Out of Egypt, I am Called Yahweh

Previous articles have discussed evidence for multiple sources in the creation and flood stories. In the final version of these stories that appears in our bibles, the Bible’s editor (called the “redactor”) sometimes keeps the sources intact (as in the two separate creation tales) and other times interweaves them (as in the combined flood story). Scholars can identify the separate strands based on terminology, consistent themes, and narrative flow. One of the themes that sets one source apart from the other is when God’s name is revealed.

What’s in a Name?

According to the source known as the “Yahwist” or “J”, God revealed his name around the time of Adam’s grandson:

To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of YHWH.” (Gen 4:26)

Thereafter, the J source exclusively uses the name YHWH (usually translated as “the Lord” in modern bibles) in narration. That is why this source was named the “Yahwist.” Ancient Hebrew consisted of only consonants, so we don’t know for sure exactly how it was pronounced, but scholars believe it would have been “Yah-WEH” (accent on last syllable).

Other sources – the “Elohist” (E) and “Priestly” (P) – hold that the divine name YHWH was first revealed to Moses. Before Moses, God was known to the ancestors under different names. For example, in the P account of the covenant with Abram, we read,

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, YHWH appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am El Shaddai.” (Gen 17:1)

The P source explains in this verse that Abram only knows the deity by the name El Shaddai (“God Almighty” in most English translations). But when YHWH speaks to Moses, the text reads:

God also spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name ‘YHWH’ I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex 6:2-3)

These verses are taken from the P version of the call of Moses (Ex 6:2-12). God’s commission to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt is a “triplet,” a story recounted in three sources: P, J, and E. The P version is isolated and intact, but the J and E versions are combined in an earlier passage (Ex 3:1-4:23). The E source predominates in this longer passage:

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘YHWH, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ (Ex 3:13-15)

There’s a lot going on in this passage that doesn’t concern us at this point. The key thing to note is that, as in the P version, the ancestors knew the deity under different names but God first reveals his true name to Moses. Both E and P agree on this point: the name YHWH only came into use after the exodus from Egypt.

Could this be a clue that refugees from Egypt brought the worship of YHWH with them to Canaan?

Charlton Heston as Moses learns the name of God in the burning bush scene from Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.

The Midianite Connection

In my last article, we saw that archaeology revealed the early Israelites were Canaanites, speaking a Canaanite dialect and practicing the Canaanite religion. In that religion, the main god was known as “El” (as in El Shaddai). Of the hundreds of city names in Canaan, many include the name El (for example, Beth-el, for “house of God”) but none include the name YHWH. Yet the worship of YHWH eventually became synonymous with Israel (etymology uncertain, perhaps means “God rules”).

How did Canaanites go from worshipping El to YHWH? Let’s go back to Exodus 3-4 and the commission of Moses. Other than Moses being told God’s true name, we also have the indication of where this occurred:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (Ex 3:1)

Both J and E tie Moses to Midian, even going so far to say that Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite priest. Both also locate God’s mountain (called Sinai in J and Horeb in E) in or near Midian. It is reasonable then to look for the origins of the cult of YHWH in Midian. (Midian was located east of the Gulf of Aqaba, south of present-day Jordan, in what would now be the extreme northwest corner of Saudi Arabia.)

We also have Egyptian texts from the 14th-13th centuries BCE that mention semi-nomads called the “Shasu of yhw3” who were located in the general vicinity of Midian. Egyptologists derive the name “Shasu” from an Egyptian verb meaning “to wander.” The Egyptian hieroglyphs transliterated as “yhw3” would probably have been pronounced “Yahu” and is strangely similar to the name of Israel’s God, YHWH. It may have been a place name or it could have been their patron god.

The pieces seem to fit together. Let’s say you have a small group who escape from Egypt – perhaps captured Canaanites or Midianites who had been enslaved – and, on their way to eventually settling in the hill country of Canaan, they pass through Midian. When they finally arrive in the central hill country, they bring with them their story of deliverance from Egypt and attribute their freedom to the god they followed in Midian, who they now call Yahweh.

Certainly the Midianite connection is strong, but so are the Egyptian connections. There are Egyptian details in the story that may go back to the original story told by those who escaped Egypt. We’ll look at those in the next article.

The Conquest Defeated

Biblical archaeology began about 150 years ago with the goal of proving the veracity of the biblical stories. The adage is that these early pioneering scholars had the Bible in one hand and a spade in the other. And the early discoveries indeed seemed to verify events described in the Bible. But as a fuller picture emerged, confidence in the Bible as a reliable guide to history was shaken to its foundations.

Digging up the Past

Let’s begin with a brief lesson on how the science of archaeology works. In ancient times, when a city was rebuilt after having been destroyed by war or natural disaster, the inhabitants would construct new buildings atop the ruins of the old. Over time, these layers would build up into something resembling an artificial hill. Scientists realized they could dig down through the layers and, the deeper they dug, the further back in time they could go.

