Should the Exodus and the Israelite Settlement Be Redated?

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On the surface, the radical redating of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan proposed by Emmanuel Anati in the accompanying article, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” is very attractive. It solves problems, there is no doubt. The question is, does it create other problems even more difficult than those it solves?

Professor Anati was prompted to examine the question of the date of the Exodus when he discovered a venerated mountain named Har Karkom near the Negev-Sinai border that bore a striking resemblance to the Mt. Sinai described in the Bible. Could Har Karkom be Mt. Sinai? Professor Anati wondered. The immediate problem with this suggestion is that the floruit of religious activity on Har Karkom that Anati documents ended in about 2000 B.C., and this date is about 750 years before the generally accepted date (G.A.D.) for the Exodus (in about 1250 B.C.). There was no human activity at Har Karkom—at least as demonstrated by the archaeological evidence—at any time near the 13th century B.C.

Professor Anati was also struck by the fact that, except for some minor Egyptian mining activity, there appears to have been no human occupation in Sinai in the 13th century B.C., the G.A.D. for the Exodus. Indeed, there was no human occupation in the Sinai, as demonstrated by the archaeological evidence, during the entire Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.).

In contrast, archaeologists have found abundant evidence of human occupation in the Sinai during almost every archaeological period both before and after the G.A.D. for the Exodus, that is, before and after the Late Bronze Age.^a

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With such evidence before him, Professor Anati must have said to himself, something sounds wrong with the G.A.D. for the Exodus.

This led Professor Anati to examine some events immediately following the period of the Israelite wandering in Sinai. After 40 years in the desert, according to the Biblical chronology, the Israelite tribes entered the Promised Land. According to the Biblical account, on entering Canaan they conquered and destroyed the cities of Jericho and Ai. However, extensive archaeological excavations have uncovered no evidence of cities at these sites—that is, the sites were unoccupied—during the G.A.D. for Israel’s settlement in Canaan.

Finally, Professor Anati asked whether the Exodus could be moved back to the third millennium B.C.^b (He is a little vague on exactly when in the third millennium, but never mind). This dating would be consistent with the conclusion that Har Karkom was, in fact, Mt. Sinai. Moreover, this would also solve the problem of Jericho and Ai, for there were dramatic destructions of major cities at these sites at the end of the Early Bronze Age (c. 2300–2200 B.C.). Thus, Professor Anati radically re-dates the Exodus and Israelite occupation of Canaan—moving it back about a thousand years—and concludes that Har Karkom was in fact Mt. Sinai. All very appealing.

The problem is, you can’t move two dates in ancient history without considering what this does to all other G.A.D.s. Ancient Near Eastern chronology is a tremendously complex chain of interlocking links constructed through generations of careful, scholarly labor. You can’t make a major change without considering what it does to all other links, both historical and archaeological. And not only in Palestine, for trade items relate archaeological deposits of one area with those of another. Historical texts also often tie the chronologies of various areas together. So it is important to see what any change in chronology does to those synchronisms. Professor Anati does not consider any of this.

If the Israelites entered Canaan a little before 2000 B.C., as Professor Anati suggests, then when did King David begin his reign? The G.A.D. for the beginning of David’s reign is about 1000 B.C. Would Professor Anati change this date? Or would he assign a thousand years to the period of the Judges? If he could move back King David’s reign (that is, the period of the Israelite monarchy), would the archaeological picture of the Near Eastern world “fit” the new date? And if King David’s reign were moved back, would he also move back the date of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem that is confidently dated by all to 587/6 B.C.?

Or consider the date of the enormously important archive of diplomatic correspondence written on clay tablets in Akkadian cuneiform and called the Amarna letters, for the site in Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, where they were found. The Amarna letters are generally dated to the 14th century B.C. and provide a detailed picture of Egyptian-Palestinian relations at the time. How would they fit into Professor Anati’s scheme? What was happening in the 14th century B.C., according to his revised chronology? And is what Anati says was happening in the 14th century consistent with the picture we get in the Amarna letters?

In short, it’s not so simple to reconstruct the chronology of the ancient Near East, especially in such a radical way. And Professor Anati has not even begun to consider the problems. That is why few responsible scholars with expertise in ancient Near Eastern chronology will leap to adopt Professor Anati’s suggestion. The danger is that laypeople will accept his proposal without appreciating the insuperable difficulties inherent in accepting such a major reconstruction.

