The Exodus: 2450 B.C.?

[Phydeaux]

I began looking into the Exodus recently and I ran into an idea which is interesting. Apparently, there are those who think the exodus occurred a millennia earlier than the common story. I realize a lot of people don't think the Exodus happened at all, but perhaps there is some historical bases to it, however distorted this story has become. In any case, the first article I found which makes this claim is "When was the Exodus? By Brad Aaronson" From the article:

According to the Midrash.... The Pharaoh....whose death prompted Moses' return to Egypt (Exodus 2:23, 4:19)..... reigned from the age of six to the age of 100. Such a long reign - 94 years! - sounds fantastic, and many people would hesitate to take this Midrash literally. As it happens, though, Egyptian records mention a Pharaoh who reigned for 94 years, and not only 94 years, but from the age of six to the age of 100! This Pharaoh was known in inscriptions as Pepi (or Phiops) II.

This is interesting considering that Moses was supposed to be about 80 years old, so if the said exodus happened, the Pharaoh who adopted Moses would have to be older than 80, but it get's more interesting:

Its author, an Egyptian named Ipuwer, writes in the document below:

Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere. (2:5)

The river is blood (2:10)

That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is ruin! (3:10-13)

Trees are destroyed. (4:14)

No fruit or herbs are found . . . (6:1)

Forsooth, grain has perished on every side. (6:3)

The land is not light [dark]. (9:11)

Nile overflows [bringing the harvest], yet no one ploughs for him. (2:3)

No craftsmen work, the enemies of the land have spoilt its crafts. (9:6)

Gold and lapus lazuli, silver and malachite, camelian and bronze . . . are fastened on the neck of female slaves. (3:2)

I found this interesting, so I did some more research and found another similar claim from "the biblical chronologist" by Dr. Gerald E. Aardsma.

The author apparently claims he can match the exodus with Jericho and also suggests the site of Sinai which matches the time period. A similar claim for Sinai is mount Har Karkom "(2350-2000 BC)".

The earliest proposal of this time period seems to be from "COMPENDIUM OF WORLD HISTORY VOLUME 1 by Herman L. Hoeh 1962" It is also claimed here that Moses is a general mentioned around that time period. I thought this was all interesting so I looked up the time period on wikipedia and apparently Pepi II was succeeded by Merenre Nemtyemsaf II who was murdered after one year of being Pharaoh. In myth, the Pharaoh who succeeded him was a woman who allegedly locked the murderers of Merenre Nemtyemsaf II in a room drowning them with water from the Nile. After her reign of about a year, I think Egypt declined into anarchy and was invaded (don't quote me on that though).

This is all extremely interesting to me, but I need to do some more research. Do you guys think this could be some how the origin of the Exodus story? I'm hoping for some input incase this is all untrue and not worth looking into further. Thanks!

 

[Yekcidmij]

I began looking into the Exodus recently and I ran into an idea which is interesting. Apparently, there are those who think the exodus occurred a millennia earlier than the common story. I realize a lot of people don't think the Exodus happened at all, but perhaps there is some historical bases to it, however distorted this story has become. In any case, the first article I found which makes this claim is "When was the Exodus? By Brad Aaronson" From the article:



This is interesting considering that Moses was supposed to be about 80 years old, so if the said exodus happened, the Pharaoh who adopted Moses would have to be older than 80, but it get's more interesting:



I found this interesting, so I did some more research and found another similar claim from "the biblical chronologist" by Dr. Gerald E. Aardsma.

The author apparently claims he can match the exodus with Jericho and also suggests the site of Sinai which matches the time period. A similar claim for Sinai is mount Har Karkom "(2350-2000 BC)".

The earliest proposal of this time period seems to be from "COMPENDIUM OF WORLD HISTORY VOLUME 1 by Herman L. Hoeh 1962" It is also claimed here that Moses is a general mentioned around that time period. I thought this was all interesting so I looked up the time period on wikipedia and apparently Pepi II was succeeded by Merenre Nemtyemsaf II who was murdered after one year of being Pharaoh. In myth, the Pharaoh who succeeded him was a woman who allegedly locked the murderers of Merenre Nemtyemsaf II in a room drowning them with water from the Nile. After her reign of about a year, I think Egypt declined into anarchy and was invaded (don't quote me on that though).

This is all extremely interesting to me, but I need to do some more research. Do you guys think this could be some how the origin of the Exodus story? I'm hoping for some input incase this is all untrue and not worth looking into further. Thanks!

Dating the Exodus is extremely tedious, and much depends on what you do with the biblical dates. Especially crucial is this one:

1 Kings 6:1 In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites left Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, during the month Ziv (the second month), he began building the Lord’s temple.

