Edwin R. Thiele

Edwin Richard Thiele (born September 10, 1895 in Chicago , † April 15, 1986 in Angwin, Napa County , California ) was an American theologian , archaeologist , editor and author of German descent who worked as a missionary in China . He is best known for his chronological investigations into the time of the king in Israel .

Life

Thiele grew up in his native Chicago and attended the Adventist Emmanuel Missionary College in Berrien Springs ( Michigan ) that in 1960 Andrews University has been renamed. There he received a bachelor's degree in ancient languages in 1918 . After two years as secretary for missionary affairs for the East Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, he served as a missionary in China for 12 years from 1920 onwards. During this time he was also the editor and manager for Signs of the Times in Shanghai .

After returning to the United States, he studied archeology at the University of Chicago and graduated with a master's degree in 1937 . During his PhD in Biblical Archeology , which he graduated in 1943, he worked in the theological faculty of Emmanuel Missionary College. His dissertation, which later appeared under the title The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings , is considered to be groundbreaking work in the field of the chronology of the kings of Israel. During this research he visited the Middle East several times .

Thiele also wrote a popular science book on Christianity with the title Knowing God . After his death, the study he began on the book of Job was completed by his wife Margaret and published under the title Job and the Devil . Thiele advocates the thesis that Leviathan and Behemot are related to ancient oriental myths about chaos and evil. Therefore, he suggests that Job depicts God's wrestling with the evil that is behind Job's doubts.

From 1963 to 1965 he was Professor of Ancient History at Andrews University. After retiring in 1965, he moved to California, where he continued his writing and died in 1986. He was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Berrien Springs.

Biblical chronology

The chronology proposed in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings is based primarily on a series of royal letters and cross- references between the royal books and the books of the chronicle , in which the accession of all kings of the northern kingdom is dated in relation to the year of reign of the respective king of the southern kingdom and vice versa. Since these cross references apparently did not always fit, a king for whom a reign of 20 years was set could also have reigned 19 or 21 years.

Thiele found that the interconnections during the long reign of King Asa had a cumulative error of one year for each subsequent king of the Northern Empire. He was able to demonstrate that this is the result of two different calculation methods for government years: the accession year method and the non-accession year method. Compared to our current calendar, the only problem would be if the old king passed away on December 31st and the new king took the throne on January 1st. However, if a king died before the last day of the year, there was a gap of X days to the end of the year. The accession year method then began counting government years with the first day of the following year and designated the days up to the beginning of the year as the accession year. The non-accession year method started counting the years of reign directly with the accession of the new king and then continued counting regularly at the turn of the year. In addition, Thiele was able to show that the beginning of the year in the northern Reich was celebrated in spring, in the southern Reich, however, in autumn. These discrepancies in the dating of the beginning of the year and in the method of counting government years were responsible for the inconsistencies in the cross-connections. In addition, the southern realm under Atalja changed from the accession year method to the non-accession year method, which was previously only used in the northern realm. In his first publication he paid no attention to the results of the Belgian Valerius Couckes , who had achieved the same results a few years earlier, a fact that he only acknowledged in the third edition of his Mysterious Numbers .

With this understanding of the chronology of the royal era, Thiele was able to show that the 14 years between Ahab and Jehu were actually only 12 years. Since Ahab in the Kurkh monolith , which documents the battle of Qarqar (853 BC) between Assyrians and the Syro-Levantine population, and Jehu in the black obelisk Shalmaneser III. , who had an 841 BC BC is attested to mentioning that both kings could be precisely dated: Ahab must have fought in Qarqar in his last year of reign and Jehu must have paid the tribute in his first year of reign.

This enabled Thiele to adjust the chronological dates of the biblical books of kings and the chronicles, with the exception of the synchronism between Hosea and Hezekiah at the end of the Kingdom of Israel, for which he concluded that the writers had made a mistake here. A co-reign of Hezekiah with his father Ahaz was later set as a possible explanation for this synchronism .

