by
Damien F. Mackey
“But after a long time, Salmanasar [Shalamneser] the king being dead,
… Sennacherib his son, who reigned in his place, had a hatred for the children of Israel”.
Tobit 1:18
“The governor [Felix] then motioned for Paul to speak. Paul said, ‘I know, sir, that you have been a judge of Jewish affairs for many years, so I gladly present my defense before you’.”
Acts 24:10
This attested lapse of a long time opens up the door for a possible extension of the reign of the conventionally brief Shalmaneser [V], c. 727-722 BC, and for the conventionally brief procurator, Felix, c. 52-60 AD.
The Vulgate Tobit 1:18 employs, in the case of Shalmaneser, the Latin phrase, post multum vero temporis (“after a long time”), and the Greek Acts 24:10 employs, in the case of Felix, the phrase, Ἐκ πολλῶν ἐτῶν (“for many years”).
King Shalmaneser
Whereas the conventional history has Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V as separate Assyrian kings, my own view, as outlined in my university thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
is that Shalmaneser was Tiglath-pileser.
In Volume One, Chapter 6, I wrote the following brief section on this, in which I took a lead from the Book of Tobit regarding the neo-Assyrian succession:
Shalmaneser V (c. 726-722 BC, conventional dates)
Looking at the conventional date for the death of Tiglath-pileser III, c. 727 BC, we can see that it coincides with the biblically-estimated date for the first year of king Hezekiah. But, if the former is to be identified with Shalmaneser V, thought to have reigned for five years, then this date would need to be lowered by about those five years (right to the time of the fall of Samaria), bringing Tiglath-pileser III deeper into the reign of Hezekiah.
Now, that Tiglath-pileser III is to be equated with Shalmaneser V would seem to be deducible from a combination of two pieces of evidence from [the Book of Tobit]: namely,
1. that it was “King Shalmaneser of the Assyrians” who took Tobit’s tribe of Naphtali into captivity (1:1, 2); a deportation generally attributed to Tiglath-pileser III on the basis of 2 Kings 15:29; and
2. that: “when Shalmaneser died … his son Sennacherib reigned in his place” (1:15).
Unfortunately, very little is known of the reign of this ‘Shalmaneser’ [V] to supplement [the Book of Tobit]. According to Roux, for instance:[1] “The short reign of … Shalmaneser V (726-722 B.C.) is obscure”. And Boutflower has written similarly:[2] “The reign of Shalmaneser V (727-722) is a blank in the Assyrian records”. It seems rather strange, though, that a king who was powerful enough to have enforced a three year siege of Israel’s capital of Samaria (probably the Sha-ma-ra-in of the Babylonian Chronicle), resulting in the successful sack of that city, and to have invaded all Phoenicia and even to have besieged the mighty Tyre for five years,[3] and to have earned a hateful reputation amongst the Sargonids, should end up “a blank” and “obscure” in the Assyrian records.
The name Tiglath-pileser was a throne name, as Sargon appears to have been – that is, a name given to (or taken by) the king on his accession to the throne. In Assyrian cuneiform, his name is Tukulti-apil-ešarra, meaning: “My confidence is the son of Esharra”. This being a throne name would make it likely that the king also had a personal name - just as I have argued above that Sargon II had the personal name of Sennacherib. The personal name of Tiglath-pileser III I believe to have been Shalmaneser.
A problem though with my proposed identification of Shalmaneser V with Tiglath-pileser III is that, according to Boutflower,[4] there has been discovered “a treaty between Esarhaddon and Baal of Tyre, in which Shalmaneser is expressly styled the son of Tiglath-pileser”. Boutflower makes reference here to H. Winckler (in Eberhard Schrader’s Keilinschriften, 3rd Edn. pt. I, p. 62, note 2); Winckler being the Assyriologist, we might recall, who had with Delitzsch spirited Sargon’s name into Eponym Cb6 and whose edition of Sargon’s Annals had disappointed Luckenbill. So far, I have not been able to find any solid evidence for this document.
Boutflower had surmised, on the basis of a flimsy record, that Tiglath-pileser III had died in battle and had been succeeded by Shalmaneser:[5] “That Tiglathpileser died in battle is rendered probable by the entry in the Assyrian Chronicle for the year 727 B.C. [sic]: “Against the city of …. Shalmaneser seated himself on the throne”.” Tiglath-pileser is not even mentioned.
A co-regency between Shalmaneser V and Sargon II can be proposed on the basis that the capture of Samaria is variously attributed to either king. According to my revision, that same co-regency should exist between Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon; and indeed we find that both Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon campaigned on the borders of Egypt; both defeated Hanno the king of Gaza, and established (opened) there a karu “quay”; both received tribute from Queen Tsamsi of Arabia; both had encounters with Merodach-baladan. Further, according to my revision, that proposed co-regency can be extended to accommodate Sennacherib (as Sargon). Perhaps a clear proof is that, whilst Sennacherib claimed that the Medes had not submitted to any of his predecessor kings (see p. 153), both Tiglath-pileser and Sargon claimed to have received tribute from the Medes.