Because Professor Anati has not really fleshed out his proposal, it is difficult to say more about it. However, a few scholars have made intensive efforts to revise ancient Near Eastern chronology; Professor Anati does not refer to these. The best known of these redating efforts was begun over 40 years ago by Immanuel Velikovsky. Donovan Courville, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California, subsequently suggested some modification to Velikovsky’s model specifically to take account of the archaeological evidence. More recently, Professor John Bimson of Trinity College in Bristol, England, has experimented with his own major chronological revisions. These chronological revisions would move the Exodus back only a few hundred years, not the 800 to 1,000 years Professor Anati proposes. Instead of radically changing the date of the Exodus, Courville and Bimson suggest major changes in the chronology of the archaeological periods in Palestine. A consideration of the Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson proposals serves to illustrate how difficult it is to reconstruct generally accepted chronologies that have been worked out with such care by generations of scholars. Not that there is no room for some minor adjustments. There is. But a radical reconstruction is most unlikely. And Professor Anati’s 060reconstruction is in some ways even more radical than the others I’ve mentioned.

The chronological revisions of Velikovsky (who died in 1979) and those of Courville and Bimson have enjoyed great popularity among the laity. This is another reason to examine the suggestions of these three men more closely.

The radical reconstructors, as I call Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson, have not been more successful than Anati in convincing even a small segment of the scholarly community of the correctness of their views. Explaining why is a complex undertaking, but the discussion below offers a start.

Immanuel Velikovsky was a physician and psychoanalyst who read very widely in the natural sciences, history and law. In the spring of 1940, while studying the Biblical account of the Exodus, he became convinced that some natural upheaval had occurred at the time of Moses and that this phenomenon should have been noted by Egyptian authors, as well as in the texts, myths, epics and folklore of other ancient peoples. So, over the next few years Velikovsky searched the records of one ancient people after another, locating what he thought to be references to the same catastrophic events reflected in the Bible. The results of Velikovsky’s research were published in Worlds in Collision¹ and in Ages in Chaos,² which presented his theories of cosmic upheavals in our solar system during historical times. At the same time, Velikovsky also developed his ideas about the catastrophic astronomic events that were reflected in the Exodus story.

According to Velikovsky, a large comet-like object, which later became the planet Venus, was ejected from Jupiter.³ As Moses prepared to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, this comet approached the earth. Earth passed through the comet’s tail, and a chain of cataclysms was set in motion. Red meteorite dust rained down, making rivers and seas appear to turn to blood. Then ash-like dust, burning meteorites and petroleum bombarded terror-stricken nations. Fires raged everywhere.⁴ As the earth plunged more deeply into the comet’s tail and approached its head, a pall of darkness fell, lasting for days; the earth’s rotation slowed, and earthquakes jolted the entire planet. Hurricane-force winds swept across the terrain. Huge tidal waves piled mountains of water on some areas, while leaving some former seabeds, such as that of the Red Sea, uncovered for brief times.⁵

When the earth emerged from the comet’s tail, the comet became visible to people on earth; it looked like a pillar of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Violent electrical discharges flashed between the earth and the comet, and also between the comet’s head and its own tail, creating a raging “battle” in the sky.⁶ The disturbance of the earth’s rotation generated so much heat that rocks melted, lava flowed from new as well as old volcanoes, new mountain ranges rose, and the seas boiled. The heat also made frogs, flies and other vermin propagate at a feverish rate. In addition, vermin hatched from eggs and larvae carried in the trailing atmosphere of the comet probably infested the earth.⁷ Clouds of water vapor and dust covered the earth for years, and in these clouds, reactions between the carbon and hydrogen from the tail of the comet produced carbohydrates that rained down as “heavenly food”—manna or ambrosia.⁸

Gradually the comet receded, but 52 years later its erratic orbit again brought it very close to colliding with the earth. This time the earth’s rotation gradually slowed to a brief complete stop, enabling Joshua and the Israelites to defeat their enemies while the sun appeared to stand still.⁹

When Velikovsky began searching for references in non-Biblical texts to the catastrophes recounted in the Books of Exodus and Joshua, he came across an Egyptian papyrus, known as the “Admonitions of Ipuwer,” that seemed to describe the same “plagues” reported in Exodus 7–12.¹⁰ Like the Exodus story, the “Admonitions of Ipuwer” tells of a period of confusion and disaster. It even refers to a time when “the river is blood” (cf. Exodus 7:20–21).¹¹ Grain had been destroyed (as in Exodus 9:25), cattle were abandoned in the fields (Exodus 9:19–21), and wailing pervaded the land (over the death of the firstborn sons, as in Exodus 12:29–30). Here, according to Velikovsky, was an obvious ancient reference to the Exodus.

But Velikovsky had a problem. The “Admonitions of Ipuwer” did not correlate to the G.A.D. for the Exodus. The “Admonitions of Ipuwer” text dates to the beginning of the Hyksos period, when Egypt was invaded by this Asiatic people. The G.A.D. for the beginning of the Hyksos period is about 1750 B.C.

Velikovsky either had to move the G.A.D. for the Exodus back or move the G.A.D. for the beginning of the Hyksos period, 1750 B.C., forward. At this point, Velikovsky began his radical tinkering with Egyptian chronology.

Velikovsky never suggested any significant changes in Biblical chronology. Nor did he concern himself much with Palestinian archaeology and the chronological problems the archaeological evidence presents for Biblical chronology. For the Biblical periods beginning with King David in about 1000 B.C., Velikovsky accepted, for the most part, the absolute dates a consensus of scholars produced, based on synchronisms with Mesopotamian (largely Assyrian) chronologies. For the period before 061David, Velikovsky accepted the dates produced by a literal reading of the Bible. This is one reason he has been so popular among people who are theologically committed to a literal reading of Scripture.

According to a literal reading of 1 Kings 6:1, the Exodus occurred 480 years before the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign. If Solomon’s reign began in about 960 B.C., a date that everyone can agree is at least very close to the truth, then the Exodus occurred in about 1440 or 1450 B.C. Velikovsky accepted this date.

Now let us talk for a moment about what I have been calling the G.A.D. of the Exodus. There is no direct archaeological evidence for the Exodus. Scholars have established a G.A.D. for the Exodus by placing it just before the Israelite settlement in Canaan.

There is abundant evidence for a change in the material culture of Palestine in about 1200 B.C. A new style of residential architecture, the so-called four-room house, appeared. Many new settlements started in the hill country of Palestine. The pottery changed somewhat. At some sites, cities were destroyed. Some scholars question whether these changes evidence the arrival of a new people; perhaps the upheavals were internal. But in any event, the emergence of the Israelites in Canaan began at about this time, 1200 B.C., or a little earlier.

Some textual evidence also seems to place the Exodus and settlement of Israel in the latter half of the 13th century B.C. Exodus 1:11 states that the Israelites in Egypt were forced to build the cities of Pithom and Ra’amses. Ra’amses is almost certainly Per-Ramesses, a city in the Nile delta constructed by the Pharaoh Ramesses II (c. 1290–1224 B.C.) as the new capital of Egypt. And the earliest reference to Israel in a non-Biblical text appears on the 1220 B.C. victory stele of Merneptah, son and successor of Ramesses II. On that stele, Israel is listed among the peoples and cities of Palestine. Accordingly, the settlement seems to have taken place about 1230–1200 B.C., and the Exodus must have occurred somewhat earlier, about 1270–1250 B.C.

Some scholars, however, date the beginning of the settlement period somewhat earlier—to perhaps 1300 B.C. or so. Supporters of this dating usually argue for a multistage Israelite settlement of Palestine with the last group leaving Egypt in the mid-13th century.¹² If we accept this view, at least one phase of the Exodus might have occurred as early as about 1350 B.C. However, this is still a hundred years later than the traditional date of about 1450 B.C., which is based on a literal reading of the passage from 1 Kings 6.

Velikovsky did not concern himself with these 062problems. He simply accepted the date of 1450 B.C. as the date of the Exodus. Since he correlated the Exodus (in 1450 B.C.) with the beginning of the Hyksos period (based on his study of such Egyptian texts as the “Admonitions of Ipuwer,” supposedly referring to the cataclysms that accompanied the Exodus), he moved the beginning of the Hyksos period forward, from 1750 B.C. to 1450 B.C.

