(i): Jehoshaphat and Velikovsky
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Besides the Scriptures and the
el-Amarna tablets, two other sources relate to the time of
King Jehoshaphat: the stele of
King Mesha of Moab and the inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III. These
relics, too, and not the Bible alone, must correspond to the contents of the el-Amarna
letters, if it is true that Egyptian history must be revised and moved forward more
than half a thousand years”.
Dr. I. Velikovsky, “Ages in Chaos”, I, p. 229.
Velikovsky more right than wrong
More
right than the conventional system, that is, to the tune of “more than half a thousand years”. This means that Velikovsky’s general re-location
of the El Amarna [EA] era as follows (ibid.):
“According to my chronological scheme, the letters of el-Amarna, sent and
received by Amenhotep III and Akhnaton, were written, not in 1410 to 1370 as is
generally accepted, but in 870 to 840, at the time of King Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem.
…. If this theory is correct, among the tablets of the el-Amarna collection
we should expect to find letters written by the royal scribes, skilled in cuneiform,
in the name of the Israelite kings of Jerusalem and of Samaria.
The most prolific writer of letters among the princes and chiefs was the
king of Sumur (Samaria). About sixty letters of his are preserved, fifty-four of
them addressed to the king of Egypt. The pharaoh even wrote to him: "Thou writest
to me more than all the regents".” [,]
is correct, even if he may since have been found out regarding some of
his details, e.g. “Sumur” was not Samaria, nor do his many letters (about 64) tend
to specify to whom and to where they were sent. Thus:
EA 75: Rib-addi spoke to
his lord, the King of Lands ….
EA 79: Rib-Addi says to his lord, the King of Lands, the Great King, the
King of Battle ….
EA 122: Ribadda of the city of Gebal to his Lord the King of many lands, the
prosperous king … the King my Lord … my Sun ….
We have already discussed the fact that the letters of
Lab’ayu; Mut Baal; the woman Baalat Neše; and Abdi-hiba, also fail to mention any pharaoh.
On pp. 234-235, Velikovsky, the Time Lord, would
boldly state with which EA characters he was intending to identify the biblical
kings:
“At this point in the discussion, should my identification of Abdi-Hiba with
Jehoshaphat, Rib-Addi with Ahab, and Ben-Hadad with Abdi-Ashirta seem arbitrary,
I shall be pleased: in the hall of history, crowded with throngs of men from many
centuries, I point straightway to certain figures bearing names entirely
different from those of the persons we are looking for; they are even said to belong
to an age separated by six centuries from the time of the persons we are seeking.
Even before I have investigated the persons thus without apparent justification
singled out, I shall insist on the identification.
The searching rod in my hand is the rod of time measurement: I reduce by
six centuries the age of Thebes and el-Amarna, and I find King Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem,
Ahab in Samaria, Ben-Hadad in Damascus. If my rod of time measurement does not mislead
me, they are the kings who reigned in Jerusalem, Samaria, and Damascus in the el-Amarna
period”.
Once again, Velikovsky was basically correct. Far more so than were the
conventional historians. But I believe that the “Glasgow school” modification
of Ages in Chaos in the late 1970’s
was necessary to make more precise, to modify, Velikovsky’s brilliant insight.
Most assuredly the goodly King Jehoshaphat of Judah was contemporaneous
with EA, but he was not Abdi-hiba of Urusalim (Jerusalem). His son, Jehoram,
would be found to fit better Abdi-hiba.
And Velikovsky had to do some real damage to Scripture, and to geography,
to make King Ahab become the prolific
EA correspondent, Rib-Addi of Gubla (Byblos).
I have argued that King Ahab was, instead, EA’s Lab’ayu.
Many revisionists (some of whom would later change their minds) have
accepted Velikovsky’s Abdi-ashirta as
Ben-Hadad I. So, too, have I.
and also
Part Twenty Three: Jehoshaphat and Jehoram
(ii): King Jehoshaphat’s Captains
A further striking correlation between
the Old Testament and El Amarna [EA], revised, that Velikovsky claimed to have discovered,
was between King Jehoshaphat of Judah’s captain, “son of Zichri”, and EA’s “son
of Zuchru”.
