Old Testament History

The historical record of humankind in the third millennium before Christ bears the stamp of Noah's family and of the events and structures outlined in Genesis 9-11. The purpose of monogenetic study is to consolidate the Biblical explanation of human origins by generating a historical science based on the family of Noah. The goal is to create a coherent Christian synthesis of the disjointed data of antiquarian study. This goal was pursued by a variety of authors between 1650 and 1820: Samuel Bochart, Paul Pezron, William Stukeley, Jacob Bryant, Sir William Jones, George Faber, and others.
My logic resembles theirs. The difference between my work and theirs lies in the data furnished by archaeology since the discovery of the Sumerians around 1880. The challenge of my work is to combine their logic with the essential information unavailable to them. An obvious question is why this work has not been done by others.
There are several answers. The most basic is that Biblical monogenesis has been unpopular in historical science since the 1880's, largely through the influence of Darwinism. Another reason concerns the issue of eccentricity. Bryant, Pezron, and others were often perceived as eccentric. Biblical monogenesis tends to breed eccentricity because of its extraordinarily daring implications. For example, a self-evident feature of any monogenetic scheme is the role of incest, inasmuch as all males and females are members of the same universal family; but incest is just one of a series of bizarre logical consequences of Biblical monogenesis. 1The most important of these concerns the degree and type of political authority to be found in Noah's postdiluvian family. The political factor distinguishes my viewpoint, first from the Darwinian anthropologists, but ultimately from the whole tenor of empirical scholarship in the modern democratic era. To the conservatives, Noah is the passive recipient of divine instruction and of a salvation experience but is not an agent of charismatic political power. In other words, Noah has been conceived as a pious but hapless old man in a bathrobe. Whether or not the gradualist approach to antiquity compromises with Darwinism, it strikes me as unworthy of a Bible, which stresses dispensational revolutions and displays of power. Noah survived the Flood in order to build a world; and worlds are not built without the intervention of great political and creative power. Noah's family were the human building blocks of the nations and were the most powerful ruling house in the history of humankind, prototypes of the Emperors of Agade and the Pharaohs of Egypt. In fact, this understates the case.
Noah's family was a kind of solar nucleus to all the primary linguistic stocks of humankind. These stocks are to Noah what the twelve tribes of Israel were to Jacob, except that Noah's postdiluvian longevity of 350 years enabled him to witness their growth from individual families to large tribes or nations, each capable of generating its own independent civilization.

Josephus nailed Solomon's ff969/968 accession!: Hiram's Solomonic Temple contract in ff969/968 by Josephus' Tyrian, Greek, & Roman dating, confirms Thiele's 2005-2015 corrected chronology


Valerius Coucke's 1928-published near-dating of Tyrian King Hiram's fall-to-fall (ff) 969/968 12th year Solomonic Temple construction contract was one year late (ff968/967) only due to his misreckoning as May (sic.) 1207 BC the Parian Marble's correct ca. June 1208 BC fall of Troy. This latter was by Justin quoting Trogus (18.3) 1 year after the ca. June 1209 founding of Tyre, which in turn by Josephus quoting Meander (Ag. Ap. I.18) was 241 years before Hiram's 12th year 1 Kings 5:1 contract with Solomon to build his Temple ca. June 1209 - 241 = spring/summer 968 BC (ff969/968). Just here David died by my 2005-2015 correction of the Coucke/Thiele/McFall/Young chronology by its wholesale 3 years later offset up to Uzziah's death. Thus: {[June 1208 fall of Troy] - 1 = June 1209 refoundation of Tyre} + 241 years until Hiram's 12th year Temple contract = June 968 = spring/summer ff969/968 1 Kgs. 5:1 accession of Solomon.

The Fig. 1 Tyrian kings chronology based on Josephus' copy of Meander's Tyrian King List using only Athenian, Tyrian, and Roman records, validates Coucke's method and confirms its result by use of my chronology: Hiram's certain ff969/988 12th year start of Solomon's Temple project invalidates the Coucke/Thiele/McFall/Young version of Thiele's chronology because by it Hiram was 2 years dead when required to receive Solomon's 1 Kgs. 9:10-14 20th year construction bonus (E, 8/19). By the Thiele chronology's unavoidable 1 Kgs. 6:1 Temple assembly start, that bonus fell in Solomon's 24th year, while by my chronology's 1 Kgs. 5:1 start, it fell 2 years before Hiram's death in Solomon's 20th (sec. 2.3). A tiny wrinkle in Assyrian chronology (701 BC, E 11/19) misled Thiele to corrupt his internal biblical chronology to make it absolute.

