Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Part 2)
As I wrote in Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Part 1), the website http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/ places the building of the Solomon’s temple at 967BC, and computes this date quite convincingly from a starting point of Creation, 4000 BC. However, this creates a disparity of 463 years between my dating of the flood and his. Can I account for those years?
Let’s start at the end. While secular sources would appear to agree with a dating of the temple around 960 BC, that date would appear to be the completion of the temple, not the beginning of it. So when was the temple begun? Well, Jewish tradition places the beginning of the temple at 832 BC, 135 years earlier than the author of the website above predicts. This does not undo his numbers, it just moves them all back 135 years.
Next, it turns out that the 832 BC year is off by 165 years. It is unknown exactly why the discrepancy is there, but add that to the 135 years above, it may account for a total of exactly 300 years. Interesting. Can I account for the 163? Or even get close to it? [NOTE: I caught my math error the next day… see following post]
Well, as I wrote in the post above, I think it’s possible that the 430 years in Egypt may in fact refer to the time from when Jacob moved there, not the time of Abraham’s Covenant. Add that 215 year disparity, and I appear to overshoot by 52 years.
Well, going back to the 480 years from Egypt to the temple, the author I cite counted those years starting from the end of Israel’s sojourn in the desert. He readily admits that theologians generally count this from 40 years earlier, counting from the beginning of their sojourn. If I go with the theologians, then I now overshoot by 12 years.
Wow. This is pretty close. I wasn’t sure I would get that close.
Now, when I added up the ages of Levi, Kohat, and Amram, they only added up to 417 years. I artificially added 13 years to Levi’s life, to make it 430. However, remove those years and I come within 1 year of my flood date. This suggests Levi was born when Joseph was about 59… but now I’m missing 13 years in the 430 year span. What if the years in Egypt began with Joseph moving there?
Joseph was forcibly moved to Egypt when he was 17 years old. He ruled it when he was 30, and Jacob moved the rest of the family there when Joseph was around 37 (after the 7 years of plenty). This would start the 430 years about 20 years sooner than thought. Again, placing all of the ages of Levi, Kohat, and Amram end to end, then adding these 20 years of Joseph’s life would get us to 437 years. This could be accounted for if Levi were born only 7 years before Jacob’s 10 years of labor, instead of 13, or if the lives of Levi, Kohat, and Amram overlapped just slightly.Â
Something confusing, and probably means nothing, is that 7 years could also be accounted for if the 7 years were the accumulated error of 360-day years, as counted within the 480 years of 1 Kings 6. Consider that (365.25 - 360) is 5.25 extra days per year not counted. To accumulate 7 years worth of those would take precisely 480 360-day years… 7*360/5.25 = 480. In other words, there were 487 lunar years between the Exodus and the temple, but only 480 solar years. If you’re confused, so am I, because this assumes that all of the other years in our discussion are solar, and somehow this oddity overlaps a period measured in solar with lunar. I cannot even begin to imagine the events that would result in dating 480 years lunar years from 437 years after entry to Egypt, such that 480 solar years pushes it back to 430.
Still. I’m within 7 years making reasonable assumptions. Cool.Â