Jehoshaphat of Judah, a king much
blessed by Yahweh, was able to boast a formidable army, about which we read in
2 Chronicles 17:12-18:
“Jehoshaphat became more and more powerful;
he built forts and store cities in Judah and had large supplies in the towns of
Judah. He also kept experienced fighting men in Jerusalem. Their enrollment by
families was as follows:
From Judah, commanders of units of 1,000:
Adnah the commander, with
300,000 fighting men;
next,
Jehohanan the commander, with 280,000;
next, Amasiah son of Zichri,
who volunteered himself for the service of the Lord,
with 200,000.
From Benjamin:
Eliada, a valiant soldier,
with 200,000 men armed with bows and shields;
next, Jehozabad, with 180,000
men armed for battle”.
We have had reason previously (e.g. in
the case of “Zerah the Ethiopian”), though, to reconsider such large military numbers,
with the Hebrew text allowing for a different, more reasonable, translation -
that key word alef אָלֶף here
figuring again in the case of King Jehoshaphat’s army.
“ONE VS.
MANY LINKS
But if it
were only a matter of evaluating my dating of the el-Amarna letters contra the
conventional dating, we would use names alone. The list of identified persons
in the el-Amarna letters in chapters of the Scriptures of the time of the
middle of the ninth century, as presented in Ages in Chaos, is
imposing. Among those names mentioned in both the letters and in the books of
Kings and Chronicles are such unusual ones as Jehozabad, Adaja, Ben Zichri,
Biridri, and many more. And is it little that, from five generals of king
Jehoshaphat named by the Scriptures, four of them signed their letter by the
very same names and one is referred to by his name?
|
Captains
of Jehoshaphat
|
el-Amarna
correspondents
|
|
Adnah
(II Chr. 17:14)
|
Addudani
(EA 292)
|
|
Son of
Zichri (II Chr. 17:16)
|
Son of
Zuchru (EA 334, 335)
|
|
Jehozabab
(II Chr. 17:18)
|
Iahzibada
(EA 275)
|
|
Adaia
(II Chr. 23:1)
|
Addaia
(EA 285, 287, 289)
|
Not only
personal names, but dozens of parallels are found between the texts of those
tablets and the scriptural narrative in the books of Kings and Chronicles, and
also between them and the Assyrian texts of the ninth century. Events—down to
the smallest details—were illuminated in the chapters dealing with el-Amarna:
actions, wars, sieges, a seven-year famine, and geographical names were
compared.
Although
the el-Amarna correspondence covers only a few decades at the most, the many
details that could be and have been brought to comparison lend an unshakeable
support to the reconstruction of the larger period covering the time from the
end of the Middle Kingdom to the time of the Ptolemies in Egypt, a span of
twelve hundred years. Therefore, a single name, even were it to appear in the
king lists and in the letters, would not amount to much without any support
from the entire sum of evidence”.
Regarding Velikovsky’s intriguing
connections for this era, I have written on a previous occasion:
“Velikovsky had discovered other striking correspondences as well between the
supposed C14th BC history and the C9th BC biblical history, none more stunning,
perhaps, than the “Son of Zuchru” [EA
334, 335] and the “Son of Zichri” (2 Chronicles 17:16).
Indeed, Velikovsky thought that the EA letters actually listed three of the
military captains of king Jehoshaphat of Judah as given in vv. 14-18,
namely, Addudani/Addadani = Adna
[and Ada-danu mentioned by Shalmaneser III]; son of Zuchru; and Iahzibada =
Iehozabad.
The fact that revisionists have since been able to establish such a host of
convincing parallels between EA and the Divided Kingdom of Israel is sure
proof, I think, of the correctness of Velikovsky’s radical re-setting of
the conventional C14th BC era, even though Velikovsky’s actual theses therein
have often needed to be modified, or, in some cases, thrown out”.
However, one always has to check thoroughly
Velikovsky’s claims.
Eric Aitchison has done so in his book,
Revisiting Velikovsky: An Audit of an Innovative
Revisionist Attempt. He is highly critical of Velikovsky’s reconstruction
of Adna-Addudani, for instance.
And, regarding the “son of Zichri”, which has been a favourite one of
mine, Eric has written:
“Zuchru
This third “captain” is dealt with on page 241 [of Ages in Chaos, I] using EA letters 334 and 335. Velikovsky opens his claim by advising
that the same words, “Protect the cities of the king which are in thy care”, as
were written to Adda-danu, were written to the son “of Zuchru”. Finding proof of
that statement is a problem. Three
times this pharaonic instruction is mentioned by Adda-danu. It is nowhere mentioned in the one extant
letter that contains the word Zuchru.
EA 334 is the last
of the four letters not considered by
Giles. He does however bracket
letters 333 - 335 as
being from the reign of Amenhotep III. EA 334 in the Moran translation has the following.
“Message Lost”. “[Sa]y [t]o the kin[g], my
lord; Message of [….] … Zuhra. […] …”
This information
is hardly inspirational enough to build thereon an argument to link a
less than high profile
Zicri or Zuchru from the Bible. This Zichri (Zicri) is mentioned twelve times in the Old Testament.
….
… there is
one reference to Zicri in the times of Ahab/Jehoshaphat. But what information do the el Amarna
letters give us? This word, Zuhra, the closest
letters to Zichri is given as a town, “site uncertain” by Moran at page
392”.
Emmet Sweeney (in Empire of Thebes, Or, Ages in Chaos Revisited), whilst also pointing out imprecision on the part of
Velikovsky in this same case, will nevertheless conclude enthusiastically in
Velikovsky’s favour (p. 87):
Here Velikovsky jumps a little bit ahead of himself. The man of the Amarna Letter is not called “son of Zuchru”; he is
simply someone, whose name is missing, “of Zuchru”. Nevertheless, since Zuchru
is not the name of a town or a country, the missing words must, as Velikovsky
assumes, be “son of”. So, the
identification is absolutely valid; and this is surely one of the
strongest pieces of evidence in the whole of Ages in Chaos!”
On another of Velikovsky’s
proposed captains, EA’s Iahzibada, Sweeney writes (loc. cit.):
“There was another military commander from southern Palestine who wrote regularly to the
pharaoh. This was Iahzibada, a man
identified by Velikovsky with Jehoshaphat's
captain Jehozabad (Iehozabad). The
names, indeed, are identical, and, given the fact that the biblical Jehozabad
was a chief in the land of Benjamin, which
is southern Palestine (2 Chronicles 17:17-18), the identification of the two
men seems virtually certain.
It should be noted, before going on, that Knudtzon placed the letters of Addadani, the son of
Zuchru and Iahzibada next to the letters of the king of Jerusalem”.
Part Twenty Three: Jehoshaphat and
Jehoram
(iii): King Jehoram as EA’s Abdi-hiba
Who was
this Abdi-Hiba [Heba] of
Jerusalem, and when did he
live?
Introduction
With the inadequacies of the
Sothic dating upon which the conventional Egyptian chronology has been based
(and to which the other nations have been tied) now laid bare, e.g.:
and the ground thus cleared for
the raising of a scientific chronological model that is not based upon
artificial a
priori assumptions, revisionist scholars have been able to re-assess the
abundant El Amarna [EA] archive to re-determine its proper historical location.
One of the EA correspondents who
has aroused special interest, owing to the mention of Jerusalem (Urusalim) in
connection with him, is the king of that city, Abdi-Hiba (Abdi-Heba), the author of
six letters (EA 285-290) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdi-Heba):
Abdi-Hiba was the author of letters EA 285-290.[9]
3.
EA 287—title: "A very
serious crime"'
4.
EA 288—title: "Benign
neglect"
5.
EA 289—title: "A
reckoning demanded"
{None of these letters, by the
way, personally names a pharaoh.
Who was this Abdi-Hiba of
Jerusalem, and
when did he live?
We know at least who were his
pharaonic contemporaries. As I have previously written about EA in a general
fashion:
The
Egyptians
Identifying the EA pharaohs is
the easiest … challenge as it is almost universally agreed that Amenhotep III
and Akhnaton are those who are referred to in the EA correspondence by their
throne names, respectively, of Nimmuria (i.e. Nebmare, Nb-m3't-R')
and Naphuria (i.e. Neferkheprure, Nfr-hprw-R'). These two
pharaohs, having been Sothically dated to the late C15th-early C14th BC, are -
from a biblical perspective - usually considered by historians to have
pre-dated the arrival of the Israelites in the Promised Land - or at least to
have coincided with their arrival there. Thus it is common to read that the habiru
rebels who feature prominently in the EA letters were either the Hebrews
of the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or perhaps the newly arrived Hebrews
(Israelites) under Joshua. ….
But To Which Era Do
Revisionists
Re-Locate EA’s Abdi-Hiba?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
…. two … pieces of evidence in EA letters
285-290 … determine the historical terminus a quo
for king Abdi-Hiba: namely, the mention of Jerusalem; and
the mention of Beth
Shulman (“House of Solomon”).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ourselves, set completely
free as we are from Sothic theory, are able to begin to zone in on the correct
era of Abdi-Hiba, and
we are going to find that it is nothing like what the conventional text books
say about this king as a ruler of Jerusalem
in the mid 1300’s BC, and probably, therefore, corresponding with pharaoh
Amenhotep III. In terms of biblical correlation, the era of Abdi-Hiba would
be considered to approximate to the Judges period, some would say to the time
of Joshua (as said above). Thus (http://www.biblehistory.net/newsletter/joshua.htm):
The Bible states in Joshua 10:26 that Joshua defeated these
kings, captured them and killed them, including the king of Jerusalem,
Adoni-Zedek.
It is very likely that Abdi-Heba and Adoni-Zedek are one [and]
the same man. The reason being is that “Adoni-Zedek” is a title rather [than]
the actual name of the king. Adoni-Zedek means the “Lord of Zedek,” similar to
the name Melchi-Zedek which means “Prince of Zedek,” who was the ruler of Salem
according to Genesis 14:18. The Hebrews would have associated this title with
the prince of Salem, an early name for the city of Jerusalem.
So the letters written by Abdi-Heba, trying to stop the
advancing Hebrews [sic], were likely written by either Adoni-Zedek, mentioned
in Joshua 10:1, or Adoni-Bezek, another king mentioned in Judges 1:7 who was
defeated by Joshua and buried in Jerusalem.
The letters from Abdi-Heba seem to have been written to either
Amenhotep II or Amenhotep III. Since one of the letters from Abdi-Heba mentions
that the pharaoh, whom he was requesting help from, had conquered the land of
Naharaim and the land of Cush, this would likely point to Amenhotep II who
indeed had military campaigns against both these countries.
Evidences would suggest that a
Joshuan alignment with the EA Pharaohs is not sustainable. For, two such pieces
of evidence in EA letters 285-290 that spring to mind determine the historical terminus a quo
for king Abdi-Hiba:
namely, the mention of Jerusalem; and
the mention of Beth
Shulman (“House of Solomon”). In other words, the conventional scenario,
and any other that would locate the reign of Abdi-Hiba in
Jerusalem to a period ante-dating kings David and Solomon, are immediately to
be cancelled out as having historical validity (and that even apart from the
ramifications of Sothic theory).
That means that Dr. Velikovsky’s
revision, in which he chronologically re-locates Abdi-Hiba - along
with Nimmuria
and Naphuria -
to the early period of Israel’s Divided Monarchy (about half a millennium after
the Joshua/Judges period), is not to be cancelled out at least by our ‘two
pieces of evidence’.
(i)
Dr.
Immanuel Velikovsky’s Pioneering Effort
In Velikovsky’s firm opinion, Abdi-Hiba was to
be identified with king Jehoshaphat of Judah. He, reflecting later upon this
choice, commented (https://www.varchive.org/ce/sultemp.htm):
“In Ages in Chaos (chapters vi-viii) I deal with the el-Amarna
letters; there it is shown that the king of Jerusalem whose name is variously
read Ebed-Tov, Abdi-Hiba, etc. was King Jehoshaphat (ninth century)”.
In this same article, Velikovsky
made a most significant discovery towards re-setting his revised EA period to
the approximate time of King Solomon:
The Šulmán Temple in Jerusalem
In the el-Amarna
letters No. 74 and 290 there is reference to a place read (by Knudtzon)
Bet-NIN.IB. In Ages in Chaos, following Knudtzon, I understood that the
reference was to Assyria (House of Nineveh).(1)
I was unaware of an article by the eminent Assyriologist, Professor Jules Lewy,
printed in the Journal of Biblical Literature under the title: “The
Šulmán Temple in Jerusalem.”(2)
From a certain
passage in letter No. 290, written by the king of Jerusalem to the Pharaoh,
Lewy concluded that this city was known at that time also by the name “Temple
of Šulmán.” Actually, Lewy read the ideogram that had much puzzled the
researchers before him.(3) After complaining that the land
was falling to the invading bands (habiru), the king of Jerusalem wrote:
“. . . and now, in addition, the capital of the country of Jerusalem — its name
is Bit Šulmáni —, the king’s city, has broken away . . .”(4)
Beth Šulmán in Hebrew, as Professor Lewy correctly translated, is Temple of
Šulmán. But, of course, writing in 1940, Lewy could not surmise that the
edifice was the Temple of Solomon and therefore made the supposition that it
was a place of worship (in Canaanite times) of a god found in Akkadian sources
as Shelmi, Shulmanu, or Salamu.