Coucke failed to follow through in developing his near-solution to its full potential for unlocking the entire Dead Sea Scrolls-based Masoretic Text's chronology, or at least its Hebrew kings foundation as Thiele nearly did by 1943, independently of Coucke. But Coucke provided corroborating independent results anticipating Thiele's better work, further refined by Leslie McFall (1991) and R. C. Young (2003).

Dating Hiram's Temple contract with Solomon
Tyrian kings chronology synchronized to & confirming my correction of Thiele in 20 pages:

Valerius Coucke's 1928-published near-dating of Tyrian King Hiram's fall-to-fall (ff) 969/968 12th year Solomonic Temple construction contract was one year late (ff968/967) only due to his misreckoning as May (sic.) 1207 BC the Parian Marble's correct ca. June 1208 BC fall of Troy. This latter was by Justin quoting Trogus (18.3) 1 year after the ca. June 1209 founding of Tyre, which in turn by Josephus quoting Meander (Ag. Ap. I.18) was 241 years before Hiram's 12th year 1 Kings 5:1 contract with Solomon to build his Temple ca. June 1209 - 241 = spring/summer 968 BC (ff969/968). Just here David died by my 2005-2015 correction of the Coucke/Thiele/McFall/Young chronology by its wholesale 3 years later offset up to Uzziah's death. Thus: {[June 1208 fall of Troy] - 1 = June 1209 refoundation of Tyre} + 241 years until Hiram's 12th year Temple contract = June 968 = spring/summer ff969/968 1 Kgs. 5:1 accession of Solomon.

The Fig. 1 Tyrian kings chronology based on Josephus' copy of Meander's Tyrian King List using only Athenian, Tyrian, and Roman records, validates Coucke's method and confirms its result by use of my chronology: Hiram's certain ff969/988 12th year start of Solomon's Temple project invalidates the Coucke/Thiele/McFall/Young version of Thiele's chronology because by it Hiram was 2 years dead when required to receive Solomon's 1 Kgs. 9:10-14 20th year construction bonus (E, 8/19). By the Thiele chronology's unavoidable 1 Kgs. 6:1 Temple assembly start, that bonus fell in Solomon's 24th year, while by my chronology's 1 Kgs. 5:1 start, it fell 2 years before Hiram's death in Solomon's 20th (sec. 2.3). A tiny wrinkle in Assyrian chronology (701 BC, E 11/19) misled Thiele to corrupt his internal biblical chronology to make it absolute.

Coucke failed to follow through in developing his near-solution to its full potential for unlocking the entire Dead Sea Scrolls-based Masoretic Text's chronology, or at least its Hebrew kings foundation as Thiele nearly did by 1943, independently of Coucke. But Coucke provided corroborating independent results anticipating Thiele's better work, further refined by Leslie McFall (1991) and R. C. Young (2003).

