S ometimes people approach Biblical matters as though there is no credible timing associated with the Bible. From what I have experienced that is simply not true. One of the greatest obstacles to the Bible is scholars who view their impressions of Egyptian history as conclusive and reject the Bible when it contradicts them. It is true that there is some corruption in every version of the Bible but when taken together they are extremely reliable. From what I have seen God has given us enough to have a very good idea of history for the last six thousand years.

This link takes you to the main article on time.

From the Creation to the Exodus

To resolve my dates I have taken the following approach. The three Biblical records that have primacy with regard to the time before the Exodus are the Septuagint (LXX), the Masoretic Text (MT), and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). I have used the principle of two or three witnesses so where two out of the three agree more I have adopted that as authoritative:

For the time before the flood I used the Massoretic numbers. They have the greatest variance and most support by the SP particularly in the cases - Jared, Methuselah and Lamech.

For the time after the flood I go with the LXX since it agrees with the SP in all instances and is also supported by Paul and Josephus. The Massoretic numbers are historically impossible. I am going to share how I came up with the following table.

Important notes

ⁿ¹⁶ _Bible says 2 years after flood (gen 11:10) but it works out to same year as flood

ⁿ²⁷ _ Abraham was given Hagar ten years after he left Haran (Genesis 16:3). Ishmael was born the next year so there was no extended sexual relationship.

ⁿ²⁹ _(Genesis 17:23 [KJV]) And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him . At that time he was 99 (Genesis 17:24 [KJV]) And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin . By the time of Isaac's birth he would be 100 and Sarah would be 90; (Genesis 17:17 [KJV]) Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear ?

ⁿ⁴⁷ Isaac, the child of promise, is the only patriarch that spent all of his life in the wilderness.

ⁿ⁴⁸ _The children were born during the years of plenty.

There is no further biblical information on when they were born so there is a range of roughly six years after Joseph became prime minister.

ⁿ⁴⁹ _(Gen 47:28) Jacob died 147 after spending 17 years in Egypt, hence went to Egypt at 130. If He was 90 when Joseph was born then Joseph was 40.

Why use the Masoretic for before the flood

When most people talk about using the Septuagint they are talking about Brenton's Septuagint. In the preface of that Septuagint it points out that he relied mostly on Codex Vaticanus for the main content. It also shows that he used two different original sources. The other source was the Alexandrenus.

According to the main content of Brenton's Septuagint, Methuselah lived 167 of his 969 years before he had Lamech and that means that he outlived the flood by 14 years, which is impossible. Lamech had Noah at 182 and Noah lived 600 years before the flood giving (600+182=)782 years to the flood. If Methuselah lived (969-167=) 802 years after he had Lamech then then he lived (802-782=)14 years beyond the flood. The marginal note does say that the Alexandrenus provides an alternative age for Methuselah as 187 years before he had Lamech, and that changes to calculation of the years that he lived after he had Lamech to (969-187=) 782 years, so that he dies the year of the flood.

I mentioned three anomalies ( Jared, Methuselah and Lamech) but I have only addressed one part of the problem. To garner a deeper understanding the reader might have to resort to more scholarly articles like https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1192&context=icc_proceedings

The table below shows the correspondence between the three main Bible sources.

In the table immediately above, you are bound to notice that the SP exceeds the MT and the LXX by exactly 100 years difference from Adam to Maleleel. Those types of errors highlight obvious tampering and predictable solutions.

Why the Septuagint for after the Flood

The first Table (the one that I labelled From Adam to Egypt) presents the dates that I have adopted. My dates are adjusted upward from the Masoretic Text dates by 100 years from Arphaxad to Serug ( highlighted in light green ), supported by the Greek Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch and Flavius Josephus. I also adjusted for Nahor, where his age at the time of his firstborn is 29 according to the Masoretic, 79 according to the Septuagint and 79 according to the Samaritan Pentateuch while Josephus does not mention it. I will show that the dates in the Masoretic Text are impossible from the Bible.

The greatest influence on my understanding of the dates in the Bible was Nathan Hoffman on YouTube.

I believe that what caught me was his clear and well documented approach backed up by relevant graphics. I will not attempt to reproduce that but I will point to the videos that I found enlightening.

You can find a host of scholarly documents on Genesis 5 and 11 but for simplicity in presentation I did not find anything that beat those.

The Masoretic Dates are impossible

Impossible! Consider Moses' lineage in Egypt: Kohath->Amram->Moses.

Moses was 80 when he left Egypt.

His father Amram lived 137 years.

His father Kohath (or Kehath) lived 133 years.

There is a bit of naming difference between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. The Septuagint has Kohath as the father of Amram while the Mosoretic Test has Kenath.

His father Levi lived 137 years.

Levi was the son of jacob, so Moses' line is Jacob->Levi->Kohath->Amram->Moses.

Kohath actually came to Egypt with his father Levi who was a son of Jacob.

Amram is the husband of Jochebed and father of Aaron, Moses and Miriam. His father was Kehath/Kenath/Kohath and Kenath's father was Levi. Judah had no great-grandchildren when he came to Egypt.

The 70 included Jacob's grandchildren which included those from Joseph. If you read from Genesis 46:1 onward you will see only children and grandchildren mentioned, no great-grandchildren.

Let us assume the worst case which is that Kohath, while not born in Egypt, was born the same year that they came to Egypt and that each parent had their progeny the same year that they died, then

133 (Kohath) + 137 (Amram) + 80 (Moses) = 350 maximum years in Egypt!

Exodus 12:40 is misleading in the KJV

Paul confirms that Exodus 12:40 is misleading in the KJV.

So Abraham received the promises 430 years before Sinai when the Law came. The promise was given in Genesis 12:1-3:

Abraham was 75 years at the time.

Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 = 25 years after the promise.

Jacob was born 60 years later = 25 + 60 years after the promise.

Jacob arrived in Egypt when he was 130 ∴ 25 + 60 +130 = 215 years after the promise.

Abraham and his seed spent 25 + 60 + 130 = 215 years in Canaan before coming to Egypt.

Paul says that from the promise to the covenant was 430 years hence 430-215 = 215 years that they spent in Egypt, since they received the law at Pentecost the same year that they left Egypt at Passover.

The Greek Septuagint for Exodus 12:40 says And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan , four hundred and thirty years . The Samaritan Pentateuch says Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and fathers of them, who dwelt in Canaan and in Egypt, [was] four hundred and thirty years . This is corroborated by Josephus in Antiquities 2,15,2

2. They left Egypt in the month Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month; four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed into Egypt. (28) It was the eightieth year of the age of Moses, and of that of Aaron three more. They also carried out the bones of Joesph with them, as he had charged his sons to do.

These last three all agree with what Paul says in Galatians.

Does Genesis 15:13 say that they would be in bondage i.e. slavery for 400 years?

The problem is punctuation. All of these things occur during the 430 years i.e. 1.. strangers (have no land of their own) ..2 serve the people of the land ...3 be afflicted. Remember that the promise was that they would have their own land but God tells Abraham that they will not have it for 430 years.

Developing a framework for Jacob in Canaan and Egypt

Let us begin by making some assumptions and constructing a framework. We will assume that Jacob spent 20 years with Laban and that there was a year between the children.

Joseph was 17 when he was sold.

Jacob at 130 reached Egypt and left home 59 years before = at 71

If he got to Egypt seven years after the years of plenty and two years into the famine that is 9 years. When Joseph was freed he would have been 121.

Joseph was 30 when the 7 years of plenty started (Genesis 41:46). It is reasonable to assume that Pharaoh's dreams occurred just before the years of plenty started. There would be no need for God to make these arrangements long before the time. Joseph appears to have gone straight to work.

Joseph would have been 30 when Jacob was 121 so he would have been born when Jacob was 90 or 91 (121-30 = 91) when Joseph was born. Assuming that the time-spans in the table above are correct then Jacob was 90-19 = 71  when he went to live with Laban.

Now let us decode some keys to fine tune the table.

KEY 1

This establishes that Joseph was born when Israel was 90 and links that age to Israel going to Egypt at 130.

Joseph went straight to work indicating that the seven years of plenty had started and Joseph was 30.

Two years into the 7 years of famine he made himself known to his brothers and brought back his father.

7 years of plenty + 2 years of famine + 30 years old when it started = 39 years when his father came

Jacob was 130 when he arrived.

Jacob was 90/91 years old (130 - 39) when Joseph was born.

Jacob died 147 after spending 17 years in Egypt, hence went to Egypt at 130

Joseph was born the same year that Jacob made the final agreement with Laban so Jacob made the final agreement when he was 90/91

KEY 2

This looks at our estimate of Jacob reaching Laban at 71. It presents the option of Jacob leaving for Paddanarm at 56 instead of 70-71.

A problem now arises depending on how you understand Genesis 31:36-42. Note especially verses 38 and 41.

One approach is to take take from this that Joseph was born at the end of the 14 years served for the wives. For sure he was born before the agreement for the cattle. If there was only one twenty year period then Joseph could have been born at the 14-year mark just before the six years work for the cattle.

However the possibility that the entire twenty years in the house were before he made the agreement to serve for the animals is a very real one. Part of the dilemma stems from Genesis 30:36

The claim is that if there were three days journey between them, then Jacob could not have been in Laban's house when he worked for the sheep. To defend this claim we first seek to establish the oldest that Jacob could have been when he went to Laban.

After Jacob stole the birthright he was sent away to be married.

Verse 8 points out that when Esau saw that his father was displeased with his Canaanite wife he got a wife from Ishmael who, according to verse 9, was yet alive. The question becomes when did Ishmael die?

Here Esau (who was the same age as Jacob) gets married at 40. How long did it take for him to realise that his wives displeased Isaac and seek another wife?

From Genesis 25:17 Ishmael died at 137 years old.

Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 years old (Genesis 16:16)

Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Genesis 21:5).

Ishmael was therefore 14 years older than Isaac(100-86=14).

Jacob and Esau were born when Isaac was 60 (Genesis 25:26).

When Ishmael died at 137 years old, Isaac who was 14 years younger had to be 123 (137-14=123).

