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: 

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). 

All the crops of Egypt were destroyed. 

All the cattle of Egypt were destroyed. 

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). 

The Egyptian army was wiped out. 

The Pharaoh was killed, because the Pharaoh led his army (Exodus 14:6ff.). 

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." 


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