Antient Biblical Chronograms Or A Discovery Of The Chronological Use Of The Majuscular Letters Occurring In The Text Of The Hebrew Scriptures Etc

This introduction discusses and classifies the Old Testament literature from the standpoint of history and chronology, i.e. the different books, or sections, or chapters, or verses, as the case may be, are taken up in chronological sequence as they relate to definite periods of Hebrew history, either as the Old Testament furnishes the history of those periods, or as its literature had its origin in them. - Preface.

This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems, encompassing more than 100 such systems used over the past 5,500 years. Using a typology that defies unilinear evolutionary models, Stephen Chrisomalis identifies five basic types of numerical notation systems, tracks relationships between systems, and creates a general model of change that incorporates social, historical, and cognitive factors.

Despite the fact that the name of many characters mentioned in the Old Testament, like David, King of Israel, have been recently confirmed by archaeology as well as their epoch and the events in which they were involved, most archaeologists continue to deny the historicity of the Bible they view as pious fiction or a mythical account. They argue that the major events in the Bible such as the victory of Abraham against Chedorlaomer, an unknown king of Elam around 2000 BCE, the victory of Moses against an unknown Pharaoh around 1500 BCE or the victory of Esther, an unknown Persian Queen, against an unknown vizier of Xerxes, never existed because they left absolutely no evidence. They also explain that according to what we know today, these events could not have occurred. These logical arguments are impressive but a precise chronological analysis based on absolute dates, coupled with a rigorous historical investigation, shows that all those major events really took place at the dates and places indicated.

Historians consider the biblical account of Noah and the Deluge as a myth. However, this famous event occurred at the earliest times of recorded history (Sumerian King List). Today scientists believe in the last ice age called Pleistocene ending in 10,000 BCE, but there is no witness of this planetary cataclysmic event and its existence is based solely on the controversial interpretation of its consequences and their dating. The existence of erratic blocks and the disappearance of mammoths are presented as evidence of the last glaciation. However, despite dating obtained by 14C (calibrated by dendrochronology) is considered absolute by most experts its confrontation with the Egyptian chronology, in which some dates are fixed by astronomy, reverses this widespread belief and shows that dates obtained by 14C increase exponentially before -2200. Thus the rate of 14C tends gradually to 0 around -3500, which implies an important consequence: before -3500, 14C dating is no longer possible.

New Perspectives on 2 Enoch: No Longer Slavonic Only presents a collection of papers from the fifth conference of the Enoch Seminar. The conference re-examines 2 Enoch, an early Jewish apocalyptic text previously known to scholars only in its Slavonic translation, in light of recently identified Coptic fragments. This approach helps to advance the understanding of many key issues of this enigmatic and less explored Enochic text. One of the important methodological lessons of the current volume lies in the recognition that the Adamic and Melchizedek traditions, the mediatorial currents which play an important role in the apocalypse, are central for understanding the symbolic universe of the text. The volume also contains the recently identified Coptic fragments of 2 Enoch, introduced to scholars for the first time during the conference.