The children were then (123-60 = 63) years old since they were 60 years younger than Isaac, having been born when he was 60. That means that the children were 63 when Ishmael died at 137.

If Ishmael is alive they cannot be older than 63 yet , so Jacob cannot be 70-71 years old when he met Laban, because Esau went to Ishmael after Jacob left.

Esau married Mahalath after jacob left and Ishmael was still alive.

Jacob could not have been 70 when he went to Paddanaram because 70 is more than 63.

From the table in our original estimate, one twenty-year puts us at an age of 71 for Jacob. The two twenty-years must be considered to reduce his age to where it is possible for Esau to be married. This means that Jacob could have been as young as 50 when he left for Paddanaram. The 50 assumes that he spent two full twenty-years with Laban.

But the agreement to serve for the sheep was of necessity made before the final six years of labour so the last twenty years had to end when Jacob finished the last six years.

If there was a final twenty years it would have ended when Jacob ended his six-year term. The conditions of service would have come before it started and that is when Joseph was born and hence when Jacob was 90.

The proposal now is that Jacob spent 40 years in Paddanaram but the first twenty included the 14 that he worked for his wives and the second twenty included the six that he worked for his cattle. In either  case Joseph was born the same year the agreement to work for the six years was made (Genesis 30:25-26) and and we have shown that Jacob was 90 when Joseph was born. This puts Jacob as young as 56 when he went to Paddanaram (90-14-20=56). Jacob was therefore somewhere between 56 and 63 years old when he went to Paddanaram.

Son of my old age

Now let us try to tie down the support for the two twenty year periods. Remember that Joseph was born the same year that Jacob made the final agreement with Laban at 90/91. I say 90. What was that agreement?

The argument is that those final six years did not immediately follow the 14 for the daughters. There is to be a new paragraph where the period is in verse 41. It should read as follows:

ISA Basic renders verse 41:

If you have a Bible with words that were added by the translator in italics you will see that the thus has been added in the KJV. The six years were part of the final twenty that he lived on his own, the ones that he mentions first. Fourteen years into those last twenty years he made a six-year agreement with Laban. He lived in Laban’s house 20 years before that and then 14 years on his own but working for Laban followed by the six years working for his own cattle. This means that he spent 40 years in Paddanaram but most of his children were born in the first 12 or so years years while Joseph came after a break of up to 20 years. So we devised that Jacob was ( 90-20-14 = 56) 56 when he left for Paddanaram. That explains why Jacob considered Joseph the son of his old age. He came after a long break in children and in his old age.

This brings us to our final version of the table

working backwards

But does it all check out when we work backwards? The children of Israel had to spend 215 years in Canaan. Does it add back to the 215 years?

The Israelites in Egypt

I am going to try to break down the period that the Israelites were in Egypt. First I begin with establishing how long they were there.

How long the Israelites were in Egypt

In the previous stage I set out to show the timing from Adam to going into Egypt. The Next stage is to show how long Israel Spent in Egypt before the Exodus. Much of this groundwork has already been done in this article when dealing with captioned Paul and Exodus 12:40 in the section captioned Exodus 12:40 is misleading in the KJV. Exodus 12:40 is misunderstood and is to be cleared up in this calculation. In that section we showed that Jacob arrived in Egypt when he was 130 25 + 60 +130 = 215 years after the promise. We also saw that Paul says that from the promise to the covenant was 430 years, hence 430-215 = 215 years that they spent in Egypt. In addition The Greek Septuagint for Exodus 12:40,  The Samaritan Pentateuch for that same verse and Josephus in Antiquities 2,15,2 corroborate each other in showing that what Paul said is accurate, hence Exodus 12:40 is not correct in the Masoretic text.

So what is the source of the error? The KJV does not say that they spent 430 years in Egypt but that these people who lived in Egypt were sojourning for 430 years. The sojourning was actually a combination of Egypt and Canaan and that is explained by Paul in Galatians 3:16-17, by Josephus in Antiquities 2,15,2 and by the rendering of the same scripture (Exodus 12:40) in the Greek Septuagint and in the Samaritan Pentateuch. They all say that the 430 years was spent in Egypt and Canaan.

Moses' Line

Again the groundwork for this has already been done but I will summarise it here. You can check back for greater detail in the section captioned The Masoretic Dates are impossible. Moses was a Levite. Levi was much older than Joseph and by the time he came to Egypt he already had children.

Moses' ancestry is Levi -> Kohath -> Amram ->Moses.

Moses left Egypt at 80 and Kohath had to have therefore been at least 1 year old upon coming to Egypt. This mean that Kohath and Amram would have had to each have children when they were over 150 years old for Israel to have spent 430 years in Egypt.

Exodus to the end of the United Monarchy

My next step is to account for the time between the Exodus and the end of Solomon. I will do this iteratively, build upon what went before.

From the Exodus to the Temple

The next stage in our reconstruction is to trace the chronology of the Exodus to the Temple. For this we have to reconcile Acts 13:16-21 with 1Kings 6:1

According to that we have 480 years from the Exodus to when the Temple started and it was the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Let's see what we learn from the next scripture.

