Bible Chronology
A Proposed Scheme
There is one major problem remaining, and that is how to fit Israel's history into the archaeological periods. Let me remind you what they are:
| Period | Conventional |
|---|---|
| Neolithic | |
| Early Bronze Age I, II, III, IV | |
| Middle Bronze Age I, II, III | Patriarchs |
| Late Bronze Age I, II, III | Captivity in Egypt |
| Iron Age I, II | Exodus to Exile |
| Persian | Nehemiah and Esther |
| Greek | Maccabees |
| Rome | Jesus and apostles |
In the conventional system the Middle Bronze Age is the period of the patriarchs and the Late Bronze Age must therefore be the period when the Children of Israel were in Egypt. It is even possible to consider that both the Patriarchs and the oppression in Egypt came under the Late Bronze.
You will notice that it is impossible to mess around with the Roman period. There are ample written records as well as archaeological remains to confirm that Jesus lived in the Roman period and the New Testament refers to the same period.
It is also impossible to interfere with the Greek period, the time of the Maccabees, for the same reasons. There are ample records, both Biblical and secular, and plenty of archaeological remains to confirm the details of the period.
The Persian period, however, is a different matter. There are very few archaeological remains in Palestine that can be confidently identified as Persian. (Of course, in Iran itself it is a different matter.) This has led some to suggest that in fact the Persian period should be identified with Iron Age II. I am dubious about this; although the Persian period may be poorly represented in Palestine we must not forget that the Persians occupied Turkey and Egypt and I am not in a position to claim that they are poorly represented in the archaeological record there.
In particular, Persian pottery and Persian art forms may be present in Anatolia and it may be possible to link them with pottery from Syria and eventually from Palestine. In my present state of knowledge I think it safer to conclude that the Persian period is indeed the Persian period - and after all, the autonomy granted to Ezra and Nehemiah is sufficient reason for the Persian period to be poorly represented in Palestine.
The main problem comes with Iron II, for it is from this period that we have Lachish , whose capture by the Assyrians was celebrated in the famous Lachish Reliefs in the British Museum. The excavators of Lachish found evidence of the siege in the form of a destruction layer, Assyrian arrow-heads, Assyrian armour, a gateway similar to that depicted in the Reliefs, and the famous Lachish Letters.
There are also, as the Israel Museum notes, a number of finds that appear to support the link with the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. These include the so-called "Ahab's Ivories", seal impressions bearing the names of Israelite kings, destruction layers that can be attributed on documentary and archaeological grounds to the Assyrians, and so on. Personally I do not believe that it is possible to explain all this evidence away or to reassign it to an earlier period. If I am right then King Hezekiah and the Assyrians must belong to Iron Age II.
However if, as I have been arguing, the Exodus belongs to the end of Early Bronze and the kingdom of David and Solomon belongs to the later Middle Bronze, then the problem arises of how we can stretch the Biblical chronology to fit the periods Late Bronze and Iron Age I and II.
We need not trouble ourselves with the thickness of deposits or the number of layers or the number of phases of pottery or building. It simply is not possible to correlate such things to the passage of time. The sole problem is the correlations between Egypt and Palestine, shown in the form of pottery synchronisms. After all, it was Palestine that first provided a means of linking Egypt's supposedly secure chronology to a country outside Egypt when Sir Flinders Petrie dug at Tel Hesi, a ruin on the border between Egypt and Palestine, and demonstrated the links.
The solution has to be either by adding in extra kings of Israel and Judah or by deleting kings from Egypt. Neither alternative is very attractive. The synchronisms between the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah mean that we cannot just add in invented extra kings. If we do, we destroy the carefully constructed pattern of synchronisms - and after all, we believe that Ezra based Kings and Chronicles on the actual chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah.
Although it is plausible to suggest that the early dynasties of Egypt might be muddled or should run side by side, it is more difficult to do so with the later dynasties, whose history is better known. Nonetheless some work has been done in this direction and the results are interesting but so far unproven.
Here, then, is a suggested outline for chronology, but I must emphasise that this is only tentative and should not be taken as fixed or authorative.
| Period | Suggested |
|---|---|
| Neolithic | The first cities after the Flood |
| Early Bronze Age | Patriarchs and Captivity |
| Middle Bronze Age | Exodus to Solomon |
| Late Bronze Age | Solomon to Ahab |
| Iron Age I, II | Ahab to Exile |
| Persian | Nehemiah and Esther |
| Greek | Maccabees |
| Rome | Jesus and apostles |
Lachish I have just come across a bit of information that I find extraordinarily interesting. The Blue Guide to Egypt was written by Veronica Seton-Williams (now dead) and the introduction mentions her autobiography, The Road to el-Aguzein. I decided to get it and very interesting it is too. I can recommend it; she knew and worked with all the greats of Middle Eastern archaeology - Petrie, Garstang, Mallowan, etc - and paints lively pen pictures of them. She worked with Starkey at Lachish for one season, the year in which he was murdered. I quote a paragraph from the chapter that covers 1937-1938.
"We had a Chinese archaeologist for part of the season at Tel ed-Duweir excavating one of the caves. When he left I took over his work. He left me his notes but they were more concerned with the flea population than with the archaeological evidence, as I was to learn to my cost. The caves had been used by local shepherds to shelter their sheep and were alive with fleas. We found the only way to cope was to spread a sheet on the ground, stand on it and hundreds jumped off; one was then only left with the residue. It was, apart from that, an interesting site and the scene of an early pottery workshop dating to the Late Bronze Age. Much of the pottery had not been baked when disaster fell upon the Tel, which was sacked by the Asssyrians, so that it was neatly stacked for firing but still in biscuit form. The stone base of the potter's wheel was also still in position, although the wooden base had long since rotted away." p. 78
Note that she says that the pottery at the time of the Assyrian attack was Late Bronze, not Iron II, as I have hitherto assumed. If her statement is correct and not just a faulty memory, then it calls in question much that has been assumed about the Israelite period. However it is quite possible that the abandoned pottery to which she refers was not caused by the Assyrian attack but by some much earlier conflict. Return
