Establishing an Accurate Chronology

 

In order to judge the historical authenticity of the bible we need to establish a reliable chronology by which we can fix the dates of biblical events. This chronology can easily be derived from material given in the bible itself and external sources if we can show that the biblical description of historic events, which occur in the bible region, can be corroborated by reliable independent sources. So lets begin by attempting to identify which historical events the bible could be referring to and see if they can be verified and used as a basis for a chronology assuming as a primary postulate that the books and generations given in the bible are intended to follow in chronological order.

 

The book of Genesis opens with the creation of the world and of Adam. Since this event cannot easily be identified with a specific historic event due to its over mythologisation we must read on further until we can find something that is recognisable as a reference to something such as a battle or the name of a regional king that appears in recorded history.

 

Noah’s flood is the next major event occurring in the bible but with no timeline established thus far and no references to known historic figures we have no way of knowing as to when it is supposed to have occurred. There have been many floods which have occurred in the bible region and once a rudimentary timeline is established we can return to this event and try to pin point it.

 

Going down the list of generations from Noah we come to Abram who the bible states takes his wife Sari to Egypt along with his nephew Lot. After Pharaoh and his household contract a disease Sari and Abraham are expelled together with Lot. Shortly following this Lot settles in Sodom. Next a war breaks out between 9 kings and Lot is abducted when Sodom is taken. Abram then makes an alliance with Mambrh and rescues Lot.

 

Since Genesis 14 gives us the names of the 9 kings who it alleges were fighting each other at the time of Abraham, and the places they came from, lets see if they can be identified from historical records.

 

 

Five of these kings as well as Abraham and Mambrh can be identified with known historical figures dating to the El-Armana period when the Mittani Hittites ruled Syria-Palestine as vassals of Egypt.

 

 

(Note that in the names of Assyrian kings the titles Adad and Enlil were interchangeable with the Babylonian titles Vul or Baal)

 

A Babylonian Inscription recently deciphered by Professor Pinches bares the names of Eri-Aku (Arioch or Erichthonius) King of Pontus, Kudur-laghghamar (Chodorlahomor) King of the Elamites and Tuduchula (Thadal)King of Nations, and tells of a campaign by these monarchs in Palestine against Khammu-rabi (Shemeber, Khammu-rapaltu or Kadashman-Khrabe) King of Babylon.

 

Some people have misidentified Amarfal with Hammurabi (Khammu-rabi) the Babylonian king of c.1800 BC but this cannot be possible since the bible sates that Amarfal was on the same side as Arioch, Chodorlahomor and Thadal but the tablet says these people were enemies of Khammu-rabi, therefore he cannot be Amarfal. Josephus also says in Book 1 of his Antiquities that Amarfal/Amraphel was an Assyrian commander.

 

The naming of Tuduchula who is easily identified as one of four known Hittite kings means that this tablet must date to the time of the Hittite Empire between 1650 and 1250 BC when these kings were reigning and by a process of elimination using the dates given the most likely date for the tablet is 1390 BC.

 

Therefore we can begin our analysis by assuming that the period in which the bible places Abram/Abraham was c.1390 BC and test if this can be corroborated.

 

Going down 7 generations from Abram/Abraham we next come to the era of Moses and the Exodus.

 

According to Manetho who lived in the first century BC the Exodus was set during the reign of the period of the Egyptian kings Amenophis and Seti II c.1200 BC. Manetho makes Moses to be a renegade Egyptian priest called Osraseph who was involved in the war that occurred between Amenophis and rival foreign invaders.

 

At about this time Egyptian records refer to two expulsions of invaders from Egypt. The first was an expulsion of an alliance of peoples from Palestine and the second was an expulsion from Egypt of Greek tribes that were defeated at sea know as the Sea Peoples.

 

Egyptologists have also found records showing that Pharaoh Seti II who succeeded Amenophis was deposed by his Syrian butler Bey who then proclaimed Merneptah-Sipta his successor in 1193 BC and was made chancellor in reward. In this office he laid insult to all the Gods, and imposed extreme levels of taxation on the people.

