The amazing academic Gérard Gertoux and the historicity of the Bible
“Realistically, we are in a system that makes lies go up the lift, but fortunately the truth that goes up the stairs always ends up getting there (with difficulty).”
Gérard Gertoux and the historical chronology of the Bible and the Ancient Near East
An amazing French scholar named Gérard Gertoux has made remarkable inroads into establishing the historicity of the Bible.
If you are part of the academic archaeological or theological community and have not heard of Gertoux’s work, I should not be surprised: from the beginning of his academic career he has been marginalised and censored because of religious discrimination in France and the academic world; he is a Jehovah’s Witness and has been called a ‘fundamentalist’ and this has been openly admitted as the reason his Doctoral thesis was never able to be defended.
Alas, Gertoux’s highly rigorous work challenges many of the assumptions of trendy theories of the moment (Biblical Minimalism and the like) and the academic credibility of those who had been holding the reins of power in the academic community for many years.
Like many academics who hold a minority position Gertoux is quite obsessively concerned with factual minutae and the detail of the case he is making. For me another example of this comes to mind, Manning Clark the Australian historian, who was a leftist before it was trendy in Australian academia, and whose work is quite obsessively and carefully referenced.
Religious or political affiliation should never be held against anyone when assessing truth claims1: Gertoux’s truth claims about the historicity of the Bible need to be assessed on their merits, and not roundly dismissed because of ad hominem criticism of his beliefs, which is entirely illogical and unworthy of any institution that claims to practice science in a democracy.
More recently, however, certain prominent scholars such as Professor Nele Ziegler and Professor Jonathan Rosenbaum have demonstrated their academic integrity, by inviting Gérard Gertoux to attend academic conferences and deliver his findings on the Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Chronologies.
Astronomy not Carbon Dating
Gertoux’s life’s work has been, to examine the historical claims of the Bible from a rigorously mathematical and scientific point of view.
When it comes to dating the Biblical stories in relation to the chronologies of the surrounding nations, the fact is that carbon dating is notoriously unreliable, and that a dating system that builds on carbon dating is actually constructing the whole intellectual edifice on what amounts to nothing more than shifting sands, with the building material being a series of ridiculously circular arguments. The Hallstatt plateau is a period of 400 years from 400BC to 800BC which all give the same result when carbon dating is use.
Carbon dating cannot give accurate dates.
Gertoux disregards carbon dating and instead uses astronomy to create a self-consistent dating system. This is possible because the ancients were quite obsessed with the movement of the stars and the heavens - they believed that there were secrets to be found in the celestial motions - they recorded them obsessively in the Near East. Eclipses were recorded and dated very carefully. The movement of the stars was recorded and remembered with great accuracy, for instance when an Egyptian pharaoh died, the walls of his tomb were illustrated with a series of gods and goddesses who correspond to the planets in the sky at the time of the pharaoh’s death.
The ancient Jews, by contrast, dated their annual ceremonies and festivals by the new moons, a fact that also allows accurate dating and cross-referencing of dates between the chronologies of the different Near-Eastern civilisations, and in the Bible the reigns of the Jewish kings are recorded quite carefully, often in relation to surrounding events, and when Israel was divided into two kingdoms, it also allows more opportunities for chronological cross-checking.
Gertoux’s career
In 1991, Gertoux was President of the Association Biblique de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits in France. (https://assoce.fr/waldec/W691054089/)
In 1995, he began a thesis at the Institut Catholique de Paris2
The Name of God
Gertoux’s first thesis was on the pronunciation of the Divine Name. He concludes that YHWH should be pronounced: Y.eH.oW.aH It was not finished at the time but was published with a peer reviewed publisher L’Harmattan as Un historique du nom divin and is available in English online and makes a very good argument for the pronunciation of YHWH being Yehowah; interestingly, despite the great importance of his later work, for a long time this was probably his most well known work in the academic community and has been referenced in scholarly journal articles that I have read on Hebrew pronunciation.
His revised version of this thesis was published by the University Press of America, which is an American peer-reviewed publisher in 2002 under the title: The Name of God YeHoWaH Which is Pronounced as it is Written I_Eh_oU_Ah. Its Story. 3
The Eye of History
Gertoux passed his Master2 in archaeology and history of ancient worlds at the Maison de l'Orient, university Lyon 2 in 2004, with a thesis entitled: L'Oeil de l’histoire : la chronologie. 1. les éclipses dans l'antiquité : approche scientifique d'une chronologie absolue. https://catalogue.frantiq.fr/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=487510 (The Eye of History: The Chronology. 1) The eclipses of antiquity: A scientific approach to an absolute chronology.)
Then Gertoux took a Master's degree in Biblical Hebrew with Dominique Gonnet in 2005: https://www.sources-chretiennes.mom.fr/index.php?pageid=equipe&id=966 and he began a thesis in archaeology and history of ancient worlds at the Maison de l'Orient, University of Lyon 2, under the supervision of Professor Pierre Villard.
In late 2007, when Gertoux’s thesis director was informed that Gertoux is a Jehovah’s Witness, the defence of his thesis was unjustly postponed to an undetermined date.
The thesis director eventually agreed to transfer Gertoux’s thesis to INALCO under the supervision of Daniel Bodi, however an entirety of two years later, the defense of Gertoux’s thesis was cancelled when the director of the doctoral school opposed his registration by explaining to his thesis director that she did not want her university to endorse a “fundamentalist”.
