History Online - Chronology

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Ancient and Medieval Chronology

Traditional biblical geography

Even if the vowels of common words are not that important, the situation changes completely when their combination meaning a city, country, the name of a king, etc., appears in an ancient text. Tens and hundreds of different variants of vowels for one term may be found, starting the "identifications" of the biblical vowel-free names of cities, countries, and others, made by traditional historians proceeding from the chronological version of J. Scaliger and the localization referring the biblical events to the Near East. As the archaeologist M. Burrows notes, the archaeological job generally leads to the undoubtedlystrongest creed in the reliability of biblical information [48]. F. Kenyon of the British Museum insists as much categorically on archaeology refuting the "destructive skepticism of the second half of the 19th century". (W. Kelley has published a book with the remarkable title Und die Bibel hat dock Recht, asserting that the Bible was right anyway.)

But here is information reported by the well-known archaeologist G. Wright, who, by the way, is a staunch partisan of the correctness of orthodox localization and of dating biblical events. He wrote,
"A great many findings do not prove or disprove anything; they fill the background , and only serve as historical artifacts. Unfortunately, the desire "to prove' the Bible permeates many works available to the average reader. Historical evidence may be used in an incorrect manner, whereas the conclusions drawn are often erroneous and only half correct" ([48]).

If we attentively examine the concrete facts, then we shall see that none of the books of the Old Testament contain any solid archaeological confirmation of their traditional geographical and time localization. The whole "Mesopotamian" biblical theory will be questioned.

I.A. Kryvelev wrote,
"The traditional localization of the events described in the New Testament is no i better. The reader interested in biblical archeology may be bewildered by the hun- ' dreds of pages speaking of excavations, landscapes, or artifacts, historical and biblical background. And, in conclusion, when it comes to the results of the whole job, there are only a number of indistinct and imprecise statements about the problem not having been completely solved, but that there is still hope for the future, and so forth. We may be absolutely sure that none of the stories of the New Testament contains any somewhat convincing archaeological confirmation (in terms of the traditional localization-A.F.). This is perfectly true, in particular, if applied to the figure and biography of Jesus Christ. Not a single spot traditionally regarded as the arena of a particular event occurring in the New Testament can be indicated with the slightest degree of confidence" ([48]).

We note at the same time that, along with the traditional point of view which as we have seen has no sure confirmation, there also exist other, competing versions. For example, beginning with the 13th century A.D., the Catholic Church declared that, in the Italian town of Loreto, there was the very house where the Virgin Mary lived and where she met the archangel Gabriel ([48). It turns out that "Loreto is a place of pilgrimage of Catholics up to the present day" ([90]).

Learn how and why Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were invented during Renaissance.

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