The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

510 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
necessary to have supposedly “oddly dated” tablets collated afresh. Furuli quotes three
examples from scholarly works of tablets that were found to have been misread by modern
scholars.
Unfortunately, Furuli himself has not applied his “word of caution” to his own research. In
the tables on pages 56-64 he presents a number of seemingly oddly dated tablets from the
Neo-Babylonian period, most of which on fresh collation turn out to have been
misinterpreted or misread. The question is why he has used these tablets in support of his
“Oslo chronology” without having them collated. Basing a radical revision of the
chronology established for one of the chronologically best established periods in antiquity
on unchecked misreadings and misinterpretations of the documents used does not speak
very well about the quality of the research performed.
Let us first take a look at the traditional chronology for the Neo-Babylonian dynasty:
Kings: Lengths of reign: Years BCE:
Nabopolassar 21 years 625-605
Nebuchadnezzar 43 years 604-562
Awel-Marduk 2 years 561-560
Neriglissar 4 years 559-556
Labashi-Marduk 2-3 months 556
Nabonidus 17 years 555-539
In the following discussion we will take a close look at each accession of a new monarch
during the Neo-Babylonian period and the “overlaps” of reigns Furuli believes he has
found.
(1) Kandalanu to Nabopolassar
Before Nabopolassar’s conquest of Babylon in 626 BCE the city and the country had been
controlled by Assyria for most of the previous 120 years. After the death of the Assyrian
king Esarhaddon in 669 BCE the Assyrian empire was ruled by two of his sons,
Assurbanipal in Assyria and Šamaš-šum-ukin in Babylonia. After the death of Šamaš-šumukin
in 648 BCE, Babylonia was ruled by an Assyrian puppet-king named Kandalanu, who
died in his 21 st regnal year, in 627 BCE. Assurbanipal to all appearances died in the same
year.
The death of Kandalanu was followed by a period of general disorder and war between
several pretenders to the throne in Babylon. One of them was Nabopolassar, the founder of
the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, who succeeded in freeing Babylon from Assyrian control late
in 626. The Babylonian chronicle BM 25127 states of the transition from Kandalanu to
Nabopolassar:
“For one year there was no king in the country. In the month of Arahsamnu
[= month VIII], the twenty-sixth day, Nabopolassar ascended to the throne”
[= Nov. 23, 626 in the Julian calendar]. (Jean-Jacques Glassner, Mesopotamian
Chronicles, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004, p. 217)
The Uruk king list, however, gives the kingless year to two Assyrian combatants, Sin-šumlišir,
a high Assyrian official, and Sin-šar-iškun, a son of Assurbanipal. Some scribes spanned
the same year by artificially extending Kandalanu’s reign for another year after his death, the
last of these tablets (BM 40039) being dated to day 2 of month VIII, shattu 22 kam arki
Kandalanu, i.e., “year 22 after Kandalanu.” This tablet, which is from Babylon, is dated 24