Douglas Petrovich – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

The Hebrew Invention of the Alphabet

An important chronological study is Douglas Petrovich’s Origins of the Hebrews published 2021. He traced biblical events from Joseph’s being sold into slavery to the Exodus aligning them with Egyptian history.

Before finishing that study Petrovich realized that he had evidence from Egypt and Sinai that the first alphabet was created by Joseph’s eldest son, Manasseh, after the Israelites arrived in Egypt in 1876 BC. Manasseh knew how to write the Egyptian language and provided a way for the Israelites to now write their own language without having to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics. Those findings led to Petrovich’s first book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet, published in 2016, where he provided evidence that the letters of our alphabet came from the Hebrews.

Not everyone agrees with this idea. For the last few centuries there has been way too much theorizing assuming that little to nothing of what was written in the Bible could have actually happened. These skeptics demanded corroborating evidence outside of the Bible before they would take the Bible seriously as history.

Those promoting such beliefs justified them using arguments from silence. Since they knew of no evidence (except what was in the Bible which they refused to accept), they assumed the Bible must be false. They reasoned: How could some guy named “Moses” – if he ever existed – in the 15th century BC write the Torah without having a script to write it in?

But theories based solely on reason quickly lose touch with reality, because they are grounded not on evidence but assumption. Petrovich brings us back to reality. By the time Moses was writing the Torah after the Exodus in 1446 BC the Israelites already had a script that they had used for hundreds of years since nearly the beginning of their 430 years of sojourn in Egypt.

This evidence of Hebraic writing is also evidence to skeptics that the Israelites did indeed spend centuries in Egypt just as the Bible said they did.

In the video below Petrovich provides an overview of the evidence for these claims.

Petrovich concludes at the end of this video:

So all of this demonstrates that it’s the Israelites who are the inventors of the alphabet and there are amazing inscriptions that attest to this. 58:51

______

For those seeking more information, the Associates for Biblical Research provides articles on Douglas Petrovich, reviews of his books, interviews with him and even articles by him. As archeologists they also provide chronological information linking events in the Bible with the history of the Ancient Near East validating the historical reliability of the Bible for those who refuse to take the Bible seriously without such corroborating evidence.

Old Testament Chronology and the Age of Mankind

Douglas Petrovich presented a framework for building a sound chronology of the Old Testament at the 2023 Chafers Theological Seminary Pastors’ Conference. If one chooses appropriate assumptions one can come up with a chronology that is faithful to the Bible and also synchronizes with Egyptian and Assyrian chronologies. This confirms the reliability of the biblical record as history.

To build this chronology one needs certain dates that one has confidence in to serve as “tent pegs” as Petrovich calls them. Reaching consensus on what those tent pegs are is not easy but it is achievable. Having that chronology allows one to date and make sense out of the archeological data. That we need to go through so much trouble to construct such a chronology is reason to believe that mankind is very young.

Construction Begins on the First Temple—967 BC

I Kings 6:1
And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

Can we find what year Solomon began to build the first temple in our calendar? James Ussher in his Annals of the World gave the date as 1012 BC. Edwin Thiele was able to establish an absolute date based on Assyrian records linked to a solar eclipse which occurred in June 15, 763, in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. This allows one to come up with 967 BC as the year Solomon initiated the building of the first temple. There is a discrepancy of 45 years between these dates. Rodger Young clarified the issues around this discrepancy in Ussher Explained and Corrected arguing in favor of the 967 BC date which Petrovich accepts.

Israelite Exodus from Egypt—1446 BC

Accepting 967 BC and the information in 1 Kings 6:1 about the Exodus occurring in the 480th year one can date the Exodus back to 1446 BC (967+479=1446). From this date and knowing the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the desert (Numbers 32:13) we get the year they crossed the Jordan into Canaan as 1406 BC (1406+40=1446).

Jacob Moves His Family to Egypt—1876 BC

If one concludes as Petrovich does (see his Origins of the Hebrews, 2021) that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, the “long sojourn”, rather than 215 years, the “short sojourn”, then the date the long sojourn began would be 1876 BC. It becomes another tent peg (1446+430=1876). The date the short sojourn began would be 1661 BC (1446+215=1661).

The reason for the 215 year discrepancy is due to textual variants of Exodus 12:40. The Masoretic Hebrew text gives 430 years in Egypt. The Septuagint Greek text said this period of time included time in Canaan.

______

This lecture highlights the resolution of difficulties permitting one to construct a sound Old Testament chronology. At 19:25 in the video Petrovich lists the major dates going back to Abraham. At 55:15 he presents the Egyptian chronological scheme.

He recommended the following sources for those interested in pursuing biblical chronology further:
Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul, Concordia Publishing House 2011
Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994)
Rodger C. Young, Ussher Explained and Corrected, Bible and Spade 31/2 (2018), 47-58

______

Why Mankind Is Very Young

William Lane Craig, the professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University and research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, asserts, “Adam plausibly lived sometime between around 1 million years ago to 750,000 years ago, a conclusion consistent with the evidence of population genetics.” (The Historical Adam, First Things, October 2021).

Much of the Old Testament chronology presented above goes back less than 4000 years. However, it involves controversy as to when something actually happened. This should make anyone pause who claims that humanity has been on this earth for much longer than 8000 years. Why? Because there is no historical evidence to justify that claim. Furthermore Biblical textual variants do not even justify ages as old as 8000 years.

From available historical evidence we know we can go from stone age to space age in about 5000 years. That means if humanity were around for 100,000 years (let alone the million that Craig finds plausible) we would have historical records going back 90,000 years assuming a generous 10,000 years to go from stone age to space age.

