An Article in our series on Chronological Revision (4 September, 2014, 9 Elul, 5774)
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. TIMELINE OF JEWISH HISTORY Extract from Rabbi Ken Spiro
3. Extract from Dr. Chaim S. Heifetz's Revision of Persian History by Brad Aaronson
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1. Introduction
There is a discrepancy of about 170 years between conventionally accepted academic dating and that of traditional Jewish sources.
The Jewish dates for such events as the Exile of the Ten Tribes are much later.
Conventionally the Ten Tribes were exiled in ca. 730-722 BCE. The Midrash Seder Olam places it in about 555 BCE.
Not all the traditional Jewish sources (Sefer HaDorot, Seder Olam, etc) agree with each other.
It is worth noting that the English Bishop Ussher drew up a chronology based solely on the Bible. He placed the death of Solomon at ca. 970 BCE whereas Seder Olam seems to date it more than a 100 years later.
See the article on Jewish Chronology in Encyclopedia Judaica.
Our understanding is that a Religious Jew has NO OBLIGATION to accept the Rabbinical Chronology.
We work with non-Jewish academic sources and therefore we use their dates.
Even if the Jewish Dates are more correct it has made little difference so far since a relative chronological sequence has been maintained.
In the future however for some issues the correct dating may be important.
The main problem is dating the length of the Persian Empire.
Conventional History lists 10 Persian Kings over a space of 208 years.
Rabbinical dating of the Sages ("Chazal") says there were only 4 Persian Kings whose combined reigns lasted 52 years.
As stated it does not make much difference to us at present BUT a general revision of all Ancient History, reducing the ages and lengths of historical polities, eliminating the Greek Dark Ages, showing how Mycenean Finds often pertain to the region of Israel and should be dated close to the time of Israelite Exile, etc, could help us greatly. Also all the dating of Megalithic monuments etc has to be reduced to after 600 BCE. Anyway these are separate issues.
For more on the issue of Jewish Dating see the extracts below and other articles that we hope to send out in the future.
We also intend to develop a line of inquiry concerning Historical Chronology in general.
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2. TIMELINE OF JEWISH HISTORY Extract from Rabbi Ken Spiro
TIMELINE OF JEWISH HISTORY
http://www.kenspiro.com/sample.pdf
Exodus 1312 BCE
555 b.c.e. Assyrians overrun northern Israel; Ten Tribes are lost
Extract:
This book relies on the traditional Jewish dating system for ancient history, that is, for the dates before the common era, or b.c.e. The Jewish dating
system and the Christian dating system vary by as much as 164 years for the
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian periods, but by the time we get to the Roman
period (i.e., the Christian year 1) the discrepancy disappears. Why?
... The Jewish dating system is taken primarily from a book called Seder Olam
Rabbah, dating back to the second century c.e. and attributed to Rabbi Yosef
ben Halafta. ...
.... So how do we get the chronology that historians use today?
Historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked
backwards and pieced it together. Data from records of ancient Rome, Greece,
Mesopotamia, and Egypt (including chronicles of major events such as battles
between empires) were combined with archaeological finds and major astronomical
phenomena such as solar eclipses, and dates were then calculated by
applying various scientific dating methods.
Rabbi Ken Spiro
kspiro@aish.com
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3. Extract from Dr. Chaim S. Heifetz's Revision of Persian History by Brad Aaronson
Fixing the History Books
Dr. Chaim S. Heifetz's Revision of Persian History
By Brad Aaronson
http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/heifetzfix.html
Many people have heard or read that the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. This date is mentioned in most books of Jewish history and is even cited at times by Orthodox rabbis.[1] What is not often realized is that this date contradicts the picture of history brought down by Chazal in the Talmud and in Tannaitic works such as Rabbi Yose ben Halafta's Seder Olam Rabba. According to Chazal, the First Temple was destroyed 70 years before the Second Temple was built, and the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE, stood for 420 years. This means that the First Temple was destroyed in 421 BCE (not 420 -- there is no year zero between 1 BCE and 1 CE), a difference of 166 years.
The crux of the problem is in the Persian period. The Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple and exiled the Jewish people, were themselves conquered by the Medes and the Persians around fifty years later. But from this point, conventional history diverges widely from Jewish tradition. Although conventional historians speak of ten Persian kings who ruled for 208 years, Chazal know of four Persian/Median kings who ruled for a total of fifty-two years....
...The accepted Persian chronology is based almost entirely upon the works of Greek historians... The Greek historians in general were considered highly unreliable by their Roman colleagues. They even condemned one another as liars and frauds.
... Heifetz's revision should be given at least as much credence as the Greek chronology... even on a more empirical level, there is much reason to see Jewish historical traditions as more reliable than the Greek histories. The Greek historians picked their stories up as they passed through the lands of Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. Sometimes they heard the stories at home in Greece from Persian immigrants. It would be no wonder if they got their facts confused. But the Jewish traditions regarding this period originated in the Babylonian and Persian communities and were passed down directly until they found their way into the Babylonian Talmud. Local history is much less likely to be misunderstood than stories, often taken out of context, about somebody else's history.
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