10. After Solomon's forty years, from Reho boam downward, we find connected notes of time expressed by years of the parallel reigns of Judah and Israel Here and there, indeed, the numbers are inconsistent and manifestly corrupt, but seldom those synchronisms which are cardinal for the con struction of a Canon. The result is, that the last year of Hoshea, last king of the Ten Tribes, cor responding wholly or in part with Hezekiah, is the 257th from Rehoboam. The gross sum total of the regnal years of Judah, to that year inclusive, is 26o ; of the Ten Tribes, 243 ; but, as corrected by the synchronisms, only 257 and 238 years. This deficit of 19 years has been by most chronologists taken to imply that the two gaps in the Israelite succes sion which are brought to light by the synchron isms, were intervals of anarchy, one of i i years, between the death of Jeroboam II. in 27 Uzziah, and the accession of Zechariah in 38 Uzziah ; the other of 8 years, between the death of Pekah in 4 Ahaz, and the accession of Hoshea in the 12th of the same reign. But later writers prefer to liqui date the reckoning, by assuming an error in the regnal years of Jeroboam II. and Pekah. Thus Ewald, making the difference 21 years, gives these kings 53 and 29 years respectively, instead of 41 and 20, Gesch. des Volks Isr. iii. I, p. 261-313; Thenius die BB. der Konige, p. 346, by a more facile emendation, makes the numbers 51 and 30 (N) for Nn, and for J. v. Gumpach, Zeitr. der Bab. a. Assyr., though reducing the total amount to 241 years, gives Pekah 29 years, and retains the 41 of Jeroboam ; Lepsius, Chronol. der Aeg. makes the reigns 52 and 3o ; and Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle, h. iv., pp. 381, 395, 402, makes Jeroboam reign 61 years, and retains for Pekah his 20 years. Movers (die Phdnizier, ii. 1. 153), by a peculiar method of treatment, reduces the reigns of Israel to 233 years, and brings the reigns of Judah into conformity with this sum, by making Jehoram co-regent with Jehoshaphat 4 years, Uzziah with Amaziah 12, and Jotham with Uzziah 11 years. From this point, viz., from the end of the kingdom of Israel, we have only the reigns of the kings of Judah, the sum of which, from 7 Hezekiah to II Zedekiah, is 133 years.
Ir. Synchronism:with Profane Annals. —In the latter part of this tract of time, we meet with syn chronisms, more or less precise, between sacred and profane history. Thus Jer. xxv. 1, the 1st year of Nebuchadnezzar, coincides wholly or in part with 4 Jehoiakim ; 2 Kings xxiv. 12, the epoch of Jeconiah's captivity and of Zedekiah's reign, lies in 8 Nebuchadnezzar ; ibid. xxv. 8, the 11th of Zede kiah, the 5th month, loth day, lies in 19 Nebu chadnezzar ; and Jer. lii. 31, the 37th of Jeconiah, 12th month, 25th day, lies 'in the year that Evil merodach began to reign.' From these synchron isms it follows demonstrably, that, in this reckon ing, Nebuchadnezzar has 45 years of reign, two years more than are assigned to him in the Astro nomical Canon, where his reign of 43 years begins Ae. Nab. 144=604 B.C.; consequently, that his reign in the Jewish reckoning bears date from the year 6o6 B.c. (Ordo Sad., sec. 16r-41, 438). Hence it results, that the year of the taking of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple is 588 B.C. Those chronologists who, not having care fully enough collated and discussed the testimonies, accept unquestioned the year 604 B.C. as that first year of Nebuchadnezzar, which coincides with 4 Jehoiakim, place the catastrophe two years later, 586 B.C. With this latitude for difference of views,
the synchronism 1 Nebuchadnezzar = 4 Jehoiakim 606 or 604 B.C., has long been generally taken by chronologists as the connecting link between sacred and profane annals, the terminus a quo of the ascending reckoning. From this point the series of years B.C. is carried up through the reigns of the kings to Rehohoam, and thence to Solomon and David : but there it is arrested, unless, in one or other of the ways which have been indicated, we can measure the interval between the time of the Judges and the accession of David, and then again that between the partition of lands under Joshua and the first servitude in the book of Judges. On the other hand, the descending reckoning can be pursued—but in a vast variety of forms—down to the time of the settlement in Canaan ; so that, if it be possible to carry the ascending line of years up to that point, our Mundane Era, of whatever form, can be rendered in terms of the era B.C.
12. But, besides the fundamental synchronisms, the history of the kings presents points of connec tion with the contemporary history of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, which recent monumental dis coveries have invested with a high degree of im portance. Thus in 2 Kings xvid. 13 ; xix. 9, it appears that Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and Tirhaka, king of Ethiopia, were both contem porary with Hezekiah, and at the 14th year of his reign. Now, in the recently recovered Armenian version of Eusebius's Chronicle, we have it on the authority of Berosus (quoted from the Polyhistor) that from Sennacherib to Nebuchadnezzar were 88 years (the names and numbers are given, and agree with the expressed sum) : this account places the accession of Sennacherib at B.C. 692, which is 20 years later than the lowest date that the biblical numbers will allow for 14 Hezekiah. Accordingly, Niebuhr (kl. histor u. phild. Schrif ten, i. 209) proposed to strike out that number of years from the 55 assigned to Manasseh ; then the interval to 4 Jehoiakirn t Nebuchadnezzar, would be 15 +35 2+ 31+ 3= 86. Since Nie buhr's time an important Assyrian monument of the time of Sennacherib, interpreted by Rawlin son and Hincks, informs us that the invasion of Judaea, which in the book of Kings is said to have been in the 14th of Hezekiah, took place in Sennacherib's 3d year. Hence the interval to 4 Jehoiakim becomes 86 years. Of itself this does not prove much, and Ewald, iii. 364 ; Thenius, p. 410 ; Bunsen, iv. 398, retain the biblical num ber, which also the younger Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs u. Babels, 99.105, learnedly upholds against his father's objections. With the assistance, too, of the Canon, and of the extract from Abydenus's account of the same times, it is not difficult to bring the statements of Berosus into conformity with the biblical numbers ; as in Ordo Sad., sec. ff. ; Brandis, Rerun: Assyriarum tempora emendata, p. 40, ff. (retracted, however, in his later work fiber den hist. Gewinn aus der Entzif. der Assyr. Inschr. p. 46, 73) ; and in the work just cited of the younger Niebuhr. On the other hand, Lepsius, Keimks-Buck der Aegypter ; Movers, die Phanizier,ii.i. 152, ff. (whose arguments A. v. Gut. schmid, Rhein. thus., 1857, thinks unanswerable) ; Scheuchzer, Phul u. Nabonassar; and J. v. Cum pach, Abrirs der Bab. Assyr. Gesch., p. 98, ff., contend for the reduced numbers.