Genesis 10 Global not Local Ethnology
    If you look through standard Bible atlases for maps describing the contents of Genesis 10 and think about what you find, you will notice something very strange. Genesis 10 follows the account of Noah’s Flood in 6-9 and carries the names of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth over into the start of the chapter. However, what you find in the atlases is a set of nations who lived relatively nearby Israel. Both Genesis and a verse in I Peter claim that the Flood reduced the population of the human race to only eight persons— a point of vast historical importance. That tiny family of eight once inhabited a single part of the earth; and the story of the Tower of Babel implies that, even when the population of this family grew sizeable, it was still living in the single location of Mesopotamia (Iraq).
If all the nationalities of mankind descend from a family living at one time in Mesopotamia, why do the Bible atlases concentrate only on nations surrounding Israel while neglecting the people of interior Europe, Siberia, the Far East, Polynesia, the Americas and interior Africa? We all agree that Israelites (*) in biblical times possessed no knowledge of those distant lands. However, knowledge of those distant lands is not at issue. Since the ancestors of all nationalities were once located in Mesopotamia, why does the text confine itself only to those nations familiar to Israel? The Bible atlases are really claiming that Genesis 10 differs radically from 6-9. After telling the story of the single family who survived the Flood, the text of Genesis is supposed to say nothing more about that family except to sample the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth living in proximity to Israel. We learn nothing about the history of Noah’s family except that a remote relationship exists between Noah’s sons and nations familiar to Israel.
[* This does not necessisarily mean such seafaring nations as the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Chinese, and others were ignorant of distant lands such as the Americas. There is much evidence of ancient contact between continents. Ancient worldwide rock art demonstrates the Egyptians and Chinese explored the Americas. The Chinese ‘Classic of Mountain and Seas’ or Shan Hai Jing mentions “Fusang” (North America) as was surveyed by the Chinese around 2500 B.C. The Chinese-Egyptian connection predates Moses a few hundred years suggesting Moses could have known about distant lands, such as China.The oppressive pharaoh noted in Exodus (1:2–2:23) was Seti I (1318–04), and the pharaoh during the Exodus was Ramses II (c. 1304–c. 1237). In short, Moses was probably born in the late 14th century BCE. Chinese historian Sima Qian’s (206 BC – AD 220.) description of the topography of the Xia empire (2070 to 1600 B.C.) suggests at least a second millennium B.C. Chinese-Egyptian connection. He notes, “Northwards the river is divided and becomes the nine rivers”… “Reunited, it forms the opposing river and flows into the sea.” – (Records of the Grand Historian). The river in question wasn’t China’s famed Yellow River, which flows from west to east. There is only one major river in the world that flows northwards, “The Nile.” Futher evidence for this exists with the Yin-Shang and the Sanxingdui bronze wares, which  date back to ca. 1400 BC, during the Shang Dynasty 1766 to 1122 BC (Bamboo Annals calculate 1556 to 1046 BC.). These objects appeared suddenly at that time in the alluvial plain of the Yellow River, in Henan Province, central China, and from several places in southern China at roughly the same time or slightly earlier. The bronze material is similar to Egyptian bronze and was obtained in Africa, bearing the highly radiogenic lead isotopic signatures of the Africa Archean cratons.]
This reading of Genesis 10 has made an unfortunate impression on modern scholars of ancient times. It makes it appear that Moses has combined a story about a Flood with an entirely different, almost unrelated body of knowledge. Secular scholars draw the unfortunate conclusion that the Flood story is an isolated myth brought forward only in a vague attempt to explain where nations known to Israel came from.(**) Christians may content themselves that the nations in Genesis 10 accurately reflect the bloodlines of Noah’s three sons. That belief, however, has little bearing on the general impression that Genesis 10 contains a less than universal account of nations with a Flood story put in front of it.
[** It is a false assumption that Moses was ignorant of geography and a further false assumption that the knowledge of Ptolemy outweighs early Dynastic geographical knowledge.]

My correction of Thiele's at first perfected but by afterthought marred biblical chronology builds upon its foundational part I, correcting the chronology of Sennacherib's first five years, which revealed 702 BC as the true date of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, enabling correction of Dr. Edwin Thiele's error in his widely accepted chronology of the Hebrew kings. Part I proved that Sennacherib's third campaign, biblically recorded in king Hezekiah of Judah's 14th regnal year, did not take place in 701 BC as Thiele had trusted for the cornerstone of his chronology, but rather in 702 BC, vindicating and perfecting his work. The lion's share of credit for my having discovered the ultimate biblical chronology belongs to Thiele (1943) as given improvement and correction by his indirectly participating colleagues Valerius Coucke (1928), Leslie McFall (1991), and Rodger C. Young (2003) who advanced Thiele's work without essentially modifying its chronological structure (CTMY). CTMY made possible my solution (solved in 2005, perfected and first published in 2015). My results validate not only their work, but the Masoretic Text (MT) as confirmed by its majority Dead Sea Scrolls representation, on which this chronology is exclusively based, and into which this chronology was imperceptibly (indeed mystifyingly according to over 2 millennia of effort since the 3rd century BC LXX futile effort to make sense of it) woven into the MT as a watermark or hologram of its authenticity.

By his Assyrian cornerstone thus out of place, no other Assyrian synchronism would fit Thiele's at first perfect internal biblical chronology, "IBC", (my solution has 8). So he emended it in Jotham's reign (2 Kgs. 15:30-33), adding 4 years to Jotham to shift Ahab's disastrous 853 Battle of Qarqar (Shalmaneser III's 6th year) immediately before Ahab's 1 Kgs. 22 fatal battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad. Thus Shalmaneser's 18th year receipt of Jehu's tribute in 841, 12 (= 18 - 6) years after Qarqar by IBC, harmonized Jehu's 841 accession with his 14th year of Hezekiah set in 701! But Thiele failed to notice that annihilation of Ahab's powerful military at Qarqar per Shalmaneser's 6th year annals, made impossible his 1 Kgs. 22 participation in his fatal war with Benhadad. Likewise Shalmaneser's 18th year annals report of Hazael's total incapacitation for his 2 Kgs. 9:15-16 wounding of Israel's Joram in battle, discredited Jehu's having killed both Joram and his sickbed visitor Judah's king Ahaziah in 841 (Appx. H, chart 2/19), stripping Thiele of all Assyrian synchronisms.

The Chronology Comparison Chart Fig. 3 exposing the difference between my and Thiele's chronologies, shows my two simple structural corrections: First Thiele's 701 BC synchronism with Hezekiah's year 14 is corrected to 702 BC. Second, Thiele's 4 fabricated years by which he (I believe honestly) found a self-deceptive pretext to lengthen Jotham's reign in order to contrive a specious but futile 853 BC Battle of Qarqar synchronism in Ahab's year of death in battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad, are removed: Jotham's 2 Kgs. 15:30 actuarial 20th year (4 years after Jotham's death) used to synchronize Pekah's death in his official chronicle, in my chronology properly observes Jotham's official 2 Kgs. 15:33 16th regnal year of death.

One of the earliest and ultimately most fruitful clues in not only exposing Thiele's error, but confirming my entire resulting Bible chronology, was the common but hitherto unproven observation that the two fallow years in succession of 2 Kings 19:29 in Hezekiah's 14th year (Sabbatical years 7 & 1 in Fig. 3) suggested the Lev. 25:2-13 49th year of a jubilee cycle (fallow), followed in the next year by its figurative 49 + 1 = “50th” in the post-Sabbatical 7 + 1 = “8th” per Lev. 25:20-22, namely Hezekiah's 15th calendrical year (also fallow), observed on its Tishri 10 by celebration of the 49-year jubilee cycle just completed in the first year of its next sabbatical cycle, whose purpose was to establish and regulate perpetual and inalienable land ownership in ancient Israel on a jubilee cyclical ceremonial basis. This exposed the purpose of the Ezra 7:7 mission from Babylon to Jerusalem on the same 49 year cycle as that of 2 Kgs. 19:29 (arguably prophesied in Daniel 9:25 dating the start of its 70 Lev. 25 Sabbatical weeks of years, namely 10 Jubilee cycles), and likewise that of the first 2 years of Bar-Kokhba's revolt against Hadrian (introducing Appx. A), thus triply confirming Moses' jubilee cycle in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's sabbatical cycles.

Appendix C shows the 4 structural charts for my chronology. Appendix D offers scholarly confirmation of Thiele's biblical chronological method. Appendix E examines Sennacherib's 702 BC 3rd campaign synchronism with Hezekiah' 14th year. Appendix F discovers my 21 April 1443 Exodus date shown in Fig. 7 in proper synchronism with Amenhotep II's short and final military campaign begun on 11 November 1444 (the “Amenophis” of Mantheo, clearly the Exodus pharaoh as preserved in Josephus' “Contra Apion”). Appendix G concisely details all 25 of my extrabiblical synchronisms validating the breakthrough nature of my discovery. And Appendix H presents the complete set of my 19 key chronology charts, where my correction of Thiele in a span of 40 years is illustrated in my Chronology Comparison Chart “CCC,” shown as Fig. 11/19, also shown as Fig. [fig:Chronology-Comparison-Chart].

Appendix [sec:25-Extrabiblical-Synchronisms], “Synchronisms for Thiele's & my chronologies” lists and locates expositions of its 2 Egyptian, 8 Assyrian, 6 Babylonian, 1 Tyrian, 3 Persian, 1 Sabbatical, and two pairs = 4 of Jubilee synchronisms (49th & 50th year Jubilee pairs, extrabiblically anchored to Bar Kokhba's spring-summer of 132 AD 49th Jubilee cycle year launching his revolt against Hadrian) totalling 25. These include synchronism of the Exodus with Amenhotep II's year 10, a Tyrian and Sabbatical year synchronism with Solomon's accession, Assyrian and Jubilee synchronisms in Hezekiah's 14th and 15th years, and Persian and Jubilee synchronisms of Ezra 7:7; exposing 3 historical Jubilee years in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's 1857 Sabbatical cycle.

My correction of Thiele's at first perfected but by afterthought marred biblical chronology builds upon its foundational part I, correcting the chronology of Sennacherib's first five years, which revealed 702 BC as the true date of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, enabling correction of Dr. Edwin Thiele's error in his widely accepted chronology of the Hebrew kings. Part I proved that Sennacherib's third campaign, biblically recorded in king Hezekiah of Judah's 14th regnal year, did not take place in 701 BC as Thiele had trusted for the cornerstone of his chronology, but rather in 702 BC, vindicating and perfecting his work. The lion's share of credit for my having discovered the ultimate biblical chronology belongs to Thiele (1943) as given improvement and correction by his indirectly participating colleagues Valerius Coucke (1928), Leslie McFall (1991), and Rodger C. Young (2003) who advanced Thiele's work without essentially modifying its chronological structure (CTMY). CTMY made possible my solution (solved in 2005, perfected and first published in 2015). My results validate not only their work, but the Masoretic Text (MT) as confirmed by its majority Dead Sea Scrolls representation, on which this chronology is exclusively based, and into which this chronology was imperceptibly (indeed mystifyingly according to over 2 millennia of effort since the 3rd century BC LXX futile effort to make sense of it) woven into the MT as a watermark or hologram of its authenticity.

By his Assyrian cornerstone thus out of place, no other Assyrian synchronism would fit Thiele's at first perfect internal biblical chronology, "IBC", (my solution has 8). So he emended it in Jotham's reign (2 Kgs. 15:30-33), adding 4 years to Jotham to shift Ahab's disastrous 853 Battle of Qarqar (Shalmaneser III's 6th year) immediately before Ahab's 1 Kgs. 22 fatal battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad. Thus Shalmaneser's 18th year receipt of Jehu's tribute in 841, 12 (= 18 - 6) years after Qarqar by IBC, harmonized Jehu's 841 accession with his 14th year of Hezekiah set in 701! But Thiele failed to notice that annihilation of Ahab's powerful military at Qarqar per Shalmaneser's 6th year annals, made impossible his 1 Kgs. 22 participation in his fatal war with Benhadad. Likewise Shalmaneser's 18th year annals report of Hazael's total incapacitation for his 2 Kgs. 9:15-16 wounding of Israel's Joram in battle, discredited Jehu's having killed both Joram and his sickbed visitor Judah's king Ahaziah in 841 (Appx. H, chart 2/19), stripping Thiele of all Assyrian synchronisms.

The Chronology Comparison Chart Fig. 3 exposing the difference between my and Thiele's chronologies, shows my two simple structural corrections: First Thiele's 701 BC synchronism with Hezekiah's year 14 is corrected to 702 BC. Second, Thiele's 4 fabricated years by which he (I believe honestly) found a self-deceptive pretext to lengthen Jotham's reign in order to contrive a specious but futile 853 BC Battle of Qarqar synchronism in Ahab's year of death in battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad, are removed: Jotham's 2 Kgs. 15:30 actuarial 20th year (4 years after Jotham's death) used to synchronize Pekah's death in his official chronicle, in my chronology properly observes Jotham's official 2 Kgs. 15:33 16th regnal year of death.

One of the earliest and ultimately most fruitful clues in not only exposing Thiele's error, but confirming my entire resulting Bible chronology, was the common but hitherto unproven observation that the two fallow years in succession of 2 Kings 19:29 in Hezekiah's 14th year (Sabbatical years 7 & 1 in Fig. 3) suggested the Lev. 25:2-13 49th year of a jubilee cycle (fallow), followed in the next year by its figurative 49 + 1 = “50th” in the post-Sabbatical 7 + 1 = “8th” per Lev. 25:20-22, namely Hezekiah's 15th calendrical year (also fallow), observed on its Tishri 10 by celebration of the 49-year jubilee cycle just completed in the first year of its next sabbatical cycle, whose purpose was to establish and regulate perpetual and inalienable land ownership in ancient Israel on a jubilee cyclical ceremonial basis. This exposed the purpose of the Ezra 7:7 mission from Babylon to Jerusalem on the same 49 year cycle as that of 2 Kgs. 19:29 (arguably prophesied in Daniel 9:25 dating the start of its 70 Lev. 25 Sabbatical weeks of years, namely 10 Jubilee cycles), and likewise that of the first 2 years of Bar-Kokhba's revolt against Hadrian (introducing Appx. A), thus triply confirming Moses' jubilee cycle in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's sabbatical cycles.

Appendix C shows the 4 structural charts for my chronology. Appendix D offers scholarly confirmation of Thiele's biblical chronological method. Appendix E examines Sennacherib's 702 BC 3rd campaign synchronism with Hezekiah' 14th year. Appendix F discovers my 21 April 1443 Exodus date shown in Fig. 7 in proper synchronism with Amenhotep II's short and final military campaign begun on 11 November 1444 (the “Amenophis” of Mantheo, clearly the Exodus pharaoh as preserved in Josephus' “Contra Apion”). Appendix G concisely details all 25 of my extrabiblical synchronisms validating the breakthrough nature of my discovery. And Appendix H presents the complete set of my 19 key chronology charts, where my correction of Thiele in a span of 40 years is illustrated in my Chronology Comparison Chart “CCC,” shown as Fig. 11/19, also shown as Fig. 3.

Appendix G, “Synchronisms for Thiele's & my chronologies” lists and locates expositions of its 2 Egyptian, 8 Assyrian, 6 Babylonian, 1 Tyrian, 3 Persian, 1 Sabbatical, and two pairs = 4 of Jubilee synchronisms (49th & 50th year Jubilee pairs, extrabiblically anchored to Bar Kokhba's spring-summer of 132 AD 49th Jubilee cycle year launching his revolt against Hadrian) totalling 25. These include synchronism of the Exodus with Amenhotep II's year 10, a Tyrian and Sabbatical year synchronism with Solomon's accession, Assyrian and Jubilee synchronisms in Hezekiah's 14th and 15th years, and Persian and Jubilee synchronisms of Ezra 7:7; exposing 3 historical Jubilee years in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's 1857 Sabbatical cycle.

