Chapter 2: The Colossal Discrepancy
Beginning around 300 BCE in Alexandria, efforts were made in various Jewish circles (and later among Christians) to synchronize then-current understandings of chronology with those recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Among the more prominent efforts toward this goal was that of the first-century Jewish writer Josephus. All attempts to (re)construct such a history of the world have included a common interpretation of 1 Kings 6:1. The passage reads: “And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD” (1 Kings 6:1 [KJV]).
The interpretation of this passage has uniformly been used to apply the phrase “the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt” to the Exodus. The result of this interpretation is that when this approximately 480- year period is added to the biblical chronology for the kings of Israel, the date arrived at for the Exodus is not consistent with the archaeological evidence of the region, although Josephus et al. would not have known this.
Speaking for himself and “the Israeli archaeologists,” William Dever, University of Arizona Professor, stated, “If you guys think I—or the Israeli archaeologists—am looking for the Israelite conquest archaeologically, you’re wrong. We’ve given that up. We’ve given up the patriarchs. That’s a dead issue.”7
On another occasion, Dever said that, in his opinion, the combination of 1 Kings 6:1 and the Merneptah Stele makes it impossible to reconcile archaeology with theological chronology.8 Like Dever and many others, Donald Redford had
7 William Dever, “Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers,” Interview by Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Review, no. 4 (1997), 29.
8 William Dever, “Artifacts and Texts: How Archaeology Illuminated Ancient Israelite Religion” (Lecture presented at a seminar hosted by The Biblical Archaeology Society on Bible and Archaeology, Scottsdale AZ, March 7, 1996).
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identified this passage as problematic for any reconciliation of history with biblical chronology. Redford wrote: “According to 1 Kings 6:1, 480 years is supposed to have elapsed between the Exodus and the dedication of the temple…. In fact, the Biblical writers are wholly and blissfully unaware of the colossal discrepancy to which their ‘history’ and ‘chronology’ have given rise.”9
In reality, the passage does not state that this period of time elapsed between the Exodus and the dedication of the temple. It states, “after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt,” and that the end of the period is the beginning of construction, not the dedication. Solomon’s fourth year was 968 BCE, and 480 years prior to that was 1448 BCE. In the introduction, I related that the anchored Jasher chronology placed the Exodus in the year 1206 BCE and identified the year 1448 BCE as the year that the patriarch Jacob and his family entered the land of Canaan. For the first time (from the Jordan Valley, which was then controlled by Egypt), he took possession of a piece of land he had purchased.
The question at hand is, therefore: is it possible to reconcile this colossal discrepancy? Even though the Mayan three-hundred-year Venus cycle fits perfectly as the period referred to as “the four hundred eightieth year,” an explanation for the text referring to something other than the Exodus is needed.
It is perfectly logical that the beginning of construction on the temple would be calculated from the beginning of the nation in the land of Canaan. Furthermore, the fact this period of time actually identifies the beginning of the nation with New Year’s Day, Tishri 1, makes a lot more sense than it would to have begun the period with the Exodus.
As explained in the introduction to this book, it is a fact that to the very day, a period also used by the Mayans to predict the conjunction of the sun with the new moon and new Venus in the evening sky just after sunset is the exact number of days used by the Hebrew chronologists. Tishri 1, 2455 (Jewish), and September 26, 1448 BCE, represent the apparent beginning point of the 480 years, a day when the new moon was next to a new Venus just after sunset.
9 Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton University Press: 1992), 258–9.
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Figure 7. May, 4, 968 BCE: Begin Construction
This period is derived as follows:
Venus cycle: five Venus circuits rounded up is 584 days x 5 = 2920 days Eight solar years is 365.2422 x 8 = 2922 days
The actual average Venus circuit is 583.92 days
584 x 300 = 175,200 days, while 583.92 x 300 = 175,176 days, 24 days earlier
This is why the nominal period, 584 days, cannot be used to predict conjunctions involving Venus over long periods of time. At the same time, the average period for a lunation is 29.5306 days.
175,176 days / 29.530601 = 5,932.01 lunations
It seems evident that this astronomical event—a new moon in conjunction with a new Venus at sunset—is an important portent for beginnings. In this case, it connects what could be understood as the beginning of the nation and the beginning of construction for the temple astronomically. It should also be noted that the ordinal number “four hundred eightieth year” is used, rather than stating “at the end of four hundred eighty years,” indicating a period slightly shorter than 480 complete years.
Is there an explanation of this passage that permits its veracity and also the chronology of Jasher? In fact, there is such an explanation. Although it was
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unknown to theologians, chronologists, and historians until after the Rosetta stone was translated, it is now recognized that “Palestine and the route through Trans-Jordan (the later ‘King’s Highway’) were wholly Egyptian possessions.”10
1448 BCE would have fallen during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III, or possibly during the early years of his son Amenophis II when Egypt was at the height of its Empire and controlled these regions. Most religious people who believe the 480th year refers to the Exodus are probably not aware the Hebrew Bible actually describes the land of Egypt extending to the Jordan Valley in the time of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Zoar was the city previously called Bela, where the patriarch Lot and his two daughters escaped to. This part of Egypt was very fertile at that time: “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar” (Genesis 13:10 [KJV]).
Though not part of Egypt proper, Zoar and the Jordan Valley were considered a part of Egypt in the same way that the land of Goshen was, where the Israelites lived. According to Jasher:
And the man that will declare unto the king the proper interpretation of his dreams, there shall be given unto him all that he will require from the king. And all the wise men of the land of Egypt came before the king, together with all the magicians and sorcerers that were in Egypt and in Goshen, in Raamses, in Tachpanches, in Zoar, and in all the places on the borders of Egypt. And they all stood before the king. (Jasher 48:14 [Book of Jasher])
This citation comes from the reign of Thutmose IV, in the year 1425 BCE, when Joseph became vizier.
According to Jasher and Louis Ginzberg, Jacob was seventy-seven years old when he anointed the so-called pillow stone on his way to his future father-in- law, Laban. He was accordingly ninety-seven when he crossed the river Jordan at the ford of Jabbok. According to our chronology, he would have been ninety- eight in 1448 BCE. What follows is a synchronization of sources for the life of Jacob at this time. The sources are Ginzberg’s Legends of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, and, of course, The Book of Jasher. It turns out that Jasher and Ginzberg agree exactly, and the Hebrew Bible does not contradict them, although it does not specifically date all of the events.
10 Redford, Egypt, 168. 26
Since all sources indicate Jacob left Laban and his father-in-law after twenty years, he would have been ninety-seven when he crossed the Jordan River. According to Jasher:
And in some time after Jacob went away from the borders of the land, and he came to the land of Shalem, that is the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, and he rested in front of the city. And he bought a parcel of the field which was there, from the children of Hamor the people of the land, for five shekels. And Jacob there built himself a house, and he pitched his tent there, and he made booths for his cattle, therefore he called the name of that place Succoth. (Jasher 37:1–31 [Book of Jasher])
Ginzberg states that a whole year passed after Jacob crossed the Jordan, culminating in paying his brother Esau in gold for the cave in Hebron that his grandfather Abraham had purchased. Abraham had originally bought it to bury his wife, Sarah. Jasher stated earlier that in selling his birthright on the day he destroyed Babylon I (1531 BCE), Esau had sold that cave to Jacob.11
Jasher states that “a year and six months” after crossing Jordan, Jacob’s daughter Dinah was raped by Shechem, the prince of that region. The only other event that must have occurred between these two periods of time was Jacob’s purchase of the field at Shiloh (called Shalem) from Hamor, the father of Shechem. So, we are left with the prospect that the event that began the 480th year before the construction of Solomon’s Temple was the purchase of this land, the first actual possession of Jacob in the land of Canaan.
Shechem was in the hills, and at that time, not part of the land possessed by Egypt. So, when Jacob left “the borders of the land” (Jasher 33:1 [Book of Jasher]), they were, in fact, leaving the land possessed by Egypt. If this is an actual chronicling of then-current events, there would have been no reason to clarify the border since they would have had no way of knowing that Egypt would later lose control of that region. The fact that it was not clarified in Jasher actually supports the notion this was the political reality at the time and, therefore, did not require clarification.
The second issue concerning the passage referring to the 480th year is the fact that the language used is dissimilar to what is usually employed when referring to the Exodus. The common formulaic language used regarding the Exodus is some form of the phrase “when I brought you out of the bondage of Egypt,” whereas the reference to leaving Egypt in the 480th year passage is “the going forth out of Egypt.” The first indicated that leaving Egypt was beyond the
11 Louis Ginzburg, Legends of the Bible (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956). vol. I, 175.
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power of the Israelites, while the second does not convey that idea at all. It instead suggests the opposite: that they left of their own volition.
A reasonable timeline with respect to Jacob and his family leaving Mesopotamia and owning property in the land of Canaan is given below.
| Jacob Age | BCE | Event | Source |
77 1469 77 1469
Pillow stone Pillow stone Pillow stone
Jasher Ginzberg Hebrew Bible
| 97 | 1449 | Cross Jordan at Jabbok; becomes Israel | Jasher |
| 97 | 1449 | Cross Jordan at Jabbok; becomes Israel | Ginzberg |
98 1448
Cross Jordan after twenty years Purchased land at Shiloh
Hebrew Bible Jasher
| Purchased land at Shiloh (not dated) | Hebrew Bible | ||
| 98 | 1447 | Dinah raped after one year, six months | Jasher |
99 1447
Dinah raped (not dated)
Jacob to Bethel
Jacob to Bethel (not dated)
Hebrew Bible
Jasher Hebrew Bible
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| 99 | 1447 | Laban dies (at hand of Thutmose III?) | Jasher |
| 100 | 1446 | Jacob from Bethel to Hebron | Jasher |
| 100 | 1446 | Jacob from Bethel to Hebron | Hebrew Bible |
Table 2.
The main point seems to be that the chronographers who wrote the first Book of Kings had access to a tradition where the Children of Israel left Egypt the 480th year prior to the beginning of construction on Solomon’s Temple. The compiling of this material and discovering that the new moon/new Venus occurred the day construction began leads to the conclusion that selecting this date for the beginning of construction was not accidental. According to Jewish tradition, the veil of the temple was, in fact, a representation of the night sky.
Most writers who refer to the 480th year seem to not understand that it describes the beginning of the construction of the temple, not the dedication. If, as indicated, the construction began on a necessary day (the Venus cycle of the sun, moon, and three hundred Venus cycles), then perhaps the true date of dedication was necessary as well.
The actual construction took seven and one-half years: “And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, was the house finished throughout all the parts thereof, and according to all the fashion of it. So was he seven years in building it” (1 Kings 6:38 [KJV]).
Ginzberg states: “The Temple was finished in the month of Bul, now called Marheshvan, but the edifice stood closed for nearly a whole year, because it was the will of God that the dedication take place in the month of Abraham’s birth.”12
The construction ended during the eighth month; however, the dedication did not take place until the following year, which would have been a Jubilee year, 960 BCE. So, according to Ginzberg, the dedication was postponed for nearly a year so that it could occur during the seventh month, Tishri. However,
12 Ginzberg, Legends,vol 4, 101.
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as we will see, the real reason for delaying the dedication was almost certainly astronomical:
Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month. (1 Kings 8:1 [KJV])
The seventh month is the same as Tishri. For ancient Israel (as well as the modern Jewish religion), the first convocation of the year began on Tishri 1, today called Rosh Hashanah. The second High Day was celebrated on Tishri 10 and corresponded to the modern Jewish High Holy Day called Yom Kippur. For those years celebrated as Jubilees, this was the critical day. The previous Jubilees had been in 1210 BCE (when Moses was released from prison, according to Jasher, and when he encountered the burning bush), in 1160 BCE when the land was allocated, and in 1110 BCE, the second year of David’s reign.
The third High Day of the month of Tishri was the Feast of Succoth, celebrated from the fifteenth to the twenty-first. Then a fourth festival was celebrated on the twenty-second, called the Eighth Day. This was the actual day of the dedication of the temple: “On the eighth day he sent the people away: and they blessed the king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the LORD had done for David his servant, and for Israel his people” (1 Kings 8:66 [KJV]).