Gary Greenberg's blog on biblical studies
Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History, Volume 1: Egypt’s Dynastic Period should be available for purchase sometime in the next couple of days, depending upon how quickly the distributor’s computer’s talk to Amazon’s computers. I expect the book to also appear on the Barnes and Noble site. As soon as I have links, I’ll post them.
I’ll be presenting a paper titled Enoch and Sothis: Is there a link between Genesis chronology and Egyptian king-lists at the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt. The conference will be held from April 12-14 in Alexandria Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. My presentation will be at 12:45 PM on April 13th. For full details on the conference go here.
I was hoping to have my new book, Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History: Volume I, the Egyptian Dynastic Period, my follow up to The Moses Mystery, out during February. There has been a couple of minor production glitches and a February release is possible, but it might take another week or two. In the meantime, you can now read Chapter One: The Mystery of the Genesis “Begats.”
Here’s some information about my next book, Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-Lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History, Volume 1: Egypt’s Dynastic Period. Over the next couple of weeks, I will post a Table of Contents and readable access to the first chapter. So far, the release date is still set for no later than mid-February.
Revealed! the hidden links between
Genesis chronology and Egyptian history
The Book of Genesis contains a 2,300-year chronology of Patriarchal births and deaths, from Adam to Joseph. Most biblical scholars believe the lists were fictional creations but Gary Greenberg, the provocative author of The Moses Mystery, says the birth and death dates contain a disguised but accurate chronology of Egypt’s dynastic history.
Based on a deep and thorough examination of the many problems in establishing an accurate Egyptian chronology, Greenberg makes a compelling case that an alignment of the Genesis birth-death chronology with the High Egyptian Chronology favored by many Egyptologists demonstrates a precise one-to-one relationship between most Genesis birth and death dates and the starting years for Egypt’s first eighteen dynasties and many of its most important kings.
Some of the surprising discoveries in Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists
Those of you who read my book The Moses Mystery: The Egyptian Origins of the Jewish People, might recall that a portion of the argument depended on an extensive study of Egyptian Chronology. Unfortunately, since the book was written for the popular market and the full study would have more than doubled the length of the book, the publishers strongly opposed my inclusion of the extra material. After negotiations, the editor agreed that I could provide a significantly abbreviated summary of the material, which I did. In the book, I said I would separately publish the chronological material.
That was about 20 years ago, and life being what it is, I wound up with new book deals and new directions of interest. Earlier this year, I convinced myself to go back to my original research, do a lot of updating, and separately publish my detailed study showing that the author of the Book of Genesis used ancient Egyptian archival material to fashion his chronological history of Genesis, from Creation to the death of Joseph.
This is going to be a massive study dealing with Egyptian chronology, mythology, and history. My initial plan has been to do a three-volume study titled Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: the Egyptian origins of Genesis history. “Volume I, Egypt’s Dynastic Period” is now completed and going through the process of transformation into a book. I expect it to be published no later than February 2019. The first volume is the one that supplements The Moses Mystery. Over the next few weeks, I will release some information about Volume I of the Genesis study.
The second volume will deal with the mythological chronology present in Egyptian king-lists and its relationship to Genesis. This will result in some substantial revelations about the nature of Egypt’s mythological chronology and the Genesis author’s reliance on that mythological chronology. The third volume will deal with the chronology of Genesis Creation and the patriarchal history from Adam to Joseph. I will show that almost all of Genesis history is highly dependent on Egyptian mythology. These last two volumes can be considered supplements to my 101 Myths of the Bible: How ancient scribes invented biblical history.
My original publishing plan called for me to release Volume 2 either in late 2019 or early 2020, and volume 3 within a year after releasing the second volume. Once again, life has intruded and I have just recently contracted with an academic publisher to produce my lengthy and controversial study on the source origins of the four New Testament gospels. The major draft of that book is complete, and I will have to spend time seeing how much editing and rewriting needs to be done and getting it in final shape for publication. That time frame is uncertain I hope that this won’t cause much delay in producing the next two volumes of Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History. More details on the Gospels project in a couple of months.
My latest book, Proving Jesus’ Authority in Mark and John: Overlooked evidence of a synoptic relationship, is now available. The book offers a new theory of John’s composition techniques and his relationship to the other gospels. A picture of the book jacket and links to the book description, jacket blurbs, and a short excerpt are available in the sidebar. I want to thank Paul Anderson, Adam Winn, and Barrie Wilson for their generous book endorsements. This is an academic study and priced accordingly, so if you’re interested you might want to encourage your local library to buy a copy. Here is the book’s description.
In this innovative study of the Fourth Gospel, Greenberg introduces important new perspectives on synoptic problems and challenges many theories about the nature of John’s sources and composition practices. His analysis shows that the author of John knew a written version of Mark’s gospel, had strong theological objections to how Mark depicted the nature and story of Jesus and the gospel message, and composed his gospel as a theologically corrected rewrite of Mark, using the latter’s gospel as a narrative guideline for his own composition.
By focusing on several seemingly different stories in Mark and John that deal with issues relating to how Jesus proved his authority, Greenberg places each of the incidents in their narrative, sequential, and theological context, demonstrating that John knew Mark’s specific stories in the same sequential order that appeared in Mark, and that John’s stories represented theologically altered rewrites of the ones in Mark. The study examines the nature of John’s objections to Mark, what changes John would want to make to Mark, and the formulaic editorial techniques John used to transform Mark’s gospel into John’s gospel. Of particular interest, Greenberg shows how John transformed Mark’s stories about proof through exorcisms into Johannine stories about proof through words.