First  Volume in a series of Ancient Near Eastern History and Biblical Chronology.
In this volume, the author attempts to fill a void in human knowledge surrounding the development of Noah s family and the origin of human nations after the Flood. Based on years of study, the book is a synthetic reconstruction of the events and people of this largely forgotten period of history.
Dr. Pilkey has post graduate degrees in both literature and theology In addition he has carried out deep studies into such fields as art chronology mythology and philosophy so that he is uniquely qualified to advance a project that was begun by the Christian euhemerists of the 18th century but has been studiously neglected during the last one hundred years.
Readers will find that this book is based on young earth creationism and that the author espouses a tightly woven chronology in which the Noachian deluge occurs at 2518 B.C. Pilkey realizes that “to dispute high chronology with a Darwinian is like blaspheming against the idea of eternity, because vast time periods have become for the Darwinist “a substitute for eternity.”
He writes a compelling apologetic for what he calls “Noahic science,” which he feels is “the atomic physics of world history.” Pilkey believes that Noahic science when fully conceived will liberate us from Darwinism so that we will then be able to see the past for what it really was.
The author carefully and brilliantly exegetes such archaeological sources as the Gundestrup Caldron and Mesopotamian Seals. While paying attention to Scripture, Pilkey demonstrates that the myths and king lists of ancient societies support the Biblical pattern of monophylogenetic human origins. 
Pilkey attempts to bring identity between such widely separated fields as human mythology, Biblical truth and the plight of modern man. Fascinating parallels are drawn, for example, between Peleg’s struggle with Canaan and Elijah’s later conflict with Jezebel, herself a Canaanite descendant.
To those who would argue that the Bible should be treated as a book of salvation alone, ignoring any of its historical, cultural, or related features, Pilkey answers as follows: “The Bible functions as a book of salvation precisely because it is a book of science, literature, and philosophy. True science is salvation from ignorance; historical literature is salvation from pagan amnesia; and true philosophy is the Logos Jesus Christ, the Truth, and Savior. One reason that secularism has spread in our day is that persons of religious background have become spiritually and therefore, intellectually lazy, unimaginative, and apathetic toward key issues of faith.”
Specialists in history or mythology would do well to read the book consecutively. Interested general readers, however, might wisely begin with the last three chapters (7, 8, and 9) to achieve an overview of the principals involved before attempting to assimilate the array of details found in the earlier chapters.
Creationists and others desiring to understand Noah’s family and its contribution to present-day national governments will find this volume indispensable. All students of ancient literature and mythology should consider their work deficient if they do not study this truly landmark endeavor.

Biblical archaeology has made tremendous contributions to biblical scholarship. It has helped us in the understanding of the Bible message, in the reconstruction of biblical history, in fixing the chronology of biblical events, and in recovering biblical places. The focus of this article is an examination of archaeological discoveries in Shiloh and its relation to biblical studies. The article seeks to answer the following questions: What does the Bible actually say about Shiloh? What are the results of the archaeological excavations in Shiloh? How have they contributed to biblical scholarship? Furthermore, I will provide a reconstruction of Shiloh’s history, highlight the role of Shiloh in history, fix exodus’ date and determine whether Shiloh was God’s elected residence in this article. The method that is adopted in this article is a descriptive-historical method. The focus of the description will be on the results of the excavations of Shiloh from 1922 to 2008.
Biblical Shiloh is one important city in Ancient Palestine that has been recovered. It was both an administrative and a religious center for the Israelite tribes from Joshua’s time until the loss of the ark around 1050 B.C. It has been excavated many times in the past. It is presently identified with Khirbet Seilun in the Middle East. Through the excavations of biblical Shiloh, many material remains from the Early Bronze Age (3150-2200 B.C.) to the Byzantine church period (A.D. 380-420).
Consequent various excavations carried out in Shiloh, some issues are raised. These issues are very significant to biblical studies. These issues are presented in question forms as follows: 
• Was Shiloh occupied before the Israelite settlement in Iron 1 Age Period (1200-900 B.C.)?
• Were the Israelites the first to build extensively at Shiloh?
• Was there any Temple at Shiloh in the Iron I Age period (1200-900 B.C.)?
• After the loss of the ark, was Shiloh destroyed by the Philistines? Did it gradually come into ruin after the loss of the ark?
The answers to these questions are as follows:
• Shiloh was first occupied but was already abandoned when the Israelites arrived there around 1200 B.C. after the conquest.
• The Israelites were not the first to build extensively at Shiloh. There were buildings and strong walls in Shiloh by the Middle Age IIC (1650-1550 B.C.).
• Shiloh was known as a place for cultic activities. In Shiloh, there had been the presence of Temple since the Middle Bronze II Age (1750-1550 B.C.).
• After the Philistines captured the ark and the defeating of Israelites at their hand, they pressed on up to the hills and burnt Shiloh to ashes.
Archaeological excavations of Shiloh have made tremendous contributions to biblical scholarship. It has helped to reconstruct the history of Shiloh. It has helped to establish the role of biblical Shiloh in history. It has helped to fix the Israelite exodus’ and conquest’s date. It has helped to establish that Jerusalem is the elected God’s residence and not Shiloh.

