Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- I INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMS
- II SOME METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
- III AROUND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN IN THE IRON AGE
- IV JORDAN IN THE IRON AGE
- V ISRAEL IN THE IRON AGE
- VI HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- 23 Stamp-Seal Amulets and Early Iron Age Chronology: An update
- 24 Problems in the Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions
- 25 Some Methodological Reflections on Chronology and History-Writing
- 26 David Did It, Others Did Not: The creation of Ancient Israel
- VII CONCLUSION
- Index
25 - Some Methodological Reflections on Chronology and History-Writing
from VI - HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- I INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMS
- II SOME METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
- III AROUND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN IN THE IRON AGE
- IV JORDAN IN THE IRON AGE
- V ISRAEL IN THE IRON AGE
- VI HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- 23 Stamp-Seal Amulets and Early Iron Age Chronology: An update
- 24 Problems in the Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions
- 25 Some Methodological Reflections on Chronology and History-Writing
- 26 David Did It, Others Did Not: The creation of Ancient Israel
- VII CONCLUSION
- Index
Summary
Abstract
My participation in this project concerning the Bible and radiocarbon dating is largely that of an observer since I am not an authority on 14C dating, and my work on Syro-Palestinian chronology until recently has had to do mostly with the Bronze Age. I have now become involved in Iron Age chronology, however, since it is a crucial aspect of my current research on the question of the socalled ‘United Monarchy’ and state-formation processes in early Israel (Dever 1997, 2004).
Why Chronology Matters
First, we need not make any apologies for what some might consider an obsession with chronology, especially our desire for closely fixed absolute dates. Chronology is ‘the backbone of history’, the time-line. It is the thread upon which individual events are strung like beads, so as to create a connected, believable series of happenings that constitute what we would call ‘narrative history’, the most fundamental level of history-writing. Yet without relative dates—and absolute dates when possible—all our reconstructions of the past remain unordered, and they can only create the impression of chaos. Yet the apparent chaos is an illusion. History, if not purposeful, is at least orderly; and culture is patterned. That, and only that, is what makes a perception of the ‘meaning of events’ (the whole point of the historical enterprise) possible—but only once we have a reliable chronology, that is, a concept of evolution, and a framework for explaining cultural change.
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- The Bible and Radiocarbon DatingArchaeology, Text and Science, pp. 413 - 421Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2005