For the construction of an Assyrian chronology we have, therefore, not one but two cardinal, extra-biblical, synchronisms. 1. The 1st year of Sargina is wholly or in part the 1st of Marudak Bal-idin, i.e. of Mardokempad, which began 721 B.C. 2. In the 1st year of Sennacherib, and late in it, began the 1st of Bel-ib=Belibus, whose epoch in the canon is 702 B.C. These two substantive synchronisms are linked together by the fact, as above shown, that Sargina reigned IS years, there fore i Sennacherib =703 All this is inde pendent of the Biblical narrative. The connection of Biblical with Assyrian and Babylonian chrono logy is determined, prima facie, by the express statement, In the 14th year of Hezekiah, Sen nacherib came up, etc.,' 2 Kings xviii. 13 ; Is. xxxvi. I : for Sennacherib's own monumental annals give that expedition to his third year, i.e., to the year 70r B. c. Hence it would follow that there is something wrong in the Biblical numbers, accord ing to which the 14 Hezekiah is not 701 but 713 or 71r) B.C. But there is another synchronism, which, It is supposed, overrules this. The Fall of Samaria, which is expressly assigned to 6th Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii. to, appears to be re corded in the Fasti and Annals of Sargina (Oppert, Pastes de Sargon, p. 3, I. 2; laser. des Sargonides, p. 19 ; Dr. Hincks, yourn. S. Lit., No. xv., 133, ff. ; Mr. Rawlinson, Herodot. i. 386, comp. Sir H. Rawlinson, Athen., Aug. 1863, p. 246) as occurring in his 1st, or possibly 2d year. The statement, I appointed a governor (or judges, lieutenants) over them' seems to imply that the monarchy of Hoshea had come to an end. The deportation there recorded was partial ; completed in some later year. No subsequent expedition against Samaria is mentioned. Nowt Sargina begins 721 B.C., and that is precisely 6th Hezekiah in the usual chronology—which, unless this As syrian synchronism can be invalidated, is thus made good against the objections raised from other quarters (the numbers of Polyhistor, Egyptian dates, etc.) But if 6 Hezekiah is t Sargina, 14 Hezekiah cannot be 3 Sennacherib, which, being 20 years later, is 26 Hezekiah. For solution of this difficulty, Dr. Hincks, u.s., assumes that the Biblical text has undergone a displacement. Ori ginally, he thinks, it stood thus : (t.) 2 Kings xviii. 13 a—` Now in the t4th year of Hezekiah the king of Assyria came up'—meaning Sargon, whose monuments show that he was in Palestine in his toth year, which Dr. Hincks makes=14 Hezekiah.
(2.) xx. 1-19—` In those days Hezekiah was sick,' etc.. . . ' At that time Merodach B.,' etc.—i.e. the M. B. of Sargina's time, Mardokempad of the canon.
(3.) xviii. 13 b–xix. fin., ' And Sennacherib king of Assyria came up,' etc. Mr. Rawlinson, Herodot. i. 393, note, proposes, `as the least change,' to read 27th for 14th Hez., suggesting that 'the error may have arisen from a correction made by a tran scriber who regarded the invasion of Senn. and the illness of Hez., which last was certainly in his 14th year, as synchronous ; whereas the words 'In those days' were in fact used with a good deal of latitude by the sacred writers '—which is no improvement on Dr. Hincks' solution, as it does not explain what could have induced the sacred writer to relate after the invasion what happened so long before it. But, indeed, the present writer finds it impossible to accept any view in which the embassy from Mero dach B. is placed elsewhere than after the deliver ance from the Assyrians. The pointed mention of Babylon (2 Kings xx. 17) of itself shows that the Assyrian crisis was then past ; and this is clearly implied in H.'s expression, ' There shall be peace and truth in my days' (ver. 19). It is clear that, according to the narrative, H.'s sickness and re covery took place before the deliverance, and dur ing, or shortly before the invasion : the embassy, soon after the deliverance. But as, by hypothesis, the number fourteenth is wrong, the most obvious supposition is that it should be read twenty-fourth (VPIC`31 for iTIVV), which is not indeed the actual year of the invasion, but is the first year of Sen. nacherib, and, as such, forms a momentous epoch. It should be observed that, during the latter years of Sargon, the power of Assyria must have been on the decline. The record of his campaigns reaches only to his 15th year, and the canon shows that in his last year (t8th) Babylon was in revolt.