According to that we have about 40 years wandering in the wilderness + x number of years where they destroyed 7 nations in Canaan + about 450 years of Judges ending with the installation of Saul + 40 years for Saul's reign + 40 years for David + 3 for Solomon before the Temple, giving us  573 (40+450+40+40+3) years until the Temple. We are going to begin by continuing with our assumption that the 7 nations were destroyed under Moses.

So we have two challenges. First Acts presents an unspecified period where God destroyed seven nations. The second is that the period in acts has a couple of intervals defined by using about, therefore by addressing those we should understand why overall the time given by Acts is much longer that the period in 1 Kings. For simplicity let us assume that the unspecified period is the time period between the death of those cursed to die in the wilderness and the end of Moses' conquests. That is the same as from Sihon/Og to the end of Moses' conquests which amounts to 2 years according to events in the life of Caleb;

Note Kadeshbarnea and Eschol occur as part of the same event (spying out the land), so it is referring to the same time, compare Numbers 32:8-9 & Numbers 13:21-26.

Using Deuteronomy 2:14 & 2:24 we get 38 years from Eschol/Kadeshbarnea (spying out the land) to Sihon. Because Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness that leaves two years to destroy the kings.

Then in Joshua we get a breakdown of the life of Caleb who was there.

So Caleb was now 85 but had spied out the land when he was 40 which leaves 45 years. Of those 45 years, 38 were spent in the wilderness before crossing Arnon to fight Sihon, which left 2 years to destroy the seven nations according to our assumption, before Moses' death. In those 38 years all of the Israelites that were his contemporaries had died (Deuteronomy 2:14). This is according to scripture because it is their children that had to spend 40 years wandering (Numbers 14:33-34). They returned after forty days of exploration. This creates an issue with Moses because Moses lived 120 years and he lived to see Sihon destroyed. People wonder why he outlived the others but died before Canaan. Moses was not cursed to die within the 40 years, he was cursed not to enter the Promised Land.

So the total number of years between the Exodus and the 4^th year of Solomon According to Acts 13:16-21:

Now 574 (derived from Paul in Acts 13:16-21) minus 480 (from 1 Kings 6:1) is 94 years. That means 94 years out of Paul's 574 must be reconciled. That is a big chunk and the only practical solution appears to be that in 1 Kings God is talking only about 480 years when Israel was His but Paul is not leaving out anything, he covers the whole period. Apart from those in years 1 Kings they had become slaves to someone else.

The total number of these years that they belonged to someone we should expect to add to 94 years. That is the sum of the times that they turned away from him and had to serve a pagan king. These are recorded as:

which sums to 111 years!

The total is 17 more years than the 94 expected, but Paul had said about in Acts 13:18 And about the time of forty years suffered he . . ., and we know that it turned out to be 2 years off target. He also said about when speaking of the 450 years in verse 21,  And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years. . .. Paul's 450 year approximation could be 17 years over the true value and that would account for the difference. If the Amount in 1 Kings is correct then we have to reduce our estimate by 17 years giving 574 - 17 = 557 years from the Exodus to the beginning of the construction of the Temple in Solomon's fourth year. So far so good.

The United Monarchy

But to connect this period with the earlier history we use the reign of Solomon.

To work out the dates I began with filling in the length column which contains how long they reigned. The sum of that column (120) tells me how long the whole period was. Next I added the from the Exodus column and filled in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (557 taken form the end end of the last section) when the temple began. Remember that though we are using 1 Kings 6:1 to connect the periods, we cannot use the 480 years because that is only the time that they were under God. We have to use the 557 that we worked out by reconciling for the discounted period, backed by Paul's estimate and the details of the book of Judges. So the whole period from the Exodus to the start of the Temple ended at 557 and that is lined up with Solomon's fourth year because they are the same. Then we complete the column by copying the 36 from the length column to make them end the same time. From the table that gives us 593 as the end of Solomon's reign. To get to the beginning of Saul's reign we subtract the 120, 593 - 120 = 473 or alternatively, the period of the Kings began with the first year of Saul which was 557 - 120 + 36 = 473 years after they left Egypt. They entered Egypt with Jacob in 1232 after the flood. They spent 215 years in Egypt and 40 after with Moses. So based on what we know so far the first year of Saul was 1232 + 215 + 473 = 1920 after the flood. Solomon's reign ended at 1920 + 120 = 2040, which is the ascendance of Rehoboam.

Reconciliation based on a detailed breakdown of events

Now that we are able to provide details down to the end of the united monarchy we can go back and attempt to reconcile our summary findings with the detailed events provided. Remember that we had assumed that the seven nations destroyed in Acts were during the time of Moses. The books from Joshua to 2 Samuel provide details of the events of the period under consideration.

^{{note xx}}This is an estimate based on how long the Ark was in Kirjath–jearim. It was taken at the death of Eli and spent several months with the Philistines before it was returned and remained at the house of Abinadab for 20 years. It appears that Saul was made king shortly thereafter.