Velikovsky also argued that the Hyksos were the Biblical Amalekites who, according to the Bible, fought against the Israelites in Sinai during the Exodus (Exodus 17:8–16), and were later defeated by Saul (1 Samuel 15:5–9) and David (1 Samuel 30:1–20). Velikovsky made this identification of the Hyksos with the Amalekites because he felt that the departing Israelites should have run into the Hyksos, who were entering Egypt at the same time. According to the Bible, the Amalekites were the only large force the Israelites encountered in Sinai. So, he reasoned, the Amalekites and the Hyksos must have been the same people. Furthermore, medieval Arabic legends state that the Amalekites left Arabia because of plagues similar to those in the Exodus account. Since the Hyksos were entering Egypt from the direction of Arabia during a time of plagues, and the Amalekites were leaving Arabia and heading towards Sinai and Egypt also during a time of plagues, Velikovsky argued that the Hyksos and the Amalekites had to be identical.¹³

As a result of his identification of the Hyksos with the Biblical Amalekites, Velikovsky had to date the end of the Hyksos period to about 1020 B.C., the approximate time when King Saul began his reign. The G.A.D. for the end of the Hyksos period, however, is about 1580 B.C. Velikovsky had to move the end of the Hyksos period down from about 1580 B.C. to 1020–1000 B.C., just as he had moved the beginning of the Hyksos period from 1750 B.C. to 1450 B.C. In the end, he was forced to contend that post-Hyksos Egyptian chronology was almost 600 years too high.

Once he had moved the Hyksos period down, he had to make other adjustments. After the Hyksos left Egypt, the famous 18th Dynasty of Egypt began to rule the country. Velikovsky had to move the 18th Dynasty (G.A.D., c. 1580–1320 B.C.) down to the period of the Hebrew monarchy in the tenth-ninth century B.C. He argued that the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who is generally thought to have reigned from 1503 to 1482 B.C., was really the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon in the tenth century B.C.¹⁴ And the 14th-century B.C. Egyptian Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaton he made contemporaries of the mid-ninth-century B.C. rulers Ahab of Israel, Jehoshaphat of Judah and Shalmaneser III of Assyria.¹⁵

It is important to note that Velikovsky did not significantly revise Biblical chronology—or Mesopotamian chronology, for that matter. His drastic revisions were all of Egyptian chronology. The only Biblical date he changed was that of the Exodus; he moved it to 1450 B.C., a mere 100 or 200 years earlier than the date most critical scholars would give it and precisely the date determined by a literalist reading of 1 Kings 6:1.¹⁶

The second point to note is that Velikovsky’s dating, both of the Exodus to 1450 B.C. and of the Israelite settlement to about 1400 B.C., solves none of the problems that the archaeological evidence has presented to the Biblical account. The 1450–1400 B.C. dates are still within the Late Bronze Age (whose G.A.D. is 1550 to 1200 B.C.). There is no more evidence of human occupation in Sinai in 1450 to 0631400 B.C. than in 1250 to 1200 B.C. There was no city at Ai in 1400 B.C., any more than there was in 1200 B.C. At Jericho there may have been a small insignificant settlement in 1400 B.C., but the last major destruction of urban Jericho occurred roughly between 1600 and 1550 B.C.

Velikovsky did not even contend that his revised Egyptian chronology solved any of these problems.

The revisions Velikovsky made have been rejected—with good reason—by virtually all qualified Egyptologists. Let me present a few arguments that illustrate why.

As a result of his redating of Egyptian history, Velikovsky dates the famous Amarna letters to the mid-ninth century B.C. As noted earlier, the G.A.D. for the Amarna letters is the 14th century. If Velikovsky’s redating of Egyptian history and the Amarna letters were correct, the conditions the letters describe would “fit” with what the Bible describes as happening during the mid-ninth century and with what happened in Assyria (Mesopotamia) at that time.

But they don’t!

The Amarna letters contain the names of a number of Near Eastern rulers,¹⁷ but these names do not match the ninth-century rulers mentioned in the Bible and Assyrian records. For example, Jehoshaphat ruled Judah from Jerusalem according to the Bible, while the Amarna letters refer to the ruler of Jerusalem as Abdu-Hepa. Velikovsky attempts to explain the discrepancy by arguing that ancient Near Eastern kings usually bore many names.¹⁸ Abdu-Hepa is really another name for Jehoshaphat, says Velikovsky. However, while it is possible that Jehoshaphat had another name we don’t know about, it is very unlikely that it was Abdu-Hepa. The Bible indicates that Jehoshaphat was a dedicated Yahwist, attempting to suppress idolatry in Judah (1 Kings 22:43, 2 Chronicles 19:4). Could he have received such favorable notice from the Biblical authors if he had chosen the throne name of Abdu-Hepa, which means “Servant of (the goddess) Hepa”?¹⁹

Velikovsky has similar troubles with his attempted synchronisms with Mesopotamian history. From abundant Assyrian inscriptions we know that the ruler of Assyria in the mid-ninth century was Shalmaneser III. But in the Amarna letters the ruler of this area was Asshur-uballit. In the mid-ninth century, Babylon was ruled by Nabu-apal-iddin, then Marduk-zakir-shumi. However, the name of the ruler of Babylon in the Amarna letters is Kadashman-Enlil, then Burnaburiash. Velikovsky asserts that Shalmaneser III and Burnaburiash are really two names for the same person—that Shalmaneser took the name Burnaburiash after conquering Babylon.²⁰ Although Shalmaneser III may well have had more than one name, it is extremely unlikely that he always used one name (Burnaburiash) in the Amarna letters when writing to the Egyptian Pharaoh and another name (Shalmaneser) in his inscriptions.

