How Demsky's 1995 dating study pushed the dating of Tel Dan back by 800 years and manufactured a false consensus

This article argues that the ninth-century BCE dating of the Tel Dan Stele is not a neutral
scientific conclusion, but the product of an inherited chronological framework shaped by the
Seder Olam Rabbah. Revisiting Aaron Demsky’s 1995 study, it shows that palaeographic
dating remains relative and cannot function independently when the comparative corpus is
itself anchored in a prior historical model. The study identifies a structural circularity at the
heart of the consensus and proposes that the Seder Olam retrojected Hasmonean political
realities into a distant biblical past. From this perspective, the Tel Dan Stele is reinterpreted
as a late first-century BCE monument, most plausibly linked to the fall of Antigonus II
Mattathias and the end of a living “House of David.” The article therefore calls for a
methodological re-examination of chronological assumptions in biblical epigraphy.