Paul had said

Using 1 Kings 6:1 we determined that there were 557 years form the Exodus to Solomon's fourth year. Going back to that table we can work back to the beginning of Saul's reign (which is the end of the judges) by subtracting Saul's and David's reigns and the period of Solomon before he started the temple giving 557 - 40 - 40 - 4 = 473. In the Table of Judges and Oppressors - Version 1 we just got 507. 507 - 473 = 34 years difference. Something is definitely off.

Now we take a second look at what Paul said. He accounts for the wilderness in verse 18. We now know that the adults died after 38 years and only Moses continued to the 40 years. That means that verse 19 covers Joshua! That is especially so since it is under Joshua that seven nations have most evidence to have been destroyed, and not under Moses as we had assumed for simplicity's sake. You can count them.

Deuteronomy was written at the time of the death of Moses and up to that point he said when, therefore they had not yet destroyed the seven nations that are listed. There are no other seven nations mentioned in the Bible for that period. Based on our updated understanding of Acts 13:18-19, Paul's 450 therefore leaves out Joshua and I contend that it also leaves out Samuel too. He said until Samuel. Looking back at Table of Judges and Oppressors - Version 1, notice that the book of Judges alone accounts for 407 years. If you leave out Joshua and include only Eli as additional judges to consider, you get 447 years which is about 450, which is what Paul has said. Why did Paul exclude Samuel? Let's begin to explore that with this scripture.

Samuel's life began under Eli and it went through much of the reign of Saul. If 1 Samuel 7:15 is true then what is being spoken of as the time Samuel judged Israel is not the period from the death of Eli until Israel had a king. For all of the other judges we have a specified time when they were the supreme authority in Israel, but none is given for Samuel! I propose the reason is that Samuel was the legal senior authority for an unspecified period but was also the de facto authority for all of his life. Even as a child he was the one that God spoke to instead of Eli (I Samuel 3).

We now return to the death of Eli and how long the ark was taken.

I used that scripture earlier to estimate the time that Samuel was the Judge over Israel. At the time it was convenient in order to simplify building the foundation, but did it take all the facts into consideration? The Ark was actually with the Philistines only seven Months.

After that they returned it and the Saga becomes convoluted. When Samuel was old he made his sons judges and that lead to the installation of Saul as king. Saul was rejected and Samuel substituted as God's representative that kept out the Philistines. It was not because of Saul. Saul ruled for 40 years until there was a valid replacement in David. Furthermore there is confusion by some about when the Ark was moved after it returned from the Philistines. It is attributed to David but that is impossible if it spent only 20 years before it was moved (1 Samuel 7:2). Paul undoubtedly recognised these complications and left out Samuel.

We are therefore justified in using 1 Kings 6:1 as the foundation for our calculation and adjusting for the time that they were under foreign control, but there is one more thing to correct. We used 557 years after the Exodus as the fourth year of Solomon's reign! Now we know that the 480 of 1 Kings must be augmented by the time under foreign domination and that gives us 480 + 111 = 591 years after they had left Egypt, based on 1 Kings 6. We now use that fact to reconcile the columns in table below.

By plugging all of the information that we now have into the table above we derive that Samuel is allotted 20 years. To determine that we note that the unrecorded time for Samuel (the ??) comes out as negative 20 years (627 – 647). We are missing something. There is no doubt that the period of judges is correct. The problem has to lie with the inclusion of either Moses or Joshua. Common sense says that it is Moses because it begins with him. What kings means by after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt must therefore be after they left the wilderness i.e. after Moses. We have just revised the years from the Exodus to Solomon's third year to be 591 for the right column and we know all but one of the judges in the left column. Since both columns above the TOTAL row must sum to the other then Samuel's time (the ?? value) is 20 years. So we confirm that the Ark did remain at Kirjath Jearim for 20 years (1 Samuel 7:2) and Saul did rule for 40 years after the Ark was moved and hence when David moved the Ark and he . . .brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was at Gibeah (II Samuel 6:4 [KJV]), that must be the same place as Kirjath Jearim.

The new table is given below.

To complete the table we add in Solomon's remaining years. He reigned 40 years so 36 are left and we sum for the overall total. That provides us with the information for our final version, the Table of Judges and Oppressors and Kings of the united monarchy.

So we get 627 by reconciling 1 Kings 6 with the 111 years but we get 587 by tallying the internal periods. What accounts for the difference is Joshua who was judge for 40 years and that takes the 587 to (587 + 40) 627. Remember we determined that 1 Kings 6 was talking about from the death of Moses when it referred to after coming out of Egypt, Which is the same as the beginning of Joshua. So now we revise our estimate reigns in the United Monarchy from the flood. The first year of Saul was 1232 (went to Egypt) + 215 (in Egypt) + 40 (Moses) + 591 (judges to Solomon's fourth year) - 4 (to go back to his first year) = 2074 after the flood. Solomon's reign ended at 2074 + 40 = 2114 (which is the ascendance of Rehoboam) and Saul's reign began at 2114 - 120 = 1994.

The Southern Kingdom

The southern Kingdom Existed from the time of Rehoboam until Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it under Zedekiah. Rehoboam ruled Judah after Solomon died.

It does not appear as though Rehoboam ever ruled over all of Israel.

