If want to put Saul on a timeline—whether you regard that timeline as historically accurate or merely as a model of a story’s internal chronology (much as one might do with a television show set in our own present)—how do you represent that? And how might one label the alternatives? As Claude Mariottini recently discussed, the problem arises from what appears to be ancient damage to the text of 1 Samuel 13:1. In the aforementioned post, Claude surveyed various alternatives—the NRSV, NIV, NET, NASB, NEB, JPSV, Modern Reader’s Bible, KJV, and ASV each offer a translation that differs from all the other translations mentioned!

The fine folk who produce Accordance knew full well that many arguments could surround any choice made when assembling a biblical timeline. In the Accordance Timeline module, the developers decided to provide two timelines, one labeled “Conservative” and one labeled “Critical.” Saul’s case, however, confounds such categorizations.

According to the documentation:

The Conservative system takes the Bible’s account of history as essentially reliable and accurate in detail. Chronological statements are therefore usually taken at face value. In cases where chronological difficulties occur, or where the Bible does not seem to agree with other historical sources, the Bible is presumed “innocent until proven guilty,” and every effort is made to reconcile such difficulties while maintaining the Bible’s historical accuracy.

The Critical system takes the Bible’s account of history as generally trustworthy, but not necessarily accurate in every detail. In cases where chronological difficulties occur, or where the Bible does not seem to agree with other historical sources, critical historians are sometimes willing to modify or depart from the biblical account.

It turns out, then, that both of Accordance’s timelines are rather conservative, even though only one is named “Conservative” in the module’s options. There is no “Wild Flaming Liberal” timeline or “Minimalist” timeline or “Finkelsteinesque Low Chronology” timeline or anything of that sort available in the module (though users can customize their timelines a bit).

The Accordance Timeline developers recognized the difficulties inherent in building any timeline, of course:

It should be noted that critical dates for Biblical events can vary widely, and there are numerous dating schemes which might have been used. To a lesser extent, the same can be said for conservative systems of dating. Rather than trying to represent every possible system of chronology, we have chosen to follow specific works which are widely recognized and respected. We understand that some of our users may disagree with particular dates, or that they may subscribe to an entire system of chronology which is different from the ones we have chosen.

Those specific sources are (copied-and-pasted from the timeline documentation, but reformatted as a list for the web):

• Conservative Dates:
• Old Testament: Eugene Merrill, Kingdom of Priests
• Old Testament Writings: Gleason Archer, Survey of Old Testament
  Introduction
• Intertestamental Period: Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Between the Testaments (by Harold Hoehner)
• New Testament: Harold Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ Class notes.
• Critical Dates:
• Old and New Testament Periods: Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Revised Edition)
• Old Testament Prophets and Writings: HarperCollins Bible Dictionary
• Kümmel: Introduction to the New Testament
• Other Dates:
• The chronology of the Hebrew kings was based on Edwin Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. This chronology, which is substantially agreed upon by both Merrill and Finegan, was used for both the Conservative and the Critical dates for the period of
  the Divided Kingdom.
• Extrabiblical dates, such as those for Egypt, Rome, and other regions
  are all based on the Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd Edition. Some extrabiblical period names were also derived from relevant articles
  in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (which is available as an Accordance module).
• The Critical dates for the kings of Aram were derived from Wayne
  Pitard’s article on Aram in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.
  Conservative dates for this period were derived from Merrill.
• Some extrabiblical writings and early church fathers were derived
  from the Anchor Bible Dictionary

We could spend a long time analyzing and evaluating these choices, but I’d rather get right on to Saul. Accordance’s “Conservative” timeline gives Saul a forty-year reign, from 1051 to 1011 BCE:

Accordance’s “Critical” timeline, on the other hand, shows Saul with a “fuzzy” reign lasting anywhere from two to 38 years, between 1050 and 1012:

This might be a good time for you to review Claude’s post, if you don’t remember the textual issues surrounding Saul’s age when he became king of Israel (I’m not convinced that can be fixed at a certain point in time, even—maybe especially!—if 1 Samuel’s narrative is 100% historically accurate, but I digress). In a nutshell, the Hebrew text (I don’t think Claude mentioned that the Septuagint simply omits the whole verse) says that “Saul was a year old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel two years.” Note my choice of “a year,” not “one year”; the Hebrew text simply has no number there. (The number “two,” later in the verse, does appear in the Hebrew text.) This obvious error leads most scholars to conclude that this verse lost its numbers sometime in antiquity, and the evidence of the Septuagint (Greek) and Vulgate (Latin) translations shows that this loss happened very early indeed. (Only fragments of 1 Samuel survive among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and as far as I know this stretch of text is not represented on any of the published fragments.)

I find myself a little bit amused, and a little bit irritated, by the way Accordance’s timeline plots and labels Saul’s reign. I understand, as mentioned above, that the developers followed certain published sources in preparing the timeline, and that’s perfectly understandable. Moreover, I understand that if you tried to depict every ambiguity on a timeline, you’d quickly end up with just a big mass of fuzzy colored blobs. And please remember what I wrote above: despite the labels, both of Accordance’s timelines lie well toward the conservative end of the spectrum of reconstructions currently circulating. That said, I find it curious that, with regard to Saul’s reign, Accordance’s “Critical” timeline is actually more conservative than its “Conservative” timeline! The “Conservative” timeline is supposed to “take[ ] the Bible’s account of history as essentially
reliable and accurate in detail,” but it patently does not do this for Saul’s reign—instead, recognizing that the Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 13:1 must be wrong about Saul’s age when he became king, the “Conservative” timeline (more properly, that timeline’s source) also assumes that the length of Saul’s reign given in the Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 13:1 must be wrong, and the timeline rewrites 1 Samuel 13:1 (dropping the word “two” and adding the word “forty”) to make it conform to Acts 13:1!

If “Conservative” means “tak[ing] the Bible’s account of history as essentially reliable and accurate in detail,” then the “Conservative” timeline’s treatment of Saul’s reign is not “Conservative.” No rational timeline could possibly be “Conservative” in that sense with regard to Saul’s reign. No; the “Conservative” timeline gets its span for Saul’s reign through a “Critical” operation of historical reconstruction. (Its reconstruction might even accurately reflect what was once written in the undamaged paragraph; I don’t really have much of an opinion about which numbers once stood in this verse.) By even entertaining the possibility of a two-year reign for Saul, the “Critical” timeline allows a chance that the second half of 1 Samuel 13:1 might be historically accurate as it stands—a possibility the “Conservative” timeline does not even envision.

Weird.