Identifying the Historicity of the Exodus

In the following it will be shown that in Ramesside times besides descendants of the Canaanites of the Hyksos Period also new groups of Near Easterners arrived in Egypt as prisoners of war or as migrant bedouins. Workmen who had the task to pull down during the 20th Dynasty the temple of Aya and Horemheb in western Thebes seem to have been carriers of the same or similar Iron Age culture as the Proto-Israelites in the southern Levant as they used for their shelters makeshift Four Room-Houses. According to the stratigraphic evidence available the presence of the Iron Age people in western Thebes can be dated to the same time or only slightly later than the settlement of the Proto-Israelites in Canaan. One has to be aware, however, that their ethnogenesis has not yet been finalized at that time. If we may assume a sojourn of early Israelites in Egypt, the most likely period would have been the late Ramesside Period – the 12th century BC. It is also most fascinating to show that Egyptian scribes used Semitic toponyms for places at the eastern border of Egypt, particularly in the Wadi Tumilat. The only sensible explanation is that Semitic speaking people lived there for a time long enough to have with the use of their toponyms an impact on the Egyptian administrative system. Because of geographical and onomastic reasons Wadi Tumilat could serve as a paradigm of the biblical land of Goshen. This article supplies furthermore evidence which makes it very likely that the memory of the town of Raamses/Ramesse in the books Genesis and Exodus has to be tied to the Delta-residence of the Ramessides Pi-Ramesse. At the same time the second biblical store city of Pithom should be identified with the only substantial Ramesside town in the Wadi, Tell el-Retabe, not with Tell el-Maskhuta which according to the archaeological record did not yet exist at that time. Reconstruction of the geography of the eastern Nile Delta in the Ramesside Period shows that at least some ideas of the topographical conditions in the eastern Delta reflected in the books Genesis and Exodus go back to this Period. The quarrying of stone blocks, statues and architectural elements from Pi-Ramesse (Qantir) and their reuse for new big sacred building projects at Tanis and Bubastis in the 21st and 22nd Dynasties brought about the rise of secondary cults of gods “of Ramses” in the 4th century in Bubastis and of the gods “of Ramses of Pi-Ramesse” at Tanis from the 3rd century onwards. Such a development may have fostered ideas among diaspora in exile coming to Egypt that Raamses/Ramesse was situated in Tanis or in the environment of Bubastis. Such considerations may have brought about the theories of the northern and southern Exodus-routes from the time of the 30th Dynasty onwards.

The Exodus: An Egyptian Story, 2021

Moses led people out of Egypt against the will of Ramses II (1279-1213 BCE) on the seventh hour of New Year’s Eve at the end of Ramses’s seventh year of ruling and he constituted them in the wilderness as the covenant people Israel of Yahweh. It is an Egyptian story. Why that time? Why that day? Why that year? Why against Ramses II? [“Ramses” is the spelling of his name to be used in this study except when quoting people who used a different spelling.] Why the new religion? Why the wilderness? The answers to these questions are found not in the Hebrew Bible but in Egypt. To understand what Moses did it is necessary to place him in the Egyptian context in which he had been raised and against which he acted. The search for this understanding is the search to understand Egypt. Typically that is not the way the search for the Exodus is conducted. With these brief introductory remarks in mind, let us now turn to the beginning of the first concerted effort in Egyptology beginning in the 1880s to find the Exodus. The specific goals were to find archaeological and textual evidence for it and to locate the route from the unknown location of the capital city of Ramses II, the presumed Pharaoh of the Exodus, to the wilderness. This review entails tracing the development of Egyptology, the formation of the Egypt Exploration Fund, its initial archaeological efforts and how leading Egyptologists have addressed the Exodus in their histories of Egypt. This review will set the stage for how this study will proceed.

Early Egyptologists were steeped in interest in biblical history and in particular the Hebrew exodus story. Edouard Naville and W.M.F. Petrie were among the early pioneers. Of interest to early Egyptologists was the geography of the exodus and the route of the Hebrew departure from Egypt. By the mid-twentieth century, Egyptology's love affair with Old Testament matters had soured, but this allowed the discipline to develop as its own science.

The article seeks to explain the contrast between the central place of the Exodus in Israelite memory and the marginality of the event in history by shifting the focus of discussion from the historical question to the role the Exodus tradition played in shaping the self-portrait and consciousness of early Israelite society. It first examines the oppressive nature of Egyptian rule in Canaan at the time of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. It then examines the story of the Exodus in the context of Egypt under the Ramesside and Saitic Dynasties. It suggests that the bondage and the delivery from slavery as related in the biblical story actually took place in Canaan and that the memories were later transferred from Canaan to Egypt. The transfer of memory explains the omission of the memory of the long Egyptian occupation of Canaan in the Bible. The displaced memories of bondage were replaced by the 'memory' of the conquest, which reflects the way early Israelite society sought to present its past. The subjugation, the suffering and the delivery were experienced by all tribal groups that lived at the time in Canaan, hence the centrality of the Exodus tradition within the Israelite society.

Hershel Shanks and John Merrill (eds.), Ancient Israel, From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Revised and Expanded Edition, Washington, D.C. 2021: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2021

This chapter attempts to produce the most likely historic scenario for the famous sojourn and the exodus story. Recent advances in Egyptology, paleogeography and modern biblical exegesis bring about a novel display of the biblical story which excites mankind since several thousand years

This research examines the possible historical realities contained in the biblical story of the Exodus. It presents evidence that the Exodus has a historical core reflecting the events and experiences of an Egyptian mining community in the Sinai, Timna, in the middle of the twelfth century BCE. The evidence is elicited from archeological evidence recovered from Timna, critical examination of the biblical sources and the research of scholars pertaining to the historicity of the Bible, ancient Near Eastern history, and contemporary anthropology. Examination of the theorized individual sources of the Exodus tradition is pursued via isolating the elements found in the earliest sources of the Exodus tradition and examining them independently without interpreting them in light of later traditions. The anthropology of contemporary peoples with lifestyles similar to those of antiquity is explored to facilitate the understanding of the cultural norms of people known only from ancient texts and archeological artifacts.

2011

for guiding me in my research and painstakingly reviewing my work. I would also like to thank Jennifer Lorge and Eliana De La Rosa for their punctilious reading of my thesis with the utmost attention to detail, correcting grammar, formatting, and providing input on content all while they were busy writing their own theses. Great appreciation also goes out to Dr. James K. Hoffmeier, for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet with me over brunch to discuss his previous work on the subject and to assist in channeling my methodology. Gratitude is deserved to all the staff and cadre of the Eagle Battalion Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, especially Lieutenant Colonel Mark W. Johnson and Master Sergeant Scott Heise for meticulously working with me to ensure I was able to give professional and effective briefings and presentations, which has come to be useful in so many areas of my life. Most of all, I would like to thank my family, especially my mom, and Major James McKnight, Major Jay Hansen, and Colonel Lance Kittleson for keeping me on track with the remembrance of the true purpose of my studies. Also, I would like to thank my fiancée, Elizabeth Fusilier, for her constant loving prodding to ensure I got this project done in a timely manner.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 04 Oct 2015 03:17:04 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Book Reviews 751

The absence of indisputable direct evidence for the Exodus has led many scholars to deny its historicity. However, although the archaeological record represents an undeniable challenge to traditional interpretations of the Biblical record, there is sufficient evidence to convince even skeptical archaeologists that the Scriptural account describes a genuine historical exodus event.