Although criticism has been leveled at numerous specific points in Thiele's chronology,'but his harmonizing approach has not gone unchallenged, especially because of the many shifts in the basis of reckoning dates that it requires (e.g., Jepsen 1968: 34–35)—shifts which were unlikely in actual practice.', Freedman, D. N. (1996). Vol. 1: The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (1006). New York: Doubleday. his work has won considerable praise even from those who disagree with his final conclusions.'Driver described Thiele's system as an "important work, which comes very near to, if it does not actually reach, a final solution of the problem of the dates of the kings of Israel and Judah."4 Leslie McFall writes that "Even a critic of Thiele's system who accused him of manipulating variable factors to achieve his goal of fitting the biblical evidence into Near Eastern history and who described his work as "more a study in numerical ingenuity than in scholarly research" had to admit that "Thiele's assumption is validated by the results achieved: inner consistency and harmony and conformity with the fixed dates of ancient Near Eastern history." "', McFall, Leslie, 'A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles', Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 148. 1991 (589) (4). Dallas, TX: Dallas Theological Seminary. Nevertheless, even scholars sharing Thiele's religious convictions have maintained that there are weaknesses in his argument such as unfounded assumptions and assumed circular reasoning.
