urely knew of Him even though they had no respect for Him. If so, how might His Name appear in their literature, if at all? The name of YHWH, in a cul

y go on a long journey to the Cedar Mountain to find and destroy the monster who sent the Flood. Gilgamesh finds him and finally succeeds in cutting off the head of this creature whose name is “Huwawa” (“Humbaba” in the Assyrian version; see Heidel 1963: 34ff).Is there a connection with the Gilgamesh epic and Genesis 10? Note what Gilgamesh says to Enkidu the half man, half beast, who accompanied him on his journey, found in Tablet III, lines 147-150. “If I fall,” Gilgamesh says, “I will establish a name for myself. Gilgamesh is fallen, they will say, in combat with terrible Huwawa.”But the next five lines are missing from all tablets found so far! Can we speculate on what they say? Let’s try...We suggest that those five lines include: “But if I win,...they will say, Gilgamesh, the mighty vanquisher of Huwawa!” Why do we say that? Because Genesis 10:9 gives us the portion missing from the Gilgamesh tablets. Those lines include... “it is said, Nimrod (or Gilgamesh) the mighty vanquisher of YHWH” This has to be what is missing from all the clay tablets of the Gilgamesh story. The Gilgamesh Epic calls him Huwawa; the Bible calls Him YHWH.Part of Nimrod’s kingdom (Gn 10:11), Nineveh along the Tigris River continued to be a major city in ancient Assyria. Today adjacent to modern Mosul, the ruins of ancient Nineveh are centered on two mounds, the acropolis at Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunis (Arabic “Prophet Jonah”). Pictured is Sennacherib’s “palace without rival” on Kuyunjik, constructed at the end of the seventh century BC and excavated by Henry Layard in the early 20th century.Heidel, speaking of the incident as it is found on Tablet V says: All we can conclude from them [the lost lines] is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut off the head of Humbaba (or Huwawa) and that the expedition had a successful issue [ending] (1963: 47).The missing lines from the Epic are right there in the Bible!Because of the parallels between Gilgamesh and Nimrod, many scholars agree that Gilgamesh is Nimrod. Continuing with Gilgamesh’s fable, he did win, he did vanquish Huwawa and took his head. Therefore he could come back to Uruk and other cities and tell the people not to worry about YHWH anymore, he is dead. ‘“I killed him over in the Lebanon mountains. So just live however you like, I will be your king and take care of you.”Often attributed to Nimrod, the Tower of Babel (Gn 11:1-9) was not a Jack and the Beanstalk-type of construction, where people were trying to build a structure to get into heaven. Instead it is best understood as an ancient ziggurat (Assyrian “mountaintop”), as the one pictured at ancient Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham’s hometown (Gn 11:31). A ziggurat was a man-made structure with a temple at its top, built to worship the host of heaven.There are still other parallels between the Bible and the Gilgamesh epic: “YaHWeH” has a somewhat similar sound to “Huwawa.” Gilgamesh did just as the “sons of god” in Genesis 6 did. The “sons of god” forcibly took men’s wives. The Epic says that is precisely what Gilgamesh did. The Bible calls Nimrod a tyrant, and Gilgamesh was a tyrant. There was a flood in the Bible, there is a flood in the Epic. Cush is mentioned in the Bible, Kish in the Epic. Erech is mentioned in Scripture, Uruk was Gilgamesh’s city. Gilgamesh made a trip to see the survivor of the Flood. This was more likely Ham than Noah, since “Nimrod” was Ham’s grandson! Historically. Gilgamesh was of the first dynasty of Uruk. As Jacobsen points out (1939: 157), kings before Gilgamesh may be fictional, but not likely. The fact that the Gilgamesh epic also contains the Deluge story would indicate a close link with events immediately following the Flood, S.N. Kramer says: A few years ago one would have strongly doubted his (historical) existence...we now have the certitude that the time of Gilgamesh corresponds to the earliest period of Mesopotamian history. (Kramer 1959: 117)What a contrast Psalm 2 is compared with the Gilgamesh Epic!



