http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file
For complete access to all the files of this collection
see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php
==========================================================
*
*
*
BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY*
/ /
Vol. 10, No. 9 © James B. Jordan , 1998
September, 1998
To the reader:
Over a decade ago, Dr. Gary North commissioned me to produce a
Bible chronology that would attempt an interaction not only with
the Biblical text but also with ancient world chronology as it
exists in the 20th century. This is necessary for two reasons.
First, 20th century Christians have largely abandoned the
authority of the Bible in the area of strict chronology; and
this is because, second, Christians have been awed by the
clearly erroneous reconstruction of ancient world history
offered by secular scholars, and have made numerous compromises
with it.
The task set before me was and is far too vast for any one man
to accomplish. Nor do I have the training to analyze and
reassess the huge amount of data concerning ancient world
chronology that comes from secular sources. What I do have the
training to do is analyze various older and newer chronologies
of the Bible and provide a strict and careful Biblical
chronology based on a Christian understanding of the Biblical
data. And, as anyone can do, I can read the works of various
revisionist historians and suggest ways that the Biblical
presentation of history interacts with the historical records of
other ancient world cultures. I have worked at this task for
over a decade, and the issues of Biblical Chronology have
presented my findings piecemeal.
All of this was designed, of course, to issue in a book. A while
back Dr. North suggested that when my research was done, and I
began writing the book itself, I use this Biblical Chronology
essayletter to present the book chapter by chapter. Naturally,
this involves duplicating much, though not all, of the material
previously published. Many current readers, however, will not
have access to the early issues of Biblical Chronology, and so
such a duplication of material will only potentially bother a
few readers.
Accordingly, we begin this month with chapter 1 of a book
tentatively entitled *The Date of Creation.* The footnotes in
this chapter will not translate into internet text, but if you
desire a printed copy of the chapter, send $5.00 to Biblical
Horizons, Box 1096, Niceville, FL 32588, and request a copy.
James B. Jordan
* * * * *
1 (part 1)
ANCIENT WORLD CHRONOLOGY AND THE BIBLE
In 1971 appeared a privately published book dealing with the
problems surrounding the chronology of Egypt as it relates to the
Bible: The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications, by Donovan A.
Courville. At the time, Dr. Courville (Ph.D., Chemistry) was
emeritus professor of Bio-chemistry at the School of Medicine at
Loma Linda University. A practicing Seventh-Day Adventist, Courville
had made this chronological problem his avocation for many years,
and his 700-page study was the result.
Courville pointed out that if the Bible is even faintly correct
about the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, there should be evidence
of a serious catastrophe in Egyptian history at that point.
According to the book of Exodus, after the Hebrews came into Egypt,
they began to multiply and about a century before the exodus the
Pharaoh tried to put a stop to it. His effort climaxed with the
command to murder all boy babies, a command his daughter rejected
when she adopted Moses (Ex. 1). What this shows us is that Egyptian
civilization was very dependant upon slave labor for about a century
before the exodus. Then the Egyptian culture was demolished for
several centuries.
The Bible says nothing about Egypt until we read in 1 Kings 3:1 that
Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter. This was shortly before the
Temple began to be built. Egypt had obviously begun to be a power by
this time, but in David's day it was still not important enough to
be noticed. Thus, for nearly 480 years after the exodus, Egypt seems
to have been a minor power.
Consider what the Bible actually says happened to Egypt:
1. A (slave) labor base of over 600,000 men was lost, and a
working population of an unknown number of "mixed
multitude" also departed (consisting doubtless of all
other slaves in Egypt).
2. All the crops of Egypt were destroyed.
3. All the cattle of Egypt were destroyed.
4. All the firstborn sons of Egypt were killed. Almost
certainly these were children up to five years of age
(compare Numbers 3:41-51 with Leviticus 27:6).
5. The Egyptian army was wiped out.
6. The Pharaoh was killed, because the Pharaoh led his army
(Exodus 14:6ff.).
7. The gods of Egypt were humiliated completely.
Now this event was of a huge magnitude. Scholars using the
conventional consensus chronology of today often tell us that it
happened during the reign of Thutmose III, but we not only have the
sarcophagus of Thutmose III, we also know nothing like this happened
during his reign. The same is true of the alternative sometimes
suggested, Rameses II (which is why in the film The Ten
Commandments, the Pharaoh is not killed at the Red Sea). This
construction of ancient history is clearly completely wrong.
The destruction of Egypt must have ushered in a dark age. Any
reconstruction of ancient history that does not have an Egyptian
dark age beginning in the 1400s BC is wrong.
