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Up from Egypt The Date and Pharaoh of the Exodus

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Introduction

The question of the date and pharaoh of the Exodus has been much disputed for over a

centwy and has been a favorite passion and voluminous pastime of biblical scholars The

story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt told in the first fifteen chapters of the Book of

Exodus is magnificent as literary art and inspiring as a scripture of faith It is the founding

event of a great religion and has been a symbol of salvation and freedom ever since But is it

history This question has exercised the best scholarly minds for more than a centwy but

has still to be conclusively answered Given the state of our evidence greater certitude may

forever elude us For outside of the Bible no clear references have been discovered The

Egyptian sources are silent as the tomb and Near Eastern documents say nothing Noneshy

theless the more we learn about ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern history the more realisshy

tic and authentic in its general features the story appears

Much of what we know about the second millennium BCE and the New Kingdom proshy

vides a plausible and ordinary context for the extraordinary and miraculous events of the

Exodus The problem with this plausibility is that it comes from other periods as well from

the Middle Kingdom to the Saite-Persian era as has been asserted by Donald Redford1

The absence of hard evidence has led to two main approaches to the Exodus in twentieth

century scholarship to regard the text as literature or to make the best we can of the evishy

dence we do have and to glean out the most probable historical reconstruction Many scholshy

ars laboring in these vineyards are agreed that the Exodus narrative to whatever degree it is

an imaginative production is steeped in authenticity of detail about Egyptian culture and

history John Currid and James Hoffmeier are Donald Redford for one is not

In fact the core of the story has been shown by archaeology to be highly realistic ~C I) Lemiddot

Throughout the second millennium Asiatics(and Semiteswere present in Egypt in many( ht

ways as herders traders immigrants refugees from famine recipients of foreign aid immishy

grants POWs forced labor slaves government officials and invaders The involvement of

West Asian peoples in Egyptian life was long complex and variegated The Nile Delta had

been swarming as it seemed to some xenophobic Egyptians with vile Asiatics since the

Middle Kingdom During and after the Hyksos era relations with them were conflicted and

strife-ridden

The story of Joseph and the sojourn of Israel in Egypt are clearly reflective of this general

state of affairs A story of Canaanites and bedouins who migrate into the territory of Egypt

are subjected to forced labor on the Pharaohs public building projects resist and escape led

by a charismatic figure is at every point composed out of elements that do occur and reoccur

1 Egypt Ca1utan and Israel in Andmt rrmeslPrinceton NJ Princeton University Press 1991 257-82 2 James Hoffmeier Israel in Eg)11t(Oxfoa Oxford U~versityPress 199~ John Cwrid Ancimt Egypt and the Old TestamentfGrand Rapids Mich Baker Books 199~ Donald Redford Observations on the Sojourn of the Bene-IsraeT in Exodus The Egyptitm Evidena editea by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko (Wmona Lake Eisenbrauns 1997)

in Egyptian history But the leap from plausibility to truth to pinning down this narrative in

a precise and concrete historical way as a real event like the Battle of Waterloo is an arguable

enterprise Many scholars have devoted the greatest ingenuity and scholarly acumen to doing

so

If the Exodus is to be considered a history it is of a peculiar kind-theology in the form

of history As such it is very difficult to fit it smoothly into the framework of known ancient

history Should we even expect to The composers of the Pentateuchal narratives were not

working on modem historiographic principles They had quite other fish to fry The Exodus

narrative was sacred history meant to function as a foundational epic for the origins of the

Hebrew people Such reflections have led many scholars to consign the Exodus to the realm

of epic poetry to a greater or lesser extent Like the Iliad there may be real history behind it

but transformed into art This is the view with many qualifications of Baruch Halpern and J

Maxwell Miller3 For both historical memory is embedded in the biblical narratives although

very deep indeed Notwithstanding all of this there are some that have diligently persevered

in maintaining its essential historical truth

The Standard Dates for the Exodus

Scholars now defend two principal dates for the Exodus the fifteenth century and the

thirteenth century BeE The oldest date favored by many early Egyptologists was in the

Nineteenth Dynasty with Ramesses II as the pharaoh of the Oppression and his successor

Merenptah the pharaoh of the Exodus cR Lepsius first proposed this theory in 18494

3The Exodus from Egypt Myth or Reality in The Rise ofAncient Isrf1poundl Symposiwn at the Smithsonian Instishytution October 26 1991 edited by Hershel Shanks 87-113(washington DC Biblical Archaeology Society 199~and The Exodus and the Israelite Historians Eretz Israel 24 1993 4 I rely on Bimsons account of this in Raiatingthe Exalus and Ol JSOTSupplement Series tLeiden Brill 1nO10 -=

Until modem archaeology appeared to undennine it the second oldest date in the fifshy

teenth century ~was also highly popular especially among Roman Catholic scholars In

this theory the pharaoh of the Oppression was Thutmosis III and the pharaoh of the Exoshy

dus was his successor Amenophis II As Bimson remarks by the 1890s Egyptian chronolshy

ogy had been refined to the point that a fifteenthcentury date seemed appealingly to harmoshy

nize with the date given in I Kings 61

Although a fifteenth century date is not now the most favored nonetheless there are in

certain scholarly circles a surPrising number who still sedulously defend it as the most conshy

sistent with the evidence we do have A fifteenthcentury date has the merit of keeping with

the Bibles own chronology (I Kings 61) I concern myself here only with the views of hisshy

torians not those with commitments of faith Prominent among defenders of a fifteenthmiddot

century date have been John Bimson Hans Goedicke and Gleason Archer Others such as

William Shea and Byrant Wood also think the evidence bends in the direction of the higher

date without directly defending it Others such as W F Albright most famously and Kenshy

neth Kitchen James Hoffmeier and Nahum Sarna to name a few have more recently

deemed the textual geographical and archaeological to favor a thirteenth-century dates

Some regard the evidence as too inadequate to support either date Consequently there

are advocates of alternative dates such as Gary Rendsburg who argues for the eleventh

century Some conclude that the question is beyond solution until more evidence is forthshy

coming Still others regard the effort to tie the Exodus down to one date as a futile fixation

A leading Israeli historian Abraham Malamat suggests that we should not look for a specific

date for the Exodus because it involved a steady flow of migration of Israelites from Egypt

over a long period of time6 And of course due to Hollywood biblical epics Ramesses II is

in the popular mind thought to be the pharaoh of both the Oppression and Exodus

Only in the nineteenth century did the historicity of the Exodus narrative begin to be seshy

riously questioned With the advent of biblical criticism and archaeology it became clear that

the narrative could not be taken simply as an historical report In the main scholars applied

the new textual analysis and archaeology to the task of proving the veracity of the biblical

narrative To speak only of the United States the school of Biblical archaeology inaugurated

by W F Albright predominated until recent years and found its classic statement in John

Brights Histmyoflsrael

Bright granted that we have no means of testing the details of the Bible narrative and that

the actual happenings were to be sure more complex than our dramatic narrative Noneshy

theless he believed that the biblical account was rooted in historical events Many so-called

minimalists are willing to allow that there may be some kernel of truth at the center of the

biblical narrative Bright however was much more positive in 1958 than most investigators

of the subject will risk today

There can be little doubt that ancestors of Israel had been slaves in Egypt and had escaped in some marvelous way Almost no one today would question it

The traditional date of the Exodus had been calculated on the basis of I Kings 61

It was in the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomons reign over Israel in the second month of that year the month of Ziv that he began to build the house of the Lord

It is generally agreed that King Solomon came to the throne in about 960 BCE According

to this reckoning the Exodus would have occurred in about 1440 BCE (or 1436 since he

started to build the Temple four years after he became king) This established the fifteenth

6The Exodus Egyptian Analogies in Exodus-The Egyptian EUdence edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko (Winona Lake Ind Eisenbrauns 1997) 15-26

centwy as one of the principal dates for the Exodus A fifteenthoocentwy date however is

regarded nowadays as the least probable For there are serious questions about this figure If

480 years is a realistic number then the Exodus would have taken place about 1450 BCE

that is in the time of Thutmosis III This is a most unlikely date from one point of view

but has its partisans Bright was already saying in 1958 that this date had been almost univershy

sally abandoned because it contradicted the archaeological evidence of the Conquest The

evidence for the date or even the actuality of a Conquest has since then run into its own

problems and cannot be incontrovertibly used to control the evidence for an Exodus The

higher date has since resumed some of its previous popularity

Be that as it may Nahum Sarna has pointed out other difficulties7 In the fifteenth censhy

twy Thutmosis III (1479-1425 BCE) the Napoleon of the New Kingdom as he has been

called and his son Amenophis II (1425-1401 BCE) were campaigning enensivelyin Palestine

It is very unlikely that the Exodus could have occurred during the reigns of these imperial

pharaohs There is no mention of such an event in any inscriptions or records But as has

been remarked the pharaohs were not given to referring to reverses or minor disturbances

like a slave revolt in their royal propaganda A tale of resistance to Egyptian oppression

could have originated from any period of the New Kingdom domination of Palestine but

the probability is against an escape of runaway slaves to Canaan at a time when Egypt was

exerting imperial control over the area It would indeed have been a miraculous and memoshy

rable delivery In fact this is a serious problem for any Eighteenth or Nineteenth Dynasty

date Furthermore the biblical account of joshuas conquest of Canaan does not even menshy

tion Egypt-Q strange omission if the Conquest occurred during the acme of Egyptian sushy

7 In Israel in Egypt The Egyptian Sojourn and the Exodusraquo In Ancient Israel From Abraham to the Reman Destructionofthe TfmJe edited b Hershel Shanks ashin on BiblicalArchaeolo Soci 1999) 34-54

premacy in the region These considerations argue for a later date when Egyptian power was

in decline

Sarna also agrees with Bright that a fifteenth-century date conflicts with the archaeological

evidence Bright accepted the findings of WP Albright that indicated a violent thirteenthshy

century irruption and bloody conquest of Canaan just as the Book of Joshua described Alshy

bright thought that the archaeology exhibited a pattern of city destructions in late Bronze

Age Palestine and attributed it to the invading Israelites He was joined in this assessment by

the Israeli archaeologists Yigael Yadin and Abraham Malamat8 The actuality was no doubt

more complex but at its core was a military conquest This is an absorbing question in its

own right but is beyond the scope of my paper

A fifteenth-century date is not surprisingly favored by defenders of the historical accushy

racy of the biblical account as well as those who want to trace a connection between Mosaic

monotheism and the Amarna age In their attempt to salvage the fifteenth-century date to

save the phenomena so to speak scholars have adduced other significant criticisms of a

thirteenth-century dating Both dates it must be said are so contingent on fragmentary and

interpretive reconstructions that they look at times as though they are built on shifting sand

Archaeological work in Edom Moab and Ammon was thought to show that these areas

were not settled before the thirteenth century Biblical descriptions of conflict with the

populations of these areas therefore indicated that there was no encounter before then The

critics countered that these findings in Transjordan had been adjusted in the light of later

work Another problem is historiographic assuming that the biblical account of conflict is

an historical datum in the first place

8 Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable BAR MarchiApril 1982 18

In response to the influential view of Albright and Yadin that the archeological evidence

of destruction of Canaanite cities in the thirteenth centwy confinns a conquest at that time

critics ascribe it to the Philistines and the Judges ie to peoples already in the region rather

than to recent invaders In any case a nwnber of scholars now regard the evidence for a

military invasion and conquest of Palestine in the thirteenth centwy as more problematic

and uncertain than it was for Albright and Yadin

The third reason proposed against a thirteenth century dates depends on the significance

placed on the mention of Pharaohs store-house city Rameses in Exodus 111 that the Israshy

elites were put to work building9

So they were made to work in gangs with officers set over them to break their spirit with heavy labor This is how Pharaohs store-cities Pithom and Rameses were built

Although Ramese is a common place-name in Egypt this reference is taken to be to Pi-

Ramesses the major delta capital built by Rameses II (1304-1238 BCE) around the summer

palace of his father Seti I It has been located on the same site once occupied by the Hyksos

at Avaris The later city of Pi-Ramesses existed from the reign of Horemheb (ca 1320 BCE)

to Ramesses IV (ca 1279-1140 BCE) afterward according to Kitchen it declined This would

seem to be a strong argument for a late secondmillenniwn date for the Exodus Critics atshy

tempt to dispose of it by suggesting this is a case of anachronism calling a place by a later

better-known or contemporary name for instance speaking of the Miami Indians of Ohio

in 1776 when there was no Ohio The problem with this argument is that it may imply a later

date of composition for the narrative hardly a consequence the defenders of a fifteenthshy

centwy date would welcome But it can be rebutted that such substitutions do not disprove

9 My discussion here depends heavily on Kenneth Kitchens excellent article The Exodus and bibliography bull rl ____ nl_- n-____ _l~_l L n __l 1IT__1 u ___l___ ) IIT_ V __1 n_11_-I_bullbull 100)7 7(0

the authenticity of the tradition Gardiner and Montet believed that A varisPi- Ramesse was

the great city that the Greeks called Tanis and the Bible Zoan Van Seters put Pi-Ramesses at