Even if we could accept the possibility that one or two rulers are referred to in the Amarna letters by names totally different from those in the Bible and Assyrian records, it is difficult to believe that virtually every name in the Amarna letters would be different from its counterpart in ninth-century B.C. Mesopotamian and Biblical sources. The fact is that not one royal name in the Amarna letters is referred to in the mid-ninth-century listings in the Bible or in Assyrian inscriptions.

Velikovsky encounters the same problem with place names that he confronts with personal names. He argues 064that Ahab, the mid-ninth-century B.C. king of the northern kingdom of Israel, is called Rib-Addi in the Amarna letters. However, in the Amarna letters, Rib-Addi is king of Gubla (or Gubal), not king of Israel. So Velikovsky argues that Gubla is really another name for Jezreel, a city in Israel that Ahab used as a royal residence (1 Kings 18:45–46). But it is well known that Gubla (Gebal in Hebrew and Phoenician) is the ancient name for the Lebanese city of Byblos. Indeed, the Bible itself refers to Byblos as Gebal (Joshua 13:5, Ezekiel 27:9, Psalms 83:8), and Assyrian texts clearly indicate that Gubla or Gubal was Byblos. An early 11th-century B.C. inscription describing an Assyrian campaign in Lebanon refers to Gubal among other Lebanese cities.²¹ And ninth-century B.C. texts recounting the military conquests of the Assyrian monarchs Asshurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III place Gubal on the coast of Lebanon along with Tyre and Sidon.²² Another indication that the Gubal of the Amarna letters was in Lebanon rather than in Israel is the fact that when Rib-Addi of the Amarna letters was forced to flee his city,²³ he went to Beirut, which is near Byblos, but not near Jezreel. Moreover, in one of Shalmaneser III’s inscriptions, which are written in Akkadian just as the Amarna letters are, Ahab is referred to as Ahab of Israel, not Rib-Addi of Gubal!²⁴ It is not wrong, but wrong-headed, to reject all of this evidence for the identification of Gubal with Byblos and opt instead for its identification with Jezreel, an equation unattested in any ancient text.

Overall, the Amarna letters clearly evidence Egyptian control of Syria-Palestine; the Bible, however, knows of no such control during the ninth century B.C. In the Amarna letters, the rulers of Gezer, Lachish, Shechem and other cities in Palestine write directly to the Pharaoh, sometimes complaining about the actions of the ruler of Jerusalem.²⁵ The Bible, in contrast, indicates Jehoshaphat was king of all Judah, and Ahab ruled all Israel. How could their administrations function if deputies in various cities in their realms were constantly going directly to the Egyptian Pharaoh with their problems? In short, the picture of Egyptian-Palestinian relationships we get from the Amarna letters is far different from the one we get from the Bible during the Israelite monarchy.

But these are just the beginning of Velikovsky’s problems. He has even more difficulties with the archaeological evidence, which he never really understood.

Archaeologists call the mid-ninth century B.C. Iron Age II. The mid-14th century B.C. belongs to the Late Bronze Age. In stratified excavations in Palestine, scarabs and other objects bearing the names of 18th and 19th Dynasty Pharaohs have been found with Late Bronze Age artifacts. These objects commonly turn up in strata below (that is, earlier than) Iron Age strata. So the 18th and 19th Dynasty Pharaohs must have lived before the Iron Age—or objects showing their names would not be underneath Iron Age remains. It is clear from this archaeological evidence that these Egyptian Pharaohs could not have been contemporaneous with the Israelite kings of the mid-ninth century (as Velikovsky contends they were) if the Israelite rulers lived during the Palestinian Iron Age.^c

Velikovsky never really addressed this problem. It has been recognized by some of his followers, however.²⁶ Two of them, Courville and Bimson, try to avoid the difficulty with this archaeological evidence by redating the various archaeological periods. Courville and Bimson, like Velikovsky, do not dispute the absolute dates generally accepted for Biblical history, except the date of the Exodus. Like Velikovsky, they date the Exodus to about 1450 B.C., 100 or 200 years earlier than most scholars would place it. While Velikovsky attempted to redate Egyptian chronology so that it would coincide with what he regarded as Egyptian references to Biblical events, Courville and Bimson attempt to redate archaeological periods in an effort to make the archaeological evidence fit better with the Biblical account, as well as with Velikovsky’s synchronisms.

