Biblical Hebrew Forum

[banyai AT t-online.de]

Peter Kirk wrote:

> My point still stands even if Thiele's method is utterly wrong, for 
> there is still far more quality data in the Bible than has ever been 
> found in Egypt.

I do not contradict you at all. But our belief in the trustworthiness of the 
chronological material offered by the bible would have been surely greater, 
should Thiele have done his job better.


The difference between the biblical material and the egyptian material when 
considering just the direct chronological one, is clearly running in favor of 
the biblical material which is by far less ambiguous. However, the problem of 
the biblical scholar comes not from this data, but from the fact that there 
is relatively little corroboration on archaeological level.

This leads to a totaly absurd situation as soon as one discusses the 
chronology of the period predating the united kingdom. The last unambiguous 
archaeological find of chronological value seems to have been Mesha´s stone. 
Everything predating this find has the problem of archaeological ambiguity. 
We have no inscriptions of any chronological value from Israel predating 
this. Would there be no historical work called the bible (which I hold 
historically very high) we would call Palestine between 1400 and 850 BC as 
being largely in a pre-historical situation. The same like the mycenian 
culture. Not a single linear B tablet of "historical" kind.

The conventional chronology setting usually as a time limit for the period of 
judges ca 1100 BC is beyond the horizon of logical discussion. There exists 
no single document to attribute the destructions preceding 1100 BC to the 
Israelites. These destructions could be attributed to anybody, since they 
fall into the socalled "dark age". We have not the least idea, what happened 
in the orient between 1100 and ca. 900 BC. So to attribute these destructions 
to the israelites is an as brilliant idea, as looking for my car on the main 
street - just because it is much better lighted. This despite my wife 
warning, she left the car in a side street. This is all a wild speculation 
based just on a majority vote.

> You are falling into the same fallacy with biblical data that Kitchen 
> has fallen into with Egyptian data: the assumption that co-regencies can 
> only occur when there is explicit evidence for them. Admittedly there is 
> more likely to be explicit evidence in the detailed biblical narrative 
> than in the random collection of inscriptions which makes up the 
> Egyptian evidence. But the biblical data becomes self-contradictory if 
> you don't allow for co-regencies which are not made explicit - or else, 
> less probably, long interregna. Thiele's method, as I understand it, 
> introduces co-regencies only where they are in fact required to make the 
> biblical data consistent - and that is a reasonable method for the 
> divided kingdom period because the synchronisms between the two kingdoms 
> would give evidence for any co-regency long enough to affect the data.

No, this is not the same fallacy. On my scheme results without assuming any 
other coregencies a perfectly consistent chronology. Thiele´s method is like 
working with the data of Manetho - choosing out of up to 4 different reign 
lengths the choiciest to add up to a certain result. Everyone knows that at 
least 3 out of 4 versions are faked or wrongly tradited. for just 10 Pharaohs 
there are possible ad absurdum of 5 high 10 combinations of numbers. Who 
knows how many sum up to to the required total, and if they do not sum up, 
one could add some convenient coregencies. 

The only reasonable way to work is to eliminate the fakes and reduce the 
number of combinations. Doing so by comparing Manethos numbers with highest 
attested regnal year of some pharaoh might be a reasonable empirical method. 
It is employed by Kitchen systematically, while it is surely imperfect.

Both Thiele and Kitchen are in some way oversimplificating their case. They 
both assume that the numberless contradictions (the most in Manetho) are the 
effect of a wrong tradition. Typos, so to say. Should they consider the 
possibility that such massive contradictions could be purposefull and not 
mere "faults", it would suffice to look for for the reason of such a 
manipulation. Once one gets the right intuition - this a no problem to 
demonstrate this mathematically. Anybody manipulating numbers would do this 
to arrive certain exact results. Since we know most key dates of antique 
chronology, for example the date calculated by Erathosthenes (this guy had 
been in hold of Manethos original work) for the fall of Troia, 1185, it is no 
problem working this out and getting rid of all faked material on the spot.

I think both Thiele as Kitchen were afraid of trying this, because this would 
have reduced their data pool. Being absolutely exact is a dangerous 
situation. You can not assume some imaginary coregency which could help you 
solve any chronological problems in 5 minutes.

However, once more: Thiele´s fault is probably +/- 20 years, while Kitchen´s 
may be much bigger. On such a basis: 

a chronology +/- 20 exact

a second chronology +/- 40 exact

to postulate anything like Shishak=Shoshenk I would go too far. They could be 
as much as 60 years apart. They could be identical. One should consider both 
possibilities.


> There is evidence quite apart from the chronology for variation in New 
> Year dates.


There is no evidence at all, that this variation happened between Israel and 
Juda and not instead between two different epochs , while this datum being 
identical for Israel and Juda. That means for example New Year 900 BC being 
seasonally different from New Year 700 BC. Both guys, Kitchen and Thiele, are 
eliminating alternatives as it fits their theory. I read both: the work of 
Thiele and Kitchen. While I find Kitchen´s a brilliant book in the 
systematisation of the material (no such book exists either for Assyrology or 
Babylon) - the ideal departure point for any later chronologist - it is to be 
said that creating an Egyptian chronology is the far nore difficult thing.

> Thiele provides an independent Hebrew chronology which is actually far 
> more detailed than the Egyptian one.

ditto. But it is still not correct.

Best regards,

Banyai Michael