This is a paper answering the criticisms and challenges posed by Rick Lanser’s article The Seraiah Assumption as published on the Associates for Biblical Research website. In his article Mr. Lanser's directly challenges my assertion that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries of the Persian king Darius also known as 'the great' Artaxerxes. This Part I of my response.

The meaning of history is about the purpose and goal of history. According to the Old Testament this involves redeeming humanity and transforming civilization toward an eternal hope of a world in which every longing is fulfilled and every fear is no more. When the Old Testament is understood on its terms, it reveals a marvelous vision of that hope. To capture this vision as well as present credible reason for the hope, this book interweaves into one coherent exposition five strands of Old Testament studies usually separated into different books: theology, ethics, mission, history, apologetics.

Revista Vox Scripturae, v. 25, n. 1, 2017.
http://vox.flt.edu.br/edicao/31/volume-xxv-numero-1-abril-2017

Resumo
Na década de 1990, o estudioso Hans Barstad desenvolveu a ideia, proposta inicialmente por Robert P. Carroll, do “Mito da Terra Vazia”, em que a concepção de um território judeu abandonado com grande parte do povo exilado teria sido uma criação posterior de uma pequena comunidade judaica zelosa por Sião que havia retornado de Babilônia. Segundo essa teoria, a sociedade em Judá continuou funcionando normalmente com seus camponeses, artesãos, comerciantes e funcionários do Templo. No entanto, estudos recentes têm questionado essa hipótese e indicado — por meio de evidências arqueológicas, documentais e demográficas — um evento marcante na história de Israel que pode ser identificado com o exílio e a destruição apresentados na Bíblia Hebraica. Portanto, a presente comunicação tem como objetivos analisar essas descobertas e pesquisas recentes de forma panorâmica e demonstrar de que modo elas iluminam a compreensão do que significou, de fato, a destruição de Judá e o exílio da população daquela terra no século VI AEC.

Abstract
In the 1990s, the scholar Hans Barstad developed the idea, initially proposed by Robert P. Carroll, of the “Myth of the Empty Land”, in which the conception of an abandoned Jewish territory with much of the people exiled would have been a later creation of a small Jewish community zealous for Zion, who had returned from Babylon. According to this theory, society in Judah continued to function normally with its peasants, artisans, merchants and Temple officials. However, recent studies have challenged this hypothesis and indicated — through archaeological, documentary and demographic evidence — a striking event in the history of Israel that can be identified with the exile and destruction presented in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose of this paper is therefore to analyze these recent findings and researches in a panoramic way and to demonstrate how they illuminate the understanding of what the destruction of Judah and the exile of the people of that land meant in the sixth century BCE.

בן־שנה שאול במלכו ושתי שנים מלך על־ישראל
A year son was Saul when he became king and two years he reigned over
Israel
This text is regarded as a stereotypical reign formula for the kings in
Israel and Judah in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The first
part states the age of a person when he became king. The second part
states the number of years he reigned as king.
In 1Sam 13,1 the expression appears for the first time in the Hebrew
Bible. Problems:
1. בן־שנה is an accent unit, with a maqqēf between the two words, and
no number separates them. This is unique for this standard formula,
which usually is שנה [x] בן.
2. The period of Saul’s government is two years. Considering the many
actions of Saul in 1Sam 11–31 from the beginning of his kingship until
his death two years are too short.
As this article presents a new proposal. Future translations will
receive a new possibility. It is also a contribution for OT chronology:
How long did Saul reign?
Proposal of translation and understanding:
בן־שנה points to the time when Saul became an adult and שנים שתי
refers to this age times two.
Saul was בן־שנה = 20 years old, when he became king. Twenty years
of age marks the time when a man became adult. Saul reigned שתי
שנים, two times the adult age (בן־שנה), this is 2 × 20 = 40 years

