CHRONOLOGY OF THE KINGS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH. 255 



accounted for by assuming 19 years interregnum in the Israel 

 list. These interregnums throw the reign of Jehu too far back, 

 and are as irreconcilable with the Assyrian monuments for 

 that king as they are with the Egyptian for the reign of 

 Eehoboam. All this is obviated by making the superfluous 



19 or 20 years the length of the time that Uzziah lived in 

 leprous seclusion during the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, 

 2 Kings XV, 5. This gives his reign 32 years alone, and 



20 contemporary; brings his death to 739 or 740 B.C., the 

 exact year that modern critics desiderate for the call of Isaiah, 

 Is. vi, 1 ; and allows him several years contemporaneous with 

 Menahem, agreeably to the Assyrian monumental evidence to 

 that effect. 



Before considering the third difficulty, the contemporaneity 

 of Menahem and Tiglath Pileser, I must prepare the way by 

 enumerating the data that have been recovered from the history 

 of Assyria, and before doing this I must lay before you a 

 statement of the triple problem to be solved. 



Firstly, the dates of the Kings of Israel and Judah must be 

 reconciled ; this, as I have already shown, is accomplished by 

 the assumption of a co-regnancy between Uzziali and his 

 successors Jotham and Ahaz for twenty years, a co-regnancy 

 which is demanded as regards Jotham by the sacred text : 

 " The king Azariah dwelt in a several house, and Jotham the 

 king's son judged the people of the land." 



Secondly, the Egyptian reckoning for Shashank (Shishak) 

 nmst agree with the Hebrew for Solomon and Jeroboam. It 

 will be found further on that this is effectually done on the 

 now proposed scheme : but no other system hitherto proposed 

 can be forced into agreement with the Manethonic numbers : 

 some authors shift the date of Shishak a score of years up, others 

 a similar interval down ; but all make their alterations 

 ineffectually and without authority. 



Thirdly, the Assyrian records, official and therefore authori- 

 tative, cannot possibly be in contradiction with the true 

 reckoning (as I contend) preserved in the Hebrew texts. 

 To Oppert belongs the credit of suggesting the existence of 

 a break in the list of Assyrian eponyms between Assur nirari 

 and Tiglath Pileser. If any historic truth lies at the founda- 

 tion of the Sardanapalus legend as given by Ctesias, if the 

 Medes did for some twenty-five years exercise supremacy over 

 Assyria, if Arbaces and Belesis are not mere figments of a 

 di'eam, whatever may be true in their history must be intro- 

 duced somewhere in the eponym list. But Oppert's interval 



