Malachi151

Yes, I would thinking about the exodus, sorry.

Jack the Bodiless

...Ah, you mean reality-based presups.

Must be careful not to get TOO close to Reality. It bites.
"A particular point of interest"? Only in the sense that it's (another) demonstration of the Bible's falsehood. This particular one can be traced back to a mistranslation in the Greek Septuagint IIRC (Genesis 11:12).

The Hebrews were not in the habit of deliberately omitting names from genealogies. That's why Matthew's genealogy (the shorter of the two NT genealogies of Jesus) specifically gives a count of the number of generations.

Not that it matters, of course. The dating still holds, and there was no Flood, and no Babel.

Knife

Just out of curiosity, where does the bible indicate this statement?

3DJay

Bahaha..."just crop up like that"?! They found Samarran levels, under the Ubaid levels, years ago. Mesopotamian history ties together just fine. The Sumerian culture didn't just pop up, like a piece of toast.

Sumerians (Uruk period, 3900-3100 BC) -> Ubaid (5600-3900 BC) -> Samarran (South, 5500–4800 BC)/Halafian (North, 5500-4700 BC) -> Hassuna (6000-5250 BC) -> Zarzian (18000-8000 BC)-> Baradostian (Zargos Aurignacian, Cro-Magnon, 36000–12000 BC) -> "out of Africa" (40000-50000 BC)


Peace

RED DAVE

It's real simple, praxeus. Just find some record of the moment when the entire Egyptian civilization (about 2 million people) was wiped out.

Then explain how it was reconstituted with the original language, religion, culture, economy, etc., with no gap.

Remember, we're not talking about war, famine, invasion, exile, weapons of mass destruction, etc. We're talking about the whole country underwater for months with everyone dead. Then a handful of Noah's descendants, from a different culture, speaking a different language, with a different religion, reconstitute everything, including the population, and no one refers to it.

Right.

RED DAVE

Cygnusx1

Nice discussion. I second the request of where in the Bible clearly and unambiguously indicates that the Exile happened 1,898 years after the Flood.

I also second the request of the spreadsheet referred to in the OP. I would find it useful in my own study of the OT.

Dean Anderson

I put the spreadsheet (or at least an HTML conversion of it) here.

It shows each of the verses used to get the 1,898 year period - each one explicitly ties an event to another event by a given number of years.

RED DAVE

Thanx, Dean. Any chance you could add a third column: historical time?

RED DAVE

3DJay

Nice.


Peace

Larsguy47

Good question. But first you need to get the timelines right, both Biblical and secular. There were actually implied revisions. My position is that you can accept the most convincing timeline you wish, but its required that you become familiar with all of them, or at least the major ones.

True, but at this point you realize many have their own timelines and so will have to go through this process with each group's timeline, right? But easily done if you have a chart!

No it does not. The Bible's chronology is complex, especially in dealing with the co-rulerships, etc. So being that as it may, I'll just offer my best direct means for determining this interval per the Bible. Permit me to help you calculate this. The end of the exile occurs in the 1st of Cyrus. The fall of Jerusalem was 74 years earlier. The actual 70-year exile didn't begin until the last deportation in year 23 of Nebuchadnezzar, 4 years later (Jer. 53:20). To get back to the flood, the easiest way is to calculate the year of the Exodus, which is 931 years prior to the 1st of Cyrus when the Jews first returned. In turn, the Exodus was 430 years after the Abrahamic Covenant was given. The beginning of the flood was 427 years prior to that. So from the beginning of the flood to the 1st of Cyrus is 1788 years. If we subtract 74 years from that we get 1714 years back to the fall of Jerusalem, which is a good point of reference, but emphasizing this is not technically the "beginning of the exile" which is four years later. But for simplicity of comparison that can be a technical foot note.

Based upon my corrections, you have 184 years too many in this interval. but that's not a lot of years in the big picture.


