Misconception of Calculating Time by the Dating Used in Years of King’s Reigns

When it is stated that it is the first year of a king’s reign or when it says the eleventh year of a king’s reign, we think that we understand just what they are saying. But it seems that by the manner that we add up dates using the statements of the numbers of years of the king’s reigns, which we in fact really do not. For example, when it says that the destruction of Jerusalem occurred in the eleventh year and fourth month of the reign of King Zedekiah, we count 11 years for Zedekiah’s reign. It reality it was only ten years and four months. To clarify this, ask yourself what is meant by the statement the first year second month of the king’s reign. Does it mean he has already reigned by one year past and is into the second month of his second year? Or does it mean he is only into the second month of his reign? Have you ever heard that it is in the Zero year first month? That might be a better way of stating it and then we would add it up properly. You see the truth is that Zedekiah did not reign 11 years though we all too often count it that way and figure dates accordingly. Zedekiah only reigned for 10 years and 4 months.

My mother use to play this game with the reckoning of time all the time. She was quite young in 1923 when she married, and so she would always say that she got married in her sixteenth year. In actuality, she had just past her fifteenth birthday and wasn’t sixteen years old at all, but just a fifteen year old when she got married. A number of societies do number ages in just this manner. They say a child is in there 1^st year or 2^nd year and so on. And we understand that they mean the zero year as to past aged birthdays when they say they are in their first year. And we understand that they mean the age one and then some when they say they are in their second year. Yet by the time they are in the 15^th year of the reign of a king, or the 16^th year when my mother was married; we tend to loose tract that this is not in terms of past anniversaries. And that our more common way of stating those dates would be only 14 or 15 in actual full years that have pasted. This is what my mother banked on when she would say she was married in her sixteenth year, that we would hear that she was sixteen when she was married and not just fifteen.

So what is the big deal? Give or take a half dozen months or so of a king’s reign, what does it matter? And perhaps we reconcile this way and continue to give Zedekiah a full 11 years reign. The place where it matters is in the commutations of such stated and calculated dates. Over the span of a number of kings the year’s date calculation could be off by a number of such cumulated particle years. For example if Zedekiah was in the fourth month of his eleventh year, which is really only ten and one third years real time, and we count it as eleven years. Now if his predecessor Jehoiakim ruled until the eighth month on his eleventh year, which is really only ten and two thirds years; and we use eleven years, we have a problem. You see, if we add the eleven to eleven to give twenty two years time when really only twenty one years have passed (ten and one third plus ten and two thirds), we are now a full year off on a true calculated date in time just between two kings. When cumulating such time from one king’s reign to another’s kings reign over a number of kings, it is now likely that we are now a number of years off of the true date.

Since ancient dates are so obscure and are only approximations anyway, it seems justified to so calculate ancient dates in such a manner because the major consideration is chronological continuity anyway. And it is not as important to have such precise dates when your major goal is to merely properly sequence the ancient events. This is a logical approach and an acceptable mindset, to accepting such dating procedures. Where the logical brake down occurs in this maintaining of chronological continuity, and where it does become significant, is when two separate society’s with such calculated dates are attempted to be accurately placed together. Here, often the one society’s so calculated dates places a common major event to both societies at different calculated dates and the two independently developed timetables clash. The intolerant non-thinking individual then concludes that one of the societies is not legitimate at worst or totally inaccurate as to their dates at best.

For example, it is a common dating that Nebuchadnezzar II began his reign in 605BC. Then in the nineteenth year of his reign is when the temple of Jerusalem is burned at the fall of Zedekiah. This was in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign. Quick calculations would therefore place the beginning of Zedekiah’s reign at the eight year difference between eleven and nineteen and say that Zedekiah’s reign began in 597BC (605 minus 8). Clear and simple, yes? And that the actual date of the fall of Jerusalem was 586BC (605 minus 19), right? This all assumes that the 605BC dating is correct to begin with and not wrongly set by other such miscalculation of errors, of which we are speaking. Now the Bible says that it Nebuchadnezzar was King of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 46:2). This is seven years before Zedekiah, meaning that Nebuchadnezzar came in 604 BC (597 + 7) which is associated by some as the first year of Nebuchadnezzar. So was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar 604 BC or 605 BC, its only one year difference right? But that is for just one King’s dating being off give or take a year. Further Zedekiah only reigned actually for ten years and four months, which when added to the three months of Jehoiachin doesn’t account for a full eleven years either, so maybe it was 604 BC and not 605 BC, who is to say? Thus the scholarly approximated dates are dealt with, and become more of an alignment of chronological events than having precise dates.

Further complicating the matter would be to add in to the mix other societies’ such calculated dates, especially a remote coexisting society without direct communication. The Book of Mormon starts in the first year of Zedekiah’s reign (597BC right?). But Lehi doesn’t leave Jerusalem until after that at a stated date of 600BC, which is actually three years before Zedekiah in the first year of Zedekiah. Even pushing Lehi’s leaving right into the first of the first year of the Book of Mormon, doesn’t extinguish the three year discrepancy of 597BC to 600BC. And the Book of Mormon really more likely started in 601 BC. This is because there was some history of Lehi’s activities in Jerusalem before at the first of Zedekiah’s reign. Lehi left more than likely left in the second half of Zedekiah’s reign which puts his leaving at 600 BC over a half a year after the beginning of Zedekiah’s reign which would round to 601 BC or during that year, right? And then there are those that state that Christ wasn’t even born at 0BC or 0AD, but some other year, a few years off from that. It just doesn’t all add up. Why?

We calculate dates in terms of ‘Before Christ’ as BC, yet Christ wasn’t born in 0BC. Date settings from different societies often clash, especially when calculated in terms or years of reigns of kings and also in just counting according to stated ages of people. Only one in three hundred and sixty five people die exactly on their birth date. So is it all wrong and none of the ancient societies historically recorded ever existed at all? Or are our date calculations off and ill matched because of the inaccuracy of our methods of calculating time? The obvious answer is that we are ill able to set actual precise date to actual historical ancient events. Even so, the most learned of us use these dates religiously, and put to shame and scoff at any one else that comes up with something that is in variation with these ‘sacred’ establish and published dates.

What the true bottom line of the matter is, there is a greater probability of a date calculation discrepancy when dealing with ancient dates between two remote societies (The Bible in ancient Israel and the Book of Mormon in America) than there is the likelihood that they will precisely coincide. In fact it could be said that if the Book of Mormon time was calculated to be exactly what the ancient calculated dates where worked out to be by man, it would have been more an evidence that the Book of Mormon was fabricated. For such exact correlation would have been so much more unlikely than the actual stated differences of just a hand full of years, 3 or 4, which such independent calculations should understandably yield. Thus the few years difference in the scholarly dating of Zedekiah compared to the Book of Mormon’s dating of Zedekiah is more of a proof that the Book of Mormon is true than it is that it isn’t true.