a)
Uniformity
The
first thing to note is the uniform approach and flow of the
Old Testament.
Each
book follows on from previous ones and treats what it is saying
as factual history, i.e. actually what took place in time-space
history.
As
has been noted on previous pages, subsequent writers clearly
understood prior characters as literal figures who appeared
in their history.
Indeed
we can go further and say that their certain belief in these
figures helped form and sustain their belief in God and their
calling as His people.
b)
Conforming to Known Secular Facts
The
danger in this heading is that we separate out the Old Testament
writings and put them on a different footing than other historical
written evidence this should not be.
The
difficulty of identifying times in history from within the Old
Testament itself, is that the references don't tend to be in
specific dates, but rather specific incidents or specific rulers,
e.g., :
In
the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned
in Jerusalem
forty years.
2
Kings 12:1
and
And
Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
What
Biblical historians try to due is marry up Biblical statements
with known historical data.
One
major historical source is the Canon of Ptolemy, otherwise known
as the Canon of the Kings, used by astronomers and preserved
by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek living in Roman
Egypt in the second century AD.
It
originated from Babylonian sources, then Persian kings, after
which it was taken up by Greek astronomers covering a period
from about 700BC through to 160AD and although it only deals
in whole years (and thus omits kings who reigned for lees than
a year) it is generally considered by historians and archaeologists
to be very accurate.
Good
dates from about 1400BC onwards are based on Mesopotamian data
Good
dates from about 1200BC back to about 2100BC can be obtained
from Egyptian sources.
c)
Example of Dating the Patriarchs
References
to Abram, Isaac etc. are checked against historical data using:
•
mention of external events
during their time,
•
evidence of social conditions
in their time.
In
respect of external events, the New Bible Dictionary
states that The only two striking external events recorded
are the raid of the four kings against the five (Gen 14) and
the destruction of the cities of the plain (Gen 19)
In
respect of elapsed time periods, the primary statements
linking Abraham's period with later events are within the following
verses:
"Then
the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants
will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will
be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will
punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they
will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go
to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age.
In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here,
for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.
(Gen
15:13-16)
In
respect of social conditions, the New Bible Dictionary
states that the social customs of adoption and inheritance
in Genesis 15,16 & 21 etc. show close affinity with those
observable in cuneiform documents from Ur
and Nuzi, ranging in date
from the 18th to 15th centuries BC.
Similar
processes can be used for other parts of the Old Testament.
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