Biblical Chronology

hi this is matt baker and today i'm going to talk about biblical chronology i'll be explaining the chronology that the jewish calendar is based on as well as some of the chronologies used by christian literalists a literalist is someone who believes that everything in the bible from adam and eve onwards is literal history i myself am not a literalist but i find the topic fascinating and if you're at all interested in learning about the development of the bible from a historical and literary point of view i think you will too according to the calendar that most people use today this coming monday will be the 6th of september 2021 and tuesday will be the 7th of september 2021 however according to the jewish calendar monday will be the 29th of elul 57 81 and tuesday will be the first of tishrei 5782 in other words tuesday is jewish new year also known as rosh hashanah which is why i thought today was a good day to talk about biblical chronology as you probably know the year 2021 is based on the approximate number of years that have passed since the birth of jesus i say approximate because nowadays most scholars actually give a date of around 4 bce for the birth year of jesus however the jewish year which is soon to be 5782 is based on the supposed number of years that have passed since the creation of the world which is why the acronym am is often placed alongside the jewish date a m stands for ano mundi meaning in the year of the world if you take 5782 and subtract 2021 you can calculate that according to the jewish calendar the world was created in the year 3761 bce now putting aside the fact that modern science tells us that the earth is actually over 4.5 billion years old still you might find the date 3761 bce a bit surprising especially if you come from a christian background because christians at least those who take the bible literally usually give a date for creation somewhere around 4000 bce why then is the jewish date so different well that's what we're going to find out [Music] [Music] if you've been following my series on who wrote the bible you'll know that ancient israelite history can be divided into two main periods the first temple period and the second temple period in between those two periods we have the babylonian exile arguably the pivotal event in the history of ancient israel well according to the early jewish rabbis the first temple stood for 410 years and the second temple for 420 years with exactly 70 years in between now the jewish year given by the early rabbis for the destruction of the second temple was 38 31 anno mundi plus or minus three years depending on which rabbinical source you use i'm going to go with 38 31. working backwards the jewish dates for the other events are thus 3411 33 41 and 29 31. the formula for translating the jewish year into the standard year is simply subtract 3761 as i mentioned earlier that's the bce date for creation on the jewish calendar so for example if we take 5782 the current jewish year as of next week and subtract 3761 we get 2021. if we do the same for the temple dates we get the year 70 for the second temple being destroyed negative 350 which means 350 bce for the second temple being built 420 bce for the first temple being destroyed and 830 bce for the first temple being built let's now discuss each one of these dates one by one according to the bible the first temple was built by king solomon the son of king david but as i've mentioned several times on this channel david and solomon are more legendary figures than historical ones now let me emphasize again this doesn't mean that they didn't exist it's just that the descriptions of them given in the bible are likely exaggerated we know this because archaeological excavations have shown that the population of the region was simply not large enough at the time to support the kinds of building projects or army sizes described in the bible so in other words david and solomon were likely local leaders and the founders of a dynasty but the territory they ruled over was probably quite small compared to the two kingdoms of israel and judah that came later when it comes to the first temple we have no historical record outside of the bible that can be used to confirm when it was built nor do we have any archaeological evidence for its existence either so it's pretty hard to say anything for certain about this first state again don't get me wrong i'm not saying that the first temple didn't exist it almost certainly did we just don't know exactly when it was built or if solomon was the one who built it so let's move on to the next date the second date the date for when the first temple was destroyed is quite a bit different this is because it was destroyed by the babylonian king nebuchadnezzar and we have a lot of records and archaeological evidence that can be used to calculate the dates for his reign as well as the dates for his various military campaigns so we know with almost 100 certainty that the first temple was destroyed in the year 586 bce give or take one year this means that the jewish date for this event is about 166 years off this is a fact that has been acknowledged by jewish scholars for quite some time now there are perhaps a few fringe groups out there that still try to argue that the jewish date is right and the historically accepted date is wrong but for the most part jewish scholars today accept the date of 586 not 4 20. this 166 year discrepancy is often referred to as the missing years on the jewish calendar and there have been several different explanations given for why the early rabbis made such a major mistake for example some argue that the mistake was deliberate and was made so that people couldn't try to calculate the date for the arrival of the jewish messiah others argue that the dates were meant to be symbolic and not literal anyway and therefore doesn't really matter then of course there's also the possibility that they just unknowingly made a mistake because they were perhaps relying on faulty records what the exact reason was we will probably never know the third date the date for the construction of the second temple is given as being 70 years after the destruction of the first although we don't have an exact date from historical records for when the second temple was built 70 years after the destruction of the first is probably about right based on how long the babylonian empire lasted and based on when its conqueror cyrus the great of persia made his decree allowing his various subjects to return to their homelands so if the destruction of the first temple was in 586 we can safely assume that the construction of the second temple was sometime around 5 16 bce which leaves us with the fourth and final date this is a date that we can fact check very easily for example we know that the second temple was destroyed in the same year as the 212th olympic games and that it occurred during the year when emperor vespasian held the title of consul for the second time so we can say with almost 100 certainty that the event took place in 70 ce which happens to be the same date that the rabbis gave so in this case the rabbis were spot on which is not too surprising because they lived shortly after that event let's now go back to the first date the date for when the first temple was built now that we have a historically accurate date of 586 bce perhaps we can come up with a better estimate if we go with the rabbi's statement that the first temple stood for 410 years this would give us 996 bce however if we simply add up the years given in the bible for each king of judah's reign keeping in mind that king solomon supposedly built the temple in the fourth year of his 40-year reign we actually end up with 430 years so that would give us 1016 bce however there's an even better way to do the calculation you see the regnal dates given in the bible are a bit confusing because the dates for the southern kings of judah don't line up nicely with the dates for the northern kings of israel and there were several times when kings reigned jointly with their sons on top of all this the calendars that they used back then weren't the same as the ones we used today but several scholars have worked on the problem over the years and have come up with an almost universally agreed upon solution obtained in part by using several non-biblical sources to confirm some of the dates using this more historically based method a fairly good estimate for the date of the construction of the first temple can be set at 966 bce meaning that the first temple actually stood for just 380 years now one of the main reasons why chronologies made by christian literalists tend to be different from the chronology that the jewish calendar is based on is the fact that nowadays christian literalists have the benefit of being able to use the more historically based year of 966 bce as their starting point presumably the early jewish rabbis did not have this advantage or at the very least they chose not to use it but there are additional differences which we will now discuss however keep in mind that for the rest of this video we will be moving away from real history and delving into stories that are best understood as being myth and legend i say this because we know based on studies of other ancient literature that ancient people didn't record history like we do today they often mixed distant memories of real events like floods or migrations with literary embellishments in order to create stories that captured certain ideas that they wanted to pass on to future generations the bible is no different from other ancient literature in this regard okay with that said let's now come up with some creation dates using 830 and 966 bce as our starting points working backwards we know based on first kings 6 1 that the exodus occurred exactly 480 years prior to the construction of the first temple so that gives us a jewish date of 1310 bce and a christian literalist date of 1446 bce as usual it's plus or minus one year in both cases because there are some minor differences of opinion when it comes to how exactly to do the counting so for example you'll sometimes see 1447 bce given as the date for the exodus on some chronologies note that i'm also still including the jewish years as well remember the difference between the jewish year and the bce date is always going to be 3761 with bce dates representing negative numbers this means that the jewish year for the exodus is 2451. in my video about the apocryphal books of the bible i mentioned that this number is highly symbolic the ancient israelites celebrated every 50th year as a jubilee year if you multiply 50 by 49 you get 24.50 so the year 2451 is the start of the 50th set of 50 years in other words it was a jubilee of jubilees the next step is to figure out how long the israelites were in egypt prior to the exodus and this is where we get some disagreement in exodus 12 40 it states the time that the israelites lived in egypt was 430 years so that seems pretty straightforward however according to the early rabbis this verse should actually read the time that the israelites lived in egypt and canaan was 430 years so according to the jewish chronology the israelites were only in egypt for 215 years with the other 215 years representing the time between abraham's arrival in canaan and jacob's departure to egypt so when it comes to the date for the israelites arrival in egypt the jewish calendar goes with 215 years before the exodus resulting in 1525 bce whereas many christian literalists go with the full 430 years resulting in 1877 bce let's now calculate the date of the flood using the birth year of abraham as a stepping stone from various scriptures we know that abraham was 