BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 57
January, 1994
Copyright 1994, Biblical Horizons
This month I begin presenting material and research that will, God willing, find eventual publication as Through New Eyes, Volume II.
In Through New Eyes (part I) I sought in a general way to explain some of the symbolism and imagery of the Bible, showing that it is through such symbolism that the Bible presents us with the true picture of the world. I dealt with rocks, stars, plants, animals, angels, and mankind. I left out some other very important aspects of the world picture that the Bible emphasizes: water, cloud, smell, taste, fire, etc., because there was not room for everything.
Then I sought to show that there are various models of the world in the Bible, symbolic models formed by putting together the various pieces of symbolic imagery together into "houses": for instance, the Oasis Sanctuaries, the Tabernacle, the Temple of Solomon, Ezekiel’s Temple, and the New Jerusalem. These are God’s houses, but since man is God’s image, I could have extended this discussion by taking note of the configuration of Solomon’s Palace, the highly symbolic configuration of Ahasuerus’ Palace in Esther, and the configuration of every Israelite house as discussed in Leviticus and Numbers. Once again, going into all that detail would have detracted from the main trust of the book.
In the second half of Through New Eyes I sought to show that God manages history by trans-forming (transfiguring) each world into a more glo-rious one. This, I argued, is the basic meaning of typology, as each world model typifies the next, and all those to come; with the overall world model of the First Creation (Adam to Christ) typically prefiguring the New Creation (Pentecost to the Second Coming). I set out the leading features of each of the main periods of First Creation history, and showed how each period declined due (a) to human maturation as men outgrew the earlier stage, and simultaneously (b) to human sin as men failed to live in terms of the promises of each stage. Thus, each stage led to the next.
I discussed the worlds of Adam, Noah, the Patriarchs, Moses, the Kingdom, and the Restoration. In a footnote, I mentioned the Remnant Covenant introduced by Elijah and Elisha (p. 312, n. 18; this is a very important note, and if you missed it as you read the book, you will want to read it now). Some of what I did in this section of the book was "new ground," because every book on the succession of covenants I have ever read jumps from the Davidic Covenant to the New Covenant, completely skipping the all-important Restoration Covenant. In fact, though, Jesus conducted His ministry at the end of the Restoration Covenant, and if we are not familiar with Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, we are not in the best position to understand the nature of the times Jesus lived in. I had to do a lot of original work here, and my thinking has continued to mature in this area.
I did not discuss what I now call the four Interim Covenants in Through New Eyes. Here again, it was because to get into these would have bogged the book down and drawn me away from my central purpose. My central purpose was to show that God manages history through crises that bring about new models of world order. After the coming of the gospel, we have seen God do this twice, as the Early Church crisised into the Medieval, and the Medieval into the Reformation. We are at the brink of a new complete cultural crisis and transfiguration today.
Some Refinements
That is a thumbnail sketch of the purpose of Through New Eyes. At this point, I want to share two refinements in my original presentation.
First, further study of the Restoration Covenant period has largely convinced me that the battle of Gog and Magog is the same as the events in the book of Esther, not the later invasion of Judea by Antiochus Epiphanes. Also, as Peter Leithart is showing in a current series in Biblical Horizons , the prophets change Jerusalem from being merely the City of David to being the Holy City, and Nehemiah’s building of Jerusalem’s walls is the act whereby the city becomes, in its entirety, a holy zone. This is an important change, which sets up many events in the New Testament, including the necessary destruction of Jerusalem.
The second refinement concerns what I called the Remnant Covenants. In fact, I see four Interim Covenants.
The first comes in the forty-year wilderness wanderings. The interim character of this period becomes clear when we read the law in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and realize that it is phrased in terms of living in the land. During the wanderings, the law must have been applied creatively and differently. Also, we find in Joshua 5 that the Israelites did not circumcise themselves during this period, which means that they understood (rightly) that the fulness of the Sinaitic covenant was in some kind of abeyance or postponement.
The second comes in 1 Samuel 1-7 and lasted about a century. God allowed the Tabernacle to be wrecked and He Himself (as the Ark) went into Philistine (Egyptian) captivity. Then the Ark was brought back, and enshrined in the "House of Abinadab on the Hill," that is, on a high place in a tent maintained by Abinadab. The Tabernacle was maintained elsewhere, and the two were not reconjoined until Solomon’s Temple was built. During this century, Yahweh’s Kingdom was maintained by the prophet Samuel, and the new Kingdom Covenant gradually came into being, climaxing with the building of Solomon’s Temple and the new order of priests, worship, architecture, and national administration that came into being at that time (as I set it out in Through New Eyes).
The third Interim Covenant is the "Remnant Covenant." It too was set up by prophets and maintained by prophets between the days of Ahab and the Restoration under Ezra.
The fourth Interim Covenant consists of the three years of Jesus’ ministry, when new features of the New Covenant began to be put into play, while at the same time features of the Old Covenant were also still honored. In a sense, this Interim Covenant extends to ad 70, for the apostles continued to offer sacrifice in the Temple until that time.
When we see this model, we can see that new covenants are heralded by prophets, prophets who actually set up the new covenants. First of all, Moses. Moses actually walks through Israel’s later experience, being driven out of Egypt, living forty years in the wilderness, circumcising his son as he enters Egypt to conduct holy war (Ex. 4 + Josh. 5), etc. Moses anoints Aaron and supervises the setting up of the Tabernacle system and the tribal system of the Sinaitic Period.
Second, Samuel. Samuel sets up the Kingdom during the second Interim Covenant period. He anoints Saul and David. 1 Samuel 9-10 establish that "Saul is among the prophets, and who is their father?"–the answer to which is that Samuel (the prophets) are fathers to the Kings. Thus, the kings address the prophets: "My father, my father: the chariot of Israel and its horsemen."
Third, Elijah and company. Elijah and Elisha set up the Restoration order in a preliminary form as the Kingdom period wanes. They introduce the period of the prophets, and thus are followed by Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. The prophet Zechariah (in the visions of Zech.1-6) sets up the new Restoration Covenant by crowning the high priest with a royal crown. Malachi is the last of these prophets.