Opinions regarding the exact dating of the activity of the prophet Hosea go mainly in two directions. One group of scholars puts it in the middle of the 8th century B.C., while the other prefers the next decades. Even though the difference is not huge, it is nonetheless very important. Both groups rely exclusively on the data given in the Book of Hosea and the knowledge about the history of the Divided Monarchy as it is presented in the Hebrew Bible. Until recently, another source of information was neglected, namely the Neo-Assyrian texts and sources. Taking them seriously into consideration, the solution given by, among others, Nadav Na’aman seems the most plausible. The early prophecies of Hosea should be connected with Israel’s disastrous defeat in its struggle with Assyria, which ended with the loss of large parts of its territory and the first big wave of forced deportations to Mesopotamia. The activity of the prophet Hosea should therefore be dated at the very beginning of the last decade of the Northern Kingdom (731-723 B.C.), hence in the context of the reign of king Hoshea, son of Elah. But quite differently to Na’aman, who suggests that the early scroll containing the message of the prophet was written in the North, possibly a short time after 720 B.C. when the Northern Kingdom collapsed, the author of this article avers that the “first edition of the book” was written in Mesopotamia at the very beginning of the process of consolidation of the Assyrian Diaspora. It means that the prophet Hosea was one of the Israelites who were deported to Mesopotamia by the Assyrians during the first wave of deportations. More than a hundred years later, his message was reinterpreted from a pro-Judaean (or pro-Jerusalem) perspective by the deportees who were brought to Mesopotamia by the Babylonians. The final elaboration of Hosea’s message, as we know it from the Book of Hosea, was made in the Persian, or possibly even in the Hellenistic period.

<b>Abstract/Intro:</b>  The observance of Sabbatical years in the Second Temple period is attested by a wide range of historical sources--in particular, the OT, the books of Maccabees, the text of Josephus, Rabbinic literature, and ancient inscriptions.  The record of Sabbatical year observances generated by these sources is not entirely unproblematic, but is substantially coherent.  Give or take a year, every observed Sabbatical year in the Second Temple era can be accommodated within the constraints of a fixed seven-year cycle.  Or, to put the point negatively, we have not found any documented observances of Sabbatical years which (give or take a year) do <i>not</i> occur a multiple of seven years away from one another.  That such a wide range of sources exhibits such a consistent pattern is noteworthy;  it suggests the observance of Sabbatical years is a genuine feature of Jewish history, which can be reconstructed with relative confidence.

Of course, mine is not the first attempt to reconstruct Israel’s Sabbatical cycle.  Zuckermann<fn>Zuckermann 1857:43-45.</fn> has proposed a Sabbatical cycle coincident with the year 458t/457t, which has been seconded by Blosser<fn>Blosser 1979:113.</fn> and Finegan.<fn>FHBC 116-126.</fn>  Meanwhile, Wacholder<fn>Wacholder 1973:153-196.</fn> has proposed a cycle a year removed from Zuckermann’s (i.e., a cycle coincident with 457t/456t), which has been seconded by Steinmann and Young.<fn>SFATP 188-191.</fn>  In the present paper, I critically assess the data cited by Wacholder, and ultimately side with Zuckermann’s cycle.  In the process, I propose a schema for the determination of the Seleucid Era (SE) conventions employed in 1 and 2 Maccabees.  If I am right in my acceptance of Zuckermann’s 458t-based Sabbatical cycle--and if that cycle was in existence prior to Ezra’s arrival in 458t--, then 534t/533t would have been the first observed Sabbatical year after Israel’s return from exile, and the 520t/519t Sabbatical year would have coincided with Haggai’s prophecy, where Haggai says Israel’s “seed” is “still in [its] barn” (Hagg. 2.19).  Furthermore, every public assembly in the 7th month in Ezra and Nehemiah coincides with a Sabbatical year (when the law is to be recited before the people: Deut. 31.10-13<fn>Graves 2007:467-487.</fn>), as does the covenant made in Nehemiah’s day when Israel promise to give the land its Sabbath rest (Neh. 10.31),<fn>See my <i>Post-Exilic History</i> (2015).</fn> which I take to be a further point in favour of Zuckermann’s cycle.

<b>Key Words:</b>  <i>Sabbatical years, Sabbatical cycle, Shmitah, dates, week, chronology, extra-Biblical, week, seventh year, Zuckermann, Wacholder, Ezra, Nehemiah, post-exilic, Second Temple</i>

This festschrift chapter (for Eugene Merrill, 2003) examines the book of Haggai in light of the precisely dated editorial frame that structures the entire text. Each of the five oracles the comprise the book is interpreted in light of the date forms of the narrative frame.