This period started at the end of Solomon's reign and the beginning of Rehoboam's, 2114 from the last section. It ended at 2114 + 393 = 2507 after the flood. The end of Zedekiah coincides with the destruction of the Temple. The bulleted items below are related to the table by the line number in the first column of the table.

• ^{n9}. Note - the Amaziah in this scripture is Amaziah of Israel not of Judah
  
• 11. Jotham (served as regent for several years until his father's death)
  
• 18. Jehoiakim (name changed from Eliakim to Jehoiakim by Necho, Pharoh of Egypt wen the captivity began )
  
• 19. Jehoiachin (also known as Coniah; called Jechoniah in N.T.)
• 20. Zedekiah (His birth name Mattaniah/Mattanyahu was changed to Zedekiah by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon)
  

The Captivity

It is following the Captivity that we have to switch from calculating events in the history of Israel from internal evidence of the Bible to other sources. The Bible is silent on dating what occurred after the original construction of the Second Temple. Fortunately the captivity is an easy link having touched the Egyptian, Neo Babylonian and the Persian empires and the link can be made to the birth of Christ and from that until the present. It began under Necho of Egypt and ended under Cyrus of Persia. The 70 year captivity prophesied by Josiah went into a much longer captivity because Judah never became truly free again until the Maccabees and even that was but for a short time. During this time God through Daniel showed that Israel would be dominated by empires from then on. From here on the story of Israel becomes a footnote to that of a global empire. The Maccabees represent a brief respite. They were a priestly family of Jews who organized a successful rebellion against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes and reconsecrated the Temple of Jerusalem which he had defiled. If you looked up a list of the last prophets you would probably find something like Deutero-Isaiah, Haggai, Zechariah, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. What does Deutero-Isaiah mean? Scholars have created some entity that they claim wrote the book of Deuteronomy and a whole mess of other ancient books during the Persian Empire. I really do not buy into that myth because it is Biblically unsound especially considering that these books each identify the writer and contain statements that would be untrue or deceitful if they were written after the captivity. Instead of the deutero approach I would say Haggai, Zechariah, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. Isaiah was a prophet to the Northern ten tribes although he lived in Judah. He lived a very long time and was murdered eventually by Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Josiah who immediately preceded the captivity. Jeremiah the prophet came up in parallel with the reign of Josiah but lived on into the Babylonian Empire. Daniel said that he knew that the captivity would end in seventy years because of what Jeremiah had said. Jeremiah said that he wrote the information in a book during the Babylonian Empire and that preceded the Persian Empire. Apparently Daniel read the book, In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem (Daniel 9:2 [KJV]). Now why would God need some entity to have to write Isaiah when He did not need one for Jeremiah? Isaiah was a prominent and highly respected man. He was the grandfather of the king that murdered him.

The key reigns of the captivity are as follows:

Dating from Secular Sources

Dating from Assyria/Egypt

• 609 - King Josiah of Judah killed by Egyptian forces under Pharaoh Neco at the Battle of Megiddo.    
  
• 609 - Reign of Jehoiakim, placed on the throne of Judah by Pharaoh Neco.

Dating from Babylon

• 597 - Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem on March 16, 597, deporting King Jehoiachin to Babylon and installing Zedekiah.
• 587 or 586 B.C - Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon obliterated the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed its holy temple, the Temple of Solomon.

Dating from the Bible

Dating from Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 25 - fourth year of Jehoiakim = 597 hence his first year was 597 + 3 = 600 BC

This is the year that Jeremiah was told to write the book (Jeremiah 30:1-2, 36:1-2). It is after Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem under Jehoiakim and so is recorded as his first year (verse 1).  God tells them that in addition to being conquered they will soon be deported.

Jeremiah 39 - the eleventh year of Zedekiah must be 586 B.C, the year that the temple was destroyed.

Evidence of the siege is recorded by Jeremiah.

Dating from Ezekiel

Ezekiel chronologically noted events in his book:

From 1:2 he begins with the fourth month on the fifth day of the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity. Jehoiachin came to the throne in December 597 B.C. according to The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty (some also claim 598) therefore four years later is 593 B.C. and it is in the fifth month of that year. Since the Hebrew calendar and the Julian calendar are not an exact match we also accept the above author’s date which is July 27. He concluded his ministry at chapter 29:17 in the seven and twentieth year, in the first month, in the first day of the month. The last dated prophecy in Ezekiel was in the 27th year, in the first month on the first day (Ezekiel 29:17). The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty dates this as March 26 571 B.C.

Ezekiel 40:1 says And In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, . . .. This shows that their captivity started 11 years before the destruction of Jerusalem i.e. at the end of the reign of Jehoiachim which was also 597 when Zedekiah became king. This means that the our in our captivity is talking about those who accompanied Ezekiel when he was brought to Babylon. They were not the first few captives that were taken to Babylon which included Daniel. Also Ezekiel is not identifying the beginning of the 70 year captivity.

Daniel also chronicled events:

The third year of Jehoiakim is recorded as 597 hence his first year would be 597 + 2 = 599 BC

This conflicts with Jeremiah by 1 year. It may be due to separate calendars being used in each case starting at different months in the year. The Jews had two calendars, one began in the spring and the other in Fall.

