Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen provides the answer :. It derives from a phrase used for the royal palace and court until the New Kingdom when, in the midth Dynasty, it came to be used of the king himself. From the 10th cent. On a more positive note, I believe there is evidence for the presence of Israel in Egypt, albeit indirect.
First, there is evidence for Asiatic slaves in Egypt during the period of the Sojourn, some even bearing Biblical names Aling ; Hoffmeier 61— 62, —16; Luft ; David — Secondly, the earliest Asiatic settlement at Tell el-Daba has all the earmarks of being Israelite, including a four-room house, a plan adopted by the Israelites when they became sedentary during the judges period, and a tomb which is possibly that of Joseph Wood No Evidence for a Conquest The second major argument raised against the validity of the Exodus account is that archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Conquest as described in the book of Joshua is unhistorical McKenzie :.
Excavation over the past half century has revealed no evidence of destruction, and in some cases no occupation… for most of the cities… supposedly conquered by the invading Israelites. The two most famous examples, Jericho and Ai, are transparent etiologies [stories made up to explain something, such as a ruin]. Jericho [according to the dating of Kathleen Kenyon] also was unwalled at the time of the supposed conquest.
Its acquisition by Israel, therefore, symbolized the complete possession of the land. Since there was no Conquest, the Israelites could not have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, ergo, no Exodus. As readers of Bible and Spade know, evidence for the Conquest is one of our favorite subjects, and we have published a number of articles on the topic on Ai: Wood a, b, a, b, c, , —68, c; see also Briggs ; on Jericho: Wood , , c, —64; see also Ashley and Aust , so we will not repeat that information here.
Suffice it to say that the supposed discrepancies between the archaeological findings and the Biblical record concerning the Conquest are due to bad scholarship and improper interpretation of the archaeological data, not on any shortcomings of the Bible.
In fact, archaeology, when properly understood, demonstrates the accuracy and eyewitness nature of the Biblical text with regard to Conquest events. The Thirteenth Century Exodus Theory Those who believe that there was an actual Exodus generally fall into two camps: those that believe that it happened in the 13th century BC, and those that believe that it happened in the 15th century BC.
We shall begin by briefly reviewing the 13th century theory. The two main reasons put forward for placing the Exodus in the 13th century BC are the mention of the city of Rameses in Exodus and the destruction of Hazor recorded in Joshua Exodus In Exodus we read:.
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. As mentioned above, the ancient city of Rameses built by Rameses the Great Rameses II is well known from Egyptian records and archaeological excavation. This particular theory has gained favor with many scholars and, as a result, Rameses II is the Pharaoh of the Exodus in Hollywood and the popular media. There are, however, insurmountable obstacles associated with this reconstruction.
The way scholars who favor this date deal with the Biblical data is to either explain it away or ignore it. The primary Scripture for determining the date of the Exodus is 1 Kings , which states:. Late-date proponents explain away this Scripture by saying that the years cannot be taken literally, but must be understood as a figurative number. It is really 12 idealized generations of 40 years each.
Of course, this is an approximation, so the actual date could vary a few years either way from Since Solomon began to build the Temple in year , month 2, the elapsed time was years plus between 15 and 45 days. From Heman the musician, who lived in the time of David, back to Korah, who lived in the time of Moses, there were 18 generations 1 Chr — Adding one additional generation takes us to the time of Solomon, resulting in a total of 19 generations, far more than the imagined 12 generations of the late-date theorists.
Judges In this passage Jephthah tells the king of Ammon that Israel had been living in the land for years prior to the beginning of the Ammonite oppression. Although we do not know precisely when the Ammonite oppression began, it had to have been sometime around BC Davis ; Ray 99; Steinmann , placing the Conquest at ca.
The only explanation for Judges from the late-date camp that I am aware of is that of Kitchen b: , who claims that Jephthah did not know what he was talking about:.
Brave fellow that he was, Jephthah was a roughneck, an outcast, and not exactly the kind of man who would scruple first to take a Ph. As explained above, the genealogy of Heman in 1 Chronicles —37 results in 19 generations from the time of Moses to the time of Solomon.
Proponents of the late date have not provided an explanation for 1 Chronicle —37, as far as I know. Ezekiel As Rodger Young has pointed out this issue, —17 this verse provides a precise date for a Jubilee year in BC. According to Jewish sources, this was the 17th Jubilee. The first year of this Jubilee cycle was BC 49 inclusive years.
Since this was exactly 40 years from when the Israelites left Egypt Dt ; Jos , , the date of the Exodus can be precisely fixed at BC, independently of 1 Kings The late-date camp is yet to respond to this precise method of determining the date of the Exodus.
Disagreement with Biblical History A close reading of the context of Exodus makes it clear that the 13th century model is incompatible with the Biblical narrative. Using the generation concept for the years of 1 Kgs places the Exodus just 13 years later in BC.
It is not possible to fit the events between the building of the store cities and the Exodus Ex — into a year timespan. The appearance of the name Rameses in this passage and in Genesis are examples of editorial updating of a name that went out of use. Another strike against the 13th century scenario is Psalm , which strongly indicates that the Pharaoh of the Exodus perished in the Reed Sea.
Evidence for destruction by fire should readily be discernable in the archaeological record, making these cities a primary focus of Conquest research. The second major pillar of the 13th century theory is that Hazor was destroyed at the right time to fit this time frame.
Excavations have revealed that the city was massively destroyed by fire toward the end of the 13th century BC, most likely by the Israelites Ben Tor , ; Ben Tor and Rubiato But, if we assign this destruction to the Conquest, there would be no city for Deborah and Barak to conquer later on in the time of the judges Jgs 4—5 , since Hazor was not rebuilt until the tenth century BC in the time of Solomon 1 Kgs Kitchen explains,.
The northern Israelites became involved in trade with nearby Egypt, and came into contact with the places and sceneries described in the biblical wandering of the wilderness, Finkelstein says. At Kuntillet Ajrud, an Israelite site in Sinai, archaeologists have found a treasure trove of texts and inscriptions from this period that give us some clues about the belief system of the northern kingdom. While the text is fragmentary, it is possible to discern some of the familiar elements of the story, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, but also snippets that contradict the narrative as we know it.
Exodus sans Moses? This brings us to the protagonist of the Passover story and the question of his historicity. From the Mesopotamian ruler Sargon of Akkad to the founders of Rome — Romulus and Remus — the ancient world seems to have been awash in boys who were birthed in secret, saved from mortal danger by a river and adopted, only to grow up to discover their true identity and triumphantly return to lead their people. It is in fact possible that Moses, at least as we know him, was a fairly late addition to the Exodus story, because he does not appear in northern biblical texts such as Hosea and Amos, says Romer.
The oldest text that mentions him is the story of the late 8th century B. Judahite King Hezekiah , who, as part of a religious reform, destroyed a bronze serpent purportedly made by Moses that was being worshipped by the Israelites 2 Kings Some traces of this tale may have survived in the Bible, Romer says.
Josiah heads for Armageddon. Whether or not Moses was in it from the start, the Exodus tradition must have undergone some serious redactions after it was absorbed by Judah in the late 8th and 7th century B.
As mentioned earlier, many of the locations mentioned in the desert wandering narrative were only inhabited during this later period, which in and of itself indicates that much of the text as we know it was written down during this period.
This time, around 2, years ago, was a key moment in the history of the ancient Hebrews. By the late 7th century B. In Jerusalem, King Josiah led a reform to centralize the cult around the Temple, while his scribes compiled early biblical texts using a combination of sources from the northern kingdom and Judah.
The ambitious Judahite ruler was hoping to unite all the Israelites under a single cult and a shared history. He also coveted the former territories of Israel, which were now being vacated by the Assyrians. The story of the exodus from Egypt is very complex and may be taken two ways. On the one hand, it is the story of a group of miserable slaves coerced into forced building labor in Egypt.
Also, contrary to the notion that the Israelites were very downtrodden, other verses describe them as leaving Egypt with great wealth: God lends the people favor in Egyptian eyes, and the Egyptians give them gold and silver vessels Exod. According to these verses, then, the exodus included a military element: armed Israelite soldiers and foreign mercenaries who came from abroad to help them.
I think one can point precisely to the time when these events took place, based both on the biblical story and the Manetho tradition. We have to go back to the story of the Egyptian prime minister Bay-Joseph and the child pharaoh Siptah, whom Bay puts on the throne. Her reign only lasted two or three years, ca. We have two Egyptian documents on the subject: one is a huge papyrus, the largest in existence today. These two sources complement each other.
The Harris Papyrus tells of a neglected Egypt, lacking a single ruler. Each region had a local officer or king, and they quarreled and murdered each other. Then it says that someone took over the throne. This would mean that the text is about someone who appointed himself as a ruler, meaning he was not worthy to inherit the throne of the pharaohs and took power by improper means.
He levies taxes on the entire country. He and his followers despoil the Egyptian gods and prohibit the bringing of offerings in the temples. The papyrus goes on to tell of a turning point when the Egyptian gods took pity on the land and restored the son born of them to power.
That was Setnakhte, founder of the twentieth dynasty. He restored order throughout the country, executed the evildoers, and cleansed the great throne of Egypt. He brought with him a large group of followers who objected to the Egyptian gods and their rituals.
He and his followers took over the country for a time and exploited it economically. Setnakhte then battled this foreigner, removed him from the throne, stripped him of power, and ascended the throne in his place.
I mentioned another document we have, however, which was written soon after the battle for power in Egypt. There it is written that Setnakhte cleansed Egypt of those who had led her in a mistaken direction, who had defrauded her. This plan of bringing mercenaries paid with Egyptian silver and gold failed, and Setnakhte drove them all out of Egypt. If I were to conflate what is written in these two Egyptian sources, the following story of the end of the nineteenth dynasty and the beginning of the twentieth emerges.
Tausert died around BCE, and her death was followed by two years of internal conflict in Egypt, because she did not have any living offspring and therefore no clear heir. Then someone of Canaanite or Syrian origin took over rule in Egypt.
Identifying Pharaoh Since Exodus does not specify Pharaoh by any name other than his official title, identifying the ruler of Egypt at this critical juncture relies almost entirely on the dating issue. Those who hold to the earlier date B. He was known for his military excursions, including campaigns into Canaan, but after B. Also, his oldest son did not inherit the throne as would have been customary; he would have been a victim of the horrifying tenth plague.
He ruled Egypt from B. But he is particularly renowned for his great building projects, which could easily have included the work mentioned in Exodus While some argue that Pharaoh must have died in the Red Sea with his army, the Bible does not say this explicitly, so Raamses could have lived many more years, matching the dates attributed to his reign. Influence on the Biblical Story Though the Exodus account makes reference to two Egyptian cities, it does not go into much detail concerning this nation and its rulers.
Instead, the work of God and His servant Moses is central — and not the work of Pharaoh.
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