EXODUS

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.

Identifying the Historicity of the Exodus, 2023

This essay is a review of the biblical account of Exodus and its possible correlation with the history of Egypt. Interpretations of Egyptian texts, ancient documents and the Pentateuch of the Bible shed new light on the stay of the People of Israel in Egypt and their epic departure led by Moses. Was the Exodus a historical event? When did it happen? In this essay, the story of Exodus and its background in the book of Genesis are critically analyzed, as well as the genealogy of Abraham's family, that of James-Israel and his descendants; the history of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period (1780-1560 B.C.); and the archaeological findings in the Eastern Delta of Egypt, to propose a tenable (historically feasible) theory about the Israelite stay in Egypt and the Exodus, complemented by a summary of their long dwelling in the desert and the conquest of Canaan. RESUMEN Este ensayo es una revisión del relato bíblico del Éxodo y su posible correlación con la historia de Egipto. Interpretaciones de textos egipcios, antiguos documentos y el Pentateuco de la Biblia arrojan nueva luz sobre la estancia del Pueblo de Israel en Egipto y su épica salida conducida por Moisés. ¿Fue el Éxodo un evento histórico? ¿Cuándo ocurrió? En este ensayo se analiza críticamente el relato del Éxodo y sus antecedentes en el libro de

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.

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.

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

PRC Press, 2010

Archaeologist Joel Klenck describes the Exodus from Egypt is being a source of controversy for millennia as different groups of scholars have debated both the historicity and the date of the event. Due to a lack of Egyptian inscriptions that mention the Exodus, during the 15th Century BC, most scholars have abandoned the Biblical timeline, shifted the event to another period, attempted to radically change Egyptian chronologies, or declared the event a myth or fabrication. This manuscript compares the timelines between the Biblical narrative and conventional Egyptian chronologies and reviews data from archaeological, bio-anthropological, philological, and historical sources in Egypt and Canaan. The analysis suggests that the Exodus occurred as the Biblical narrative suggests, in the 15th Century BC, specifically during the reign of Thutmose II.

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.

WHEN DID THE EXODUS OCCUR?, 2024

Establishing the date of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, a story contained in the Old Testament (OT) of the Bible, has been one of the greatest challenges for biblical studies researchers, historians and archaeologists who consider at least a historical background for this story. And the fact is that the OT does not mention dates or names of kings or pharaohs, and the signs or "clues" that it does provide in its text are often vague, contradictory, or subject to interpretation. For this reason, numerous (tens of thousands) books, articles and essays have been written in which theories are proposed that have generally not been satisfactory or universally accepted. A meticulous analysis of the biblical account of the Exodus, and in particular of the signs or clues that could generate a valid answer to the enigma of when did the exodus occur?, finds that there appear to be fragments in which two versions (traditions) of this event are mixed. Specialists in biblical studies know them as the "Y" version (Yahwist or from Jehovah) and the "P" version (Priestly). If these were two exodus episodes remembered as one, the apparent contradictions in the text could be explained without much problem. The purpose of this essay is to propose the existence and present evidence of two stories in the OT from different times, about the departure, escape or flight from Egypt of Israelites who had been oppressed and enslaved, and their return to the land of Canaan. In this essay, the conventional dates used by most historians for Canaan and Egypt during the so-called Second Intermediate Period (2 nd IP), the New Kingdom, and the corresponding Egyptian dynasties are utilized. AUTHOR'S NOTE. In this essay the terms Israelites, children of Israel, and tribes of Israel are used as they appear in biblical quotations to refer to the descendants of Jacob-Israel in Egypt, in the Exodus and in Canaan, but in reality the correct use of these terms began much later than that epoch, and probably dates back to the times of kings David and Solomon who ruled the Kingdom of Israel.

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.