by
Damien F. Mackey
Biblical history cannot be verified in terms of the conventional
(Sothic-Sirius) Egyptology, which is an artificial construct.
Introduction
When
I, in 1981, with a background in ancient history (University of Tasmania),
began a search for the great Hebrew patriarch, Moses, I turned for assistance
to books with such seemingly relevant titles as The Bible is True
(1936), by Sir Charles Marston, and The Bible as History (1964), by Dr.
Werner Keller.
To
my genuine surprise, these books were pitifully unhelpful.
There
was no Moses to be found there, nor was there a decent Exodus - just, at most,
a handful of families departing from Egypt.
Fossicking
around, between Moore Theological College and the Fisher Library (University of
Sydney), I eventually came across (in Fisher) Dr. Donovan Courville’s
life-saving 1971 set, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications (Vols. 1
and 2).
This
pioneering work taught me exactly what I needed to know, namely that:
Biblical history cannot be verified in terms of the conventional
(Sothic-Sirius) Egyptology, which is an artificial construct.
This
is what Sir Charles Marston and Dr. Werner Keller had quite failed to
understand. They had attempted - that which is totally impossible - to yoke
biblical history unevenly (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14) to an artificially
derived chronology of ancient Egypt.
Dr.
Donovan Courville, on the other hand, a Christian believer in the truth of the
Bible, had insisted that the text book ancient chronology must be revised and
corrected if biblical events and people were to become identifiable.
Having
taken to heart this most important instruction, and after much reading
(including Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos series, and UK and US
publications devoted to a revision of history), I would soon be embarking upon
a post-graduate Masters thesis on this very subject at the University of
Sydney. That thesis, The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar,
was ultimately passed on both historical and scientific (archaeo-astronomical)
grounds.
One
examiner commented that, since I had exposed the inadequacies of the Sothic
(Sirius)-based astronomical system of Egyptian chronology, “the way now lay
open for a more acceptable alternative”. Exactly what I had had in mind all
along, a work of reconstruction; but the less interesting work of deconstruction
had had to be done first (thanks to advice from a non-university friend).
The
whole epic story can be read in my article:
Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses
(6)
Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses
Creationists
and biblical history
As
far as I am aware, Creationists, or those closely associated with them, commendably
intent upon proving that the Bible is actually a true historical record, will
have sensibly rejected the Sothic chronology and have gone in pursuit of a
revised Egyptology and stratigraphy.
Two
interesting examples of this, for me, are the quite different types, Dr. John
Osgood and Ron Wyatt (RIP), who was/is very popular amongst Creationists and
evangelicals.
Dr. John Osgood
An
Australian Creationist, Dr. Osgood has been working on biblical stratigraphy
for 40 years or more. He has been an absolute guru for me as regards biblical
archaeology. I doubt if I, myself, would ever have been able to identify the
era of Abram (Abraham). Dr. John Osgood, and no other - as far as I am aware -
has done just that, pinpointing Abram to Late Chalcolithic En-gedi (Hazazon
Tamar) and those associated archaeologies in the Syro-Canaanite region, as
well as in Egypt.
I
refer to his article, “The Times of Abraham (EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986,
pp. 77–87):
And
whilst others, too, have made a case for the Middle Bronze I (MBI) nomadic
peoples as the Exodus Israelites, none has done this more clearly and
convincingly than Dr. Osgood, who will also, in the process, explain the tricky
Jericho in a full OT context - from the Conquest to Hiel of Bethel in the days
of King Ahab (I Kings 16:34).
Thus
we learn that the Jericho sequence, in outline, is to be interpreted like this:
Joshua’s Conquest
– MBI Israelites destroy Early Bronze III Jericho;
King Eglon of Moab
– Middle Bronze IIB Jericho;
David’s brief tenure
– Middle Bronze IIC/Late Bronze I
Hiel of Bethel
– Iron Age
Ron Wyatt
An
amateur US archaeologist, and Bible believer, Ron was well read in ancient
history.
Unfortunately
he, in his determination to prove the Bible to be a real history, coupled with
his popularity and wide following, with money flowing in, began to doctor sites.
This has been well documented. See, for instance, my article:
What of Ron Wyatt’s Egyptian chariot wheels in the Red Sea?
(8)
What of Ron Wyatt's Egyptian chariot wheels in the Red Sea?
God
does not need this sort of shonky ‘assistance’.
Some
Creationists might baulk at the accusations made against them by Australian
earth scientist, professor Ian Plimer, even threatening him with Judgment Day.
But
I think that he makes a valid point.
Though
I am hesitant to say such a thing, Ron Wyatt was a charlatan, a fraudster.
And
his ex-wife, Mary Nell, is perpetuating his legacy.
She
has written a book, Battle for the Firstborn: The Exodus and the Death of
Tutankhamen (2020), based on the extensive research of Ron, and
ostensibly God-inspired, in which she claims to have set out definitively how
Egyptian history connects with the Old Testament.