Finally, John the Forerunner. John baptizes Jesus, thereby anointing the final and Great High Priest. Jesus, as Greater Prophet, sets up the New Covenant, baptizing the Church at Pentecost. Thus, in a sense, Jesus’ ministry and that of the apostles is a fourth Interim Covenant, having such features as miraculous prophecy and speaking in unlearned foreign languages, which are not part of the full establishment of the Covenant as we have it after ad 70.
The Original Plan of Through New Eyes
Volume II might just take up the loose ends from Volume I, such as I’ve described above. In fact, however, I originally projected a trilogy of books that, like Through New Eyes, would take up basic matters without going into all the details. The second volume was to be called The Treasury of God, and was to deal with the three fundamental dimensions of the kingdom (person, word, and sacrament) as they were locked up as the "mystery" in the Old Creation and are now published abroad in the New. I still plan to include much of this material in Volume II, and may still use the same title.
Volume III was to be called With New Hands, and was to show that man, the image of God, is called to transform the world under God. Chapters would include the Restoration & Transformation of human life, of worship, of church life, of the family, of the nation, of labor, and of culture in general, including the Renewal of Time, the Exploration of Space (earthly space), and the Reformation of Science.
I never had time to get these into shape for publication, and then my publisher went out of business.
Meanwhile, I have encountered some marvelously insightful information on the course of civilization in the writings and lectures of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a maverick Christian historian and philosopher of the first part of this century. Restructuring his insights along more strictly Biblical lines has led me to a conviction that history moves in triadic cycles (spirals), revealing the Trinity more and more in human history. This insight is closely tied to the three fundamental dimensions of God’s kingdom, which I had originally projected for The Treasury of God. Thus, I hope to weave them into a restructured version of that book’s outline.
Now that we have Transfiguration Press underway, I have been able to justify taking time for research in this area once again, and I have decided that the best way for me to get this written is to write it up first in these newsletters. Thus, during this year I intend to use both Biblical Horizons and Rite Reasons for that purpose.
Volume II: Part 1
Let me now lay out a roadmap of what I hope to cover, God giving me strength and opportunity.
The first large period is the Age of the Father. Man was created and put into a garden-sanctuary, the firmament between the earthly paradise of Eden and the earthly "world" of the outlying lands. Each of these outlying lands would be a homeland, but Eden would be the Throneland. Thus, we have four environments:
Edenic Throneland – the place of rule
Garden Sanctuary – the place of worship
Homelands – the place of domestic rest
Outlying World – the place of work
Adam sinned in the Garden, and thus was not admitted to the Throneland. During the Old Creation, sinners were admitted partially to shadows of the Throneland if they passed through the sanctuary. Thus, Israel passed through the Tabernacle in the wilderness and then was admitted to the Land of Milk and Honey. They passed through the second Interim Covenant under Samuel and they were admitted to the Kingdom of David. They passed through the third Interim Covenant under the prophets, especially in Babylon, and then were admitted to the "throneland" of world influence at the right hand of the emperors (Esther, Nehemiah).
Returning to the Age of the Father (Spiral I): we find within it three periods (Spirals I:A,B,C): Adam to Noah, Noah to Abram, Abram to Moses. Each of these is triadic, as we shall see. But in all of this, the focus is on persons. This is an age of stories, not an age of law. The Law has not yet arrived, as Romans 5:13 says.
Spiral I:A
1. Adam rebelled in the sanctuary. He assaulted the authority of the Father and was cast from the garden. This is the sin of Sacrilege (stealing from God).
2. Cain rebelled in the homeland. He murdered his brother and was cast from the homeland to wander in the world. This is the sin of Fratricide (brother murder).
3. The Sethites (sons of God) rebelled in the world. They forsook their witness and intermarried with the heathen, and were removed from the world. This is the sin of Intermarriage.
4. Then comes Noah, the bringer of Sabbath rest (Gen. 5:29). The rest brought by Noah introduces the next triadic spiral.
Spiral I:B
1. Ham rebelled in Noah’s garden. He assaulted the authority and integrity of his father, the image of God, and his descendants were cursed away from the sanctuary-tents of Shem. Notice the historical progression: Now it is a man who plants a garden, and a man who passes judgment. Noah’s tent is a shadow form of the Throneland.
2. The Joktanite branch of the Shemites evidently joined with the Hamites in building the Tower and City of Babel. This is the new city of Cain. We don’t directly see the sin of Fratricide here, but the other parallels link it to Cain’s fall in the land. Cain was cursed to wander, though he did build a city. The story of the Tower & City of Babel shows judgment of scattering, analogous to the judgment of Cain. Later parallels in the Bible (Egypt in Exodus 1; Solomon’s building projects) link Babel to oppression of the brethren.
This Spiral is incomplete; we don’t have a third rebellion in the world-setting, because God does not intend to destroy the world again. Instead, we have three positive pictures presented in the next spiral.
Spiral I:C
The third smaller spiral provides pictures of true faith, unlike the two previous spirals. What makes this true faith possible is the circumcision of the foreskin at the central horn of the human altar.
1. Abram. The story of Abram provides a positive balance to what we have seen before. Fatherhood is the main theme: Abram is "Mighty Father," Abraham "Father of Many," but ultimately Abraham is not adequate as a father, for in Genesis 22 we see that Abraham must die to his fatherhood and let God be Father.
The story of Abraham consists of altars and worship places. Abraham shows patient faith, faith appropriate to the sanctuary garden. But Abraham does not enter the Throneland; he only sees it from afar.
Adam had to leave the Garden because of his own sin. Abraham is forced to leave the land of promise because of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, which like sacrifices "rise up to heaven," and which are destroyed, sacrificially, by heavenly fire from the sword of the cherubim. Abraham then moves to Philistia, but returns to the land to sacrifice Isaac. Thus, sacrifice and worship in garden-sanctuaries are the main themes.
There is an "interim" period between the call of Abram and his circumcision. Circumcision is the definitive marker that denotes the foundation of a positive response to God and the exemplary histories of the patriarchs.
2. Jacob. Isaac might seem next, but in the literary structure of Genesis, the Abraham story is a large chiasm (ABCDEDCBA structure) blocked off at each end by the phrase "these are the generations of . . . ", and the same is true of the Jacob story. Thus, from the standpoint of literary structure, Isaac is transitional (though of course very important in other ways), and his story is spread between the two sections.
Because Isaac is the son, it seems that the land becomes for him a shadow-throneland. Abraham lived faithfully in the sanctuary that the son, Isaac, might enter the throneland. I suggest this because Jacob leaves the land by way of Beth-El, the sanctuary house of God, and evidently returns roughly the same way (from the east). Isaac in his sinful blindness determines to give the shadow-throneland to the devil, Esau.
The story of Jacob concerns the land, not the sanctuary. The brother-brother theme is highlighted. Jacob needs a brother, and neither Isaac, Esau, nor Laban are fit. Jacob meets the True Brother-Wrestler at Peniel.
Simeon and Levi, like Cain, murder their brothers, the newly-circumcised men of Shechem. For this reason, Jacob "stinks" in the land, and must leave it.
3. Joseph. The story of Joseph is set in the outlying world, the place of witness or compromise. Nestled in the story of Joseph is the story of Judah, who did compromise with the "daughters of men" in more ways than one. Joseph refused the temptation Judah succombed to. (Note also that both men had two sons, the elder serving the younger; and there are many other parallels.)
Witness or compromise: that is the question in the third phase. Joseph does not compromise, and bears faithful witness. As a result he is seated next to the world emperor, a "father to Pharaoh," fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham that he would be father to many nations.
Joseph refuses a sinful intermarriage, but marries an Egyptian woman after Egypt converts. Here is true intermarriage, based on true witness. (Compare Moses’ marriage, and Solomon’s marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh, and climactically Jesus’ marriage to His former enemies: us.)
We can see a definite advance in the complexity and richness of the basic structure by the time we get to this last story. We begin with brother-brother conflict, and the "murder" of Abel (Joseph) by the Cainitic brothers. But Joseph is also a substitute Cain, exiled from the land in the place of his brethren. He goes to prepare a place for the brothers, and reconciles them to himself, to themselves, and to their father.
4. Moses climaxes the series, like Noah. Noah floated in an ark, and the same word "ark" is used for only one other object in the Bible: the ark in which baby Moses floated. Moses brings rest to the people after years of bondage, as Noah was the bringer of rest.
(to be concluded)
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 6, No. 1
January, 1994
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1994
by James B. Jordan
In 1971 appeared a privately published book dealing with the problems surrounding the chronology of Egypt as it relates to the Bible: The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications, by Donovan A. Courville (Loma Linda, CA: Challenge Books). At the time, Dr. Courville (Ph.D., Chemistry) was emeritus professor of Bio-chemistry at the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University. A practicing Seventh-Day Adventist, Courville had made this chronological problem his avocation for many years, and his 700-page study was the result.
Courville pointed out what we saw in our previous essay, which is that if the Bible is even faintly correct about the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, there should be evidence of a serious catastrophe in Egyptian history at that point. The present Current Consensus Chronology (CCC) of the ancient world places the exodus at a time when Egypt was very strong, and becoming stronger. Moreover, according to the CCC there is virtually no evidence of an Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Courville’s solution involved shifting the entire CCC forward by several centuries. The CCC tells us that the Hyksos dynasty in Egypt ruled during Joseph’s day, and that the Israelites left Egypt during the reign of Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, or Rameses II. Courville shifted this forward so that the Hyksos were the Amalekites who conquered Egypt after God devastated it, and who were kicked out during the time of Saul (which is why Saul had to fight them). The "Shishak" who sacked Solomon’s Temple in the days of Rehoboam was Thutmose III, according to Courville.
The general elegance of Courville’s solution can be seen in that its redating forces a redating of the archaeological chronology of Palestine and provides clear evidence of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Moreover, and this is very important, Courville’s solution eliminates a 300-year "dark age" that supposedly occurred in every part of the Mediterranean world between about 1100 and 800 B.C.
Courville’s work was generally ignored. After all, he was not an insider to the world of archaeology and ancient history. Also, he was a Seventh-Day Adventist. His book was privately published. Gradually, however, his efforts came to the attention to the catastrophic revisionists.
The founder of modern catastrophic revisionism was Immanuel Velikhovsky. Velikhovsky was an unbeliever, but he decided that the fantastic events recorded in the Bible probably had some basis in fact. Thus, he posited that the planet Venus was travelling around the solar system during the ancient world, causing disruptions on the earth. He used this and other astral catastrophes to explain the plagues on Egypt, the manna, the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua’s long day, etc. His followers have come up with many more odd catastrophic schemes to explain ancient events. Velikhovsky maintained that the Hyksos were the Amalekites, and his general scheme is the same as that of Courville, who gives him credit for being the first to suggest it. It is noteworthy that over the years, the Velikhovskian catastrophists have become less interested in Venus fly-bys and Mars fly-bys, and more interested in chronological and archaeological revisionism. Interaction with Courville’s work has to some extent displaced fascination with Velikhovsky’s.
This was the situation until 1991. In that year a book was published by scholars working within accepted academic circles that challenged the CCC: Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional Chronology of Old World Archaeology (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1991). The primary author is Peter James, who graduated in ancient history and archaeology at Birmingham University and at the time of publication was engaged in postgraduate research at University College, London. The thesis of the book is that there was no 300-year "dark age" in the ancient world, and that the myth of the 300-year dark age is based on a misreading of Egyptian history. In order to make this point, James teamed up with specialists in various areas of Mediterranean archaeology and history, who wrote various chapters of the book: I. J. Thorpe, Nikos Kokkinos, Robert Morkot, and John Frankish. Their manuscript was read and critiqued by well over two dozen scholars before publication. The book was picked up by Rutgers University Press in 1993. Publication by a university press has guaranteed that the book will receive serious attention. It was an "Editor’s Choice" selection of the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club. With the publication of Centuries of Darkness, revisionism has entered the mainstream of discussion.
Centuries of Darkness takes note of Velikhovsky’s work, but finds it wanting in substance. There is no reference to Courville’s work, nor to that of the other "outsiders" who have been working in this area. This is significant, because it means that the authors have developed their thesis out of a thorough familiarity with existing "in house" archaeology and history, and for this reason their work must be taken seriously by the academy.
The Development of the CCC
The first chapter of Centuries of Darkness is a discussion of the evolution of old world chronology. At the time of the Reformation, the chronology of the Bible was taken seriously, and those who sought to reconstruct the history of the ancient world did not depart from the boundaries provided by the Bible. The leading Protestant scholar in this area was Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609). He was the first to make a systematic and critical study of the chronological material in the Bible together with that from the pagan classical world. James tells us that "he developed a chronology which, for the time, was both coherent and comprehensive" (p. 6).
Scaliger ran into a problem, however. "He recovered a Byzantine summary of the writings of Manetho, a Graeco-Egyptian priest of the 2nd century BC who had recorded a history of Egypt back to its first kings. Computing the information given by this source for the lengths of the thirty Egyptian dynasties, Scaliger set the start of the 1st Dynasty at 5285 BC. Much to his dismay, it lay 1336 years before his own date for the Creation (3949 BC). Many scholars sought to reconcile Manetho’s dynasties with the Bible by assuming that many of these dynasties ran concurrently.
With the decline of belief in the Bible, secular scholarship began to depend more heavily on Manetho and to revise the Bible to fit Manetho’s chronology. Out of this dependence on Manetho arose the great error that we have been discussing, the error that both created the mythical "dark age" between 1100 and 800 BC throughout the Mediterranean, and also completely obscured the connections between Biblical and Egyptian history.
As we discuss the development of this error, we have to take note of the work of Christian Thomsen (1788-1865), a wealthy Danish businessman and collector, who developed the "Three-Age System," a technological succession from Stone to Bronze to Iron. This framework provided a sensible way of ordering archaeological finds. James points out that this system now has a much more technical meaning, however: "Thomsen’s simple division of history into ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron is still the basis of archaeological classification throughout the world–though, of course, the various cultures around the globe went through these three stages at different times. Since Thomsen’s day the sheer convenience of this terminology has often caused it to stray far from the original meaning: thus, in the Eastern Mediterranean such terms as `Early Iron Age’ were long ago adopted to describe cultural phrases which are now in fact defined by their pottery. It should not be supposed that iron was first introduced, or even became predominant, at the beginning of the `Iron Age’" (p. 10).
In 1880, W. Flinders Petrie made an expedition to Egypt to survey the Great Pyramid at Giza. Petrie was from a Plymouth Brethren family, and was committed to the strange view of Charles Piazzi Smith that the geometry of the Great Pyramid was a divinely inspired prophecy of world history based on a "pyramid inch." Petrie set out to demonstrate that this was a fact, but soon found out that it was nonsense and dropped it. He developed, however, a life-long commitment to Egyptian archaeology, and made numerous scientifically-controlled excavations. He established a pottery sequence, and tied these to Manetho’s dynasties.
Confirmation of the Manetho chronology was seemingly found from another source as well: Sothic dating. The Egyptians called the star Sirius (the Dog-Star) Sothis. There are references to Sothis in various papyri from ancient Egypt. James summarizes: "The `ideal’ Egyptian year was one in which the rising of Sothis just before dawn coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile. Because the Egyptians never introduced a Leap Year, the New Year festival linked to the rising of Sothis inevitably slipped round the calendar; only after 1460 years had passed would the cycle be completed by another `ideal’ year. It therefore appeared possible to calculate where a given text fell within a `Sothic cycle’ if it mentions a rising of Sirius on a particular calendar day.
"Schemes for the `Sothic dating’ of Egyptian history were experimented with from the mid-17th century onwards, but all these were highly speculative. The system still used today is essentially that established by the chronologist Eduard Meyer in 1904, hinging on two recently discovered Sothic references–one around 1870 BC during the 12th Dynasty and another of 1540 BC for the 18th Dynasty. In general, Egyptologists were impressed by the scientific aura which astronomy apparently lent to the Sothic theory. Different calculations produced slightly varying results, but they were close enough to convince the vast majority on the central issues. For example, the `New Kingdom’ period of the 18th to 20th Dynasties could be confidently placed between 1600 and 1100 BC" (p. 12f.).
All of this was very "scientific" and seemed quite secure. It provided a history of Egypt, and the fact that it contradicted the Bible was unimportant. It also contradicted, however, some important finds in the Aegean.
In 1870 Heinrich Schliemann began his excavations of Troy and later of Mycenae. Cities turned up under the rubble that predated the classical and Archaic remains of known history. The question that needed to be answered was, therefore: how much earlier were these cities? When did the Mycenaean and Trojan civilizations, celebrated in Homer, exist?
Flinders Petrie discovered the "answer." He discovered pottery sherds in Egypt identical to those Schliemann had uncovered, sherds mixed with Egyptian remains of the 18th and 19th dynasties. Thus, he fixed the destruction of Troy around 1100 BC. James comments that Petrie’s "Egyptian-derived dates had the extremely unwelcome result of producing an enormous void between the Mycenaean world and that of the early Greek city-states of the 8th century BC. Previously it was common practice to date the end of Mycenaean civilization as late as 800 BC, allowing continuity, or even an overlap" with the following period of pottery and other remains (p. 16).
Here’s the problem: the pottery styles of Mycenae and the style of Greek, even the shape of the letters of the alphabet, are virtually the same as that of the Greek city-states. We are asked to believe that Greek civilization collapsed and went into a dark age for 300 years, after which it arose again almost identical to what it had been before.
Classical scholar Cecil Torr argued against Petrie on two grounds. First, he disputed the claim that Petrie’s Egyptian sherds were contemporary with Mycenaean ones. Second, and more importantly, he challenged the notion that Manetho’s dynasties were successive, and lowered Egyptian chronology to make it fit. Thus, he argued, even if Petrie were correct about the pottery sherds, it would only mean that Egyptian chronology needed to be shortened.
The founding father of Swedish Egyptology, Jens Lieblein, agreed with Torr. He pointed out similar problems in others areas of history in the Near East and even in Egypt, pointing out that Petrie’s error was producing another unnecessary "dark age" in Hittite chronology. He also argued for a lowering of Egyptian chronology, stating: "I have never understood the obstinacy with which scholars have hung on to the regular succession of the thirty dynasties of Manetho. However many voices of incontestable authority have protested, the error still seems to be fashion in our days" (p. 17).
Petrie’s view won out, however, for three reasons. First, Torr was wrong to challenge the pottery sherds. It is clear that the 18th and 19th Dynasties of Egypt were contemporary with Mycenae.
Second, the short chronology was simply out of step with the trend of the time, which was to ascribe the highest antiquity to Egypt and its neighboring civilizations. The myth was that civilization arose in the Near East and then spread over Europe. Evidence against this notion arising from European archaeology (evidence like Stonehenge) was simply ignored. High dates were also being ascribed to the Mesopotamian civilizations as well; Hammurabi was placed around 2100 BC.
Third, correspondence was uncovered that linked Egyptian civilization with Mesopotamian. Since both were said to be old, this linkage produced seeming confirmation of the age of each. In a somewhat circular fashion, the long chronology of each supported the other.
Based on the great error in Egyptian chronology, the Current Consensus Chronology has produced one "dark age" after another in the history of the ancient world. The purpose of Centuries of Darkness is to close the gap, and in 400+ pages of close reasoning the authors do so admirably. For anyone interested in this subject, Centuries of Darkness is must reading.
Manetho’s Dynasties
As mentioned above, Manetho was an Egyptian priest who wrote in the 2nd or 3rd centuries BC. His history of Egypt, the Aegyptiaca, is now lost, but "summaries and ostensible extracts survive in a number of later works, notably those of Josephus (1st century AD), Julius Africanus (3rd century AD), Eusebius (4th century AD), and Syncellus (c. 800 AD). These preserve, in different and often contradictory versions, an Epitome, giving the names and reign-lengths of the Egyptian pharaohs, arranged into a system of thirty Dynasties or ruling houses. The sequence begins with the unification of Egypt by King Menes, founder of the 1st Dynasty, and ends with Nectanebo II, the last native pharaoh" (p. 223). Everything we have of Manetho is found in Manetho, translated and annotated by W. G. Waddell (Loeb Classical Library: Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1940).
The CCC takes the dynasties of Manetho as consecutive, but allows for some overlap when it becomes necessary. That is, the CCC starts with the assumption of consecutiveness, and then makes necessary modifications. Thus, the earliest kings of the 26th Dynasty ruled at the same time as the later kings of the 25th. Also, the early 25th overlapped with the later 22nd and 23rd. James comments: "Whether Manetho understood his sources as meaning that a given dynasty began only after its predecessor had finished will probably never be known, as his original work is lost. The Church Father Eusebius, who transmitted one of the major recensions of Manetho’s work, certainly had a different understanding:
"It seems … that different kings held sway in different regions, and that each dynasty was confined to its own nome [province]; thus it was not a succession of kings occupying the throne one after the other, but several kings reigning at the same time in different regions" (p. 233). [Loeb edition: Manetho, p. 9.]
There is another very important reason to question Manetho’s list, and that is the probable reason for his writing it in the first place. Virtually every civilization in the ancient world sought to claim the greatest antiquity, and histories were produced to show that each was the oldest. The reason for this is not only to glorify the nation, but also to establish imperial claims.
This is not just an ancient phenomenon. Not too long ago, German historians were diligently falsifying and inventing history in order to prove the seniority and superiority of the Aryan race. The rulers of England have often supported the absurd notion that the English and Saxon races are descended from the "lost tribes of Israel." Today, the Israeli claim to the land of Palestine is grounded in events 2000 years old.
When the Greek politician Solon visited Egypt in the 6th century BC, he was chided as a citizen of such a youthful culture, and was told that Egyptian history ran back 8000 years. Herodotus was told a century later that Egyptian history ran back 11,340 years before his time (p. 292).
The Babylonian priest Berossus presents us a dynasty of 86 kings who reigned for no less than 33,091 years. His contemporary, Manetho, produced a similar claim regarding the earliest, divine rulers of Egypt. Manetho expert W. G. Waddell suggests that
"The works of Manetho and Berossus may be interpreted as an expression of the rivalry of the two kings, Ptolemy and Antiochus, each seeking to proclaim the great antiquity of his land" (p. 292). [Loeb edition: Manetho, p. x.]
Everyone admits that these are fictional exaggerations, but when it comes to Manetho’s dynasties, the admission is not so forthcoming. Moreover, no such skepticism is found concerning the Assyrian King List, on which so much of ancient near eastern chronology currently depends.
The reason for this blindness is not hard to discern. It lies in the presuppositional hostility of secular scholarship for the Bible. If Manetho cannot be trusted, scholarship must rely much more heavily on the Bible, and that is not regarded as acceptable. That evangelical scholars have been so willing to play along with the palpable errors of secular scholarship is a monument to their unwillingness to face the hard questions. We are compelled to turn to a Seventh-Day Adventist and to secular scholars to find challenges to the regnant folly.
We shall let W. G. Waddell, the editor of Manetho, have the last word:
"But there were many errors in Manetho’s work from the very beginning: all are not due to the perversions of scribes and revisers. Many of the lengths of reigns have been found impossible: in some cases the names and sequence of kings as given by Manetho have proved untenable in the light of monumental evidence. If one may depend upon the extracts preserved in Josephus, Manetho’s work was not an authentic history of Egypt, exact in its details, as the Chaldaica of Berossus was, at least for later times. Manetho introduced into an already corrupted series of dynastic lists a number of popular traditions written in the characteristic Egyptian style. No genuine historical sense had been developed among the Egyptians, although Manetho’s work does illustrate the influence of Greek culture upon an Egyptian priest." (Loeb edition: Manetho pp. xxv-xxvi.)
