by
Damien F. Mackey
“There are two kings in the Bible referred to as King Jehoram/Joram. The first was the son of King Jehoshaphat, and he ruled in the southern kingdom of Judah from 853 to 841 BC. The other King Jehoram was the son of the wicked King Ahab, and he ruled in the northern kingdom of Israel from 852 to 841 BC. The name Joram is a shortened form of Jehoram. Complicating matters is the fact that both Jehorams were brothers-in-law to each other”.
King Jehoram of Judah I have confidently identified with – following Peter James – El Amarna’s Abdi-Hiba of Urusalim. For now, I would accept for Jehoram (as a rough approximation) the date of c. 850 BC. That date, however, will need to be lowered considerably as my revision progresses.
Turning to convention, Abdi-Hiba is thought to have lived around 1330 BC, in pre-Israelite Jerusalem. Unfortunately for this theory, Jerusalem (Urusalim) was called Jebus in those days.
By 850 BC, convention has already seen off Egypt’s entire New Kingdom (so-called), comprising dynasties 18, 19 and 20, and it is well into the so-called Third Intermediate Period (TIP), having gone past dynasty 21, and having settled somewhere in dynasty 22.
We recall that dynasty 22’s founder pharaoh, Shoshenq I, has been aligned by the French genius, François Champollion, with the biblical Shishak.
And that unfortunate link is still retained today by the conventional scholars.
By 850 BC my revised chronology has not yet even exhausted Egypt’s famous Eighteenth Dynasty (let alone the entire New Kingdom), with the two kings Jehoram being contemporaneous with (following the “Glasgow” School) pharaoh Akhnaton and El Amarna.
Akhnaton’s two sons, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun, will yet follow him in this dynasty.
Obviously this ought to be a great advantage for the conventional system over mine.
I shall have to contend with confining an enormous amount of Egyptian dynastic history into a far diminished period. Such a prospect would eventually frighten away a lot of revisionists, who, reeling after (i) “The Assuruballit Problem” [TAP], would despair of having to squeeze into so tight a chronological space the (ii) almost 70-year reign of Ramses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty, not to mention (iii) the multiple dynasties of TIP.
These (i)-(iii) have long loomed as the biggest obstacles towards a Velikovskian-style revision.
David Rohl, Peter James and others would eventually compromise by cutting approximately in half Velikovsky’s 500-year time shift. Whilst all agreed that the biblical Shishak could not have been (as per convention) pharaoh Shoshenq I, Rohl, for instance, would now look to identify this Shishak with the Nineteenth Dynasty great, Ramses II.
The conventional system, although it has the advantage of far more chronological space, has the distinct disadvantage of its proponents not being able to identify, either historically or archaeologically, any of the great biblical events such as the Exodus and Conquest; the Fall of Jericho; and the era of kings David and Solomon.
Pharaoh Thutmose III, the great conqueror, the biblical Shishak, gets lumped into the Exodus era. Others, though, opt for Ramses II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, although his conventionally calculated era of c. 1300 BC does not match biblical time calculations for the Exodus – nor does the reign of Ramses II exhibit any evidence for a large-scale Exodus of its slave population.
Ramses II’s son, Merenptah, has a famous Stele that names “Israel”.
Dated to c. 1205 BC, this document has been a source of great confusion for historians. For example: https://watchjerusalem.co.il/446-merneptah-stele-proving-israels-3200-year-existence
“The mention of Israel in this 3,200-year-old document suggests, at the time of its inscription, the nation of Israel was an established power and not a nomadic people who had just recently entered the land of Canaan. Before the discovery of the stele, many dated the Exodus much later, but now they are forced to reconcile with the fact that Israel was already an established power in Canaan in 1207 b.c.e”.
