Edwin R. Thiele is little known in Christian lay circles, but he is famous among theologians and in the academic community for his book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, which supposedly harmonizes the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah. However, Thiele got it wrong. There is nothing mysterious about the numbers if you believe what the Bible says.
The standard harmonized chronology for the Hebrew kings that is featured in almost all study Bibles and commentaries and taught in most English-speaking seminaries is the kings chronology developed by Dr. Thiele in the 1940s and 1950s and published in his book. Unfortunately, it has one major flaw. In order to get his chronological system for the reigns of the Hebrew kings to work, Thiele had to introduce the idea that the biblical text has not been accurately transmitted down to us today. Thus, he maintains that we cannot entirely trust what it says about the reigns of the Hebrew kings.
As shown from a quote from the conclusion of his book (see below), Thiele needed to hypothesize “scribal error” in the biblical text of 2 Kings 17 and 2 King 18 to make his chronology harmonize. The overall result of his methodology (accepting that parts of the Bible were in error) was a faulty chronology and the propagation of the idea throughout academia (after all, he did have a PhD!) that the biblical text as we have it today cannot be trusted to be a totally accurate expression of the mind of God, especially in matters of history and chronology. The damage since done to the credibility of the Bible as God’s word has been subtle but massive.
My book, Sacred Chronology of the Hebrew Kings, refutes that latter assumption of Thiele by showing that the biblical data about the Hebrew kings is absolutely accurate as we have it in our Bibles today, and that, when the Bible’s data is properly understood and accurately applied, yields exact harmonization of the reigns of the Hebrew kings without having to reject any of the biblical text as corrupted. In that critical respect, my Hebrew kings chronology is superior to the widely-accepted Thiele chronology for the kings of the divided kingdoms period.
The following is an excerpt from Sacred Chronology of the Hebrew Kings …
“Edwin R. Thiele was born in Chicago in 1895. He grew up in an age when men and women of letters and science still honored the Bible as a repository of wisdom and truth, and that attitude was reflected in his early ministry (but not in his later biblical studies and research). After graduating from Emmanuel Missionary College (later renamed Andrews University) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in ancient languages, Thiele served as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary to China for twelve years. In 1932, he returned to America to pursue advanced studies in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Five years later, in 1937, he received a Master of Arts degree, then proceeded to complete his doctoral work, being awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Biblical Archaeology degree in 1943. His doctoral dissertation, finished sometime in 1942, was published in book format in 1951 under the title The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Today, that book, updated and revised by Thiele over the course of thirty-two years and three editions, is widely accepted by many biblical and secular scholars as the definitive work on the chronology of the Hebrew kings.
Early in his academic career, Thiele became interested in finding a way to harmonize the reigns of the Hebrew kings. He began his research with knowledge of the general framework into which the reigns had to fit. The anchoring of the Assyrian reigns listed on the Assyrian Kings List accomplished by British Orientalist Sir Henry Rawlinson had allowed kingdoms chronologists to identify the year 931/930 BCE as the probable date for the start of the reigns of Rehoboam of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel. The Kings List had also allowed the identification of the year 722/721 BCE as the date for the fall of Samaria to Sargon II, the event which ended the northern kingdom of Israel. In addition, it had allowed scholars to align the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian Empire with that of the late Neo-Assyrian Empire, making it possible to identify the year 587/586 BCE as the date for the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.
So, by the time of Thiele’s initial efforts to reconcile the reigns of the kings, the chronological framework into which they had to fit, give or take a year or so on either end, was well established by biblical scholars. The real challenge for Thiele, as it had been for all kingdoms chronologists in the years since Rawlinson’s chronology had been published, became that of getting all of the reigns of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah to line up as specified by the chronological cross-references given in the biblical text. Thus, the task of harmonizing the reigns is where Thiele focused his attention.
Thiele limited his research by using only the Masoretic text, recognizing from his own early struggles to harmonize the reigns of the kings that the differences in chronological data found in other source texts, such as the Septuagint, were probably nothing more than ancient attempts to do the same. He also made a deliberate attempt to distance himself from what he termed “certain preconceived opinions” held by kingdoms chronologists of his day, and instead to try to “ascertain just what the Hebrews did in the matter of chronological procedure.” Over the course of his studies, Thiele tried to put himself into the mind of the ancient scribes, to think as they thought.
By so doing, he was able to discern that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had used different methods for recording their chronologies. One kingdom had used the accession-year system for counting its regnal years, the other had not. One had begun the year in Nisan, the first month of the Jewish year, while the other had begun its year in Tishri, the seventh month. Thiele hypothesized that both had used coregencies from time to time, although he did not always find support for his assumed coregencies in the biblical text. Additionally, he found that the years of rule in a coregency were sometimes counted in the total regnal years for a king, sometimes not. Over time, as he refined his chronology by using his new insights, Thiele was able to show where the kingdoms scribes were inconsistent in the way they recorded details about their kings.
But, despite the fact that his work was original and provided new insights about the reigns of the kings, Thiele ultimately chose to rely on a secular anchor, the date for the Bûr-Saggilê eclipse recorded in the Assyrian Chronicles that had been determined by Rawlinson almost a century earlier, for anchoring his chronology in time. When it was published, Edwin Thiele’s harmonized chronology for the reigns of the Hebrew kings was generally applauded by secular scholars and religious professionals across academic and theological spectrums, but his system did come with an important caveat.
Thiele himself, in the first paragraph of the concluding section of his book, offered the following assessment of his research and its results: The vital question concerning the chronological scheme set forth in these pages is whether or not it is a true arrangement of reigns of Hebrew kings. Certainly, this system has brought harmony out of what was once regarded as hopeless confusion. But is it necessarily the true restoration of the original pattern of reigns? At the least this research shows that such a restoration is possible. However, we must accept the premise of an original reckoning of reigns in Israel according to the nonaccession-year system with a later shift to the accession-year method; of the early use in Judah of accession-year reckoning, a shift to the nonaccession-year system, and then a return to the original accession-year method; of the need to begin the regnal year in Israel with Nisan and with Tishri in Judah; of the existence of a number of coregencies; and of the fact that at some late date—long after the original records of the kings had been set in order and when the true arrangement of the reigns had been forgotten—certain synchronizations in 2 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 18 were introduced by some late hand [causing error in the biblical text] twelve years out of harmony with the original pattern of reigns. When all of this is understood, we see that it may be possible to set forth an arrangement of reigns for the Hebrew kings in which there are both internal harmony and agreement with contemporary history. (The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 1983, p. 205)
Today, anyone familiar with the field of kingdoms chronology will agree that Thiele did a masterful job of harmonizing the reigns of the Hebrew kings, of bringing harmony out of confusion. Time has shown that most of the harmonization principles he stated above are valid. Yet, Thiele himself revealed the one glaring weakness of his system, the requirement that a portion of the biblical text be disregarded as unreliable. In the final analysis, Thiele found that he had to ignore chronological details in 2 Kings, chapters 17 and 18, to allow his system to fully harmonize and thus be considered true. The decision to ignore portions of the biblical text in favor of secular Assyrian chronology was a serious compromise on his part (and surprisingly an error that has been echoed without question ever since by even the most conservative Bible scholars). Furthermore, it was an unnecessary compromise. The reigns of the Hebrew kings can be harmonized without having to forsake any of the chronological details preserved in the Bible.”
… end of excerpt.
As I show in my own harmonization of the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, their reigns align perfectly with one another when using the biblical data exactly as revealed and recorded in the Bible. You can check out my book in the bookstore: Sacred Chronology of the Hebrew Kings