Sothic Dating
But what about the "proof" that comes from Sothic dating? As we saw above, testimony from 12th and 18th dynasty establish dates of about 1870 and 1540 BC respectively. How reliable is this?
James explains the Sothic dating by citing from I. E. S. Edwards:
"The 12 months were divided into 3 seasons bearing names which are generally rendered Inundation, Winter, and Summer, each season consisting of four months. The year began in the season of Inundation, and in the ideal year the first day of the first month of the season of Inundation coincided with the first day on which the dog-star Sirius [Sothis] should be seen on the eastern horizon just before the rising of the sun (i.e., roughly about 19 or 20 July in the Julian calendar). Since the dynastic Egyptians never introduced a leap year into their civil calendar, New Year’s Day advanced by one whole day in relation to the nature year in every period of four years. As a result of this displacement New Year’s Day and the day on which Sirius role heliacally actually coincided for no more than four [consecutive] years in every period of approximately 1460 years (i.e., 365 x 4), the so-called Sothic cycle.
"Thus," continues James, "according to the theory, the heliacal rising of Sirius (Sothis), together with the seasons, gradually revolved around the civil calendar. After 730 years they would have completely reversed with respect to the solar year, returning to their original position only after a period of some 1460 years:
"Dates in Egyptian records were generally set out according to a fixed formula: … If in addition to this formula, a document tells us that Sirius rose heliacally on that day it is only necessary to count the number of days which had elapsed since the first day of the year given in the formula and multiply the total by four to obtain the number of years since the beginning of the particular Sothic cycle." (p. 225)
Now the fact is that we only have two such Sothic dates, and one of them is no good. The first is provided by papyrus fragments "found at el-Lahun, dated to year 7 of an unnamed pharaoh, but reasonably attributed to Senusret III on paleographic grounds. This document does not give the beginning of a Sothic cycle, but a calendar date for the rising of Sirius, which can be retrocalculated as 1872 BC if the sighting of Sirius was made in the Memphis-Lahun region. If, however, the sighting was made at the lower latitude of Elephantine, as Rolf Krauss has recently advocated, the date would be reduced to 1830 BC" (p. 226).
The only other Sothic date comes from the Ebers Papyrus for year 9 of Amenhotep I. There is a problem with this one, though, since while the "emergence of Sothis" is referred to in the text, no calendar day is specified. Thus, no calculation of a New Year’s Day starting point can be made, and this Sothic date is of no use.
So we have one date: year 7 of (probably) Senusret III, from which we can calculate back to either 1872 or 1830 BC, and then forward again to the BC date of Senusret III year 7. But how reliable is even this?
James points out that "there are good reasons for rejecting the whole concept of Sothic dating as it was applied by the earlier Egyptologists, simply on the grounds that it did not make allowance for any calendrical adjustments. It is assumed that the Egyptians allowed the civil calendar and the seasonal cycle, to which the lunar-religious calendar was tied, to progress further and further out of alignment" (p. 227). There is no evidence to support this. In fact, we know from "the much better documented (calendrically speaking) Hellenistic and Roman periods [of Egyptian history] that several major reforms were put into effect within the space of only three centuries" (p. 228). If the Egyptians were willing to revise the calendar during this period, who is to say that they did not revise it at other periods as well?
James puts the conclusion in italics: "If a single calendrical adjustment was made in the period before the Ptolemies, it would completely invalidate the Sothic calculations for any prior period" (p. 228).
Conclusion
The 20th century will go down as an era of tremendous error as regards the history and chronology of the ancient world. The consensus chronology, used by secular scholars and Christian scholars alike, is built on fiction, creates huge problems with the history of every culture of the ancient world, and is collapsing today. Believing Christians can rejoice at this development, but students must be aware that virtually every Bible Dictionary article, Bible Encyclopedia article, and Old Testament commentary written in this century is replete with error wherever it discusses links between Bible history and the history of the ancient world.
OPEN BOOK
Views & Reviews
No. 19 Copyright (c) 1994 Biblical Horizons January, 1994
Greystoke
reviewed by James B. Jordan
Greystoke was produced and directed by Hugh Hudson, the man who gave us Chariots of Fire. Thus, it is of interest to thinking persons who appreciated the subtle interplay of ideas and perspectives in the earlier _lm, and it is also of interest to Christians for obvious reasons.
Greystoke is the _rst _lm version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes to come anywhere close to presenting the story and characters of the original book. Even so, however, Hudson has invested the story with quite a bit more than Burroughs ever did. If the basic themes of Chariots were nationalism, human motivation, and religious faith, the basic themes of Greystoke revolve around the nature of man, of society, and of science.
Starting with the modern assumption that human beings are related somehow to animal ancestors, Greystoke explores various comparisons and contrasts between man and beast. In the _rst half of the movie, as Tarzan grows up among the apes, we are shown a series of events each of which shows that Tarzan is fundamentally di_erent from his primate family. (1) Tarzan is shown imitating the sounds and actions not just of apes, but of other animals as well, showing his transcendence over the animal realm. (2) Tarzan learns to throw objects, not just wield sticks and clubs, showing a concept of transcendence over space. (3) In the next scene, Tarzan smears mud on his "ugly white face," so that he can look more like an ape brother; yet when a panther attacks the two, the ape is killed, while Tarzan swims to safety, showing dominion over water which apes cannot have. (4) Encountering a mirror, Tarzan examines himself in it, in contrast to the apes who pay no attention to it. (5) Tarzan uses a tool to kill his enemy.