The Dating of Hazor's Destruction in Joshua 11 Via Biblical, Archaeological, and Epigraphical Evidence
I. INTRODUCTIONOn the side of the former view, biblical archaeologists such as Bryant Wood argue that the Exodus must have occurred in the middle of the 15th century BC, since the ordinal number “480th” in 1 Kgs 6:1 only can be understood literally (contra allegorically, as late-Exodus proponents suggest). Wood, who mainly presents archaeological evidence to support his case, even declares that “the 13th-century Exodus-Conquest model is no longer tenable.”[3] Thus the battle over the proper dating of the Exodus and Conquest continues to wage.While this debate cannot be settled in the present article, nor can space be devoted here to the issue of the alleged Ramesside connections with the store-city of Raamses or the problem of archaeology not being able to “provide any trace of Israelites [in Canaan] before the Iron Age (shortly before 1200 B.C.E.),”[4] an examination of one aspect of this issue is in order: namely, the destruction of Hazor that is recorded in Joshua 11. The importance of Hazor’s contribution to the debate on the timing of the Exodus cannot be underestimated, as “Hazor provides the only possible evidence for an Israelite conquest of Canaan in the late 13th century” BC.[5]The initial Israelite conquest of Canaan under Joshua included three cities that were destroyed and put to the torch: Hazor (Josh 11:10–11), Jericho (Josh 6:21–24), and Ai (Josh 8:18–19).[6] Hazor—strategically located on the Great Trunk Road, which is the main commercial highway that cut through Canaan and was part of the principal military route throughout the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC)—thus is at the center of the debate over the timing of the Exodus, since it was both destroyed by Joshua and destroyed in the 13th century BC. The biblical text requires that the former is true, while archaeology requires that the latter is true. The matter that will be discussed here, however, is whether these destructions are distinct or one and the same. This study may go a long way toward determining whether or not the Exodus and Conquest transpired in the 13th century BC.II. THE DESTROYER OF THE FINAL BRONZE AGE CITY1. The Destroyer’s Nationality. Ancient Hazor consisted of a large, rectangular lower city (170 acres) and a bottle-shaped upper city (30 acres), essentially an elongated mound called a tel, which rises about 40 m. above the surrounding plain.[7] Yigael Yadin, the archaeologist who excavated at Hazor from 1955–1958 and 1968–1969, documented the great conflagration that accompanied the total destruction of the final Late Bronze Age city, which he believed to have occurred by ca. 1233 BC.[8] Evidence of this destruction consists of layers of ashes, burnt wooden beams, cracked basaltic slabs, mutilated basaltic statues, and fallen walls. Yadin’s findings in the lower city confirm that public structures such as the Orthostats Temple and the Stelae Temple were violently destroyed, while the renewed excavations in the uppelearn french

Tags: amenhotep, exodus, hatshepsut, moses, thutmosis, rameses, 1 kings 6, plagues, amarna, memphis stela, karnak stela, apiru, hazor--> I. INTRODUCTIONFew disciplines related to Biblical inerrancy are scrutinized more intensely than historicity. Accordingly, questioning the Bible’s historicity is nothing new to Biblical studies, as evidenced by Ladd’s remark, “It is the author’s hope that the reader may be helped to understand that the authority of the Word of God is not dependent upon infallible certainty in all matters of history and criticism.”1 A more extreme recent trend, popular in the study of ancient Israel’s storied past, is a revisionistic version of Biblical history.2 A prime example is seen in the words of Finkelstein, who speaks of “the rise of the true national state in Judah [in the eighth century BC]. . . . That national state produced a historical saga so powerful that it led Biblical historians and archaeologists alike to recreate its mythical past—from stones and potsherds.”3 Such attacks on the inerrancy of the Bible’s historicity necessitate a reasoned defense of its historical accuracy. As Lindsell writes, “When inerrancy is lost, it is palpably easy to drift into a mood in which the historicity of Scripture along with inerrancy is lost.”4 The danger of compromising the inerrancy of Biblical historicity became vivid to the present writer when he learned that a transfer student who entered the seminary where he teaches was taught in another theological institution that Biblical inerrancy does not even extend into the realm of history. Such a position is unacceptable, and it must be opposed rigorously. The present work examines the trustworthiness of Biblical history by using the Hebrew exodus from Egypt (hereinafter, simply “exodus”) as a test case. More specifically, an examination of the exodus-pharaoh’s life will reveal whether Biblical history can be harmonized and synchronized with Egyptian history, and whether Biblical chronology is clear and trustworthy when relevant