 

Unfortunately, even though the bible mentions the Exodus occurred after the construction of the city of Ramses, probably named after Ramses the Great who ended his reign in 1212BC, with no names of historic figures to go by such as the name of the Pharaoh who adopted Moses, it is not certain weather Moses lived in this period or in the following generation or the one after.

 

Therefore when we have constructed our chronology one of its major tests will be to see if the date it gives for the Exodus is corroborated by the extant Egyptian records and the account of Manetho.

 

Searching further through the bible we come to the account of the sack of Jericho by Joshua in the next generation after Moses. This may correspond to the repulsion of the Sea People by Ramses III (1182-1151) in his 8^th year which is 1175 BC. But Ramses III is not directly mentioned by name in the Bible either, so we shall continue reading further until we can find the name of another king who can be identified.

 

After the death of Joshua the Book of Judges starts by saying that the Assyrian king Chousarsathaim ruled over Syria-Palestine. This king must be Assur-Risilim king of Assyria c.1150 BC the father of Tiglath-Pileser I (1114 BC) and is named in his sons inscription. We can be certain of this since there are no other kings with similar names that can be found anywhere in any Assyrian King lists.

 

 

Now going though the Book of Chronicles we are told that Beera the son of Joel a descendent of Ruben fought against both Tiglath-Pileser I and  Asharid-Pal-Ekur II who were both kings of Assyria at the same time. In the Septuagint Asharid-Pal-Ekur II is called FALWH which is equivalent to Vul-Ek(er). Therefore we have a date of around about 1114BC for this event.

 

 

There are no more than 11 Generations between Jacob and Saul during which we have the Exodus, and the joint reign of Tiglath-Pileser I and Asahrid-Pal-Ekur II over Assyria dated to 1102 BC, no more than 5 generations before Solomon.

 

Next we come to Roboam in whose reign Sheshonq (Shishak) Pharaoh of Egypt sacks Syria-Palestine. Sheshonq’s own uncompleted inscription mentions this event which occurs towards the end of his reign, so he would have become Pharaoh during the latter part of Solomon’s reign when Sadoc was high priest.

 

Thus far all of these events can be referenced by the number of Generations from Abraham or from Jacob, but counting from Roboam (945 BC) downwards the reliability of the generations comes into question since the kingship of the so-called kingdom of “Israel” was not hereditary and the kings of “Judea “ cannot be trusted to have been true decedents of Roboam.

 

Fortunately we still have other lists of generations that cover this period that appear in the Book of Chronicles and in the Gospel of Luke so it is still possible to fill the gap.

 

In the generation of the Grandsons of Aelem the last known of the decedents of Benjamin, Israel is supposed to have been carried away by Shalmaneser V (who reigned before Sargon) after a 3 year long siege of Samaria. This event cannot be proven to have occurred but according to the Tyrian annals Shalmaneser V did lay siege to Tyre and died in the process in 722BC. Further more this king only reigned 4 years and this offers us an extremely accurate date for the end of the siege.

 

From this point on it is possible to list and number all the known generations against the dates of the known kings and perform a statistical linear regression on the figures to see if the generation corresponding to each event plotted against the year of the reign of each known king form a straight line. If this is done it will show how accurate the bibles chronology is by linearity.

 

In order to obtain the most accuracy since the dates of the start of a kings reign do not necessarily have to coincide with a biblical event or the precise beginning of a biblical generation, we should collect some more data though.

 

In the reign of Joahim, Nebuchanesser 605BC, is supposed to have carried away Jerusalem. Again this cannot be proven but according to the Tyrian annals Nebuchanesser did capture Tyre.

 

Next Cyrus is supposed to have reigned over Persia and taken Babylon in 538BC, in the generation of Zorobabel.

 

After this we have no other historical events that are related in the Old Testament. The furthest the Old Testament generations go is to Odolia so we can assume that was written down when the text of Septuagint was placed in the Library of Alexandria and frozen in time during the reign of Ptolemy Philopater in about 285BC and no later.

 

The last historical event given in the bible by generation is the life of Jesus, who was supposed to have been in Jerusalem in the 15^th year of Tiberius (Luke 3:1) when Joseph Caiphas and Ananias were both High Priest and he was supposed to have been crucified at around about the age of 32 or 33 in 28 or 29 AD.