The next section of the _lm brings Phillipe D’Arnot into the picture. This Belgian is travelling with English hunters and explorers. The anti-British theme in Chariots of Fire carries over here, for the British are shown as completely out of touch with nature. They kill animals for fun ("sport and blood"), or to study them clinically, but they have no sympathy or kindness in their approach to nature. The more emotional D’Arnot has no use for the British.
Attacked by primitive blacks, the English _ee, leaving D’Arnot wounded by an arrow in his back. In a scene designed to show the strength of human dominion, D’Arnot pokes the arrow through his body and pulls it out the front. This contrasts with the earlier death of Tarzan’s mother who, shot by an arrow, simply lay down and died.
Tarzan _nds D’Arnot and nurses him back to health. D’Arnot teaches him English, and tells him that he is not an animal but a man. Tarzan’s _rst two words are "mirror" and "razor," which signify the uniquely human capacities for self-examination and self-alteration.
To this point in the _lm, then, we have explored di_erences between men and beasts. Hudson’s viewpoint is more sophisticated than much of modern anthropology, which tries to reduce that di_erence to one thing or another (took-making, or language). Here we have a whole complex of things that separate men from beasts. The second half of the _lm explores similarities between men and beasts, but before discussing that, let us survey brie_y the remainder of the movie.
Tarzan and D’Arnot come to a town on the edge of civilization. As they arrive, we hear a church service in progress. They take a room at an inn, which is also a whorehouse. The opposition of Church and whorehouse, however, is not explored. Comparing the _lm to its previews, it is obvious that a big hunk of the movie was cut just at this point; in fact, the credits give the name of a character called "Rev. Stimson" who does not appear in the _lm at all. I don’t know if Hudson himself made the cut, or if the distributors did. Naturally, I’d like to know if there was some presentation of the Church and Christian faith at this point in the movie.
Arriving in England, Tarzan is presented to his grandfather, the aging Lord Greystoke. As Tarzan arrives, the old man is—signi_cantly—shaving. The aged Greystoke represents the best of human culture. Beloved by his servants, he is kind and caring to them all. His Christmas party celebrates the best and _nest in human culture. His grace in dealing with an idiot boy in his entourage is set in contrast to the sharpness and harshness with which the retarded boy is treated by others. Greystoke’s kindness and childlike outlook on life complete the picture of true humanity, and point to how men should relate to other men, and to beasts.
In contrast, Sir Evelyn Blount represents the scienti_c viewpoint. We cannot be sure that Tarzan is really the heir of Greystoke without scienti_c tests, he intones. Blount’s hero is Charles Darwin, but when Tarzan visits the museum dedicated to Darwin’s work and sees all the stu_ed and mounted beasts, he becomes physically sick. Wandering out, he comes to a scienti_c laboratory where experiments are being conducted on apes. He _nds his old ape "father" in a cage, and sets him free. They wander in a park, frightening people unintentionally, until a policeman under Blount’s direction kills the old ape. The Darwinian viewpoint is presented as characterized by an utter lack of sympathy and kindness. As Silverbeard dies, D’Arnot removes his hat, and John (Tarzan) cries out in French, "He was my father!"
More so, since as Tarzan approaches the scienti_c laboratory, the camera shoots the scene through a grated fence. Tarzan is caged as well, visually. The association is pregnant: As men have caged and abused the animal, so they have caged and abused their fellow man. The Darwinian treatment of the beast is but a precursor to the Darwinian treatment of humanity. Thus, the scientist in the laboratory is given a German name. Darwinism leads to Nazism.
This leads us back to the nationalistic symbols in the _lm. Jane delights to hear Tarzan (John Clayton by this time) speak English with his French accent. If anything encapsulates the message of Greystoke it is this line, for Hudson clearly presents the French (Belgian) D’Arnot as more humane than the English characters in the movie (except for the aging Greystoke). As he leaves to go to home, D’Arnot says to John, "When I get back, you will have forgotten all your French." "Never," replies Tarzan.
As mentioned earlier, the second half of the _lm sets up similarities between beasts and men. In an example of territorialism, the old Greystoke encourages his grandson, Tarzan, never to sell o_ the estate. "Keep it whole, and keep yourself whole," he advises. His house is like a tamed jungle, with plants and animals displayed everywhere. Moreover, there are parallels between his household and the tribe of apes among whom Tarzan had grown up. At the end of the _lm, with both his ape father and his grandfather dead, Tarzan cries out "Father, father, family, family!" The question raised is, thus: Who is my father, and who my family?
A good question, and one for which Christianity alone has a real answer: God is our only abiding Father, and the Church our only abiding family. Similarly, the key _gures in Tarzan’s life seem to die, one after another (Kala, Greystoke, Silverbeard), and each time there is a strong mourning scene in the _lm. What then is the meaning of death? What is the answer to it?
The need for a new science is presented in Greystoke. The aging Greystoke is out for a ride on a large tricycle, and a motorcar drives past him. "Infernal machine," says the old man, shaking his _st. At the end of the _lm, Sir Evelyn Blount says that John (Tarzan) should remain in England and not go back to Africa, "because of the needs of science." "Whose science?" replies the French D’Arnot. The cold sterility of Darwinian experimentation, or something new and better?
The great weakness of Greystoke as a _lm is that it raises all kinds of problems, and sets up extensive contrasts and symbolic matrices, yet leaves everything unresolved. All the same, the issues raised by the _lm are worthy of Christian re_ection. God brought the animals to Adam so that Adam could learn from them. The Bible always presents animals as object lessons for human social life and behavior. This "use" of animals is a far cry from the modern "scienti_c" use of them. Moreover, the theme of kindness in Greystoke is an important one, for if God cares about every sparrow that falls, so should we.
There are a number of very tense scenes in Greystoke, as when D’Arnot pulls the arrow through his _esh. Also, there is one implied sexual encounter. Parents will want to preview it before letting children view it.
Two by Hitchcock
reviewed by James B. Jordan
Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho, The Birds, and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later e_orts, Hitchcock brought humorous or absurd twists into his plots. Hitchcock was able thereby to trick his audience, precisely because the audience was still committed to a moral worldview, but the overall e_ect of his later works is to confuse the moral perspective.