Combined dating beginning with Judah as a separate kingdom

I will use the captivity to establish this. First I need to define what I mean by the captivity. One method is based on interpreting the seventy years as referring to the time several nations will serve Babylon and not the time that Judah will be in captivity. This comes primarily from one understanding of Jeremiah 25:9-12.

Notice that it says in verse 11, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. I do not subscribe to the view that this is defining the captivity. I believe that the Bible defines the beginning and the end based on the reign of kings.

So it ended in the first year of Cyrus. The empire was actually the Meda-Persian Empire and so it was also the first year of the Medes.

In the first part of the section above captioned The Southern Kingdom we calculated that Zedekiah's reign ended in 2,443 after the flood, and it is established in the Bible that his reign ended with the destruction of the Temple. We could try to use that to work backwards and forwards to link the time counted from the flood to the secular dates but there is a snag. It does not provide any definite means for linking with the end of the captivity.

Ezra also says that the captivity ended in the first year of Cyrus.

Alternative secular sources date that varying from 536 to 539 BC.  537 +70 = 607 which puts us into the reign of Jehoiakim. The problem is that we have to decide whether it began with Necho or Nebuchadnezzar. Look at what Jeremiah and Daniel say about when Nebuchadnezzar took control of Jerusalem.

From Daniel especially, it would seem that the 70 year captivity began when Nebuchadnezzar seized Jerusalem early in the reign of Jehoiakim. I propose that the Babylonian captivity was not the beginning of the 70 year captivity because the incumbent Jehoiakim was already a puppet king installed by Egypt. The king represents the nation and the Egyptian conqueror Necho II, took Jehoahaz (the one installed by the Jews) to Egypt and made Jehoiakim king. He was required to pay heavy tribute while the chosen king Jehoahaz remained captive surety in Egypt for the tribute. The captivity therefore began with Egypt. Something else worth considering is that some people only accept one time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and that was at the end of Jehoiakim's reign. I accept Daniel, but there is a discrepancy between Jeremiah and Daniel which is remedied by my approach. The Jews had two calendars. One calendar began in the Spring with the events of Passover and the Other Began in the Fall. Because Jeremiah counted from the Spring he recorded it the fourth year but Daniel used the Fall and got the third year. This only accounts for one year's difference. The debate over the precise calculation for the 70 years continues but for my purposes the validity of the scriptures have been established. In the chronicle below I have used the secular date of 539 for the Cyrus' edict to end the captivity as the reference from which to calculate backwards and derive corresponding secular dates for the earlier events. I personally believe that this date is 100 years too early and it should be 439 instead based on the 70 year prophecy.

The Second Temple

In Jewish history, the completion of the Second Temple marks the beginning of the Second Temple period. According to the Bible (Ezra 3:11-13), the Second Temple paled in comparison to the first. It was  built by Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon led by Zerubbabel, the grandson of king Jeconiah. During the reign of Herod the Great it had a complete make over resulting in what is seen in most models today. After standing for approximately 500 years based on Bible records (586 years according to secular history), the Second Temple was destroyed by Emperor Titus in 70 AD. No Biblical dating is available to cover the second Temple period and so it has to be linked to the previous period either by Daniel's 70-weeks prophecy or by secular dating to arrive at timing from the flood.

There are a few prophets that we can use to link the second Temple to the Biblical chronology. The reign of Darius coincides with the reign of Cyrus who became emperor of Babylon after he overthrew the Babylonians.

Those tell us when the project to reconstruct started. The order was given in the first year of Cyrus but construction began in the second year. People had to relocate and set up their families first. Construction began with the altar.

They were finally finished in the sixth year of Cyrus.

To gauge the time it took until the current era we can use Daniel's 70-weeks prophesy.

In addition to the day for a year cipher, the information is given in a type of riddle. It alternates between information about the city and information about the prince. This approach that I am taking was conceived to resolve that difficulty so that a chronological understanding of the events of the prophecy is reconcilable. For example the sanctuary is destroyed in verse 26, but yet in the next verse (v27) the prince causes sacrifices to cease which is impossible if you have no sanctuary to sacrifice in. The original translators do not appear to have understood this and so their treatment of the verses is inconsistent.

