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GERSHON GALIL, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (SHCANE 9; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1996). Pp. xix + 180. Nlg 104, $65.50.
Galil traces the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah from the schism to the fall of Judah by accepting the length of reigns and synchronisms mapped out in the Book of Kings as reliable in almost every case. G. believes that the author of the Book of Kings knew that some of the chronological data of his sources were inconsistent, and he contends that most of these inconsistencies should not be attributed to the interventions of later redactors. G. reconstructs the chronology by reconciling the biblical data with the absolute dates supplied by the Assyrian royal inscriptions. He estimates that nearly ninety percent of the biblical chronological data can be reconciled with the extrabiblical data.
Galil dates the schism to 931/30 B.C.E. by calculating back from the battle of Qarqar in 853 or from the presentation of tribute by Jehu in 841, established by Assyrian inscriptional data. Claiming that postdating (i.e., counting the first year of a king's reign as the one beginning with the new year after the coronation) was in place in Judah, whereas antedating (i.e., counting the first year of a king's reign as the actual year of the coronation) was in place in Israel to the end of the ninth century, with postdating thereafter, G. sorts through the complexities of dating events in the reigns of Asa of Judah and Omri of Israel. G.'s dates are higher in this period than those offered by Albright ("Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of...