Both Courville and Bimson revise archaeological chronologies so as to equate the Late Bronze Age—rather than the Iron Age—with the period of the Israelite monarchy. They differ, however, on which archaeological period was that of the Exodus.

Courville places the Exodus at the end of the Early Bronze Age, thus dating the end of the Early Bronze Age to about 1400 B.C. instead of to about 2300–2200 B.C., which is its G.A.D.^d Courville’s revision of the chronology of archaeological periods is shown in the chart.²⁷

As this chart shows, Courville²⁸ moves down the archaeological periods and squeezes them into a much 065shorter time frame. But this compression creates more problems than it solves. Take Jericho, for example. Jericho was a major city that suffered total destruction at the end of Early Bronze III. According to Courville’s chronology, this is the destruction by Joshua in about 1400 B.C. (shortly after his dating of the Exodus in 1450 B.C.). Courville’s redating of the archaeological periods effectively solves the problem of the destruction of Jericho by Joshua’s armies.

But, according to the Bible, Jericho was cursed (Joshua 6:26), and it remained in ruins until it was rebuilt by Hiel in the reign of King Ahab (1 Kings 16:34). Based on the G.A.D. for the United Monarchy, 1000 B.C., the rebuilding would have been carried on in the mid-ninth century B.C. According to Courville, this rebuilding would have occurred in the Late Bronze Age. During the preceding period, the Middle Bronze Age, the site should have lain in ruins, according to Courville’s hypothesis. But exactly the reverse is true. Archaeologists have found major occupation layers and tombs from the Middle Bronze Age (MB II) at Jericho. On the other hand, very few Late Bronze remains were found at Jericho. Thus, Courville still has a problem with Jericho: According to his own chronology, Jericho was occupied when the Bible says it was in ruins, and unoccupied at the time the Bible says it was rebuilt.²⁹

Another site that presents problems for Courville’s chronology is Samaria. According to the Bible, King Omri of the northern kingdom of Israel made Samaria the capital of Israel in about 879 B.C., as scholars agree, and it remained the capital of Israel until 721 B.C. when the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians. According to Courville’s dating of the various archaeological periods, Samaria would have served as the capital of Israel during the Late Bronze Age. But no Late Bronze Age remains were uncovered during excavations at Samaria.³⁰ All the remains are from the Iron Age. The Iron Age date of the earliest building levels so far discovered at Samaria fits the conventional dates for archaeological periods, but not Courville’s revised ones.

Again, these are only examples of the insuperable obstacles to the acceptance of Courville’s reconstructed archaeological chronology.

More recently, Professor Bimson attempted still another reconstruction of archaeological periods in an effort to make the archaeological evidence conform to the Biblical record. Like Velikovsky and Courville, Bimson would place the Exodus in about 1450 B.C., with the period of the settlement beginning in about 1400 B.C. What Bimson moved around, as Courville does, are the dates of the archaeological periods. The chart 066shows how Bimson experimentally dated the archaeological periods in contrast to the conventional dating for the periods and to the dating by Courville.

According to this reconstruction, the Israelite conquest of Canaan occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age—in about 1430–1400 B.C., as Bimson dated it. But, if the archaeological site generally accepted as Ai is correctly identified, then there was no city at Ai during the Middle Bronze Age for Joshua to conquer. So this hardly solves all the problems that archaeology poses for the Biblical text.

Like Courville, Bimson dated the Divided Monarchy to the Late Bronze Age. According to Bimson’s reconstruction, Samaria should have been the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel during the Late Bronze Age. But no Late Bronze Age remains were found at Samaria.

