Historic Confirmation of Bible Student Chronology
Summary report of L.A. Times feature article, “Time Keepers,” by staff writer Thomas H. Maugh, II, August 29, 1996. Metro section, p. B-2. (See also NATURE, “The Exodus Enigma,” July 18, 1996, p. 213, a scientific report in more technical terms.)
OVERVIEW
In a breakthrough of historic proportions, researchers from Cornell University have developed the first tree-ring chronology from the Middle East, allowing precise dating of many events from the very cradle of civilization. It involves a method of counting time that depends on analyzing tree rings from specimens that can be associated with specific events. This kind of dating, formally called “dendrochronology,”1 is not new to archeology, but only recently has been applied to the Middle East. The technique has aroused worldwide interest because it will permit the dating of many events with a precision hitherto thought impossible and perhaps resolve a hundred years of debating among historians and archeologists who had proposed conflicting theories. Combined with high-precision radiocarbon testing, it may lead to a dating method that is “truly absolute,’ end produces data that are accurate “to the year.”
THE TECHNIQUE
To establish the new chronology, the Cornell University team collected wood and charcoal samples from 22 sites throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Radiocarbon dating2 was then employed to give approximate dates for important rings noticed in their samples. Then to tie it down exactly, they correlated the finds with a great global catastrophe of the era – the eruption of the volcanic island Thera in the Aegean Sea. Ash from the powerful explosion dispersed into the upper atmosphere, causing worldwide climatic effects, and inhibiting the growth of tree rings for that year. Archeologists had long believed the Thera eruption occurred around 1500 BC, but more recent finds by University of Arizona scientists have dated it to 1628 BC.3 That was the critical finding needed to nail down the new chronology and was found to harmonize nicely with another volcanic eruption in Iceland, which an earlier tree ring study had dated to 1159 BC. This link provided the evidence needed to verify the astounding accuracy of the new method.
THE RESULTS
The new chronology has opened a window of insight into the dawning of early kingdoms and city states, stretching from 2220 BC to 718 BC. The findings move back the date of the Late Bronze Age, including Egypt, Assyria and pre-Greek civilizations, by as much as 100 years. It demonstrates that one of the long-held conventional timelines, the so called High Chronology, “is clearly not sustainable.” This will now necessitate “a reworking of conventional assessments of the chronology of the Old World”
Researchers in various lands are now beginning to take advantage of the new timeline. Archeologists from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have used it to come up with new results for the fall of Jericho. This was the first city to be sacked by Joshua and the Israelites after crossing the Jordan and completing the 40 year wilderness wandering, as detailed in Joshua chapter 6. Secular scholars had long held that the city had been destroyed (and the walls collapsed due to an earthquake) around 1400 BC. But the new date based upon the tree ring chronology and “high precision radiocarbon dating on charred cereal grains” from Jericho was found to be about 45 years after the eruption of Thera, thus pinpointing Jericho’s fall to about 1583 BC.4 It is even speculated that the heavy clouds of dust and smoke emitted by the volcano might have caused the biblical “darkness that can be felt” (Exodus 10:21) that was part of the plagues inflicted by God upon Egypt to release Israel from bondage under Pharaoh.5
COMMENTARY
After more than 100 years of uncertainty regarding the dates of historical events in the Middle East and the unending conflict between our Bible chronology and the secular scholars, these new results are indeed welcome news. It appears that the Lord has seen fit to permit the development of this new method at the present as a special encouragement to His people. So far as we know, the Bowen/Russell chronology, as set forth in Volume 2 of Studies in the Scriptures, is one of the very few Bible chronologies that can directly correlate with the new findings.*
The new date for the fall of Jericho, about 1583 BC, compares with that of the B/R chronology of 1575 BC, showing a variation of only 8 years!6 The gap has thus been narrowed from 175 years as heretofore thought, down to this small number. (Perhaps even this small difference can be accounted for by the normal range of allowable deviation inherent in radiocarbon testing of the samples needed to correspond with the tree-ring patterns.) Corroborating the date of Jericho also provides indirect evidence for closely related events: the start of the Exodus (40 years earlier, 1615 BC), Moses’ birth (120 years earlier, 1695 BC), the start of the Period of the Judges (6 years later, 1569 BC), and the start of the Period of the Kings, based on Paul’s statement in Acts 13:19-21 (456 years later, 1119 BC); all dates according to the Volume 2 chronology.