passages are interpreted literally. The need for evaluating the former premise is that many Egyptologists are leading the charge to deny the veracity of the exodus, attempting to persuade Biblical scholars and the Christian populace at large that the exodus never actually occurred. Renowned Egyptologist Donald Redford concludes, “The almost insurmountable difficulties in interpreting the exodus-narrative as history have led some to dub it ‘mythology rather than . . . a detailed reporting of the historical facts’ and therefore impossible to locate geographically.”5 Redford then betrays his affinity with this fraternity, stating that “despite the lateness and unreliability of the story in exodus, no one can deny that the tradition of Israel’s coming out of Egypt was one of long standing.”6 The need for evaluating the latter premise is that many Biblical scholars who affirm the historicity of the exodus now date it to the 13th century BC, a step that requires a redefinition of concrete numbers in Biblical passages that, if taken literally, would indisputably place the exodus in the 15th century BC. The eminent Egyptologist and Biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen is foremost among them: “Thus, if all factors are given their due weight, a 13th-century exodus remains—at present—the least objectionable dating, on a combination of all the data (Biblical and otherwise) when those data are rightly evaluated and understood in their context.”7 While Kitchen is a vital contributor in the field of OT history and chronology, the accuracy of his conclusion here is disputable, along with whether he has evaluated “all of the data” correctly. Wood rejects the theory of a 13th-century-BC exodus, originally propagated by Albright, appealing to a reevaluation of the archaeological evidence pertinent to key Palestinian cities in question.8 Young also opposes this trend: “A date for the exodus in the mid-fifteenth century BC has been much maligned because of favorite theories that identified various pharaohs of a later date with the pharaohs of the oppression and exodus. . . . It is hoped that the present study has strengthened the case for the accuracy of the chronological numbers as preserved in the Masoretic text, and at the same time has helped to discredit theories which put the exodus anywhere but in the middle of the Fifteenth Century BC.”9 Just as Young established a 15th-century date for the exodus by chronological means, the present writer seeks to accomplish this goal by historical means, namely by examining the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep II (ca. 1455–1418 BC),10 which coincides with that of the exodus-pharaoh if adhering to conventional views of Biblical and ancient Egyptian chronology. By answering the following questions, it will be seen whether Amenhotep II remains a viable candidate for the exodus-pharaoh, and whether Biblical history can be exonerated under the scrutiny of synchronization with Egyptian history. Does Amenhotep II qualify as the pharaoh who lived through the tenth plague because he was not his father’s eldest son? Could the eldest son of Amenhotep II have died during the tenth plague, which must be true of the exodus-pharaoh’s son? Did Amenhotep II die in the Red Sea, as the Bible allegedly indicates about the exodus-pharaoh?11 Can any of Amenhotep II’s military campaigns be related to the exodus events? Can the loss of over two million Hebrew slaves, certainly Egypt’s “slave-base” at the time, be accounted for in the records of Amenhotep II’s reign? Is there any evidence to confirm that Amenhotep II interacted with the Hebrews after they left Egypt? If Amenhotep II is the exodus-pharaoh, could the obliteration of Hatshepsut’s image from many Egyptian monuments and inscriptions be attributed to backlash from the exodus events? II. THREE INTRODUCTORY BACKGROUND MATTERS 1. The Reason for Moses’ Omission of the Exodus-Pharaoh’s Throne-Name. Every time Moses wrote the dynastic title of the exodus-pharaoh, it was devoid of the pharaoh’s throne-name (e.g. Sesostris, Amenhotep, etc.), which is known in Egyptology as the praenomen.12 This, however, was not the practice of later Biblical writers—especially writers of the historical books, who routinely transliterated each pharaoh’s praenomen— beginning with the reign of Pharaoh Shishak. For example, Shishak is named in the OT seven times, though never is he referred to merely as “pharaoh.”13 The same is true of Pharaoh Neco, whose name appears nine times.14 The only exception to this rule—apart from the 21 references in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, where the Egyptian monarch is referred to only as “pharaoh”—is when the Hebrew authors retrospectively write about the exodus-pharaoh, always leaving him unnamed.15 The question that arises is why Moses consistently omitted the throne-names of pharaohs, especially in the historical book of Exodus. a. Omission of Pharaoh’s Throne-Name not Theologically Motivated. The absence of pharaoh’s praenomen in the biblical history of the second millennium BC is often used either to support the assertion of the legendary nature of the exodus narrative, or to demonstrate that the Hebrew writers were not truly interested in history. These criticisms, however, dissipate under a closer examination of the practice of Moses’ day. Hoffmeier nobly suggests that “the absence of pharaoh’s name may ultimately be for theological reasons, because the Bible is not trying to answer the question, ‘Who is the pharaoh of the exodus?’ to satisfy the curiosity of modern historians; rather, it was seeking to clarify for Israel who was the God of the exodus.”16 To support this idea, Hoffmeier appeals to Exod 5:1, which he uses to suggest that pharaoh not only rejects Moses’ petition to allow the Hebrews to worship Yahweh in the desert, but rebuffs Yahweh by denying knowledge of him,



Rosetta Stone Spanish

suggesting that both references may be a divinely-overseen

updating of an earlier place-name.31 Whether or not Exod 1:11 is anachronistic, there is no guarantee that Pi-Ramesses is biblical Rameses. Scolnic warns, “The truth is that there are very few sites indeed that yield the kind of evidence required to make the site identifications that we, especially we who are openly interested in religion, yearn to make.”32 Yet the presumption that Biblical Rameses could not have been inhabited before Rameses II has driven the movement to advance the date of the exodus forward by two centuries, with the view’s proponents interpreting “480th” in 1 Kgs 6:1 as being merely a symbolical number.Two options exist for allegorizing “the 480th year.” The first option is that the number 480 is the sum of 12 eras consisting of 40-year generations: 20 years for one generation to live to child-bearing age, then 20 years for their children to do likewise. When totaled, these 12 eras of 22–25 actual years supply the 288–300 years needed to support the late-exodus theory.33 By counting back 300 years from 967 BC, the exodus dates to ca. 1267 BC, which falls within the exceedingly long reign of Rameses II.34 The second option for the number 480 is what Kitchen calls “the nonoppressions aggregate theory.” Here, the 480 years consist of nine periods of 40 years (=360 years), the third of which is actually 80 years (2 x 40), plus five aggregate periods of varying lengths. When totaled, the sum is a neat 480 years.35c. The Inadequacy of Interpreting the 480th Year of 1 Kgs 6:1 Allegorically.One weakness with any allegorical interpretation is that in 1 Kgs 6:1, the author used an ordinal number, not a cardinal, making a figurative use even more inexplicable. Another weakness is that the exodus-pharaoh followed an exceedingly lengthy reign, not boasted one, as does Ramses II. Moses fled from pharaoh, who sought to execute him for killing an Egyptian (Exod 2:15), departing from Egypt when he “was fulfilling 40 years of age” (Acts 7:23). Only “after 40 years had passed” did the angel speak to him at the burning bush (Acts 7:30), which immediately follows the statement that “in the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died” (Exod 2:23).Thus the pharaoh who preceded the exodus-pharaoh must have ruled beyond 40 years, a criterion not met by the modest reign of Seti I (ca. 1305–1290 BC), Rameses II’s predecessor. In contrast, Thutmose III, the father and predecessor of Amenhotep II, who ruled just under 54 years, is the only other pharaoh of the 18th or 19th Dynasty to rule over 40 years. This factor, combined with all of the other evidence, causes one writer to declare, “Thutmose III must be the ruler whose death is recorded in Exodus 2:23.”36Finally, if “480th” merely represents a collection of equally or non-equally divisible components, what is to prevent the subjective periodization of other numbers within Scripture? In Exod 12:40–41, Moses notes that “at the end of 430 years—to the very day—all the hosts of the Lord departed from the land of Egypt.” Does 430 also represent a compilation of time periods? If so, are they divided into 10-year spans, since the number is indivisible by 20? Is the inclusion of the qualifier, “to the very day,” simply to be dismissed as a later scribal gloss? Moreover, who is to be trusted to correctly allegorize the number, which otherwise is shrouded in mystery? Opponents of biblical inerrancy even recognize the folly of such allegorization, with one calling it the devising of “ingenious solutions. The most common trick has been to reduce time spans to generations: thus the 480 figure must really represent twelve generations.”37 Simply put, no such creative ingenuity is necessary.d. The Preference for Interpreting the 480th Year of 1 Kgs 6:1 Literally.Cassuto studied ascending and descending Hebrew numbers.38 As Wood notes from this study, a number written in ascending order—as with “eightieth and four-hundredth” in 1 Kgs 6:1, where the smaller number (80th) is followed by the larger number (400th)—is always “intended to be a technically precise figure.”39 Moreover, no subjectively allegorical use of “480th” justifies the rejection of its natural use. Since the advocates of a late exodus are more driven by arguments