Judaism
Dating Ancient Near Eastern History III.3
Abstract
If an excavator believes from the scriptures that an ancient mound must contain buildings from Solomon’s reign, it is almost certain that sooner or later he will find structures that fit the bill. The spurious air of biblical authority given to such a discovery can then make the identification stick, despite any evidence to the contrary. In the meantime a small tourist industry may even have grown up around this “confirmation” of the Bible.Peter James
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, August 28, 2001
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Dismantling the Standard Model
Peter James and the co-authors of Centuries of Darkness wrote that conventional model raised many questions. They thought there was “a strong whiff of unreality” about the dark ages of the ANE that supposedly descended on every civilisation in this region about 1200 BC. From Greece through central Turkey to Nubia, everywhere there was massive depopulation, while skills such as literacy, metallurgy, ivory working and the art of painting pottery are thought to have lapsed or disappeared entirely for anything up to 300 years.
Economic recession is a fact of history, but in this case every strand of evidence—from pottery chronologies to royal inscriptions—argued against the existence of such a long dark age. The evidence seemed to argue that Late Bronze Age civilisation did not end c 1200 BC but more likely around 950 BC when civilisation, and with it all the old skills, revived. What seemed remarkable was the evidence for continuity between the periods before and after the dark ages.
Why did the Nubians, thought to have abandoned urban life in the eleventh century BC, supposedly resettle two centuries later using pottery indistinguishable from that made before they set off on their long nomadic wanderings? Why was the problem encountered at Troy over the same time range? Was central Anatolia really totally depopulated between the twelfth and ninth centuries after the collapse of the Hittite Empire? If the Greeks founded Syracuse in Sicily in 733 BC, after expelling the locals, why are the burned huts of the last pre-Greek inhabitants dated to c 850 BC?
Such conundrums range across the whole of the Mediterranean and Near East and have in common that all depend for their dating on Egypt. Finds of Mycenaean pottery in Egypt enabled prehistoric Greece to be dated. Mycenaean pottery in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balkans and Troy has enabled these diverse regions to be cross-dated with Egyptian chronology. Yet, Egyptian history could be shortened by as much as 250 years.
Research has progressed. That Tell Abu Hawam in Palestine does not provide a fixed point for the dating of Greek Geometric pottery has now been generally accepted. The illogical 120-year gap between the “Cassibile” culture and the earliest Greek colonies in Sicily has conclusively been rejected in a study by Robin Leighton.
In Israel, the dating of the first Iron Age settlement in Edom, southern Palestine, has one school of thought placing it in the twelfth century, another in the ninth. In 1992, a Greek krater (bowl) was unearthed at Tel Hadar in Galilee in a level dated by Israeli archaeologists no later than 1000 BC. Yet Greek ceramic experts insist that the vessel dates no earlier than about 900 BC.
In 1993, the “House of David” stele was found at Tel Dan in northern Israel, giving the first historical reference outside the Bible to David and his house, but also forcing a profound revision of Israelite archaeology. Bimson thinks the Tel Dan stele gives a propaganda account of the defeat of Jehoram (king of Israel) and Ahaziah (king of Judah) at Ramoth-Gilead and their subsequent deaths. The king whose victory it celebrates is Hazael of Damascus. As in all these remarkable monumental discoveries that confirm the bible, the stratum in which it was found is disputed. Without a context, the inscription is valueless, especially as most such unstratified finds have proved to be hoaxes or frauds. A sophisticated fake factory was found only a few years back in Jerusalem that had been forging artefacts for twenty years. If the supposed stratum the Tel Dan stele was discovered in is correct, and the artefact is not a fake, Iron Age stratigraphy in Palestine will have to be lowered, and that will hardly suit biblicists or Egyptologists. Bimson concluded:
The full implications of the Tel Dan inscription for Iron Age stratigraphy and chronology have yet to be faced. When they are, its significance as a chronological anchor may turn out to be even more far reaching than its reference to the House of David.
Rupert Chapman, Executive Secretary of the Palestine Excavation Fund, carefully examined the situation of the find. The stele, which can be historically dated to 825-800 BC came from a level conventionally dated to the tenth or even eleventh centuries BC. It follows that the Tel Dan stone testifies to the falsifying of Israelite history by 200 years.
A dismantling of the standard model for the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt seems to be underway. A 20-year adjustment in twenty second Dynasty chronology and a lowering in the dates for the twenty fifth Dynasty have been put forward in the Journal for Egyptian Archaeology. Two Egyptological reviewers of Centuries of Darkness—John Ray, Reader in Egyptology at Cambridge University, and Aidan Dodson—have now stated in print that Egyptian chronology could be lowered by some 50 years.
Archaeologists must let the archaeology speak for itself, and fit it in with some already approved schema. The way we learn is not by assuming that we already know, and then by fitting everything into the same pot however unsuitable its shape is. The discoveries ought to be carefully described, including the strata they were found in, not just broad locations, and then tentative explanations given, with discrepancies highlighted! It is the discrepancies that are important, but the whole has to be presented for later scholars to review the work in the light of discoveries elsewhere. Perpetual phony excuses are not what history is about, and archaeologists ought to be freed of it. When something seems anachronistic, it ought not to be written off as contamination, heirloom or reusage, to mention just a few excuses. Dating is not easy, certain or to be assumed. Anachronisms might show assumptions are utterly wrong, not necessarily about chronology generally, but about that particular site. Biblicists know that this tell is Ai, or that is Ashkalon, until the evidence does not match, then the excuses emerge. The top of the tell had eroded off. Sometimes it happens but not by erosion, by self-seekers or greedy treasure hunters digging it away in modern times. There is method in this for biblicists. It makes sure the bible can never be contradicted by archaeology!
The chronology revisers seem no better. John Crowe writes:
The credibility of the bible in general and of Old Testament history in particular is being undermined quite unfairly.
So, he, like the biblicists who caused the whole mess, knows that the bible is right in what it says about such as Moses and Solomon. He criticises orthodox Egyptologists, quite rightly too, but he is no better! Crowe puts his faith in the bible, stating that the correct identification of Shishak would get chronology right. Then he wants to identify the Pharaoh of Joseph’s famine, so that is history too and not a Hellenistic romance. He says there is strong evidence, both historical and linguistic, for an early Hebrew sojourn in Egypt, so he knows who the early Hebrews were then? Whoever he thinks they were, does he know they are the same as the later so-called Hebrews, or does he just mean Asians?
What is so terrible if Egyptian history is shortened by a few hundred years. It has happened before with no ramifications. Petrie thought Egypt began in 5000 BC, but no one now thinks it, and 3000 BC is accepted. What is so bad if it is shortened again to 2500 BC? The same is true of Assyria and Babylon where Hamurabi used to be dated before 2000 BC, but now is dated at 1750 BC. Why is there suddenly such tremendous resistence to something that seems relatively trivial, even if it does mean a lot of revision of textbooks. No doubt publishers would love that. The answer can only be that it accepts the falsehood of the scriptural myths before Omri. The gap between Moses and Omri in Jewish history is filled with Egyptian colonization. Two billion Christians would be objecting, and even a few million Jews. Even one billion Moslems would object, after all Solomon means a lot to them too! We are facing the power of mass religion here, and it is overpowering science! Both sides of this dispute are reprehensible. What is needed is some honest science.
Reference: P John Crowe, The Revision of Ancient History: Revised Chronologies (updated 2007), online