As encouraging and significant as the new finding for Jericho appears to be, it is too early to draw sweeping conclusions from it. Nevertheless, it seems to be part of a general trend of moving back the dates of early civilizations in the late Bronze Age. This has the effect of bringing the secular dates for this period closer and closer to those that we have long accepted and believed to be well established in the Word of God.
With cautious optimism, then, we may sense yet fuller corroborations of the components of our chronology that parallel the parameters of the tree-ring technique. If the B/R chronology continues to correlate with additional findings, it would seem only reasonable to conclude that this would offer strong confirmation of the Period of the Kings (513 years), the Period of the Judges (450 years) and the Period from the Covenant to the Exodus (430 years). May all interested in this area be on the alert for further findings and be aware of their implications in strengthening our faith in the harvest message we have been given.
–Charles Redeker
* The chronologies of H. Fynes Clinton and Martin Anstey also show close correlation, but both of these exhibit marked deviations in other links of the chronology.
Editor’s footnotes:
¹ See American Journal of Archaeology (AJA99:1995), “Science in Archaeology.”
² Radiocarbon 14 dating has previously been questioned in connection with contaminated samples, improper association with human habitation, variations in 14C absorption factors or reckoning with the few 14C atoms in samples older than 6000 years. 14C has a half life of 5568 years (some studies show it to be 2.9% longer). The present study seeks to more accurately plot the variation in the 14C absorption rate over time.
³ The reviewed articles do not spell out exactly how they arrive at this date, other than saying they were “calibrated … using a smoothed function through a decadal dendrochronologically obtained data set” and then graphing the results. Some of our editors consider these conclusions premature. Two other Bible Students are doing extended research on this subject. Those seeking some technical details may contact Jim Parkinson in Glendale, California or Richard Doctor in Lisle, Illinois.
⁴ Studies of Jericho cereal samples from this period were performed at Groningen University, The Netherlands. Conventional radiocarbon dating of these and other Jericho samples produced six dates averaging 45 years after the year 1628 BC determined for the Thera eruption, implying an average of 1583 BC, with a probable error of ±13 years.
⁵ This suggested association of the Thera eruption with the plague of darkness just prior to the exodus needs to be recognized as an assumption. As such, it should be kept separate from the datings of the eruption itself and of the destruction of Jericho, which are both based on solid scientific measurements. Hence, whether Thera caused the darkness or not has no bearing on the validity of the 1628 BC data determined for the eruption and the 1583 BC date for the destruction of Jericho.
⁶ these radiocarbon results would substantiate a destruction of Jericho by fire within about 8 years of the chronology proposed in Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 2, and that difference is within the ± 13 year probable error of the measurements. Although there were other destructions of Jericho (both earlier and many centuries later), only this destruction (at the end of the Middle Bronze Age) 1) occurred just after the Spring harvest, 2) followed no more than a brief siege, and 3) was produced by massive fire, all of which are indicated in the Joshua 6 account. (See Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho” BAR 16, March 1990, pages 44-59.)
A Word of Caution. If this process produces dates that are “truly absolute” accurate “to the year,” providing “astounding accuracy,” then it shows the Bowen chronology short by 13 years at the Exodus (1628 vs. 1615 BC). On the other hand, if this new approach is off at all, it may be far afield. A deeper look is appropriate
Tree-Ring Dating. It is one thing to bore a single bristle-cone pine from California and count thousands of rings. It is quite another to collect multiple samples of much shorter-lived, and long-dead trees, and correctly stitch together their overlapping ring patterns. “In 1986, D. Yamaguchi recognized that trees tend to auto-correlate – that is they possess the ability to cross-match with each other in several places within the tree-ring sequence … he found 113 significant candidate wiggle-matches throughout the whole of the AD tree-ring sequence” (Pharaohs and Kings, 388- 389). The same problem occurred in the Turkish dendrochronology, which is the basis for the present article. “The problem [Kuniholm] found was that the … wiggle-match computer test produced not one but three results – 1258,1140 and 981 BC. Each had a 1-value greater than 4 which, according to the dendrochronologists, makes all three 99.9 per cent certain to be correct! … Kuniholm ended up rejecting the date with the highest l-value of 5 (981 BC) in favor of 1140 BC, presumably because the latter better fitted the historical expectations.” (Pharaohs and Kings, 389).
Radiocarbon Dates for the Eruption of Thera. “C-14 dates for short-lived materials from the Theran eruption span the period 1760-1540 BC with the great majority falling earlier in that period. As a result, in 1989 the Third International Congress favored an eruption date between circa 1680 and 1670 BC” (Pharaohs and Kings, 386). Notice that the current findings, also claiming radiocarbon support, are 50 years different.
– David Rice