What the archaeologists lacked, however, were the proper reference points. For example, they could identify the various levels – or strata – of the ruins of a city, but unless they had inscriptions or texts that were datable, they would have no idea how much time passed between the city in level 2 and the one in level 3. The invention of radiocarbon dating provided a method for establishing a fixed date, but it required finding organic material like wood or grain.

The major breakthrough was the discovery that pottery provided a fairly accurate clock for establishing dates. Unlike inscriptions or organic material, pottery fragments were plentiful at excavation sites. Scientists were able to create a relative sequence of pottery styles from oldest to youngest and then plug in any absolute dates provided by radiocarbon testing of organic material. Since pottery styles changed frequently enough, a well-trained archaeologist could identify the date of any strata based on the pot shards found within it.

The Missing Conquest

Naturally, the first sites to be excavated were cities mentioned in the Bible, cities like Megiddo, Shechem, and Jericho. Jericho is well-known from the Book of Joshua where, forty years after the exodus, Joshua led the Israelites in a systematic campaign of genocide against the Canaanites. First on their list of conquests was the walled city of Jericho (Joshua 6) where, after the walls came down, the entire population was put to the sword and the city destroyed. This was followed by the destruction of the city of Ai (Joshua 7-8). Seeing what happened at Jericho and Ai, the people of Gibeon made a treaty with the Israelites (Joshua 9) to avoid the destruction of their town.

Digging at ancient Jericho in the 1930s, John Garstang found destroyed mudbrick city walls that he attributed to the battle mentioned in the Book of Joshua. He dated the level to 1400 BCE, fifty years or so after the traditional date for the exodus.

In the 1950s Kathleen Kenyon re-visited the site with more refined techniques and was able to date the destruction of Garstang’s wall to 1560 BCE, a century and a half earlier. Not only that, but she discovered that the city had remained unoccupied for several centuries after its destruction. Not only was Jericho unoccupied during the traditional 15th century date for the exodus and conquest, but also for the currently accepted 13th century date as well.

Kathleen Kenyon discovered the remains of 23 cities at Jericho, the earliest dating back to the 8^th millennium BCE, making Jericho the oldest city in the world. At the 9000-year old stratum, Kenyon unearthed this circular tower built of stone and mud. (Photo by author, 1993)

Jericho is not the only such case. Archaeological evidence at the site of Ai shows that it was unoccupied from the 15th century BCE to the 12th. At Gibeon, no remains at the site were found earlier than the 8th century BCE. In short, at Ai there was no occupied city in the 13th century for Joshua to destroy and at Gibeon no city had yet been built to surrender to Joshua.

And on it goes. Joshua 12 lists the kings of 31 cities defeated by the invading Israelites. With only a few exceptions (e.g., Hazor, Bethel), the cities were either not occupied or not destroyed in the 13th century. Of the few cities that were destroyed, there is no evidence of who destroyed the city.

The Israelites were Canaanites

Just as we saw with the exodus, the scientific data does not square with the biblical accounts. But whereas with the exodus the problem primarily was the absence of evidence supporting the Bible, in the case of the conquest of Canaan, the evidence contradicts the Bible.

Indeed, the Bible itself is inconsistent when it comes to the conquest. For example, Joshua 12:10 says the king of Jerusalem was defeated by Joshua and the Israelites. But the Book of Judges begins with the death of Joshua and describes how the people of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took the city (Judges 1:8). Then again, 2 Sam 5:6-9 describes how David took the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The Bible provides three different stories naming three different conquerors of the same city.

The traditional “conquest” model as portrayed in the Book of Joshua has been dismissed by all but fundamentalists. What, then, can archaeology tell us about the formation of Israel?

The facts on (and underneath) the ground show rapidly-growing communities in the hill country during the 13th to 12th centuries. The material culture (architecture, pottery, etc.) of these open villages were in continuity with the Canaanite material culture of the walled cities of the lowlands. The Hebrew language is essentially a Canaanite dialect and worship of Canaanite gods continued for centuries in Israel. Had an invading people defeated and supplanted the indigenous one, you would expect to see a sharp break in the culture from what went before. Also, you would expect the invaders to take the best lands in the lowlands, not the poorer land of the hill country.

The prevailing explanation today is that the early Israelites were Canaanites who had resettled from the lowland cities to the rural highlands. Archaeology can’t provide the reason for the move – perhaps to escape warfare or high taxation – but the theory does explain the continuity of architecture, pottery, language, religion, etc. If the refugees fled the cities for political or economic reasons (the kings seizing the resources of the poor), it could explain the strong resistance to a king cited in biblical passages such as 1 Sam 8:10-18.

Perhaps at some point, a group of migrants settled in the area, bringing with them their story of having escaped persecution in Egypt and their worship of the god Yahweh as well. The origin story and religion slowly caught on, providing a national identity to a people who became known as Israel. We’ll go into this theory in more detail in the next article.

Absence of Exodus

The one event from the Bible for which we should be able to find ample evidence in extra-biblical sources is the exodus from Egypt. According to the biblical account, various plagues wracked the nation of Egypt over the course of several months. This was then followed by the exit of 600,000 men and their families (estimated population of over 2 million) from Egypt. When the pharaoh attempted to stop them with a squadron of 600 chariots, they were drowned in the Red Sea. The 2 million people wandered the desert for 40 years before finally settling in the land of Canaan after defeating the indigenous population in a series of battles.

Surely, events on such a scale should have left a record in either Egyptian texts or archaeological strata that would allow us to assign them to an appropriate point in world history.

Getting the Date Right

According to the Bible (1 Kgs 6:1), work on Solomon’s Temple began in the 480th year since the Exodus. Since we know that date with some degree of confidence, a simple calculation would give us 1447 BCE for the date of the exodus. But that places the exodus during the reign of Thutmose III when Egypt was at the height of its powers and Canaan was firmly under his control. Egypt’s power over Canaan only began to weaken in the 13th century BCE.

The Bible also provides a clue that suggests the 15th century is not the right era. Ex 1:11 reports that the enslaved Hebrews were forced to construct the supply cities of “Pithom and Rameses.” Most experts identify the biblical city of “Rameses” as the old Hyksos capital of Avaris (modern-day Tell ed-Dab’a). The city was destroyed in 1530 BCE and long abandoned until it was rebuilt as the royal city of Pi-ramesse during the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE). The construction referenced in Ex 1:11, therefore, could only have taken place in the 13th century.

We also can’t look at Egypt in isolation, but have to consider what happened in Canaan once the Israelites arrive. All the experts agree that a major break in the archaeological record indicating a shift from an urban “Canaanite” to a rural “Israelite” culture occurred at the end of the Bronze Age, ca. 1250-1150 BCE. If a large number of people suddenly settled in Canaan from elsewhere, it could only have happened in this period.

Therefore, the mid-13th century is the era in which we need to situate the biblical stories of exodus.

Missing Evidence

We can’t quite yet call it a day, though. The big events recounted in the Book of Exodus should have left plenty of evidence in both the written and in the archaeological record, but many have searched and found nothing. There are no Egyptian records of a series of plagues that would surely have destroyed the economy and killed thousands. No records of a mass migration of 2 million former slave workers. No record of a major military defeat in a freak tidal wave.

The typical counter-argument is that Egyptians do not record their defeats. True, Egyptians did put a positive spin on things, but we don’t see that, either. Where are the boasts of a pharaoh who forcefully expelled troublesome aliens from his land or bravely rescued his soldiers from a flood? Sure, there could have been Egyptian texts or inscriptions that did not survive, but we have to make judgments based on the evidence we do have.

And there’s no archaeological evidence of the desert wanderings, either. Two million people could not have passed through the Sinai desert and left behind no evidence behind. It’s certainly not because people weren’t motivated to look or looked in the wrong places. Any discoverers of sunken Egyptian chariots or ruins of ancient Israelite desert encampments would have their names written in the history books, but alas! At some point you have to admit that nothing has been found because there’s nothing there to find.

The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899) shows many common misconceptions such as the outfits worn by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.

Where Does That Leave Us?

While many scholars believe the exodus story was invented by the Israelites as their own rags-to-riches tale, there are some biblical clues that some portion of Israel recalled once having lived in Egypt. For example, several of the individuals named in the biblical story of the exodus – Moses, Hophni, Hur, Phinehas – have Egyptian names. The description of the Tabernacle (or Tent of Meeting) has architectural parallels with the war tent of Ramesses II and the Ark of the Covenant has parallels with ritual Egyptian barks. (I hope to go into more detail on this in a future article.) These details could have been invented hundreds of years later to provide Egyptian color to the story, but they could also be relics of memories handed down for hundreds of years.

The prophet Amos wrote in the 8th century BCE, “Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor?” (Amos 9:7) Caphtor is the area of Cypress and Crete and historians agree that the Philistines did arrive in Canaan from there in the 12th century BCE. If Amos knew where Philistines originated 400 years previously, why would we not expect him to know the origins of his own people?

It is not inconceivable that a relatively small group of Semite immigrants left Egypt during the time of Ramesses and settled in the hill country of Canaan, bringing with them tales of having once lived as strangers in an alien land. We would not expect Egyptians to record the departure of a small group nor would we find traces of them in the desert unless we knew exactly where to look. No plagues, no miracle of the sea, just one of many quiet migrations in and out of Egypt.

But if this theory is true, then only a fraction of the people who became Israel would be able to trace their story back to Egypt. How did the entire nation of Israel come to see themselves as having been brought up from the land of Egypt?

