Scholarly re-examination of radiocarbon dating leads to re-evaluation of King David and the Exodus

The Tel Dan Stele referencing King David

It comes as no surprise to this blogger to read that radiocarbon dating may not be as scientifically precise as is commonly promoted. As reported by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz of Breaking Israel News, July 2, 2018 (links in original):

A recent study into carbon dating may reset the archaeological timeline, adding fuel to an ongoing debate as to whether King David ruled over a large unified kingdom or whether he was a tribal chieftain, overly glorified in the Biblical narrative.

Prof. Sturt Manning of Cornell University recently published a paper, Fluctuating Radiocarbon Offsets Observed in the Southern Levant and Implications for Archaeological Chronology Debates in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) Journal. His study of radiocarbon testing in the southern Levant suggests that the current model for carbon dating is inaccurate when applied to Israel. His data point to more recent ages for archaeological findings, suggesting a timeline that may be earlier by as little as a few years or as many as several decades.

“If the difference in the carbon dating sets a new date 20 years earlier then it is not significant,” Professor Avraham Faust, an archaeologist some of whose findings at Tel Eton were carbon dated, told Breaking Israel News. “If it is set 60 years earlier then it might be significant.”

The difference in those years for the archaeological timeline is literally of Biblical proportions.

“The debate between the high chronology (the earlier timeline) and low chronology (the later timeline) draws the public interest because it might have consequences as to whether David was a tribal chief or a larger polity,” Faust stated.

Manning’s study could reset carbon dating as it is applied in the Middle-East. Carbon dating is calibrated by the IntCal13 curve based on securely dated findings taken from trees, usually oaks or conifers, from the northern hemisphere. Manning’s study investigates whether the unusually long and hot summer in the Middle East would lead to different results for carbon dating. Using juniper trees in southern Jordan, he utilized calendar-dated tree ring studies from the years 1610-1940. He correlated these findings with the Carbon-14 in the rings’ annual growth. The study found a difference of about 20 years during the 330-year test period when compared to the IntCal13 curve. When applied to artifacts from the early Iron Age in Israel, he estimated that this could mean a difference of 50-100 years in the dating.

Faust noted that Manning’s findings seemed to indicate the low chronology.

“When there were differences, they always indicated that the date should be newer in the Middle-East,” Faust said. “If this difference is also applied to earlier periods than what Manning tested, findings from the 10th century BCE for example, this might support the low chronology, depending on how much later the new dates would be.”

But Faust cautioned that at this point, the study is not conclusive regarding its application to findings from the Biblical period.

“There are many ‘ifs’ before we can assess the importance of this study this to our findings from the Iron Age in Israel,” he said. “If there is indeed a difference in the carbon dating between Europe and the Middle East, and if that difference gives a lower date in antiquity, and if that difference is significant, then it has an impact on the debate over Biblical David.”

Faust explained that the Biblical chronology places the united monarchy of David and Solomon in the 10th century BCE. Archaeological finds like his at Tel Eton, close to the Hebron Hills, seems to fit with the story, showing cities and public buildings with a relatively sophisticated social infrastructure, which might be associated with David’s kingdom in the highlands during that period.

“This can be in line with at least some of the Biblical description of a kingdom centered in the highlands,” Faust said. “If, however, you go according to the low chronology placing these cities and public buildings at a later date, then there are many fewer finds that can correlate with a central kingdom in the highlands at the time in which King David was supposed to have existed. This would mean that David could not have been as important a king.”

A thorough scientist, Faust cautioned that even if the reset of the carbon dating is shown to be applicable, consideration will still be required.

“When you discuss a historical question, you should rely on as much as evidence as possible,” Faust cautioned. “Carbon 14 dating is just one of them and is not necessarily definitive or final, as the study shows. In archaeology we have a huge amount of evidence, and all the surrounding evidence needs to be considered as well. It needs to fit into a coherent picture, not simply be taken on a site-by-site basis.”

It is important to note that the discussion among scientists is not whether King David existed but how he ruled. Faust confirmed this.

“It is my experience that the vast majority of scholars believe that a figure by the name of David existed, mainly because 9th century BCE sources mention a dynasty named after him,” Faust said. “Most scholarly views fall within a spectrum, with one side of it seeing David as a local, insignificant chief, and the other conforming to an image more consistent with the Biblical description of a ruler of a kingdom centered in the highlands and ruling even beyond it. Most scholars are located somewhere along this spectrum. Very few, if any, serious scholars would say that David was a completely mythical figure, and that no person by that name ever existed and that this figure was not regarded as a founder of a dynasty of rulers already at an early stage.”

And as reported by Mr. Berkowitz in Breaking Israel News, August 27, 2018 (links in original):

A recent breakthrough in carbon dating may help archaeologists give a more precise dating for the Exodus from Egypt, linking it to a catastrophic volcanic eruption that many claim explains some of the more spectacular aspects of the Biblical story.

A University of Arizona study led by Dr. Charlotte Pearson was published two weeks ago. The study used high-resolution radiocarbon dating methods to establish a more precise date for a cataclysmic volcanic blast that took place in the 16th century BCE in Thera, an island in the Aegean Sea near Greece. Their results will be used to re-calibrate carbon dating around the world.

“What we are trying to do is be part of the global realization that the radiocarbon calibration method is ready for an improvement. Because now the technology is there to measure the radiocarbon in every single tree ring, and we’re just pulling out one treasure from the box — in this instance the carbon-14, and seeing how that can be applied to improve the way we date material in the Mediterranean… and anywhere in the world,” said Pearson, in a video explaining her project.

Despite its massive scale as one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 4,000 years, archaeologists and historians have always had difficulty assigning a specific date to the Thera eruption. The devastating results of the eruption are evident on the island to this day, as are the results of an earthquake and tsunami generated by the volcano.

The eruption is a key marker for the Bronze Age chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean world. It provides a fixed point for aligning the entire chronology of the second millennium BCE in the Aegean, as evidence of the eruption is found throughout the region. Despite the evidence, the exact date of the eruption has been difficult to determine. Archaeologists have traditionally placed it at approximately 1500 BCE.

Radiocarbon dates corresponding to the eruption, including analysis of an olive branch buried beneath a lava flow from the volcano that gave a date between 1627 BCE and 1600 BCE, suggest an eruption date more than a century earlier than suggested by archaeologists. Thus, the radiocarbon dates and the archaeological dates are in substantial disagreement.

The Thera eruption was so transformative that major historical events in the region have been attributed to it. The discoverer of the Akrotiri archaeological site, suggested that the Minoan eruption is the basis of Plato’s story of Atlantis.

Some egyptologists believe ancient Egyptians wrote about the Thera eruption. Times of Israel wrote that Nadine Moeller, associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Chicago, believes the Thera eruption was referred to an the Tempest Stela. Attributed to Pharaoh Ahmose I who ruled from 1539–1514 BC, it describes a great storm striking Egypt during this time, destroying tombs, temples and pyramids and the work of restoration ordered by the king. The storm was accompanied by darkness, earthquakes and flooding.

“It is now time to consider the possibility that the Tempest Stela is indeed a contemporary record of the cataclysmic Thera event,” Moeller wrote in a 2014 article.

In 1981, Professor Hans Goedicke, chairman of the department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a world-famous Egyptologist, attributed several aspects of the Biblical account to the eruption at Thera. His theories were based on his opinion that the Exodus took place 1477 BCE in the reign of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, 200 years earlier than most historians previously believed. Goedicke believed the splitting of the Red Sea and the swallowing up of the Egyptian army was the result of a tsunami generated by the eruption at Thera. Initially well-received, Professor Goedicke was ridiculed for his theory and his claims labelled a hoax.

This theory was resurrected by two-time Emmy winner Simcha Jacobovici and world-famous film director James Cameron in a 2006 documentary titled “The Exodus Decoded.” In additon to espousing Goedicke’s theory attributing the splitting of the sea to a Thera generated tsunami, the film also suggests that Thera may have been the source of the Biblical pillars of fire and smoke.

This connection between the eruption at Thera and the Biblical Exodus was also suggested in books by geologist Barbara J. Sivertsen.

When asked by Times of Israel if her results were significant for the dating of the biblical Exodus story, Pearson answered ambiguously.

“All I can say is that continued work to improve chronological frameworks is essential for the study of past civilizations,” she wrote in an email.

In her study, she writes, “No definitive calibrated radiocarbon range for the Thera eruption is currently possible, but the altered position of the 14C plateau indicates that improved calibration has much to offer chronological synchronization of human and environmental timelines in this period.”

Of course, if you can come up with a "scientific" explanation for the Exodus, then you can omit God from the event, and explain the Biblical account as merely a Jewish mythological explanation for a natural event. The Bible, however, allows for no such explanation of the Exodus, stating that it was clearly a miraculous intervention by God into both human history and nature:

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:
And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.
And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.
And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians,
And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.
And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.
And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them.
But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore.
And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses. Exodus 14:19-31