Claude Mariottini caught me in an inadvertent historical “error”
(or is it an error? it is accurate according to the MT) when he
noticed my reference to King Saul’s “two year” reign in my post,
“Saul: The King Who Should Have Never Been.” I hadn’t meant to
make a point out of how long his reign actually was
historically; while some scholars would agree with the MT and
maintain that Saul’s reign was only two years, most would
suggest there is a textual error in the MT. My concern in the
post, however, was not how long the historical Saul may or may
not have reigned, but rather, I was making a point about the
anti-Saul polemic in Samuel and especially in Chronicles. That
being said, I find Saul’s problematic regnal formula in 1Samuel
13:1 intriguing. A quick look at the Hebrew text of this verse
will quickly highlight the problems with this verse: Literally
translated the text would read: “Saul was son of __ years when
he began to reign, and he reigned two years over Israel.” There
are two issues with this vers