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This chart summarizes the proposal for radically redating the Exodus, made by John Bimson and David Livingston in the September/October BAR (“Redating the Exodus,” BAR 13:05), a proposal vigorously disputed in this article by Baruch Halpern.

B&L would move the Israelite conquest back approximately 200 years, from 1250 B.C. to 1420 B.C.; and they would move the end of the Middle Bronze Age forward about 150 years, from 1550 B.C. to 1420 B.C. In this way the conquest of Canaan as described in the Bible coincides with the destruction of Canaanite cities at the end of the Middle Bronze Age—a destruction that has been found in numerous archaeological excavations at Biblical sites.

However, as Halpern points out, this squeezes the Late Bronze Age. The Late Bronze Age is subdivided into Late Bronze I and Late Bronze II. Late Bronze II cannot begin later than 1400 B.C., as B&L themselves recognize. But, as Halpern stresses, that leaves only 20 years for Late Bronze I (from 1420 to 1400 B.C.), an impossibly short period.