The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

320 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
(November–December) in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes. But the
month of Nisan of the next year is still referred to as in Artaxerxes’
twentieth year of rule. (Nehemiah 2:1) If Nehemiah reckoned
Artaxerxes’ regnal years from Nisan 1, he should have written
twenty-first year at chapter 2, verse 1. Nehemiah, therefore, obviously
reckoned the regnal years of the Persian king Artaxerxes according
to the Jewish Tishri-to-Tishri calendar, not according to the Persian
Nisan-to-Nisan count. This is also supported in the Watch Tower
Society’s Bible dictionary, Insight on the Scriptures, Vol. 2 (1988),
pages 487, 488. 18
That Judah followed a Tishri-to-Tishri reckoning of the regnal
years, at least in this period of its history, is the conclusion of some
of the best scholars and students of Bible chronology, for example,
Sigmund Mowinckel, Julian Morgenstein, Friedrich Karl Kienitz,
Abraham Malamat, and Edwin R. Thiele. 19 Although this way of
reckoning regnal years makes the synchronisms between Judah and
Babylon somewhat more complicated, it clears up many problems
when applied. In the chronological tables on pages 350–352 of this
book, both kinds of regnal years are paralleled with our modern
calendar.
18 Few scholars seem to hold that Judah in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E.
employed this combination of both the nonaccession year system and the Tishri-to-
Tishri count of the regnal years, as advocated in this work. Those who opt for the
nonaccession year system usually hold that Judah applied the Nisan-to-Nisan
reckoning, and those who argue that Tishri-to-Tishri regnal years were used
generally believe that the accession year system was employed.
19 See for example J. Morgenstein’s review of Parker and Dubberstein’s Babylonian
Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 45 in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 2 (1943),
pp. 125–130, and Dr. A. Malamat’s article, “The Twilight of Judah: In the
Egyptian-Babylonian Maelstrom,” in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, Vol.
XXVII (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. 124, including note 2; also K. S. Freedy and D.
B. Redford, “The Dates in Ezekiel in Relation to Biblical, Babylonian and Egyptian
Sources,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 90 (1970), pp. 464, 465.
Dr. Edwin R. Thiele, however, assumes that while the books of Kings reckon the
regnal years from Tishri, Jeremiah and Ezekiel both reckon them from Nisan. (E.
R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1983, pp. 51–53, 182–191.) This seems a rather far-fetched
speculation, and there is no need for it, if we allow for both Tishri regnal years and
the nonaccession year system for this period.