1) The VAT4956 confirms that the original dating before revision that year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar actually falls in 511BCE. But that's just a technical note when we compare "absolute dating" issues (i.e. astronomical events, RC14 dating). For relative chronology purposes, the comparison works with any dates. So I'll just note that 587BCE is a confirmed erroneous absolute date, but as long as we are comparing "relative" chronology (time intervals) then 587BCE works as well as any for the sake of comparison.

2) Generally, the Egyptian timeline is considered broken by the time we arrive at Shishak. Thus Shishak is dated via a combination of Assyrian history based upon the 763BCE eclipse event and the Bible's timeline in relation to the end of Ahab's reign which is linked to the Battle of Karkar fix-dated by this eclipse to 853BCE. So the Egyptian timeline specifically is not continuous.

A typical reference is reflected in David and Solomon (Finkelstein, Asher) on page 71: "With the lack of datable inscriptions (presumably due to the decline of Egypt and the other major literate powers in this eara), the possibilty of confirming or precisely dating the biblical events is virtually nil. But the biblical passage referring to Shishak holds the key to one unique chronological anchor--or at least it has served as such for many decades."

So the idea that Egyptian records are "unbroken" is not precise. There is a break by the time you get to Shishak and thus Shishak, until recent RC14 dating from Rehov, was entirely dependent upon the fixed dating of the Assyrian timeline and the dating of the battle of QarQar to 853BCE where Ahab was mentioned. The Biblical timeline back to the invasion by Shishak in the 5th year of Rehoboam is thus were both the 925BCE dating comes from and also the popular dating back to the Exodus and likely back to the flood.

There is little resolution when comparing one historical reference to the other, especially if it is not clearly linked archaeologically. In this case, therefore, if the Bible specifically limits the interval between the Exodus and the Flood to 857 years, and the Egyptian dynasties reach back beyond this, then there is an admitted conflict and you have a choice which to believe. That's not the same as astrocoordinated dating or archaeological dating or radiocarbon14 dating that deal with "absolute" chronology vs "relative" chronology or simply history. Thus unless the Egyptian history is agressively linked with archaeological dating, it's simply one historical record versus the other. Historical records from one nation doesn't automatically preempt those from another. So as a Biblical inerrantist, given the choice of records, I'd simply choose the Biblical timeline as more reliable. Further, apologists have their supports, for instance, claiming that a lot of the dynasties in these lists were likely different kings ruling in different places concurrently:

Studies in Egyptian Chronology, by T. Nicklin (Blackburn, Eng. 1928, p. 39): "The Manethonian Dynasties... are not lists of rulers over all Egypt, but lists partly of more or less independent princes, partly...of princely lines from which later sprang rulers over all Egypt." Professor Waddel (pp. 1-9) observes that "perhaps several Egyptian kings ruled at one and the same time;... 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. Hence arose the great total number of years."

So a critical direct comparison with the Egyptian timeline, especially the earlier ones is far too flexible to establish a clear contradiction between the Bible and the Egyptian records, particularly going back from the Exodus (1st of Akhenaten) to the Flood.

Absolutely!

Some "traditional" history as pointed out in the case of Shishak's dating is dependent upon Biblical chronology. Basically though, what is considered FIXED CHRONOLOGY is set against astronomical dates. The key astronomical events used in the timeline are two:

1) The dating of a solar eclipse in month 3, Simanu, mentioned in the Assyrian Eponym list, allowing the entire period of the Assyria to be fix-dated by that single eclipse. This is then used to piggyback into earlier Biblical dating from the time of Ahab and on back to Solomon, the Exodus, the Flood, Creation, etc. But it is misdated by 54 years, the actual event occurring in 709BCE.

2) The other significant eclipse is the total eclipse that begins the Peloponnesian War, the one where Pericles reassures his sailors about to leave the port of Athens that there is little to fear, darkness is no more significant than covering your eyes. That eclipse event is now dated to 431BCE and fix-dates that part of Greek history. The 431BCE eclipse though is a poor match and the actual event occurred in early 402BCE meaning the war actually began in 403BCE. We know this because Plato was an adult when the war began and wasn't born until 428BCE, which would have been 2 years after the war.

Do you like FUN?!!! How about this?