Interestingly, nowhere in Kings, Chronicles, or in any other of the books traditionally called ‘historical’, do we encounter the name ‘Sargon’. Yet we should expect mention of him if his armies really had made an incursion as close to Jerusalem as ‘Ashdod’ (be it in Philistia or Judah). Certainly, Sargon II claimed that Judah (Iaudi), Philistia (Piliste), Edom and Moab, had revolted against him.[6] If the Assyrian king, Sargon II, can have two different names – as is being agued here – then so might his father. So I conclude that 2 Kings, in the space of 2 chapters, gives us three names for the one Assyrian king:
- 15:19: “King Pul of Assyria came against the land ...”.
- 15:29: “King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria came and captured …”.
- 17:3: “King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up”.
(iii) [Book of Judith]
The testimony of [Book of Judith] should not be dismissed lightly for it is – as we shall discover in Volume Two – a very ancient document that has been copied frequently.
Now, there is only the one Assyrian king, ‘Nebuchadnezzar’,[7] ruling throughout the entire drama of [Book of Judith], and he has likenesses to ‘both’ Sennacherib and Sargon II. Thus:
(As Sennacherib) The incident to which the climax of [the Book of Judith] drama could be referring, if historical, is the defeat of Sennacherib’s army of 185,000; yet
(As Sargon II) The Assyrian king in [the Book of Judith] 1 seems to equate well with Sargon, inasmuch as he commences a war against a Chaldean king in his Year 12.
So it might be asked: Was [Book of Judith’s] Assyrian king, Sargon or Sennacherib?
The question of course becomes irrelevant if it is one and the same king.
[The Book of Tobit], like [the Book of Judith], was a popular and much copied document. The incidents described in [Book of Tobit] are written down as having occurred during the successive reigns of ‘Shalmaneser’, ‘Sennacherib’ and ‘Esarhaddon’. No mention at all there of Sargon, not even as father of Sennacherib. Instead, we read: “But when Shalmaneser died, and his son Sennacherib reigned in his place ...” (1:15). Moreover this ‘Shalmaneser’, given as father of Sennacherib, is also - as we saw - referred to as the Assyrian king who had taken into captivity Tobit’s tribe of Naphtali (vv. 1-2); a deed generally attributed to Tiglath-pileser III and conventionally dated about a decade before the reign of Sargon II. This would seem to strengthen my suspicion that Shalmaneser V was actually Tiglath-pileser III, despite Boutflower’s claim of a treaty document specifically styling Shalmaneser as son of Tiglath-pileser III.
A Summarising and Concluding Note
The neo-Assyrian chronology as it currently stands seems to be, like the Sothic chronology of Egypt - though on a far smaller scale - over-extended and thus causing a stretching of contemporaneous reigns, such as those of Merodach baladan II of Babylonia, Mitinti of ‘Ashdod’ and Deioces of Media. There are reasons nonetheless, seemingly based upon solid primary evidence, for believing that the conventional historians have got it right and that their version of the neo-Assyrian succession is basically the correct one. However, much of the primary data is broken and damaged, necessitating heavy bracketting. On at least one significant occasion, the name of a king has been added into a gap based on a preconception. Who is to say that this has not happened more than once? Esarhaddon’s history … is so meagre that recourse must be had to his Display Inscriptions, thereby leaving the door open for “errors” according to Olmstead.
With the compilers of the conventional neo-Assyrian chronology having mistaken one king for two, as I am arguing to have occurred in the case of Sargon II/Sennacherib, and probably also with Tiglath-pileser III/Shalmaneser V, then one ends up with duplicated situations, seemingly unfinished scenarios, and of course anomalous or anachronistic events. Thus, great conquests are claimed for Shalmaneser V whose records are virtually a “blank”. Sargon II is found to have been involved in the affairs of a Cushite king who is well outside Sargon’s chronological range; while Sennacherib is found to be ‘interfering’ in events well within the reign of Sargon II, necessitating a truncation of Sargon’s effective reign in order to allow Sennacherib to step in early, e.g. in 714 BC, “the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah” (2 Kings 18:13; Isaiah 36:1), and in 713 BC (tribute from Azuri of ‘Ashdod’).
[End of quote]
‘Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists
out into the wilderness some time ago?’
Good luck to anyone who is able to convert the Jewish Jesus Christ of the New Testament, whose death occurred early during the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, into a rebel insurgent leading a force of 4000 murderous sicarii (assassins) at Mount Olivet, or into the wilderness, at a point late in the procuratorship of Felix - and an “Egyptian” rebel at that!
Dr. Lena Einhorn of Stockholm, though, has attempted to do just that in her, albeit most intriguing, book, A Shift in Time, How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus (2016).