 

Putting all of this together we get:

 

List of Biblical Generations and Events

 

Regression Calculation

 

We thus find that each biblical generation equates to exactly 25 years. This figure corresponds to the period used by the Egyptians in a calendar system where 309 Lunar Months were equal to 25 Civil years of 365 days, and would indicate that the entire chronology was artificially devised for the sake of convenience by the authors of the bible. Since the statistics give an R² value of 1.00 for the regression line this not only proves that the generations are linear but also proves that the Chronology that has been constructed along it is historically valid and justifiable.

 

Using this time line we obtain a date of 1197 BC as the date of the Exodus which corroborates the account of Manetho since the reign of Seti II dates from 1199 to 1193 BC. We also get a date of 1172 BC for the start of the Joshua confirming his identification as being contemporary to Ramses III’s campaign in Syria-Palestine. This corroboration proves not only that Manetho’s independent dating of the Exodus is correct but it also justifies the method and assumptions used to derive the chronology on the basis of looking for corroborative historical references to biblical events and persons.

 

Note that the sequence of generations of Abram, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, Levi, Kohath, Amram seems to have been devised so as to normalise the period it documents (1397-1297) to a scheme of 4 generations per century like the period from Moses downward. If the sequence is read as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram this would corresponded to a scheme of 3 generations per century which is the system used by Herodotus to determine the reigns of the Egyptian Pharaohs (Histories 2.142.1).

 

Accurate Numerical reconstruction of the Bibles Chronology

 

Now that it has been proven that the generations and dates given in the bible are linear and form an accurate time line we can proceed to reconstruct the entire chronology by a third independent method using the lengths of reign, ages and dates of birth of the biblical patriarchs which are given in the bible with the regression line acting as our guide.

 

The first thing that needs to be understood is that the biblical dates after Abraham and (and even prior to him) including parts of the Book of Kings are based on an equinoctial calendar rather than on an annual calendar. This having been said will be our primary postulate for reconstructing the chronology arithmetically.

 

The inhabitants of Syria-Palestine are known to have celebrated the new year at both the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes and also at the Summer and Winter solstices. These reference points for the start of the year correspond to the start points for the Roman, Babylonian, Greek, and Gregorian calendars.

 

The use of dating based on a Solsticial (winter to summer, summer to winter) calendar in ancient Greece can be proven by reference to its use by Pausanius 4.17.10 who states that “twenty two winters and green herbs” was taken to mean eleven years since time was reckoned between solstices. A similar method referring to time between Equinoxes (eg. autumn leaves and spring shoots in poetic form) was used in the bible but due to the ignorance of the copyists the fractional notation has either been deleted, misunderstood or lost in translation.

 

Pliny the elder also justifies this in his seventh book of The History of Nature.

 

 

The so-called “years” in the bible between Abraham and David can be shown to refer to periods of 6 months duration since the Jews recorded the year as beginning at both the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

 

 

This will now be proven on the basis of numerical consistency. It can be shown to be so since the Book of Kings gives the date for the so-called Exodus as being either 480 "years" (in the Massoretic Text) or 440 "years" (in the Septuagint) before the 4^th year of the reign of Solomon.

 

If Solomon’s reign came to an end in the generally accepted date of 936 BC (as I shall show later) then with a 40 year reign for Solomon the date of the Exodus can be calculated thus:

 

(976-3)+440 = 1413 BC

 

This figure as can be seen is not justified by the linear regression which gives a year of 1197 for Moses, nor by Manethos dating of Moses to the reign of Seti II or the biblical reference to Ramses, a name which was unheard of in Egypt until 1293 BC. The reign of Assur-Risilim who reigned 2 generations later than Moses in 1150 does not tally with this dating either.

 

But if we take a figure of 220 years for the number of years to the Exodus we get:

 

(976-3)+220 = 1193 BC

 

This figure is perfect and fits in with what we already know. Unfortunately since we are unsure which numbers were originally written in fractional notation and which were not we do not know if the 4^th year of Solomon should actually be halved to give the 2^nd year, or if Solomon’s reign should be taken as 20 years which would give the following if we take the Massoretic texts figure of 480 years to the Exodus and half it^*.

