Etude,
After I hit the submit button, I had some of the same thoughts. While there is a lengthy argument in these posts in support of accuracy of Biblical chronology citing dispersions in radio carbon dating, it was not fair to say that the topic is about that specifically. And the further we get into the question of CO2 variations, the closer and closer we get to another topic - global warming. That's one that some of my veteran friends love to argue about, but Biblical chronologies seldom come up in that context.
I should also say that in order to have a debate, you do have to have a pro and a con. And it is fair enough to argue in behalf of a Biblical chronology that is inherently accurate with the best case available. Otherwise everyone that is sceptical is arguing against a very poorly sewn straw man. So I hope that some of my own rhetoric is taken with a grain of salt.
I am writing from a coffee house table right now; so I don't have hard copy references in front of me. But going back to early civilizations and Bible chronology, as important as radio isotope methods might be, I think much of the case pro or con rests with how early civilizations recorded their own events and COMMUNICATED with each other.
Since Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamian civilizations of the mid 2nd millenium communicated with each other in Akkadian and left permanent stone or clay records, these are very compelling arguments pro or con for a Biblical chronology. When I would look for a book on Egypt, Assyria or Babylonia in a bookstore or a library, I noticed that the older the book was, the more likelihood that the chronologies were longer. In the 19th century prior to deciphering Mideast literatures other than Hebrew, it was just generally assumed that the Biblically derived chronologies would bear out once some notion of what was written on obelisks and stellae was worked out. So far as I can tell, that did not prove to be the case.
Just what is a Bible chronology for early civilization is also a moving target. To illustrate, if you compare the assumed chronological appendix in the NWT with say that in the New Jerusalem Bible, you have events in Egypt associated with the Exodus in variance by 300 years. As a result, you have the Exodus arriving in the promised land amidst the Egyptian New Kingdom's empire in that part of the world, stretching into Lebanon and Syria. Egyptian battles of this era are recorded not only by the Pharoahs or kings, but by the veterans of the wars themselves.
One possible reason for the discrepancy is the assertion in Kings that Solomon's temple was commenced four hundred years after the Exodus from Egypt. If all the accounts of the Judges were sequential rather than parallel, it would be possible. But the argument for Biblical chronology assumes that such dynastic confusions could only happen in other places - like Egypt - places where stone records survive.
Eventually, of course, there definitely were kingdoms of Israel and Judea, but how they got started (or with an Exodus), is a matter of controversy. Candidate pharaohs you can find in mummies in museums. You can't find a trace of an Exodus of 100s of thousands that wandered forty years and took off with borrowed pottery and jewels.
Despite divine interventions in Joshua's behalf, and complete eradications of places like Ai and Jericho, the narrative says that Joshua still had much unfinished work in the conquest when he died. The record indicateshe conquered several cities several times. Archeology indicates that Jericho and Ai were not inhabited circa 1200 BC. The stories of their desolation might have been provided as explanations for ruins that had been ruins longer than accurate national memory.
Even by Exodus chapter one, you could argue that the narrator of the book was describing workers who were employed not at Ramses capital but at Neccho II's. And oddly they seemed to be engaged in "royal" construction work more associated with Babylon than with Egypt. They speak none of sandstone or granite, but plenty about making mud bricks.
In Genesis there are supposedly camel caravans and the Philistines were already there. As best we can tell today, Phillistines were part of the Mycenean Greek expansion post Trojan war.
My copy of "What the Bible Really Teaches" says that Job was written about 1500 BC and the NWT appendix, claims it was Moses who was the author. Job had camel caravans too.
One of the things about Babylonian and Egyptian records is that they are replete with commercial transactions. I wonder how many 1000 BC camel caravans they mention?
Does anyone sense any anachronisms in these descriptions?
