Tony Malone & Saint Oxen Books

A New Biblical King Chronology 
Part 1: Analysis of the Worst King List Attempt
Tony Malone December 2004

This paper will present a Biblical king list (the first) that is consistent with the Bible's instructions. At the end of it, the new king dates will be compared with the archaeological record.

First we'll examine one of the older standard lists, still used by archaeologists and Biblical scholars, of the kings of Israel and Judah with the supposed years that each reigned.

The Bible tells how to align the two sets of kings (of the Northern and Southern tribes), and archaeology has provided us with one important date, 586 BCE, for the total takeover of the Middle East by Babylon. Any list of Judahite kings has to end at 586 BCE. The whole table only needs that one date to sit on.

A number of scholars have prepared lists of dates for the Biblical kings. This is the worst, from the Oxford Annotated Bible, also used by the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, both weighty and trusted sources.

The Oxford/Jerome List used the names of the kings, and almost nothing else. The Biblical historian tells us the length of each king's reign, and aligns his first year of reign to the concurrent rival king's ('he began to rule in the 12th year of so-and-so'). The Oxford/Jerome list ignored nearly ALL of that information.

We'll examine the errors in the Northern and Southern king lists. In the first chart below is a list of the Northern kings. Beside each king is what the Biblical author told us: how many years the king ruled and the year he began his rule, compared to the current Southern king. Next to that is what the Oxford/Jerome list chose to present. The chart following it will examine the Southern kings the same way.

Does the Oxford/Jerome list follow the Bible's instructions? And does it work within itself? The Bible says Rehoboam  (1st on the Southern list) ruled 17 years, but the Oxford/Jerome list has only awarded him 7 (see list above: Rehoboam rules from 922-915, seven years). His son Abijam, according to the Bible, is supposed to begin his rule in the 18th year of Jeroboam (which would be 904 on the Oxford/Jerome list), but they place his first year in the 7th year of Jeroboam (915). And the king after him, Asa, should begin his reign in the 20th year of Jeroboam (922), but on their list he begins in Jeroboam's 9th year (913). And so on. The list is not consistent with the Bible, nor does it have its own integrity. It's just a bunch of guesses.

Northern Kingdom Reign Lengths
Correct: 0 out of 19
Incorrect: 19 out of 19 (13 are off by one year;
in the other 6, errors range from three to fifteen years).

Northern Kingdom Cross References
Correct: 1 out of 17
Incorrect: 16 out of 17 (6 are off by one year;
in the other 10, errors range from six to ten years).

*Ahab, Pekahiah and Pekah begin to rule during the reigns of different Southern kings than the Bible instructs.

For Northern Jehoram there are two different Bible cross references (18th yr of Jehoshaphat, and 2nd yr of Southern Jehoram). The Oxford/Jerome list comes close to one of them, starting his reign in the 1st yr of Southern Jehoram.

Hoshea also has two different cross references (12th yr of Ahaz, and 20th yr of Jotham); Oxford/Jerome starts his reign in the 3rd yr of Ahaz.

Southern Kingdom Reign Lengths
Correct: 7 out of 20
Incorrect: 13 out of 20
(5 are off by one year; in the other 8,
errors range from two to twelve years)

Southern Kingdom Cross References
Correct: 1 out of 11
Incorrect: 10 out of 11
(errors range from four to twenty-four years)

*Jehoshaphat and Jotham begin to rule during the reigns of different Northern kings than the Bible instructs.

For Ahaziah there are two different Bible cross references (12th yr of Northern Jehoram, and 11th yr of same). Oxford/Jerome starts his reign in the 7th yr of Northern Jehoram.

This list has rendered itself useless. Of a total of thirty-nine kings (Northern and Southern), only seven of their reign-lengths are correct. Of twenty-nine cross references, only two are correct! And yet it is still used and trusted.

Scholars have convinced themselves that the list must begin around 920 BCE. According to the Bible, David and his son Solomon each reigned for forty years, and archaeologists have said for decades (without support) that David began to rule in 1000 BCE. Therefore, the divided kingdom must begin around 920 BCE. But this grave assumption guaranteed that those lists couldn't work. The numbers became impossible.

The Northern half of the problem: The Northern kings' reigns listed in the Bible add up to 241 years. But from 920 to 720 BCE (the fall of Israel) are only 200 years. Scholars forced themselves to fit 241 years of kings' reigns into 200 years.

But there's more. The four-year rival reign of Tibni and Omri is never properly acknowledged. The Bible says that Tibni and Omri ruled a split Northern territory for four years (1Kings 16:21-23). Omri then killed him and began his own solo reign over all the Northerners. But all the lists either exclude Tibni totally, or they absorb his reign into Omri's. Our chart will show why they're wrong.

And when we lay the Northern kings' information out properly, we also find that there are three reigns totaling 17 years for which the kings' names are not remembered. The Bible shows us this by leaving two of those time periods empty, and crediting the third to a king (Hoshea) who ends up with two reigns. This totals 258 years that must be crunched into a period of about 200 years. Again, our chart will show all of this.

The Southern half of the problem: The Southern kings' reigns listed in the Bible add up to 394 years. But from 920 to 586 BCE (the fall of Judah) are 334 years. 394 years had to be jammed into a period of 334 years.

On each of the Northern and Southern lists, we have about sixty years that have to be deleted and ignored in order for the whole king chart to be squashed into the time-frame that the Oxford and Jerome scholars want.

There have been many efforts to assemble the Biblical king information and make sense of it, and some have made vast improvements over the one we've just taken apart (most researchers have freed themselves from the arbitrary restriction of beginning David's reign in 1000 BCE). But scholars seem to believe that the Biblical instructions themselves are not fully trustworthy, and so they move numbers around to make them sort of work. They then find that their lists are generally as wrong as the others.