Reflections on History and the Jewish Calendar (Part 4)
In my investigations, I came across what is called The King’s Calendar. It is a systematic, mathematical approach for squaring away all of the dates and durations recorded in the Bible. How does it compare with the dates that I have rather simplistically computed? Without delving too deep into the King’s Calendar (yet), here is how my dates compare with the dates computed by the Kings Calendar (which does not go back beyond Abraham’s birth).
Here are the key dates I computed, in reverse order:
- 587 BCÂ - Destruction of Solomon’s Temple, after standing 410 years
- 997Â BCÂ - Construction of Solomon’s Temple, 480 years after exodus
- 1437 BC - End of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness
- 1477 BC - Exodus from Egypt
- 2455 BC - Abraham’s birth (Year of covenant + 75 years)
Here are the King’s Calendar dates:
- 586 - Destruction of Solomon’s Temple, after standing for 384 years
- 970 - Construction of Solomon’s Temple, 479 years after leaving the wilderness
- 1412 BC - End of years in the Wilderness
- 1449 BC - Exodus from Egypt
- 1915 BC - Abraham’s birth
Now I fully expected Abraham’s birth to be off. The King’s Calendar has Abraham’s birth at 504 years before the Exodus, where I have it at 978. Most of this is due to my laying out the 430 and 400 year periods, end-to-end, with a separate duration in there for the time when Jacob’s family lived under Joseph in Egypt…
400 years (as slaves) + 215 years (in Egypt living peacefully - Sojourn II) + 73 years (under Joseph) + 215 years (in Canaan - Sojourn I) + 75 years (Abraham’s age at covenant) = 978 years
The King’s Calendar on the other hand computes the years from the Exodus as such…
215 years (Sojourn II)Â + 129 (Jacob’s age entering Egypt, minus 1) + 60 (Isaac’s age at Jacob’s birth) + 100 (Abraham’s age at Isaac’s birth) = 504 years
The difference is basically 474 years, and is accounted for by my separation of 400 years for slavery, 73 years living under Joseph, plus 1 additional year to make Jacob’s age 130. But notice something… while our durations are only apart by 474 years on the surface, our dates are apart by 2455-1915=540 years. How’s that? Well, The King’s Calendar’s interprets many of these durations as what I am calling Biblical years (primarily lunar), and documents a historical rationale for converting those to solar years. I on the other hand simply assumed solar years from the get-go.
It would be an interesting exercise to understand The King’s Calendar’s rationale for counting years, and see how close I come to being able to discard the 73 year time period I inserted for Joseph’s life. In other words, subtracting it out from the 978 figure above comes awfully close to the same proportionality one computes from the 384 years life of the Temple versus 410 traditionally quoted (.925 vs. .937). It’s numerically intriguing… but might take a bit of reading to arrive at an answer.
Also intriguing is the close date computed by The King’s Calendar for the temples building (970 BC) vs. mine (997 BC). It’s a difference of 27 years, which if added to the 73 year gap from Joseph’s life would add up to 100 years instead of 73. I know it’s foolish to just look at the pleasing numbers and be done with it, but I also don’t like to dismiss things like that either, because so many of the Bible’s durations are nice multiples of 4, 10, 40 and even 100.
In closing, I’m willing to revisit my dating. At the very least, I’m willing to understand the King’s Calendar. Of course, I’m still not done with Noah’s family tree.