 

(956-1)+240 = 1195 BC

 

The easiest thing to do is to take an average of the above two dates. The end year of Solomon already carries with it a +/-2 years margin of error anyway so an extra year on the error margin makes little difference. But it is actually possible to prove mathematically that the date of 1193 BC is the correct date as I shall show below using additional information that fixes the post Exodus chronology absolutely. The research for this proof took me two months from September to November 2001.

 

Along with the reference to the Exodus being 440 equinoxes or 220 years before the 4^th year of Solomon’s Reign, there also exists the chronology of Judges which takes us from immediately after the death of Joshua to the reign of Saul.

 

The book of Judges makes no mention of how long the Judges reigned in total and there is no mention of the length of Saul’s reign in the Old Testament at all, but the book of “Acts” in the New Testament though does give us this information.

 

 

Saul reigns for 40 years after being anointed by Samuel, and according to Josephus Antiquities 18 years of Samuels reign as a Judge elapse during Sauls reign and 12 years are alone after the death of Eli.

 

 

The bible tells us that David and Solomon both reign 40 years each.

 

According to the Book of Samuel Eli reigns 20 “years “ in the LXX or 40 “years” in the Hebrew version. The question that needs to be answered is which one of this is right. The difference in the number of years by a factor of two is an indication that fractional nation was originally being used and indicates that the number of real years referred to cannot be greater than the figure given in the Septuagint (LXX) text. The following demonstration will show that it is the LXX figure which is correct and that Samuels years are given in eights of a year by splitting up each season up into 2 halves. If the seasons were spilt into thirds, beginning, middle and end then you would have 12 equal months, so there is no reason to exclude the possibility of splitting the season into a beginning and end half to give eight eighths.

 

If Solomon’s reign begins in 976 BC, then David reigns from 1016 BC and Saul reigns from 1056 BC. This means that Eli the last Judge before Samuel dies in 1068 BC since after Eli’s death Samuel lives 12 years until he makes Saul king.

 

The date of the Exodus derived by adding 220 to 973 (Solomon’s 4^th year) is 1193 BC. According to the book of Joshua 14:10, Joshua is 85 equinoxes old (42.5 years) when the Israelites have spent 45 equinoxes (225 years) in the wilderness and lives to 110 equinoxes (55 years) thus he dies in 1158 BC.

 

According to 1Samuel 7:13 the Philistines are defeated by Samuel and never trouble Israel anymore until his death, which according to Josephus is 18 years into Sauls reign or 1038 BC.

 

A gap of 1158-1038 = 120 Civil years now needs to be bridged.

 

This is equal to the length of the reign of all the Judges up to the death of Sampson + the length of the reign of Eli + the length of the reign of Samuel.

 

According to the book of Judges the time from Assur-Risilim down to the death of Sampson who judged Israel for 20 “years” during the time of the Philistines [Judges 15:20] was 350/4 or 87.5 years, which takes us to 1070.5 BC. Using the same figures the book of Judges tells us that the reign of the Philistines begins at the same time Sampson judged Israel and lasts 40 “years” which if taken as seasons takes us to 1165.5 BC.

 

Now the LXX (1Samuel 4:18) tells us Eli reigned 20 “years” which if taken as eighths is equal to 2.5 years. Subtracting this from 1070.5 BC when Eli begins his reign we get a date of 1068 BC for the date he died which is the same year the Philistines stole to Ark of the Covenant (1Samuel 7:2 tells that the Ark was in Kirjathjearim for 20 “years” after the Philistines retuned it after 7 months in their possession) and is the same year that Samuel became a Judge 12 years before Saul’s reign in 1156 BC and it was 2.5 years after Elis death that Samuel defeated the Philistines in 1165.5 BC and brought their reign to an end.

 

The Judges together reign for 450 “years” according to Acts 13:20 which is 350 “years” from Assur-Risilim until Eli + 20*2 “years” for Eli + 30*2 “years” for Samuel. (Assuming Deborah rules in parallel to Jabin and Sampson and Eli rule in parallel to the Philistines.)

 

This Chronology is given here:

 

Chronology B

 

Alternatively Jabin, Deborah, the Philisitnes and Sampson may have reigned alternately which would then imply that Saul only reigned 20 rather than 40 years which may be justified since if Saul reigned 40 years David would have been no more than 8 years old when Samuel died and he was forced to flee to the Philistines with his own troops. On top of that Josephus 6.(4)[83] claims there were 10 years of unrest plus a further 8 years (ie. the reign of Assur-Risilim) before the first Judges were appointed.