Bimson is aware of the difficulties Samaria presents for his thesis.³¹ He argues that the limited excavations in the lower city at Samaria may have missed the Late Bronze deposits, and that on the citadel the activities of the later Iron Age builders (whom he regards as the Assyrians) may have removed all traces of the earlier occupation.³² In support of his contention, he cites the situation on the citadel at Hazor where “Iron Age builders have in places completely removed the remains of the LBA [Late Bronze Age] city by massive leveling operations, so that Iron Age remains are found directly above those of the Middle Bronze Age.”³³

The significant words in the above quotation are “in places”! In fact, Yigael Yadin, the excavator of Hazor, found much evidence of Late Bronze occupation on the citadel at Hazor, as well as in the lower city.³⁴ It is extremely unlikely that all traces of such an extensive Israelite occupation at Samaria as the Bible describes would completely disappear over an area as large as that excavated at this site. Buildings could be demolished, stones reused, but something (especially pottery sherds) would remain. Some Early Bronze sherds survived under the Iron Age building levels at Samaria. Why didn’t a number of Late Bronze fragments survive? Bimson’s attempt to explain away the failure of the excavators to find Late Bronze remains at Samaria is totally unconvincing. And the lack of Late Bronze strata at Samaria is devastating to his synchronization of Late Bronze II with the time of King Omri and King Ahab of Israel.

Dibon presents another problem for both Bimson and Courville. Dibon was the birthplace of Mesha, King of Moab and a contemporary of Ahab in the mid-ninth century B.C. (2 Kings 3:4). Mesha rebelled against Israel and established an independent state in Moab. He recorded his victory on a stele, known as the Mesha stele, found at Dibon in 1868.³⁵

If the episode regarding Mesha, as told in the Bible and confirmed by the Mesha stele, is true, and if Courville’s and Bimson’s dating of the Late Bronze Age to the mid-ninth century B.C. is correct, there should be a major Late Bronze Age city at Dibon. In fact, modern excavations at Dibon have found no traces of occupation there during the Late Bronze Age.³⁶

Indeed, there is a gap in occupation between the Middle Bronze I period and the Iron Age throughout southern Transjordan; there is almost nothing here from the Late Bronze Age. Yet southern Transjordan is where the ancient kingdoms of Edom, Moab and Ammon were supposedly located in the Late Bronze Age, according to both Courville’s and Bimson’s chronology.³⁷ This presents another major difficulty for these revised datings of archaeological periods. Edom, Moab and Ammon were in more or less continuous conflict with Israel during the period of the United and Divided Monarchies. But there is almost no archaeological evidence of their existence in the Late Bronze Age in southern Transjordan.

According to Bimson’s chronology, the Israelite advance into Canaan occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze II period. The Bible tells us that the Israelite advance was impeded by strong local kingdoms in southern Transjordan (Numbers 20–21). But there were no strong kingdoms in this area in the Middle Bronze II, if we are to judge by the archaeological evidence.

The situation is somewhat the same in the Negev. Beersheba, which figures in Biblical accounts from patriarchal times through the period of the Monarchy, was not occupied during the Middle or Late Bronze Age.³⁸ At Beersheba there is an occupational gap between the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Bimson’s reconstruction hardly solves all of the problems the conventional dates for archaeological periods present to the Biblical account.

Moreover, the Iron Age itself creates difficulties for Bimson and Courville. They are forced to squeeze the Iron Age into the period from about 730–700 B.C. to 586 B.C. A mere 125 years is an extremely short period of time for the archaeological development of the Iron Age; the G.A.D. for the Iron Age is from 1200 B.C. to 586 B.C., a period of more than 600 years.

Moreover, if we were to accept such a late date for the beginning of the Iron Age, we would have to revise Greek chronology as well—and in impossible ways. Imported Mycenaean wares have been found in great quantities in Palestinian Late Bronze II deposits.³⁹ If the Palestinian Late Bronze II ended about 733 to 700 B.C. (when, according to Bimson and Courville, the Iron Age began), the Greek Mycenaean Age must belong to the period just before that date. However, from the sixth 067century B.C., Greek art and pottery can be closely dated because of many inscriptions and historical references.⁴⁰ Between the sixth century B.C. and the earlier Mycenaean period in Greece, an enormous number of finds evidence a lengthy, well-recognized sequence of pottery styles, including (from earlier to later) the sub-Mycenaean, proto-Geometric, Geometric and Corinthian styles. If Bimson’s dating of the archaeological periods were correct, all of these styles would have to be dated roughly between 733 and 600 B.C. It’s highly improbable that such extensive stylistic development and the great volume of material could have occurred in a mere 133 years or less.⁴¹

Courville and Bimson have still more problems with Greek synchronisms. We know with considerable certainty that the earliest Greek colonies in Sicily and southern Italy were founded during the last half of the eighth century B.C. The pottery in the earliest strata at these sites is late Geometric and Corinthian.⁴² According to the chronologies of Courville and Bimson, the period when these colonies were founded (about 733 to 700 B.C.) represents the transition from the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age I in Palestine. However, at Syro-Palestinian sites, Greek Geometric pottery is found in Iron II strata, not with Late Bronze–Iron I material.⁴³ Geometric pottery should be later than the last half of the eighth century B.C. according to the Courville and Bimson chronologies, but the evidence from the Greek colonies shows that it is not.

