1 Kings 6:1
480 years or 440?
The Hebrew dates the temple's foundation to the 480th year after the Exodus; the library's Greek has the 440th. Separately from the textual question, readers debate whether 480 is a literal count or a symbolic one (twelve generations of forty years).
Manuscript variant: witnesses differ in wording
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Unknown (debated)
Original Kings
No original survives.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint, 3 Kingdoms (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Ce fut en l'an quatre cent quarante de la sortie d'Égypte
It was in the four hundred and fortieth year after the exodus from Egypt
In this Greek tradition 6:1 also comes after other material (Greek chapter 6 is reordered). One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
quadringentesimo et octogesimo anno
480.
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
בִשְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה
in the eightieth year and four hundredth year
480.
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
in the four hundred and eightieth year
What changed, and why
If 480 is literal and Solomon's fourth year was about 966 BC, the Exodus falls about 1446 BC (the "early date"). Those who favor a 13th-century Exodus read 480 as twelve generations of forty years, a schematic figure. The Greek 440 does not settle the matter either way. Judges 11:26 (300 years) and Acts 13:20 (about 450 years for the judges) are also part of the discussion.
What the evidence shows
- The library's Greek reads 440; the Hebrew and Vulgate read 480.
- 480 is a literal count of years.
Sources
- E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012)
Related lessons
- Building God's House →In the 480th year after the Exodus (the Greek says 440th), in Solomon's fourth year, the temple is begun: a long house sixty cubits long, with a porch, a main hall and an inner sanctuary twenty cubits square, lined with cedar and overlaid with gold, with two olive-wood cherubim ten cubits high. It takes seven years.
- Historical Investigation: Solomon, the Temple and Archaeological Chronology →Kings describes a wealthy, centralized kingdom with a temple, palaces, fortified cities and international trade. Archaeologists agree that Jerusalem existed and that a dynasty of David ruled Judah, but they disagree sharply about the scale of 10th-century BC Israel. The debate turns on how pottery and building levels are dated, on radiocarbon results, and on what can be excavated in Jerusalem.