 

 

The Chronology calculated on this basis is given here:

 

Chronology A

 

This reconstruction proves that contrary to Josephus derision of their work, the Ancient Greek writers were correct in their dating of the so-called Exodus and since the Egyptian texts they quoted make no mention of Moses the only way they could have derived the date was by the method above. They must have also possessed accurate Egyptian king lists in-order to be able to say who was Pharaoh at the time.

 

From this point we can proceed to work out the reigns of all the biblical figures up to Abram/Abraham using this table.

 

Table

 

Chronology of the Patriarchs before the Exodus

 

To work out the chronology of the Patriarchs before the Exodus we need to establish how many years before the so-called Exodus the so-called Israelite captivity began.

 

The Greek Septuagint (LXX)^** states that the so-called Israelites had been living in both Canaan and Egypt for 430 “years” prior to the so-called Exodus. Josephus on the other had gives a figure of 215 “years” for this event and this indicates that the figures in the bible were originally written in fractional notion since it is precisely one half of 430.

 

The Hebrew version of the bible says that the captivity was in Egypt alone.

 

If we use Josephus figure and compare the date for the start of the captivity with the regression calculation for the dates of the Patriarchs then Jacob would have entered Egypt in 1408 BC which dates to before the reign of Abraham as given by the linear regression of generations counting Jacob and Israel, and Abram and Abraham as 4 different people (because they fathered their sons in the second generation of their lives, or in middle age as stated in the bible). Therefore this assumption cannot be right and the number of years in captivity must really be 430 solsticial “years” which is 107.5 civil years.  

 

Nearly two years after I made the original draft of this discussion I discovered that Eusebius had preserved a list of figures for the ages and year of birth of the Generations of Levi through to Moses which are not included in the Old Testament. This came as a mixed blessing. On the one hand I now have an irrefutable arithmetical proof for the biblical chronology up to Abraham, but on the other I have found a discrepancy of 12.5 years in my original figures dating events prior to the exodus which I have now corrected.

 

 

Based on a Equinoctial calendar Levi was 30 years old when Jacob died 8.5 years after he came to Egypt and in the same year Levi had begat Kohath. Amram was born when Kohath was 20 and was 7 years old in the same year Joseph died. Moses was born when Amram was 39 and the Exodus took place when Moses was 40.

 

Alexander Polyhistor therefore places Jacobs arrival in Egypt in 1300.5 BC, if the Egyptian captivity was 430/4 or 107.5 years long then,

 

Amram is born in 1300.5 - 8.5 years - 20 years = 1272 BC

 

Joseph dies in 1300.5 BC - 8.5 years - 20 years - 7 years = 1265 BC.

 

Moses is born in 1272 BC - 39 years = 1233 BC and the Exodus occurs in 1233 BC - 40 years = 1193 BC which is 1300.5 BC - (430 years of captivity)/4

 

Based on the proofs given above from which the same date for this event can be calculated by two different methods from two different sets of figures contained in the bible (and related Jewish and Christian sources recording its missing contents) the book of Genesis was obviously written using fractional notation which has subsequently been lost though lack of understanding.

 

The bible offers us a way to accurately check the distance between these dates as with the Judges and Exodus dates since we are told that the sons of Abram, meaning his family would be afflicted for 400 “years” until the 4^th generation.

 

 

If this figure is taken as 200 on the basis that an Equinoctial calendar was being used by the Bibles authors then 200 years counted from the birth of Ishmael would take us to 1402.5-200 = 1202.5 BC which more than the stated 4 generations and too long before the so-called “Exodus” for that to be the event referred to.  If taken as 400 this would take us to 1002.5 BC or past the beginning of the reign of David, but this overlooks the 40 “years” of Saul’s reign since Saul was the first king of Israel not David so that can’t be right.

 

If the figure is taken as 100 years which would be reasonable if a Seasonal Calendar were being used where the periods between the Solstices and the Equinoxes marked a “year” then we have a date of 1302.5. This date as we shall see is close to the date when Joseph was made Chancellor of Egypt in his 30^th “year” or 15 real years after his birth i.e. 1305. This must be the date that the bible means since this is when the Affliction of the sons of Abram came to an end when one of them was put in charge of the entire region. The date looks like it is out by 2.5 years but not if you consider that the bible tells us that the revelation of the Affliction is given to Abram 10 “years” before the birth of Ishmael. Assuming that this is when the Affliction begins then using a seasonal this works out a 2.5 years before Ishmaels birth or in 1405 BC. This now consolidates the dates from Abraham down.

 

Assuming that prior to the birth of Ishmael the bible uses a Seasonal calendar we can now calculate the birth date and lifetime of Abrams father Tharrah.

 

Looking at the table is obvious that Tharrah and his father’s years should all be divided by 4. But what we don’t know is how long Tharrah lived. All we are given in the LXX is that his son Arrahn died and this prompted Tharrah to leave Ur and bring Abram and his wife and Lot his Nephew who was still and infant to Charran where he lived a further 205 years. We are not told how old Abram was when this occurred. The Hebrew version tells us that Abram was 75 when he left his father but can this be the same year as the move and is it reliable. The only way to proceed is to set a limit. Lot would have been born at the earliest when Abram was 13. Compare this to Tharrah who was born when his own father was 19.75. When Abram leaves his father he takes Lot with him to Egypt where he is used as a male prostitute. Lot would have had to have been at least 13 when this occurred. A reasonable estimate for the time Abram left Ur is somewhere between the dates of these two events or when he was 19.5 (26+13/2). This figure concurs with the Hebrew figure of 75 divided by 4 or 18.75 years which is of the same order as the birth date of Tharrah and that of Abram when his father was 17.5. Thus it is safe to calculate Tharrahs age by using the Hebrew date and adding this to his years in Charran and the age he was when Abram was born then dividing the lot by 4. Of course an error margin of about a standard deviation or two should be added which comes to about a year with these figures.

 

For the dates for the figures before Nahor the Father of Tharah up to Arphaxad it can be seen from the table that they aught to be divided by 8 to give reasonable ages of birth. This corresponds to what Apollodorus describes as an “Everlasting Year” in his Library of Greek Mythology in an account relating to Cadmus to father of Phoenix the eponymous ancestor of the Phoenicians.

 

 

The time in question would have been approximately 1400 BC. To correctly interpret the meaning it must be noted that Apllodorus based his account on Hellanicos who states the this was “one (normal) year”. Therefore the explanatory note made by Apollodorus implies that a year in those times reckoned by the Cadmain/Phoenician calendar imported from Syria-Palestine and Egypt was divided into eight eights.

 

From Shem to Adam it can be seen that the dates are obviously given in Lunar months rather than years so should be multiplied by 19 and divided by 235 to convert them to years. Arphaxads date of birth is to early. Shem would have been 300 lunar months old when this occurred 200, not 2 “years” after the Flood. Enoch’s age of 365 is clearly a mistake since his reign would end before that of his predecessor. When broken up into Sexagessimal, which is the number system which is being used here since the lunar calendar is Babylonian, the figure 365 is written as 6’05’’. This figure should actually be 16’05’’ giving an age for Enoch of 965. Also the dates of birth of Cainan down to Noah are way too early. Lamech would have died before his father if they were correct so they should all be increased using Sexagessimal notation by adding 60 months or 1’ to each to bring them into the same order as the birth dates Seth and Enos. This would push up the figure for Adams birth by 34 years and more closely match the regression date for his reign.

 

The final Chronology works out thus:

 

Chronology

 

This chronology provides the best fit to the linear regression carried out earlier. The date for the so-called Flood works out as 1614 BC which is close to the Dendrochronological date of 1628 BC for the time of Thera Eruption in the Aegean and close to the date given by Ice Core analysis of about 1610 BC and the Carbon dating of 1650 BC. The concurrence of dates justifies all of the assumptions used.

