276 F. GARD FLEAY, ESQ., M.A., ON THE SYNCHRONOUS 



I am quite in agreement with the lecturer concerning the identity 

 of Ahab, and while mentioning that point I may say that instead 

 of reading Dad-idri I read Adad-idri. The way in which his name 

 becomes identical with that given in the Old Testament, viz., 

 Benhadad, is because in the Hebrew they omitted the last portion, 

 and the Assyrians omitted the first. 



Concerning the matter of the possiblity of introducing twenty-five 

 years for Arbaces into the eponym list, that I must leave for the 

 present ; but as I have said, if I can find any comments to make 

 tending to illustrate the subject I shall do so, and hope they will be 

 published in the Transactions at the end of the discussion. 



Professor ORCHARD. — I am sure we shall all agree with what has 

 been said as to the industry and, I might also add, the ingenuity, of 

 the author of this paper. 



I note that he assumes a co-regency between Uzziah and his 

 successors Jotham and Ahaz of twenty years. That, so far as I can 

 judge, is a perfectly reasonable assumption. I cannot, however, 

 concur in all the statements of the learned author. In order to work 

 out the theory he is obliged to throw over at least two persons. 

 The passage he refers on page 257 (2nd Book of Kings) he appears to 

 think is indefensible. "I can find no defence," he says, "in any way 

 that Hoshea did not obtain the throne by an independent conspiracy 

 but was appointed by Tiglath, who had smitten Pekah, we know 

 from the Assyrian annals." The probability is that he conspired as 

 agent of Tiglath. Then he says "the 20th year of Jotham " is an 

 impossible date, because he reigned only sixteen years. But the 

 statement is not only that he reigned sixteen years, but that he 

 reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and he may easily have reigned 

 for some time afterwards somewhere else. Then the author 

 continues to deal with the supposed difficulty. " Moreover he [the 

 sacred writer] contradicts 2nd Kings xvii, 1, which assigns the 

 accession of Hoshea to the 12th year of Ahaz, which cannot by any 

 means be identified with the impossible 20th of Jotham." The 20th 

 of Jotham is not impossible, nor does there seem to be the difficulty 

 the learned author supposes with regard to that verse. He says, 

 " an exactly similar instance of insertion of an unauthentic verse 

 occurs in 2 Kings i, 17," because of the supposed discrepancy in 

 chapter 8, verse 16, but that may be so read as to cause no 

 discrepancy whatever. 