Chronology of the Israelite kings according to Thiele

ISRAEL				JUDAH
king	Overlapping reigns	Reign	Duration	king	Name of the father	Age at the induction as a coregent	Age at the beginning of the only government	Co-sponsorship	Reign	Duration	Age at birth of successor	Age at the participation of the son as coregent	Age at death
Jeroboam I.		931/0 - 910/9	22nd	Rehaboam	Solomon		41		931/0 - 913	17th			59
				Abija	Rehaboam				913 - 911/0	3
Nadab		910/9 - 909/8	2	Asa	Abija				911/0 - 870/9	41
Basha		909/8 - 886/5	24
Ela		886/5 - 885/4	2
Zimri		885/4	0.02
Tibni		885/4 - 880
Omri	885/4 - 880	880 - 874/3	12
Ahab		874/3 - 853	22nd	Joschafat	Asa	35	38	872/1 - 870/9	870/9 - 848	25th	23	54	59
Ahaziah		853-852	2	Joram	Joschafat	32	37	853-848	848-841	8th	23		44
Joram		852-841	12	Ahaziah	Joram		22 (42)		841	1	22nd		22nd
Jehu		841 - 814/3	28	Atalja	Ahab				841-835
Jehoahaz		814/3 - 798	17th	Joasch	Ahaziah		7th		835-796	40	22nd		46
Joasch		798 - 782/1	16	Amaziah	Joas		25th		796-767	29	15th	30th	54
Jeroboam II	793/2 - 782/1	782/1 - 753	41	Azariah (Uziya)	Amaziah	16	39	792/1 - 767	767 - 740/9	52	33	57	68
Zechariah		753-752	0.5
Schallum		752	0.08
Menahem		752 - 742/1	10	Iotam	Azariah	25th	36	750 - 740/9	740/9 - 732/1	16	21st		44
Pekahya		742/1 - 740/9	2
Pekach	752 - 740/9	740/9 - 732/1	20th	Ahaz	Iotam		20th	735-732/1	732/1 - 716/5	16	16		40
Hoschea		732/1 - 723/2	9
				Hezekiah	Ahaz		25th		716/5 - 687/6	29	33	44	54
				Manasseh	Hezekiah	12	22nd	697/6 - 687/6	687/6 - 643/2	55	45		66
				Amon	Manasseh		22nd		643/2 - 641/0	2	17th		24
				Joschiah	Amon		8th		641/0 - 609	31	17 Jehoahaz 16 Jehoiakim 31 Zedekiah		39
				Jehoahaz	Joschiah		23		609	0.25
				Joiakim	Joschiah		25th		609-598	11	19th		36
				Jojachin	Joiakim		18 (8)		598-597	0.25
				Zedekiah	Joschiah		21st		597-586	11

reception

Thiele's reconstruction of a chronology was not accepted by all scientists, but there is also no alternative that met with broad consensus. Overall, Thiele's work and that of his students have gained the broadest acceptance, so that the ancient orientalist Donald Wiseman wrote: “The chronology most widely accepted today is one based on the meticulous study by Thiele” and, more recently, Leslie McFall “Thiele's chronology is fast becoming the consensus view among Old Testament scholars, if it has not already reached that point. "

While many specific points in its chronology have received criticism, its work has received praise from those who disagreed with its ultimate conclusion. Nevertheless, even scholars who share Thiele's religious convictions have admitted that his argumentation has weaknesses such as unfounded assumptions and circular conclusions: "In his desire to resolve the discrepancies between the data in the Book of Kings, Thiele was forced to make improbable suppositions .. . There is no basis for Thiele's statement that his conjectures are correct because he succeeded in reconciling most of the data in the Book of Kings, since his assumptions ... are derived from the chronological data themselves ... "

In particular, the numerous extra-biblical synchronisms that he included in his chronology do not always correspond to the most recent results of ancient oriental research. For example, he often took undocumented events to confirm biblical dates.

In response to the circular argument, Kenneth Strand referred to several archaeological finds that were published after the creation of Thiele's chronology and that confirmed his chronology and assumptions compared to other chronological systems such as William F. Albright , which were postulated before Thiele's work. Within scientific methodology, the ability to predict new results that were not yet known at the time the theory was created is considered to be a clear support for the preliminary acceptance of such a theory.

Despite the criticism, Thiele's methodical approach remains the typical starting point for scientific investigations in the field to this day. His work is seen as establishing the exact date of division (931 BC) for the Israelite kingdom.

Publications (selection)

• The Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel. In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3, 1944, pp. 137-186
• The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Chicago, Chicago University Press 1951; 2. Impression 1955; Revised Edition Grand Rapids, Eerdmans 1965; Grand Rapids, Kregel, 1983. ISBN 0-8254-3825-X
• A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings. Grand Rapids, Zondervan 1977, ISBN 0-310-36001-3
• with Margaret Thiele: Job and the Devil. Boise, Pacific Press Pub. Association 1988. ISBN 0-8163-0747-4

literature

• Siegfried H. Horn: From Bishop Ussher to Edwin R. Thiele. In: Andrews University Seminary Studies 18, 1980, pp. 37–49 ( pdf )
• Floyd Nolen Jones: Chronology of the Old Testament: A Return to the Basics. 2002. A refutation of Thiele's assumptions ( pdf ).

supporting documents

1. ^ Edwin R. Thiele: The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings . 1st ed. Chicago, Chicago University Press 1951.
2. ↑ Thiele's chronology is, among other things, the basis for the chronology of the Israelite monarchs in Cambridge Ancient History . With slight modifications, it was also used by Jack Finegan for his Handbook of Biblical Chronology .
3. ^ Edwin R. Thiele: Knowing God . Southern Publishing Association, 1979.
4. ↑ for example Siegfried Horn: The Chronology of King Hezekiah's Reign (1964) pp. 48-49 or TC Mitchell; Kenneth Kitchen: New Bible Dictionary (1962) p. 217.
5. ^ Donald Wiseman: 1 and 2 King. In: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries . Leicester: Intervarsity, 1993, 27.
6. ^ Leslie McFall: The Chronology of Saul and David. In: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53, 2010, p. 215.
7. ^ Gershon Galil: The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah . Leiden, Brill 1996, p. 4.