Why David and Solomon mattered so much

For centuries, readers of the Bible have encountered David and Solomon not just as religious figures, but as epic founders of a powerful kingdom.

• David is portrayed as the warrior who unites the tribes, captures Jerusalem, and defeats surrounding enemies.

• Solomon is depicted as ruling a wealthy, peaceful empire from Jerusalem, building the Temple, and hosting foreign dignitaries like the Queen of Sheba.

If archaeology could uncover clear, datable evidence for a united, powerful kingdom centered on Jerusalem in the 11th century BC—the traditional time of David and Solomon—it would strongly support those stories as rooted in real political power. If not, say skeptics, then perhaps the stories were later idealizations, written generations after the fact. That “yes or no” question gave these two kings an outsized importance in modern debates.

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The early hunt: looking for a golden age

In the early days of biblical archaeology (late 19th and early 20th centuries), many explorers went into the field expecting to “prove the Bible right.”

• They looked for monumental architecture in Jerusalem and across Israel that could be linked to David’s conquests and Solomon’s building projects.

• The hope was to find palaces, city walls, and inscriptions actually naming these kings—something like “Palace of King David, year X” or “Solomon, king of Israel, built this.”

Every big find—a city gate, a palace, a strong wall from roughly the right period—was eagerly measured against the biblical description. When major structures from the 10th–9th centuries BC were uncovered at places like Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, some archaeologists initially saw them as proof of Solomon’s centralized building program.

At that stage, many believed it was only a matter of time before an inscription mentioning David or Solomon in their lifetimes would appear.

The challenge: silence and reinterpretation

But as methods improved—radiocarbon dating, more precise pottery chronologies, careful stratigraphy—things became more complicated.

• Some buildings once assigned confidently to Solomon were later redated down to the 9th century BC, more likely linked to later kings like Omri or Ahab.

• Excavations in Jerusalem itself are difficult: the ancient city lies under a dense modern one, and key areas are politically and logistically sensitive. That limits what can be found and how clearly it can be interpreted.

For decades, there was no contemporaneous inscription from the 10th century BC explicitly mentioning “David king of Israel” or “Solomon son of David” from inside Israel or Judah. That silence led some scholars to propose that David and Solomon were much smaller figures than the Bible suggests—or even purely legendary.

This tension—rich literary portraits on one side, hesitant or ambiguous archaeology on the other—is a big part of why the search for David and Solomon was called a holy grail. It seemed to hold the key to how “historical” the biblical narratives really were.

A turning point: the “House of David”

One of the most important shifts came not from Jerusalem, but from the north. In the 1990s, excavations at Tel Dan in northern Israel uncovered fragments of a victory inscription set up by an Aramean king (most likely Hazael of Damascus). The text, written in Aramaic and dated to the 9th century BC, appears to mention a Judean ruler as belonging to the “House of David.”

Even though the inscription is about a century after David’s supposed lifetime, it matters because:

• It shows that foreign neighbors recognized a dynasty in Judah named after a founder called David.

• That implies that David was not just a late literary invention, but a remembered royal ancestor important enough to name a ruling house.

This didn’t suddenly prove all the biblical stories in detail, but it shifted the conversation. The figure of David now had extra‑biblical support as a real, early king, even if the scale of his kingdom remained debated.

An Interpretive Key: They Were Not Looking Deep Enough

Together with Darrell K. White, I have been developing the Chronological Framework of Ancient History - a chronology for the ancient world that is based on historical durations between events as recorded by ancient historians. We have come to the conclusion that the real reason that archaeologists have failed to find David and Solomon has been that they were looking for them in the Iron Age Strata, when David and Solomon lived in the Middle Bronze Age, and were contemporaries of Hammurabi of Babylon. In short, they did not dig deep enough.

We have just published Paper #16 in our Chronological Framework of Ancient History series, in which we reveal the holy grail of archaeology. David and Solomon are found in the letters of Mari, Qatna, and Babylon in the Old Babylonian Period. The reason scholars never associated them before was that they have the wrong date for the Old Babylonian Period. They have shoved Hammurabi back eight centuries before he actually lived. Once he is placed in his proper chronological context, Hammurabi is named in contemporary texts as an equal of King Solomon.

Not only did we find David and Solomon, we also found King Saul and his ill-fated son Ishbosheth. Ishbosheth made a marriage alliance with David’s enemy, Hadadezer, who then supported him with a few thousand troops to fight the civil war against David.

If you want to learn the details, please enjoy the paper.

https://www.academia.edu/166250608/CFAH_16_The_Kings_of_Israel_and_Judah_Paper_No_16_in_the_Chronological_Framework_of_Ancient_History_Series

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The SKL continues:

Then the Flood swept over. After the Flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kiš.

The list continues city by city, however the first two cities after the Flood, Kish and Uruk, have kings with reigns far longer than a human lifespan, but not nearly as long as the predeluvial kings. For example, the longest reign in the First Kish Dynasty was that of Etana the Shepherd who reigned for 1,500 years.

After the First Kish Dynasty, the SKL says:

Then Kiš was defeated and the kingship was taken to Eanna.

It then lists the kings of Uruk, the first five of whom again, have reigns of several centuries. After Gilgamesh, the fifth king, the reigns of the rest of the rulers in the list appear to be reasonable for normal human lifespans, except for the Kish dynasties II-IV, which continue to be “too high”.

Ancient Priests Loved to Play Games with Numbers

In several of my papers with Darrell White, we have pointed out that according to both Censorinus and Eusebius the pagan priests of several of the Mediterranean cultures would sometimes report days, months, bimestrals (two months), quadrimestrals (4 months) as “years” when giving their histories. We found several examples of this.

For example, Pliny the Elder reported that Greek astrologer, Epigenes (~270-200 BC), claimed the Babylonians had 720 or 720,000 years of astronomical observations on clay tiles. 720,000 year seems ridiculously too long, but 720 years is much shorter than Babylon was known to practice astronomy. However, if the 720,000 years are interpreted as days, they amount to 1,971 Julian years.

If Epigenes obtained this figure from a Babylonian source in the reign of Antiochus II Theos, whose accession to the throne was in 262 BC, then 1,971 years earlier was 2233 BC, the year for which we have found several other sources claiming the Tower of Babel was founded.

Another example of this practice was reported by Diodorus Siculus who said that the Egyptians claimed that Menes reigned 23,000 years before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. Interpreted as months, the 23,000 units become 1,859.5 years. Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 BC. Adding 1,859.5 years comes to 2192 BC, the year reported as the Dispersion from Babel and the start of the reign of Ninus (Nimrod) by several sources.

Decrypting the Sumerian King List

My analysis of the Sumerian King List has revealed what appears to be a cipher. The scribe who composed the SKL multiplied the real reigns of the “gods” meaning ancestors before the Flood, and the rulers of Kish and early Uruk, by a consistent set of numbers, in order to exaggerate the reigns of the god-kings.

According to Eusebius and Syncellus, the Babylonian priest named Berossus wrote the history of Babylon as the book, Babylonaica, in Greek for the Seleucid Court. In that book, Berossus explained three Babylonian units of time as the saros (plural saroi) which was 3,600; the neros which was 600, and sessos which was 60.

The Babylonians used the sexagesimal numerical system where instead of each power of a number being written as 0-9, it was written as 0-60. In that system “10” means 60x60, or 3,600.

The Predeluvial Saros

While Berossus said the saros of 3,600 meant years, it could also have meant days. If we interpret the 432,000 years of predeluvial reigns reported by Berossus as being 120 x 3,600 days, the result is 120 decades of 360-day years, which is to say, 1,200 years of kings before the Flood. That is actually reasonably close to the time period recorded in Genesis that there were 1,656 years for the ten generations before the Flood from Adam to Noah.

Thus we might conclude that the 120 saroi in that context referred to decades. This multiplied the true solar years of the predeluvial rulers by a factor of 360.

The Deccans of Kish

After the Flood, the SKL continues with the rulers of Kish. We hypothesize that Cush originally named the city later called Babel after himself - Cush, or Kish. The reigns of Kish are inflated, but not nearly to the degree of the predeluvial kings. The first King of Kish is listed as Gišur, whom we identify as the Sumerian name for Cush.

By trial and error we came to the conclusion that the rulers of all four Kish dynasties in the SKL were given in deccans. A deccan is a period of 10 days. It was used in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and also in China and Greece for astronomy. The constellations were divided into 36 deccans, using a 360-day year. This probably means the constellations were so divided into deccans by one of the patriarchs before the Flood, when the year was only 360 days. If my hypothesis is correct then the reigns of the Kings of Kish in the SKL are multiplied by 36.

The god-Kings of Uruk

The first five kings of Uruk in the SKL also have inflated reigns. They have the star-sign meaning “god” written next to their names. However, they do not all use the same cipher. The first King of Uruk, Meš-ki'ag-gašer, is also identifiable as Cush, as pointed out by David Rohl. This indicates that the Uruk Dynasty counted its origin from Babel also.

It appears to us that the SKL multiplies the reign of Meš-ki'ag-gašer by a factor of 6, so the time period counted is in bimestrals of two thirty-day months. His actual reign from the time the Earth was Divided, when Peleg was born, was 54 or 55 years until the Dispersion when the tongues were confused in 2192/2191 BC.

After Meš-ki'ag-gašer come three rulers: En-mer-kar (Nimrod), Dumuzi (Semiramis posing as a man), Gilgamesh (Ninyas Zames in Ctesias). (See the table below.) These three appears to be using the multiple of 3.33, or 20/6. This is not a natural cycle, but appears to be a numerical cipher chosen by the scribe to be less than six, but for some reason, greater than 3.

The Babylonians worshipped their first king, Cush, under the name Bel Marduk, the son of Utu (Ham). But they also considered Gilgamesh the last of the gods. So perhaps the scribe felt he should inflate the reigns of those three, but not as much as the first King, Bel Marduk, also known as Meš-ki’ag-gašer.

By the way, Meš-ki’ag-Gašer means “the youth has become mighty.” This applies well to Cush who usurped the kingship after Noah divided the earth as an inheritance among his sons and grandchildren, 101 years after the Flood in 2247 BC.

To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
— Genesis 10:25

So, we conclude that the first five kings of the Uruk Dynasty reigned about 282 years. After Gilgamesh the reign of the rest of the kings the SKL, excepting Kish and Hamazi, are given in regular years.

If my hypothesis is correct then the scribe who wrote the SKL used the following series of descending ciphers to inflate the reigns of the early kings. In all but one case the scribe steps down by one of the factors of 60: 10 or 6.

Predeluvial: 360X
Kish Dynasty (Babel): 36X
Cush: Meš-ki’ag-Gašer: 6X
Nimrod-Gilgamesh: 3.3 X
After Gilgamesh: 1X

The entry for Lugal Banda in the list is an outlier as his 1,200 year reign appears to use the deccan of Kish (36X).

Ok, so now we have a hypothesis, and we have a theory for why the scribe did it this way. But is my hypothesis falsifiable? Yes, it can be tested, which I will do next.

The Test Case: From Babel to Sargon of Akkad

I have identified the first rulers of both Kish and Uruk as references to the same person, Cush, the son of Ham, remembered as Belus, or Bel Marduk, and later worshipped as the god of Babylon.

There is a synchronism between Ur Zababa, the second king of the fourth Kish Dynasty in the SKL, and Lugal Zagesi, the only king of the third Uruk Dynasty. They were both defeated by Sargon of Akkad, near the start of his reign. And Lugal Zagesi was the king of Uruk whom Sargon persuaded to help him defeat King Ur Zababa of Kish. If my hypothesis is correct, then the time from the founding of Babel to the defeats of those two kings should be about the same in both Kish (multiplied by 36X) and in Uruk (factoring for the inflated reigns of the first five god-kings). If the time between those two events does not come to roughly the same duration using the 36X multiple for the reigns of Kish, then my hypothesis will be proven false.

However, the first five reigns at Uruk are not precise, so we will count instead from the death of Gilgamesh, also known as Ninyas Zames, which several ancient chroniclers dated to 1968 BC.

Summing the reigns of SKL kings after Gilgamesh down to the death of Lugal Zagesi comes to 352 years. Subtracting from 1968 BC yields 1616 BC.

On the Kish side, if we sum the reigns of the Kings of Kish from Gisur to the death of Ur Zababa, and then divide by 36, the result is 614 years. Subtracting 614 from the year that Cush founded the Tower of Babel, 2233 BC, yields 1619 BC for the defeat of Ur Zababa by Sargon and Lugal Zagesi. That is only three years difference!

Even if we use my estimate of 282 years for the first five kings of Uruk, and use the year the Earth was Divided, when some chroniclers counted the start of the reign of Cush, then the result comes to 2247-634 = 1613 BC for the death of Lugal Zagesi. While that date is not as close to the start of Sargon of Akkad’s reign, it is still close enough to be plausible if someone does not like my date for Gilgamesh.

The results along the two paths give answers that are only three years apart. (see chart below) It is entirely reasonable that after helping defeat Ur Zababa and establishing himself as King of Akkad, it took three years for Sargon to consolidate his power and then attack and defeat his former ally, Lugal Zagesi.

Conclusion

This result confirms my hypothesis that the scribe who first composed the Sumerian King List was using a cipher to inflate the reigns of the early kings that Sumerian culture deified as gods. The Sumerian King List preserves real data, but inflates the reigns of the early kings using a consistent cipher that decreases by powers of 6 and 10, the two base factors of the Babylonian numeral system.

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CFAH-14: Ancient Assyria — A Layman’s Summary

This paper, co-authored by me (Kenneth Griffith) and Darrell K. White, is the 14th installment in the Chronological Framework of Ancient History (CFAH) series. Its central argument is that two major errors in how scholars have interpreted Assyrian history have caused ancient Babylonian and Israelite history to be misplaced by nearly a millennium — and that correcting those errors allows seven biblical kings of Israel to be identified in the archaeological records of neighboring nations.​

What Is the Paper About?

