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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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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