The correction of
the reading of Knudtzon (who was uncertain of his reading) fits well with the
chronological reconstruction of the period. In Ages in Chaos (chapters vi-viii)
I deal with the el-Amarna letters; there it is shown that the king of Jerusalem
whose name is variously read Ebed-Tov, Abdi-Hiba, etc. was King Jehoshaphat
(ninth century). It was only to be expected that there would be in some of his
letters a reference to the Temple of Solomon.
Also, in el-Amarna
letter No. 74, the king of Damascus, inciting his subordinate sheiks to attack
the king of Jerusalem, commanded them to “assemble in the Temple of Šulmán.”(5)
It was surprising to
find in the el-Amarna letters written in the fourteenth century that the
capital of the land was already known then as Jerusalem (Urusalim) and not, as
the Bible claimed for the pre-Conquest period, Jebus or Salem.(6)
Now, in addition, it was found that the city had a temple of Šulmán in it and
that the structure was of such importance that its name had been used
occasionally for denoting the city itself. (Considering the eminence of the
edifice, “the house which king Solomon built for the Lord”,(7)
this was only natural.) Yet after the conquest by the Israelites under Joshua
ben-Nun, the Temple of Šulmán was not heard of.
Lewy wrote: “Aside
from proving the existence of a Šulmán temple in Jerusalem in the first part of
the 14th century B.C., this statement of the ruler of the region leaves no
doubt that the city was then known not only as Jerusalem, but also as Bet
Šulmán.”—“It is significant that it is only this name [Jerusalem] that
reappears after the end of the occupation of the city by the Jebusites, which
the Šulmán temple, in all probability, did not survive.”
The late Professor
W. F. Albright advised me that Lewy’s interpretation cannot be accepted because
Šulmán has no sign of divinity accompanying it, as would be proper if it
were the name of a god. But this only strengthens my interpretation that the
temple of Šulmán means Temple of Solomon.
In the Hebrew Bible
the king’s name has no terminal “n”. But in the Septuagint — the oldest
translation of the Old Testament — the king’s name is written with a
terminal “n”; the Septuagint dates from the third century before the present
era. Thus it antedates the extant texts of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea
Scrolls not excluded.
Solomon built his
Temple in the tenth century. In a letter written from Jerusalem in the next
(ninth) century, Solomon’s Temple stood a good chance of being mentioned; and
so it was. ….
Though I cannot locate the exact
reference at present, I recall a brief article pointing out that, contrary to
Velikovsky, Beth
Šulmán could not properly refer to the actual Temple of Solomon, since this
edifice was always referred to as the Temple of Yahweh.
So, the better translation of
the EA phrase is “House of Solomon”.
Now, that accords with
contemporary usage, in that we have at least two documented references to the
“House of David” (the Tell Dan and the Mesha Moabite Inscription, see André
Lemaire’s “‘House of David” restored in Moabite Inscription”)
For a time, this equation of Abdi-Hiba =
Jehoshaphat held as the standard amongst revisionists. However, the Glasgow
School, in 1978, seriously re-assessed Velikovsky’s entire EA revision – with,
as I believe, some outstanding results. This included a reconsideration of
Velikovsky’s corresponding opinion that king Jehoshaphat of Judah’s
contemporaneous ruler of Samaria, king Ahab of Israel, was to be identified
with the prolific EA correspondent Rib-Addi.
(ii)
The
“Glasgow” School’s Modification of Velikovsky
The Glasgow Conference of 1978
gave rise to important contributions by scholars such as Martin Sieff; Geoffrey
Gammon; John Bimson; and Peter James. These were able at the time, with a
slight modification of Velikovsky’s dates, to re-set the latter’s revised EA
period so that it sat more comfortably within its new C9th BC allocation. {Though,
as to their pharaoh Akhnaton (Naphuria) now becoming
a contemporary of king Jehoram of Judah (c. 848-841 BC, conventional dating) -
and, hence, of the latter’s older contemporary Jehoram of Israel (c. 853-841
BC, conventional dating) - I would suggest that Jehoram of Judah’s contemporary
pharaoh was still Amenhotep III}. Jehoram, rather than Velikovsky’s choice of
Jehoshaphat (c. 870-848 BC, conventional dating) and of king Ahab of Israel (c.
874-853 BC, conventional dating).