Moreover, on their way out of Egypt the Israelites encountered a
savage tribe of men called Amalekites (Exodus 17). There is reason
to believe that these Amalekites were on their way to Egypt to
pillage it. As Rahab informs us (Joshua 2:9-11), the shock of the
collapse of Egypt was felt immediately in Canaan, which was under
Egyptian hegemony. It is reasonable to assume that vultures would
immediately descend upon the corpse of Egypt. Genesis 36:12 tells us
that Amalek was a grandson of Esau, and thus the Amalekites were
Semites of the Hebrew line, though they were completely mingled with
Canaanite Horites (Genesis 36:1-43), and evidently with a group of
Japhethites also called Amalekites (Numbers 24:20).
The present conventional consensus chronology (CCC) of the ancient
world places the exodus at a time when Egypt was very strong, and
becoming stronger. Moreover, according to the CCC there is virtually
no evidence of an Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Courville's solution involved shifting the entire CCC forward by
several centuries. The CCC tells us that the Hyksos dynasty in Egypt
ruled during Joseph's day, and that the Israelites left Egypt during
the reign of Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, or Rameses II. Following
Velikhovsky, Courville shifted this forward so that the Hyksos were
the Amalekites who conquered Egypt after God devastated it, and who
were kicked out during the time of Saul (which is why Saul had to
fight them). The "Shishak" who sacked Solomon's Temple in the days
of Rehoboam was Thutmose III, according to Courville.
The general elegance of Courville's solution can be seen in that its
redating forces a redating of the archaeological chronology of
Palestine and provides clear evidence of the Israelite conquest of
Canaan. Moreover, and this is very important, Courville's solution
eliminates a 300-year "dark age" that supposedly occurred in every
part of the Mediterranean world between about 1100 and 800 BC.
Courville's work was generally ignored. After all, he was not an
insider to the world of archaeology and ancient history. Also, he
was a Seventh-Day Adventist. His book was privately published.
Gradually, however, his efforts came to the attention to the
catastrophic revisionists.
The founder of modern catastrophic revisionism was Immanuel
Velikhovsky. Velikhovsky was an unbeliever, but he decided that the
fantastic events recorded in the Bible probably had some basis in
fact. Thus, he posited that the planet Venus was travelling around
the solar system during the ancient world, causing disruptions on
the earth. He used this and other astral catastrophes to explain the
plagues on Egypt, the manna, the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua's
long day, etc. His followers have come up with many more odd
catastrophic schemes to explain ancient events. Velikhovsky
maintained that the Hyksos were the Amalekites, and his general
scheme is the same as that of Courville, who gives him credit for
being the first to suggest it. It is noteworthy that over the years,
the Velikhovskian catastrophists have become less interested in
Venus fly-bys and Mars fly-bys, and more interested in chronological
and archaeological revisionism. Interaction with Courville's work
has to some extent displaced fascination with Velikhovsky's.
This was the situation until 1991. In that year a book was published
by scholars working within accepted academic circles that challenged
the CCC: Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional
Chronology of Old World Archaeology. The primary author is Peter
James, who graduated in ancient history and archaeology at
Birmingham University and at the time of publication was engaged in
postgraduate research at University College, London. The thesis of
the book is that there was no 300-year "dark age" in the ancient
world, and that the myth of the 300-year dark age is based on a
misreading of Egyptian history. In order to make this point, James
teamed up with specialists in various areas of Mediterranean
archaeology and history, who wrote various chapters of the book: I.
J. Thorpe, Nikos Kokkinos, Robert Morkot, and John Frankish. Their
manuscript was read and critiqued by well over two dozen scholars
before publication. The book was picked up by Rutgers University
Press in 1993. Publication by a university press has guaranteed that
the book will receive serious attention. It was an "Editor's Choice"
selection of the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club. With the
publication of Centuries of Darkness, revisionism has entered the
mainstream of discussion.
Centuries of Darkness takes note of Velikhovsky's work, but finds it
wanting in substance. There is no reference to Courville's work, nor
to that of the other "outsiders" who have been working in this area.
This is significant, because it means that the authors have
developed their thesis out of a thorough familiarity with existing
"in house" archaeology and history, and for this reason their work
must be taken seriously by the academy.
In 1995, an associates of James and company, David Rohl, published a
book entitled A Test of Time: The Bible From Myth to History (Great
Britain: Century, Ltd.) reprinted in the United States by Crown as
Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest. A two-tape video series (three
50-minutes presentations) hosted by Rohl and covering the material
in his book was produced in 1985 by Discovery Networks and Channel 4
Television. The American edition is available from Discovery Channel
Video under the title Pharaoh's and Kings: A Biblical Quest. (At the
time of this writing, both book and video are found in the Barnes
and Nobles catalogue.)
Rohl's highly detailed and lavishly illustrated book advances the
suggestions of Velikhovsky and Courville, arguing that Egyptian
chronology has been inflated by about 300-350 years. Rohl provides
good arguments that the monotheist king Akhenaton was a contemporary
of Saul (Akhenaton's "Hymn to the Sun" is very similar to David's
Psalm 104, and if Akhenaton's reign had overlapped the time when
David began writing psalms ? well before he became king ? Akhenaton
might have been influenced by David). According to him, the
Hyksos/Amalekites were driven out of Egypt about 150 years before
Saul became king, and the Philistine hegemony over Israel that began
about 80 years later was a result of the strengthening of Egypt
under Thutmose III (the Philistines being, on his reconstruction,
allies of Egypt; compare Genesis 10:13-14). By Rohl's reckoning, the
exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt coincides with the collapse of the
13th Egyptian Dynasty and the arrival of the Hyksos/Amalekites.
All of which is to say not only that chronological revision is very
much needed, but also that serious attempts are being made along
these lines by competent scholars today.
*THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONVENTIONAL CONSENSUS CHRONOLOGY*
The first chapter of Centuries of Darkness is a discussion of the
evolution of old world chronology. At the time of the Reformation,
the chronology of the Bible was taken seriously, and those who
sought to reconstruct the history of the ancient world did not
depart from the boundaries provided by the Bible. The leading
Protestant scholar in this area was Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609). He
was the first to make a systematic and critical study of the
chronological material in the Bible together with that from the
pagan classical world. James tells us that "he developed a
chronology which, for the time, was both coherent and comprehensive."
Scaliger ran into a problem, however. "He recovered a Byzantine
summary of the writings of Manetho, a Graeco-Egyptian priest of the
2nd century BC who had recorded a history of Egypt back to its first
kings. Computing the information given by this source for the
lengths of the thirty Egyptian dynasties, Scaliger set the start of
the 1st Dynasty at 5285 BC. Much to his dismay, it lay 1336 years
before his own date for the Creation (3949 BC)." Many scholars
sought to reconcile Manetho's dynasties with the Bible by assuming
that many of these dynasties ran concurrently.
With the decline of belief in the Bible, secular scholarship began
to depend more heavily on Manetho and to revise the Bible to fit
Manetho's chronology. Out of this dependence on Manetho arose the
great error that we have been discussing, the error that both
created the mythical "dark age" between 1100 and 800 BC throughout
the Mediterranean, and also completely obscured the connections
between Biblical and Egyptian history.
As we discuss the development of this error, we have to take note of
the work of Christian Thomsen (1788-1865), a wealthy Danish
businessman and collector, who developed the "Three-Age System," a
technological succession from Stone to Bronze to Iron. This
framework provided a sensible way of ordering archaeological finds.
James points out that this system now has a much more technical
meaning, however: "Thomsen's simple division of history into ages of
Stone, Bronze, and Iron is still the basis of archaeological
classification throughout the world ? though, of course, the various
cultures around the globe went through these three stages at
different times. Since Thomsen's day the sheer convenience of this
terminology has often caused it to stray far from the original
meaning: thus, in the Eastern Mediterranean such terms as `Early
Iron Age' were long ago adopted to describe cultural phrases which
are now in fact defined by their pottery. It should not be supposed
that iron was first introduced, or even became predominant, at the
beginning of the `Iron Age.'"
In 1880, W. Flinders Petrie made an expedition to Egypt to survey
the Great Pyramid at Giza. Petrie was from a Plymouth Brethren
family, and was committed to the strange view of Charles Piazzi
Smith that the geometry of the Great Pyramid was a divinely inspired
prophecy of world history based on a "pyramid inch." Petrie set out
to demonstrate that this was a fact, but soon found out that it was
nonsense and dropped it. He developed, however, a life-long
commitment to Egyptian archaeology, and made numerous
scientifically-controlled excavations. He established a pottery
sequence, and tied these to Manetho's dynasties.
Confirmation of the Manetho chronology was seemingly found from
another source as well: Sothic dating. The Egyptians called the star
Sirius (the Dog-Star) Sothis. There are references to Sothis in
various papyri from ancient Egypt. James summarizes: "The `ideal'
Egyptian year was one in which the rising of Sothis just before dawn
coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile. Because the
Egyptians never introduced a Leap Year, the New Year festival linked
to the rising of Sothis inevitably slipped round the calendar; only
after 1460 years had passed would the cycle be completed by another
`ideal' year. It therefore appeared possible to calculate where a
given text fell within a `Sothic cycle' if it mentions a rising of
Sirius on a particular calendar day.
"Schemes for the `Sothic dating' of Egyptian history were
experimented with from the mid-17th century onwards, but all these
were highly speculative. The system still used today is essentially
that established by the chronologist Eduard Meyer in 1904, hinging
on two recently discovered Sothic references ? one around 1870 BC
during the 12th Dynasty and another of 1540 BC for the 18th Dynasty.
In general, Egyptologists were impressed by the scientific aura
which astronomy apparently lent to the Sothic theory. Different
calculations produced slightly varying results, but they were close
enough to convince the vast majority on the central issues. For
example, the `New Kingdom' period of the 18th to 20th Dynasties
could be confidently placed between 1600 and 1100 BC."
All of this was very "scientific" and seemed quite secure. It
provided a history of Egypt, and the fact that it contradicted the
Bible was unimportant. It also contradicted, however, some important
finds in the Aegean.
In 1870 Heinrich Schliemann began his excavations of Troy and later
of Mycenae. Cities turned up under the rubble that predated the
classical and Archaic remains of known history. The question that
needed to be answered was, therefore: how much earlier were these
cities? When did the Mycenaean and Trojan civilizations, celebrated
in Homer, exist?
Flinders Petrie discovered the "answer." He discovered pottery
sherds in Egypt identical to those Schliemann had uncovered, sherds
mixed with Egyptian remains of the 18th and 19th dynasties. Thus, he
fixed the destruction of Troy around 1100 BC. James comments that
Petrie's "Egyptian-derived dates had the extremely unwelcome result
of producing an enormous void between the Mycenaean world and that
of the early Greek city-states of the 8th century BC. Previously it
was common practice to date the end of Mycenaean civilization as
late as 800 BC, allowing continuity, or even an overlap" with the
following period of pottery and other remains.
Classical scholar Cecil Torr argued against Petrie on two grounds.
First, he disputed the claim that Petrie's Egyptian sherds were
contemporary with Mycenaean ones. Second, and more importantly, he
challenged the notion that Manetho's dynasties were successive, and
lowered Egyptian chronology to make it fit. Thus, he argued, even if
Petrie were correct about the pottery sherds, it would only mean
that Egyptian chronology needed to be shortened.
The founding father of Swedish Egyptology, Jens Lieblein, agreed
with Torr. He pointed out similar problems in others areas of
history in the Near East and even in Egypt, pointing out that
Petrie's error was producing another unnecessary "dark age" in
Hittite chronology. He also argued for a lowering of Egyptian
chronology, stating: "I have never understood the obstinacy with
which scholars have hung on to the regular succession of the thirty
dynasties of Manetho. However many voices of incontestable authority
have protested, the error still seems to be fashion in our days."
Petrie's view won out, however, for three reasons. First, Torr was
wrong to challenge the pottery sherds. It is clear that the 18th and
19th Dynasties of Egypt were contemporary with Mycenae.
Second, the short chronology was simply out of step with the trend
of the time, which was to ascribe the highest antiquity to Egypt and
its neighboring civilizations. The myth was that civilization arose
in the Near East and then spread over Europe. Evidence against this
notion arising from European archaeology (evidence like Stonehenge)
was simply ignored. High dates were also being ascribed to the
Mesopotamian civilizations as well; Hammurabi was placed around 2100
BC.
Third, correspondence was uncovered that linked Egyptian
civilization with Mesopotamian. Since both were said to be old, this
linkage produced seeming confirmation of the age of each. In a
somewhat circular fashion, the long chronology of each supported the
other.
Based on the great error in Egyptian chronology, the Conventional
Consensus Chronology has produced one "dark age" after another in
the history of the ancient world. The purpose of Centuries of
Darkness is to close the gap, and in 400+ pages of close reasoning
the authors do so admirably. For anyone interested in this subject,
Centuries of Darkness is must reading.
*MANETHO'S DYNASTIES*
As mentioned above, Manetho was an Egyptian priest who wrote in the
2nd or 3rd centuries BC. His history of Egypt, the Aegyptiaca, is
now lost, but "summaries and ostensible extracts survive in a number
of later works, notably those of Josephus (1st century AD), Julius
Africanus (3rd century AD), Eusebius (4th century AD), and Syncellus
(c. 800 AD). These preserve, in different and often contradictory
versions, an Epitome, giving the names and reign-lengths of the
Egyptian pharaohs, arranged into a system of thirty Dynasties or
ruling houses. The sequence begins with the unification of Egypt by
King Menes, founder of the 1st Dynasty, and ends with Nectanebo II,
the last native pharaoh." Everything we have of Manetho is found in
Manetho, translated and annotated by W. G. Waddell.
The CCC takes the dynasties of Manetho as consecutive, but allows
for some overlap when it becomes necessary. That is, the CCC starts
with the assumption of consecutiveness, and then makes necessary
modifications. Thus, the earliest kings of the 26th Dynasty ruled at
the same time as the later kings of the 25th. Also, the early 25th
overlapped with the later 22nd and 23rd. James comments: "Whether
Manetho understood his sources as meaning that a given dynasty began
only after its predecessor had finished will probably never be
known, as his original work is lost. The Church Father Eusebius, who
transmitted one of the major recensions of Manetho's work, certainly
had a different understanding:
"It seems ... that different kings held sway in different
regions, and that each dynasty was confined to its own nome
[province]; thus it was not a succession of kings occupying the
throne one after the other, but several kings reigning at the
same time in different regions."
There is another very important reason to question Manetho's list,
and that is the probable reason for his writing it in the first
place. Virtually every civilization in the ancient world sought to
claim the greatest antiquity, and histories were produced to show
that each was the oldest. The reason for this is not only to glorify
the nation, but also to establish imperial claims.
This is not just an ancient phenomenon. Not too long ago, German
historians were diligently falsifying and inventing history in order
to prove the seniority and superiority of the Aryan race. The rulers
of England have often supported the absurd notion that the English
and Saxon races are descended from the "lost tribes of Israel."
Today, the Israeli claim to the land of Palestine is grounded in
events 2000 years old.
When the Greek politician Solon visited Egypt in the 6th century BC,
he was chided as a citizen of such a youthful culture, and was told
that Egyptian history ran back 8000 years. Herodotus was told a
century later that Egyptian history ran back 11,340 years before his
time.
The Babylonian priest Berossus presents us a dynasty of 86 kings who
reigned for no less than 33,091 years. His contemporary, Manetho,
produced a similar claim regarding the earliest, divine rulers of
Egypt. Manetho expert W. G. Waddell suggests that "the works of
Manetho and Berossus may be interpreted as an expression of the
rivalry of the two kings, Ptolemy and Antiochus, each seeking to
proclaim the great antiquity of his land."
Everyone admits that these are fictional exaggerations, but when it
comes to Manetho's dynasties, the admission is not so forthcoming.
The reason for this blindness is not hard to discern. It lies in the
presuppositional hostility of secular scholarship for the Bible. If
Manetho cannot be trusted, scholarship must rely much more heavily
on the Bible, and that is not regarded as acceptable. That
evangelical scholars have been so willing to play along with the
palpable errors of secular scholarship is a monument to their
unwillingness to face the hard questions. We are compelled to turn
to a Seventh-Day Adventist and to secular scholars to find
challenges to the regnant folly.
We shall let W. G. Waddell, the editor of Manetho, have the last
word: "But there were many errors in Manetho's work from the very
beginning: all are not due to the perversions of scribes and
revisers. Many of the lengths of reigns have been found impossible:
in some cases the names and sequence of kings as given by Manetho
have proved untenable in the light of monumental evidence. If one
may depend upon the extracts preserved in Josephus, Manetho's work
was not an authentic history of Egypt, exact in its details, as the
Chaldaica of Berossus was, at least for later times. Manetho
introduced into an already corrupted series of dynastic lists a
number of popular traditions written in the characteristic Egyptian
style. No genuine historical sense had been developed among the
Egyptians, although Manetho's work does illustrate the influence of
Greek culture upon an Egyptian priest."
*END*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message containing
"unsubscribe" to:
chronology-request@cliffslanding.com
To obtain back issues:
http://www.reformed-theology.org/ice/
Copyright 1998, James B. Jordan
in association with:
*I*nstitute for *C*hristian *E*conomics
P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711
Donations are fully tax deductible; checks should be made out to
Institute for Christian Economics.
*Released for informational purposes to allow individual file transfer,
Usenet, and non-commercial mail-list posting only. All other copyright
privileges reserved.*