The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Appendix 337
Nebuchadnezzar in or before his second year, though verse 18 of
the 1st chapter shows that the three years had completely expired.
How, then, is Daniel 1:1 to be understood? The Edgar brothers
pointed out that “a number of commentators suggest that the 3rd
year of Jehoiakim in Daniel 1:1 should be understood as meaning
the 3rd year of his vassalage to Nebuchadnezzar,” which in effect
was his eleventh and last regnal year. 59 In this way the deportation
of Daniel and other Hebrew captives was made identical with the
deportation of Jehoiachin in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar.
But this explanation did not negate the seeming conflict with
Daniel 2:1, which dates the image dream of Nebuchadnezzar to his
second year; in fact, that conflict was exacerbated. If Daniel was
not deported to Babylon until the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar,
how could he be at his court interpreting his dreams in his second
year, five years earlier?
So, in addition to the interpretation placed on Daniel 1:1 to
explain its reference to the third year of Jehoiakim, there was also
need for another interpretation of Daniel 2:1 to explain its
reference to Nebuchadnezzar’s second year. The Edgar brothers
suggested that the number “2” is an error, which “has evidently
risen out of the number 12.” 60 Later these arguments were adopted
by the Watch Tower Society. They were, for example, incorporated
into the 1922 edition of the booklet The Bible on Our Lord’s Return,
pages 84–88.
But the explanation that Daniel 1:1 refers to Jehoiakim’s third
year of vassalage to Nebuchadnezzar, corresponding to
Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh regnal year, creates yet another
problem.
If this vassalage ended in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, it
must have begun three years earlier according to 2 Kings 24:1, or in
Nebuchadnezzar’s fourth year, which was the eighth year of
Jehoiakim. As is stated in 2 Kings 23:34–37, Jehoiakim was a
tributary king of Egypt before he became a vassal to Babylon. If we
59 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 29 (ftn. 4) and 31. This “solution,” found already in Josephus’ Ant.
X, 6:1–3, was adopted by a number of later writers. Dr. E. W. Hengstenberg refers
to it in his work Die Authentie des Daniel und die Integrität des Sacharjah
(Berlin,1831), p.54. Hengstenberg rejects the idea because (1) there is no evidence
indicating that Jehoiakim’s regnal years were counted in this curious way, (2) it is
an unfounded hypothesis with no support in the Bible, or elsewhere, that
Nebuchadnezzar’s first siege of Jerusalem occurred in Jehoiakim’s eighth year,
and (3) the “solution” is in inextricable conflict with Daniel 2:1.
60 John and Morton Edgar, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 32. This, too, is an old idea, suggested,
for example, by Chrysostom in the fourth century. One ancient manuscript of the
LXX version of Daniel (Papyrus 967), dating from the early third century CE., also
reads “twelfth” at Dan. 2:1. The reading is best explained as a scribal
“correction”.—John J. Collins, Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 154.