Bible Synapse

How many years passed between the Exodus and Solomon’s temple?

Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate

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The passages

1 Kings 6:1

Solomon began the temple “in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt”.

And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

Acts 13:17–21

Paul: God chose the fathers, brought Israel out of Egypt, bore with them forty years, gave them the land, then judges “until Samuel the prophet”, then Saul for forty years.

The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it. And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot. And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.

The objection

1 Kings 6:1 says that Solomon began to build the temple in the 480th year after the Exodus. But in Acts 13 Paul counts forty years in the wilderness, judges for “about the space of four hundred and fifty years”, and then forty years of Saul (Acts 13:18–21). Add David’s forty years (1 Chronicles 29:27), and the time from the Exodus to Solomon comes to at least 570 years, nearly a century more than 1 Kings allows.

The answer

The 450 years in Acts depend on where the phrase stands in the Greek. The King James Version follows the later Greek text, in which God “gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years” (13:20). But in the oldest manuscripts, and in the critical editions printed from them, the order is different: ‘about four hundred and fifty years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.’ On that text the 450 years belong to what comes before, and modern translations follow it. The WEB reads that God “gave them their land for an inheritance for about four hundred fifty years”, and the BSB, “All this took about 450 years.”

So Paul gives no length for the time of the judges at all. His ‘about 450 years’ covers the story he has just told, from God’s choice of the fathers and Israel’s stay in Egypt (13:17), through the forty years in the wilderness (13:18), to the giving of the land (13:19). Counted from Isaac’s birth, as John Gill counts it, that is 60 years to Jacob’s birth, 130 to the descent into Egypt, about 210 in Egypt, 40 in the wilderness and some 7 years of conquest: about 447 years. Counted on the long view of the stay in Egypt, the 400 years of Genesis 15:13 plus the wilderness and the conquest come to about the same round figure. Either way, nothing in Acts 13 conflicts with the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1.

Other answers Christians give

The judges’ years added end to end

If the King James text is followed, Paul may be giving the total of the periods of oppression, rest and rule recorded in the book of Judges. Added end to end, with some years for Joshua, they come to about 450, as Haley shows. Most scholars think that several judges ruled at the same time in different regions, so the real span was shorter; on this view Paul, giving a round total, summed the figures as Judges gives them, without claiming that they followed one another.

Still open

1 Kings 6:1 has its own questions. The Greek Old Testament reads 440 years there, not 480, and Christian scholars still debate the date of the Exodus. Neither question touches Acts 13 on the older text.

From the classic commentators

The text from Acts has really no bearing upon the subject, since, according to the order of the Greek in the four oldest and best manuscripts, the correct rendering is, "He gave them their land as a possession about four hundred and fifty years; and, after that, he gave [to them] judges until Samuel the prophet."J. W. Haley, Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (1874), pp. 421–422

Sources

Further reading

Raised by: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Only the verse references come from these lists.

Checked 2026-10-22. All hard questions