[Avodah] How do Chazal calculate a king's reign?

Fri Apr 1 06:06:53 PDT 2011

My chavrusa and I are still stuck on the chronologies of the kings and events mentioned in Gemara Megilla 11b-12a. At the moment, our problem is that we've been forced to admit that we can't figure out how to count how long a king has been reigning for.

To modern minds, this is not a difficult question. George H.W. Bush was President of the United States from noon on January 20 1989 until noon on January 20, 1993 -- exactly four years. No one would dream of saying that he was president for five years simply because he was president during the five calendar years of 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993. But our understanding is that this *is* how the old kings counted their years.

We know this from the gemara, in the last words on Megilla 11b, where Rava resolves some difficult calculations by concluding, "Shanim m'kutaos havu - They were partial years." Rashi explains that the final year of one king got "absorbed" into the first year of the following king. In other words, when a new king came to power, the time from that day to the end of the year got counted as his first year, independently of the previous king's last year also being in that same year. This can cause big errors. It would be like counting George HW Bush's 5 years, Bill Clinton's 9 years, and George W Bush's 9 years, adding them together, and finding that (5+9+9=) 23 years elapsed from Jan 20 1989 to Jan 20 2009. According to that gemara, both Belshatzar and Achashverosh made this exact error, and so Rava warns us about counting these partial years.

This helped a lot, when my chavrusa and I were working on the reigns of Nevuchadnetzar and Evil Merodach. But it seems to work against us with some of the later kings. Belshatzar is a great example:

Several sources (ArtScroll Megilla 11b2, Seder Hadoros 65a) say that Belshatzar reigned for three years, from 3386 to 3389. But that phrase ("three years, from 3386 to 3389") makes sense *only* according to modern minds.

If we look at it the way the ancients did, that Belshatzar's first year began at some point in 3386, then his second year was 3387, and his third year was 3388. How can anyone say that he reigned for three years and was still king in 3389?

It gets worse. It is clear from the Gemara on 11b, that Belshatzar calculated that the first 68 years of our galus had elapsed during the reigns of his predecessors, and that he considered his first year to be #69 of our galus, and his second year to be year 70. Therefore, right at the beginning of his third year, when we were still not redeemed, he mistakenly thought that he no longer needed to worry about us; he celebrated by using the keilim of the Beis Hamikdash, and was killed that very night. Thus, regardless of how long his first year might have been, we know for a fact that his third year hardly lasted any time at all. This makes it even more difficult to imagine any calculation by which his reign began during 3386 and lasted to 3389.

(I suppose one possible scenario is that he became king during the day of 29 Elul 3386, and he did *not* consider that partial day to constitute his first year, but that his first year continued until 29 Elul 3387, and his second year until 29 Elul 3388, and that he died the night following 1 Tishre 3389. But this goes against the whole "partial years" concept, not to mention the odds of his taking office on that particular day being around 1/365.)

Additional Note:  I must point out that in Rav Aryeh Kaplan's "Torah Anthology" on Megillas Esther, the chronology on page xv shows Balshatzar's reign from 3387-3389, which would solve all the above questions. However, that simply moves the problem to Nevuchadnetzar, who is shown as reigning from 3319 to 3364, which goes blatantly against the 45 years that the Gemara says he reigned. When counting 3319 as his first (partial) year, the 45th year is only 3363. This is simple counting, not even advanced arithmetic.

Additional Note #2: The reign of Evil Merodach is confusing both according to the ArtScroll Gemara (which gives 3363-3386) and the Torah Anthology (which gives 3364-3387). Either way, if the first year is #1, then the last year is #24, but the Gemara is very clear that he died in his 23rd year.

What on earth could it be that we are misunderstanding?

Let's wrap this up:

The numbering of years from Creation is not really critical to our quest. Our goal is no different than the Gemara's: to to document the 70 years of galus in terms of the political events of the time. We'd be quite happy with a list, seventy lines long, looking something like this:

* Galus year 1 - Tzidkiyahu is exiled; it is the 11th year of Yehoyachin's exile, and the 19th year of Nevuchadnetzar's reign
* Galus year 2 -  12th year of Yehoyachin's exile, and the 20th year of Nevuchadnetzar's reign
... etc ...
* Galus year 27 -  37th year of Yehoyachin's exile, and the 45th year of Nevuchadnetzar's reign; Nevuchadnetzar is killed, Evil Merodach becomes king
* Galus year 28 - Evil Merodach's 2nd year as king
... etc ...
* Galus year 48 - Evil Merodach's 22nd year as king
* Galus year 49 - Evil Merodach is killed, Belshatzar becomes king
* Galus year 50 - Belshatzar's 2nd year as king
... etc ...
* Galus year 57 - Last year of Koresh's reign; 1st year of Achashverosh
* Galus year 58 - 2nd year of Achashverosh's reign
... etc ...
* Galus year 69 - 13th year of Achashverosh's reign
* Galus year 70 - Achashverosh dies in the 14th year of his reign, and Daryavesh (his son and Esther's) becomes king
* Year 71 - Galus ends in Daryavesh's second year when he begins rebuilding the Beis HaMikdash

Most of the "...etc..."s in that list are pretty easy to fill in. (It's just counting! Not even high-level arithmetic!) But we can't figure out the gap between years 50 and 57. No one seems to dispute the claim that Belshatzar died in (the very beginning of) his third year, and then Daryavesh Mada'a and Koresh reigned for a combined total of 5 years. How can we stretch that to fill in the whole gap between 50 and 57?

Akiva Miller

PS: I had thought that the solution might lie in Mishna Rosh Hashana 1:1, which says that the years for kings are counted from Nisan. According to this, if a king took office in Tammuz and died the following Teves, that would count as only one year, even though it spans two calendar years. And if he took office in Teves and died in Tammuz, it would count as two (partial) years, even though his reign only lasted about a half-year. However, this is NOT relevant to any of the above, according to ArtScroll Mishnah Rosh Hashana page 13, which says that Nisan marks the year only for Jewish kings -- non-Jewish kings count their years from Tishrei.

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