Next Frontiers for Christian Research

A) Iron and the iron age

I) Here is what wikipedia has to say about the Iron age:

Although meteoritic iron has been used for millennia in many regions, the beginning of the Iron Age is defined locally around the world by archaeological convention when the production of smelted iron (especially steel tools and weapons) replaces their bronze equivalents in common use.[2]

In Anatolia and the Caucasus, or Southeast Europe, the Iron Age began during the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC).[3] In the Ancient Near East, this transition occurred simultaneously with the Bronze Age collapse, during the 12th century BC (1200–1100 BC).,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age

II) Here are the first five mentions of iron in the Bible:

Sella also brought forth Tubalcain, who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Noema.
[Genesis 4:22]

And I will break the pride of your stubbornness, and I will make to you the heaven above as iron, and the earth as brass:
[Leviticus 26:19]

Gold, and silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin,
[Numbers 31:22]

If any man strike with iron, and he die that was struck: he shall be guilty of murder, and he himself shall die.
[Numbers 35:16]

For only Og king of Basan remained of the race of the giants. His bed of iron is shewn, which is in Rabbath of the children of Ammon, being nine cubits long, and four broad after the measure of the cubit of a man's hand.
[Deuteronomy 3:11]

And, not many decades after Og of Basan, we have Judges 1:19, here is the Catholic Douay Rheims translation:

And the Lord was with Juda, and he possessed the hill country: but was not able to destroy the inhabitants of the valley, because they had many chariots armed with scythes.

Here is the King James Version:

And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Even earlier than Judges, you have Joshua, and here even Douay Rheims has:

But thou shalt pass to the mountain, and shalt cut down the wood, and make thyself room to dwell in: and mayst proceed farther, when thou hast destroyed the Chanaanites, who as thou sayest have iron chariots, and are very strong.
[Josue (Joshua) 17:18]

III) Here is the date of the Exodus, in the Roman martyrology, the liturgical martyrology reading for Christmas day says Christ is born in

a Moyse et egressu populi Israel de Aegypto, anno millesimo quingentesimo decimo

So, if Christ is born 1 BC (most of the year was before His birth and the beginning of it even before His conception) and in 1510 after Exodus, that means the Exodus took place in 1511 BC.

Let's confer the Syncellus chronology, used by Orthodox when saying what year after creation it is, on September 1st every year.

Creation 5510 BC - Flood 2242 after Creation = Flood in 3268 BC
Flood in 3268 BC - Abraham born 1070 after Flood = Abraham born 2198 BC
Abraham born 2198 BC - Exodus 505 after Birth of Abraham* = Exodus in 1693 BC (I think I recall seeing 1683 BC, as well).

So, Exodus in 1511 or 1693 BC => Conquest in 1471 or 1653 BC. That's some time before the Bronze Age collapse, 12th C. BC.

IV) Resuming the problem, and solutions to propose:

Iron chariots, iron bed of Og, iron objects in the law. Mentioned before the archaeologically apparent Iron Age.

Speaking of which, this shows the folly of excluding a Middle Kingdom Exodus, just because archaeologists claim the Egyptians had no chariots prior to the New Kingdom.

Iron in Genesis 4, as being pre-Flood, is not a problem. If we haven't found iron objects from Nod, yet, so, we also haven't found Henoch in Nod yet in the first place.

Here are a few solutions:

a) The iron chariots and the iron objects mentioned in the law could simply be things that are sharp. The chariots could be armed with scythes as the Douay Rheims translation suggests, and the iron objects in the law could be sharp objects. Og's bed could be a very isolated item in meteoric iron.

The reason this would work is, barzel does not just mean "iron" the metal, it means also "sharp object" more specially "axe" ....

On this theory too, "bikli barzel" in Numbers 35 would be better translated as "sharp objects" or "sharp tools" than as objects or tools actually made of iron, and a bronze or stone knife would be a more probable itemization than an iron bar.

b) But it could be that meteoric iron had actually been used on the chariots too. They could have had a fright of meteoric iron as endowed with mysterious properties, or they could have had the sun reflected more glaringly in a surface of meteoric iron than in bronze, so the men of Juda were blinded by sunlight.

c) Or, archaeologists are wrong on when iron became a commonly used metal.

Given that lots of what is preserved to us, what they dig up, comes from graves. It was arranged in certain ways to escape normal processes of entropy. Bronze would have been more likely to put in a grave than iron which one could still use.

B) Horses and horseriding

Except, that seems by now to be a fixed problem:

somewhere else: Inerrancy of OT: Riding in King David's Day!
https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2024/09/inerrancy-of-ot-riding-in-king-davids.html

C) Haven't thought of it yet ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Bertin, Abbot
5.IX.2024

* Catholics and Orthodox in these chronologies count on a short soujourn, Exodus 430 years from when Abraham got the promise = when he was 75, 75 + 430 = 505.