For these and other reasons, the redating of Palestinian archaeological periods suggested by Courville and Bimson is untenable. Specialists, of course, recognize the insoluble problems that proposals like those of Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson are faced with; this is why these theories have received no support among specialists. [Indeed, Professor Bimson advised us as we went to press that he himself has rejected his own published ideas on “a revised chronology for Egypt and its consequences for Palestinian stratigraphy.” His position, as summarized above and as set forth in a series of articles published between 1976 and 1982 (see endnote 26), will be “explicitly abandoned,” he tells us, in a forthcoming article.⁴⁴ Professor Bimson stresses that his earlier, now abandoned views were experimental only. [The experiment obviously failed.—Ed.]

Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson nevertheless have enormous popular appeal, and one may ask why there aren’t more articles and books written to expose the errors in them. There are several reasons one is surely a matter of time and priorities.⁴⁵ It took a lot of time to write this article, and even so I have only touched on the 068kinds of problems faced by these theories. Obviously, I could have used this time in other more productive research. In addition, some scholars feel that refutation gives such theories a respectability they don’t deserve.

But whether archaeologists and ancient historians like it or not, the public reads Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson. And it is not immediately apparent to the average reader why their proposals are wrong. That is why I have been persuaded to write this article.

Before concluding, let me face a question that BAR readers may already be asking. A significant part of my refutation of Velikovsky, Courville and Bimson is based on conflicts with the Bible—for example, there is no city at Samaria or Dibon when, according to Bimson’s and Courville’s archaeological chronology, there should be. If that refutes Bimson and Courville, why doesn’t this same kind of argument refute the traditional chronology of archaeological periods? According to the conventional chronology, there should be cities at Jericho and Ai during the 13th century B.C., but archaeologists have found none. Doesn’t this refute the generally accepted chronology of archaeological periods just as surely as the situations at Samaria and Dibon refute Bimson and Courville?

The answer to this is that, although the generally accepted archaeological chronology presents difficulties for the Biblical account of the Exodus and the settlement in Canaan, it does not present difficulties beginning with the United Monarchy in about 1000 B.C.—and all parties agree on the general reliability of Biblical history beginning with the Israelite monarchy. Theories like those of Bimson and Courville create serious problems for the period after 1000 B.C., when Biblical chronology is fairly reliable.

For the period before the Israelite monarchy, most Palestinian archaeologists and Biblical scholars recognize that the Biblical account cannot be accepted as we would accept a modern historical account.⁴⁶ That is why archaeology presents problems for the pre-Monarchic Biblical account. The Biblical accounts of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan took form over a long period of time. Aetiological, anachronistic and sometimes legendary material became imbedded in these stories. The Biblical authors of these accounts were not trying to “tell history,” as we would understand this; they were making theological points.

In the course of the telling, the Biblical authors may have drawn on some historical memory that was ancient even then. Jericho and Ai were important cities that were destroyed nearly a thousand years before the Israelites arrived on the scene. Perhaps the memory of these 069destructions became incorporated into Israelite history. Precisely how this occurred, we shall probably never know.

As for the holy mountain the Bible calls Mt. Sinai, Har Karkom may have provided a kind of model preserved in some ancient communal memory of a time long ago. But to suggest that the Exodus event actually occurred nearly a thousand years before its generally recognized date is untenable.

No one will deny that Professor Anati has found an extremely important holy mountain with extraordinary remains. But the final step in his paper—that these remains belong to the Israelite experience in Sinai—almost certainly will not be accepted by the scholarly community.

On the surface, the radical redating of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan proposed by Emmanuel Anati in the accompanying article, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” is very attractive. It solves problems, there is no doubt. The question is, does it create other problems even more difficult than those it solves? Professor Anati was prompted to examine the question of the date of the Exodus when he discovered a venerated mountain named Har Karkom near the Negev-Sinai border that bore a striking resemblance to the Mt. Sinai described in the Bible. Could Har Karkom be Mt. Sinai? […]