The paper examines ancient Assyrian historical sources — including the Assyrian King List (AKL), the Eponym Chronicle, Ptolemy’s Canon, and royal inscriptions — to reconstruct a revised chronology of Assyria that aligns with the Ussher-Jones chronology of Scripture. The Ussher-Jones chronology is the traditional biblical timeline, which places Creation at 4004 BC and the Exodus at 1491 BC. The paper argues that Assyria was actually the oldest civilization on earth, even predating Babylon and Egypt, and that according to Cicero, the Egyptian god Thoth brought writing and laws from Assyria to Egypt.​

The Assyrian King List Goes Back to Adam

One of the paper’s striking claims is that the 17 earliest names in the Assyrian King List — the “kings who lived in tents” — correspond to the pre-Flood patriarchs of Genesis. For example:​

• Adamu = Adam

• Nuabu (”Noah is Father”) = Noah

• Abazu = Shem

• Azarah = Asshur, son of Shem and ancestor of the Assyrians

• Ushpija = the founder of the city of Assur, grandson of Shem​

The city of Assur itself is dated to approximately 2139 BC, shortly after the Biblical Dispersion from Babel in 2191 BC, when Nimrod (known to ancient chroniclers as Ninus) was driven out of Assyria into Egypt by Shem’s descendants.​

The Four Errors That Derailed History

The paper identifies four errors that have distorted conventional Assyrian chronology. The two big ones are:

Error 1: The Shamshi Adad Problem

This is the paper’s most important finding. A king named Shamshi Adad appears in Assyrian records as a famous conqueror who fled from a “Naram Sin” and then conquered the city of Assur and the kingdom of Mari. Scholars assumed this was Shamshi Adad I, who reigned around 1841 BC. However, the paper argues he was actually Shamshi Adad IV, who reigned around 1053 BC — nearly 800 years later.​

The confusion arose because two different kings named “Naram Sin” lived 800 years apart. The Naram Sin that Shamshi Adad actually fled from was the king of the city of Eshnunna (a Middle Bronze Age city), not the ancient Naram Sin of Assyria. A late scribe in the era of Ashurbanipal apparently conflated them — possibly deliberately as political propaganda — to make it appear Assyria had been allied with Babylon from the very dawn of civilization.​

The effect of this error was to push all of early Babylonian history back by nearly 1,000 years in the conventional timeline.

Error 2: The Ashuruballit Problem

Two letters (EA15 and EA16) found in the famous El Amarna archive of Egyptian diplomatic mail were written by an “Ashuruballit” who called himself “Great King of Assyria.” Scholars identified him as Ashur-Uballit I from the Assyrian King List (~1353 BC). The paper follows researcher Reilly in arguing this was actually a non-canonical Assyrian governor of Harran, a vassal of the Mitanni empire, who reigned around 920 BC. Conflating these two figures made Assyria appear to be a major military power a full century before it actually became one, and pushed the chronologies of Egypt and the Kassite Dynasty of Babylon back by roughly four centuries.​

Why Does This Matter for Biblical Chronology?

This is where the paper becomes especially exciting for students of the Bible. When you correct the Shamshi Adad error and move him from the 19th century BC to the 11th century BC (around 1053–1020 BC), he falls precisely into the era of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon in the Ussher-Jones biblical timeline.​

The paper identifies 18 specific synchronisms — matching names and events — between the archives of Mari/Qatna and the Bible. These include:​

Additionally, the Banu Yamina mentioned as enemies of Shamshi Adad in the Mari Letters is essentially identical to the Hebrew word for Benjaminites (Benyamina), consistent with Saul being the first king and defining Israel by his tribe. The paper also notes that letters from Ishbosheth (Saul’s son) and mentions of David, Solomon, Jeroboam, and Nadab appear in the Mari and Qatna archives once the revised dating is applied.​

The Anchor Points: How They Date Everything

The paper works backward from secure historical dates, establishing a chain of “anchor points”:​

• 539 BC — Cyrus conquers Babylon (universally accepted)

• 626 BC — Accession of Nabopolassar (from Ptolemy’s Canon + Berossus)

• 612 BC — Fall of Nineveh (confirmed by the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle)

• 705 BC — Death of Sargon II (Ptolemy’s Canon)

• 1232 BC — Tukulti-Ninurta I conquers Babylon (10+ independent durations)

• 1841 BC — Shamshi Adad I (from Shalmaneser I’s temple inscription: “580 years elapsed”)

• 2000 BC — Erishum I (from another duration in the same inscription)

• 2191 BC — The Dispersion from Babel / founding of Nineveh by Nimrod​

Each anchor point is triangulated by multiple independent ancient sources, including Berossus, Ctesias, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Ptolemy’s Canon.​

The Bigger Picture

The paper is part of a larger project to show that the conventional academic chronology of the ancient world — which places many events centuries earlier than the biblical timeline suggests — rests on a small number of specific errors that, once corrected, bring archaeology and Scripture into remarkable agreement. By placing the conquest of Mari by Shamshi Adad (Hadadezer) in the 1050s–1020s BC, the entire Middle Bronze Age of the ancient Near East aligns with the period of the United Monarchy of Israel under Saul, David, and Solomon. This is a dramatic claim that, if correct, would mean that a vast body of ancient Near Eastern archaeological material — palace archives, diplomatic letters, king lists — directly corroborates the historical narrative of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles.​

Prepared using Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking

You may read the full paper here:
https://www.academia.edu/92995116/Chronological_Framework_of_Ancient_History_2_Founding_of_the_Nations

1. The Temple Was Founded 144 Years before Carthage

First, because Josephus said Solomon founded the Temple 144 years before Elissa founded Carthage, there has been much debate over when Solomon built the Temple and when the city of Carthage was founded. Several Roman sources seem to place the founding of Carthage in 814 BC, which suggests Solmon’s Temple was founded in 958 BC, which is 53 years later than the biblical chronology places the founding of the Temple. I have answered this problem in detail in the paper, The Foundings Dates of Tyre and Carthage. The simple answer is that Phoenician sources, the culture that actually built Carthage, unanimously place the founding of Carthage in 868 BC, agreeing precisely with the Ussher-Jones chronology of the Bible.

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2. David’s Hiram Was Reigning 25 Years Before Solomon’s Hiram Came to the Throne

A second problem is that Josephus states that Solomon founded the Temple in the 12th year of King Hiram of Tyre, which scripture states to have been the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings 6:1). However, 2 Samuel 5:11 says that Hiram of Tyre sent messengers to King David in the first year that he reigned in Jerusalem, which was seven years after he became king in Hebron, therefore 1048 BC. If Solomon’s temple was founded in the 12th year of Hiram, then Hiram’s reign began in 1023 BC. This means that David’s Hiram sent messengers and gifts 25 years before Solomon’s Hiram began to reign!

Academic scholars merely bend the scripture durations of David and Solomon’s reigns to force a fit for the reign of Hiram of Tyre. However, there is a simple and obvious solution that harmonizes the biblical data with that of Menander and Josephus. Josephus does not say how long that Abibaal, the father of Hiram reigned. We only know that he died 12 years before Solomon founded the Temple in 1011 BC. Therefore Abibaal died in 1023 BC. If his reign was about 20 years, then his predecessor would have been on the throne when David founded his throne in Jerusalem in 1048 BC.

Therefore, we can conclude that there were two kings of Tyre name Hiram. Hiram I was reigning in 1048 BC, and probably died within five years of that date. He was followed by Abibaal, with a reign of about 20 years. Hiram II took the throne in 1023 BC, eight years before the death of David in 1015 BC.

3. The Sums of Menander’s Reigns in Josephus Fall 19 Years Short of the Given Total

Josephus passed on two durations from Menander relating Hiram II and the Temple to the founding date of Carthage. He said the sum of reigns of all the kings from Hiram to the 7th year of Pygmalion, when Elissa founded Carthage, was 155 years. Elsewhere he wrote that the time from the founding of Solomon’s Temple in the 12th year of Hiram to the founding of Carthage was 143 years and eight months.

Table 1 lists the figures of Menander for the reigns of the kings of Tyre. Two problems arise from this data. Both the sum from the start of Hiram’s reign and the sum from the 12th year of Hiram’s reign fall 19 years short of the totals of 155 and 144 years given by Josephus. This suggests that there has been a scribal error when copying the reigns of one of the kings.

Scribal errors do not normally change a number with a completely new one. The most common error when copying a king list is for the scribe’s eye to wander to the wrong row, and thus copy the reign of a king above or below the row with the value that he meant to copy.

In all probability the scribal error is one of the repeated numbers. In Menander’s kings list, we see two 12’s and three 9’s. Since the list comes 19 years short, this suggests that a 19+9 = 28 was replaced by a 9, or a 19+12 = 31 was replaced by a 12.

Given that the only number repeated consecutively was 12, we will guess that the error was to replace the 31 year reign of either the unnamed usurper or Astartus with a 12.

Since Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of Ithobaal, we can test this correction to see if the reign of Ithobaal still overlaps with the reign of Ahab.

We tested this correction in Table 2.

In the Ussher-Jones chronology of Scripture, Ahab reigned from 918 to 897 BC. As seen in Table 2 above, our test correction places the reign of Ithobaal from 920 to 888, thus overlapping with Ahab. Furthermore, we can deduce that Ithobaal came to the throne at the age of 36 by subtracting his years of reign from his length of life. If Ithobaal sired Jezebel when he was 20 years old, then she would have been 18 years old when she was given in marriage to Ahab in the first year of his reign. Therefore the test case passes.

Just to be thorough we tested adding the missing 19 years to the other 12 and the three 9’s in the list. As it turns out, the reigns of Ahab and Ithobaal still overlap no matter where we insert the 19 years in the list. However, if we insert the 19 years into the reign of Matgenus, it results in Ahab coming to the throne in the 21st year of Ithobaal as king, and the 55th year of his life. Both of those are still quite reasonable.

We conclude that while several solutions to the Ithobaal problem are possible, the most probable solution is to make the reign of Astartus 31 years. Table 2 can therefore be safely relied upon for the dates of the Kings of Tyre.

Conclusions

We may conclude that the city of Tyre was founded in 1251 BC, 240 years before Solomon’s Temple, and Carthage was founded in 868 BC, 143 years and eight months after the Temple.

The Hiram who sent messengers and gifts to King David in 1048 BC was Hiram I, the grandfather of Hiram II who supplied Solomon with the materials to build the Temple.

Ithobaal of Tyre most likely reigned from 920 to 888 BC, overlapping all of Ahab’s reign and outliving him by 9 years. This may also help explain how Jezebel was able to retain power after Ahab’s death. Her father was a powerful king of Tyre.

And finally, Pygmalion, the brother of Elissa, reigned from 873 to 826 BC and was contemporary with Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Horemheb of Eygpt. He was the author of nine of the El Amarna Letters, #146–#155, as Abimilki, meaning Abimelech, King of Tyre. Either Menander or Josephus transliterated Abimelech into Greek as “Pygmalion.”

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https://www.academia.edu/146031286/Chronological_Framework_of_Ancient_History_No_13_The_Hittites_Cimmerians_and_Medes

AI Summary of the Paper

The paper argues that the so‑called New Kingdom “Hittite Empire” centered on Hattusa is in fact the western capital and bureaucratic expression of a late Iron Age Cimmerian–Median–Scythian coalition, and that several key “Hittite” kings are identical with named figures in Neo‑Assyrian annals and Greek historiography.​

Core thesis and chronological claims

• The authors contend that the archaeological “Median Empire” in Iran is largely missing, whereas the Hittite kingdom at Hattusa is archaeologically robust but inexplicably absent from Greek narrative sources.​

• They propose that New Kingdom Hittite rulers Mursilis II, Muwatallis II, and Hattusilis III are respectively Tugdamme the Cimmerian, Madyes the Scythian, and Cyaxares the Mede, so the Median “Empire” of classical authors is really a Cimmerian‑led coalition ruling from Hattusa ca. 705–547 BCE.​

• This reconstruction is embedded in the broader “Chronological Framework of Ancient History” (CFAH), which lowers Egyptian and Near Eastern dates, placing Ramesses II from 644–578 BCE, the Battle of Kadesh in 639 BCE, and the Treaty of Kadesh in 623 BCE, synchronizing them with late Neo‑Assyrian history and the rise of the Medes.​

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Hittites, biblical Hittites, and Tabal

• The paper distinguishes the biblical Hittites (descendants of Heth in Canaan) from the later Anatolian kingdom of Hattusa, arguing that the latter’s name “Hatti/Kheta” overlaps geographically and linguistically with Syrian “Hatti land” but arises in a different period.​

• It traces biblical references to Hittites from Abraham through Joshua, David, and Solomon, arguing that Israelite expansion pushed Canaanite Hittites north into Syria, where they formed the Hatti/Hattina of the Amuq and later Tabal/Neo‑Hittite states.​

• Assyrian references to Tabal, Mushki, and related polities (Tubal and Meshech of Ezekiel) are reinterpreted as the Old/Middle/New Hittite phases, leading into the Cimmerian takeover and the emergence of a “Hittite” (i.e., Tabalian) royal center under Cimmerian control at Hattusa.​

Key synchronisms: Mursilis II = Tugdamme

• The central argument is a synchronism “cluster” equating Mursilis II with Tugdamme (Dugdammi) the Cimmerian based on four shared features:

  • Both campaign against Sardis/Ephesus and defeat a Lydian ruler whose name means “grandfather” (Uhhazitis vs. Gyges), argued to be dialectal variants of the same name.​

  • Both reigns record a “thunderbolt/fire from heaven” event at or near Ephesus that injures or destroys the enemy, interpreted as a bolide airburst that later underlies the Ephesian cult of the “stone fallen from heaven.”​

  • Both kings suffer a stroke‑like illness involving facial paralysis and speech impairment (Mursilis’ “mouth went sideways” vs. Tugdamme’s half‑body palsy and tongue injury in Ashurbanipal’s annals).​

  • Both have a decisive solar eclipse omen interpreted in nearly identical divinatory terms (king or royal woman must die), which the authors fix to the precisely dated 15 April 657 BCE eclipse over Cimmerian territory.​