What can happen with the way that ancient history (and dare we say also much of AD history) has been, in many cases, erroneously reconstructed, with the duplicating of eras and rulers, is that a certain biblical situation can appear to emerge far more clearly at a time later than it historically should. A classic example of this is with the surprise finding of historians and biblical commentators that king Nabonidus of Babylon, dated some years after the death of king Nebuchednezzar II of Babylon, is found to match the biblical “Nebuchadnezzar”, of, say, the Book of Daniel, far better than does the historical Nebuchednezzar II.
And Lena Einhorn thinks, similarly, that she has found better parallels with Jesus Christ in the time of the procurator Felix (a contemporary of St. Paul) than at the time of Pontius Pilate – hence her proposed “Shift in Time” of some two decades.
In the case of the Babylonian dynasty, the solution to the seeming displacement is that - at least according to the AMAIC’s scheme of things - some of the Babylonian kings have been duplicated. The reason why king Nabonidus makes such an excellent “Nebuchadnezzar” of the Book of Daniel is because Nabonidus is the historical Nebuchednezzar II, is the “Nebuchadnezzar” of the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel informs us, in Chapter 5, famous for the Writing on the Wall, that “Nebuchadnezzar” was succeeded by his son, “Belshazzar”. And that very son is attested in Baruch 1:11: “ … pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and of Belshazzar, his son …”.
And it is well known to historians that the son of Nabonidus was also Belshazzar.
But biblical commentators, following an erroneous Babylonian history quite incompatible with the Bible, must feel the need to drop in a corrective note here to Baruch 1:11:
* [1:11] Nebuchadnezzar…Belshazzar, his son: Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, not of Nebuchadnezzar, the destroyer of Jerusalem. Belshazzar was co-regent for a few years while his father was away in Arabia. Later Jewish tradition seems to have simplified the end of the Babylonian empire (cf. Dn 5:1–2), for three kings came between Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus.
Now, when Dr. Einhorn wrote to me (Damien Mackey), pointing out what she considered to be some seemingly striking parallels between “the Egyptian” (as portrayed by the Jewish historian, Josephus), and Jesus Christ, I suspected that the procurator in either case, Felix (for the Egyptian) and Pontius Pilate (for Jesus Christ) must be duplicates. What I think may bear this out is the fact that St. Paul tells Felix that the latter had judged the nation of Israel for many years (see below) – a situation which would not apply in the conventional ordering of things, but would apply if Pontius Pilate ‘runs into’, is, the same person as Felix.
Anyway, I, having read through a substantial amount of the material that Dr. Einhorn referenced for me on the subject, wrote her this my summary of it all:
Dear Lena,
Many thanks for your interesting contributions which I have enjoyed reading ….
What I got out of it, though, is not what you would have wanted me to get out of it.
Your showing how well Procurator Felix fits the biblical Pontius Pilate was a revelation to me.
St. Paul says to Felix that the latter had been a judge of the nation "for many years" (Acts 24:10), which could not be true of just Felix at that time (about a handful of years only). But it would be perfectly true were Felix to be merged with Pontius Pilate, making for some two decades of overall governorship.
And, regarding the startling likenesses between some aspects of Jesus and "the Egyptian" - though one would be very hard put indeed to make of Jesus, "love thy enemy", "he who lives by the sword will die by the sword", "my kingdom is not of this world", "render to Caesar", a murderous revolutionary.
What happens is that the influential life of Jesus Christ gets picked up and absorbed into pseudo-historical characters, such as the Buddha (his birth was miraculous, he supposedly walks on water, he has 12 inner apostles and 72 outer ones, etc.), Krishna, Prophet Mohammed, and, most notably, Apollonius of Tyana, whom many regard as being the actual model for the biblical Jesus.
Unfortunately for Apollonius, his association with Nineveh (destroyed in 612 BC and whose location was totally unknown until the C19th AD), renders him an historical absurdity - same with Mohammed and his various associations with Nineveh.
Also Heraclius of Byzantium for the very same reason.
Josephus has obviously merged into the one scenario, two very disparate characters: Jesus Christ and the Egyptian.
Hence some incredibly striking parallels mixed with some impossible differences. ….
[1] Ancient Iraq, p. 310. And S. Smith wrote: “Of the short reign of Shalmaneser V no historical record is extant”. ‘The Supremacy of Assyria’, p. 42.
[6] Luckenbill, op. cit, # 195, p. 105. Again, the Assyrian scribes of Tiglath-pileser III and Sennacherib used “stereotypical military imagery” in regard to, respectively, Rezin of Syria and Hezekiah of Judah, each having been “shut in like a bird in a cage”. S. Irvine, Isaiah, Ahaz, and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis, p. 30, including n. 21.
[7] Regarding the use of ‘Nebuchednezzar’ for Sargon/Sennacherib, see Chapter 7 of this thesis.
[8] Taken from C. Archer’s The Assyrian Empire, p. 66 for Sargon II (“Sargon II and an attendant eunuch. Young boys were made eunuchs when given to the king as tribute. In Assyrian art they are always shown as being both beardless and chubby. Drawing of a bas-relief from Khorsabad”); p. 79 for Sennacherib (“Sennacherib accepting the defeat of the vanquished. Engraving of a bas-relief from Nimrud”).