from silence about the Israelites’ habitation of Canaan before the 13th century BC than by textual evidence, this number should be taken literally, reinforcing 1446 BC as the exact year of the exodus.3. Egyptian Chronology: Precisely Dating the Pharaonic Reigns of the 15th Century BC.The final step before determining whether Amenhotep II is a viable candidate for the exodus-pharaoh is to synchronize the date of the exodus with Egyptian history. While inspiration does not extend to extra-Biblical literature or ancient inscriptions, many extant writings do possess a high degree of trustworthiness.a. The Astronomical Date in the Ebers Papyrus.The Ebers Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian MS that dates the heliacal rising of Sothis to Year 9, Month 3, Season 3, Day 9 (ca. 15 May) of Amenhotep I’s reign (ca. 1550–1529 BC), records this astronomical event that fixes its composition to an identifiable time in the 18th Dynasty.40 Since astronomers can pinpoint this event by charting the positions of stars in antiquity, the papyrus can be dated to ca. 1541 BC, making his initial regnal year ca. 1550 BC. This dating, accepted by numerous Egyptological scholars, is based on the ancient capital of Memphis as the point of observation, despite the Theban provenance of the papyrus. A Theban point of observation, which is accepted by other Egyptologists, dates the papyrus to ca. 1523 BC.41 While the Egyptians never stated from where they observed the Sothic rising, Olympiodorus noted in AD 6 that it was celebrated at Alexandria, after having been observed at Memphis.42 Therefore, Memphis is taken to be the correct point of observation for the rising recorded in the Ebers Papyrus.b. The Reliability of the Dating of the 18th Dynasty.Even without depending on astronomical dating, the chronology of Egypt in the mid-1400’s BC remains sure. Ward notes that “New Kingdom chronology can be fairly well established on the basis of the monuments and synchronisms, without recourse to the astronomicalmaterial.”43 As for the 18th Dynasty, he adds that the 25-year gap separating current theories on its starting date narrows to a scant three or four years by the middle of the dynasty, meaning that most mainstream Egyptologists consider the dating of Egypt’s exodus-era history to be fixed and reliable.44c. The Regnal Dates of the 18th-Dynasty Pharaohs from the Time of the Ebers Papyrus to the Exodus.With firm regnal dates for Amenhotep I, the reigns of the subsequent 18th-Dynasty pharaohs down to Amenhotep II are fixed with relative certainty: Thutmose I (ca. 1529–1516 BC), Thutmose II (ca. 1516–1506 BC), Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1504–1484 BC), Thutmose III (ca.1506–1452 BC), and Amenhotep II (ca. 1455–1418 BC).45 With these reigns chronologically ordered, the evaluation of Amenhotep II’s candidacy for the exodus-pharaoh may proceed.III. THE SURVIVAL OF AMENHOTEP II DURING THE 10TH PLAGUEThe tenth plague upon Egypt specified that the firstborn of all classes of people, from pharaoh who sat on the throne to the lowest slave girl behind the millstone, along with the firstborn among the livestock, would all die at the hands of the Death Angel (Exod 11:5). Being that the throne was included in this edict, one might expect that pharaoh himself—if he actually was the firstborn son of his father, which was the normal protocol for succession under Egypt’s dynastic rule—would have died during this last and most terrible plague (Exod 12:29–30). However, since the exodus-pharaoh obviously lived through the final plague, he could not have been “the king’s eldest son,” a title the Egyptians liberally used of pharaoh’s eldest son, who stood in

first published एडिन्बुर्घ

A. & C. Black, 1885; German original, Berlin: G. Reimer, 1878] 272). See the remarks of Rodger C. Young in “When Did Jerusalem Fall?” JETS 47 (2004) 28–29, n. 13 regarding the artificiality of Wellhausen’s construction. Other authors who have followed Wellhausen in his faulty reasoning include Bernhard Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel 1 (Berlin : G. Grote, 1887) 89; Emile F. Kautzsch, Abriss der Geschichte des alttestamentlichen Schrifttums: nebst Zeittafeln zur Geschichte der Israeliten und anderen Beigaben zur Erklärung des alten Testaments (Freiburg: J.C.B. Mohr, 1897) 65; Jeremy Hughes, Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in biblical Chronology (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic, 1990) 2. [15] Wellhausen, Prolegomena 272. Wellhausen’s attack on the historical validity of the regnal data in Kings and Chronicles was very effective in destroying faith in the integrity of the Scriptures. Liberal scholarship was quick to press the argument. “Wellhausen has shown, by convincing reasons, that the synchronisms with the Book of Kings cannot possibly rest on ancient tradition, but are on the contrary simply the products of artificial reckoning (Rudolf Kittel, A History of the Hebrews 2 [Oxford: Williams & Norgate, 1896; German original Gotha, Germany: Perthes, 1892] 234). “Wellhausen is surely right in believing