Qantir and be Tell el-Daba and has been followed by Kitchen Hoffmeier Bimson and

Shea There may be some consensus here but there still remains much disagreement about

the locations dates and names of other places in Goshen The whole project of verifying

the geographical references of the Exodus account and mapping out the itinerary of the esshy

caping Israelites is perhaps a game the appeal of which depends principally on how much

one trusts the accuracy and authenticity of the account But a consideration of this quesshy

tion- tracing the route of the Israelites out of Egypt over the yan suph and into Sinai- I am

afraid lies far beyond the scope of the paper

Some scholars adjust the 480 years to fit other longer or shorter chronologies by comshy

pression addition and concurrence The solution that Yamauchi found attractive to the

problem of squaring I Kings 61 with the archeology is that of Kenneth KitchentO He colshy

lapsed the 480 years of I Kings 61 to about 200 years on the conjecture that there is an

overlapping of the periods of rule of the Judges during the intermediate age between Joshua

and the United Monarchy similar to that we see in Egyptian dynastic lists rv-)- 0ci - bull c-t

~ iu~ ~ )vtgt (IQ

Sacred Arithmetic

Many scholars regard the number 480 as purely symbolic rather than literal Occurring as

it does in the Priestly strata of the Bible it is readily assumed to be typological and without

historical validity There are too many of the earmarks of schematic sacred chronology

about it The number 480 is the sum of twelve generations of forty years each A rounded-

off forty years was a traditional sacred number for the length of a generation Twelve was

likewise a typological nwnber The existence of Solomonic records of priestly generations

reaching back to the Exodus is dubious Furthermore Sarna remarks that exactly 480 years

are given in Kings as the time from the building of the Temple to the end of the Babylonian

Exile The Biblical writer placed the Temple at the center of Hebrew history Another telltale

sign may be seen in the fact that the Hebrew Bible (Gen 1513 Exod 12 614-20 1240)

makes the sojourn of Jacob and the Israelites in Egypt about four centuries reckoning these

as four patriarchal generations of 100 years each This kind of temporal symmetry leads one

to suspect that sacred figuration is at work

Who is the Pharaoh

If we accept a fifteenth century date it is interesting to speculate who is most likely to

have been the pharaoh of the Exodus then Hatshepsut Thutmosis III and Amenophis II

have all at one time or another had their backers Most of the chronological arguments for

an Eighteenth Dynasty date would place it in the reign of Thutmosis III or his son Amenoshy

phis II But the Eighteenth Dynasty seems on the face of it an inauspicious time for an exoshy

dus of escaped Israelite slaves especially in the reigns of these two pharaohs In any case let

us consider the probabilities for them individually

The Thutmosids

During the Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt reached a zenith of power and prosperity11 After

1i ~ fOo-or-gtthe expulsion of the Hyksos ~ embarked on a course of aggressive imperial expansionism

The country was ruled by a brilliant set of warrior pharaohs who commanded one of the

11 My discussion of the Thutmosids draws extensively on Maurice Grimal A Histmy ofAncient Egypt (Oxmiddot ford Blackwell 1992)199middot225

most effective anrues in the Near East After Amenophis II (c 1550-1528 BCE) the New

Kingdom basked in a centwy and half of unbroken dominance and social stability a pax

Aegyptiaca These were halcyon days for Egypt as Gardiner says when she became a world

power and extended her sway over Palestine and Syria

Thutmosis I (1504-1492 BeE) mounted the first large incursions of the New Kingdom

into Western Asia Beginning with him the Egyptians made a concerted effort to maintain an

empire in Palestine The dark experience of the Hyksos oppression during the previous genshy

erations had taught them the necessity of exerting control more forcefully over the Asiatics

Prior to the New Kingdom Egyptian intervention in the region had been limited to punitive

strikes and raids As trade expanded in the Late Bronze Age defensive bases were set up in

Western Asia Forts and canals were built along the eastern frontier of Egypt In no less than

seventeen campaigns Thutmosis III (c 1479-1425 BeE) quelled revolts in Retenu supshy

pressed the bedouins and fought off Mitannian expansionism in Nahrin and among the

Phoenician cities The later years of his reign were more peaceful and foreign relations with

the Near East and the Aegean were cordial He now turned his attention to building proshy

grams and patronizing the arts The imperious and ferocious son of Thutmosis III Amenoshy

phis II (c 1427-1400 BeE) continued his fathers campaigns in Asia ruthlessly deporting

masses of people and brutalizing prisoners in order to terrorize the local populations

On the one hand it is difficult to imagination anything like the Exodus occurring in such

glorious and aggressive reigns On the other hand eras of warfare such as this are precisely

the breeding ground of heroic and memorable exploits The policing actions against Shasu

bedouins Sinai desert peoples and Canaanites could very easily have been the milieu for

tales of escaped war prisoners deportees and forced laborers led by rebellious princes edushy

cated as hostages at the Pharaohs court There is not a shred of evidence in the Egyptian

sources but then for the Egyptians dealing with unruly Asiatics or rebellious laborers was

routine not a matter for annals or monuments

John Bimson

Although many scholars continue to subscribe to a date in the 1400s one of the most

outstanding in recent years has been John Bimson who tried to vindicate the Biblical chroshy

nology12 He thinks that Thutmosis III was the pharaoh of the Exodus when he reigned

alone He attempted to retrieve a fifteenth century date through a radical reconstruction of

Egyptian chronology He lowered the date for the transition between the Middle and Late

Bronze Ages in order to correlate site destructions usually associated with the end of the

Hyksos era with the arrival of rampaging Israelites He dated the Exodus to c 1470 the

Conquest forty years later c 1430 and drops the end of the MBII usually dated to 1550 to

1430 Needless to say such an effort has not met with wide acceptance As Egyptian chroshy

nology provides the framework of so much of ancient Near Eastern history not surprisingly

this audacious venture was subjected to severe scrutiny which led Bimson to retreat from

his revised chronology These problems of chronology are extremely complicated so I refer

you to Stieyenings lucid analysis of them13

-

Critics furthetmore say that Bimsons new chronology obviated none of the difficulties

of a fifteenthcentury date14 These are chiefly two A fifteentholCentury date for the Exodus

and an early fourteenth century date for the Conquest puts these events in the period of

maximum Egyptian power and control in Palestine How could these things have occurred

without a major confrontation with the Egyptian army and without a word of the Egyptians

