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Explicit Correspondence to the Biblical Story
Excerpts From: Center for Online Judaic Studies Article

Most scholars accept Shoshenq I’s (Shishak) attack of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as historical because the extra-biblical literary and archaeological materials show strong evidence that corroborates Shoshenq’s accounts of his campaign. It shows the veracity of the biblical account at a time just following the split of the United Monarchy and creates a chronological point that aligns the Egyptian, the Biblical and the Syro-Palestinian chronologies.

Threefold conflation path of argumentation:

Many archaeological digs in Israel that have sequences from the Iron Age contain a few destruction layers in their strata. Based on the remains in each level, we can correlate the stratigraphies of the different sites, yielding a widespread group of destruction layers all appearing in the Iron Age I-IIA. These include the biblical sites of Arad, Gezer, Beth-She`an, and Megiddo. Now, taking the Megiddo stele of Shoshenq I and the destruction level that it follows and putting them together with the whole group of destruction layers, we ought to date the widespread destruction to right around the erection of that stele. This is amounts to a correlative chronological point in Iron Age I Palestine.

Next, we turn to the Egyptian materials. We find that many of the sites in Israel that have this destruction layer are the very same ones named in the Karnak inscription of Shoshenq I, confirming his campaign to the Levant as a solid historical fact. Based on the Egyptian Chronology, which is placed into an absolute timeframe through correlation with various astronomical events mentioned in inscriptions, we can date Shoshenq’s campaign to about 925 BCE with a margin of error of 10-15 years (because of the uncertainty in determining from the inscription when in Shoshenq’s reign the campaign took place).

When we look at the Bible (1 Kings 14:25-26), we find an advance by a Pharaoh Shishaq on Jerusalem in the fifth year of king Rehoboam of Judah that was only averted by emptying the coffers of the palace and temple into Shishaq’s pockets. The name “Shishaq”, or “Shushaq” as in a variation from the Masoretic pointing, fits so well as a transliteration into Hebrew of Egyptian “Shoshenq” that there is virtually no scholarly debate on the matter (amazingly). According to internal biblical chronological assessments working from the latest times (whose absolute dates are easier to approximate) backwards, Rehoboam’s fifth year falls very near 925 BCE. With the Shishaq/Shoshenq correspondence and the firmness of the dating of Shoshenq’s campaign to 925 BCE from archaeological and inscriptional evidence, the Bible’s chronological placement of this event works out nearly perfectly!

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