that the synchronisms in Kings are worthless, being merely a late compilation from the actual figures given” (Theodore H. Robinson, A History of Israel [Oxford, England: Clarendon, 1932] 1.454). Yet, by one of the ironies of history, the same chronological data that these scholars cited as showing the fallibility of the Scriptures have been demonstrated by conservative scholarship to have all the earmarks of authenticity, once the presupposition-based approach of liberal scholarship was replaced by a careful study of the chronological methods used in the ancient Near East. These later findings are therefore consistent with a high view of the inspiration of Scripture. “[T]he apparent authenticity of the chronological details of Scripture is precisely what would be expected if the doctrine of limited inspiration is false and that or inerrancy is true” (Rodger C. Young, “Tables of Reign Lengths from the Hebrew Court Recorders,” JETS 48 [2005] 244). There is also a pragmatic side to this: the Thiele/McFall chronology that is based on a conservative approach to the Scriptures has been widely accepted as reflecting the true history of the times, whereas no chronological consensus has ever been attained by starting with the various theories that postulate artificiality in the records of Kings and Chronicles. [16] “Propositions” 36. [17] Kings 60. The rationale for choosing this particular timespan to insert in 1 Kgs 6:1 is not explained by Burney. Hawkins, however, provides a reason, as given earlier by Nahum Sarna. Sarna suggests, “the biblical writer [of 1 Kgs 6:1] wanted to place the Temple at the center of biblical history” (Nahum M. Sarna “Israel in Egypt: The Egyptian Sojourn and the Exodus,” in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple [ed. Hershel Shanks; Washington DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1999]) 42). Hawkins understands Sarna’s “biblical history” to mean “Israelite history,” and he writes, “Israel’s history on either side of the construction of the Temple is summarized as having encompassed 480 years, thereby placing the construction of the Temple in the center of history” (“Propositions” 36). This concept is not found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and it assumes that Israelite history ceased with the first return from exile. If the historical data had been manipulated in the way theorized by Sarna and Hawkins, the authors of Kings would be writing propaganda, not history. Such an approach to the authorship of the Scriptures destroys all confidence in anything presented in the written text, whether it be matters of history or of doctrine. But imaginative theorizing of this sort has no explanation of why sound scholarship has shown that the reign length data have all the characteristics of authenticity, so that a coherent and rational chronology has been constructed from them. [18] Non-accession reckoning means that the calendar year in which the king came to the throne is reckoned as his “year one,” while at the same time it is reckoned as the last year of the king he was succeeding. When reckoning is by the non-accession method, a year must therefore be subtracted from the given reign length when calculating elapsed time. Under the accession method, the calendar year in which the king came to the throne is counted as his “zero” year, and consequently elapsed time can be calculated by a simple addition of reign lengths. [19] “Propositions” 36, esp. n. 25. Hawkins writes, “If the number is literal, then they returned 53 years after Cyrus’s accession to the throne.” But there is no record, biblical or otherwise, of any return of exiles in 487 bc, 480 years after the start of Temple construction in the spring of 967 bc. (Hawkins takes 966 for the start of Temple construction and ends the 480 imaginary years in 486.) [20] Young, “Tables of Reign Lengths” 225–48. After the division of the kingdom, Judah continued its practice of using accession reckoning, whereas Israel made a deliberate break from Judean practice by adopting a Nisan-based regnal year, non-accession reckoning, and a non-canonical festival in the eighth month. Later, both kingdoms changed from their initial choice regarding accession or non-accession reckoning, and the lack of understanding of these important principles is one of many reasons why Wellhausen and those who followed him were incompetent in determining a chronology from the data given us by the Hebrew court recorders. [21] In the present paper, the authors use dates for Solomon and the other kings of Judah taken from ibid., 246 (Table 2). [22] William H. Barnes, Studies in the Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel (Atlanta, GA.: Scholars Press, 1991) 146. [23] S. Olam 11. Rabbi Yose assigned this period to seventeen Jubilees, yet the 850 years are seventeen years more than seventeen Jubilee cycles of forty-nine years each. Rabbi Yose then asks how it is possible that there is an excess of seventeen years over the 833 years that he apparently expected for the seventeen Jubilee cycles. He gives no answer. The reason is evident: his 850 years is an artificial number that does not represent real elapsed time, similar to the artificial constructs of Wellhausen and Barnes, and there is no reason to try to correlate it with the seventeen Jubilee cycles that Rabbi Yose states as terminating fourteen years after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. Neither is there any reason to relate Judean reign lengths to the 479 years between the exodus and the building of the Temple. When artificial arrangements such as these are imposed on the data, it creates confusion in any chronological scheme and leads to wrong conclusions. [24] Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, Seder Olam: The Rabbinic View of biblical Chronology (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005; first published Northvale, NJ, 1998) 117–18. [25] Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3d ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983); Leslie McFall, “A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles,” BSac 148 (1991) 3–45. Thiele’s book should be the starting place for anyone seeking to understand the methods of the Hebrew court recorders and scribes whose figures are recorded in the chronological notes of Kings and Chronicles. These methods were not understood by Wellhausen, Burney, and some others even to the present day. Thiele’s problems with the chronology of the eighth-century kings of Judah are entirely resolved in McFall’s article. [26] Jack Finegan, Handbook of biblical Chronology (rev. ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998) 246, 249; Kitchen, On the Reliability 83; T. C. Mitchell

10 Mar 11 An Iranian Foreign Film Fails To Promote Real Understanding

An Iranian Foreign Film Fails To Promote Real UnderstandingBy: Ed Bagley .... Click author's name to view profile and articles!!!Retargeting by ChangoTweet ? 2006 Ed BagleyChildren of Heaven is an Iranian movie with subtitles about a boy who accidentally loses his sister's worn out shoes after being sent to get them repaired, and must share his own worn out sneakers with her in a sort of relay while each attends school at different times during the day.He bargains with his sister not to tell his father that he has lost her shoes, as the father will beat both of them.This is a family literally living hand-to-mouth in a one-room rental with no, and I mean no, amenities, except a tea pot and television. There is no visible kitchen, no bathroom (one assumes they share a bathroom in the building), no beds (they sleep on the floor), and no apparent heat. Jeez, this is living in poverty in parts of the war-torn Middle East.If you were born in America, you may have no idea how fortunate you are to be the one child among every 50 children born into the world who lives in a relatively free, democratic society, in the most prosperous nation on the face of the earth.We have so much more of everything in America that even our less fortunate people live better than the majority of the people in undeveloped and underdeveloped nations around the world, but back to Iran and these particular children.The shoe exchange in Children of Heaven goes on for days with predictable results, the boy is continually late for school and reprimanded, his sister longs for a pair of shoes, and she even suffers the humility of seeing one of her classmates wearing her missing shoes (a street vendor inadvertently picked up the repaired shoes while picking up refuse at a vegetable shop).The same classmate then gets a brand new pair of shoes, and his sister must suffer the indignity of hearing that her old, repaired shoes were thrown away.Alas, all is not lost, as the boy learns of a 4 kilometer foot race (approximately 2.5 miles), and the 3rd place prize is a pair of new sneakers. He knows he can run fast (he has been unknowingly practicing by having to run each day to school to get there on time) and decides to beg his way into the race, finish 3rd, and give his hard-earned prize to his sister.Imagine the start of this race among his peers, it looked like the start of the Boston Marathon in America with 10,000+ petitors. The race footage is well done. In the end, the boy does not finish 3rd, he wins the race, but not the sneakers.Now get this, because this is important: At the end of the story, the father is able to finally buy his daughter a new pair of sneakers, the boy feels like a failure for not winning the sneakers, and his sister is sorely disappointed that he could not get the job done. The film ends on this note.There is no resolution in this film, it is like I imagined the Middle East culture and mentality all over again, no consensus on anything, no meaningful result to anything, and negative to the end.If it were not for this terrible ending, this film would have a 3-star rating rather than 2, however, I am not about to reward poor story telling.Children of Heaven has some touching moments, and is instructive because it reminds us that no matter what the politics are, children are children; and they act like children, everywhere, and in every corner of the world. This film is worth