• By associating Mursilis’ eclipse campaign against Azzi (year 7 or 10) with the 657 BCE eclipse, they date Tugdamme–Mursilis’ accession to 667/664 BCE and the death of Gyges/Uhhazitis to 661 BCE, aligning this with Ashurbanipal’s third campaign chronology.​

• The authors argue that the probability of all four rare events coinciding twice, seven centuries apart, is effectively zero, so conventional Hittite–Assyrian chronology is displaced by roughly seven centuries.​

New dating: Hittites, Babylonia, and Egypt

• Using Berossus, the Sumerian King List, Larsa year‑names, and Babylonian King List B, the paper recalculates the fall of Akkad (to 1477 BCE), the life of Hammurabi, and the end of Babylon I, placing Mursilis I’s famous raid on Babylon in 851 BCE rather than the late second millennium, and linking it to a Kassite civil war described in Shalmaneser III’s annals.​

• Mursilis I (“Mushallim‑Marduk” in Assyrian eyes) thus becomes a player in ninth‑century politics, and the old‑Babylonian chronology is lowered to the early first millennium; this is set up for fuller treatment in CFAH‑14 and CFAH‑15.​

• The Dakhamunzu letter to Suppiluliuma I is likewise redated: the authors reject the standard identification with Tutankhamun’s widow, arguing instead for a queen of Necho‑Ramesses I (an Egyptian high‑king under Assyrian hegemony, killed in 664 BCE), amid conflicts involving Taharqa and Tantamani, Psammetichus’ flight, and Assyria’s reconquest of Egypt.​

• Within this framework, Suppiluliuma I becomes Partatua the Scythian (Prototythes/Phraortes in Herodotus), married to an Assyrian royal (Tawananna as Esarhaddon’s daughter), turning “Hittite” family politics into Scythian–Median–Assyrian dynastic politics.​

Cimmerian–Median empire built from west to east

• The authors challenge the standard model in which a Median state in Iran grows westward to absorb Urartu and Anatolia, insisting instead that power progresses from west to east: a western Cimmerian horde establishes itself in Tabal/Hattusa under Tudkhaliya III and Suppiluliuma I; Hattusa becomes a western capital; and only later does control extend over Central Iranian Media.​

• The Cimmerians are treated as closely entangled with Scythians and Medes, with Ishpaka (Ishkallu/Eshpai) and his son Partatua as early leaders, and Tudkhaliya III–Suppiluliuma I as their Hittite throne names.​

• The death of Sargon II in 705 BCE “on campaign to Tabal” is read as the Median revolt remembered by Herodotus and Ctesias, with Ctesias’ Arbaces and Sardanapallus narrative treated as a conflation of Sargon’s death and the later fall of Nineveh.​

• Evidence such as the Saqqez dish with a Luwian‑hieroglyphic inscription naming Partitavas (identified as Partatua) is used to argue that Scythian elites in Media adopted the Hittite writing system, confirming a Cimmerian/Scythian presence in the Hittite scribal milieu around 690 BCE.​

Madyes/Muwatallis II, Cyaxares/Hattusilis III, and later history

• Madyes the Scythian, who dominates Asia and the Medes for 28 years in Herodotus, is identified with Muwatallis II, the Hittite king who battles Ramesses II at Kadesh; his “28 years” are read as overlapping the reigns of Muwatallis II and his successor Mursilis III.​

• Hattusilis III is identified as Cyaxares the Mede, whose Hittite title “Kheta‑sar” (“king of Kheta/Hatti”) is argued to underlie the Greek form “Kyaxares”; Hattusilis (“man of Hattusa”) and Khetasar would be complementary throne titles for the same ruler.​

• Within the revised timeline, the Battle of Kadesh (Muwatallis II vs. Ramesses II) occurs in 639 BCE, corresponding to Madyes’ invasion of the Levant, and the Treaty of Kadesh (Ramesses II and Hattusilis III) falls in 623 BCE, just as Cyaxares and Nabopolassar launch their war on Assyria.​

• This treaty secures Egypt’s flank with the Cimmerian–Median coalition; the authors suggest it may explain later Judahite resistance to Necho II (Josiah’s death in 609 BCE) as an attempt to uphold an older Egyptian–Median arrangement.​

Extended synchronism network and king‑list harmonization

• A long sequence of synchronisms is assembled linking Hittite kings of Old/Middle/New phases with Assyrian rulers (Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, Tiglath‑pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal), Lydian kings (Midas, Gyges, Alyattes, Croesus), and Median kings in Herodotus and Ctesias.​

• Labarna I and Hattusilis I are tied to Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III; Middle‑Kingdom Tudkhaliya II and Arnuwanda I are linked to Tiglath‑pileser III and Sargon II as puppet kings in Tabal; Mita of Mushki (Midas of Phrygia) surfaces in both Assyrian and Hittite texts, anchoring the middle chronology.​

• A composite king list is constructed in which Herodotus’ Deioces, Phraortes, Cyaxares, and Astyages, Ctesias’ parallel sequence, Hittite Tudkhaliya III–Suppiluliuma I–Mursilis II–Muwatallis II–Hattusilis III–Tudkhaliya IV–Suppiluliuma II, and Scythian/Cimmerian names (Ishpaka, Partatua, Tugdamme, Madyes) are all cross‑identified or aligned.​

• Late Hittite Tudkhaliya IV is equated with Astyages; conflict with an unnamed “king of Assyria” in Hittite letters is re‑attributed to Nabonidus rather than Shalmaneser/Tukulti‑Ninurta, on the grounds that Levantine and later Greek sources often call the Babylonian king “king of Assyria.”​

• Suppiluliuma II, last Great King of Hattusa, is identified as Cyaxares II/Darius the Mede (from Xenophon and Daniel), whose campaigns in Lycia and Tarhuntassa are equated with warfare against Croesus and Nabonidus leading up to Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon.​

• Hartapu, a Hittite prince ruling in the Konya plain, is proposed as Harpagus, the Median general who aids Cyrus and later becomes satrap of “Asia,” using Hittite/Arzawan evidence to backfill Greek accounts.​

Interpretive conclusions

• The authors argue that once Mursilis II is accepted as Tugdamme and Hattusilis III as Cyaxares, the Hittite archives furnish the missing internal history of the Median/Cimmerian Empire: a line of kings using Hittite throne names but remembered by Greeks under Median and Scythian ethnonyms.​

• “Median Empire” is thus recast as a convenient classical label for a Cimmerian‑dominated federation of Cimmerians, Scythians, Medes, Manneans, Urartians, and Tabalians, with Hattusa as a major western capital linked to Media by the Persian Royal Road.​

• Herodotus’ neat genealogy from Deioces to Astyages is taken to compress co‑regencies, hostage princes, and succession by sons‑in‑law or nephews, much as the Hittite succession often passes through marriage rather than direct patrilineal inheritance.​

• The paper closes by asserting that this re‑identification of New Kingdom Hittites with Cimmerian–Median rulers both explains the archaeological absence of “Median imperial” material in Iran and the textual absence of “Hittites” in classical narratives, while vindicating the lowered, duration‑based CFAH chronology developed in earlier installments.​

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By Kenneth Griffith and Darrell K. White

Introduction

For the past two centuries, Bible scholars have debated the length of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt. The reason for the debate is the wording of the passage in Exodus 12:40. Did the Israelites spend 430 years from Jacob’s entry into Egypt, or were the 430 years from Abraham’s entry into Egypt, as stated in Galatians 3:16-18? In this short paper, we will endeavor to show that the Short Sojourn is the only view that is compatible with Scripture and that it is also supported by two external witnesses.

Over the past few decades, Associates for Biblical Research and several other Christian scholars have promoted the interpretation that the 430 years count from God’s covenant with Jacob to the Exodus, rather than from Abraham’s entry into Egypt until the Exodus (Petrovich 2024). The primary reason for preferring this interpretation has been to fit the conventional chronology of the 12th Dynasty of Egypt, which several scholars recognize as being the dynasty under whom Jacob entered Egypt (Stewart 2008, 80-107; Petrovich 2019, 37). However, those who make this argument have typically resorted to claiming that the genealogies recorded in Exodus and Numbers are missing several generations. Ray makes this argument:

A comparison of various genealogical data reveals that while on the surface, at least, the Levitical genealogy of Moses shows only four generations, other genealogies, such as those of Judah, and the two sons of Joseph, reveal six, seven, and eight generations for the same time period, evidencing that there are some missing generations in the genealogy of Moses. Thus, this genealogy in Exodus 6:16–27 should not be taken as support for the 215-year view. The genealogical data favor, instead, a longer time period.
– (Ray 2007, emphasis added)

Additionally, those like Ray and Petrovich who choose the Long Sojourn in order to match Jacob with the 12th Dynasty of Egypt assume that they know the chronology of Egypt better than we know the chronology of Scripture. If we presuppose that Scripture is chronologically accurate and are open to the possibility that it is the accepted chronology of Egypt that is mistaken, then the problems are easily resolved.

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Though this paper primarily critiques the arguments of Petrovich and Ray, Petrovich at least holds to the primacy of Scripture over Egyptian chronology:

The cart should not be trusted to pull the horse. The issue must be solved within the disciplines of biblical studies first, because there cannot be two or more lengths of the sojourn, two or more exodus dates, or two or more exodus pharaohs. As Benware rightly cautioned, the declarations of Scripture must provide the primary evidence to determine these events, and only then can ancient historical evidence be consulted to add flesh to the skeletal structure.
– (Petrovich 2019, 23)

Having established that Scripture must dictate chronology, let’s consider the passages and Petrovich’s interpretations of them.

Correctly Parsing Exodus 12:40

Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was 430 years. (Exodus 12:40 )

The word translated as “Egypt” in most English Bibles for this verse is “Mizraim”, but the LXX says, “Egypt and Canaan.” Petrovich argues that since the word in the Masoretic Text is “Mizraim,” the 430 years had to be entirely spent in the territory that we know today as Egypt, and therefore the LXX translation “Egypt and Canaan” was a corruption in the Greek text (Petrovich 2019).

However, Petrovich treats the question as being only whether or not the words “and Canaan” were in the original Hebrew text, rather than considering the geographical possibility that Mizraim could mean “Egypt and Canaan” Petrovich concludes:

While these texts could preserve correctly the inclusion of Canaan as one geographical locale for the sojourn, the MTʼs reading possesses substantial authority, and only with great caution should it be overruled. Due to the strength of the double tradition of the MT and the Dead Sea Scrolls, external evidence favors the reading without Canaan.
– (Petrovich 2019, 29)

While the question of whether “and Canaan” was included in the original Hebrew is certainly the first question that should be asked, that question alone cannot ultimately determine the passage’s meaning. We must go on to ask what the original Hebrew passage meant when it was written, and why the LXX translators might have substituted “Egypt and Canaan” for the word “Mizraim.” Petrovich prematurely concludes the matter after answering only the first question, and by doing so, he misses the forest for the trees.

The second question we should be asking is:

What was meant by the word “Mizraim” in the original text?

The place to begin is to let Scripture define Mizraim for us:

Mizraim begot Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, and Casluhim (from whom came the Philistines and Caphtorim).
– (Genesis 10:13-14 emphasis added)

Scripture defines the word Mizraim in Genesis 10 as the tribes descended from Mizraim. When Abraham entered Canaan, the southern half was ruled by the Egyptian Philistine tribe, who were of the house of Mizraim.

Genesis 21 records two major events that appear to have occurred in the same year: the weaning of Isaac and Abraham being forced to make a covenant with Abimelech, the Philistine. Both events involved persecution from the house of Mizraim.

When Isaac was weaned around age five, he was mocked by Ishmael, the son of the Egyptian woman, which was highly symbolic. However, the actions of Abimelech the Philistine were more materially significant. The Philistines filled Abraham’s wells with rubble and forced him to enter a covenant with them as the subordinate party. Thus Abraham found himself as a vassal under the authority of Abimelech, king of the Philistines, who was of the house of Mizraim, and probably a vassal to the King of Egypt.

The third question we need to ask is:

Why did the LXX translators substitute “Egypt and Canaan” for “Mizraim” in the original Hebrew text?

A reasonable answer to this question is that by the time the LXX was translated, circa 260 BC, Egypt and Canaan were understood by the Greeks (for whom the LXX was translated) to be separate polities. Therefore, the phrase “Egypt and Canaan” is the Septuagint translation of the meaning of “Mizraim” from Abraham’s day into words the Greek audience understood in the third century before Christ.

When Abraham dwelt in Canaan, the region was effectively ruled by the 4th dynasty of Egypt, and when Jacob went down to Egypt, Canaan was ruled by the 12th and 13th Dynasties, as evidenced by a monument found in Byblos of a governor appointed by Neferhotep I of Dynasty 13. Senusret III of Dynasty 12 is also said by Diodorus to have placed a college of astronomer priests on the Euphrates after he conquered the Levant (Diodorus 1935, Book I.28.1), which indicates the Egyptian 12th Dynasty viewed the Euphrates as their northern border. Egyptian Kings would continue to claim the land of Canaan and Syria to Carchemish until Necho II of the 26th Dynasty, about 1,300 years after Abraham’s time (Jeremiah 46:42), and even further by the Ptolemaic Egyptians down to the reign of Cleopatra, who died in the reign of Caesar Augustus.

The view that Mizraim in Exodus 12:40 refers to both Philistine Canaan and Egypt proper is supported by Galatians 3:16-18:

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ. And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

This passage places the giving of the Law at Sinai 430 years after some event in Abraham’s life, most likely the first covenant when he was told to go to Canaan. Galatians explicitly states the covenant at the start of the 430 years was with “Abraham and your Seed,” but goes on to specify that the Seed “is Christ”.

Petrovich contradicts Paul’s identification of the Seed, by arguing the Seed, and therefore the start of the sojourn, refers to Jacob (Petrovich 2024, 8). However, Abraham is mentioned by name in the verses before and after the 430-year duration in the Galatians passage, and Paul himself explicitly states in that passage that the Seed refers to Christ, and therefore obviously not Jacob.

Since the law was given on Sinai the same year as the Exodus, this places the promise to Abraham 430 years earlier, not over 645 years earlier as required by the Long Sojourn.