James, faced with J. Day’s “Objections
to the Revised Chronology” in 1975, in which the latter had raised this
fundamental objection to Velikovsky’s identification of Abdi-Hiba with
Jehoshaphat (ISG Newsletter 2, 9ff):
Velikovsky claims that Abdi-Hiba, king of Jerusalem, is to be
equated with Jehoshaphat. Abdi-Hiba means ‘servant of Hiba’ - Hiba being the
name of a Hittite goddess. Can one really believe that Jehoshaphat, whom the
Old Testament praises for his loyalty to the Israelite god, could also have
borne this name involving a Hittite goddess?
plus James’s own growing belief
that the lowering of the date of the EA letters (within a revised model) was
demanded by “several chronological and other considerations ...”, arrived
at his own excellent comparison of Abdi-Hiba with king Jehoram of Judah.
I give only his conclusion here, with which I fully concur, whilst recommending
that one reads James’s full comparisons (“The Dating of the El-Amarna
Letters”, SIS Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (London, 1977/78), 84):
To sum up:
the disasters that befell Jehoram of Judah and Abdi-Hiba of Jerusalem were
identical. Both suffered revolts of their subject territories from Philistia to
Edom. During the reign of both the Philistines invaded and swept right across
Judah, entering Jerusalem itself, in concert with the sack of the king’s palace
by “men of the land of Kaši” or men “that were near the Cushites”. These
peculiar circumstances could hardly be duplicated in such detail after a period
of five hundred years. It is clear that Velikovsky’s general placement of the
el-Amarna letters in the mid-ninth century must be correct, and that the
modification of his original model suggested here, that Abdi-Hiba was Jehoram
rather than Jehoshaphat, is preferable.
Rib-Addi, for his part, could not have been king Ahab
of Israel, Glasgow well determined. Velikovsky had been wrong in his proposing
that the Sumur
mentioned in relation to Rib-Addi (though
not necessarily even his city, it has since been suggested) was Samaria, when Sumur is
generally regarded as referring to Simyra, north of Byblos on the Syrian coast.
David Rohl’s Intriguing Angle on EA
Whilst I fully accept the
Glasgow School’s basic conclusions about Abdi-Hiba and Rib-Addi, those,
generally, who had worked these out went on later to disown them completely.
James would team up with David Rohl to devise a so-called New Chronology,
that I find to be a kind of ‘No-Man’s-Land revision’ hovering awkwardly mid-way
between convention land and real base. Rohl, in The Lost Testament, would
re-locate EA back from Velikovsky’s Divided Monarchy, where (when modified) I
think that it properly belongs, to the time of the Unified Monarchy of kings
Saul and David. Rohl will, like Velikovsky, propose an EA identification
for a king of Israel, but it will be for Saul rather than for the later king
Ahab. According to Rohl, king Saul is to be identified with EA’s Labayu, generally
considered to have been a local ruler in Canaan. And Rohl identifies David with
the Dadua (“Tadua”) who is referred to in EA 256.
For Rohl, Abdi-Hiba is a
Jebusite ruler of Jebus/Jerusalem.
Rohl is extremely
competent and his reconstructions are generally most interesting to read.
However his EA revision, locating Abdi-Hiba as it
does as an early contemporary of David’s, who is defeated by the latter, cannot
therefore discern in EA’s Beth Shulman any sort of reference to David’s son,
Solomon. Moreover, Rohl’s revision may have difficulty accounting for the fact
that the name Urusalim
(Jerusalem) occurs in the letters of Abdi-Hiba, supposedly
a Jebusite king ruling over Jebus, but apparently known to David as Jerusalem
(I Chronicles 11:4).
Conclusion
Whilst the New Chronology is
superficially impressive, it, based as it is upon rocky ground, fails to yield
the abundant fruit that arises from the fertile soil of a modified Velikovskian
EA. James’s erstwhile identification of EA’s Abdi-Hiba as king
Jehoram of Jerusalem not only yields some impressively exact comparisons
between these two, supposedly separate, historical characters, but it is also
able to accommodate most comfortably (chronologically) those two EA evidences
of Shulman (Solomon) and Urusalim (Jerusalem). Hence,
EA’s Abdi-Hiba = King Jehoram of Judah
is worthy to be regarded now as
a firm pillar of the revised chronology, from which fixed standpoint one is
able to generate a very convincing series of further correlations between EA
and the particular biblical era. James has thereby provided the definitive
answer to the questions that I posed earlier: Who was this Abdi-Hiba of
Jerusalem, and
when did he live?
Continued at next blog:
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