12Re1ating the Exodus rrnd Conquest(gOT Supplement Series 5middotLeiden Brill 1978J 13 Stieb1ng 137f

in the biblical account Joshua and Judges show no sign of them (but then they show no

sign of the campaigns of Merenptah and Ramesses III either for the lower date) And very

few of the sites in Palestine that are mentioned in the biblical account were destroyed or even

occupied at that time In short a fifteenth-century date just does not fit into the political and

archaeological picture of the time

Hatshepsut

A number of scholars have and still do find Hatshepsut (1478-1458 BCE) an appealing

figure for the Exodus drama A number of authors have imagined that Hatshepsut the

daughter of Thutmosis I half-sister and wife of Thutmosis II step-mother and regent to

Thutmosis III in her youth was the daughter of pharaoh who rescued the infant Moses

from the bulrushes of the Nile Then about thirty-five years later Thutmosis III took power

and consigned her usurpation to a dimnatio rmmoriae Moses was obliged to flee to the counshy

try of Midian He later returned and entered into conflict with Amenophis II who is the

pharaoh of the Exodus This historical romance seems to be especially popular among the

French

Gleason Archer subscribes to a variant of this scenarioIs He believes that Hyksos rulers

began a policy of repressing the Israelites subjecting them to hard labor and retarding their

population growth Thutmosis I (1539-1514 BCE or thereabouts) continued this anti-Israelite

policy even more sternly since the Israelites worshipping their invisible god refused to asshy

similate into Egyptian culture A time-frame for events following a 1526 birth date for Moses

agrees with an adoption by a very independent strong-willed princess like Hatshepsut

Moses would then have been about forty years old in 1486 when Thutmosis III engineered

the assassination as Archer thinks probable of his stepmother and seized power Moses

fled the country and returned forty years later when Thutmosis III passed away Amenophis

II (1425-1401 BCE) was the pharaoh of the Exodus and his oldest son died in the tenth

plague Archer moreover thinks that Reharakhtis promise to the younger prince Thutmosis

IV (1401-1390 BCE) that he would become pharaoh if he cleared away the sand from the

shrine between the Sphinxs paws proves his unexpected accession A date of 1445 BCE for

the Exodus is thusly sustained

Hans Goedicke on the Island of Thera

Hans Goedicke is of the view that Hatshepsut herself was the pharaoh of the Exodus He

has worked out one of the most ingenious theories of the Exodus by connecting it with a

volcanic eruption on Thera16

The most notorious attempt to explain the miraculous events of the Exodus by catashy

strophic causation is of course that of Velikovsky17 He believed that ancient texts myths

legends and epics preserved cultural memories of a disaster due to a comet that passed exshy

tremely close to the earth around 1450 BCE This comet was ejected from Jupiter As it

passed it caused all the spectacular phenomena described in Exodus--darkness burning

hail the Nile bloody with a rain of red fiery meteoric dust a tidal wave generated by gravishy

tational perturbations and the wall of water that swept Pharaohs chariots away The comet

later returned causing the sun to stop during joshuas siege of Gibeon After colliding with

Mars it finally settled down into orbit as the planet Venus

16Hershel Shanks The Exodus and the Crossing of Red Sea According to Hans Goedickeraquo BAR VII 5 (SeptlOct 1981421 Charles Kralmalkov A Critique of Professor Goedickes Exodus Theories BAR VII 5 fSeptlOct 198~ sf

Velikovsky thought all this could be read out of texts such as the Admnitions ofIfJtfUpoundr

Needless to say such questionable readings were sharply attacked as were his mutilations of

Egyptian chronology Nevertheless cataclysmic theories have made a comeback in recent

years in astronomy and geology most popularly with the theoty of the asteroidal demise of

the dinosaurs

Goedicke as a leading Egyptologist and archaeologist has advanced a theoty of geologishy

cal rather than cosmic causation He created a sensation in 1981 when he proposed that not

only did the Exodus happen but that the crossing of the yam suf wherein the Egyptians

drowned was an actual event It occurred in 1477 BCE which by the standard chronology

places it in the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmosis III He believed that it took place

on the coastal plain west of Suez A giant tidal wave or tsunami swept over the Nile delta

causing a flash flood that drowned the Egyptians This tidal wave was the result of a volcanic

explosion on Thera Much speculation has risen over an eruption on Theraj it has been seen

as the putting an end to Minoan civilization and as the origin of the legend of Adantis Many

have attributed the miracles of Exodus to it as well the darkness in the middle of the day

swarms of insects lightening severe hail smothered and starved livestock pink dust turning

the Nile red the pillars of cloud and fire and even the propitiatoty sacrifice of first-boms

These theories are all to say the least vety doubtful as is I am sony to say Goedickes

own ingenious coincidence The most recent geological studies have shifted the date for the

eruption back before 1525 BCE and into the seventeenth-centuty date And it is improbable

that volcanic ash and a tsunami from north of Crete could have had the cataclysmic impact

on Egypt reported in Exodus

Goedicke also supports his view that these events occurred in the reign of Hatshepsut by

his readings of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions and Hatshepsuts Temple Inscription at Speos

Artemidos In the former he takes Bamiddotalat to refer to Hatshepsut and in the latter the Seshy

mitic immigrants shemau expelled from Egypt as the Israelites Critics say that Goedickes

readings are based on questionable translations The Asiatics referred to were most likely the

Hyksos which might at the most indicate a connection of the Exodus with the Hyksos exshy

pulsion

What I find interesting about Goedickes theory are his ideas about the Israelites The Joshy

seph story indicates how the Israelites came to Egypt They were a sedentary people not

nomads who immigrated to Egypt from southern Palestine as part of a wave of Semitic

movement during the Second Intermediate Period that included the Hyksos Goedicke

thinks that the Israelites were mercenaries who had been invited into Egypt and rebelled

against being subjected to forced labor They were settled as garrisons at Pithom and Raamshy

ses (He does not accept that these are Ramesside clues) They lost favor and requested reshy

lease from their employment which was granted after long delays poeticized as the ten

plagues The Egyptians did indeed very often enlist foreigners as allies and troops- that

much is quite plausible

William Shea and the Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions

William Shea also believes that the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions support a fifteenth rather

J

than a thirteenth centwy date1S He is of the view that the Proto-Sinaitic script originated in

the sixteenth or fifteenth centwy BCE and was in use until the thirteenth century when it

t 18 New Light on the Exodus and on Construction of the Tabernacle Andnws Uniwrsity Seminary Studies 25 l 199 73-96

died out Most interestingly he connects these inscriptions with the presence of the Israelites

in Sinai The Egyptians conducted mining operations in the Sinai particularly for turquoise

There were Egyptianized settlements there with temples such as that of Hathor the goddess

of the turquoise mining region at Serabit el-Khadem Semitic peoples in the Sinai did mining

and metalworking for the Egyptians Shea thinks that one inscription actually refers to Hoshy

bab the brother-in-law of Moses the congregation of Israel during the sojourn in the wilshy

derness and a mighty furnace in which the Kenites smelted bronze ore for the construction

of the tabernacle He also believes the evidence indicates that the Israelites took a southerly

route into this region around Serabit el-Khadem in southern Sinai Mt Sinai should be loshy

cated there

As noted above proponents of a fifteenth century date have the daunting task of exshy

plaining the mention of the city of Raamses in Exodus 111 and of Israel in the Merenptah

Stele (co 1207 BeE) both of which appear strongly to connect the Exodus with the thirteenth

century As noted before it has been argued that the mention of Raamses is an anachronism

Some scholars have tried to circumvent the Merenptah Stele with the findings of Israel

Finkelstein that there is a gap of several centuries between a thirteenth-century date and the

appearance of archaeologically identifiable Israelite sites in Canaan This may be parenthetishy

cally consistent with the determinative designation of Israel on the Stele as an unsettled

people and not a city Unfortunately it argues even more forcefully against a fifteenthmiddotcenshy

tury date because it leaves a hiatus of several more centuries until the appearance of Israel in

the archaeological evidence for Palestine In the end the possibility has to be considered as

does Baruch Halpern that the stories of exodus and settlement conquest originated sepashy

rately or that the relations between Israelites or proto-Israelite tribesmen in Egypt and Palshy

estine are more complex and protracted than one national migration

Ramesses II and Merenptah

Most scholars think that there is a better fit between the biblical account and a date in the

Nineteenth Dynasty The picture of Palestine in the Books of Joshua and Judges confonns

much more with the chaos and turbulence at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning

of the Iron Age c 1200-1050 BCE when Egyptian power was waning19 The toponyms in

Exodus such as Raamses Succoth and Pithom appear to be Ramessicijzand there are no coshy

gent reasons to assume otherwise A Nineteenth Dynasty context when the pharaohs were

undertaking large building projects in the Delta when it had become an important staging

area for military operations the capital had been moved there and the name Ramesses was

ubiquitous makes the long reign of Ramesses (1279-1213 BCE) the most probable The trashy

ditional view was that Ramesses II was the pharaoh of the Oppression and Merenptah of the

Exodus despite Cecil B DeMille Stiel)ling and Kitchen think that the Exodus most likely

did happen during the reign of Ramesses himself20

191n support of a late date of the Exodus c 1250 BCE John Defelice looks at metallurgical use in the Hebrew Bible sources of tin and copper and trade patterns in the Late Bronze Age He believes that the evidence shows a loss of metal technology in Canaan at this time He infers that the narrative traces from Exodus to I Kings of this loss coheres with the archaeological record which shows that trade was disrupted and the sources of tin were blocked off by the coinciding invasions of Sea Peoples Philistines and Israelites in the thirteenth centwy As a maximalist Defelice concludes that this demonstrates a thirteentlJ(entwy ConquestSettlement of Canaan just as the Bible recounts This fit of archaeology and narrative buttresses a thirteenthcentwy much better than a fifteenth-centwy date when stable international palace trade was flourishing in the Levant and power of the Eighteenth Dynasty was at its apogee In this scenario Israel must have moved out of Egypt beshyfore the political turbulence and economic collapse at the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty and settled in Canaan within a generation of the wandering in the wilderness Tin and Trdde An A rrhaeanetalJur Approach to Dating the Exrxius Dies submitted to MiamiUnivers Oxford Ohio 1994) 20 Stietfmg William H Out 0the Desert A andthe ExrxiusConquest Narratire BuffaloiNY Prometheus Books 198 38-63 Kenneth Kitchen laquo es Succoth and Pithom Exrxius SympsiumWho Was the Pharshyaoh 0the ExrxiusSponsored by Th ear East Archaeological Society April 23-25 Memphis Tennessee 198

When Flinders Petrie found the Merenptah Stele in 1895 it was a sensation and caused

considerable confusion for the received view that Ramesses II was the pharaoh of the Opshy

pression and Merenptah the pharaoh of the Exodus If Israel was already a people in Palesshy

tine in 1207 BCE when did the Exodus occur Some decided that Merenptah could not be

the pharaoh Nevertheless many scholars then and now have continued to hold to the old

view as did Petrie himself Some took the Stele to be referring to an incident subsequent to

the Exodus and others like Montet believed that it referred to the Exodus itself More reshy

cendy the French scholar Maurice Bucaille has actually proposed that the mummy of Mershy

enptah show the signs of the death by drowning he suffered according to the Bible acshy

count21

Apropos of Merenptah Frank Yurco has made some startling and controversial discovshy

eries He thinks that the military victories celebrated on the Merenptah Stele were illustrated

on reliefs at the temple of Karnak He identifies the men dtcted in one battle scene as Isshy

middot 1 f dr R dg~ VOd hinksrJAcff-ShJob d)oV ~d~ rJrae tes m a Canaarute-sty e li 0 ess amey erus -thls an t ~ the asu e ouMs c eshy

61t)) r h ~ v (~ to- ~picted are to be so identified Yurco even more startlingly thiriKs that anothrlPscriptioq inshy

Ls-ClJC1b dicates that Ramesses first-born son and crown prince Amun-her-khepesh-ef perished

young c 1259-49 BCE22

Albright most influentially defended the theory that Ramesses II was himself the pharaoh

of the Exodus and not just the Oppression3 He seems to have thought that there was a

two-phased Exodus an earlier one by the Joseph tribes whom he identified with the Habiru

c 1400 BCE and by the Leah tribes led by Moses c 1290 BCE He therefore placed the

21Maurice Bucaille Moise et Pharacn Us Hebreux en Egypt4paris Seghers 199 143f 22 See Frank Yurco Merenptahs Campaigns and Israels Origins in Exodus The Egyptian Eviden1 edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko(Winona Lake Eisenbrauns 199zjand Anson Rainey Can You Name the Panel with the Israelites BAR XVI1 6(199~ 56-60 CA_ n_~~_ 1Q70 +~~ JP~P bull

Exodus early in the reign of Ramesses and the beginning of the Oppression under his predeshy

cessor Seti I when the Egyptians were engaged in a new build-up in the delta with increased

forced labor Many scholars have followed his view Wright Bright de Vaux Aharoni

Kitchen Stjieb)fug and Halpern

Alternative Dates

Given the problems of the conventional dates some scholars have turned to more radical

hypotheses ranging from the Early Bronze Age to the twelfth century and beyond

The Twelfth Century

One such is Gary Rendsburg who makes a case for the 1100s or Iron Age 124 The Bible

relates an idealized history a narrative filled with epic qualities He concurs with those who

believe that there exists sufficient evidence on the Egyptological side to substantiate the bashy

sic picture portrayed in Exodus but that recent archaeological evidence better supports a

twelfth-century date There are the faults with both standard dates that we have already disshy

cussed Proponents of the fifteenth century most eloquently Bimson must ignore or explain

away the reference to Raamses and the mention of Israel in the Merneptah stele Proponents

