David Rohl is an archeologist and historian specialising in ancient Egypt.
His books A Test of Time (1995) and Legend (1998) elaborate upon the proposals for a major revision of the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt, and less radical revisions of the chronologies of Israel and Mesopotamia. These allow scholars to identify many of the main characters in the Old Testament with people whose names appear in archeological finds.
The first of these books, A Test of Time explores possible links between archeology and the books of Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The sequel Legend extends this to Genesis. A Test of Time was published in the USA under the title Kings and Pharoahs.
These claims remain controversial, despite even the suggested changes to the Egyptian chronology being relatively mild compared to some others that have also been seriously suggested.
The Revised Chronology is the prime concern of the Institute for the Study of Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS). Building upon the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky, the Revised Chronology puts the dates on the Traditional Chronologies Based upon Egypt out by upto 300 years at points prior to the universally accepted fixed date of 664BC for the sacking of Thebes by Asshurbanipal.
The Prime opponent to the Revised Chronology has always been Professor Kenneth Kitchen formerly of Liverpool University. Kitchen is the last surviving expert in Conventional Egyptian Chronology and it is thus he, along with archaeologists who are non-experts in chronology who blindly support him, who are the "professionals", "academics" and "experts" refered to in writings which atempt to defraud the Revised Chronology. Kitchen's major objection is to the identification of the Biblical Pharoah Shishak as a Hebrew familiar form transcription of of Rameses instead of an attempt to transcribe Shoshenk. Thus Middle and Near eastern archaeology has become divided into two schools those who support Kitchen and those in favour of a scrutinous and careful revision of certain 'facts' established more than a century ago.
For a list of some heated opinions against Rohl's work see [1]
The current lack of experts in the field other than Kitchen is the main reason that his iconoclastic and establishment upsetting doctoral thesis, of which his first book A Test of Time was a popular account of, has as of yet not been accepted. Instead the traditional dating given in the Bible for the events discussed is suggested to be inaccurate while many of the connections drawn by David are retained with the conventional Egyptian & Messopotamian chronologies.
