Index
Abstract and Introduction
Part One: Early Bronze
Table I: Chronology from Abraham to Joshua
Table III: Comprehensive Correlation of Timelines
Part Two: Middle Bronze
Part Three: Cities
Table VI: Survey of Cities
The Age of Base Metal: a new biblical paradigm for the Early & Middle Bronze Age in Palestine
Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
This article rejects the standard paradigm of the chronology of ancient history as fundamentally flawed by humanistic and uniformitarian assumptions. Using a timeline derived entirely from the Bible, the author briefly discusses his work on the chronology of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and then reinterprets the archeological data of Syria-Palestine from the rise of urbanization (after the Sodom catastrophe, c. 1967 bc) to the period just following the Exodus (1561 bc) — dealing with Early Bronze II/III & IV, Middle Bronze I, and Middle Bronze IIA. The author proposes that these societies were segregated from each other more by culture than by time — that is, they were more coeval than consecutive, running more side-by-side than end-to-end. Robustness is demonstrated by the consonance achieved from using this theory to interpret the data from a number of sites; several examples are given where archeological data contradict the Bible when interpreted by the standard paradigm, but are in harmony when interpreted through the new paradigm.
Introduction
Ancient history is, I propose, wrong. The modernist paradigm by which evidence is interpreted was designed in large measure by 19th century humanists whose prime axiom seems to have been that the Bible is not primary historical documentation, but rather a mishmash of myth and fable. From this bias, historians proceeded to construct a chronological scheme based less on evidence than upon the philosophy of Evolutionism. We find the result not only in textbooks, but even in Bible encyclopedias, dictionaries and commentaries.
I maintain that there is no history at all prior to the year 4074 bc, the year of Adam's Fall, and there is no archeological artifact from before 2418 bc, the year of Noah's Flood (these precepts are, to say the least, extremely challenging to scholars familiar with the evidence of ancient history). Furthermore, I place the
I will be absolutely explicit: this reconstruction of ancient history requires nothing less than a total revolution, which must affect a spectrum of disciplines. All preconceptions about the order of the Egyptian Dynasties are suspect. All interpretations regarding the successiveness of Bronze Age cultures are open to debate. All calculations based on astronomical data are questionable. All standard assumptions about ancient dates are disputable.
The reason that I am so bold — so apparently arrogant or reckless — is that I have come to believe that the Bible is not vague or ambiguous in matters of chronology, but rather contains a clear and recoverable outline of dates (cf. Table I). Virtually all the dates which I propose are derived from the Bible, without any reference to the humanistic dating scheme advanced by previous scholars.
I have dismissed radiometric dating methods as utterly unreliable for the early post-Flood era. There are "serious problems" with carbon 14 dates of early periods. When calibrated to dendrochronological dates, C‑14 “dates in the fourth and third millennia b.c.e. appear to be too early when compared to dates ascertained through Egyptian chronology.” (A. Mazar, p. 28 — see my bibliographical note; cf. Weinstein, 1984b). The data from both C‑14 and dendrochronology are polluted by uniformitarian assumptions (JH, 1996a and 1995, ch. 9) such as of a constant rate of atomic decay, a constant amount of atmospheric C‑14, or of geologic and astronomic uniformity (see Aardsma, 1991); indeed, uniformitarianism is simply inimical to biblical catastrophism.
Again, dates extrapolated from the rare astronomical observations preserved in Egyptian documents are dismissed as invalid (JH, 1997a, ch. 5). Although the theory is not inelegant, the necessary assumption is rejected, that the heavens have never changed their course (that is, that the orbit and rotation of Earth have never been catastrophically altered). I maintain — along with Velikovsky (1950) and Patten, Hatch & Steinhauer (1973) — that in the past some significant gravitational mass periodically approached Earth and occasionally interfered with the length of the day and the year. Consequently, any astronomical "anchor" or "pillar" of ancient history is here considered to be effectively arbitrary, and even the work of such a courageous scholar as Read (1995) is, sadly, rendered invalid.
Rather than accept the philosophical musings and uniformitarian dogmas of humanists, I have started with the chronological clues embedded within the words of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. This starting point, I maintain, requires that the conjectures of the conventional system be utterly rejected. For this reason I must seem, to some, arrogant and reckless. There is never room for dogmatism in a discussion of this sort, but there is also no room for compromise between the antithetical assumptions of humanism and of biblical sufficiency. If the Bible does contain the framework of a clear chronology, then the standard presumptions must be rejected, and a revolution must ensue.