This is not the case, however, with his earlier _lms. Two you will enjoy are I Confess and Rope. The _rst of these takes place in French Canada. In the opening scenes, a man commits a murder and confesses it to a young priest. Because of the separation of church and state, and the privacy of the counseling o_ce (the confessional booth), the priest is not able to tell the police who the murderer is. As it happens, the young priest himself falls under suspicion, and is eventually charged with the murder!
In this theologically sophisticated story, the young priest is called upon to imitate his Master, and give his life as a sacri_ce to ransom the sinner. I Confess is a dramatic story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
The other _lm I recommend is Rope. Based on a true story, the _lm opens as two young men murder a mutual friend. They commit this murder for no reason except to prove to themselves that they are "supermen," men who are beyond the mundane categories of good and evil.
After committing the murder, they place the body in a chest and invite friends over for dinner. Dinner is served on the chest in which the corpse lies, a parody of the catholic idea of the altar as, in part, the tomb of Christ. This is no feast to commemorate the self-sacri_ce of Jesus, but a feast to celebrate guilt-free murder.
One of the people they invite over is their philosophy professor, played by Jimmy Stewart, from whom they had learned their "superman" philosophy. As the evening progresses, the professor begins to _gure out what his two students have done. They have actually put his armchair paganism into practice! This _lm exposes the humanist philosophy taught in our public schools and universities. The movie is too intense for small children, but it is a rewarding and thought provoking experience for Christian adults.
Rope is also interesting from an artistic standpoint, since the entire action takes place in one apartment, and in real time.
2001: A Space Odyssey
reviewed by James B. Jordan
In the November 1993 issue of Open Book Peter Leithart commented brie_y on gnosticism. The _lm 2001 is a great specimen of gnosticism, and is worth viewing as a Sunday School project for an adult class.
The author of the basic story was Arthur C. Clarke, an old-school science _ction writer whose novel, Childhood’s End, provided the basic theme of the _lm. Stanley Kubrick, the director and crafter of the movie, is well-known for his Freudian _lms Barry Lyndon and A Clockwork Orange, both of which deal with the primitive sexual violence lurking in the hearts of men (the id) versus the restraining in_uence of society (the super-ego).
The theme of Clarke’s novel and of 2001 is mankind’s transcendence of the limitations of the _esh. The summum bonum—the greatest good—to which we can aspire is to be rid of the body, which according to these men and gnostics of all ages, limits us from ful_lling our god-like nature.
2001 is a visually stunning work of art (especially in a theater). It is packed with symbolism employed in a sophisticated fashion, and deals in a profound but pagan way with some of the most basic aspects of human existence.
As you watch the _lm you will notice that in virtually every scene people are shown eating food. The fact is that we need food to life. From a Christian standpoint, God gives us life by His Spirit as we eat food, which is dead and lifeless; we kill cows and tomatoes before we eat them. From the gnostic standpoint, our need for food is simply a limitation. The Starchild born at the end of the _lm gets his energy directly from the cosmos.
Other "limitations of the _esh" that are displayed in the _lm are sleep, birthdays, and the elimination of waste. See if you can count the number of meals, scenes of sleep, birthdays, and bathroom scenes. As the _lm moves to its climax, we are shown men running for exercise and breathing heavily, and then comes the long heavy-breathing sequence in the spacesuit. Breathing is another limitation of the _esh.
In the lengthy prologue to the _lm, the apes are shown sleeping and eating. Then, after encountering the Monolith, which raises them up to the next stage of evolution, they become aggressive and territorial, using tools to defeat the other tribe of apes. In a visual pun, the bone-tool becomes a spaceship as we transition to the main part of the _lm. The theme of territoriality is pursued as the Russians and Americans are shown in an uneasy truce on the space station.
At the end of the prologue, the "missing link" apes are shown at the end of their development. They are passive and clearly have no future. In the main body of the _lm, the human beings are shown the same way: passive and listless. Only the HAL 9000 computer, a new creation, has the drive to try and seize the next stage of evolution by killing o_ the men and joining with the matrix. (Ignore the stupid reworking of this aspect of the movie in the _lm 2010.)
The humanform character of technology is visually portrayed in two ways. First, the globular shapeship the lands on the moon has a clearly human face, seen as the ship is transported below the surface of the moon at the end of the visually beautiful and entrancing Blue Danube Waltz sequence. Second, the ship sent out to Jupiter is clearly phallic in shape, and from its spherical head the seed containing the last living crewmember is ejected into the matrix.
In an additional dimension of this theme, we see that the theme of territorial con_ict moves from ape versus ape, to American versus Russian, and _nally to man versus machine; for what/who is more "humanoform" than HAL 9000?
The fabulous visual e_ects we see as the man enters the matrix are not just for show. If you watch with your mind in gear you will see foetus-shapes in the fog. Clarke and Kubrick are inviting us to believe that the human race as a whole is the masculine part of a celestial marriage with the cosmos, which is female. From that union comes the Starchild.
Finally, we are shown a "transcendent change," as Dave, the crewmember, becomes timeless in what looks like an expensive hotel room of 18th century design. He experiences the limitations of the _esh for the last time: eating a meal, entering a bathroom, and lying on a bed. Then he becomes the Starchild, escaping the limitations of time and space, the whole world as his new toy.
Sadly, many Christians today think of salvation and spirituality in such gnostic terms. They overlook the physical, earthy doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and think of glori_cation as some kind of immaterial existence. The Eastern, Roman, and Anglo-Catholic sects conceive of the saints as transcendent over the limitations of space, able to visit people all over the world simultaneously through their icons. Protestants have ignored the food of the Lord’s Supper, savoring it only four times a year, with tiny bits of bread and impactless grape juice. The earthy, "bathroom humor" of the Reformers and the Puritans is viewed as o_ensive and downright sinful by modern Christians, who derived such notions from the gnostic Unitarians. In these and many other respects, pagan gnosticism is very much with us today.