Americans can look to Thanksgiving as an example. While very few Americans can trace their ancestry back to one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, we teach our children the story of Pilgrims sharing food with Native Americans every Thanksgiving as though it were our story. The Pilgrims’ desire to flee religious persecution in Europe became a central theme in American history and culture.

And what happened once the Egyptian pilgrims arrived in their promised land? We’ll look at the stories of the conquest of Canaan in my next article.

Biblical Dating

No, this article is not about whether or not the Bible says it’s okay to kiss on the first date. (But there will be some discussion of begetting.) Mainly, we’re going to talk about how can we assign a date to events reported in the Bible and if the relative chronology provided by the Scriptures is reliable.

When Was Christ Born?

In my last article I discussed how, in the 17th century, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland used time indicators in the Bible to develop a biblical chronology covering 4000 years from the creation of the world to the birth of Jesus. Following the thinking of the time, he placed the birth of Jesus in the year 4 BC. How could Jesus be born 4 years “Before Christ”?

Back in antiquity, years were counted from the beginning of the reign of a monarch (e.g., the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar) or some other notable event (e.g., the founding of Rome). In the 6th century CE, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for “Dionysius the Humble”) decided that we should count the years from Christ’s birth, not from the reign of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Diocletian who had been a notorious persecutor of Christians. Therefore, he reckoned years should be dated either “before Christ” or “years of our Lord” (in Latin, anno domini). (There is no Year 0 and his calendar goes from 1 BC to AD 1.)

The problem is that Dionysius didn’t get the year of Christ’s birth right. Matt 2:1 and Luke 1:5 both agree that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Dionysius thought that Herod died 754 years after the founding of Rome (AUC, for ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city), but Herod died in 750 AUC. This mistake was known in Ussher’s day and their best guess was that Jesus was therefore born in 4 BCE. Historians today would estimate that Jesus was born a few years before  the death of Herod (e.g., 7-6 BCE).

It's a well-known fact that back in the 50s, guys could only afford one milkshake.

It’s Written in the Stars

All of which raises the question: How we can date any event in the past to any degree of accuracy? Occasionally, we get lucky. The Babylonians, for example, not only recorded the reigns of kings and dates of battles, but they also recorded astronomical observations. On one astronomical diary for the 37th regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar, there are about thirty precise observations of the moon and planets that allow astronomers to determine the 37th regnal year ran from March/April 568 to March/April 567 BCE. Such dates are called “absolute dates” because we know with mathematical precision when they occurred on our BCE/CE calendar.

From such absolute dates, the relative dates in a chronology can be assigned. For example, with the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar fixed as an absolute date, it can be easily calculated that his 18th year, during which he destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple was 587/586 BCE. With absolute dates, the entire Babylonian chronology can be recreated. And the same can be done using data from the records of other cultures.

Then, by cross-checking events mentioned in the biblical Books of Kings with known dates in the chronologies of Assyria, Babylonia, and other surrounding kingdoms, scholars can establish with some degree of confidence that the Divided Monarchy (Israel in the north, Judah in the south) began with the death of Solomon in 931/930 BCE.

But that’s the end of the road because if we try to push back before the time of Solomon, it becomes increasingly difficult to find synchronisms between the Bible and historical records from the surrounding nations. We’re left with only the witness of the Bible and its authors were not trying to document events with historical accuracy.

The Lost Generations 

As we saw in my previous article, the Bible records the Exodus occurred after the Israelites had lived 430 years (to the day!) in Egypt. Solomon began construction on the Temple in the 480th year since the Exodus. That’s 910 years to account for. Yet when we look at genealogical lists such as Ruth 4:18-22, there are simply not enough generations.

Gen 46:12 says that Judah, his son Perez, and his grandson Hezron were 3 of the 70 members of Jacob’s family who went down to Egypt. An adult Nahshon was a chieftan of the tribe of Judah (Num 2:3; 7:12) during the desert wanderings. Over 400 years separate Hezron from Nahshon, but only 3 generations.

It’s even crazier for Moses. According to Gen 46:11, Levi and his son Kohath migrated to Egypt with Jacob. But according to Ex 6:18-20, Kohath was Moses’ grandfather and lived to be 133. Amram, Moses’s father, died at age 137. Adding these two ages gives you 270 years. Even if they both fathered children on their deathbed, that’s not enough time to have an 80-year old Moses at the time of the Exodus.

I was curious how fundamentalists handle this and one such solution is the same as that used by Archbishop Ussher: follow the LXX which says the 430 years covers the time the Israelites spent in both Canaan as well as Egypt. This drops the time the Israelites spent solely in Egypt to 215 years and reduces the gap between Moses and his grandfather to a mere 135 years.

This still leaves 480 years from the time of Nahshon to the time of Solomon and only 6 generations separating them. Did each man father his son at the age of 80? Interestingly, 1 Chr 6:3-8 records 10 generations from Aaron (Moses’ brother and brother-in-law of Nahshon) to Zadok (priest of Jerusalem at the time of Solomon). Ten generations covering the same timespan in one genealogy as six generations in a different genealogy suggests that some intermediate ancestors were lost or one (or both) are both fictional.

