Young's Chronology

Rodger C. Young studies Old Testament Chronology [1].

Young arrived at the following rules for interpreting Judean chronology [2, p. 37]:

• 2 Kings 24-25 uses Tishri years and non-accession reckoning for Judean kings.
• 2 Kings 24-25 uses Nisan years and non-accession reckoning for Nebuchadnezzar.
• Jeremiah (excluding chapter 52) uses Tishri years and non-accession years for Judah.
• Jeremiah (excluding chapter 52) uses non-accession years for Nebuchadnezzar (with either Nisan or Tishri years).
• Jeremiah 52:28-30 uses Nisan and accession year reckoning for Nebuchadnezzar [2, p. 36].
• Between 2 Kings 22:1 and 24:1 the counting system changed from accession to non-accession [2, p. 35].

Timeline

A = Accession Year Reckoning NA = Non-Accession Year Reckoning

n = Nisan-to-Nisan years t = Tishri-to-Tishri years

Discussion

Battle of Megiddo

Young dates the battle of Megiddo and death of Josiah to the same month as the attack on Harran (month IV). He also claims that it was after Josiah's reign the Judean system changed to non-accession reckoning [2, p. 35]:

The Babylonian Chronicles allow the date of his death to be calculated as the fourth month of 609 bc, which was in the year 610t. This was thirtyone years after the beginning of Josiah’s reign in 641t, so the reign length as given in 2 Kgs 22:1 is by accession reckoning, showing, incidentally, that somewhere between 2 Kgs 22:1 and 24:1 the counting system changed from accession to non-accession.

He does not appear to explain how the Egyptian army could have made the ~400 mile journey from Megiddo to Harran within this timeframe [3, p. 30].

Battle of Carchemish

Regarding Carchemish [2, p. 36]:

In Jer 46:2, the Battle of Carchemish is dated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, 609t – 3 (acc) = 606t. The battle occurred in 605n/605t, which is in the latter half of the year given by Jeremiah.

Subjugation of Judah

Young does not appear to explain where the subjugation of Judah (2 Kings 24:1 and Daniel 1:1) would fit into his timeline.

Sieges of Jerusalem

Young's chronology would place Jehoiakim in his 12th year at the time of his death, he does not explain how this fits in with 2 Kings 23:36 (11 years).

Young reads the deportations in Jeremiah 52:28-30 as corresponding to the same years as the captives were taken in 2 Kings, however he does not appear to justify the difference in numbers [2, p. 36]:

The writings of Jeremiah end with chapter 51 (Jer 51:64), so his methods of dating are not automatically applicable to the contents of chapter 52. The contents of that chapter, except for verses 28 through 30, are all parallel to passages in the last two chapters of 2 Kings, so the methods already determined for these chapters in 2 Kings (Tishri, non-accession reckoning) can be applied to the corresponding verses in Jeremiah 52. Verses 28 through 30 are independent of the Book of Kings and are interesting enough to require special consideration.

Jer 52:28–30 gives the number of captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar in his seventh, eighteenth, and twenty-third years. There is one thing certain about the counting of captives—the captives themselves are in no position to do it. Every king and pharaoh must have had an official assigned to this task, so that the number of those vanquished could be recorded on a stela or in the annals glorifying the king’s exploits. Thus the list of captives in Jer 52:28–30 could not have originated in a Judean record—it came from the official records of Nebuchadnezzar. The years of the monarch would therefore be the Nisan, accession years used in Babylon. This is an independent verification of the use of non-accession years when Jeremiah and the author of the last two chapters of 2 Kings referred to Nebuchadnezzar: the seventh (accession) year of Jer 52:28 corresponds to the eighth (non-accession) year of 2 Kgs 24:12, and the eighteenth (accession) year of Jer 52:29 corresponds to the nineteenth (non-accession) year of 2 Kgs 25:8. These are not mistakes, as some have assumed. They are a valuable clue that the synchronisms to Nebuchadnezzar in 2 Kings were to be taken in a non-accession sense, and this conclusion could have been reached from these texts alone without going through the more thorough analysis of the present article.

Release of Jehoiachin

Young counts Jehoiachin's 37 years of captivity on a Tishri-to-Tishri calendar [2, p. 32]:

The final synchronism in these chapters is 2 Kgs 25:27, which says that Jehoiachin, in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, was released from prison by Evil-Merodach in the twelfth month of the year that he became king. The Babylonian Tablets establish this date as April 2, 561, shortly before Evil-Merodach’s first full year that began in Nisan of 561. The thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s exile was 598t – 36 (acc) = 562t, which is consistent with the date given in the Babylonian Tablets.

References