Here you have a firm date for the building of Solomons Temple - 480 years after the Exodus. You can also very firmly date the building of Solomon's Temple by doing a sort of regression analysis on the other kings of Israel and Judah's reigns. Many of dats of the reigns of later kings of Israel and Judah can be dated with great confidence due to overlap in Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian records and dating systems. Keep in mind that the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians dated many things by cosmic events like eclipses, new moons, solstices, the star Sirius, etc.. which can easily be confirmed by mathematics and astronomy. Skipping the details for lack of time and space, Solomon's Temple is build circa 960 BC. Now you can do math from here. 960+480 (since it's BC) = 1440 BC.

Much of this depends on how literal you think the reference in 1 Kings 6:1 is. The number itself is highly suspect of being the exact, literal amount of time, but it still may be close. 480 is divisible by 40, 12, 60, and 5, each of which are highly symbolic figures throughout the middle east at that time. For example, Babylonian math was done in base 60 (our math is in base 10) and 480 is 8 cycles of 60. Or 40 is 12 cycles of 40 (or 40 cycles of 12), which might correlate with the length of a year or the length of a generation or the length of periods of testing (ie: 40 years in the wilderness, etc). 480 could also mark a point that is significant for later generation (ie. the building of the 2nd temple). So the Exodus occurs in 1440; add 480 years you get Solomon's Temple (960) add another 480 years and you get 480 BC. Is this the finishing of the 2nd Temple?

In any case, the number 480 is extremely suspect of being intended to be read in some literalistic fashion and much more likely is being used in some sort of symbolic sense (so I think) to emphasize the ultra-significance of the building of Solomon's Temple within God's overall plans.

But, having said that, if you take the numbers very literally, then the Exodus date is going to be circa 1440 BC. The dating of the Exodus depends on how literally you take the biblical data of dates and what you do with extre-biblical material like Egyptian records, archeology, and other attempts at dating such as Josephus, modern scholars, etc..

Early dates aren't out of the question in my opinion. Joseph's time in Egypt, I think, would roughly correspond with the Hyksos period in Egypt.

 

[Phydeaux]

Yes, now that I looked more into it, the idea seems to be that a thousand years may have been lost in a transcription error of 480.

Early dates aren't out of the question in my opinion. Joseph's time in Egypt, I think, would roughly correspond with the Hyksos period in Egypt.

Interesting you mentioned Joseph because I just found the story of Imhotep who seems to be very similar to the Joseph of the Bible with the dream and the 7 years of famine etc. He lived about 400 years before the new proposed time for exodus I mentioned earlier, so it seems he would match the time period too.

 

[Chris47]

Try Immanuel Velikovsky, he mentions the Ipuwer Papyrus in Worlds in Collision and deals with the Egypt Hebrew connection in his Ages In Chaos series. If you can't get them PM me.

Chris

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

See here: http://www.christianforums.com/t7432897/

 

[Adventist Heretic]

the typical date for conservaties in 1446 bc

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

the typical date for conservaties in 1446 bc

The reason why that is absurd is that it doesn't make sense from either a Biblical, historical, or archaeological perspective.

1446 B.C. doesn't make sense from a historical perspective because Thutmose III was not the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

1446 B.C. doesn't makes sense from a Biblical perspective because the years don't add up: What's wrong with the conventional dates for the Exodus?

... in Judges and 1 Samuel the Bible seems to indicate that the time between the Exodus and Samuel was longer. This biblical chronological conflict is easily seen by adding up the well-known 40 years of wilderness wandering, 410 years of alternating periods of oppression and deliverance recorded in the book of Judges, 40 years for the career of Eli, 40 years for the reign of Saul, and 40 years for the reign of David. This already totals 570 years, though it does not include the time during which Joshua led Israel, nor the career of Samuel, and these two periods of time, while not specified biblically, must certainly total to something greater than 30 years (they probably total close to 80 years in fact). Thus, the biblical stipulation of 480 years from the Exodus to Solomon given in 1 Kings 6:1 conflicts with the greater than 600 year total for this same time period which one can calculate from chronological data given elsewhere in the Bible.

 

[jhwty42]

In my opinion (as graduated Egyptologist the First Intermediate period of which Phydeau speaks is more reasonable guess for the Exodus. He mentions Ipuwer and I suggest also the Prophecy of Neferti.

Very useful book on the Exodus: David Rahl's A Taste of Time

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Sharuhen is mentioned in the Book of Joshua: Joshua 19:6

And Bethlebaoth, and Sharuhen; thirteen cities and their villages:​

Sharuhen was destroyed by Pharaoh Ahmose I whose reign (the beginning of the New Kingdom) has been radiocarbon dated to 1570 and 1544 B.C.

