Valerius Coucke

Who was Valerius Coucke?

Valerius Josephus Coucke, 1888–1951, was a Belgian scholar and priest who was professor at the Grootseminarie Brugge in the 1920s. His importance to modern scholarship comes from his writings in the field of Old Testament chronology. His study of the methods of the authors of the books of Kings and Chronicles led him to conclusions that were later discovered, independently, by Edwin R. Thiele. A distinctive of his approach was the use of citations in classical authors in order to obtain fixed dates in biblical history, most notably the date for the beginning of construction of Solomon’s Temple.