The problem with arguing 400 or 430 years of sojourn from Jacob’s entry based on a strictly literal interpretation of Exodus 12:40 is that it contradicts Galatians 3, and it also creates chronological impossibilities in the lineage of Moses, which is already near the threshold of impossibility even with the shorter 215-year sojourn from Jacob’s entry.

Four Generations from Levi to Moses

The Bible chronology is explicit:

25 years from Abraham’s first visit to Egypt until the birth of Isaac (Gen 12:4; 21:5); plus,

60 years to the birth of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:26); plus,

130 years of Jacob’s life before meeting Pharaoh (Genesis 47:9); gives:

215 years from Abraham crossing the Euphrates to Jacob meeting Pharaoh

For the balance of the sojourn, we have three or four generations from Levi to Moses on his father’s and mother’s sides. We don’t know the ages at which the fathers sired the sons, but if we add them all, we get the maximum possible duration of the sojourn from Jacob’s entry date.

And the years of the life of Levi were one hundred and thirty-seven. The sons of Gershon were Libni and Shimi according to their families. And the sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. And the years of the life of Kohath were one hundred and thirty-three. The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi. These are the families of Levi according to their generations. Now Amram took for himself Jochebed, his father’s sister, as wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of the life of Amram were one hundred and thirty-seven. (Exodus 6:16-20)

Kohath was already born prior to entering Egypt (Genesis 46:11) and was probably 5 or 6 years old unless he and his younger brother were twins. To grant that they were twins born the year of the migration gives the most time to the Long Sojourn.

133 years of Kohath’s life; plus,

137 years of Amram’s life; plus,

80 years of Moses’s life before the Exodus; totals:

350 years Maximum in Moses’ male line, assuming conception in the year of the death of the father for each generation.

We conclude from this passage alone that claiming 400+ years from Jacob to the Exodus explicitly contradicts Scripture unless we grant Ray’s assertion that Moses left out several generations of his own family history when he wrote the book of Exodus. Followers of the Documentary Hypothesis assert that Moses was not the author of Exodus (Dozeman 2010, 1-11), though that claim directly contradicts Scripture (Exodus 24:4). If Moses did omit some generations, then the included ages of only some of his ancestors are rendered useless information to us.

On the mother’s side, this duration is also limited. The fact that the mother of Moses, Jochabed, was Levi’s physical daughter also makes the 430-year sojourn from Jacob’s entry impossible.

The name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; and to Amram she bore Aaron and Moses and their sister Miriam. (Numbers 26:59)

Levi was older than Joseph, and we know Joseph’s age when his father came down to Egypt. Joseph’s age when Jacob arrived was 30 + (9 or 10), therefore, at a minimum, 39 or 40 years of Levi’s life preceded the family moving to Egypt. Joseph was born shortly before Jacob left Haran, and given that Rachel gave birth (and died) when he arrived in Shechem, that suggests Joseph was about 5 years old at that point. Jacob’s marriage was 20 years before he left for Haran (Genesis 31:38), and Levi was third-born and thus was born no less than 7 years after Jacob got married. 20 minus 7 minus 5, gives an 8-year estimated age difference between Joseph and Levi. Therefore, about 48 years of Levi’s life preceded Jacob going down to Egypt.

If Levi was 48 when Jacob entered Egypt, then he spent the final 89 years of his life in Egypt, living to 137. Moses was born 80 years before the end of the sojourn. Therefore, assuming that Levi sired Jochebed in the final year of his life, her age at the conception of Moses under the Long Sojourn theory must have been:

430-year sojourn; minus,

89 years of Levi’s life in Egypt; minus,

80 years of Moses’ life before the Exodus; gives:

261 years, the age of Jochebed when Moses was born under the Long Sojourn

We are unaware of any Bible scholars who argue that a woman born later than the fourth generation after the Flood had more than two centuries of fertility. Therefore, the Long Sojourn is also explicitly contradicted by the fact that Levi was the grandfather of Moses on his mother’s side through Jochebed.

Ray tries to get around this by claiming Jochebed was merely a descendant of Levi. Ray’s argument might pass for Jochebed, “the daughter of Levi,” meaning a descendant. However, the phrase “born to” (יָלְדָ֥ה) in the vast majority of cases used in Scripture means the act of birthing the child, never referring to a descendant. Jochebed was Levi’s direct, first-generation daughter. The reason that Levi’s paternity is repeated twice in the text is probably that it seems so unlikely.

Even for the Short Sojourn, the only way Moses could have been Levi’s grandson was if Levi sired Jochebed in Egypt about the age of 123, only 14 years before his death, and Jochebed bore Moses around the age of 60. Jochebed bearing her last child at sixty is reasonable because lifespans were still about 50% longer than the modern average during the sojourn.

Genesis 15:16 says: “But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” From Levi to Moses, there were four generations in the male line counted inclusively. Four generations in that era could not have stretched four centuries, based on the recorded ages of the patriarchs.

Ray introduces another argument, saying that the data in Numbers requires that in some family lines, there were 7 or 8 generations during the sojourn.

Further evidence pertinent to the Levi genealogies may be found in the fact that the genealogies of Judah (1 Chr 2:1–20) and Ephraim (Nm 26:35–36; 1 Chr 7:20–27) indicate seven and eight generations, respectively,[xviii] for the same or a slightly lesser time period than that encompassed in the four-generation genealogies of Levi in Exodus 6:16–27 and Numbers 26:57–62. At the very end of each of these other genealogies, we find reference to several contemporaneous individuals from the three tribes. Thus, these more-extended genealogies of Judah and Ephraim would seem to indicate incompleteness in the Levi genealogies.

The problem with Ray’s argument is that Israelite men in that era frequently took additional younger wives in their old age and continued to have children, like Abraham did with Keturah. Hezron is the most extreme example, who had at least three wives and whose last child was born after he died.

Also the sons of Hezron who were born to him were Jerahmeel, Ram, and Chelubai. … Now afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, whom he married when he was sixty years old; and she bore him Segub. Segub begot Jair, who had twenty-three cities in the land of Gilead. … After Hezron died in Caleb Ephrathah, Hezron’s wife Abijah bore him Ashhur the father of Tekoa.
– (1 Chronicles 2:9-24, emphasis added)

Given that they were living 130 to 140 years and came to sexual maturity around age 30, that means an Israelite man in that era could sire children born up to 110 years apart in the same generation.

In the same space of 215 years argued by the short sojourn, there could have been some families that, starting with the generation (grandchildren of Jacob) that entered Egypt, begot seven more generations of the firstborn line in Egypt, for a total of nine generations after Jacob, as seen in the examples given by Ray above.

Ray’s error is to assume that the record of eight generations in one tribe at the Exodus, therefore, requires a longer sojourn than the three and four generations to Moses. However, any population will have a generational average of the dates of the births of all of the children, not just the firstborn. The long generations of Moses, assuming the 215 years of the Short Sojourn, averaged 67.5 years from the birth of the father. If most men sired children from age 30 to 110, as the biblical evidence suggests, the generational average could be as high as 70 years.

The eight-generation families and the three-generation families, like that of Moses, were merely the opposite tails of the bell curve, with the majority being the average somewhere in the middle. Dividing 215 years by an average generation of 70 years comes to just over three generations, plus the already-born generation when Jacob entered Egypt, makes four. If we use a more realistic average generation of 40 years, there were 5.3 generations born in Egypt before the Exodus. Thus, the average number of generations from Jacob across all the Israelite families at the time of the Exodus was probably around four or five. Moses was the youngest of the youngest line from Levi.

Ray also argues that the number of Kohathites recorded as over 8,000 men, shortly after the Exodus, was far too many to have been produced in only three generations from Kohath to Moses.

These families of the Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites consisted of 8,600 men and boys (not including women and girls), of which about a fourth (or 2,150) were Amramites. This would have given Moses and Aaron that incredibly large a number of brothers and brothers’ sons (brothers’ daughters, sisters, and their daughters not being reckoned), if the same Amram, the son of Kohath, were both the head of the family of the Amramites and their own father (Keil and Delitzsch 1952b: 470). Obviously, such could not have been the case.

Ray failed to count the extra generations in the line of Amram’s descendants in the eighty years between the birth of Moses and the Exodus.

The census in Numbers 3:28 tells us that there were 8,600 male Kohathites from infant to old age. And the census in Numbers 4:34-37 tells us that the heads of households from age 30 to 50 numbered 2,750. These two numbers also tell us about the fertility of the Kohathites. 8,600, minus 2,750, and divided by 2,750 is 2.12 sons per head of household. The portion of the Amramites being one-quarter of these, the total population of Amram at the Exodus was about 2,150 males from infant to old age. That is the number that the population calculations need to hit.

Read what Scripture says about the fertility of the Israelites:

But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
– (Exodus 1:7)

This sentence says in four different ways that Israelite fertility in Egypt was extremely high. Benjamin is recorded as having ten sons when he entered Egypt (Genesis 46:21), though he would only have been thirty-five years old. To have so many sons in only five or six years, Benjamin’s father must have given him more than one wife as soon as he reached puberty, which would be consistent with Jacob’s favoritism toward Benjamin. Given their longer lifespan, their practice of polygamy, and lack of birth control, an average of ten children per Israelite man during the time in Egypt seems entirely reasonable, especially if they had low infant mortality.

Numbers 3:19,27 lists Amram twice as the firstborn son of Kohath, whom we earlier calculated was about five years old when he came to Egypt. This suggests Amram was born about 25 years after Jacob’s entry, leaving 190 years for his progeny to multiply until the Exodus. Moses, being born 80 years before the Exodus, was sired when Amram was about 110 years old, by his [presumed] second wife, Jochebed. This assumes that Amram married at about age 30 and had an earlier set of children by his unnamed first wife. None of the geneologies list the children of the fourth generation from Jacob, except for the lines of notable leaders like Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. Therefore, Amram must have had sons beginning around age 30, and his marriage to Jochebed was a second, or third, marriage in his old age.

Assuming Amram began siring children with his first wife at age 30, if she had ten children, half boys, and we use the 40-year average generation, then there were 4.75 generations at the Exodus. Five sons per generation raised to the 4.75 power gives 2,089 male descendants, which is quite close to the target of 2,150 males. However, that calculation only tells us the size of generation 4.75 and does not include the fathers and grandfathers still alive from generations 3 and 4.

125 – Generation 3: 5³
625 – Generation 4: 5⁴
2,089 – Generation 4.75: 4^4.75
2,839 – Approximate Total Male Amramites living at the Exodus

With 5 sons per generation, the required number of descendants was exceeded by 32%. However, we must remember that the boys were killed for at least five years from the Decree to the birth of Moses, which would lower the count.

If the Israelite men were practicing polygamy before the final enslavement, as we know at least some of them did, the same results could have been achieved with only 5 births per woman instead of 10. Ray’s objection is thus reasonably overcome.

The Children of Israel

The Bible is internally consistent. So the question is, why does Exodus 12 say “the sojourn of the children of Israel” was 430 years if it doesn’t solely mean the children of Jacob, the first of whom weren’t even born until nearly halfway through the sojourn?

The passage uses the term seed in the same way that the author of Hebrews argues that Levi was in the loins of Abraham when he paid a tithe to Melchizedek.

Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. (Hebrews 7:10)

Of all of the “seeds” of Abraham, only the children of Jacob (Israel) sojourned under the Egyptians for the full 430 years from Abraham’s first visit to Egypt, or 400 years from the start of the persecution when Isaac was weaned. Ishmael and the sons of Keturah left Canaan and, therefore, Egyptian authority. Esau also left Canaan and went to the Southeast side of the Arabah to found Edom, outside of Canaan, and outside of Egyptian authority. Of all the children of Abraham, only the children of Israel sojourned the full 400 years under Egyptian authority. This seems to be why it was worded in that way.

400 Years of Bondage

Genesis 15:13 records God’s prediction to Abraham that his descendants would face 400 years of affliction, and Stephen in Acts 7 records that the bondage and oppression lasted four hundred years. Petrovich rightly observes that the 400 could be intended as a round number:

The exact length of the sojourn should not be sought in Genesis 15:13 because the “400” in this verse was intended to be a rough number, just as was the use of the term “fourth dor ” in Genesis 15:16 (Wenham 1987, 332). Kitchen (2003,355–56) perceptively referred to the predicted 400 years of the Egyptian sojourn as a number that was cast as a round figure and looked into the future, and he argued that the Hebrew word dor, which usually is rendered four “generations” in English translations, actually means “spans,” given that the West Semitic cognate daru was used to denote the seven spans of time that elapsed between the fall of the Akkadian Empire and the accession of Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria (ca. 1800 BC), whose scribes would have measured these spans as totaling between 530 and 730 years.
– (Petrovich 2019, 31)

Petrovich argues a bit too confidently because the 400 years could also be a precise duration, as proponents for the Short Sojourn have long argued (Jones 2026, 55-56). At this point, we will only say that it could be either rounded or precise, and we won’t hold him to the precise duration.

Adherents of the Long Sojourn argue that the 400 years of bondage mentioned by Stephen in Acts 7 must have been entirely in Egypt proper.

And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell. And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, He promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his descendants after him. But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years. ‘And the nation to whom they will be in bondage I will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and serve Me in this place.’
– (Acts 7:4b-7)

Note that Stephen did not use the word “Egypt” in that sentence or paragraph. When it is understood that Mizraim included the Philistines, the sojourn in the “foreign land” began with Abraham himself, who was a stranger in a strange land with “not even enough to set his foot on” shortly after Isaac was born, as is implied by the next verse:

Then He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot the twelve patriarchs.
– (Acts 7:8)

Thus, the four centuries of persecution mentioned in Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:4-7 are chronologically consistent with the Short Sojourn from the weaning of Isaac at age 5 to the Exodus, exactly 400 years later. And the 430 years counted from Abraham’s first entry into Egyptian territory when he was 75 years old. Both durations are precise, and both are internally consistent with the other durations recorded in Scripture.

Egyptian Durations

In addition to the Scriptural durations, there is evidence from the Egyptian records that supports the Short Sojourn.

