Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Peter Kirk wrote,



>Dear Rolf,
>
>As Ian declined to respond to the part of your posting retained below, I
>will take the chance to by referring you to the infamous David Rohl. I don't
>seek to support him on Assyrian chronology as I am not competent to do so.
>But in "A Test of Time", otherwise known as "Pharaohs and Kings", chapter
>11, he does present an argument from purely astronomical data for an
>absolute date of 1419 BC for year 1 of King Ammisaduga of Babylon, fourth in
>line after Hammurabi. This is considerably later than the orthodox dating.
>The argument is based on comparisons of mentions in documents of the 30th
>day of a month with astronomical calculations of which months had 30 days.
>Rohl takes his argument from his reference: W.A. Mitchell, "Ancient
>Astronomical Observation and Near Eastern Chronology", Journal of the
>Ancient Chronology Forum 3 (1990) pp.18-20. Don't expect me to defend the
>method in detail, but it looks plausible. In his book "Legend", Rohl
>connects some far more ancient (alleged) records of eclipses with
>astronomical data, but the argument was not so strong. And Rohl does find
>evidence of a catastrophic, though not worldwide, flood, but he dates it
>earlier than 2400 BC.


Dear Peter,

I looked at the information in Rohl's book. In my view, there are too many
unknowns and conjectures to trust the conclusion. But related to what the
Bible say about the flood, there is no problem with the dating.


Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo