Bibliography
| Title: The Chronology of the Hebrew Bible Type: Thesis Year: 1986 Abstract: "This thesis discusses the chronology of the Hebrew Bible in its various textual forms, including indirect textual witnesses such as Jubilees and Josephus. Two main chronological traditions are reconstructed from textual and literary evidence: the Priestly chronology of the world and the Deuteronomistic chronology of Israel. Both chronologies are fundamentally schematic, and may be viewed as mythical expressions of the belief that human history is ordered to a divine plan, with significant events occurring at schematic intervals such as 480 years. Deuteronomistic chronology is patterned according to a 1000-year scheme of 480 + 40 + 480 years from the settlement to the exile, while Priestly chronology extends from creation to the period of the second temple and uses schematic dates to underline the ideological importance of Abraham and the Solomonic temple. The Priestly scheme is clearly post-exilic, whereas the Deuteronomistic chronology of Israel was evidently constructed during the exile. But evidence is adduced to show that the person responsible for Deuteronomistic chronology took over and schematized an earlier chronology of the Israelite and Judean kingdoms; and it is argued that this provides a convincing explanation of the existence of serious historical discrepancies between the chronology of Kings and ancient near eastern historical chronology. Finally is is argued that internal discrepancies in the chronology of Kings, and textual variants from the Septuagint and Josephus, offer us the possibility of recovering a pre-schematic form of this chronology, and thereby constructing a historical chronology of Israel and Judah which is not contradicted by historical evidence and is not dependent on conjectural chronological overlaps (coregencies etc.) or on ad hoc juggling with calendars and dating systems". Keywords: Chronology and Calendar |