year of the old king. In that case, we can add up the numbers without subtracting any.
It is clear that sometimes the accession-year method is employed, and sometimes the nonaccession-year method is employed. This is what makes interpreting the chronology of Kings so tricky. Anstay comments that "the figures cannot be treated mechanically. They can only be interpreted and understood in the light of the accompanying narrative" (Anstay, p. 176).
Now, what is Thiele’s system? Thiele maintains that sometimes the two kingdoms used the accession-year method, and sometimes the nonaccession-year method, and moreover that sometimes the king’s reign began in the fall (Tishri) and sometimes in the spring (Nisan). He sets out his system in detail in his book, but for our purposes, Ozanne’s summary will be most helpful:
"Briefly [Thiele’s] system is as follows. At the time of the disruption, the Northern Kingdom of Israel followed the nonaccession-year system of reckoning, and in accordance with this system, backdated their regnal years to the Nisan preceding the precise date of accession; on the other hand, the Southern Kingdom of Judah followed the accession-year system and accordingly postdated their regnal years to the Tishri following the precise date of accession." (C. G. Ozanne, The First 7000 Years [New York: Exposition Press, 1970], p. 96.) What is immediately odd about this system is that both of these kingdoms had a common cultural root. Why would they be so completely different in their methods of reckoning reigns?
"Furthermore, the recorder in each kingdom reckoned the years of the other kingdom according to his own system: the northern recorder reckoned the years of the Judean kings by the nonaccession-year system, while the southern recorder reckoned the years of the Israelite kings by the accession-year system; but in each case retaining the New Year’s Day (1st Nisan or 1st Tishri) used by the other kingdom" (Ozanne, p. 96). There are two problems with Thiele’s view here. First, why would the northern scribe use the northern nonaccession-year system, but keep the southern new year’s date? This really strains credulity.
Second, how does Thiele know which verses stem from a "northern scribe source" and which come from a "southern scribe source"? In some cases, where reference is made to such books as "The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah" as a source document, we can make a guess, but in other cases such information is lacking.
Now, this is only the beginning of complications, because Thiele’s system only works for the first century of so. "This system of reckoning continued down to the reign of Jehoram of Judah, but in his day, according to Thiele, the Judean kingdom adopted the nonaccession-year system used in Israel. This was due to the influence of Jehoram’s wife, Athaliah, who was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel" (Ozanne, p. 98). So, for 52 years, the two kingdoms both used the nonaccession-year system, though they retained two different New Year’s dates (Tishri in the south, Nisan in the north).
But: "This, however, was to continue for only 52 years and through four reigns; for toward the end of Joash’s reign the Southern Kingdom reverted to the accession-year system, while at the same time the Northern Kingdom adopted the accession-year system from Judah" (Ozanne, p. 98).
Thiele’s work has been influential, primarily I suspect because of the unwillingness of evangelical scholars to challenge the "assured results" of secular opinion regarding the chronology of the Near East, with which Thiele’s dovetails. Yet many scholars feel that it is too complicated. Why in the world would two cultures that have the same background differ so dramatically in their ways of reckoning time? And why would they switch back and forth?
But let’s assume that the cultures did indeed differ in this regard, where does this leave us? Ozanne’s comments are worth citing: "That the prophetic recorders should have reckoned the years of both lines of kings by the system customary in their own kingdom is nothing to be surprised at; what is surprising is that the final editor of the books of Kings, who was responsible presumably for these references in their present form, should have left the synchronisms unchanged — unless, indeed, he was unaware that they were reckoned in divergent principles. To me it is not only surprising but incredible that such a complicated system of reckoning should underlie these seemingly innocent entries. What, we may ask, was the purpose of this editor — was it to enlighten his readers or to confuse them?" (Ozanne, p. 99).
The point of this essay is not to despise or reject Thiele’s labors. At many points of detail his suggestions are worthy of consideration. His system as a whole, however, is not very plausible because (a) it asks us to believe some almost incredible things about these cultures and about the final author of Kings; (b) it gerrymanders the text in order to square it with highly questionable secular chronological reconstructions; and (c) the gerrymandering of the chronological data entails some very, very unlikely interpretations of the text.
