I wrote the original "torah torah torah" piece. I did read a book once, "The Bible Dates Itself" (unfortunately, a self-published book which I have never been able to locate again, and cannot remember the author's name) which asserted that the puzzling chronology in Kings (the parallel reign-lengths in Judah and Israel are notoriously hard to reconcile) easily straightens out if it is assumed that until the Assyrian domination, the counting was in base-seven.
It was also pointed out that other stories add up better that way: if Abraham was not "100" but rather "49" (a week of weeks), and the word tish'iym "lacking some" does not mean "90" (tish'ah "lacking" became the word for nine, because it is just short of 10; with the plural ending it means nine tens) but rather "42" (six sevens; lacking one week from the week-of-weeks), then the story of Sarah is that her periods stopped and she quite naturally, at that age, assumed menopause, and laughed out loud when someone told her she was pregnant: as opposed to, not realizing until she was in her eighties (if that's when she told Abraham to impregnate Hagar) that she was unlikely to have a child.
