Mainstream have had a field day making out Ptolemy’s historical reconstruction was flawed – just as they think ancient Greeks were wrong about eclipse dates and such like. Mainstream models can only tell you what modern parameters may reveal – but that is not necessarily the truth. It is projection into the past.
Eric Aitchison in Ptolemy Revisited [available from the author via email at request] has a very interesting point of interconnection between Assyria and the Biblical comings and goings of kings in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. It has repercussions, for example, on the 763BC event – assumed to be an eclipse but possibly some other kind of natural phenomena. After all it involved a major earthquake in Assyria, not the sort of thing eclipses usually manage to provoke. Mainstream chronology of the Iron Age rest heavily on this date as well as the assumption that Biblical shishak = Libyan Shoshenk. Basically, Aitchison came to doubt the current succession of Sennacherib from Sargon II. Mainstream authors have also toyed with this but the consensus has usually left the idea well alone. Aitchison says there was a period of co-regency between Sennacherib and his predecessor. As Iron Age chronology is already overstretched mainstream prefer to keep the reign lengths separate – even when they agree a couple of campaigns are mirror images of each other.
The bit I like about this is that Aitchsion goes on to suggest there was an eleven year co-regency between Hezekiah and his successor, Manesseh, who reigned 55 years as the vassal king of Judah under the Assyrian kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal. We are told that Hezekiah was confined to his sick bed after the ‘angel of the Lord‘ destroyed the camp of the Assyrians who were beseiging Jerusalem. Sennacherib himself had returned to Nineveh which was in the process of redevelopment and the Asssyrian army was led by a general named in the Bible. Something happened and the army was almost wiped out – but it also seems to have affected the people of Judah as well. Mainstream get very cross if anyone suggests a catastrophic event of some kind – which is a convenient way of shutting down any debate on what actually occurred. Hezekiah had brought in major changes, or reforms, to religious cult practise but his successor restored the high altars and cult shrines of the Canaanite and Mosaic religion. It is usually assumed that this was in response to Assyrian influence – but this ignores the fact the Assyrians were only concerned that their gods took precedence in the imperial sphere. It is highly unlikely they would have interfered in local cults as long as they were not given precedence over their gods. In other words, it looks increasingly likely that whatever happened in year 15 of Hezekiah was what actually led to a restoration of traditional Canaanite cult centres. Josiah, in the late reign of Ashurbanipal, when events caught up with the Assyrians and they lost control of large areas of their empire, restored the religious reforms of Hezekiah, according to the Deuteronomist.
Aitchison ignores the catastrophic parallels but sets out to critique current chronology based on Edwin Thiele’s rearrangement of Biblical reign lengths in order to conform with the reign lengths of the Assyrians. Aitchison, by overlapping Sennacherib with Sargon II, recognised both kings laid claim to victories over their enemies that are precisely the same, or nearly so. Even to the names of their adversaries. This could have happened if Sennacherib as crown prince conducted those military adventures, claiming them for himself when he became sole king – thus duplicating them in the Asssyrian annals. Well worth a read and if true it could upset Iron Age chronology.