It was perhaps during these latter years that Heze kiah `rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not,' 2 Kings xviii. 17. But the accession ' of Sennacherib greatly changed the face of affairs for the revolted provinces; and the year of Heze kiah in which this befell—probably marked by a demand of instant submission—may be supposed to have been noted in that fuller record ' The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah,' from which the existing condensed narrative was drawn. Its com
piler, by retaining only this initial date, and pass ing on at once to the invasion, two years later, seems to place this in the 24th year. This, how ever, may have been the year of H.'s illness, which seems in fact to have occurred at a time when the peril from Assyria was impending, but not actually present ; and it will not be disjoining it too far from the Babylonian embassy to suppose it to have be fallen late in the 24th year (the invasion in the 26th and the embassy in the 27th). In any case, it is not likely that the number fifteen in the promise of added life has undergone any change. It may therefore be necessary to make the term of Heze kiah's reign 39 instead of 29 years, and to retrench to years from the 55 of Manasseh. All this rests on the supposition that the synchronism 6 Hez. = year of Fall of Samaria=1 Sargina=72I B.C., is unassailable (camp. Sir H. Rawlinson, Trans. R. S. Lit., vii. But should monumental evidence yet come to light, proving that the expedition of Sargina's first year did not effect the final overthrow of Samaria, the cardinal synchronism will once more be 14 Hez.
Senn. =701 B.C. Then 6 Hezekiah will be 709 B.C., and it will be necessary to reduce the reign of Manasseh to 43 years (comp. Sir H. Raw linson, //then., Aug. 1862, p. 247).
Whatever uncertainty may still attach to this point of chronology whether 3 Senn., which is 7o1 B.C., be 14 or 26 Hezekiah), we can put to gether a connected account in which Scripture, Canon, Berosus, and monuments, all fit into each other. It is nowhere intimated on Senn.'s monu ments that the Marudak Bal-idin, with whom he contended, was the M. B. whom his father had dethroned; nor is he called, as on Sargina's monu ments, son of Jakin.' But the Biblical M. B. is `son of Baladan.' It seems, then, there were two persons of the name, father and son ; the first, 'son of Jakin' in Sargina's time,* named in the Canon Mardokempad, in Scripture simply Baladan, father of the second, who is the M. B. of Hezekiah and Sennacherib named by Berosus, but not in the Canon (comp. Brandis, fiber den h. Gewinn, etc., p. 53; others assume but one M. B.) Of the father, after his dethronement by Sargon (709 B.c.), we hear no more. Five years later, a time of anarchy in Babylon is marked in the Canon at 704 703 B.C., i.e., in the last year of Sargon and first of Sennacherib, and partly described by Berosus. During this revolutionary period, Merodach Bala dan, second of the name, repossessed himself of his father's throne in Babylon for a time of 6 months according to Berosus (who, however, is wrong in saying that he was then slain), to be driven from it late in the 1st year of Sennacherib (703). Between that time and 4 Senn. =700 B.C. something befell which encouraged M. B. once more to raise insur rection in Babylon. That something' may well be conceived to have been the reverse sustained by Senn. in Palestine (701), and nothing could be more natural than that M. B. should seek to strengthen himself by alliance with that Hezekiah in invading whom the great king had been so igno miniously checked in his career of conquest.—It is here assumed that the defeat which is related in 2 Kings xviii. befell in the 3d year of Senna cherib, which year, in his account of it (dated in his 15th year), is filled only with victories. The disparity between the Biblical and the monumental record has led to the inference that there were two invasions—the first in 3 Senn., briefly related ver. 13-16; the second, of which there is no monu mental record, that of xviii. 17–xix. fin., which is placed a year or two later by Dr. Hincks, journal of S. Lit., u.s., and Mr. Rawlinson, Herodot. i. 393 ; Anc. Empires, ii. 439 ; but by Sir H. Rawlinson at least 10 years later,t Trans. R. S. Lit., vii. Ashen., Aug. 1863, P. 247.
In the view of the present writer, vers. 13-16 are condensed from a fuller report of the transactions from Sennacherib's accession to Hezekiah's sub mission. It does not appear, indeed, that S. was himself in Palestine during the first two years of his reign, but his generals may have been, and their successes, together with his own in the early part of the campaign, the tribute levied, the tale of spoil and deported captives, furnished matter of glori fication, twelve years later, for a year which ended in disaster. Great king, mighty king, king of hosts,' he wrote his own story on his palace walls— with whom to gainsay it ? After long ages the record is disinterred and deciphered—with whom to vouch for it ? On the bringing to light of some new and unexpected document, the fortunate dis coverers are prone to claim a too implicit credence for its contents : to the calm inquirer the genuine and the authentic are still distinct considerations, nor does the truth of the decipherment carry with it the truth of the thing deciphered.—H. B.