Edwin R. Thiele

Edwin R. Thiele (1895–1986) was an American missionary in China, an editor, archaeologist, writer, and Old Testament professor. He is best known for his chronological studies of the Hebrew kingdom period.

Biography

A native of Chicago, he graduated from Emmanuel Missionary College (which was renamed Andrews University in 1960) in 1918 with a BA degree in ancient languages. After two years of work as home missionary secretary for the East Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, he left in 1920 for mission service in China. During his 12-year work in China, he was an editor and manager for the Signs of the Times Publishing House in Shanghai.

After returning to the United States, Thiele received an MA degree in archaeology from the University of Chicago in 1937. He then joined the religion faculty of Emmanuel Missionary College, while continuing his doctoral work at the University of Chicago. He obtained a PhD degree in biblical archaeology in 1943. His doctoral dissertation, laterpublished as "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings" [Thiele, Edwin R.: "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings," Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951. Later reprinted by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids MI, 1983.] is widely regarded as the definitive work on the chronology of Hebrew kings. [Thiele's chronology is accepted in several recent study Bibles, and is the chronology used for the Hebrew monarchs in the "Cambridge Ancient History" (T. C. Mitchell, "Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu (931-841 B.C.)" "CAH" 3, Part 1, p. 445). Thiele's chronology with the slight modificatons of Leslie McFall, ("A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles," "BSac" 148 [1991] , pp. 3-45) is accepted in Jack Finegan's influential "Handbook of Biblical Chronology", rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), p. 249. See also, in the note below, the list of scholars who accept his date for the beginning of the divided kingdom.] He'd traveled extensively throughout the Middle East in the course of his research.

In addition, Thiele also authored a popular book on Christianity, "Knowing God". [Thiele, Edwin R., "Knowing God," Southern Publishing Association, 1979] After his death, his widow, Margaret, completed his study of the Book of Job entitled "Job and the Devil". [Thiele, Edwin R. and Thiele, Margaret R., "Job and the Devil", Southern Publishing Association, 1988.] In this work, Thiele argues that Leviathan (and Behemoth) are linked to Near Eastern myths for chaos or evil. Hence, Thiele suggests, Job pictures God struggling with Evil as lying behind Job's suffering.

From 1963 to 1965, he served as Professor of Antiquity at Andrews University. After retiring from teaching in 1965, he moved to California where he continued to write. He died in St. Helena, California in 1986. He is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

Biblical Chronology

The following is based on Thiele's book "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings".

The chronology of the Hebrew kings rests primarily on a series of reign lengths and cross references within the books of Kings and Chronicles, in which the accession of each king is dated in terms of the reign of his contemporary in either the southern kingdom of Judah or the northern kingdom of Israel. Unfortunately some of these cross references did not seem to match, so that a reign which is said to have lasted for 20 years results in a cross reference that would give a result of either 19 or 21 years.

Thiele noticed that the cross references given during the long reign of King Asa of Judah had a cumulative error of 1 year for each succeeding reign of the kings of Israel: the first cross-reference resulted in an error of 1 year, the second gave an error of 2 years, the third of 3 years and so on. He was able to demonstrate that this was due to two different methods of reckoning regnal years - the accession year method and the non-accession year method.

If we think in terms of our own calendar, if the old king died on December 31 and the new king started to reign on January 1, there was no problem. However if the old king died on December 1, what did you do with the remaining 30 days of the old year? Under the accession year method, those 30 days were called the "Accession year" and Year 1 of the new king's reign began on January 1. Under the non-accession year method the 30 days were Year 1 of the new king and Year 2 began on January 1.

If this were not complicated enough, Thiele was able to demonstrate that the northern kingdom (Israel) celebrated a spring New Year while the southern kingdom (Judah) held to an autumn New Year. Differing new years and different methods of calculating reigns were responsible for much of the confusion in the cross references, with the additional problem that the southern kingdom appears to have adopted its neighbour's non-accession method during the time when Athaliah seized power. Unknown to Thiele when he first published his findings, these same conclusions that the northern kingdom used non-accession years and a spring New Year while the southern kingdom used accession years and a fall New Year had been discovered by V. Coucke of Belgium some years previously, a fact which Thiele acknowledges in his "Mysterious Numbers". ["Mysterious Numbers", 3rd ed., p. 59, n. 17, citing V. Coucke, "Chronique biblique," in "Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible", ed. Louis Pirot, vol. 1, 1928.]

With this understanding of chronology, Thiele showed that the 14 years between Ahab and Jehu were really 12 years, which meant that he could date their reigns precisely, for Ahab is mentioned in the Kurk Stele which records the Assyrian advance into Syria/Palestine at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC, and Jehu is mentioned on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III paying tribute in 841 BC. As these two events are securely dated by Assyrian chronology at 12 years apart, Ahab must have fought the Assyrians in his last year and Jehu paid tribute in his first year.

Thiele was able to reconcile the Biblical chronological data from the books of Kings and Chronicles with the exception of synchronisms between Hoshea of Israel and Hezekiah of Judah towards the end of the kingdom of Israel and reluctantly concluded that at that point the ancient authors had made a mistake. Oddly, it is at that precise point that he himself makes a mistake, by failing to realize that Hezekiah had a coregency with his father Ahaz, which explains the Hoshea/Hezekiah synchronisms. This correction has been supplied by subsequent writers who built on Thiele’s work, including Thiele’s colleague Siegfried Horn [Siegfried H. Horn, "The Chronology of King Hezekiah’s Reign," "AUSS" 2 (1964) pp. 48-49.] , T. C. Mitchell and Kenneth Kitchen, ["New Bible Dictionary", 1st ed., J. D. Douglas, editor; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962, p. 217.] and Leslie McFall. [Leslie McFall, "Translation Guide," p. 12.] Although Thiele’s chronology of the Judean monarchs has thus needed some slight revision, his chronology of the northern kingdom (Israel) has remained basically intact since it was first published in 1944. [Edwin R. Thiele, "The Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel," "JNES" 3 (1944): pp. 137-186.] In particular, his date of 931 BC for the beginning of the division of the kingdom has been widely accepted among diverse scholars [For example, Finegan, "Handbook", (rev. ed.; Peabody, Mass., p. 249; Gershon Galil, "The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah" (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 14; McFall, "Translation Guide," p. 33-34; T. C. Mitchell, "Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu," pp. 445-446.] and has found independent support in the work of J. Liver, [J. Liver, "The Chronology of Tyre at the Beginning of the First Millennium B.C.," "IEJ" 3 (1953), p. 113-120] Frank M. Cross, [ Frank M. Cross, "An Interpretation of the Nora Stone," "BASOR" 208 (1972) p. 17, n. 11.] and others studying the chronology of the kings of Tyre. [A summary of these studies is found in William H. Barnes, "Studies in the Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel" (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 29-55, and also in Rodger C. Young, "Three Verifications of Thiele's Date for the Beginning of the Divided Kingdom," "AUSS" 45 (2007), pp. 179-187.] This date of 931 BC, in conjunction with the synchronism between Rehoboam and Pharaoh Shishak in 1 Kings 14:25, is used by Egyptologists to give absolute dates to Egypt’s 22nd Dynasty, so that Thiele’s work based on the Biblical chronology has been found useful outside the realm of purely Biblical studies.

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