I received an email in March 2001 which simply repeated one of the contradictions listed and then cited chunks of text from different sources that were presumably supposed to show that no contradiction arose. As can by seen from the following, they do not achieve this and the writer apparently did not check this before emailing.

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My website statement: Solomon's reign.
Acts 13:16-22 numbers the years from when the Hebrews left Egypt to David beginning his reign as 40 (Wilderness) + 450 (Judges) + 40 (Saul) = 530 years. According to 1 Chron 29:27, David reigned 40 years, so Solomon became king (when David died) 530 + 40 years (of David's reign) = 570 years.
040 - Wilderness (Acts 13)
450 - Judges (Acts 13)(BR> 040 - Saul (Acts 13)(BR> 040 - David (1 Chron 29:27)
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570 years
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However, 1 Kings 6:1 states Solomon's 4th year of rule (when he began the Temple building) was 480 years after the Hebrews left Egypt, ie. he began his rule 476 years after the Hebrews left. Therefore there is a contradiction of (570 - 476) 94 years.

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The following is from http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/comm_read/985574552.html
Acts 13:20. 'after that he gave judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years'. As this appears to contradict 1Ki 6:1, various solutions have been proposed...taking the sense to be as in our version, that it was the period of the judges itself which lasted about four hundred fifty years, this statement also will appear historically correct, if we include in it the interval of subjection to foreign powers which occurred during the period of the judges, and understand it to describe the whole period from the settlement of the tribes in Canaan to the establishment of royalty. Thus, from the Exodus to the building of the temple were five hundred ninety-two years [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 8.3.1]; deduct forty years in the wilderness; twenty-five years of Joshua's rule [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 5.1.29]; forty years of Saul's reign (Act 13:2); forty of David's and the first four years of Solomon's reign (1 Ki 6:1), and there remain, just four hundred forty-three years; or, in round numbers, 'about four hundred fifty years'.

My comment:
This lays out the chronology as:-
040 wilderness
025 Joshua (Per Josephus)
443 Settlement and Judges
040 Saul
040 David
004 Solomon
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592 years (Agreeing Josephus)
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How does any of this explain the 1 Kings 6:1 statement that Solomon's 4th year of rule (when he began the Temple building) was 480 years after the Hebrews left Egypt, ie. he began his rule 476 years after the Hebrews left resulting in a contradiction of ((592-4)-476) 112 years???

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The following is from http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/CH7/CH7_3.HTM. Judges as a Whole. The core of the book of Judges is a collection of stories told about Israel's legendary tribal leaders. The independent stories probably existed orally for a long time, transmitted from generation to generation in the vicinity where the particular judge at one time lived. Many of the stories have a setting in the north and were incorporated into the all-Israel story after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom....
Notice how no judge covered all Israel, yet when all are accounted for, they cover virtually the entire spectrum of territories...
The chronology of the book suggests that the Deuteronomistic Historian artificially chained the judge stories together to create the feeling of a continuous history such that each generation after the next fell away from Yahweh. If all the time indications are added together, the book spans exactly four hundred years. This is too exact to be an accident, and much too long to fit the archaeological and historical record. A reasonable estimate for the time span of the period of the judges is one hundred fifty years. Evidently, many of the judges actually lived and ruled contemporaneously.

My comment:
All very fascinating but it simply says that the chronology is artificial which of course invalidates any claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Moreover, it says 'A reasonable estimate for the time span of the period of the judges is one hundred fifty years' thereby saying that that Acts 13: is incorrect when it says the period of the judges was 450 years.
Interestingly, the NIV, RSV, and other versions, say:
13:18: Wilderness wandering - 40 years
13:19-20: Overthrow of nations and establishment of land - 450 years
13:21: AFTER this, the judges followed until Samuel arose. ??? years
This being so, with the Judges period not being included in the 450 year period, this then makes the overall period even longer, resulting in the the contradiction with 1 Kings 6:1 even more apparent.

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The following is from http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/CH7/CH7_1A.HTM.
What is a Judge?
The traditional name of the book is a bit misleading. The name Judges was taken from references to the main figures about whom tales are told. None of the figures is actually called a judge. The name was applied because the text says so-and-so 'judged' Israel a certain number of years.
There are twelve judges in the book, but they are not judicial figures such as the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who sit in a courtroom behind a mahogany bench. While some of these ancient figures might have occasionally arbitrated disputes (Deborah, in particular), they possessed peculiar qualities of leadership for which they were called judges. The exact reason judges applies remains somewhat unclear, yet they may have gotten the title because they applied God's judgment to Israel's enemies. As in other passages of the Hebrew Bible, judging means standing up for the oppressed and delivering the afflicted, rather than judicially applying a notion of equity. The judges might better be called saviors or defenders, in keeping with their historical function.
If the traditional date of the exodus is accepted (mid-thirteenth century B.C.E.), the tales of the judges would be set in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C.E. From the evidence we have at our disposal, this was, to say the least, an unsettled time in Canaan. The period began with the great international powers in stalemate and then in decline. Both the Egyptians and the Hittites wished to control Canaan because of the importance of its trade routes but were unable to do so. Canaan was not dominated by either of these powers at this time, and this created a virtual free-for-all among the lesser peoples.
The most significant challenge to Israel came from a group called the Sea Peoples. They had moved into the coastal plain of Canaan as part of a larger migration of people fleeing the Aegean. One of the groups of the Sea Peoples is called the Philistines in the Hebrew Bible>.

My comment:
Again, all very interesting, but how does this actually affect the chronological anomaly set out above? The various different pieces of material which is cited should include a chronlogical table, stating what the amount of time each period was, and the Biblical text which advises that time-period. The very fact they do not do this can only raise suspicions.

Finally, the conservative theologian Prof. F. F. Bruce in The International Bible Commentary: with the NIV, (Marshall, Pickering/Zondervan, 1986) is unable to explain the chronology. For Acts 13:19, he says: 'The 450 years may extend from the patriarchs to the beginning of the Judges'.
And for 1 Kings 6;1, he remarks: 'The foundation of the temple is dated to the four hundred and eightieth year after the exodus. It is impossible to say how this figure is arrived at. K. A. Kitchen (Ancient Orient and Old Testament, 1966, pp.72-75) gives extended discussion and concludes that the 480 years is 'some kind of aggregate of overlapping periods which spanned the (approx) 300 years'.
In sum, there is no point in copying chunks of text from different sources, some of which is not even relevant, that fail to set out how the chronological contradiction can be explained.

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