The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

SECOND BOOK OF KIXGS XV. 231
of other rulers), or having a name like it, does not appear
on the lists of Assyrian kings , if he be not identical with
another Assyrian king, which other Assyrian king, again,
on historical grounds can only be Tiglath-Pileser ; (9) Pul
and P6r are shown to be one and the same name by
virtue of a phonetic law which has been established from
other examples. Under these circumstances* it appears in
my estimation impossible to avoid the supposition that Pul
and Por, and also Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, are one and the
same person. If this however be so, light is at once cast24o
on the obscurity which involves the chronological problem,
and especially the relation of the considerably longer
Israelite measurement of time to the proportionally shorter
Assyrian measurement— an obscurity which writers for some
time past have only been able to dispel by violent hypo-
theses, see Keilinsch. u. Gesch. pp. 440 &c.
19. A7id Menahem gave Pul 1000 talents of silver', see
note on Gen. XXIII. 16 and 2 Kings XVIII. 14.
20. Fifty shekels of
silver to every man i. e. exactly one
mina to each man, see note on Gen. XXIII. 16.
29. in the days of Pekah king of Israel, there advanced
* We have no right to quote as another argument for this identity,
with H. Kawlinson, E. Lepsius and H. Brandes, 1 Chron. V. 26, in
which the transportation of transjordanic Israelites is equally attributed
to Pul and to Tiglath-Pileser. For this statement rests, in the first
place, on a confusion of what is reported in 2 Kings XV. 29 of Tiglath-
Pilesei", and what is said in 2 Kings XVII. 6 of Salmanassar ; and in the
second place, on a transference to Pul of what according to the Books
of Kings is only true of Tiglath-Pileser. This passage can only be
cited as a proof of the ease with which in Biblical writers generally
confusions of events or persons might occur, and how very possible
therefore might appear even the differentiation by these writers of one
and the same personality into two distinct ones. See also Keilinsch.
u. Gesch. pp. 431, 435 foil.