the look, but brace yourself for an unsettling ending.The postscript to this film from NETFLIX says "Children of Heaven is just that-heavenly." It is absolutely not, despite having some heavenly moments. Be advised that NETFLIX has some descriptions that belie the film's actual presentation.NETFLIX has lulled me to sleep once too often. I have rented NETFLIX films that are characterized as a "romantic edy" when, in reality, I have been given a film with two funny scenes and a very heavy dose of disturbing human conflict with raw emotions and passion.Article Source: abcarticledirectoryEd Bagley is the Author of Ed Bagley's Blog, which he Publishes Daily with Fresh, Original Articles on Internet Marketing, Jobs and Careers, Movie Reviews, Sports and Recreation, and Lessons in Life intended to Delight, Inform, Educate and Motivate Readers. Visit Ed at . . .edbagleyblogMovieReviewArticles.htmledbagleyblogLessonsinLifeArticles.htmledbagleyblogInternetMarketingArticles.htmlNote: The content of this article solely conveys the opinion of its author, Ed BagleyRetargeting by ChangoDid You Like This Article? 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5 Mar 11 Make More Money Selling Info Products With Resale Rights or Master Resale Rights

Make More Money Selling Info Products With Resale Rights or Master Resale RightsBy: Dipak Patel .... Click author's name to view profile and articles!!!Retargeting by ChangoTweet If you have an info product, you can sell it with or without resale rights. However, you can make more money by selling the resale rights to your product. By offering your product with resale rights or master resale rights, you can bring in extra cash as customers will find it more attractive since they can make money from your product too when they resell it.When it comes toNHL Jersey
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24 Jan 11 Big Ten Football Preview, Week 5: Big Ten Play Begins

Leon Halip/Getty ImagesIn golf, they call the preseason the "silly season" because the guys really don't practice. They just go to a couple of tournaments, play okay, and cash a few checks.For somecollege football teams, they just finished the silly season. For others, Big Ten play is their only hope of having a successful year.This week starts the second, or real season, for Big Tenschools. I also like it because I don't have to preview 11 different games. So it works out for all of us! Big Ten Game of the Week Wisconsin at Michigan Reebok Washington Redskins #98 ORAKPO Realtree camo Jersey
StateWhen the season began, I would have bet a dollar that thePenn State at Iowa game would be this week's BTGOTW (Big Ten game of the week), but with Mark Dantonio's mild heart attack (isany heart attack mild?) and return to coaching in the press box, and with both teams undefeated, this is clearly the better game.Both are power teams that like to run the ball. Both have good running backs and good non-conference wins (ND and ASU). I think this will be a very close game, and believe it or not, MSU is a home dog, getting two points.I usually sidewitha home team in a close game, but I have a strange feeling that Wisconsin is the better team. Wisconsin 24, MSU21 More Big Ten PlayNorthwestern at MinnesotaThe Golden Gophers really need a win, and Northwestern is quietly undefeated this year. Could Tim Brewster be gone before the end of October? He could if the Golden Gophers don't start playing better football. This is another home dog scenario where Northwestern is giving 5.5 points. It won't be that close.Northwestern 28, Minn 14Reebok Pittsburgh Steelers 43 Troy Polamalu Realtree camo Jersey
Ohio State at IllinoisIllinois has given Ohio State fits in the past, but this team led by Ron Zook doesn't really have much to offer to stop Terrelle Pryor and company. Ohio State always has a Big Ten sleeper game on the road (last year it was Purdue), but not in this game. Guess what? Another home dog game: OSU is favored by 17 points. Seems about right.OSU 31, Illinois 10 Penn State at IowaBoth teams have high hopes for a Big Ten championship. Iowa's schedule sets up nicely for them, being able to hostPSU, MSU, and OSU during Big Ten play. Both teams havealready lost a game on the road in 2010. Penn State got manhandled by No. 1 Alabama, and Iowa got down quickly to Arizona and wasn't able to recover.Penn State's offensewill struggle against Iowa's defense. I see thisgame as a defensive battle with not a lot of points scored. Iowa is favored by seven points.Iowa 17, Penn State 7 Purdue has abye. I will preview the Michigan-IU game on Friday. A Thought to Ponder on a Thursday AfternoonHow big would next Reebok Green Bay Packers 21 Charles Woodson Realtree camo Jersey
week's Michigan-MSU game be if both teams were undefeated? Storylines: Dantonio's heart condition, Rich Rodriguez trying to beat his in-state rival for the first time, two really good running teams, MSU's first time in the new Big House, and I'm sure there will be a little brother reference or two. (Note: MSU does not play OSU this year.)This article is also featured onThe BIG HOUSE Blog