An Unreliable Witness

Despite the earnest desires of biblical literalists, the time indicators in Scripture are not salvageable as historical data any earlier than the 10th century BCE. And it’s not just the dates but the events themselves. While there are a couple of mentions in extra-biblical inscriptions to a “house of David,” there are no references to a King David or a King Solomon outside of those in the Bible. There are no mentions in Egyptian chronicles of plagues or a mass exodus of Hebrew slaves. Archaeological evidence does not support the conquest story described in the Book of Joshua. All of this leads scholars to question whether any of the events described prior to the Divided Monarchy happened at all.

We will explore these topics further in my next article.

Ussher, U Got It Bad

Many readers of the Bible have looked at chronological markers, such as “When X had lived Y years he became the father of Z” in Genesis 5, and wondered if they could construct a timeline of biblical history. The best-known attempt of this was in the 17th century by Irish Archbishop James Ussher. He famously set the first day of Creation as 23 October 4004 BC. How difficult was this task?

Let’s do the timeline again

The first decision we need to make is which numbers to use. As I pointed out in my previous article on Genesis 5, many of the ages given in Genesis differ depending on whether you use the Hebrew MT or the Greek LXX. For example, the Flood occurred 1656 years after creation according to the MT, but the LXX says it was 2242 years. From here on, I will use the abbreviation A.M. (for anno mundi) to count the years since the creation. Since modern bibles are translated from the Masoretic Text (MT), we’ll use those numbers so you can check my math, if desired.

The next decision we need to make is to decide on the birth year for Shem’s son, Arpachshad. As stated in my previous article on the post-Flood genealogies, Gen 5:32 states Noah was 500 years old when he begat Shem and Gen 7:6 tells us Noah was 600 when the flood began. But Gen 11:10 says Shem was 100 when he fathered Arpachshad and that this was “two years after the flood.” But if the flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old and the flood lasted a year, Shem must have been older than 100 “two years after the flood.” Let’s say Arpaschad was born the same year as the flood, AM 1656.

Using the data for the post-Flood ancestors in Gen 11 we get to the year AM 1946 where Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he “became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” In similar fashion, we can use other markers in Genesis (17:1; 25:26; 47:9) to get to the year AM 2236 when Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt. According to Ex 12:40-41 it was 430 years later (“on that very day”) when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt (AM 2666) and Solomon began construction on the first Temple (AM 3146) 480 years after the Exodus (1 Kgs 6:1).

After this the chronological markers aren’t so clear. The Bible lists the various kings and their reigns, but some of them overlap. But if we ignore those technicalities, we can use the information in 1 and 2 Kgs to add another 430 years from the beginning of construction of the Temple in Solomon’s fourth year until the destruction of that Temple by the Babylonians (AM 3576). Another 50 years brings us to the end of the Babylonian captivity when the Edict of Cyrus (AM 3626) allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem to construct the second Temple (Ezra 1:1-4). Thus we would have 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the First Temple and 480 more years to the founding of the Second Temple.

Portrait of James Ussher by Cornelius Janssens van Ceulen (1593-1661). His head and hands look out of proportion to his body.

It’s just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right

The chronological references end with Ezra and Nehemiah and we’re left with a relative timeline. What we need is an event in the Bible that can be assigned a fixed date in our own calendar. To achieve this, Bishop Ussher turned to Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to find such a date. He calculated the death of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to be 562 BCE. This was also the accession year of his successor Amel-Marduk (known as Evil-merodach in the Bible). According to 2 Kgs 25:27, in his year of accession Evil-merodach released Jehoiachin from captivity after 37 years. Ussher determined this was AM 3442 in his chronology.

But our calculations above yield AM 3602, not AM 3442, as the year Nebuchadnezzar died (see table). Given the same information to work with, how did Ussher end up 160 years off?

Let’s go back to Abram. Above we pointed out that “Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” Were they triplets? If not, one of them was eldest. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old when God called him to depart from Haran for Canaan. Ussher reasoned that Abram was called to leave Haran the same year Terah died (AM 2083). This would make Abram the youngest of Terah’s three sons, born when Terah was 130 years old.

Ussher made another modification to the chronology we derived above when he used the LXX version of Ex 12:40 which says the children of Israel “sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan” for 430 years (the MT says it was 430 years in Egypt only). So Ussher adds 430 years to the year Abram left Haran (AM 2083) to get the date of AM 2513 for the Exodus. This puts the founding of Solomon’s Temple at AM 2993 and he finds overlaps in the reigns of kings to reduce the time from the founding of the Temple to its destruction down to 423 years. Thus he determines AM 3442 as the year of Jehoiachin’s release. With this date as his anchor, he was able to determine the creation occurred in 4004 BCE. Q.E.D.