Now from the right hand side you can see that Christ's ministry began after 7 weeks + 62 weeks = 469 years from the commandment to rebuild i.e. Cyrus' decree. From verse 24 the whole period was for 70 weeks. 62 + 7 = 69 weeks to the beginning of Christ's ministry, leaving Him one week to complete His work. He was cut off in the middle of that final week. The day for a year of one week or seven days is seven years, so His ministry was cut short at the middle of 7 years which is 3½ years. His crucifixion was therefore 469 + 3½ = 472½ years after the decree was given to rebuild. If He lived 33½ years then His birth was 472½ - 33½ = 439 years after the decree. That would put the decree around 439 BC. Secular records show Cyrus' reign over Babylon and hence the decree to rebuild as 536 BC. That is a difference is suspiciously close to exactly 100 years. One reason can be ascribed to the reasoning of modern scholars. According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great_in_the_Bible, dd. 09:34, 14 June 2023, captioned Cyrus the Great in the Bible, this is the perspective of scholars: . . . Traditionally, these passages in Isaiah were believed to predate the rule of Cyrus by about 100 years; however, most modern scholars date Isaiah 40–55 (often referred to as Deutero-Isaiah) toward the end of the Babylonian exile (c. 536 BC). . . . I would suggest that the reasoning by the scholars is (i) that prophecy is nonsense and therefore accurate ones had to be written after the fact or (ii) that Christ is a fable and anything that validates Him should be discredited. To compensate they either attempt to date the prophecy later than the event or shift the record earlier, i.e. closer to the prediction. Isaiah 40–55 was written before the Babylonian captivity to encourage displaced and exiled Jews that God would restore Jewish society. There are various interpretations of the fulfilment to account for this disparity between the secular and the Biblical accounts but the most popular that I have found starts the prophesy from the decree to build the temple by Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:7-21; 9:9). Some claim that this was in 457-458 BC and it ended when Christ was baptised by John. Some are so specific that they claim that it was March 14, 445 BC and accounting for leap year adjustments etc. ends when Messiah made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Cyrus II of Persia (reign 539–530 BC), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the First Persian Empire. Artaxerxes I was the fifth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, and his reign is given as from 465 to December 424 BC. Because of this difference of about 100 years for the beginning of the prophecy, the same as that mentioned in the Wikipedia quote, I am hesitant to accept dates given by scholars for anything during the intertestamental period, but I use them because I have no alternative. I have searched high and low for their scientific methodology and the document specifying the integral components of the dates and could never find either. The Julian Calendar was the system of dating followed from 46 BC onwards. I have found no dating system that links years chronologically before that. The usual method was to state the reign of the king and so counting those would give a close estimate. Even so the source documents for the reigns should be stated. According to my own research the historical foundation of the intertestamental period is largely built upon Herodotus, Xenophon, Ctesias, Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha and Cuneiform Inscriptions. Firm dates are published for events but I cannot understand how they have been derived, for example their rationale for ignoring dates from Josephus in deference to some other history eludes me. The impression is given that the dates are firm, irrefutable and conclusive but nothing could be further from the truth. Consider this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_dynasty, entitled Median dynasty.

The Current Era

An English monk named Bede came up with the idea of B.C., or Before Christ, in 731. Bede invented B.C. but not A.D. and for his B.C. system he adapted and earlier approach to modern dating. A.D. came first and it is from the Latin phrase Anno Domini, which means in the year of the Lord. Bede was English and derived his term from English but those involved with the development of A.D. were Roman and hence used Latin.

The Council of Nicaea was a big deal to emperor Constantine because he wanted to make a version of Christianity the religion of his empire and that meant most of the known world. The purpose of the council was to resolve the controversy of Arianism, a doctrine that held that Christ a created being. Both sides were keen to demonstrate dominance in their theology and one such area was the reliability of the celebration of Easter, a fundamental tenet of their religion. Mathematics was employed to compute the dates for its celebration. The procedure was called Computus (Latin for computation) and the results were published in what was called Easter tables. In A.D. 525, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus introduced the A.D. system by recording dates using the years since the birth of Christ. Bede and Dionysius operated independently and one consequence is that there is no year 0. The calendar goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. A further complication comes from the year that was originally adopted as the birth year of Christ. Herod attempted to kill Christ and assumed that ye could have been up to 2 years of age at the time. Scholars claim that their records show that Herod died in 4 B.C. Christ had to have been born when Herod was alive, since He had to be alive during the Massacre of the Innocents (the name given to the murder of all the children around the age of Christ) then Christ had to be alive at or before 4 B.C. The assumption is made that Christ was born the same year that Herod died. Since Herod assumed that Christ could have been up to 2 years old that pushes his possible date of birth back to 6 B.C. Consequently, while we can adjust for the lack of a year 0 there is no way to precisely determine whether Christ was born in 4,5 of 6 BC. One recent innovation is to ignore the problem say before the current era B.C.E., instead of BC before Christ, and just keep the old date.

If you have read through and followed the development of the tables then you will know that the Biblical basis is robust. In spite of that there will always be an error because God did not chose to be precise. One clear example is the birth date of Messiah. God has put us close enough but there is a range of uncertainty. It is unfortunate that those who provide secular dates do not admit the error in any public document that I know of. We do not have any declaration of how robust the support for dates are before the Julian calendar (the system of dating followed from 46 B.C. onwards). God could have recorded the significant events of the life of the Messiah in that manner but chose not to.

One enormous problem for the average person is geologists. They make some outrageous claims about the origin of man and they use this sophisticated language that suggests what they say is scientific. But what does that mean? There is a scientific process or method.

Conclusion

In my opinion, whereas dating using internal Biblical records can be resolved back to creation there is no similar consistent scientific treatment for secular dating. The scholars pretend that their information is infallible but I cannot see it. The two dating systems make it very difficult to resolve secular history with Bible records. I hope that the tables in this article will assist anyone is resolving events based on the Bible with confidence. The problem that will remain that one will still need to use the secularly determined dates to communicate with people in general, since they will very likely not go to the trouble of investigating this for themselves.

Acknowledgements