The Scrambled Early History
A new textbook on the market scrambles its ancient dates by mixing Bible information with non-Bible dates from who knows where. Trying to look biblical, the book lists genealogy figures from Adam to Abraham. That's correct history of course, but the book does not help readers to translate that information into dates or help in any way to match the genealogy with other dates in the book.
Some of the other dates are the beginning and ending of each of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of Egypt, Abraham's birth, the exodus, and a few others, without explaining where they came from. I won't repeat the dates here because they are useless. The book does not tell you how to match the dates, and furthermore does not do the arithmetic itself and match them for you.
I know how to do the arithmetic, and I find a huge mismatch. For one, they place the exodus in the New Kingdom of Egypt. This is typical of secular books that try to downplay the exodus. If it happened at all, they say, it was during a strong pharaoh in the New Kingdom. That's how it could be unnoticed in history; a few slaves could leave, if you insist on that story, but it would not disrupt their history of Egypt.
You who know the Bible, though, know that it would disrupt the history of Egypt. Pharaoh and all his army were drowned. Back home the crops and animals were devastated and many people were dead. That sounds like a collapse of the kingdom. Moreover, during the subsequent Bible history, the Israelites were not troubled by Egyptians for a long time. All during the wilderness wanderings, during Joshua's conquest, and during the judges they were troubled by many enemies but never by Egypt.
A better fit for the exodus is to place it at the collapse of the Middle Kingdom. During the chaos between kingdoms, the Egyptians had no strength or leadership to attack Israel. But some cruel foreign rulers, called Amalekites, could and did.
So if your children memorize the book dates for the kingdoms of Egypt, and they, being good learners, pass the test, what do they now know about early history? Do they gain meaning or understanding?
Another mismatch in this book is that its dates place most of the Old Kingdom before the Flood. With only a cursory knowledge of the Bible, we know that the early civilizations we can study all grew up after the Flood, in fact after the tower of Babel when people spread abroad. The Egypt we know could not exist before the Flood. But when Christian books borrow dates from secular books they make mismatches like this placing the Flood during the Old Kingdom of Egypt.
How the Scrambling Began
The main reason that secular dates do not match the Bible is that in the early 1900s historians decided to use a history of Egypt that they are now learning is several centuries too long. A number of books, even non-biblical ones, are now re-dating Egypt. They still cannot get exact dates, but many agree on shortening the history by several centuries.* This shorter history affects all of the Mediterranean area, because archeologists there tied everything to Egypt.
Another mismatch in the book is that their dates place Abraham's birth between the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt. The book does not say that, but I do the arithmetic with their dates to figure that out. The book only wants your children to memorize its Old Kingdom dates and Abraham's birth date, and then they presumably will know history. But, again, that does not match the Bible. From the Bible we can see that when Abraham was in his seventies he and Lot visited the Old Kingdom of Egypt, so he was not born after that kingdom. Egypt was like the "garden of the Lord" in those days—the days before the Sodom and Gomorrah catastrophe changed it to its present desert climate and landscape (Genesis 10:13).
Unscrambling Per the Bible
Let's forget dates and match a little Egypt history with the Bible meaningfully. Just after the tower of Babel some of Ham's descendants moved to Egypt and began building what we call its Old Kingdom. In time, Abraham and Lot with all their flocks visited lush, green Egypt. They returned to Canaan and a bit later God rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. This caused the Dead Sea to form and tore the Great Rift down through most of Africa. That catastrophe changed the climate and landscape and caused chaos in Egypt, resulting in the collapse of its Old Kingdom.
Homeschoolers have the best chance in this generation to teach up-to-date history that uses a new shorter history of Egypt and the Mediterranean areas.
Egypt eventually pulled itself together, and a few generations later Israel and all his family moved into its Middle Kingdom. At the exodus, the Middle Kingdom collapsed and the cruel Amalekites oppressed Egypt's remaining people while the Israelites conquered Canaan and lived with judges and experienced no trouble from Egyptians. Finally King Saul helped defeat the Amalekites and a true pharaoh came to the throne for what we call the New Kingdom of Egypt (1 Samuel 15:5-8). King Solomon married a princess of Egypt to encourage good relations with their former enemy.
This broad matching of Bible history and Egypt's history was first proposed by a Jew, Immanuel Velikovsky, in the 1950s, but at that time the establishment universities fought and suppressed his view and his books. For decades he was vilified so much that writers were reluctant to cite him as a source of information. Now, with that generation of established professors and textbook writers gone, Velikovsky's research is mentioned favorably in more books. His system goes with the shorter Egyptian history, or maybe it originated the shorter Egyptian history, and that shorter chronology matches with the Bible. Christian books follow behind others, as they usually do in keeping up with new information. And school books lag still farther behind, as they always do.
Where To Go from Here
Homeschool curriculums can catch up with the new history more easily than school textbooks, but it will take more thinking and matching than the example described earlier. Some curriculums begin with the Bible, which of course is our earliest history book, and then jump over to typical non-Bible history, avoiding the job of tying the two together. So far, my own book on matching history with the Bible does the most thorough job of this for students that I am aware of. * Presumably other curriculums will update soon.
With your current history books, it can help to forget about memorizing dates—especially early ones. Any date before about 4000 BC is before creation. So ignore those. Any date before about 2350 BC is before the Flood. Ignore those, too, unless they are dating Enoch or Methuselah or somebody who lived before the Flood.
You homeschoolers have the best chance in this generation to teach up-to-date history that uses a new shorter history of Egypt and the Mediterranean areas. You can teach the Bible thoroughly—the most accurate history book of all. You do not have to give tests on the textbook dates that are probably wrong. You are not tied to state approved books; you can skip portions, or juggle them. And soon more homeschool books will come along that do the juggling for you.
* World History Made Simple: Matching History with the Bible (Mott Media 2006) by Beechick is a short course for three months or so that will straighten out your students on the problems mentioned in this article. This includes an annotated bibliography of books that provide research on the shortened history, all adult level. A new book not listed there is Unwrapping the Pharaohs by John Ashton and David Down (Master Books 2006), adult or advanced teen level.
©2009 Homeschooling Today magazine, Nehemiah Four, LLC