This paper depends only on well-known, mainstream archeological evidence. I will not deflate the standard paradigm with any unmatched erudition. There is no obscure "aha!" fact, heretofore overlooked, which will clinch my case and blast the opposition head-over-heels. I depend entirely upon the elegance of the biblical paradigm, over that of the standard scheme. It is the ease, the elegance, the parsimony with which the evidence fits my time frame, to which I point as my greatest recommendation. The archeological evidence, I maintain, is ambiguous enough to have allowed the standard scheme to stand; but the data are less equivocal when seen from the biblical perspective. Given that an inductive approach is ambiguous, I have adopted deduction, referring first to the underlying assumptions, and then to the objective evidence. But always, I trust, and using public information, I support my case with facts.
From the Bible we may derive not just the correct outline of ancient history, but the very dates of seminal events. To demonstrate this I have included the relevant excerpt of my suggested Biblical Chronology (Table I), derived in its essentials entirely from the Bible. Once we have these dates it becomes clear that one or the other is wrong — the Bible, or Evolutionism. (My reasons for rejecting such compromises as theistic evolutionism or a local Flood of Noah are found in JH, 1995 and 1996a.) As for those readers who do not share my regard for the Bible as a historical source, I suggest that this lack of respect derives from a lack of due diligence.
Some years ago I set about correlating the empirical evidence of science and scholarship with the rigorous demands of a young-Earth interpretation of the Bible. I have written several books as a result of my investigation. In Idols of the Cave: the Arguments of Evolution (1995), I document the misrepresentations of the so-called objective evidence of the evolutionists. In The Pillars of Heaven: Creation, Fall and Flood According to Science and the Bible (1996a), I present the case for an abrupt creation by God, a literal six days for the refining of our planet, an actual Garden of Eden, and Fall, and Flood; I also examine such physical phenomena as continental movement, mountain building, and the geologic column. In Dragons in the Earth:
But there remains the final area of history to be addressed. I have started with three assumptions: [1] that there are no chronologically significant gaps in the biblical genealogies, [2] that Abraham was born in 2066 bc, sixty years after his brothers, and [3] that the rule of Solomon ended in 931 bc. From this starting point, I have dated the Flood of Noah to the year 2418 bc. But if this is the case, how then do we read that the Sumerians and the earliest Egyptians built their civilizations at the end of the 4th millennium bc? What are we to make of the claims of a 10,000-year-old
In my books, Most Ancient Days (1997a) and The Days of Brass and Iron (1997b), I have undertaken the reconstruction of ancient history using a young-Earth, catastrophic world-Flood, biblical paradigm. I have reconstructed virtually all of ancient history, from the apparent earliest human settlements, through the first civilizations of the
In this brief article I cannot go into the relevant details and interactions of the
Table II
Early Bronze / Middle Bronze Timeline | |||||||||||
| | | | | | | | | | | |
2100-2081 | | EB I | | Canaanites | | | Amorites | | |||
80-61 | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-41 | | | | | | | | | | | |
40-21 | | | | | | | | | | | |
20-01 | | | | | | | | | | | |
2000-1991 | | EB IIA | | | | | | | | | |
90-81 | | | | | | | | | | | |
80-71 | | | | | | | | MB I | | | |
70-61 | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-51 | | | | | | | | | | | |
50-41 | | | | | | | | | | | |
40-31 | | | | | | | | | | | |
30-21 | | | | | | | | | | | |
20-11 | | | | | | | | | | | |
10-01 | | | | | | | | | | | |
1900-1891 | | | | EB IIIA | | | | | | | |
90-81 | | | | | | | | | | | |
80-71 | | | | | | | | | | | |
70-61 | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-51 | | | | | | | | | | | |
50-41 | | | | | | | | | | | |
40-31 | | | | | | | | | | | |
30-21 | | | | | | | | | | | |
20-11 | | | | | | | | | | | |
10-01 | | | | | | | | | | | |
1800-1791 | | | | | | | | | | | |
90-81 | | | | | | | | | | | |
80-71 | | | | | ? | | | | | MB IIA | |
70-61 | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-51 | | | | | | | | | | | |
50-41 | | | | | | | | | | | |
40-31 | | | | | | | | | | | |
30-21 | | | | | ? | | | | | | |
20-11 | | | | | | | | | | | |
10-01 | | | | | | | | | | | |
1700-1691 | | | | | | | | | | | |
90-81 | | | | | | | | | | | |
80-71 | | | | | ? | | | | | | |
70-61 | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-51 | | | | | | | | | | | |
50-41 | | | | | EB IIIB | | | | | | |
40-31 | | | | | | | | | | | |
30-21 | | | | | | | | | | | |
20-11 | | | | | | | | | | | |
10-01 | | | | | | | | | | | |
1600-1591 | | | | | | | | | | | |
90-81 | | | | | | | | | | | |
80-71 | | | | | | | | | | | |
70-61 EXODUS | | | | | | | | | | | |
60-51 | | | | | | | | | | | |
50-41 | | | | | | | | | | | |
40-31 | | | | | | | | | | | |
30-21 | | | | | | | | | | | |
20-11 | | | | | | | | | | | |
10-01 | | Invasion and conquest of Joshua and the Israelites | | ||||||||
1500-1491 | | | | | | | | | | | |
Table III
The vocabulary of the historiography for the ancient world varies from region to region. Thus, the eras of Mesopotamia are called after places (e.g., Uruk, Akkad or Old Babylon), the eras of Egypt are called after governments (Dynasties and "Kingdoms"), and the eras of Palestine and Syria are called after technological characteristics (cf, the triptych of "Stone Age," "Bronze Age" and "Iron Age" — composed by Danish archeologist C.J. Thomsen, and used since 1819 ad). For each of these three regions —
To establish the context, note that in
In Egypt, the labeling system involves dynasties, I through XXX, which are assumed to have run consecutively, while I propose many of them ran side-by-side, holding power over different nomes ("provinces"). The dynasties are for the most part numbered not for their successiveness in time, but rather for their dominance in a given region. My solution does not seem as pleasing in terms of simplicity, but this is because it is not I who invented the nomenclature. I am forced to use an essentially inappropriate vocabulary, which is biased toward the invalid system.
Finally, the Early and Middle Bronze Ages of Palestine and
Suppose some befuddled archeologist of the distant future concluded that a vast span of time separated the indigenous population of
In the land of Canaan: different languages, religions, morés — different preferences and technologies in architecture, ceramics and metallurgy — all combined to define and separate the cultures which we know as Early and Middle Bronze. Modern scholars have mistakenly distributed the evidence across time, instead of across topography. We will look at this key point in more detail, shortly.
Archeology deals with artifacts — with things man-made. History deals with writing. In
Now, archeological correlations give us relative dating — that is, they tell us which civilizations were contemporaneous with each other. But what of "absolute" dating, which fits these cultures into our numerical dating system? Is it not a fact that carbon 14 dating excludes any significant error? Well, I have dealt with the problems of radiometric "dating" elsewhere (JH, 1995 & 1997a). But with regard specifically to EB artifacts, it is highly interesting that C-14 “tests relating to EB I come from only four sites; some of the tests point to a high date in the first half of the fourth millennium.” (Mazar, p. 147, note 28.) So, first we find that there are scarcely any data at all, and next we see that they are disharmonious. Likewise, C‑14
dates from EB II-III contexts are known only from
Again, only three sites provide data, and these too are disharmonious. We may conclude, then, that "absolute" dating is not as secure, not as grounded in objective and unambiguous evidence, as we may wish to believe.
If not on writing or C-14 data, then on what basis is Canaanite chronology decided?
From ca. *3000 b.c.e. the absolute chronology of
The study of specifically Egyptian chronology is outside our scope; I discuss it in great depth in Most Ancient Days — most specifically in chapter five (but consider Table III for my general conclusions). Aside from Egyptian data, “Imported pottery and other artifacts from
Table IV
Early Bronze: |
EB I (*3100-2900) |
EB II (*2900-2700) |
EB III (*2700-2250) |
EB IV (*2300-2000) |
Middle Bronze: |
MB I (*2000‑1800) |
MB IIA (*1800-1750) |
MB IIB (*1750-1550) |
MB IIC (*1575-1500) |
Table IV |
Be that as it may, unfortunate circumstances — of effective illiteracy in the
Table V
Table V — Bronze Ages in | |
Correct ages | Standard designations |
c. 21st cent. bc Nimrod to Amraphel | Early Bronze I *3100-2900 |
c. 2000-1650 Amraphel to Bondage | EB II *2900-2700 |
c. 1820-1500 Sesostris III thru Joshua | EB III *2700-2250 |
20th-14th cent. bc Abraham thru Deborah | Middle Bronze I *2000-1800 (*2000 = |
18th-16th cent. bc Joseph to Conquest | MB IIA *1800-1750 |
16th-14th cent. bc Exodus to Deborah | EB IV *2300-2000 |
1500's-1050 Judges | MB IIB *1750-1550 |
1300's-1020 Deborah to Saul | MB IIC *1575-1500 |
Late Bronze Age . . . |
This treatment is limited to the period from Abraham to Moses, dealing only with EB II/III & IV, and MB I & IIA. I ignore the Copper Age and EB I, which have more to do with Nimrod than Abraham; I also ignore MB IIB and LB, which by my reconstruction have to do with the time of the Judges and the Kings of Israel. This article is divided into the preceding Introduction, and three other parts, dealing with the Early Bronze, the Middle Bronze, and the re-evaluated archeology of various cities. The overall discussion of archeology is not meant to be exhaustive — I will just give some of the more important evidence, and interpret it through our new paradigm. Each reader must judge for himself as to which is more convincing, the standard model or the biblical.