This is entirely unacceptable and is quite disgusting that religious discrimination can be applied in France, a country that prides itself on its open-mindedness and modernism. Had Gertoux been a Buddhist or a Moslem, I would like to bet that this approach would not have been taken. It is only those who support the historicity of the Bible that they would treat in this way.
While I disagree quite considerably with the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses (I do not believe Jesus is the incarnation of Archangel Michael but rather the incarnation of the eternal Word of God) I nonetheless support the right of anyone who holds any religious beliefs or none to make their truth claims in the academic forum and receive the due reward for their hard work and persistence, in the form of a degree.
Gertoux’s chronology should be the standard chronology
And in Gérard Gertoux’s case, I believe his astronomical chronology of the ancient world is so extensive, detailed and well-researched, that it ought to be the standard chronology. Nothing else than anyone has done that I know about comes even close to his chronology; it is logical, scientifically determined using the data and simple, clear mathematics. To be honest, his work makes the work of the scholars of the past one hundred and fifty years of biblical studies look ridiculous and childish, with their circular arguments, reliance on a corrupt dating system and lack of intellectual rigour. Were he a Mormon or a Catholic or even a Moslem or a Raelian or even a worshipper of Bullet Baba’s Motorbike, should make no difference to his truth claims: science (as a chronology ought to be) should be assessed on the data alone, as Richard Feynman would say, and not on any personal details of the person involved.
The winds begin to change
In 2014 his fortunes began to change: a film was made about Gertoux’s claims concerning The Name of God (https://www.dreilindenfilm.de/produkt/der-name-gottes/) and in 2015 he was invited to give a Lecture at Oxford University: Assyrian and biblical chronologies: are they reliable? Then in 2018 Gertoux’ article "Dating the Reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes" was published in a peer-reviewed journal: Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Series Archaeologica 40, 2018, pp. 179-206.
2019: Gertoux presents at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale
In 2019, Gertoux’s truth claims finally entered the mainstream of Archaeology: Professor Dominique Charpin invited Gertoux to the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at the Collège de France to present a summary of his thesis (https://rai2019.digitorient.com/en/posters/).
ASOR: Archaeology and Bible Studies
Professor Jonathan Rosenbaum of Gratz College invited Gertoux to the 2019 ASOR Annual Meeting in the session: Archaeology and Bible Studies to give a lecture on the second part of histhesis (http://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-ASOR-Program-and-Abstract-Book.pdf pp.26,98).
More publications follow
In 2020 his article "Biography of Themistocles: 536-471 BCE or 524-459 BCE?" was published by Professor Nele Ziegler in NABU 2020-3, p. 199 (https://www.academia.edu/44311183/), a peer-reviewed journal (https://sepoa.fr/actualites/).
In 2021 his article "Mesopotamian chronology over the period 2340-539 BCE through astronomically dated synchronisms and comparison with carbon-14 dating" was published by Professor Nele Ziegler in NABU 2021-3, pp. 171-172 (https://www.academia.edu/58872500/).
And in 2022 the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology mentioned Gertoux in an article about whether the book of Esther is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They mention Gertoux’s fantastic investigation into the historicity of Esther which I have read and I believe establishes firmly the foundation for believing the book to be historical. The Armstrong article said: As for the overall historicity of the book—despite widespread dismissal from skeptics—there is likewise a remarkable body of evidence for it, including the historical identity of Queen Esther herself. For more on this, read a thorough investigation by Gérard Gertoux
Much of Gertoux’s work is available for free on Academia.org, and is so excellent I believe he will go down in history as the person who established the historicity and the true chronology of the Bible, once and for all.
As he said to me in a message on Academia.edu, “Realistically, we are in a system that makes lies go up the lift, but fortunately the truth that goes up the stairs always ends up [getting there] (with difficulty).
Here is a link to his page on Academia.org:
https://univ-lyon2.academia.edu/GerardGERTOUX
Gérard Gertoux deserves recognition, and he should be given the title of Professor, actually, as well as his long-denied Doctorate, as his work is perfectly splendid.
REFERENCES
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5916-0445
https://iaassyriology.com/author/publisher/page/12/ https://stp.abes.fr/node/42608/edit?origine=thesesFr
The draft of his thesis was registered on:
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02076861 http://www.sudoc.fr/235280852
—2012, Member of The International Association for Assyriology
https://iaassyriology.com/author/publisher/page/12/
http://areopage.net/PDF/Gertoux_NameGod.pdf
LINKS - My other article about Gérard Gertoux
I certainly disagree with the Jehovah’s Witness position on the divinity of Jesus myself: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God and one Lord, as St Paul says many times, and yet Father is Lord, Son is Lord, Holy Spirit is Lord as well.
His thesis was registered under the reference T 594 GER. Henri Cazelles (1912-2009), former director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, followed the preparation of his thesis and organised for it be preserved in the Bibliothèque Oecuménique et Scientifique d'Etudes Bibliques.
https://icp.summon.serialssolutions.com/#!/ (enter Gertoux).
—In 2003 a review of the Name was published in Religious Studies Review Vol. 29:3, 2003, p.285: “This detailed treatment of the Name is useful for those who are interested in the history of its translation over the centuries.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17480922 Bruce Metzger quoted his work in a footnote on the Old Presbyterian Meeting House website in 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20050408213316/www.opmh.org/newbibles.htm