See? They have Plato being consulted to solve the plague that broke out in the first year of the PPW now dated to 431/430BCE and Plato wasn't even born yet. But a major total eclipse occurred during the first year of the war. The eclipse used now to date that war was not total in Greece, specifically not Athens. But a total eclipse at Athens, does occur in early 402BCE which would effectively redate the beginning of the PPW to the summer of 403BCE, in which case, Plato would be 25 years of age. As noted in another post, this corrected Greek dating would date the end of a 30-year peace agreement to year 10 of the war in 394BCE, a peace agreement negotiated the year of Xerxes' invasion, which means he actually invaded Greece in 424BCE suffering the Battle of Salamis. The Battle of Marathon would have occurred 10 years earlier in 434BCE, the date of Darius I's death when he was beheaded by the Athenians, beheaded by a Greek woman he went to bed with. The Bible (Ezra 6:14,15) establishes that he died in his 6th year, the same year the temple was completed begun 21 years earlier in the 1st of Cyrus. Add 21 to 434BCE and you get the correct date for the 1st of Cyrus, which is 455BCE. This is the confirmed Biblical dating for this event since when the work on Jerusalem begins, it is 483 years until the baptism of the Jewish messiah, who got baptized in the 15th of Tiberius, which was 29 BCE. This, in turn, dates the exile 70 years earlier to 525BCE. This is confirmed by the double-dating in the VAT4956 which double dates year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar both to 568BCE (from whence we get 587BCE for the fall of Jerusalem) and 511 BCE, which matches year 23 to 525BCE. Obviously, this was an attempt to hide an astronomical reference to the original chronology that had been revised. But now that we know that, and understand the NB Period around the 37th of Nebuchadnezzar is 57 years to early in the revised chronology, when we go back to the Assyrian Period to find a match for the single solar eclipse in the 10th of Bar-Sagale, the 709BCE eclipse is the closest match. This eclipse dating would have been the customary dating for this eclipse in the third month because it's the third month after the equinox. The 763BCE eclipse only matches if you begin the year earlier than the equinox which is not considered to have been the practice at the time. Thus we get some qualifiers on the actual dating of this eclipse such as here:

By the above test, 709BCE would have been the historical choice and 763BCE is disqualified, among other reasons.

Finally, when you correct the Assyrian dating and then piggy-back to Shishak, it downdates him from 925BCE down to 871BCE. When we check our best possible independent dating reference for Shishak's invasion, now newly available via radiocarbon 14 dating from Rehov, it shows us exactly when this event happened, which totally agrees with both the Bible's dating and the astronomically corrected dating.

RC14 Rehov - 925 vs 871 BCE

Finally, Kathleen Kenyon dates the fall of Jericho archaeologically between 1350-1325BCE. That would date the Exodus between 1390-1365BCE and the earliest possible rule for Solomon between 914-874BCE. Shishak's invasion near the very end of his rule, therefore, even via archaeological dating for the fall of Jericho matches well with the RC14 dating from Rehov for this invasion, 99% probability for dates between 874-867.

So in conclusion, when comparing the Bible to "extra-Biblical" references, you will find many historical contradictions from point to point. In fact, basically at every point except for during the Assyrian Period. But that's history. If "extra-Biblical" though starts to include archaeological dating, astronomical dating or RC14 dating, which involves degrees of absolute dating, then the Bible compares far better than the popular "traditional" timeline, which was compromised by the Persians trying to claim that Xerxes and Artaxerxes were different kings, when they, according to the Bible, were the same king.

So I know this is fun and fascinting to you because you're new to this field, but the details have already been worked out. Strict science and astronomy support the strict Biblical timeline. But even though the "traditional" timeline has been compromised, even segments of that history are amazingly compatible with the Biblical records. So the more they dig up in the Middle East, the better it is for Biblical inerrantists these days.

YOUR PROCESS:
1) You must first get a good secular timeline.
2) You then must understand the best critical Biblical timeline

Then you compare both against archaeological, astronomical and scientific (i.e. RC14) means for absolute dating.

Thanks for your post! :notworthy:

Larsgury47