Chronology of the Old Testament

Notes:

All dates are best taken as 'about BC', as the possible variation can run to a century or more in 2000 BC, down to a decade by 1000 BC. Most of the dates for the Hebrew monarchies are quoted in double form, e.g. Asa, 911/10-870/69 BC, and Baasha, 909/08-886/85 BC, because the Hebrew year does not coincide with the January to December of our civil year. Apparent variations from biblical lengths of reign are not real but stem from the kinds of regnal-year reckoning then in use.

1. From the time of the division of the kingdom after the death of Solomon, the official scribes of the southern kingdom of Judah counted the regnal years of their kings from the month Tishri (September - October), while the scribes of the northern kingdom of Israel apparently reckoned the regnal years of their kings from the month Nisan (March - April).   Proof that Tishri reckoning was employed in Judah may be found by comparing II Kings 22:3 with 23:23, where the discovery of the law by Hilkiah and the subsequent passover in Nisan, which must have occurred several months later, are both dated in the 18th year of Josiah.  Although no scriptural evidence is available for the time of the beginning of the regnal year in the northern kingdom of Israel, when a Nisan-to-Nisan regnal year is used for Israel together with a Tishri-to-Tishri year for Judah, the perplexing discrepancies disappear and a harmonious chronological pattern results.
2. The scribes of Israel used the Egyptian nonaccession-year ("postdating") system in reckoning the reigns of their kings from the division of the kingdom down to 798 BC, and the Babylonian accession-year ("antedating") system from that year onward.  According to the nonaccession-year system, that portion of a year wihch followed a king's accession to the throne and which preceded the official New Year (whether Tishri 1 or Nisan 1) was counted as his first official year.  But according to the accession-year system, that initial period was called his accession year, and not until after the New Year did his first official year begin.  Proof that Israel followed the nonaccession-year system during the 9th century B.C may be found in the fact that Jehu (according to Assyrian records) paid tribute to Shalmanezer III only 12 years after Ahab fought in the Battle of Qarqar, while the scribes of Israel attributed 14 years to the reigns of the two intervening kings, Ahaziah and Joram.  On the other hand, the scribes of Judah must have employed the accession-year system for their kings, except during that dark period of their history when the influence of the northern kingdom, through Queen Athaliah, was predominate (848-796 BC); for only by means of this assumption is it possible to harmonize the synchronisms employed by the northern and southern scribes.
3. When the scribes of one kingdom synchronized the reign of their king with the reign of the neighboring king, they employed their own system of reckoning for both kings instead of employing the foreign system for the foreign king.
4. Many of the kings of Judah (and also Jehoash of Israel) associated their sons with them on their thrones during the final years of their reigns, thus necessitating the allowance of considerable overlappings or coregencies.

From c. 900 BC onward, Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian dates are nearly all very closely fixed. Dates for Aramaean kings, e.g. of Zobah and Damascus, are approximations based on the OT and Assyrian references and rare inscriptions from Syria itself. Dates for the Phoenicians Hiram I and Ethbaal I (father of Jezebel) are based on synchronisms and regnal years derived from the OT references and Josephus, Against Apion 1:116-126.

The two sets of dates given for later 18th and 19th Dynasties of Egypt depend on the two possible dates offered by lunar data for the accession of Rameses II, i.e. 1290 and 1279 BC. At present neither Egyptian nor related Near Eastern data are sufficiently free of gaps and uncertainties to enable a final choice to be made between these two dates.

The Old Testament chronology for the kings of Israel and Judah can be interlocked at vital points with the astronomically verified absolute chronology of the Assyrian eponym lists and thus with the other important chronological systems of the ancient Near East.  Some of the major points of contact between the Biblical and the Assyrian records are

• the Battle of Qarqar (853 BC)
• the tribute of Jehu (841 BC)
• the first western campaign of Tiglathpileser III (743 BC)
• the conquest of Samaria (722 BC)
• Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem (701 BC)

In addition to these synchronisms with Assyrian records, we have

• Pharaoh Shishak's invasion of Judah (925 BC)
• the conquest of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar (605 BC)
• Nebuchadnezzar's deportation of Jehoiachin (597 BC)