Michael Avioz, «When Was the First Temple Destroyed, According to the Bible?», Vol. 84 (2003) 562-565

This article deals with the contradiction between 2 Kgs 25 and Jer 52 regarding the date on which the First Temple was destroyed. Comparing the descriptions of the destruction in Kings and in Jeremiah shows that the two descriptions were borrowed from a common third source. In our view, this common third source is better preserved in Jeremiah 52 than in 2 Kings 25. We therefore deduce that Jeremiah 52 preserves the more exact date of the Temple’s destruction: the tenth of Ab. This claim is based on the fact that the description of the destruction in Kings is in any case truncated, and is therefore likely that it contains the textual corruptions as opposed to Jeremiah.

integrated the description into a new context. Person’s reconstruction of the Urtext of Kings and Jeremiah has the original text as "on the seventh"¹¹. He explains his view as follows: "Since a satisfactory decision cannot be made regarding the original reading, the KH [= the Hebrew version of Kings] reading is given"¹².

        We do not think that the author of Jeremiah took the material in Jer 52 from 2 Kgs 25, but rather that both borrowed from a common third source.

        Some of the differences between Jer 52 and 2 Kgs 25 can be explained by each author using the materials differently. Person’s view that the original source is Kings, and that Jeremiah borrowed and abbreviated it cannot be accepted, since some points that appear in Jeremiah do not appear in Kings.

        The differences between Jer 52 and 2 Kgs 25 that can be explained in this way include the different descriptions of Zedekiah in the two books¹³; the different foci of the two books on the fate of the Temple and the sacred vessels¹⁴; the different descriptions of Gedaliah’s murder¹⁵; as well as different descriptions of the release of Jehoiachin from prison¹⁶. All of these points strengthen the argument of some scholars¹⁷ who favour a third common source from which the authors of Kings and Jeremiah borrowed, with each author reworking the material to fit the context of his book. While in Kings, the narrative of the destruction is designed to serve as the final point about the Kingdom of Judah, depicting its destruction as punishment for the kings’ sins, the purpose of Jer 52 is to demonstrate that Jeremiah’s prophecies came to pass.

        It seems that this conclusion is to be preferred to any assumption that the author of Jeremiah took material from Kings, and added to it his own material, while correcting corruptions.

        One ought to take into account the fact that the description of Zedekiah’s end, as well as that of Jerusalem in Kings is very corrupted¹⁸. The text of Jeremiah is to be preferred to that in Kings; and the reasonableness of this preference emerges from an examination of the following arguments:

        1. The plural form wnxyw  ("they laid siege") in Jer 52,4 seems preferable to the singular Nxyw in 2 Kgs 25,1. Similarly, the plural form wklyw ("they... went out") in Jer 52,7 is to be preferred to the singular Klyw in 2 Kgs 25,4.