Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> Available at my website is an article titled "Deconstructing Rohl's
> Chronology". David Rohl is well known to millions of viewers via a TV series
> that presented his re-dating of archaeological eras, said reconstruction
> suppossedly verifying the Bible's presentation of many historical scenarios.
> Rohl advances the notion that Solomon is a Late Bronze Age King. My
> investigations into surface surveys conducted by the Israeli Antiquities
> Authority ca. 1986, reveal that certain cities and towns appearing in the
> narratives about Samuel, King Saul and his son Jonathan, like Michmash,
> Mizpah and Geba (1 Sam 13 & 14) did not come into existence until Iron Age
> times. This means that Saul cannot be a Late Bronze Age king. If interested
> just click on the following url to access the article
> http://www.bibleorigins.net/RohlsChronologyDeconstructed.html
> 
Walter,
I think you have missed Rohl's point entirely.  You never addressed 
the basis of his redating, which is a group of anomalies in Egyptian 
chronology.  Virtually all dating done on ANE artifacts is based on 
Egyptian chronology.  If that's wrong, the whole system requires re-
evaluation.  This is Rohl's whole point.  Specifically, he found errors 
in dating of the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, and these errors 
threw off the entire dating sequence for Egypt, Palestine, the 
Levant and the Sinai, among other places.  I have no doubt that 
Rohl is aware of the survey you mentioned, but that survey's dating 
is based on the (according to Rohl) flawed chronology of Egypt and 
hence is not reliable.  You haven't "deconstructed" anything, 
because you haven't dealt with Rohl's primary thesis.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"You just keep thinking, Butch.  That's what you're good at."