100 when he had isaac that isaac was 60 when he had jacob and that jacob was 130 when he moved to egypt a total of 290 years this gives us dates of 1850 and 2166 bce for abraham's birth if we add up the generations from noah to abraham using the birth years given in genesis 11 we get yet another 290 years resulting in a jewish flood date of 2105 bce and a christian literalist flood date of 2456 bce okay just one last step to get us to the dates for creation if we add up the generations from adam to noah using the birth years given in genesis 5 and combine this with the fact that genesis 7 verse 6 clearly states that noah was 600 years old when the flood occurred we get exactly 1 656 years from creation to the flood so if we add 1 656 to the flood dates we get a jewish creation date of 3761 bce and a christian literalist date of 4112 bce now please understand that not all christian literalists are in agreement when it comes to the chronology that they use so far i've presented just one version there are countless other versions out there based on small changes here and there for example one of the best known literalist chronologies out there is the one made by a 17th century irish bishop named james usher he agreed with the jewish calendar when it comes to the number of years that the israelites were in egypt but he added 60 years to the time between noah and abraham based on the argument that abraham's father was actually 130 years old when abraham was born not 70. finally usher added an extra 47 years to the first temple period based on the documents that historians had at the time so 4112 minus 215 plus 60 plus 47 equals 4004 bce which is the date that usher gave for the creation of the world then there are those who use the septuagint which is the greek version of the old testament rather than the masoretic text which is the hebrew version the septuagint gives different numbers in both genesis 5 and 11 adding over 1500 more years to the period between adam and abraham thus the traditional eastern orthodox dates for creation are usually closer to 5500 bce rather than 4000 bce finally i want to take a look at one last chronology which is the one that i personally find the most interesting of all remember how i said that if we simply add up all the years given in the bible for each king of judah's reign we end up with a date of 10 16 bce for the construction of the first temple well that would add 50 years to all the other dates resulting in a creation year of 4162 bce interestingly this date is exactly 3999 years prior to the year 163 bce which is the year that the hasmoneans also known as the maccabees rededicated the second temple after its defilement by antiochus iv an event remembered during the jewish festival of chanukah this would mean that the temple rededication would have taken place in the 4 000th year since creation certainly a nice round symbolic number in addition to this according to this chronology the exodus would have occurred exactly 2666 years after creation which is exactly two-thirds of the way between creation and the rededication so it seems extremely likely that the numbers given in the hebrew bible were finalized sometime during the hasmonean period in order to highlight the importance of the time in which they were living further evidence for this hypothesis is the fact that although most of the book of genesis has been found among the dead sea scrolls genesis chapter 5 and 11 have not those two chapters being the ones that include the genealogies from adam to abraham indicating that they were probably later editions perhaps added by the hasmoneans so which one of the chronologies that i have discussed is the correct one well in my opinion the obvious answer is none of them because in particular when we're talking about the creation of the world or the flood we're talking about mythology not real history so to me each chronology is interesting only in that it helps us to understand how the early jews at various different times understood and communicated their story as a jew myself i'm not too concerned about the fact that the year 5782 doesn't actually mean anything in a literal sense for me it simply represents a very old cultural tradition that i am now a part of finally because someone is bound to bring it up in the comments i want to address david roll's so-called new chronology which is used in the film patterns of evidence to argue that the exodus was in fact a real historical event first of all rolls chronology doesn't actually change much in terms of the biblical timeline for example his date for the exodus is still around 1446 bce what he does change however is the egyptian timeline in fact he changes it quite a bit enough so that the exodus coincides with the middle kingdom instead of the new kingdom so what do i think of his ideas well to be frank i'm not a fan and neither are the vast majority of egyptologists when it comes to this sort of thing academic consensus is very important and currently the academic consensus is overwhelmingly in favor of the standard egyptian chronology not david rolls but either way i don't think it really matters when it comes to understanding the exodus story in my opinion there is probably some kernel of truth to the exodus story i.e some distant memory of semitic people being treated poorly by egyptians but overall as i keep saying it's clear to me that the exodus story is a work of theological literature not a record of literal history so the fact that david roll says it happened in the middle kingdom rather than the new kingdom is simply not important to me especially when most egyptologists disagree with him anyway so that was a look at biblical chronology including an explanation for why this coming tuesday is the start of the year 5782 on the jewish calendar shana tova and thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021