Brinkman's Brief Note
NOTAE BIBLIOGRAPHICAE
Bernard NEWGROSH, Chronology at the Crossroads: The Late Bronze Age in Western Asia, Leicester, Matador Publisheing, 2007. Xii-710 p., 10 fig. 16 x 24, £29.99. – The number crunchers for an ultra-compressed Late Bronze Age chronology are at it again. Following firmly in the footsteps of Peter James (Centuries of Darkness, 1991) and David Rohl (A Test of Time, vol. 1, 1995), Bernard Newgrosh, a physician practising in Bolton (U.K.), has emerged as the latest champion for making the Amarna kings contemporary with the early Israelite monarch. Elaborate arguments are trotted out for truncating the time span covered by the late Middle Assyrian and early Neo-Assyrian kings (two separate contemporary groups of “warrior kings” and “priestly kings”), inverting the sequence of Babylonian dynasties, inventing new dynasties (e.g., Neo-Kassite monarchs toward the close of the tenth century), and creating a host of additional rulers (some “non-canonical”, some based on literal acceptance of scribal errors, and some inferred from a much later literary text). This post-Ockhamist approach (here: entia sunt multiplicanda) adduces such far-fetched concepts as “the year 0 B.C.” and blithely informs us, among other revelations, that “sic” is an abbreviation for “sicut”. It is unfortunate that the few useful critical observations are buried in a welter of details skewed to support the central idee fixe. – J. A. BRINKMAN, Oriental Institute, 1155 East 58th Street, Chicago KL 60637, USA.
