Assyria: Part I
Scholarship and discussions or debates about biblical chronology and biblical archaeology are dominated by two groups of people. One group dismisses the Scripture when it suits them to do so, and it is no secret that they do so. They arrive at the wrong result. The other group maintains that the Scripture is always correct, but they dismiss the Scripture by stealth, and keep it a secret that they do so, while maintaining that they uphold it completely. They also arrive at the wrong result.
It is in the interest of the world system and the minions of Satan to keep the debate centered between these two groups, and to draw everyone's attention to one or the other. This is so that the truth will be ignored. Because Satan is only concerned with getting people to believe the wrong result, however it is arrived at.
Invariably, anyone who is not a true and committed follower of Messiah Yeshua is vulnerable to falling into one group or the other. Or if one is not a true upholder of Scripture and Messiah's Torah, then one will be sidetracked from the truth. If this is not always true, it is certainly a statistical probability
Yeshua is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Without him, people inherit lies.
We also have to be on guard against the frauds, those who claim faithfulness to Messiah and his Torah, but in fact are not true to one or the other. And to detect them, you have to know the Word.
If you have a heart true to Messiah and true to his instructions, then you have an opportunity to hear the truth. The reason those outside cannot hear the truth is that from a chronological point of view, not being true to Messiah Yeshua, or not holding to his Torah, they have been tripped up by traditional arguments that support their predisposition. I'm not saying they do this willfully. I'm saying tradition has become a reinforcing mechanism of the wrong predisposition. To have the right predisposition, one has to be faithful to Messiah and his commandments.
There is a lesson to be learned from King Ahaz. He was so impressed by the Assyrians that he decided to compromise with their designs and customs. This worldliness is described in 2 Kings 16:10–18
In like manner there are those today that defer to the king of Assyria, based on what archaeologists have dug up from Assyrian Archives. But Scripture has a different point of view:
"Then the Almighty of Israel rouses up the spirit of Pul, king of Asshur, and the spirit of Tilgath Pilnasr, king of Asshur. Then he caused them to become captive, the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh. So, it had been he causes them to come to Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and river Gozan onward this day" (1 Chronicles 5:26).
Bondage to Assyria and the Assyriologist has to be unraveled. Firstly, let us note that this passage (1 Chronicles 5:1-26) is concerned only with the fate of the Transjordan Tribes. Of course, Assyria took other tribes captive also.
In fact, a number of Assyrian Kings were involved somehow in the defeat and exile of Israel. Pul, Tiglath Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon, and Esarhaddon.
If we look in 1 Chronicles 5:6, we will see Tilgath Pilnasr mentioned, and a little further on it is noted that these Transjordan tribes were registered in the days of Jotham, king of Judah (1 Chron. 5:17).
It will be noted that they were still in the land during the days of Jotham king of Judah. And the days of Jotham continued until until he was removed from the throne in his 16th year, probably by pro-Assyrian nobles supporting an abdication so Ahaz could rule.
On the other hand, 2 Kings 15:29 says, "In the days of Pekah, King of Israel, Tiglath Pileser, King of Assyria, had come. Then he takes Ijon, and Abel-beth-Maachah, and Janohah, and Kedesh, and Hatsor, and Gilead, and the Galilee, all the land of Naphtali. Then he captives them to Assyria."
So the exile of these tribes was while Pekah was still king. But it was after the days of Jotham. It was also after Isaiah 7:8, when the 65 year prophecy was made. This narrows it down to the 4th year of Ahaz, and the 20th year of Pekah, just before Hoshea killed Pekah.
Isaiah mentions two kings that will be removed, Pekah and Rezin of Damascus. Damascus fell in 732 BC after the exile of Galilee and Gilead in 737 BC.
The exile of Gilead and Galilee is not mentioned in the Assyrian Eponym canon. Only some major operations are mentioned in the canon. What happened was that Assyria traveled the coast, west of Damascus, leaving Damascus isolated. They then swept into Galilee and Gilead. Then a few years later they laid siege to Damascus and gained victory over Rezin in 732 BC.
The Transjordan tribes are also missing in King Hezekiah's invitation to attend his Passover reformation, and Hezekiah's messengers did not cross to the east of the Jordan into Gilead.
Let us now return to 1 Chronicles 5:26. The Hebrew text represents the kings Pul and Tilgath Pilnasr as two different kings. The clauses are connected by "w'et". If they were connected by just "et" then there is the possibility that the second clause is just explaining who the king named in the first clause is. But with "w'et" we have two persons. "W'et" in Hebrew always separates different persons, places, or things. It is never used in an explanatory or appositional sense. So the interpretation that makes Pul the same as the later Tiglath Pileser is without precedent, and without parallel example. In fact, all the we'et's that can be adduced are not used in the sense of "that is."
For instance, in Genesis 1:1, It says, "In the beginning of the Almighty's creating the heavens and the earth," (et ha-shamayim we'et ha-arets). Observe that "the heavens" and "the earth" are separated by we'et. It does not say "the heavens, that is the earth," because the heavens and the earth are two separate things. Similarly, "et ruach PUL, king of Assyria, we-et ruach Tilgath Pilnasar, king of Assyria" have we'et between them. We have here two separate persons.
The reason the Assyriologist, and the biblical commentators listening to them equivocate here is that no king "Pul" has been found at a time before Tiglath Pileser. So they assume that Pul and Tiglath Pileser are the same king.
There is, in fact, confirmation from the biblical chronology that Pul is a different king! Pul extorted a huge amount of money from Menahem of Israel to leave them alone. Menahem reigned one year in Tirzah, and ten years in Samaria. His son reigned 2 years. His son Pekahiah was murdered by a commander in his army, Pekah, who then reigned "in Samaria twenty years" (2 Kings 15:27).
Tiglath Pileser III took the Transjordan tribes captive in the final year of the 20 year reign of Pekah, and Tiglath Pileser did not reign more than 19 years. Therefore, the Pul who took money from Menahem is not the same as Tiglath Pileser. Our Chronicles passage represents Pul and Tilgath Pilnasr as two different kings.
One may wonder why I keep spelling Tilgath Pilnasr incorrectly. I do so because the 1 Chronicles 5:26 passage in Hebrew does this. When dealing with titles of idolatry, the Hebrew scribes had every reason to twist them around. The Assyrian name of the king is "Tukulti-apil-Ešarra", meaning "my trust [is] in the heir of Ešarra," but no Israelite wants to utter this phrase, except the rebellious like Ahaz who had the high priest copy the designs of the altar in Damascus.
Thus by a possibly intentional Metathesis, the Lamed and gimel in Tiglath are switched to Tilgath, making it nonsense. Then we have Pilnasr, with a nun in it that isn't in the Assyrian. "Apil" means "heir" or "son of." The last word is supposed to be "Ešarra", meaning the main Temple of the Assyrian god, Asshur. So essentially, the phrase is like saying the son of the god's temple, a metonymy for the son of the false god. But Messiah Yeshua is the true son of the Almighty, the one alone being true Almighty, and he who sent him, the Father.
But the last word is altered. Since this temple sounds like the Hebrew asar, aleph, samech, resh, a nun would change the meaning to something like "being in bondage." So now the same means "Tilgath [nonsense], the heir of one being a prisoner." Or it could mean "son of bondage" with an evident double entendre, thus referring to the king who carried Israel into bondage.
If we go but a step further, then Tilgath may become "tell gath" meaning "a heap (or ruin) of a winepress, heir of bondage." Thus Israel is compared to a ruined vineyard.
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