In
my article:
Reflecting on the biblical Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell
(Lee)
(3)
Reflecting on the biblical Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell (Lee)
I
wrote, regarding the tendency of the Wyatt pair to claim divine inspiration:
According
to Mary Nell, Ron believed that he had been able to work out the complexities
of Egyptian dynastic history in relation to the Bible only because God had
enabled him to do so. Otherwise, it would have been impossible considering the
intricacies of the subject.
This
is so different from what we get from Creationist Dr. John Osgood, an honest
researcher, who, no doubt seeking to do the work of God, never goes so far as
to claim infallibility from divine inspiration.
On
a more positive note, I wrote in my article above:
Yesterday,
the eve of today’s feast-day of the Immaculate Conception (8th December,
2025), I came across a video by Mary Nell (Lee) Wyatt on the high official,
Senenmut, of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty: NEW Discovery | Ron Wyatt Found Evidence For Moses In Egypt!
Prior to
this, Mary Nell Wyatt was for me just a name that I had seen associated with,
as his wife, the well-known Ron Wyatt. Thus I was stunned to hear her expatiate
at great length and fluency on Egyptology, from the First Dynasty all
the way through to the Eighteenth, in relation to her large
book: Battle for the Firstborn: The Exodus and the Death of Tutankhamen (2020).
Mary
Nell’s narrative, heavily based upon the research of her deceased husband,
gives as plausible account as most have been able to do of biblical history,
from Abram (Abraham) to Moses, in its relation to the Egyptian dynasties. And
it is highly original. ….
Based
on what I have said about the Wyatt pair, and considering also that professionals
and many of their fellow evangelicals have considered them to be “fraudulent”:
How have Ron Wyatt’s claims been evaluated
by professi...
Professional
archaeologists and multiple published critiques have overwhelmingly rejected
Ron Wyatt’s high‑profile claims—labeling them unscientific, unlicensed, and in
many cases fraudulent—while supporters and Wyatt’s own organization continue to
promote his finds without peer‑reviewed backing …. Independent examinations and
institutional statements (notably from the Israel Antiquities Authority) stress
that Wyatt lacked formal archaeological credentials and did not conduct legally
licensed excavations, and mainstream specialists have found no verifiable
archaeological evidence to support his extraordinary assertions …. [,]
I
would suggest that God is highly unlikely to bless their efforts with a perfect
Daniel-like certainty (cf. Daniel 2:45).
For
one, the Wyatt reconstruction completely misses out on Dr. John Osgood’s essential
biblico-archaeological anchor point:
Joshua’s Conquest
– MBI Israelites destroy Early Bronze III Jericho.
Many
of his followers will jump to the defence of Ron Wyatt whenever he is
criticised, claiming him to have been a most sincere and personable type. Like
most of us, though, he had that other side to him:
The
strange case of Douglas Petrovich
He
is, like Dr. John Osgood, a Creationist.
Again,
like Dr. Osgood, he is an extremely thorough researcher.
And,
with Dr. Osgood and Ron Wyatt, he is a firm believer in the truth of the
biblical record, and he sets out to demonstrate it, but without resorting to
the subterfuges of Ron Wyatt.
Like
Ron Wyatt, but unlike Dr. Osgood, he (an ordained pastor) appears to believe
that to him (as if like a new Moses) has been given divinely inspired insights.
Thus
he entitles his YouTube series “Illumining the Path”.
Like
Ron Wyatt, but unlike the gentlemanly and reasonable Dr. Osgood, he can be a
prickly customer. My first very brief encounter with Douglas Petrovich was in
May 2022. When I disagreed with him, and had a crack at what I called his
“sloppy” research for misquoting me in a way that made an article of mine look
silly, he replied in the most unexpected fashion for a scholar-academic. We saw
how Creationists have threatened professor Ian Plimer with Judgment Day – well
that is how he concluded with me:
“Let's see at judgment day whose work the Lord calls sloppy”.
This
was like a threat from someone who believes himself to be God’s chosen
instrument.
No,
‘sorry I mis-quoted you’, as I would have expected from a reasonable academic.
(After all, we can all misquote someone). Instead, I am right and you are
wrong!
What
I also find mystifying is that this man, having apparently learned nothing from
decades of revisionism and scholarly assaults upon the artificial Sothic scheme
of Egyptology, has tried to weld the Bible to the conventional Egyptology, just
as had the likes of Sir Charles Marston, long ago, and Dr. Werner Keller.
The
results are equally fruitless.
In
fact, I recently (March 2026) told him, with reference to his “Illumining the
Path” series, that it was, like Seinfeld, “a show about nothing”.
With
that hard taskmaster, Sothic chronology, dictating his every move, Petrovich
will locate Joshua in the Late Bronze Age, when there was no city of Jericho to
conquer; will have Moses in the Eighteenth Dynasty, but without being
able identify the great man there; and will fix Joseph and the Famine during
the Twelfth Dynasty, without finding either there.
And
all this is done in such detail (he could never be called lazy) that must have
the heads of his poor audience - seeking guidance along the Path, not up the
garden path - spinning.
For
that is the effect that it had on me.