Ramsey, et al., Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Dynastic Egypt, Science, Volume 328, Number 5985, Pages 1554-1557, Jul 2010

Our radiocarbon data indicate that the New Kingdom started between 1570 and 1544 B.C.E.​

Therefore the Exodus must have preceded the reign of Ahmose I, and therefore also preceded the traditional Exodus date of 1450 B.C.

The Pharaoh preceding the Exodus was Pepi II Neferkare and the Exodus occurred circa 2200 B.C.

Exactly 430 years before Pepi II Neferkare and the Exodus lived Vizier Joseph (aka Imhotep) and his Pharaoh Djoser.

"Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." -- Exodus 12:40

 

[betteroffdead]

Try Immanuel Velikovsky, he mentions the Ipuwer Papyrus in Worlds in Collision and deals with the Egypt Hebrew connection in his Ages In Chaos series. If you can't get them PM me.

Chris

I’ve read most of Dr. Velikovsky’s published books and about 10 years ago I got tired of trying to use the less-than-adequate index in the original Doubleday edition of Worlds in Collision. So I spent months putting the whole book through my page scanner so I could make an MS Word copy that would give me a search option. I don’t mean to violate any copyright laws, but if anyone wants a copy of it pm me your email and I’ll send it to you.

I don’t know of any mainstream historian that has conceded that the standard chronology for ancient Egypt is too long, but there are some historians that do admit the chronology is too long. There’s one book that describes how radiocarbon dates for Europe don’t line up with the dates indicated by written records. I cannot remember the title right off, but if I remember right the author was named Peter James.

David Rohl wrote a book (Pharaohs and Kings) about 10 years ago that also proposes a revised chronology for Egypt, but he changes dates by only about 300 years and not the 500 proposed by Dr. Velikovsky. All-in-all I think Dr. Velikovsky’s proposal is more likely true even if Rohl did start his revised chronology with Joseph rather than Moses. Also Rohl in a later book makes it clear that he doesn’t believe the Genesis account of Adam and Eve so I would hold all of his scholarship suspect.

 

[betteroffdead]

1446 B.C. doesn't make sense from a historical perspective because Thutmose III was not the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

You are assuming that you have an accurate chronology for ancient Egypt. I once had an assortment of college history textbooks that gave chronologies for Egypt that diverged from each other by 500 years or more. And since historians base chronologies for Mesopotamia and Greece on the chronology they accept for Egypt, if they are wrong about Egypt, they are automatically wrong about everywhere else.

1446 B.C. doesn't makes sense from a Biblical perspective because the years don't add up:

If Dr. Velikovsky is right about the disruptions to the earth’s natural time-keeping mechanisms- namely repeated alterations of the earth’s orbit around the sun, there is no way we can assign year dates to anything this far back.

 

[betteroffdead]

In my opinion (as graduated Egyptologist the First Intermediate period of which Phydeau speaks is more reasonable guess for the Exodus. He mentions Ipuwer and I suggest also the Prophecy of Neferti.

Very useful book on the Exodus: David Rahl's A Taste of Time

Test of Time. It’s the same as Pharaoh’s and Kings. One is the British title, the other is the American title. I couldn’t remember both of them.

BTW: I once wanted to learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphics, but my local library has only a dismal selection of books to choose from. Do you know of something that would give me a guide to how hieroglyphics sound? One book I had had a pronunciation guide comparing hieroglyphics to British English, but since I have had only limited exposure to British English the book wasn’t really useable.

 

[betteroffdead]

Sharuhen was destroyed by Pharaoh Ahmose I whose reign (the beginning of the New Kingdom) has been radiocarbon dated to 1570 and 1544 B.C.

Radiocarbon dates are not trustworthy. Dr. Velikovsky repeatedly tried to get museums to carbon date their artifacts from the time of Tut hoping that the dates would support his revised chronology, but at the time the museums refused. I vaguely remember hearing something about some artifacts eventually being carbon dated and the results supported Dr. Velikovsky’s theory.

I’ve also heard that some archaeologists won’t allow artifacts that they find to be carbon dated because they don’t trust the technology.

Compare the work of Kenyon and Bryant Wood at Jericho. Kenyon dated Joshua to the wrong stratum and naturally found no evidence for Joshua. Wood later used a different stratum and found ample evidence to support the Bible’s account.

 

[MichaelBurk]

What about the store cities of Pithom and Rameses?

Isn't "Rameses" a new kingdom name?

Were any of the kings or nobility of Egypt named "Rameses" in the Old or Middle Kingdom periods?

 

[Verward]

Thanks for the interesting information. I have recently become quite interested in the Exodus and have many questions. If the Exodus was around 2450 BC this is a long time before the iron age, but when Joshua conquered Jericho they collected all the iron. Also, according to Wikipedia the war chariot wasn't introduced to Egypt until many centuries later and we know Pharaoh's armies had chariots when they chased the Israelites

 

[MichaelBurk]

It's been a long time since I looked into any of this, but I think David Rohl's revised chronology would put the conquest of Canaan in the middle bronze age, some would question whether the development of iron uniformly falls into any clearly defined chronological period (across the entire ancient world), and I think the discovered a charioteer's glove (or a depiction of it) in ruins from the old (or middle) kingdom.

 

[MichaelBurk]

I'd still like to know how the store city of Rameses would fit into a revised chronology?

 

[childofdust]

I began looking into the Exodus recently and I ran into an idea which is interesting. . . . In any case, the first article I found which makes this claim is "When was the Exodus? By Brad Aaronson" . . . Do you guys think this could be some how the origin of the Exodus story? I'm hoping for some input incase this is all untrue and not worth looking into further. Thanks!

Dear Phydeaux,


I looked up that article, and I have grave concerns about the argument being made.


Firstly, what “Midrash” is this coming from? I found the footnote where the author gives (a little) more information about his sources. Unfortunately, the author provides nothing more than the name of the manuscript (so I doubt the author actually read this in that manuscript anywhere). It is the Sefer HaYashar. It is a very, very, very late manuscript—from the mid-1600s—that is trying to pass itself off as “the book of Jashar.” As soon as it was printed, Rabbinic authorities denounced it as a fantasy. It is “midrash” only in form, not in fact. i.e., it does not belong to any Jewish Midrashic tradition that anyone knows of. In other words, it's a manuscript that some dude made up about 400 years ago.


Q: What do you think the chances are that some dude, writing something 400 years ago, knew more about the exodus account than the exodus account itself?
A: Nil.


It's like when you read about other things that Abraham said in the Qur'an. Either you believe the Qur'an came down from heaven and gave information about Abraham to Mohamed that no one else before him knew about, or you believe Mohamed made up a bunch of stuff about Abraham based on the Abrahamic narrative in the biblical texts. I go with option 2.


That article also references (badly) Joseph and Aseneth. I've read JandA, done a search of it, and I can't find anything there that would shed light on this issue.


In other words...
there is no reliable evidence in that article that anyone before AD 500 knew how long the Pharaoh of the Exodus reigned.


So if I were you, I'd stop listening to anything else this person has to say, because it is obvious that they are more interested in making something up than dealing with real evidence.

 

[dana b]

I began looking into the Exodus recently and I ran into an idea which is interesting. Apparently, there are those who think the exodus occurred a millennia earlier than the common story. I realize a lot of people don't think the Exodus happened at all, but perhaps there is some historical bases to it, however distorted this story has become. In any case, the first article I found which makes this claim is "When was the Exodus? By Brad Aaronson" From the article:



This is interesting considering that Moses was supposed to be about 80 years old, so if the said exodus happened, the Pharaoh who adopted Moses would have to be older than 80, but it get's more interesting:



I found this interesting, so I did some more research and found another similar claim from "the biblical chronologist" by Dr. Gerald E. Aardsma.

The author apparently claims he can match the exodus with Jericho and also suggests the site of Sinai which matches the time period. A similar claim for Sinai is mount Har Karkom "(2350-2000 BC)".

The earliest proposal of this time period seems to be from "COMPENDIUM OF WORLD HISTORY VOLUME 1 by Herman L. Hoeh 1962" It is also claimed here that Moses is a general mentioned around that time period. I thought this was all interesting so I looked up the time period on wikipedia and apparently Pepi II was succeeded by Merenre Nemtyemsaf II who was murdered after one year of being Pharaoh. In myth, the Pharaoh who succeeded him was a woman who allegedly locked the murderers of Merenre Nemtyemsaf II in a room drowning them with water from the Nile. After her reign of about a year, I think Egypt declined into anarchy and was invaded (don't quote me on that though).

This is all extremely interesting to me, but I need to do some more research. Do you guys think this could be some how the origin of the Exodus story? I'm hoping for some input incase this is all untrue and not worth looking into further. Thanks!

This might help you to understand that the exodus occured just before, 40 years exactly before, the crossing of the Jordan River by the 12 tribes. But only Bible believing Christians are privy to this information.

 

[Verward]

Joshua must have got very tired if he was fighting for a thousand years