 

A second regression should be calculated for the dates Between Abram and Adam but they are not enough reliable events to go by.  We can only fix the dates of Artatama/Artashuimara, and the date of the Thera Erruption to specific generations. Nimrod/Nefrod of the same Generation as Cainan the son of Arphaxad could be Amehotep I 1550 BC known as Nefer-kheferu-re, and Phaleg whose name means division may refer to Egypt being divided in the reign of Tutmoses III 1503, but nothing is certain before Noah. Enoch could correspond to Sheshi the first Hyksos king of the 15^th Dynasty, and Adam could be Agum I the Hurrian king of Babylon.

 

My suspicion is that each generation in this period corresponds to a 19 year Metonic Cycle of exactly 235 lunation’s. This equivalence was discovered by Meton of Athens in about 400 BC but the Babylonians probably already knew about it over a millennium earlier. This is also the cycle used in the modern Hebrew calendar. A linear regression indicates a figure in that region but the error margin is too wide to confirm it.

 

The Chronology of the Kings of Israil and Ioudia is described on the following page.

 

Chronology of the Kings of Israil and Ioudia

 

 

**Choosing the most actuate text

 

If one looks at the figures of the ages of the patriarchs at the birth of their son (given in Genesis) it can be seen that the figures given in the LXX (Septuagint) are the most coherent. These figures are all of the order of centuries and agree in the most part with Josephus, whereas the Hebrew and the Samarian figures jump all over the place.

 

 

Between Adam and Noah 6 of the Herbrew ages at birth are lower than the Greek by 100 years, whereas 3 are the same as the Greek (within a few units). The Samaritan figures are all 100 less than the Greek except Noe and the flood date.

 

The figures in the Hebrew text are obviously the last figures to have been written down since in palaces they match the Samaritan figures and in others the match the Greek.

 

In the Generations between Sem and Thare the Samaritan figures match the Greek figures exactly except for Cainan who is missing. The Hebrew figures are all down by 100 years, and Canain is again missing. The Greek figures are the only ones to include Cainan.

If you take the ages at birth from Adam to Noah as lunar months as the clearly are, the Hebrew and Samaritan versions are unworkable but the Greek figures give reasonable ages.

 

The figures that were originally written in the bible obviously included the centuries that are now missing from the Hebrew and Samaritan texts, therefore the Greek text which contains them must be the oldest and the most accurate.

 

Chronology Variations

 

If the Hebrew figure of 480 “years” from the Exodus to the 4^th year of Solomon is used to derive the date of the Exodus a date of 1213 BC can be obtained which is the date of the death of Ramses II. This would move the death of Moses to 1193 BC and the fall of Jericho in 1190.5 BC which not only is incompatible with Manetho but it would also create a problem with the dating of the reign of Assur-Risilim who it is known from Assyrian texts reigned in about 1150 BC and this is corroborated by the linear regression performed earlier which carries an error margin of about 10 years either way, by moving his reign to 1178 BC which does not correlate with the fact that he was the father of Tiglath-Pilaser I who reigned in 1114 BC.

 

If Eusebius is to be believed, and there may be problems with the translation and interpretation of what he wrote, there may have been a gap of 30 “years” between the death of Joshua and the start of Assur-Risilim’s reign which might resolve one of these problems.

 

 

But Eusebius numbers are clearly wrong since Joshua lived 30 “years” after Moses death and reigned 25 “years” in Jericho. Eusebius may in fact have made a mistake and placed the judges who were appointed for 30 “years” after Moses death after Joshua’s death instead.

 

 

If on the other hand Eusebius is right then it might be possible to resolve the problem with the reign of Assur- Risilim by assuming that Eli reigns 20 Equinoxes as a Judge and the Judges appointed after the death of Joshua reigned 30 Equinoxes. This moves Assur-Risilim’s reign down to 1148-1146 BC, but leaves Joshua’s death in 1178 BC with a 30 year gap. Unfortunately this date for Joshua’s death is still incompatible with the Linear regression as is the 1213 BC date for the exodus, which are both out by 20 years so such a scenario is highly unlikely. There is no indication in the books of Judges or Joshua or from Josephus of any Judges being appointed for 30 “years” between the death of Joshua and the start of the reign of Assur-Risilim.

 

 

Note that Judges 1:11-15 is a repetition of Joshua 15:15-18 so the opening events of Judges take place while Joshua is still alive.

 

Revision 3.6 01/02/07

 

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