Event	Date AM	Date BCE	Ussher's AM	Date BCE
Creation	0	4164	0	4004
Flood	1656	2508	1656	2348
Abram born	1946	2218	2008	1996
Abram arrives in Canaan	2021	2143	2083	1921
Jacob into Egypt	2236	1928	2298	1706
Exodus	2666	1498	2513	1491
Founding of 1st Temple	3146	1018	2993	1011
Dedication of 1st Temple	3153	1011	3000	1004
Destruction of 1st Temple	3576	588	3416	588
Death of Nebuchadnezzar	3602	562	3442	562
Edict of Cyrus	3626	538	3485	519
Re-dedication of 2nd Temple	4000	164	3840	164
Birth of Jesus			4000	4

With a bit of a mind flip, You’re into the time slip

Ussher’s chronology appears too neat. He calculates 3000 years from the creation to the dedication of Solomon’s Temple and another 1000 years to the birth of Jesus. Ussher seemed to like large, round numbers. One suspects he began with the desired end result in mind and jiggered things around to make his chronology fit.

But the patterns in the Bible’s timeline are too on the nose: 430 years for the Hebrews living in Egypt and 430 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple and 480 years from the founding of the First Temple to the founding of the Second Temple.

Just as Ussher labored to fix a period of 4000 years from creation to Christ, perhaps the biblical editors were also working under their own schema. Several modern interpreters have suggested that AM 4000 corresponds to 164 BCE and the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees (the event celebrated at Hanukkah). Looking at the table, our timeline and Ussher’s sync up at the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the death of Nebuchadnezzar before diverging again. Yet our timeline ends with AM 4000 in 164 BCE. If Ussher had a specific event in mind as the terminus for his 4000-year timeline, maybe the 2nd century editors of the Bible did as well. If not, it’s an incredible coincidence.

Bottom line, the dates presented in the Bible are theological and symbolic. Despite Bishop Ussher’s assumptions, they cannot be relied upon as historical data. But we adjust biblical events to extra-biblical dates as Ussher did, can we calculate a more accurate biblical chronology? That will be the topic of my next article.

New Wineskin Buying Guide

Last Sunday morning my wife and I were waiting for a table at our favorite breakfast place. At the cashier’s station I saw an elderly gentlemen carrying a very thick book. As he headed out the door, I caught a glimpse of the book’s cover and saw it was a 900-page exegetical commentary on Ephesians. Not exactly what I would call casual Sunday-morning reading.

The Letter to the Ephesians consists of six short chapters and maybe five or six printed pages. Why would someone want or need a 900-page book on it? Well, the fact of the matter is that no matter how feature-laden your study bible is, there will be times when you need more information. Fortunately, there are plenty of supplemental sources you can turn to.

Commentaries

The most essential bible reference is the commentary. You can use a commentary to help interpret the meaning of a particular passage or as a guide in working your way through an entire book of Scripture. Finding a good/reliable commentary isn’t easy. Commentaries range from the very introductory to the very scholarly. If you want to focus on the practical application of the Bible for Christian life, there are devotional commentaries (e.g., Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible) that would suit this purpose. But if you want the history, culture, and background to the biblical text, you will need something more in-depth.

Commentaries come in mainly two formats, the single-volume and the multi-volume varieties. One-volume commentaries (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Commentary, New Jerome Biblical Commentary) provide you with basic, introductory material on every book in the Bible. If you are starting out with scripture study and building up your library, a one-volume commentary is a useful first step. But by its nature as a concise commentary, do not expect the analysis to be in-depth.

Multi-volume series (e.g., Anchor Bible, Hermeneia) have an entire volume (or two) dedicated to one of the biblical books. A commentary dedicated to a specific biblical book will usually include the author’s translation of that book with textual notes explaining the rationale behind the translation choices. Because different volumes in the series have different authors, the quality and writing style will vary.

Commentaries are geared towards different audiences. A commentary on Genesis intended for pastors and well-educated laymen will be less dense and run a couple of hundred pages, but one intended for scripture students and readers familiar with Greek and Hebrew could be 1500 pages spread over three volumes. Individual textbook-level books such as this could easily run more than $50. Before making a big investment, check out reviews and, if available, the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon to see if the reading level and style of the commentary is suitable for your purposes.

Other Reference Works

While bible commentaries are an essential study aid, other reference materials such as a bible dictionary, bible atlas, and concordance could come in handy.

A bible dictionary is really a bible encyclopedia. You use it as you would an encyclopedia to learn more about a biblical person, place or thing. They also come in the single-volume (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Dictionary) and multi-volume (e.g., Anchor Bible Dictionary, New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible) varieties. Multi-volume dictionaries are very expensive and would be considered an investment. A good one-volume bible dictionary is probably all you need and Wikipedia might do in a pinch.

A bible atlas is more than just a set of maps. Some bible atlases include articles on history and archaeology, details of battles and conquests, artistic renderings of biblical cities, etc. I would put this in the “nice to have” category, especially if your bible already has some decent maps.

