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Up from Egypt: Recent Work on the Date and Pharaoh of the Exodus

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Up from Egypt: Recent Work on the Date and Pharaoh of the Exodus Up from Egypt The Date and Pharaoh of the Exodus ~= """'''''"'~ ~ ~ ~_ ~ "" ~ ""''"~ =~~ ""'",,"'''' <==~_....=~=".,~"" "'~~= _~ 0_ ~ ~ ¥ _ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~~~~ V~= .......~=~""""__=~ ~ 'f,.' 'f,.' j\"'A''''A''A'''A'''},/''i•.''''A' 'A "'f..t"A:" A' A.:''A:'''fl,''''A'}j:<K'''X''A: A; '1i -,--- -~- -~ ----- ---~- ~~- ­ 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. None­ theless, the more we learn about ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern history the more realis­ tic and authentic in its general features the story appears. Much of what we know about the second millennium BCE and the New Kingdom pro­ 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 Redford. 1 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 evi­ dence we do have and to glean out the most probable historical reconstruction. Many schol­ 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).. L,e· Throughout the second millennium Asiatics(and Semites\were present in Egypt in many (, ht., '/ ways: as herders, traders, immigrants, refugees from famine, recipients of foreign aid, immi­ 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 Pharaoh's 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, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 199.1, 257-82. 2 James Hoffmeier, Israel in Eg)1.1t,(.Oxfo;a; Oxford U~versity Press, 199~ John Cwrid, Ancimt Egypt and the Old Testament,fGrand 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 Miller.3 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. c.R. Lepsius first proposed this theory in 1849.4 3"The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality?" in The Rise ofAncient Isrf1£l: Symposiwn at the Smithsonian Insti­ tution October 26, 1991, edited by Hershel Shanks, 87-113..(washington, D.C: Biblical Archaeology Society, 199~and 'The Exodus and the Israelite Historians," Eretz Israel 24, 1993. 4 I rely on Bimson's account of this in Raiatingthe Exalus and O:l JSOTSupplement Series %tLeiden: Brill, 1n..,.O\10 .... -'= Until modem archaeology appeared to undennine it, the second oldest date in the fif­ 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 Exo­ dus was his successor Amenophis II. As Bimson remarks, by the 1890's Egyptian chronol­ ogy had been refined to the point that a fifteenth..century date seemed appealingly to harmo­ nize with the date given in I Kings 6:1. 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 con­ sistent with the evidence we do have. A fifteenth.century date has the merit of keeping with the Bible's own chronology (I Kings 6:1). I concern myself here only with the views of his­ torians, not those with commitments of faith. Prominent among defenders of a fifteenth· 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 Ken­ 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 date.s 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 forth­ 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 time. 6 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 se­ 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 Bright's 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. None­ 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 6: 1. It was in the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's 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).
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