It’s been years since I first – and last – read David Rohl’s A Test of Time: The Bible – from Myth to History. While I do read fantasy literature to relax, I’m considerably less fond of fantasy literature that tries to masquerade as non-fiction and so I haven’t bothered with the rest of Rohl’s books. However, someone was undiscerning enough to use one such Rohl fantasy as evidence in a Twitter debate – earning a few rather incredulous comments from me – so I though I’d revisit Rohl. I won’t deal with anything more than his first book, as I have a marked aversion of supporting cranks, crooks, crackpots or charlatans monetarily. Rohl is attempting in his book to overthrow the established Egyptian chronology and transfer it by up to 350 years at times before the universally accepted fixed date of 664 BCE for the sacking of Thebes by Ashurbanipal. The main argument in Rohl’s book is that Labayu, a Hapiru/’Apiru (no, the name is not related to the name Hebrew) chieftain who ruled Shachmu (the Biblical city of Shechem) mentioned in several Amarna Letters (and himself writing three of them) is the same person as the Biblical King Saul, and that the whole Amarna period is the same as the Early Monarchic Period of Israel. Anyone familiar with the chronologies will notice a slight problem there: the Amarna period is dated to c. 1391-1323 BCE, and the Israelite Early Monarchic Period to c. 1000-926 BCE (all dates are [...]