~~Ao--~ o-rd of the thirteenth-century date must explain away th~ habintythe Amarna letters The facr flo

- ~ ~ that Israelite sites are not archaeologically attested until the twelfth century is also a problem

for both dates Many sites that the Israelites conquered such as Jericho Ai and Arad did not

exist in the thirteenth century Ussishkin on the other hand has excavated a destruction

layer at Lachish c 1150 which supports a twelftlrtentury date

24 The Date of the Exodus and the ConquestSettlement The Case for the 1100s Vetus Testa17lJ11Wn 41 (199) 510-27

On the basis of such arguments Rendsburg places the Exodus in the reign of Ramesses 1[[

(1195-1164 BeE) This has a certain plausibility Ramesses III was the last great pharaoh of

the New Kingdom He repelled the invasions of Sea Peoples including the Philistines who

were on the move again in the twelfth century in the Eastern Mediterranean from the borshy

ders of Egypt commemorating his victories in the reliefs at Medinet Habu Despite these

victories Egyptian power soon went into a steep decline and her sporadic control of Palesshy

tine completely collapsed The Exodus is more convincingly dated in Rendsburgs view to

such a period of turmoil and catastrophe when the Egyptians were diverted by serious danshy

ger and their dominance was falling apart than to the earlier and stronger Ramesssids

In fact Rendsburg considers the mention of Raamses in Exodus 111 to refer to the opshy

pression under the early pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty He also interprets the mention

of Philistia in Exodus 1317 as referring to the Sea Peoples Additionally he tries to reintershy

pret the Merenptah Stele by proposing that Israel refers to Israelites enslaved in Israel and

that not all the Israelite tribes were in Egypt Hoffmeier finds these proposals strained it is

better to proceed by accepting that the Merenptah Stele precludes a date after 1200 BeE

Sixth-Fifth Century

Philip Davies makes an intriguing suggestion to date the exodus to the post-Exilic peshy

riod2s As a minimalist Davies believes that the Biblical Israel is something quite different

from the historical Israel and it is improper to harmonize them In his In Searrh ifAncient Isshy

rael he examines the sociology of the biblica1literature- how it came to be produced by

whom and for what purposes He sees ancient Israel as largely a later scribal construct The

Hebrew Scriptures as we have them were compositions of the Persian and Hellenistic perishy

25Tn SpmrJnf AndentIsrael (Sheffiel heffieldAcademic Press 1992 143

ods The Hasmonean Judean state (200-70 BeE) was a major stimulus to their formation as a

national heritage The Exodus was one of a number of alternative stories of origin through

immigration included in the holy books Davies therefore agrees with the other minimalists)

Thompson and Lemche)n seeing the Exodus as a foundation myth for the Judean nation

Davies tends to think that the biblical narratives are about as historically true as King

Arthur and Camelot To be sure for Davies the composition of the Exodus story is more

plausibly located in the Persian period than in the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age As many

have observed the Mosaic story of a return to Canaan from Egypt may be an imaginative

dramatization of the return from Babylonian exile to the Persian province of Yehud But in

the case of the exodus Davies offers a novel genesis It may represent the experiences of

Judeans who went down to Egypt at the end of the sixth centwy after the fall of Jerusalem

and later returned They may have been Judeans and Israelite Palestinians serving the Pershy

sians as garrison troops such as those at Elephantine who fled from hostile Egyptians during

a period of revolt against Persian rule A man may even have led them with the Egyptian

~~ ~ ~ ~~ IIV ~CiT-- IAI tOt- f ~Lo name Moses rO h If ~ 6 TcjMtn) frrch~s ~ ~c5heVt~

What I find compelling about this thy is thaia band of mercenaries again apears as it ~ b-~ AlA t~~ tgtf Cofoc~ ~C(rs t t6~

does in Goedickes fifteenth-centwy poundaximalist hypothesis Escaping mercenaries or harshy

assed bedouins or a deponed population whose deliverance from the Egyptian army was

attributed to Gods handiwork were more likely origins of the Exodus tradition than a

united national mass migration

The End of the Early Bronze Age

One of the most radical alternatives places the Exodus at the end of the Early Bronze

Age c 2300 BeE Building on the work of Kathleen Kenyon some Israeli archaeologists have

associated the Exodus and Conquest with the transition f5Hn Early Bronze III to Middle

Bronze I The evidence of destruction of EBIII cities such as Jericho and Ai and the cultural

break at the end of the Early Bronze Age is attributed to semi-nomadic invaders MBI culshy

ture seems to have spread from the Sinai to Transjordan and thence into Palestine accordshy

ing to Rudolf Cohen in the pattern Joshua recounts He does not identify the MBI people

with the Israelites but suggests that the traditions incorporated into the Exodus account may

have a very ancient inspiration reaching back to the MBI The migration of these MBI peoshy

pIe from the southwest made a lasting impression memory of which was preserved as a

tribal tradition for generations~oPted by the Israelites as their own Emmanuel Anati reshy

gards as evidence for the Sinaitic origins of this people the rock art found at Har Karkom in

the Negev There are clearly many problems with this theory for a discussion of which I reshy

fer you to Stie~g26

Moses Amarna and the Hyksos

I cannot conclude my alternatives without mentioning in passing the possibility that

Moses was an Egyptian In Ontra Apiunem Josephus gave excerpts of Manethos account

which connected the Exodus of the Israelites with the expulsion of the Hyksos to West Asia

and also with an expulsion of lepers led by a rebellious Egyptian priest named Osarsiph who

is taken to represent Moses Other Greek writers gave curious variants of this account The

problem of whether or not the Hebrews and the Hyksos were related is one of the most

26 0uJ ofthe Desertf A~ ctnd the ExodusConquest Narratite (Buffalo NY Prometheus Books 1989))123shy137

puzzling and unsolved Donald Redford goes so far as to assert that the expulsion of the

Hyksos is the only real history we have that has the remotest connection to the Exodus He

also correlates the legend of the lepers with the Amama period The idea that Moses was an

Egyptian has given rise to much speculation about the influence of Amama monotheism

on Hebrew religion most famously Freud in his Moses andMonotheism These questions are

gly I d J A ely f hi ~I the~E- ~b~~vwshyfascmatm exp ore ill an ssmann s stu 0 mnemo story ill JVJoses gypttan - Goo

shows how cultural memories of the Hyksos expulsion and the purging of the Amama

abomination were combined and projected onto the Hebrews This suppressed cultural

memory is the only trace of the Exodus on the Egyptian side

Conclusions

There is not a shred of hard extrabiblical textual or archaeological evidence that the biblishy

cal narrative as it now stands is historically true The Bible tells a story that never happened

as far as the Egyptians were concerned All we have is the biblical account The lack of any

verifying evidence has led some to deny the account entirely any historicity and regard it a

later and imaginative construction They may grant that it has a kernel of tradition at its orishy

gins but has been epically elaborated into a majestic saga of godly deliverance to serve religshy

ious and national purposes Many other scholars however have persevere~in helt~acshycording the biblical account more historical validity than the so-called minimalists The

maximalists have devised many ingenious theories and reconstructions none of which can

be decisively convincing due to the dearth of evidence Although there is no Egyptim evishy

dence that offers direct testimony to the Exodus as described in the Bible there are hints

that suggest that something like an exodus with a lower case e could have happened on a

smaller less heroic scale the tradition of which was magnified into an epic of national mishy

gration and foundation by later Hebrew scholars Exciting stories of plagues and of the sea

sweeping Pharaohs chariots away may be pure fiction but there is a lot of circumstantial

plausibility and verisimilitude in a tale of forced Asiatic laborers a maltreated minority

population group mercenaries or deportees escaping from the Egyptian army in the Northshy

east Delta Redford has had ideas along these lines27 There is not enough concrete evidence

however to pin it down more precisely than that Such minor occurrences do not appear in

the Egyptian sources simolv because theMwere of no interest to them ~~~v~ T U

TheJabint menriplled in the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century are no longer confishy ~ t iIf)(jnT)

dently identified with the ibn or Hebrews but are seen as a congeries of mercenaries refushy

gees renegades bandits nomads slaves and other marginal and shifting populations not as

an ethnic group Some such peoples may have fonned a component of proto-Israel it is preshy

cisely among such people that the Exodus legend may have arisen or among Bedouin peoshy

pIes flltering in and out of the eastem delta like the Shasu mentioned in Egyptian literature

and government reports from frontier officials The Shasu too may have been among the

elements making up the proto-Israelites in the view of Anson Rainey28

A fifteenthcentury date was the oldest and long the most popular date since it vindicated

the Bibles own chronology However with the discovery of the Memeptah Stele and exshy

panding knowledge of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age and its mishy

grations wars and massive social breakdowns a thirteenth-century date has emerged as the

most favored The origins of the Israelites and of the Exodus tradition are now thought to

have come out of this period of collapse of Bronze Age civilization The evidence for the

Exodus is bound up with the problems of the conquest andor settlement of Canaan a

27 See Redford Donald Redford Observations on the Sojourn of the Bene-Israel Exodus tbe Egyptian Evishydence edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko (Winona Lake Eisenbrauns 1997) 28 Rainer1991 56-60

principal one being that it is not dear that the traditions of the Exodus and Conquest were

originally connected They may in fact have been two separate migration sagas of the sevshy

eral that the Bible contains later woven together Moreover the thrust of current work on

the Conquest is to deny that there WtS one The peaceful-emergence-in the-Palestinian-hillshy

country model of Noth and Alt as developed recently by Israel Finkelstein and others has

prevailed in recent scholarship

Bibliography

Assmann Jan Moses the Egyptian Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press 1997 Ahlstr6m Gosta Who Wm the Israelites Winona Lake Ind Eisenbrauns 1986 Albright W F Frcm the Stene Age to Onistianity Monotheism and the Histariad Process (1940) 2nd

ed Garden City NJ Doubleday 1957 -- The Biblical Periafirm Abraham to Ezra New York Harper amp Row 1963 --- Archaeology and the date of the Hebrew Conquest of Palestine BASOR 58

1935 10-18 ~~(~N~I~~Iamp- Moses in Historical and Theological Perspective In Magnalia Dei ed F Cross et al 1976 120-31

Anati Emmanuel The Mountain ofGcx1 New York Rizzoli 1987 Bietak Manfred Comments on Exodus In Egypt Israel and Sinai edited by Anson Rainey

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv University Press 1987 Bimson John Ra1ating the Exodus and G1nquest ]SOT Supplement Series S Leiden Brill

1978 Bright John A History ofIsrael London SCM Press 1960 su h So 3 ~ ~ r W Bucaille Maurice Moise et Pharaon Les Hebreux en Egypte Paris Seghers 1995 Cassuto U A Orrrrnmtary azthe Book ofExodus Jerusalem Magnes 1967 Cun1d John Ancient Egypt andthe Old Testament Grand Rapids Mich Baker Books 1997 Davies Phillip In Search ofAncient Israel Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press 1992 De Felice John Tin and Trade An A~ Approaih to Datirg the Exodus IlissVh~ T~t

Submitted w Miami University Oxford Ohio 1994

De Wit C The Date and Ratteofthe Exodus London Tyndale 1960 Doumas Christos Thera and the Exodus-When Was the Island Destroyed BAR XVII

ltJanlFeb 199~ 48 DurIiam] I ExodUs Waco Texas Word Book 1987 Exodus The Egyptitrn Eviderre Edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko Winona Lake r1J

Eisenbrauns1997 Exodus Symjmium W1u Was the Phar(Jf) of the Exodus Sponsored by The Near East Arshy

chaeological Society April 23-25 Memphis Tennessee 1987 Finkelstein Israel The Arclxunlagy ofthe Israelite Settlenmt Jerusalem Israel Exploration Socishy

ety1988 Forster K P Texts Storms and the Thera Eruption fNES 55~99~ 1-14 Freud Sigmund Moses and Monotheim Translated from the German by Katherine Jones

New York Vintage Books 1939 Gardiner Alan Egypt ofthe Pharadls An InmxluctWn Oxford Clarendon Press 1961 Goedicke Hans Exodus The Ancient Egyptian Evidence A paper delivered at the Who

Was the Pharaoh of the Exodus symposium Memphis Tennessee April 23-25 Grimal Nicolas A History ofAncient Egypt Oxford Blackwell 1992 Halpern Baruch The Exodus from Egypt Myth or Reality In TIx Rise ofAncient Israel

Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution October 26 1991 edited by Hershel Shanks 87-113 Washington DC Biblical Archaeology Society 1992

--- The Exodus and the Israelite Historians Eretz Israel 24(99) _ Hoerth Alfred ArCharolntyandtheOId Testament Grand Rapids Mich Baker Books 1998 Hoffmeier James Israel in Egypt Oxford Oxford University Press 1997 Kitchen Kenneth The Third I~eria1 in Egypt (100-650 BC) Wanninster Aris amp

Phillips 1973 --- Ancient Orimt and the Old Testammt 0Jicap InterVarsity Press 1966 -- The Bible in its Wotfa Downers Grove InterVarsity Press 1978 ----The Exodus in The Arufur Bible Dictionary edited by David Noel Freedman ~

New York Doubleday 199~700-708

-- Pharadl TriumJlxt~ The Life and Times ofRarmsses IL Mississauga Benben 1982 Lemche Niels Peter The Israelites in History and Tradition London Society for Promoting

Christian Knowledge 1998 -- Ancient Israel A New History ofIsraelite Society Sheffield JSOT Press 1988 Malamat Abraham The Exodus Egyptian Analogies In Exodus-Tx Egyptian ETlidena

edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko Winona Lake Ind Eisenbrauns 1997 Manetho With an English translation by W G WaddelL Cambridge Mass Harvard Univershy

sity Press London William Heinemann 1980 Miller J Maxwell and John Hayes A History ofAncient Israel andJudah Philadelphia West-

minster press 1986 Montet Pierre Egypt and the Bible Philadelphia Fortress Press 1968 Pfeiffer Charles Egypt andthe Bible Grand Rapids Baker Books 1963 Redford Donald Akhenaten The Heretic King Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1984 --- Egypt Ctnaan and Israel in Ancient Trmes Princeton N] Princeton University Press

1992 -- Observations on the Sojourn of the Bene-Israel Exodus The Egyptian Evidenre edited by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko Winona Lake Eisenbrauns 1997

Rendsburg Gary The Date of the Exodus and the ConquestSettlement The Case for the 1100s Vetus Testamentwn 42 1992510-27

The Rise ofAncient Israel Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution October 26 1991 edited by Hershel Shanks 87-113 Washington DC Biblical Archaeology Society 1992

Sarna Nahum M Exploring Exodus The Heritage ofBiliical Israel New York Schocken 1986 ---Israel in Egypt The Egyptian Sojourn and the Exodus In Ancient Israel Fran

Abrahum to the Reman Destrudion ofthe Tenple Edited by Hershel Shanks 33-54 Washingshyton Biblical Archaeology Society 1999

Shanks Hershel The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red sea According to Hans Goedicke BAR VII 5~eptJOct 198~ 42

Shea W H New Light on the Exodus and on Construction of the Tabernacle An~ UntwsitY Sfminary Studies 251l98l73-96

Stie~g William H Out ofthe Desert A~ rmd the ExodusOJnquest Narratire Buffalo NY Prometheus Books 1989

Stigers H Biblical and Archaeological data Bearing on the Late date for the Exodus Near EastemArrhamfutjcaL Society BulletinJ28~ 5-28

Thera and the Aegean Warld 111 C~ Proceedings of the Third International Congress Santorini Greece 39 Sept 1989 edited by D A Hardy London The Thera Foundation 1990

Thompson Thomas Early History of the Israelite Prople Fran the Written and A~ SOUteS Leiden E J Brill 1992

Van Seters John The Hyksos A New Imestiflltion New Haven Yale University Press 1966 -- The Life ofMoses The Yahwist as Historian in ExodusmiddotNurnters Philadelphia Westminshy

ster1994 Whitelam Keith W The Immtion ofAncient Israel The Silencing ofPalestinian History london

and New York Routledge 1996 Yadin Yigael Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Relishy

able BARfy1archApri1198j ~ 18 Yamauchi Edwin The Stones and the Scriptures Philadelphia and New York Lippincott Comshy

pany1972 Yurco Frank Merenptahs Palestinian Campaign and Israels Origins In Exodus The

Egyptian Ellidena edited by S Frerichs and Leonard H Lesko 27-56 Winona Lake Ind Eisenbrauns 1997

Exodus The problem with this plausibility is that it comes from other periods as well from

the Middle Kingdom to the Saite-Persian era as has been asserted by Donald Redford1

The absence of hard evidence has led to two main approaches to the Exodus in twentieth

century scholarship to regard the text as literature or to make the best we can of the evishy

dence we do have and to glean out the most probable historical reconstruction Many scholshy

ars laboring in these vineyards are agreed that the Exodus narrative to whatever degree it is

an imaginative production is steeped in authenticity of detail about Egyptian culture and

history John Currid and James Hoffmeier are Donald Redford for one is not

In fact the core of the story has been shown by archaeology to be highly realistic ~C I) Lemiddot

Throughout the second millennium Asiatics(and Semiteswere present in Egypt in many( ht

ways as herders traders immigrants refugees from famine recipients of foreign aid immishy

grants POWs forced labor slaves government officials and invaders The involvement of

West Asian peoples in Egyptian life was long complex and variegated The Nile Delta had

been swarming as it seemed to some xenophobic Egyptians with vile Asiatics since the

Middle Kingdom During and after the Hyksos era relations with them were conflicted and

strife-ridden

The story of Joseph and the sojourn of Israel in Egypt are clearly reflective of this general

state of affairs A story of Canaanites and bedouins who migrate into the territory of Egypt

are subjected to forced labor on the Pharaohs public building projects resist and escape led

by a charismatic figure is at every point composed out of elements that do occur and reoccur

1 Egypt Ca1utan and Israel in Andmt rrmeslPrinceton NJ Princeton University Press 1991 257-82 2 James Hoffmeier Israel in Eg)11t(Oxfoa Oxford U~versityPress 199~ John Cwrid Ancimt Egypt and the Old TestamentfGrand Rapids Mich Baker Books 199~ Donald Redford Observations on the Sojourn of the Bene-IsraeT in Exodus The Egyptitm Evidena editea by Ernest Frerichs and Leonard Lesko (Wmona Lake Eisenbrauns 1997)




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Conclusions










































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Alternative Dates



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cated there






































count21

















Alternative Dates



The Twelfth Century





























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fer you to Stie~g26


















Conclusions










































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count21

















Alternative Dates



The Twelfth Century





























Sixth-Fifth Century










































fer you to Stie~g26


















Conclusions










































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count21

















Alternative Dates



The Twelfth Century





























Sixth-Fifth Century










































fer you to Stie~g26


















Conclusions










































Bibliography













































Alternative Dates



The Twelfth Century





























Sixth-Fifth Century










































fer you to Stie~g26


















Conclusions










































Bibliography
























































Sixth-Fifth Century










































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Conclusions










































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fer you to Stie~g26


















Conclusions










































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Conclusions










































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Conclusions










































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Bibliography















































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