In order to determine the proper time setting for biblical events, we need to answer questions of dating, chronology, and location. The study of such things began in earnest in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and techniques were developed for determining dating of artifacts, both in historical context (where the recovered artifacts correspond to a time within recorded history) as well as in a prehistoric context.
Today, many fundamentalist scholars question such techniques, because of a mistaken understanding of biblical Creation as fully literal. But truth agrees with truth – biblical truth, and scientific truth. When they seem to be in conflict, we don’t simply throw out one or the other, but continue questioning until the conflict is resolved. And sometimes, those answers don’t come right away.
As a side note, belief in supernatural miracles is often used as a reason to reject scientific explanations. For instance, it is sometimes claimed that God could create the world with “apparent great age” even though it was only created roughly 6,000 years ago. And that is simply taking the easy way out of honestly resolving the conflict between spiritual truth and scientific truth. Even if we ourselves aren’t expert enough in scientific matters to know the real answers, hand-waving that God could make the conflict disappear by miraculous means isn’t following the biblical injunction to “prove all things” (1 Thess. 5:21).
Today, we count years “Anno Domini” or after Christ. Although our calendar has gone through minor changes (to better account for leap years and even leap-seconds), it has remained mostly the same since 46 BC when Julius Caesar invented a “leap day” every four years to adjust the calendar to be better in sync with the cycle of the earth around the sun.
But, before our “year one,” how did people reckon time? How did they determine the passing of years?
They generally reckoned time according to the ruling king of their country. In the king’s first year, in his eighteenth year, etc. Thus, in order to construct a chronology of when things happened, we need to know several things:
- What kings ruled in a certain country, and in what order
- Did they count the year they ascended the throne as their “year one” (meaning they only had a partial year one), or did they count their “year one” starting with the local new year of their calendar system (meaning they had a partial year zero)? This is known as non-accession year dating vs. accession year dating, respectively.
- If that country only lasted for a certain period of time, what interactions did it have with other countries? Can we synchronize dating systems between the countries to construct a more complete chronology?
If we don’t have accurate records of the lengths of kings’ reigns, or if we can’t synchronize between the dating systems of different countries, then we won’t be able to complete an accurate chronology. That’s the starting point – IF we want to establish the historical setting of a particular event. If that event happened before recorded history, or in a place where history wasn’t recorded, then we need to resort to other means.
Archaeologists often use pottery as a means of establishing dating. We can compare characteristics of different pottery across different locations, and establish a rough time setting. We look at the depth at which that pottery was found, and then estimate how old it would be, because sediment naturally accumulates over time and buries artifacts that were once on the surface of the ground.
Another technique that archaeologists use is called radiocarbon dating. All living things have Carbon atoms in them, and a certain percentage of those Carbon atoms are actually radioactive. (The reason why they’re radioactive is a bit complicated, and the radioactivity actually doesn’t hurt anything.) When a living thing dies, the radioactive Carbon atoms begin to decay into normal Carbon atoms, so archaeologists can estimate the number of years since a living thing has died by measuring the remaining percentage of radioactive Carbon atoms to normal Carbon atoms in a sample of organic material.
A number of things can throw off time estimates. Certain pottery manufacturing techniques can die out in one area while continuing to be used in another area, for instance. Volcanic eruptions, contamination of one organic material with another, etc., can throw off the radiocarbon date of a sample. Archaeologists know about errors of these sorts, so they can make adjustments for them.
Also, we’re generally not told what the margin of error is for a date arrived at through radiocarbon dating, but those margins of error exist and they’re NOT thousands of years wide. Generally the margins of error are fifty years to a few hundred years at most.
As archaeologists and other scholars have reconstructed a chronology of ancient events, over the years since the 18th and 19th centuries, they’ve progressively refined their results until arriving at a generally accepted reconstruction. The problem, of course, is that this reconstruction is at odds with the biblical record. Significant events such as the Exodus from Egypt, the time of King David and King Solomon, and so on, simply don’t match up with the chronology that has been reconstructed.
What do we do, then? Simply throw out what archaeologists and scholars have discovered and start over? Simply accept the implied chronology of the bible, and just ignore extra-biblical events and records?
Over the years, attempts have been made to reconcile the conventionally accepted reconstructed chronology with Scripture. Some progress has been made – for instance, an extensive study on the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah produced a chronology that actually does match up very well with the extra-biblical records recovered and discoveries that have been made. Other events, such as the Exodus, are far more controversial and harder to match up.
When attempting to “fix” the conventionally accepted chronology so that it better matches the events of the bible, we have several things to consider:
- Are we proposing a well thought-out theory, or are we just hazarding a guess? For instance, guessing that the Exodus really happened during the reign of Akhenaten.
- Does our theory fit with other, related events? For instance, the conquest of Canaan happened 40 years after the Exodus. Does that fit with a guess that the Exodus happened during the reign of Akhenaten?
- Does our theory take into account climate and natural events, such as volcanic eruptions?
- Does our theory account for ancient observations of astronomical events, such as eclipses?
Sometimes, we have highly detailed ancient records. For instance, for a long period of time, the Assyrians recorded “year names” or eponyms for each year, named after the ruling king, provincial governors, and high officials of state. When linking up events between Assyria and other countries, we have to take these Assyrian “year names” into account. If we’re looking at two related biblical events a number of years apart, and attempting to link them to Assyria (such as Assyria’s tribute from Menahem, one of the kings of northern Israel, vs. Assyria’s next attack on northern Israel), we can’t just assume that the biblical count of years is correct without looking at how those two events are dated under Assyrian year-names.
Later on, we’ll look more closely at some of those controversial “fixes” to the conventionally accepted chronology.
References:
Thiele, Edwin. Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings