Competing Chronologies, Competing Histories

Abstract

This article explores biblical and non-biblical texts, iconographic sources and material remains in defining their significance for the chronology of the Southern Levant and ancient Israel from the end of the Late Bronze Age in ca. 1200 BCE to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in July 587. It observes how in both past and present counting years and defining a time period is to organize and classify the past and to take a stance in the present. Departing from an application of the established chronological framework of Egypt and the Ancient Near East to the region, this perspective is used to reflect on the rather precise southern Levantine chronology of the late 10th to 5th centuries BCE, and on the much more contested chronology of the 12th to 10th centuries BCE in the Southern Levant. It turns out that the uncertainty is also reflected in the biblical chronology from the exodus to the building of the temple.