Disparity between Traditional Jewish Dates and Academic Dates User PiCo I will desist from making edits in this current article since I feel my input might be misconstrued or disruptive and that of course would not be my intent However please be apprised that there is a vast disparity between the traditional Jewish method of calibrating years based on a carefully guarded oral tradition as opposed to modern methods used primarily by Christians who rely heavily upon the modern academic methods applied in dating chronology The two are still reconcilable but it will take a vast amount of effort and a person of long wind patience and extreme diligence to even begin to explain where the discrepancies have crept in to ancient chronologies The Jews insist that there were only 210 years of slavery in Egypt although the 430 years mentioned in the Hebrew Bible are merely counted from the time of Isaac s birth until the departure of Israel from Egypt You see strangers in a land not theirs really begins with Abraham s seed in the land of Canaan Anyway my view is not to interrupt your work but to let it proceed on course I would however have preferred to see you mention more about the other method practiced by mainstream Judaism whether it is accepted or not by Christian or academic circles This would have given more balance to the current article I have an inkling that someone will eventually start another article dealing only the Jewish tradition of biblical chronology If I might say for us the Scroll of Antiochus is considered a reliable source CERTAIN FLAWS WITH MODERN SCHOLARSHIP I wish to point out something about modern scholarship that I think we should be aware of Research has been carried out in France by a certain Christian Robin and Andr Lemaire on the subject of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon Andr Lemaire wrote The hypothesis of a Sheba in Northern Arabia at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE Noth 1968 223 224 W rthwein 1977 121 Eph al 21984 88 89 227 229 Garbini 1984 Sarki 1994 190 Mulder 1998 509 510 has no basis and is generally abandoned Robin 1992 col 1109 1110 1118 Avanzini 1996 13 Kitchen 1997b 128 He also writes The first mention of Sheba in Neo Assyrian texts is to be dated mid 8th c BCE with the story of a caravan of 200 camels coming from Tayma and Sheba to Hindanu Middle Euphrates Cavigneaux Isma l 1990 339 357 Frame 1995 300 Younger 2003 279 282 Holladay 2006 319 321 Contrary to modern scholarship it should be noted here that in Jewish tradition king Solomon did not begin his reign in circa 1 000 BCE as purported by modern scholarship but rather in circa 843 BCE as we find in Jewish tradition Likewise in Jewish tradition the first Temple was destroyed in 422 BCE rather than in the erroneous date used by scholars of the western world to fix its destruction i e in 586 BCE Modern scholars totally ignore Jewish tradition and wrongly put historical events at least 200 years earlier which accounts for the discrepancies in calibrating these important events and not finding historical records to substantiate these events The one major flaw in their critical view of Jewish texts is the belief that if they can not find an archaeological document affirming a certain event mentioned in the Bible for them it is as though the event never happened This is a fallacy in logic To begin to tackle this tremendous difficulty with modern scholarship and Jewish tradition we must first lay down a premise that will follow us all throughout this discussion and that is the fact that historical records have been kept by Jews since ancient times and they have often preserved these very written accounts of events by marking their dates in the Seleucid Era counting This is vital as without which information it will be virtually impossible to determine the sequence of events and to correctly compare them with dates in the Julian Gregorian calendars The Aramaic Scroll of Antiochus known in Hebrew as Megillath Benei Ha monai The Scroll of the Sons of Asamoneus is a curious document alleged by Rabbi Saadia Gaon in his Introduction to Ha Eggron to have been written by the elders of the schools of Hillel and Shammai in the Chaldaic language meaning a document that dates back earlier than the book Seder Olam composed by Rabbi Yose b Halpetha in the 2nd century CE In that book the Scroll of Antiochus we find this remarkable remark viz that from the Second Temple s rebuilding till the 23rd year of the reign of Antiochus Eupator son of Antiochus Epiphanes who invaded Judaea there had transpired 213 years in total