If we had such historical records then there would be no doubt about what happened a mere 4000 years ago. We would have archived video recordings of Solomon holding a press conference broadcasted live to the entire world via satellite in 967 BC about the construction of the temple. We would know precisely when that press conference started. Constructing a sound biblical chronology would not be the problem that it is today.

Since we don’t have that kind of historical record it is reasonable to doubt the non-historical dating methods and speculations that extend mankind back hundreds of thousands of years. Mankind is nowhere near that old.

Exploration 105 – The Historicity of the Bible

I am reading Douglas Petrovich’s Origins of the Hebrews to better understand Moses and the Exodus. I now see the Israelites entering Egypt in 1876 BC in the 12th dynasty where Joseph provided shelter for them during the seven year famine. I see Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt 430 years later in 1446 BC when Amenhotep II of the 18th dynasty was Pharaoh.

What this confirms is the historicity of the Bible. That confirmation is made possible by examining evidence from two sources:

Archeological Research
The rate of radioactive decay may have varied over time. As a clock Petrovich trusts Carbon-14 tests back only toward 1400 BC. Test results beyond that require an offset.
Biblical Research
Biblical manuscript traditions give different accounts of the age of the world based on genealogies in Genesis. Putting the date of the flood at an earlier age provides time for known historical events to have occurred.

In the brief interview below Dr. Petrovich discusses both of these sources of evidence which together support the historicity of the Bible.

Sunday Walk 65 – Learning Biblical Hebrew

I have been studying Biblical Hebrew primarily using the YouTube videos from the Aleph With Beth channel by Andrew and Bethany Case. The Bible Society in Israel offers the Hebrew Bible with a dramatized audio reading and dictionary. They have also translated the Greek New Testament into Modern Hebrew and made this available with an audio reading. One can add a column to compare two versions of the text. As an alternative, I have also used the Step Hebrew Interlinear Bible.

I recommend all of these resources if you are interested in learning Biblical Hebrew. If you have other resources you are using that you find helpful, let me know. I still have a long way to go.

My goal is to be able to read the Masoretic text found in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia without needing a dictionary. I am not there yet. Here is a song by Miqedem on Psalm 23 that I am trying to understand by hearing it sung without following along with the Hebrew-English text.

MIQEDEM, Psalm 23

The Old Testament was written in Biblical Hebrew. Douglas Petrovich provided evidence that the Israelites possessed an alphabet centuries before Moses. If that’s true there is no longer a compelling reason to follow theories like the JEDP/Documentary Hypothesis which claimed that Moses could not himself have written the first five books in the Bible because he did not have the means to do so. Moses had what he needed to write those books and the Israelites were able to read them.

I used to think that Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke. However, Jeff A. Benner provided evidence that most of the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew which was also the language spoken by Jesus and his early followers. If that’s true then what we have today are translations of the Hebrew originals into Greek from which English translations were later made.

Some early form of Biblical Hebrew may have been the original “one language” (Genesis 11:1 KJV) spoken until the time of the Tower of Babel. For arguments for and against this, including Isaac Mozeson’s Edenics, see Bodie Hodge’s discussion of language before the time of Moses. Mozeson notes that many Jewish commentators see this one language as Biblical Hebrew. For further information on his view see A Garden of Edenics 2021.

Weekly Bible Reading: Daniel (Audio), Hosea (Audio)
24 Cheshvan, 5782, Chayei Sarah: Parashat Genesis 23:1-25:18; Haftarat 1 Kings 1:1-1:31
Commentaries:
David Pawson, Daniel, Part 46, Hosea, Part 47, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Daniel and Hosea

Sunday Walk 52 – Biblical Archeology

I recently went on a tour of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago led by Ted Wright, Executive Director of Epic Archeology. After exploring his site here are a few of the many topics I found of interest.

Among the top 10 things to know about Biblical archeology are that “every major New Testament village and town has been discovered”, the Book of Acts records accurate geographic references, and there is an “historical synchronism” between the Assyrian record and the Old Testament regarding Sennacherib’s sacking of Lachish and the siege of Jerusalem. The prism containing the annals of Sennacherib is on display in the Oriental Institute.
The uraeus representing the Egyptian goddess Wadjet was a cobra often seen on the heads of statues of the pharaohs. When the Israelites yearned to return to Egypt, God sent them poisonous snakes to remind them what would be waiting if they went back (Numbers 21). As a cure for the bites Moses hung a copper snake on a pole which was how John 3 represented Jesus on the cross.
The references to Pharaoh hardening his heart is evidence that Exodus was written by an eye-witness who knew the Egyptian Book of the Dead where a weighty, hardened heart meant a miserable afterlife.

In the video below Ted Wright reviews one of the documentary films in Timothy Mahoney’s Patterns of Evidence series. Some of the questions asked in these documentaries are whether the Exodus and Conquest happened in the 15th century BC, where was the Red Sea crossing and whether Moses would have been able to write the Torah.

Ted Wright, Patterns of Evidence

There is also the question of whether Hebrew is the language of “the world’s oldest alphabet”, a position held by Douglas Petrovich. The discovery of the origin of the alphabet involved the discovery of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim at the beginning of the Sojourn in Egypt at Avaris. As Petrovich presented the data, they would have been the most likely inventors. This alphabet made it possible for Moses to write the Bible and for the Israelites to read it.

Weekly Bible Reading: 1 Samuel (Audio), 2 Samuel (Audio), 1 Kings (Audio), 2 Kings (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, 1 and 2 Samuel, Part 2 of 2, 1 and 2 Kings, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible