We have now reached the final chapter in our epic journey through time and I suppose this is an appropriate moment to look back down that road to remind ourselves of the various milestones we have passed along the way.
First we witnessed how scholars of the last century had taken the wrong path right at the beginning of their journey of discovery. That false trail, sign posted to 'Raamses' and 'Shishak', led modern scholarship into a quagmire of confusing anomalies in the chronology and archeology of the ancient world. Although we began our journey at the same junction and with the same map (i.e. the available evidence), we decided to take the alternative road sign posted 'archeology of the TIP' [Third Intermediate Period]. It was not very long before we arrived at an entirely different ancient world- one with a much greater potential for biblical and archaeological synthesis. The irony was that although the conventional chronology had been based on two key biblical synchronism it produced an unhappy marriage between excavation results and the Old Testament narratives, whereas we chose to refer directly to the archaeological evidence and now had a framework which produced clear links between the Bible and archaeology.
First we witnessed how scholars of the last century had taken the wrong path right at the beginning of their journey of discovery. That false trail, sign posted to 'Raamses' and 'Shishak', led modern scholarship into a quagmire of confusing anomalies in the chronology and archeology of the ancient world. Although we began our journey at the same junction and with the same map (i.e. the available evidence), we decided to take the alternative road sign posted 'archeology of the TIP' [Third Intermediate Period]. It was not very long before we arrived at an entirely different ancient world- one with a much greater potential for biblical and archaeological synthesis. The irony was that although the conventional chronology had been based on two key biblical synchronism it produced an unhappy marriage between excavation results and the Old Testament narratives, whereas we chose to refer directly to the archaeological evidence and now had a framework which produced clear links between the Bible and archaeology.
- from page 327, A Test of Time