A concordance is used to look up all the verses in the bible that contain a particular word (e.g., all the verses in the bible with the word “camel”). Since the Hebrew and Greek words can be translated using different English words, you need to use a concordance that is keyed to a particular translation. There are free bible concordances available online for popular translations like KJV and NIV.

A Gospel Synopsis places similar passages from the four gospels side-by-side so that you can easily compare them. It’s in the “nice to have” category but very useful if you want to study gospel parallels.

Old and new wineskins.

How They Work Together

Let’s say you want to research Jesus’ proverb about “old wine in new wineskins” but don’t know where it is in the Bible. Looking up “wineskins” in a concordance you find references to Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; and Lk 5:37f. You could then look up these three passages individually in your bible, but a Synopsis of the Four Gospels presents them side-by-side on the same page.

From the synopsis, it is easy to see that Luke adds a non-related statement (v. 39) that no one drinking the old wine desires the new wine. This saying apparently has no bearing on what was just said about old wine in new wineskins and seems a bit odd, so now you want to know what biblical scholars have to say about it.

A single-volume commentary only has two sentences on v. 39. From this you learn that v. 39 is a unique Lucan proverb that conditions how the previous saying about “new wine” should be interpreted. The “old wine” represented by the Sabbath and practices like fasting are not to be cast aside as they also contain God’s will.

That provides some insight and many people would be happy enough to stop right there. But those wanting to go deeper could consult a commentary volume dedicated to Luke and there they would find several paragraphs devoted to v. 39. Reading the detailed commentary, you learn the proverb is referring to religious conservatives comfortable with the old practices like fasting having difficulty in accepting the “new wine” that Jesus offers, saying, “The old is what is good.” Therefore, this proverb does not contradict what was said before about the incompatibility of the old practices with Jesus’ new teachings, but confirms it.

Hopefully, this very brief example illustrates how to incorporate multiple reference works to bring out a deeper meaning in a passage that, on initial reading, seemed odd and confusing.

Scripture Notes

Bibles come in a variety of versions. I’m not just talking about various translations or formats like hardcover, paperback, or leather-bound. I’m referring to special-featured editions like devotional bibles, bibles for men and bibles for women, and ones for teens and kids and so on. My “marriage devotional bible,” for example, has features such as daily and weekend devotions, marriage quizzes, and 30 profiles showing both good and bad examples of married couples in the Bible.

Any of these editions are fine if you simply want to read the Scriptures and the features may be inspiring or help you apply lessons from the Bible to your daily life. And if that’s all you’re looking for, then read no further. But if you really want to understand Scripture, there are some basic features that a bible should have to help you towards that goal.

Footnotes

Footnotes come in many forms. Translators’ notes offer alternate readings of an ambiguous text or different readings from other manuscript sources. These kind of notes can generally be found in all bible editions, even in those that are not intended as study bibles.

Explanatory notes or annotations comment on the biblical text, either on a passage or a specific verse. Also called study notes, these annotations come from the editor of that bible and generally not the translators. Annotations may not appear in all editions and may even be frowned upon in some circles because they tell you what someone else thinks about the Bible. Study notes written by a fundamentalist, for example, will not be welcomed by a mainline Protestant and vice versa.

But, in my opinion, trying to read the Bible without some guidance is like embarking on a cross-country road trip with no maps. Sure, you can follow the road signs, but it wouldn’t take much to veer off-course and wander aimlessly.

No, my bible doesn't look like this. At most I have a few little scribbles in pencil. (Bible journaling by Shar Martinez at https://gypsymamanc.wordpress.com/)

Cross-references operate under the principle that the Bible is its own best interpreter. Cross-references help you locate other verses in the Bible that may be helpful for understanding a particular passage. If, for example, you are studying the story of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, it may be instructive to compare with the parallel baptism passages in the other gospels. A cross-reference will also help you locate the verse in Hab 2:4 that Paul quotes in Rom 1:17 so you can read it in its original context.

Introductions and Topical Articles

Most bibles will include some brief introduction to each individual book in the Bible. A good introduction should explain what we know about the author and when the book may have been written. It should also describe the themes of the book and outline the major sections. This may be carried out further in the text itself in the form of unit and section headings. These help you quickly identify the contents on the page much in the same way headings and subheadings do in a contemporary textbook.

For example, my previous articles have covered the unit of Genesis chapters 1-11 known as the “primeval history,” set before the time of Abraham. This unit can then be subdivided into sections on The Creation Week (Gen 1:1-2:3), Adam and Eve (2:4-3:24), Cain and Abel (Gen 4), and so on. Sometimes these unit and section headings are embedded in the text itself, but other times these headings are only mentioned in the footnotes. I prefer the latter approach because deciding where a section begins and ends is a judgment call. Not having an editor’s decision forced upon you through the formatting of the text allows you to make your own decision.

A bible may also have general introductions to both the Old and the New Testaments as well as their major parts: the historical, wisdom, and prophetic books in the OT, and the gospels and letters in the NT.

General or topical articles would help you understand the Bible in general. These may include articles about history during the time period covered by the Bible, how the Bible came to be written, the theology of the Bible, or how to understand Hebrew poetry. These vary widely in content and quality from bible to bible. It is nice to have them conveniently available to you in your bible, but you can easily purchase an introduction to the OT or NT that would cover such topics in more depth.

Maps and Charts

The Bible takes place a long time ago in lands very far away. Although the lands are the same, the place names and political boundaries have certainly changed. Therefore, a set of maps will help you visualize the route of the Exodus, the extent of David’s kingdom, and the journeys of Paul. Ideally, the bible should also include an index to the maps to help you identify a particular location.

In addition to a good set of maps, a proper study bible may also include various charts for helping convert ancient weights and measures to their modern equivalents, for example. Or it may include a chronological table listing events from the Bible with contemporaneous events happening in other parts of the world.

Even with these helps, you will only be able to go so far without additional reference works. In the next article, we’ll discuss how to take your bible study to the next level.

Parallel Lines

The last several articles have examined various English translations of the Bible, but how do they compare to one another? Let’s take one Scripture citation and see how it looks in various popular translations available at your local bookstore.

The Test Case – Rom 1:17

Here is a hyper-literal, word-for-word translation from the Greek:

For God’s righteousness in it is revealed from faith to faith, as it has been written, “But the righteous by faith will live.”

Paul is talking about how the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. There are only two main issues in translating this verse (in bold above):

1. What does “from faith to faith” mean?
2. In Paul’s quotation from Hab 2:4, does “by faith” describe how one becomes “righteous” (option A) or how the righteous “will live” (option B)?

King James Family

(KJV) For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith. 

(NASB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” 

(NRSV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

(ESV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The KJV here is a very literal translation with no archaic language to confuse the modern reader.

The NASB translates “righteous” instead of “just” in the Habakkuk quotation. “Righteousness/righteous” better reflects the use of the same Greek root word than does the “righteousness/just” combination in the KJV. The NASB also inserts the word “man” (that’s why it is in italics) after “righteous,” probably because readers expect “righteous” to be an adjective and not a noun.

The NRSV translates “through faith for faith” and the ESV “from faith for faith” but these are only slight variations and neither really tries to interpret the phrase.

All versions choose option B for the Habakkuk quotation with some version of the “just/righteous will/shall live by faith”.

Just as train tracks seem endless, so do the number of new English translations of the Bible.

Catholic Translations

(NJB) For in it is revealed the saving justice of God:  a justice based on faith and addressed to faith. As it says in scripture: Anyone who is upright through faith will live.

(NABRE) For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous by faith will live.”

The NJB is clearly a thought-for-thought translation and not a word-for-word one. It translates the Greek dikaiosynē theou as the “saving justice of God” and expands on that in the cryptic middle term with “a justice based on faith and addressed to faith.” It chooses the word “upright” in the Habakkuk quotation, in which case it would have been better to translate dikaiosynē theou as the “uprightness of God” to preserve the connection. The NJB translates “as it is written” with the more interpretive “as it says in scripture”.

The NABRE and the NJB are similar to the phrasing of the King James tradition with two exceptions. First, they place the verb “revealed” before the “righteousness of God” instead of after. Second, both follow the ambiguous word order of the Greek in the Habakkuk quote instead of choosing between option A or B.

Protestant Translations

(NIV) For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

(CSB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

(CEB) God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.

(ISV) For in the gospel God’s righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous will live by faith.”

The NIV (and CEB and ISV) introduces the word “gospel” so the reader isn’t confused what the pronoun “it” refers to. The NIV also repeats the word “righteousness” in the middle part and is more interpretive with “by faith from first to last.” Paul would certainly agree that salvation is a matter of faith from start to finish but that is not a literal translation.

The CSB is very close in wording to the very literal ESV but the Common English Bible (CEB) and International Standard Version (ISV) go a different route by translating “God’s righteousness” instead of “righteousness of God”; this is a more natural way of describing a possessive in modern English. They both use the present tense (“is being revealed”) rather the perfect tense (“is revealed”) to capture the idea that God’s saving righteousness continues to be revealed whenever the gospel is preached. The CEB, though, is unique with the translation “from faithfulness for faith”, which to my ears is not much of an improvement in clarifying the meaning.

All these versions choose the traditional option B in stating that it is by faith that the righteous will live.

In Summary

Hopefully, this side-by-side comparison of more than a dozen different translations gives you a flavor for how translators go about doing their work. Sometimes they have to make a choice between leaving a confusing word or phrase in place or try to clarify it for the reader. Other times, the verse is ambiguous or has two meanings, only one of which can be captured in English. 

Which of these versions speaks to you?