RABMEC, J. A. Giannini (7/25/2012)
THE REVISED ANCIENT BIBLICAL and MID-EAST CHRONOLOGY (RABMEC) TIMELINE
J. A. Giannini 12/10/2009 (revised 7/25/12)
1. INTRODUCTION
This book is about time and about the fact that the farther beck you go, the less clear things become. It is like looking into a dark foggy mirror. Events in ancient history and the ordering of their occurrence are dimmed by the passage of time.
The goal of this work is to produce some clarity. This is done by developing an alternate timeline with which to view the past. This new timeline is a re-calibration of the traditionally accepted time and order of the ancient past.
Here in the introduction, we examine some ideas that are relevant to the development of the new timeline, but that are not addressed in the later chapters.
We talk about the nature of history. We provide a perspective on why looking at the ancient past seems to matter so much by looking at the intersection of science and religion. We discuss the nature of the information sources by considering the intersection of history and religion and by speculating on how some of that information is stored and accessed. Finally, we briefly indicate what each of the following chapters address.
What is the nature of history?
The study of history has always been a fascinating endeavor. It begins with the written story of Man's accomplishments (a tale of what happened when, an analysis of why events happened, and a description of how we as a species developed after the coming of writing). Prior to writing, however, there is a fine line separating history from pre-history (a time after humans became Man but before civilization as we know it was established). But, that is history as well, buried in the mist of antiquity and shrouded in mystery and mysticism.
The more recent events of the ancient world are revealed thru documents and monument inscriptions, authenticated with radio dating(1) (with its intricate calibrations), with astronomical correlations(2) (that assume cosmic uniformity and order in the recent ancient past), and with cross-culture correlations(3) (that are rife with political agendas and transcription errors of the recorders). This means that even the more recent ancient history is subject to uncertainty in absolute (BC) time, and, in many cases, in relative placement on the timeline which just adds to the confusion. The dates are reasonably well accepted for dates more recent than about 500 BC. However, prior to that, the uncertainty grows with time.
For times earlier than about 3000 BC, we have an added problem because most of the information is locked in oral tradition that was only later recorded (what we know as myth and legend). This is the very beginning. It is the time of the god-kings, dragons, floods and new world ages. It is from here we find our true roots as a species (when our consciousness and development begins); but, we appear to lack the hard scientific validation of the real events as they unfolded, at least for the oldest events.
What is the intersection of science and religion?
One looming question about these earliest events that repeatedly surfaces is one of origin. This question is expressed in numerous ways. Where did we come from? How did the universe and humanity begin? When did it all begin? What is our purpose?
For the fundamentalist who accepts the literal interpretation of the Old Testament, the answer is simple. "God", the creator, is the origin; and, the timing is spelled out in the Bible as lasting seven days. The beginning is about 4000 BC if one counts backwards through the genealogies and events from known historical time. Our purpose is to serve God.
At the other extreme, to the pure naturalist, the universe and Man evolved according to natural law commencing about 14 billion years ago and 1 million years ago, respectively. From this point-of-view, there is no need for the intervention of a supreme deity along the way whose existence as author of creation is questionable at best. The question of purpose is unaddressed.
When viewing the two extremes, the fundamentalist believer would declare the pure naturalist view as heretical because God is to be believed and nothing more. To the pure naturalist, God cannot be viewed thru a telescope or measured by a voltmeter, and so, the fundamentalist view is unsupported religious superstition and folk lore. But the answer to the question of origin need not rest with the extremes.
In this work, we take the middle ground. We consider two issues. In the first, the issue of origin becomes one of defining when physical reality, as we know it, began (setting aside the question of how for the moment). In the second, the issue is whether the myths really have an encoded description of the process of development from the beginning. The identification of the relevant events and their properly calibrated timing are the tools used to resolve these issues. The question of how, whether by divine creation on the one hand, or, quantum fluctuations leading to a Big Bang on the other, will be left to other reflections at another time.
What is the intersection of history and
religion?
There is one additional question that needs to be addressed, if only in passing. Why do we care about our origin? Such a question has answers on many levels. The simple answer is idle curiosity. But, this cannot be the whole answer because too much energy has been expended over the eons without providing a truly verifiable answer to maintain such curiosity.
Since the question of origin invariably becomes entangled with (or competes with) religion, it appears obvious that the motivation for the search for our origin has some spiritual implications. This brings us to the question of whether the gods of the myths were real beings. An alternate question is whether they were just used as a tool by primitive man to try to comprehend the power of nature. This issue is addressed by assuming the gods were real, and by developing a calibrated timeline that places them in time relative to accepted historical events.
With this goal in mind, we note that there is no true alternate timeline that offers much new if it does not attempt to reconcile the oldest body of knowledge with some verifiable evidence. This record of earliest knowledge can be viewed in two ways in the extremes. One approach is to treat it as the product of human imagination and superstition (myths beyond belief as factual - a symbolic mechanism for moral and social conscience training and organization). The other extreme is to treat it as purely factual history. The middle ground seems the most likely, that is, that myths are based on fact, embellished for effect, and overlaid with social and moral training. So how can we pick out the fact from the fiction?
Carl Jung(4) claimed that within each of us is a deep memory of the\ancient past. He called them our racial (species) memories. He believed these racial memories were highly encoded images of our primordial beginning that affect our behavior without our conscious awareness. These encoded images, when connected to, produce powerful emotional responses even though the images themselves may not be recognized consciously.
This idea seems to imply that in each of us there is a window into the deep past that sees the memories, passed on from one generation to the next. These memories contain the facts as our ancestors directly observed them. We believe they are encoded in our genes, but not easily accessed or decoded by our conscious mind.
This state of affairs prevents the cross-culture reference, on a sufficiently statistically believable scale, that would make the observations useful for scientific validation of the deep past. We are thus forced to take a different approach, that is, to try to place the mythical stories in a context of time that supports the believability of the kernel of truth within them.
What is addressed in the following chapters?
By connecting the historical past with myth and legend placed in a dated context it is then possible to extend history back to the beginning. This is what this effort will do. We develop the Revised Ancient Biblical and Mid-East Chronology (RABMEC) an alternate timeline to the traditionally accepted one. In this work, the traditional timeline is referred to as the Standard TimeLine (STL). The RABMEC has an historical part and a pre-historical part.
Section 2 re-calibrates the timeline from Adam to the birth of Christ to produce the historical part of the RABMEC. Dates after the birth of Christ are traditionally referred to as AD (anno Domini). However, the new accepted system refers to them as CE (the Current Era). The re-calibration of the timeline shows that the events on the STL, with the currently accepted BC (also known as before the current era or BCE) calibration, have a different possible calibration that can be supported by the written records. The RABMEC has the oldest events slid in time, some forward and some backward by as much as hundreds of years, from the STL convention.
Next, in Section 3, a relation among five ancient cultures is established through the cross-culture comparisons of their mythic beliefs and writings (that part of their writings that are not sufficiently well dated, primarily of the creation).
In Section 4, the legendary periods are given a BC calibrated context. We do this in several ways. One way is to extend the historical periods backward to date the Sumerian mythological kings and the Egyptian god-kings. A second way is to develop a mathematical formula to relate the Hebrew's seven days of creation with dated geologic time. The third way is to tie of the Hindu divine world cycles to geologic events. This is accomplished by examining the oral traditions and the list of kings for the cultures being considered. The effort is aided by identifying a pivotal point in the RABMEC that connects the mythological period to the historic period. This event is the new RABMEC date for the first historical Egyptian king.
Finally, Section 5 presents the fully calibrated RABMEC, combining the historical and the calibrated mythic periods. The looming question of the factual existence of the Flood compared to scientific records is addressed here. In addition, the Egyptian beginning of the world event is dated.
This work takes us back to the beginning of Man and beyond. Through it we get a glimpse of our most ancient roots that are currently obscured in the mist of myth and treated in the STL as unreal.
References for the Introduction
1 D. Macdougall, Nature's Clocks, Univ.
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