The Turin Canon informs us that the Egyptian 12th dynasty lasted 213 years (Lundström 2025). Stewart argues that an assassination attempt occurred in the twentieth year of its first king, Amenemhat I, which led to the trials of the baker and the butler (Stewart 2008, 80-107). Courville argued that the death of Concharis recorded in the book of Sothis was 34 years after the death of the last queen of Dynasty 12, and that Concharis died at the time of the Exodus (Courville 1971, Vol I, 121-122). If he was correct, the duration from the start of the 12th dynasty to the Exodus would have been 247 years.

Joseph was promoted two or three years after the assassination attempt in the twentieth year of the first king of Dynasty 12, and Jacob entered Egypt 9 or 10 years later in the second year of the famine. Therefore:

213 years of Dynasty 12; plus,

34 years to the death of Concharis in the Exodus; minus,

20 years to the assassination attempt; minus,

2 or 3 years to Joseph’s promotion; minus,

9 or 10 years to Jacob’s entry; gives:

214 - 216 years from Jacob’s entry to the Exodus

Three other ancient sources also give us a precise date for the Pharaoh Senusret III of Dynasty 12 returning from his Asian campaign and sending a college of astronomer priests to the Babylonians on the upper Euphrates (near Haran).

• Pliny, citing Berossus and Critodemus, says Babylonian astronomy was improved 480,000 [days] in the past. Berossus dedicated his book to Antiochus Theos, whose reign began in 262 BC. 480,000 days before 262 BC was 1576 BC. (Pliny 1855, Book VII.57.53)

• Diodorus wrote that “To Babylon…colonists were led by Belus…and after establishing himself on the Euphrates river, he appointed priests, called Chaldaeans by the Babylonians…; and they also make observations of the stars, following the example of the Egyptian priests, physicists, and astrologers.” 473,000 [days] prior to Alexander (Diodorus 1935, Book I.28.1; Book II.31.9). Assuming his source was Manetho, who dedicated his book to Ptolemy Philadelphus, whose first year was 282 BC, this points to 1577 BC.

• Dicearchus placed Sesostris III 293,6[00] [days] before the first Olympiad in 776 BC, yielding 1579 BC. (Spineto 1845, 403, 404)

Figure 3 shows these three durations in the context of the 12th Dynasty. The fact that three durations from different sources and events point to the same year for the founding of the astronomical college by Egyptian Belus, aka Senusret III, around 1577 BC is quite significant.

The year 1577 BC was 86 years before Ussher’s 1491 BC date for the Exodus. This becomes highly relevant when we look at the traditions of the Jews.

Jewish Traditions (Josephus, Seder Olam, and Talmud)

A second external set of testimonies is found in Josephus, the Seder Olam, and the Jewish Talmud.

Josephus states explicitly that the 430-year sojourn began with Abraham.

They left Egypt in the month of Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month: four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan. But two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed unto Egypt; it was the eightieth year of the age of Moses, and of that of Aaron three more. (Antiquities Book II.XV.2)

However, in the previous chapter, Josephus relates that the Israelites labored 400 years under the Egyptians. However, Josephus does not peg the start and end of the four centuries of affliction in that passage; he merely mentions it amid a chapter about the afflictions. Recognizing Philistines as members of the House of Mizraim, this passage is also consistent with the Short Sojourn.

Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews, an English translation of the Mishnah, specifies that the four hundred years of affliction began with Isaac’s birth (Ginzberg 2004, Vol 2, IV.125), but that the duration of the time in Egypt was only 210 years (Ginzberg 2001, Vol 2, IV.145).

The same text states that the decree to slaughter the infants was given 130 years after Jacob entered Egypt (Ginzberg 2001, Vol 2, IV.21). Elsewhere it states that the dominion of the Egyptians over the Israelites lasted only 86 years (Ginzberg 2001, Vol 3, I.27) but that the Israelites had been strangers in the land for four hundred years since the birth of Isaac (Ginzberg 2001, Vol 3, I.28). Thus, in the Jewish tradition, only the final 86 years of the four centuries of affliction as strangers were the Israelites reduced to chattel slaves.

Adding those two durations together, the total sojourn in Egypt comes to 216 years.

130 years from Jacob’s Entry to the Decree to kill babies; plus,

86 years from the Decree to the Exodus; gives:

216 years from Jacob’s entry to the Exodus

Also, the 210-year duration cited above may have been counting from the end of the seven-year famine, which lasted five more years after Jacob entered Egypt.

The 86-year duration is seen to be significant because Sesostris III returned from his Asian campaign and sent the astronomical college to the Euphrates about 86 years before Ussher’s 1491 BC Exodus date.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.”
– Exodus 1:8-10

The context fits Sesostris III of Dynasty 12 as the king who knew not Joseph. In his Asian campaign, he fought the Edomite and Keturite descendants of Abraham and recognized the Israelites as their kinsmen, and feared they might turn against him. Thus, his decree to enslave the Israelites and kill their sons was most likely given in 1577 BC when he returned from his Asian campaign. This agrees within one year with the Jewish tradition that they served 86 years as chattel slaves. (Figure 1)

Conclusions

We find that two solutions are being proposed, one that breaks the durations and bends the biblical passages, and the other that harmonizes them.

The Solution that Breaks Everything

Advocates of the Long Sojourn, such as Petrovich and Ray, must resort to bending and breaking the other chronological passages of Scripture to force them into their predetermined conclusion of the 430-year sojourn. They claim that Moses omitted generations from his own genealogy and that Paul was speaking of Jacob, not Abraham, even though he explicitly named Abraham twice when speaking of the 430 years.

In doing so, they avoid dealing with the question of what it meant to sojourn as strangers for four hundred years in Mizraim. Petrovich abandons his inquiry after concluding the words “and Canaan” were not in the original Hebrew text. The stated motivation for preferring the Long Sojourn by both scholars is to make the chronology of the Bible fit the accepted chronology of Egypt’s 12th Dynasty.

In our view, this is backward because the true chronology of the 12th Dynasty of Egypt is by no means confidently known. Academics have high, middle, and low chronologies for that dynasty, differing by up to four centuries, which indicates they cannot even agree among themselves. Figure 2 shows that the Long Sojourn produces five gaps with the recorded scriptural and extra-biblical durations.

A Solution that Is True to the Biblical Data

When we interpret the relevant passages of Scripture in such a way that they all agree, the answer becomes clear.

• 430 years of the sojourn in Exodus 12:40 count from Abraham’s first visit to Egypt, the year that he crossed the Euphrates.

• 400 years as strangers in Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:6 count from the birth of Isaac (rounded) or the weaning of Isaac (exact) to the Exodus.

• 430 years from the promise to the Law in Galatians 3:17 count from Abraham’s first meeting with God at age 75 until the Law was given at Mt. Sinai, three months after the Exodus.

• Internal chronological passages indicate that Jacob entered Egypt 215 years after Abraham crossed the Euphrates. Subtracting 215 years from the 430-year duration of the sojourn gives 215 years from Jacob’s entry into Egypt until the Exodus. This agrees with the external durations found in Egyptian records and Jewish historical traditions.

Christian theologians have been aware of this solution since before the time of Bishop Ussher in the 16th century.

In addition to Scripture itself, two sets of external witnesses concur with the Short Sojourn, namely the Egyptian data and the traditions of the Jews. As cited above, we have three precise durations to Sesostris III from the ancient chroniclers that agree with both Ussher and the Jewish traditions, but place Sesostris nearly two centuries later than the lowest accepted chronology for Dynasty 12. A fourth duration from the Midrash, that the decree was given 86 years before the Exodus, ties the other three to the Biblical chronology. Figure 3 shows how the Biblical data and the extrabiblical durations mesh together for the 12th Dynasty of Egypt.

As presuppositionalists, we do not allow extra-biblical sources to dictate our interpretation of Scripture. But when extra-biblical sources agree with an internally consistent interpretation of Scripture, that can be seen as a strong confirmation that the interpretation is correct.

The only internally harmonious interpretation of the relevant biblical passages is that the 430 years of the sojourn of the children of Israel were counted from Abraham crossing the Euphrates at the age of 75. Therefore, Jacob entered Egypt only 215 years before the Exodus.

References

Courville, Donovan. 1971. The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications. Vol I & II. Loma Linda, California: Challenge Books.

Diodorus Siculus. 1935. C. H. Oldfather, trans. Diodorus Siculus. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dozeman, Thomas B. (editor). 2010. Methods for Exodus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gardiner, Alan Henderson. 1959. The Royal Canon of Turin. Oxford: The Griffith Institute. https://pharaoh.se/turin-kinglist-column-7

Ginzberg, Louis. 2001. The Legends of the Jews, Vol I-IV, Gutenberg Project Foundation, Oxford, MS: Gutenberg Project Foundation.

Jones, Floyd Nolan. 1993-2026. The Chronology of the Old Testmament. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Lundström, Peter. 2025. Turin King List Column 7. https://pharaoh.se/ancient-egypt/kinglist/turin/column-7/

Petrovich, Douglas R. 2019. “Determining the Precise Length of the Israelite Sojourn in Egypt.” Near Eastern Archaeological Society Bulletin. NEASB 64 (2019).

Petrovich, Douglas R. 2024. Resolution of the Exodus 12:40 Textual Variant. Accessed on 1/31/2024. https://www.academia.edu/34278461/Resolution_of_Exodus_12_40_Textual_Variant

Pliny. 1855. John Bostock & H. D. Riley, trans. The Natural History of Pliny. London: Henry G. Bohn.

Ray, Paul J. Jr. 2007. “The Duration of the Israelite Sojourn in Egypt” Bible and Spade 20:3. 2007. https://biblearchaeology.org/research/chronological-categories/patriarchal-era/3228-the-duration-of-the-israelite-sojourn-in-egypt

Spineto, Marquis. 1845. The Elements of Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Antiquities, London: Printed for C.J.G. & F. Rivington by R. Gibert.

Stewart, Ted T. 2003. Solving the Exodus Mystery. Lubbock, Texas: Biblemart.com, 70-107.

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Rameses VII as Alexander the Great

One apparent weakness of Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory of Dynasty 20 is that if Rameses VI was Nectanebo II, then who were Rameses VII, son of Rameses VI, and Rameses VIII, alleged to be the son of Rameses III? These two kings appear to have ruled immediately after Rameses VI.

In Velikovsky’s chronology, the Persians reconquered Egypt, and Nectanebo II/Rameses VI fled away to the south. We would expect that Rameses VII must have ruled during the final 11 years of the Persian 31st Dynasty, or Rameses VII would have to be Alexander the Great. As it turns out, on closer examination, several points of evidence support the idea that Rameses VII was the Theban identity of Alexander the Great.

First, the throne name of Alexander the Great is known to have been Setep en Ra mery Amun. The throne name of Rameses VII is nearly identical, with the addition of the phrase “User Maat Ra”: User Maat Ra, setep en Ra, mery Amun.

Second, as reported by Diodorus, Plutarch, and Strabo, Alexander was told by the Oracle of Amun in Thebes that he was the divine son of the god Amun, which the Greeks considered the Egyptian equivalent of Zeus. Thus in taking a set of Egyptian titles, it would not be surprising if one of these alluded to that claim. The personal name of Rameses VII was Ramessu, ity Amun, heqa netjer Iunu, translated as “Ramesses, his father is Amun, god and ruler of Heliopolis.” There is no other Egyptian ruler known to have a personal name in this form.

Third, the highest attested year of Rameses VII was 8. Alexander conquered Egypt without a fight in the Autumn of 332 BC, but was not inaugurated as Pharaoh until the Spring of the following year, 331 BC. Unlike Babylon and Judah, which used accession years, Egyptian reigns were dated from the day of inauguration. Alexander died in June of 323 BC, which was 8 years from his inauguration as Pharaoh.

Fourth, there is little known about Rameses VII, except that grain prices soared in his reign. After being crowned as Pharaoh in the Spring of 331 BC, Alexander left Egypt in the hands of Cleomenes of Naucratis, who is recorded as having manipulated the price of grain, buying it at 10 drachmas but then selling it for 32 drachmas, and deliberately exacerbating shortages by cornering the grain market (Bevin 1927).

The unfinished tomb of Rameses VII names Rameses VI as his father. This would seem to contradict the notion that Alexander the Great could have been Rameses VII, as his father was Philip of Macedon. However, a fable called The Alexander Romance maintained that after fleeing Egypt from the Persian reconquest, Nectanebo II was a wizard who traveled to the court of Philip in Macedon and, as the incarnation of Amun, impregnated Olympias with Alexander. While this is dismissed as a late fable, given everything else we know about Alexander’s claim to be the son of Amun, the Alexander Romance could very well have been propaganda created by Alexander’s Egyptian handlers to legitimize his reign in the eyes of the Egyptians. The claim that Rameses VI (Nectanebo II) was the father of Rameses VII (Alexander the Great) is entirely consistent with this possibility.

Lastly, the tomb of Rameses VII was left incomplete. We know that Alexander’s body was intercepted by Ptolemy I, who interred it in Alexandria, where he could keep an eye on the tomb. The reason for this was that in the Macedonian culture, the possession of and piety towards his predecessor’s body was one of the proofs of the legitimacy of the successor’s claim to the throne. The choice to bury Alexander in Alexandria brought an end to seven centuries of burials in the Valley of Kings.

In summary, the possibility that Rameses VII was Alexander the Great is supported by the nearly identical throne name, the personal name as the son of Amun, the Alexander Romance which names Nectanebo II as the father of Alexander, the spike in grain prices in the reigns of both Rameses VII and Alexander, the length of reign, and the cancellation of the tomb in Kings Valley.

This leaves a question of when Rameses VIII reigned. This king left no tomb, but a stele claimed he was the son of Rameses III (Nectanebo I). Rameses VIII may have briefly pretended to the Egyptian throne during the final 11 years of the Persian reconquest of Egypt prior to Alexander’s arrival in 332 BC. Like as not, the Persians decided they had had enough of Egyptian kings and killed him.

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One of my readers, named Dan Janzen, has stridently objected that the name “Prepottery Neolithic” is misleading because it assumes that people gradually learned how to make pottery rather than recognizing that some cultures used perishable containers such as leather wineskins, while others used pottery.

Genesis 10 and 11 clearly show that the generations immediately after the Flood had advanced knowledge of ceramics and architecture. “Let us make bricks and back them thoroughly.” So the idea of a gradual evolution from hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers over tens of thousands of years is obviously false.

I agree with Dan that “Prepottery Neolithic” is a misleading name for two reasons. First, the name “Neolithic” means “new stone” and refers to the Darwinist assumption that the Paleolithic and Mesolithic stone ages preceded the Neolithic stone age, when people suddenly learned how to farm. It is my belief that the so-called Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites and artefacts were merely the disposable tools made and used by hunters during the first seven centuries after the Flood.

The so-called “Neolithic” tools were the stone tools used by sedentary farmers and village builders during the exact same time period. Scripture informs us that after the Flood, “Noah began to be a farmer.” Therefore, we can date the “Neolithic” as beginning within a decade after the Flood itself in 2348 BC. So there was nothing “new” about the “Neolithic” because it was contemporaneous with the Paleolithic. The two types of tools were used for different modes of life, hunting versus farming.

It may be that during those seven centuries after the Flood, in some locations, a village was later built on a Paleolithic campsite. This could give the appearance that the Neolithic followed the Paleolithic.

Second, the word “Prepottery” grossly oversimplifies the reality with a false assumption. There are several reasons why the earliest culture after the Flood did not make ceramic pottery. Noah’s Ark must have had many containers to store water, food, wine, oil, and other precious substances. (I have argued elsewhere that the amazing predynastic stone jars are pre-Flood artefacts that were part of the Ark’s cargo.) Given they had a new world to explore and learn how to live in, it stands to reason that the patriarchs would have recycled the containers from the Ark until they were all gone.

Additionally, the choice of whether to use a leather waterskin or a ceramic amphora would largely depend on whether you had to transport it. Leather water skins are highly portable, though they have a lower volume. But skins are so perishable that they leave almost no trace in the archaeological record. Later cultures developed the capacity to transport large amphorae full of wine and oil in ships and with carts. But they required special precautions to keep them from breaking during transport. Ceramic shards are nearly indestructible and therefore leave a permanent archaeological record.

I must conclude that the terms “prepottery” versus “pottery” and “lithic” versus “bronze” ages are both false dilemmas. They were lifestyle technologies practiced by different cultures at roughly the same time in history.

My dilemma as a historian and author is that the Prepottery Neolithic is central to my arguments about the early history of mankind after the Flood. This culture is the strongest evidence that civilization began after the Flood in the mountains of Urartu, just as the Bible says it did.

I do need to put this on my charts in a way that people can look it up to see what I’m talking about. However, I don’t want to mislead my audience by reinforcing false evolutionary assumptions either. I need a new name for the Prepottery Neolithic. I would appreciate feedback and suggestions from my readers on this.

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Tweedy's (2024) paper “Oard’s Ice Age and Settlement of Northern Europe on Masoretic and Septuagint Timelines” is a needed survey of MT/LXX alternatives for the Ice Age after the Flood. It reviews an important topic in establishing a baseline for creationist history. It is well written, informative, and shows a breadth of information from many fields. We are delighted to provide a variant Masoretic Text (MT) compatible Ice Age model, which was not mentioned in Tweedy’s paper, and to address a few concerns he mentioned related to MT Ice Age models, especially those related to the settlement of Trier and Ireland (Griffith and White 2022). Our model is entitled “The Chronological Framework of Ancient History” (CFAH).

Building upon the research of Oard, Nienhuis, and von Fange, our study has found post-dispersion historical evidence and synchronisms for many aspects of the Ice Age within our MT-compatible chronological framework based on the durations given by the Ancient Chroniclers. We have planned a paper to explain our Ice Age findings in more detail, but it will be some time before it is ready. We feel a short summary of our results would be beneficial to the current thinking on this topic. We will also address some of the concerns pointed out in Tweedy's paper and suggest that a Mastoretic Text-compatible Ice Age should be a very reasonable possibility.

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The CFAH Ice Age Model used Oard's model as a starting point. Oard posits 500 years from the Flood to the Glacial Maximum (GM) and 200 years to the high water mark after the meltdown. Then we looked for historical clues and synchronisms that appeared compatible. After considerable research, we found datable events in ancient history which match up nicely with a slightly longer Oard Model as follows:

(dates below are approximations)

~2340 BC Start of Ice Sheet expansion

~2030 BC Likely mid-point of glacial expansion

~1720 BC Likely Glacial Maximum (GM) – start of slow meltdown of ~200 years

~1523 BC Start of 73-year rapid meltdown:

~1523 BC Flood of Deucalion II - Aegean Sea is formed (Fange 1994, 202; Nienhuis 2006, 23, 156)

~1450 BC High Ocean Levels – Flood of Dardanus, sinking of Dwarka

~1200 BC Ocean Levels near present levels – Sealand returns to usefulness

The result is a period of glacial expansion for about 620 years from the Great Flood to the Glacial Maximum and 270 years of melt from the Glacial Maximum to the post-glacial high sea level mark. This is about 27% longer than Oard's 500-year and 200-year estimations. This appears to be a reasonable fit with Oard’s model, with a slightly longer glaciation and thus a proportionately longer meltdown.

Is it reasonable for the Ice Age to have lasted during historical times after the Dispersion through the Exodus at the end of the Early Bronze Age? Both Tweedy and Habermehl have assumed that the meltdown phase would have been so destructive that cities could not have been founded in affected regions until afterwards. In our opinion, the impact of the meltdown phase was more nuanced, and we will address that concern.

Background:

We place the Dispersion from Babel at 2191/2190 BC, the settlement of Trier at about 2053 BC, and Partholan’s settlement of Ireland in 2035 BC.

That places the founding of these settlements at about the midpoint of the glacial buildup (2030 BC). However, we suspect that many hunting and exploration groups set up camps and settlements throughout Europe shortly after the Dispersion (2191/2190 BC). Following the interpretation that the division of the Earth in Genesis 10 referred to territorial inheritances, we expect the migrations were not slow and random, but relatively rapid migrations to their agreed-upon allotments.

“Archaeologists have found thousands of campsites and small settlements where Noah’s descendants lived after the Babel dispersion during the Ice Age. The earliest pioneers were daring explorers and settlers.”
– Snelling and Matthews 2013

Basic Assumption: The above-mentioned settlements would have been after the Dispersion, which we place in 2191 BC (Figure 1). We believe what von Fange calls “The Village Explosion” happened quickly after Babel fell, not before. However, we also recognize that a few explorers probably traversed much of the world before the Dispersion, leaving Paleolithic campsites. Additionally, hunting and fishing parties and outcasts probably already existed in some parts of the world outside the Babel region even before 2191 BC.

What is Needed for Prosperous Settlements?:

Humans require plentiful food sources, water, safe shelters, and a reasonable climate. The following quotes from Oard and others suggest these needs could be met within the MT timeframe.

Food & Climate:

“When the ice sheets were growing, there were immense herds of large animals. Plenty of grass and food grew because the rain and snow watered the land so well.” … “Their winters were not that cold.” (Oard 1993, 66)

“Winter temperatures over the ice sheets would not be extremely cold, and the areas south of the ice sheets would be rather mild, mostly cloudy, and wet in winter. Summer south of the ice sheets would be cooler due to volcanic dust, greater cloudiness, and the proximity of the sheets. In other words, winters would be warmer, and summers cooler than the present. The seasonal differences in climate would have been less extreme, or, in other words, more equable.” (Oard 1990, 83-84)

“If mammoths reproduced at the slow rate of modern elephants, more than two million would have been born in 200 years, and about two billion in 300 years.” (Oard 1990, 83) “... mammoths had plenty of time to multiply and spread across the Northern Hemisphere after the Flood.” (Oard 1990, 83) “... it seems certain they represent animals which lived in earily post-Flood time – not Flood burials.” (Oard 1990, 87)

The Ice Age climate was reasonably mild near the seas. The rapid growth of immense herds of wild animals would easily feed hunting communities, especially by the time of the Dispersion.

Water:

“Immediately after the Flood, about three times more water vapor would have evaporated from the oceans than is evaporating now.” (Oard 1993, 65) “... the amount of moisture available for rainfall in non-glaciated areas was at least three times higher than today.” (Oard 1990, 80)

Plenty of rainwater was available throughout Northern Europe. But what about permafrost as a problem for agriculture?

“First, a million or more well fed mammoths, …, lived in a climate much warmer than at present, and with no permafrost.” (Oard 1990, 131) “Thus, a catastrophe seems to be the logical conclusion.” (Oard 1990, 130) “The permafrost must not have existed at the beginning of the catastrophe.” (Oard 1990, 130)

“... followed the herd north in a lush life zone near the edge of the great ice build up all the way from Britain, France, and Spain to eastern Siberia ...” (Fange 1994, 95)

Safe Shelter:

“We now learned that, contrary to popular myth, they did not live in caves but in natural rock shelters or dwellings built of wood, stone, bone, or skin. The hunters lived in cozy base camps, complete with hearths and cobblestone floors.” (Fange 1994, 197, 99)”

The colonists traveling from the Middle East in the 2191 to 2030 BC timeframe had the knowledge and access to a vast supply of timber, earth, and stone available to construct permanent settlements at their destinations. Some sheltered in caves, as testified by the artifacts and art found therein. However, caves were most likely used for temporary shelter while hunting or traveling, for burials, and for rituals.

Early in the Ice Age ( 2300 to 2150 BC )

“There was probably only a small temperature difference between Summer and Winter.” “Warm air off the Atlantic Ocean would have constantly bathed countries like France, Spain, and England.” (Oard 1993, 50)

Trier is near the eastern border of France.

“Lowlands, close to the warm ocean water, would not be glaciated at this time. Such areas would include the British Isles and northwest Europe, which would be bathed in warm westerly winds at the beginning of the ice age.” (Oard 1990, 63)

Settlements by sea near the coast of Ireland would have a pleasant climate, even as the ice sheet accumulated in the interior.

Neanderthals & Cro-Magnons

“In our story, we treat them as one of the many nomadic tribes that wandered in search of food during the Ice Age.” (Oard 1993, 58)

“Neanderthal bones are found buried in the deepest layer of cave floors. This seems to indicate that he was the first tribe to reach Europe ... We now have a great deal of evidence that shows both groups lived in the same areas at the same time.” (Oard 1993, 59)

Likewise, Fange concludes that “Neolithic villages were thriving at the same time Paleolithic hunters were active.” (Fange 1994, 93)

Middle of the Ice Age Glaciation – (c. 2030 BC: 2180 to 1880 BC)
The time of Trier and Irish Settlement

“Ice in northern Germany and Poland probably developed during the middle of the Ice Age, eventually merging with the Scandinavian ice sheet. The British Isles would be very slow in forming an ice sheet, due to the warm ocean, but by the middle of the glacial build-up, highland ice caps would have been established in the northern portions.” (Oard 1990, 76)

When Trier was first colonized in 2053 BC on the MT timeline, the Scandinavian Ice Sheet was still about three centuries away from reaching the Glacial Maximum, and the southern edge was probably more than 300 miles to the Northeast. Likewise, in the Irish settlement, the lowlands near the warm ocean would be safe from the ice sheet, even at the Glacial Maximum. Those lowlands are now below sea level.

Migration: CFAH identifies the division of the Earth in the time of Peleg (2147 BC) as the allotment of territories within the world to the descendants of Noah. Thus, we presume:

1) that all regions of the world had been very roughly surveyed before 2147 BC, and

2) that each tribe would know the location of their allotment and travel directly there, either by ship or overland, soon after the fall of Babel. These tribes, for the most part, reached their destinations within two centuries after the Dispersion.

Even during the GM, an ice-free corridor existed from the Black Sea westward to the Atlantic Ocean (Oard 1993, 58).

The European corridor may have experienced conditions similar to the “Chinook” in Canada: “These winds would keep the corridor free of ice for quite a while.” (Oard 1993, 60).

At the Glacial Maximum (GM)
Living near the Ice Sheet (about 1750 to 1690 BC)

“The most challenging problem is presented by the existence of warmth–loving animals, especially the hippopotamus, so close to the maximum ice sheet boundaries, and in association with cold-tolerant animals. The climate caused by the warm ocean at mid and high latitudes provides the solution.” (Oard 1990, 83)

“England, France, and western Germany, where the hippopotamus fossils are found, ...” (Oard 1990, 84)

In a find in Alaska, camels were found with a variety of ice age animals in the muck. (Fange 1994, 216) Thus, camels were part of the ice age menagerie of warm and cold-loving animals living in the far North.

Irish coastal settlements, for the most part, would still be usable at least until the great meltdown caused the sea level to rise.

Trier was about 100 miles south of the southernmost edge of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet at the Glacial Maximum and thus was never directly impacted. Yet from Oard's and Fange's comments, we see no reason that communities like Neanderthal, which were located closer to the edge of the Ice Sheet at the Glacial Maximum, would need to move away from it.

The Great Meltdown – (1520 BC to 1450 BC) Was the Meltdown Dangerous?

Although a catastrophic meltdown was undoubtedly highly destructive to some parts of the world, that destruction was highly localized. It would have been limited to areas that experienced dam breaches of formerly endorheic basins like the Black Sea, breaches of ice dams like the Missoula Flood, hypothesized regional impacts such as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, and catastrophic rises in sea level such as the floods of Deucalion and Dardanus. There is no reason to believe that rivers like the Rhine, the Nile, or the Euphrates experienced catastrophic flooding merely from the melting of glaciers in their watersheds. However, regions like the Indus, Ganges, and Columbia river valleys, located downstream of a vast quantity of melting ice at high elevation, would have been in greater danger of catastrophic flooding caused by ice dam breaches.

As cited above, the rate of evaporation of the warm post-flood seawater was about three times what it is today. As the sea gradually cooled over the centuries of the Ice Age, the rate of evaporation diminished until it approached the present level. This means that annual precipitation in the first third of the Ice Age would have been about three times the present value in most regions.

By the time the meltdown phase of the Ice Age began, the rivers downstream of glaciers would have higher flow rates from meltwater, but this would have been offset to some degree by the 66% reduction in precipitation.

Ireland: Partholón's settlement was founded in 2035 BC, but lasted only 281 years until the colony died out due to plague. However, a second settlement by Nemed existed during the meltdown. According to some Irish Historians, Ireland was laid waste for 200 years (1504 to 1304 BC by our chronology). We do not know where that settlement was located. If it were on the continental shelf at the southern end of Ireland near the outlet of the strait between Britain and Ireland, then that region may have been subjected to widespread flooding when the British-Irish Ice Sheet melted and the sea level rose.

The meltdown laid waste to large regions downstream from the major ice sheets, such as the region from the English Channel to the edge of the continental shelf.

Trier, 2053 BC:

Our chronology suggests the founders of Trier travelled from the Middle East up the Rhone River. They likely brought advanced methods and goods with them.

Founded on the Moselle River during the mid-glacial buildup period, Trier’s climate would still be moderate with heavy rain and snow compared to the present. Thus, the people of Trier would have experienced floods of the Moselle. They likely built lodging well up the ridge above the river, situated where they could quickly escape to even higher ground should need ever arise. The nearby Rhine drained the glacial meltwaters of that region. However, the Moselle watershed did not reach the foot of the Alps. Thus, the Moselle would have suffered little effect from glacial melting.

Likely, the majority of villages and most of the nomadic groups in central Europe south of the ice sheet would have survived the meltdown and rebuilt as needed.

Destruction of Greek Civilization:

“Plato spoke of a sequence of four floods that divided the history of mankind. For example, it was the third of these, the flood of Deucalion, that we believe we can identify with the meltdown of the ice cover.” (Fange 1994, 202, 205). The authors concur.

The third flood, attributed to Deucalion by the chroniclers, can be dated to about 1520 BC. Being cut off from the ocean by the then Isthmus of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean Sea was at a much lower level, leaving the Aegean region as dry land. This Deucalion flood appears to have occurred as the eastern side of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet melted, causing the Black Sea to overflow, cutting the Bosporus channel, and flooding the region that is now the Aegean Sea (Figure 2).

“It is fascinating to note that Plato, in his work Critias, stated that the area of Greece was much larger before the flood. It was then greatly reduced in area. This is a perfect description of civilization thriving during the great ice buildup, followed by the great meltdown and the vast drowned lands all over the world.” (Fange 1994, 212)

The common date for the Flood of Deucalion is around 1520 BC. The CFAH date is 1523 BC.

Diodorus recorded the story of that flood as follows:

[5.47.3] … And the Samothracians have a story that, before the floods which befell other peoples, a great one took place among them, in the course of which the outlet at the Cyanean Rocks was first rent asunder and then the Hellespont.

[5.47.4] For the Pontus [the Black Sea], which had at the time the form of a lake, was so swollen by the rivers which flow into it, that, because of the great flood which had poured into it, its waters burst forth violently into the Hellespont and flooded a large part of the coast of Asia3 and made no small amount of the level part of the island of Samothrace into a sea; and this is the reason, we are told, why in later times fishermen have now and then brought up in their nets the stone capitals of columns, since even cities were covered by the inundation.”

[5.47.5] The inhabitants who had been caught by the flood, the account continues, ran up to the higher regions of the island; and when the sea kept rising higher and higher, they prayed to the native gods,” (Diodorus 1935, V.47.3-5)

When the meltdown waters filled the Black Sea, causing it to overflow and flood (some say form) the Aegean Sea, a greater part of Greek Civilization (now underwater) was destroyed. Much of the history of Greece before 1500 BC appears to have been wiped out. The timing of the formation of the Aegean Sea by the Deucalion flood is a key synchronism.

Figure 2. Glacial Maximum Map, modified by authors from Snelling and Matthews 2013.

At the end of the Ice Age (1450 BC)

Arctic Ocean Freezes Over: (Oard 1990, 110)

The vast amounts of fresh water that flowed into the Arctic Ocean during the great meltdown, combined with cold temperatures, led to the Arctic Ocean freezing over, which in turn, firmly established a permafrost in the northernmost lands.

Extinctions (of Mammoths) (Oard 1990, 124-127)

“Man, who by this time had spread over most of the world, would also have been stressed by the harsher climate.” (Oard 1990, 127)

During the Ice Age, ivory, due to its multiple uses, would have become a valuable commodity. When the herds were greatly reduced, man would continue to want ivory. Thus, even the few mammoths that survived would likely have been hunted to extinction within a millennium of the end of the Ice Age.

High sea level mark after the meltdown. (1450 BC) How long ago did the Ice Age end?

“A more reasonable estimate for the time since the glacial ice melted is probably 3,000 to 4,000 years.” (Oard 1990, 173) [[Ave. = 1500 BC]]. Even 1650 BC + 700 years = 2348 BC or so as a feasible date for the start of the Ice Age after the Great Flood. This suggests Oard would consider an MT time frame as a reasonable possibility. His “Life in the Great Ice Age” story of that Ice Age would certainly fit within a Masoretic Text timeframe just as reasonably as for the Septuagint chronology.

Repeating: “... it was the third of these, the flood of Deucalion, that we believe we can identify with the meltdown of the ice cover.” (Fange 1994, 202, 205) This would be about 1523 BC by CFAH estimates.

Dwarf mammoths found in the Arctic Circle of North Russia were dated quite late (Fange 1994, 183). After the Arctic Ocean froze over, it would have been impossible for them to survive.

Nienhuis (2006, 3-5) gives evidence for 1500 BC as the time of high sea level. We use some of his information as one of our key synchronisms for the timing of the end of the Ice Age.

Conclusion: Historical evidence points to when the meltdown occurred (c. 1523 BC: Deucalion’s Flood) and the high water mark circa 1450 BC. This information gives us the historical length of the Ice Age, about 620 years to GM, and 270 years to the high water mark, or about 890 years in total. Our research and everything we have read by Oard, von Fange, and Nienhuis seems to affirm that this was the most likely timeframe of the Ice Age (2340 – 1450 BC). Figure 3 charts an overview of the CFAH Ice Age model.

We look forward to the time when we can provide, in greater detail, the Ice Age events that synchronize quite well with our baseline CFAH histories of the nations.

References

Diodorus Siculus. (30 BC) 1935. The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus. Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library. Charles Oldfather, translator. London: Heinemann.

Fange, Erich A. von. 1994. Noah to Abraham: The Turbulent Years. Syracuse, IN: Living Word Services.

Griffith, Kenneth C., and Darrell K. White. 2022. “Chronological Framework of Ancient History. 2: Founding of the Nations.” Answers Research Journal 15 (December 14): 405–426. https://answersresearchjournal.org/tower-of-babel/chronological-framework-ancient-history-2/.

Hosfield, Robert. 2020. “Lower Palaeolithic Europe.” In The Earliest Europeans: A Year in the Life: Seasonal Survival Strategies in the Lower Palaeolithic, 15–71. Oxbow Books, 2020.

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv138wsvq.7.

Nienhuis, James I. 2006. Ice Age Civilizations. Houston, TX: Genesis Veracity.

Oard, Michael J. 1990, An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research.

Oard, Michael, and Beverly Oard. 1993. Life in the Great Ice Age. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Snelling, Andrew, and Mike Matthews. 2013. “When Was the Ice Age in Biblical History?” Answers Magazine. April 1, 2013. https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/when-was-the-ice-age-in-biblical-history/.

Tweedy, E. J. 2024. “Oard’s Ice Age and Settlement of Northern Europe on Masoretic and Septuagint Timelines.” Answers Research Journal, 17, 763–783.https://answersresearchjournal.org/chronology/oards-ice-age-europe-timelines/.

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When did the legendary Queen Dido, or Elissa, found the City of Carthage? That question turns out to be critical to the defense of the biblical chronology of the Divided Kingdom.

In writing our Chronological Framework of Ancient History series, Darrell White and I found that the ancient Egyptian chronology appears to agree with Ussher’s dates for the Exodus and for the death of Solomon, to the year. In attempting to publish these findings, we have received very passionate blowback that we cannot possibly support Ussher’s date for the Exodus (1491 BC) because it has been conclusively disproven by Thiele, Couke, McFall, Steinmann, and Young in their various books and papers over the past century.

This prompted us to write a rebuttal of Thiele’s chronology in three parts. It may eventually be turned into a book.

Part 1 - The Ancient Jewish Chronology

Part 2 - The Assyrian Synchronisms

Part 3 - The Founding Dates of Tyre and Carthage

In these papers, the authors engage with the arguments of Coucke, Thiele, McFall, Steinmann, and Young. Together, our three papers might be considered a frontal assault on the Divided Kingdom Chronology accepted in the majority of colleges and seminaries.

The third paper is now published as a preprint at the Open Science Foundation. You can read it here:

When Were Tyre and Carthage Founded?

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This prompted us to write a rebuttal of Thiele’s chronology in three parts. It may eventually be turned into a book.

Part 1 - The Ancient Jewish Chronology

Part 2 - The Assyrian Synchronisms

Part 3 - The Founding Dates of Tyre and Carthage

In these papers, the authors engage with the arguments of Coucke, Thiele, McFall, Steinmann, and Young. Together, our three papers might be considered a frontal assault on the Divided Kingdom Chronology accepted in the majority of colleges and seminaries.

The second paper is now published as a preprint at the Open Science Foundation. You can read it here:

An Objectivist Answer to the Assyrian Synchronisms

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With the rediscovery of the Egyptian, Akkadian, and Persian languages in the 19th century, Assyriologists unearthed a series of inscriptions and tablets with chronological data in them. These were interpreted to mean that the chronology of the Divided Kingdom must be wrong. Edwin R. Thiele wrote his master’s thesis in 1945 to prove that the Divided Kingdom must be reduced by about 44 years in order to accommodate the Assyrian synchronisms. This reduces the date of Solomon’s Temple from 1011 to 967 BC, and it also reduces the date of the Exodus from 1491 to 1446 BC. Since then, Thiele’s work has become the de facto standard at most universities and seminaries.

In writing our Chronological Framework of Ancient History series, Darrell White and I found that the ancient Egyptian chronology appears to agree with Ussher’s dates for the Exodus and for the death of Solomon, to the year. In attempting to publish these findings, we have received very passionate blowback that we cannot possibly support Ussher’s date for the Exodus (1491 BC) because it has been conclusively disproven by Thiele, Couke, McFall, Steinmann, and Young in their various books and papers over the past century.

This prompted us to write a rebuttal of Thiele’s chronology in three parts. It may eventually be turned into a book.

Part 1 - The Ancient Jewish Chronology

Part 2 - The Assyrian Synchronisms

Part 3 - The Founding Dates of Tyre and Carthage

In these papers, the authors engage with the arguments of Coucke, Thiele, McFall, Steinmann, and Young. Together, our three papers might be considered a frontal assault on the Divided Kingdom Chronology accepted in the majority of colleges and seminaries.

The first paper is now published as a preprint at the Open Science Foundation. You can read it here:

A Reply to Thiele’s Chronology of the Divided Kingdom: Part 1 - Jewish Sources for the Chronology of the Divided Kingdom

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What is the correct chronology of the Bible from Creation to Christ?

What are the true and correct chronologies of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Greece?

Where do the histories of the Bible and the ancient empires intersect to form synchronisms?

Varying answ…

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What is the correct chronology of the Bible from Creation to Christ?

What are the true and correct chronologies of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Greece?

Where do the histories of the Bible and the ancient empires intersect to form synchronisms?

Varying a…

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This video is for those seriously interested in the chronology problems for the Bible and the ancient world. He gives an overview of the five major chronologies of the ancient world.

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Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus (this was the Ahasuerus who reigned over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India to Ethiopia), ² in those days when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the citadel, ³ that in the third year of …

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In the study of ancient history and chronology, we are heavily dependent on king lists that were preserved by various cultures, preserving a timeline of their history.

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The Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) is a group of Christian archaeologists founded by the late Dr. David Livingston in 1969, who was later joined by Dr. Bryant Wood in 1986. The current flag bearers for ABR doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of publications include Douglas Petrovich, Rodger Young, and Henry Smith.

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While coming from the perspective of believing in biblical inerrancy, rejecting evolution, and upholding a global flood, ABR has approached the Biblical Chronology Problem by selectively embracing the Septuagint (LXX) chronogeneologies, while using MT arguments for other parts of the chronology. Consequently, ABR has taken a hard-line position that the chronogeneologies in the Septuagint are the original numbers of Scripture, as explained in their Statement on Near Eastern Chronology, but they are not willing to fully commit to the LXX as the most accurate manuscript of the Old Testament.

"ABR is not presently prepared to advocate all of the numbers of the Masoretic Text as original to Genesis 5 and 11 unless further research leads to such a conclusion... Based on preliminary investigations, an acceptance of the matching SP/LXX begetting ages for each patriarch as the original text of Genesis 11 would date the Flood around 3300 BC. The begetting age for each patriarch is the key number for calculating the chronology of this period. This is probably the outer possible date of the Flood. Any archaeological/historical dates that go back beyond this time range would be considered incorrect and subject to emendation and correction."

It should be stressed that the authors of this Creation History website recognize the ABR associates as creedally orthodox fellow Christians, who are not advocating theistic evolution, gap theory, or other positions that directly contradict the Scriptures.  The points of contention between us are a collegial debate over the identification of the original manuscript tradition of the Scriptures, the internal chronology preserved in those manuscripts, and the external chronology of the Ancient Near East from the Genesis Flood to the Advent of Christ.  These points of debate overflow into the interpretation of some archaeological sites such as Shiloh, Gezer, and Jericho which have been excavated by ABR staff.  While we may express criticisms of ABR's arguments on this website, our purpose is as iron sharpening iron, not to denigrate the work of our brothers.

Since ABR seems to endorse the Septuagint as preserving the original numbers in the chronogeneology, it should be pointed out that the general chronology expressed in the Septuagint was expounded by Josephus as follows:

* Divided Kingdom: 394 years

* Long Judges: 518 years from the Exodus to the Temple foundation

* Short Sojourn: 215 years from Jacob's entry into Egypt until the Exodus

* Long Chronogeneologies: adding 100 years to each post-flood generation before siring their first child, as well as adding a second Cainan in some manuscripts.

While preferring the LXX chronogeneologies, ABR's official chronology is actually the opposite of the LXX on three of the four controversial eras:

"1. We believe that the length of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt is 430 years (the so-called Long Sojourn view) going back from the Exodus (1446 BC) to Jacob’s arrival in Egypt (1876 BC). This chronological view seems to have the best exegetical and textual support. We believe the Short-Sojourn view disrupts many of the excellent synchronisms between archaeology and the Bible from the birth of Abraham through the time of Joshua."

"2. We believe that the date for the Exodus from Egypt is 1446 BC and the conquest of Canaan began in 1406 BC. These dates are based on the internal chronology of the Bible and are affirmed by a wealth of data in the archaeological and historical record. These dates are strongly affirmed by the evidence found in our own excavations in Israel at Khirbet el-Maqatir (Joshua’s Ai), and our extensive research on the destruction of the cities of Jericho and Hazor during the period of the Conquest. Archaeological evidence for the occupation and subsequent destruction of these three Canaanite/Amorite cities agrees with the biblical text and thereby confirms the accuracy of conventional Egyptian/ANE chronology from this period. Radically revising Egyptian chronology destroys such important synchronisms between the Bible and the archaeological record."

"3. Based on the exhaustive research of ABR Associate Rodger C. Young and the ABR staff generally, we believe the period of the Divided Kingdom was 345 years. The construction of Solomon’s Temple began in 967 BC and Solomon died in 931 BC. These dates are verified through an examination of over 120 pieces of data found in the relevant biblical texts, and are affirmed in hundreds of ways in the archaeological and historical record. We acknowledge Archbishop Ussher's 17th century work in this area, but believe that subsequent scholarship has refined and brought correction to Ussher’s Divided Kingdom chronology."

As will be expounded in greater detail in several papers and articles on this site, it appears to us that ABR staff have selectively chosen LXX or MT arguments based on some unstated external chronology requirements, rather than choosing which manuscript tradition is the authentic Bible and then arguing consistently from that tradition.

For example, the LXX text for Exodus 12:40 states that the sojourn of the children of Israel "in Egypt and Canaan" was 430 years, thereby including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the sojourn.  Thus the LXX text itself commits to a short sojourn.  However, Petrovich argues from the MT Hebrew that the original text only states "Egypt" not "Egypt and Canaan." By strictly adhering to the MT on this passage, Petrovich is able to sidestep the LXX interpretation, and keep his preferred Long Sojourn in Egypt because it is required by his Egyptian chronology.

Further inquiry into the chronology of ABR reveals that their Biblical chronology is pinned to three extra-biblical synchronisms, and thus they have chosen the Long Sojourn in Egypt, Short Judges, and Short Divided Kingdom in order to match those external synchronisms.  In all three of their choices, they choose the opposite of the LXX. This suggests they have only chosen the LXX chronogeneologies because they are convenient to their chronology of the Ancient Near East, not because they believe the LXX is the most faithful translation of the original manuscripts of Scripture.

ABR'S THREE CHRONOLOGY LYNCHPINS

1. Petrovich anchors his Egyptian chronology on the Lahun Papyrus which gives a Sirius rising date, assumed to be in the reign of Senusret III.

"The correct synchronism for the entrance into Egypt in 1876 BC is two full years into the reign of Sesostris III (Petrovich 2016b, 234) based on the datable astronomical event recorded on Berlin Museum Papyrus 10012 from Lahun and the preference for the high chronology view (Parker 1976, 184; Ward 1992, 56–59; Huber 2012, 224)." -- Petrovich, "Determining the Precise Length of the Israelite Sojourn in Egypt."

The Lahun Papyrus is a letter from the priest of the mortuary temple of a Senusret (could be I, II, or III) which predicts an Egyptian month and day for the rising of Sirius on the 17th day of the fourth month of the seventh year of an unknown king of Egypt.  Based on the city where the observation is assumed to have been made this could have occurred between 1876 and 1830, assuming it is a date using the Sothic Cycle calendar.  Egyptologists commonly assumed the seventh year was of King Senusret III.  Petrovich picks his Biblical chronology in order to have Jacob enter Egypt in the second year of Senusret III via the high chronology, in the year 1876 BC.   

In our view, this is an extremely speculative synchronism on which to base Biblical chronology because we don't know which king was referenced, and we have strong evidence that Egypt was still using a 360-day calendar prior to the Hyksos invasion many years after the end of the 12th Dynasty.  In Manetho and the Book of Sothis, we find two different references to the adoption of the 365-day calendar in Egypt, one being in the reign of Salatis, the first Hyksos king, and the other being in the reign of an "Aseth" the last king listed before Ahmose I. Both of these references suggest the 365-day Sothic calendar was not adopted until well after the end of the 12th Dynasty.  Therefore interpreting the rising of Sirius according to the 365-day Sothic calendar prior to the adoption of that calendar certainly gives an erroneous result for the year.

Furthermore, Keenan brought attention to the fact that a Nile-level text at the Dal Cataract dated to the 10th year of the same king, Senusret III, gives a Sothic date some five centuries different from that of the Lahun Papyrus. This suggests that there were two different calendars in use in the reign of Senusret III, or that the Sothic Calendar was not being used then.

2. The Founding date of Carthage was 812 or 825 BC.  Rodger Young published a paper in which he justifies Edwin Thiele's chronology of the Divided Kingdom (adjusted by one year), based on Josephus giving a list of the kings of Tyre and their reigns from Hiram down to the time of Pygmalion.  Carthage was said to be founded in the 7th year of Pygmalion, and Pompius Trogus records that Carthage was founded 72 years before Rome, thus placing it in 825 BC.  The total number of years in the chronology from Hiram's 12th year to Pygmalion's 7th is given as 147 years, Young concludes that this confirms Thiele's date for Solomon's reign beginning in 971 BC, and the founding of the Temple in 967 BC.

Our view of this synchronism is that it is good and bad.  It is good because it would be an example of triangulation using data from the ancient chroniclers, which is the method that our Chronological Framework of Ancient History is built upon.  However, it is a bad example of good technique because Young picked the only one of half a dozen durations to the founding of Carthage that seemed to agree with Thiele's chronology. The other durations support dates as early as 890 and as late as 812 BC.  Thus the date of the founding of Carthage is nowhere near as certain as Young and Steinmann lead their audiences to believe.

The Romans destroyed Carthage so thoroughly that no king list or chronology table has survived, and we have four different dates for its founding given by the chroniclers.  We prefer to use dates to which there are multiple triangulated durations, such as the Fall of Troy in 1183 BC, for which there are over a dozen durations given by different chroniclers from different events.  The Bible alone contains five separate chronological data sets covering the period from Solomon to the fall of Samaria.  Therefore hanging the chronology of Solomon on the founding date of Carthage is a strange choice of a weakly attested date.  And as we will demonstrate in a future paper, Young's interpretation of Justin contradicts both Josephus and the well-triangulated date for the Fall of Troy.

3. The third synchronism on which Thiele built his Divided Kingdom chronology, which Young, Petrovich, and Steinmann all follow, is the identification of Ahab as the "Acha-abbu Sirila-aa” (Luckenbill 1989, Vol I, §611) who was part of a coalition of 12 kings who fought against Shalmaneser III at the Battle of QarQar in that king's sixth year, 853 BC.  Despite several obvious problems with this synchronism, it has been universally accepted since first suggested in the 19th century.   The are three problems with this.

First, according to the chronology of the kings of Judah and Israel in the Bible, Ahab died 44 years earlier in the year 897 BC. (Jones, Chart 5) 

Second, the name in the Assyrian inscription, “Acha-abbu Sirila-aa” interpreted as Ahab of Israel, uses the wrong name for Israel.  The Assyrian name for Israel in every other known inscription was “Bit Khumry”, not Sirila-aa. 

Third, there is another much better synchronism with Shalmaneser III recorded in both the Bible and the Assyrian records that agrees with the Ussher-Jones chronology.  Shalmaneser III defeated Hazael of Damascus in 842, the same year that he received tribute from "Yau bit Khumry" which has been interpreted as Jehu son of Omri.  However, Yau could be short for any of the many Hebrew names that begin with the theophoric, Yah. The Bible records that Hazael died shortly after Jehoash, grandson of Jehu, came to the throne as pro-rex with his father Jehoaz. Therefore the king that paid tribute to Shalmaneser could have been either Jehoaz or Jehoash, as both were on the throne at the time.  As Hazael's death is documented by both the Bible and the Assyrian records as occurring within a year or two of 842 BC, it is impossible that Jehu could have still been alive at that date, unless we assume the sacred text is full of errors.

Fourth, Sargon II also recorded a battle against a "Yaub'di" at QarQar about 130 years later.  Sargon tells us this Yaub was a Hittite.  It seems likely that Yaub was a dynastic name for the kings of QarQar, similar to how Ben Hadad was a dynastic name used by the kings of Damascus, Jabin was a dynastic name for the kings of Hazor, and Tudkhalia was a dynastic name for the kings of Hattusa.  Though they had the same first name, there is no concrete connection between Ahab and “Acha-abbu Sirila-aa”, while several facts argue strongly against them being the same person.

COMMENTARY ON ABR'S METHODOLOGY

Our main objection to ABR's chronological hermeneutic is that they have chosen to synchronize their Bible chronology to three of the weakest external synchronisms available for the period in question.  Young's date for the founding of Carthage hangs from the single thread of Pompius Trogus, in contradiction to the other sources.  The identification of Ahab as Yaub Srilit of QarQar is clearly wrong, and contradicts other Assyrian records, as shown by the correct synchronism with the death of Hazael.  The Sothic date for Senusret III is also verifiably false because we have actual durations to an event in the reign of Senusret III given by the Greek chroniclers, obtained from the priests of Egypt.  That event, the founding of an Egyptian astronomical college on the Euphrates River by Sesostris III, occured in the year 1577 BC.

ABR claims the LXX chronogeneology is the correct representation of the original Hebrew numbers, but contradicts the LXX on the length of the Sojourn in Egypt, the length of the Judges, and the length of the Divided Kingdom.  The haphazard approach to the LXX reveals Petrovich's Biblical chronology to be based on the eisegesis of his external synchronisms into the Bible, not sound exegesis of the Masoretic Text. We conclude that despite looking good at first glance, the ABR chronology promoted by Young and Petrovich is a house built upon sand, even though we greatly admire their work in other areas.

ABR'S EPISTEMOLOGY

In their Statement on Near Eastern Chronology, ABR makes an interesting statement (emphasis in the original):

5. The radical revision of Egyptian chronology demands that the chronologies of many other civilizations across the ANE also be rewritten. Egypt had countless dealings with numerous other nation-states, such as the Hittites, the Sea Peoples (Philistines), the Canaanites, the Amorites, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, Nubia, and of course, Israel. Hundreds of synchronisms from the archaeological record during the post 2000 BC era already exist, some of which are cited on this website in a variety of articles. These synchronizations agree with the biblical dates and cultural setting. Radical revisionism serves to destroy these manifold correlations, undermining their already strong and highly useful apologetic value.

6. We believe that those who advocate such reconstructions have been and will continue to be woefully unsuccessful at resolving the thousands of new synchronization problems that the wholesale disruption of Egyptian chronology creates, even if one were to assume that said advocates have the requisite expertise to revise the histories of all of the applicable and interrelated civilizations.

No single person could possibly have a grasp of all these thousands of implications or the requisite knowledge required to revise the entire chronology of the ANE.

The bolded statement is a statement of epistemology - their theory of the nature and limits of human knowledge.  However, this statement has some implications that the person who wrote it seems to have missed.

First, if no single person could possibly have sufficient knowledge to revise the chronology of the Ancient Near East, then the converse is also true.  No single person could possibly grasp the implications and requisite knowledge to confirm the accepted chronology of the Ancient Near East to be true and accurate.

But, ABR obviously does claim that the existing chronology of the ANE is correct.  Therefore they have contradicted their statement that nobody could know enough to revise the chronology of the ancient world. We must conclude that the claim that nobody can know enough to revise the chronology of the ANE is a canard that they do not really believe.

Second, if we accept their statement to be true, then only God can possibly know enough to give a true chronology of the ancient world.  That should turn us back to the Bible as the original source of true chronology, rather than bending the chronology of the Bible, as Thiele and Petrovich do, to fit the accepted chronology of the Ancient Near East.

Therefore, ABR has an epistemology problem.  They claim nobody can know enough to revise the chronology. Yet, they also very obviously rely on the external chronology of the Ancient Near East to dictate the correct interpretation the chronological passages of the Bible.  Rather than requiring the external chronology of the Near East to submit to the authority of Scripture, they allow the fallible external history of Egypt and Assyria to dictate truths that the Bible must bow down to.

We also would like to clarify that we are not using Anstey's argument here, of pagans versus the Bible.  In the periods of history where the sacred text gives us dates in terms of external kingdoms, then we must use the chronology of those kingdoms in order to build a Biblical chronology.   From the Jewish Captivity until the end of the New Testament, the Bible gives dates in terms of the year of the king of the ruling empire. Therefore, we must use the king lists and chronologies of Babylon, Persia, Seleucid Asia, and the Roman Empire in order to build a complete Old Testament chronology.

Our objection is that ABR is allowing external chronology of the kingdoms of the Ancient Near East to over-ride the clear internal chronology of Scripture for the eras in which the Bible gives dates in terms of the kings of Israel and Judah, and the major events such as the Conquest, Exodus, and Noah's Flood.

While we respect Associates for Biblical Research as Christian scholars, their Statement on Near Eastern Chronology betrays a corrupt epistemology that we believe has led them into error in interpreting both the scriptural text and the external data available from archaeology.

As was the case with Copernicus and Galileo, new discoveries will never change the mind of most established academics, because they are so heavily invested in their paradigm.  We have to press forward with new research and new models that more accurately explain the data, and convince the next generation of scholars.  That is how learning progresses in the world we live in.