Bible Chronology
What about Rameses II?
In the last two lessons we have put the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah on a sound and secure foundation. This, in turn, meant that we were able to give the Exodus a date: 1445 BC.
The curious fact is that most scholars, including Biblical scholars, reject that date. Instead, they prefer a date around 1280 BC and the reason is simple: circumstances.
As we saw in the last lesson, it is impossible that the Exodus could have taken place during the Eighteenth Dynasty. It was too powerful and we know too much about it for anything like the Exodus to have happened. In addition, we have a reference in the Biblical book of Exodus to the Children of Israel building a city called "Rameses", and the argument is that the city was given this name after the name of the reigning monarch.
The pharaohs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties were called Rameses, but the trouble is that there were eleven of them! However we can limit possibilities to the first two because of a stele in the Cairo Museum in Egypt. Erected by Pharaoh Merneptah, it contains the only mention in the whole of Egypt of the name "Israel". Among a list of all those the pharaoh has defeated it says, "Israel is forsaken, her seed is not."
Hieroglyphics, as you know, are picture writing and usually the picture was enough to tell you what it meant. However with foreign names like "Israel", the Egyptian scribes had to use special pictures whose name spelled out the word in question - a bit like we might use a picture of a bumblebee and the numeral '4' to spell out the word "before".
When this happened the scribes inserted an extra picture called a determinative, which indicated what the following word meant - what class of words it belonged to. In the case of the word "Israel" the determinative sign indicates that this is a nation, they are not nomads but neither are they fully settled. In other words, in the time of Merneptah, Israel must have already arrived in Palestine and already be in the process of settling down.
Merneptah was the son of Rameses II; Rameses I was a nobody who only ruled for two years, so under this scenario Rameses II is the only possible candidate for the pharaoh of the Exodus and the Exodus must have taken place fairly early in his reign, which gives us 1280 to 1260 BC as the date for the Exodus. You may be surprised at how many Bible commentaries - even conservative ones - adopt this date.
I want you to notice: the scholars have shifted the Exodus from the date the Bible gives - 1445 BC - by two hundred years in order to fit in with the circumstances they perceive: the name "Rameses" given to the city the Israelite slaves built.
Unfortunately there are a whole lot of circumstances which do not fit this date - primarily in Palestine. The most spectacular example is Jericho, where there have been a number of archaeological excavations over the years. In the 1920s a man called John Garstang, a highly respected archaeologist, dug here and discovered walls that had fallen outwards down the slope, shaken down by an earthquake. He dated these walls to around 1400, which he believed was the time of the Exodus. In view of the dramatic story of the conquest of Jericho, when "the walls came a-tumblin' down", he decided that these must be the walls of the Biblical story.
In the late 1950s, however, Kathleen Kenyon, later Dame Kathleen Kenyon, led another expedition to Jericho. She was a highly talented archaeologist and she was using more advanced techniques. Not only did she prove that Garstang's famous walls dated to the end of the Early Bronze, hundreds of years before Garstang had placed them, but she also proved, beyond any possibility of doubt, that at the time of the Exodus - which she placed at around 1280 BC - Jericho was a deserted ruin.
The consequences of this conclusion were staggering. There was no "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho", no "walls come a-tumblin' down", no Rahab, no spies, the whole Bible story appears to be a fabrication.
Even worse, the situation is exactly the same all over Palestine. In 1280 BC life continued much as it had always done: there were a few immigrants coming into the land from across the Jordan, but there was no change of culture, no violent destruction of cities, no new people, even the worship of the old gods continued unchanged.
The result is that the most respected scholars, even Jewish ones who celebrate the Passover every year and might be expected to want to support the story of the Exodus, have been forced to conclude that the story is a myth: it never happened. There was no Exodus, no parting of the Red Sea, no miraculous crossing of the Jordan, no destruction of Jericho, no nothing.
Putting the Exodus in 1280 BC in order to fit the circumstances is a failure: the only circumstance it fits is the name "Rameses"; everything else is a misfit.
Unfortunately things are no better if you put the Exodus in 1445 BC, during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Not only is there still no sign of an entry into Palestine - no change of culture, no destroyed cities, no new people invading the land - but you don't even have Rameses around to build the store city!
However I think the idea of moving the Exodus around in order to fit circumstances is a good one. It turns the whole thing into a detective story: you have an unknown event about which you have a certain amount of detail; you scan through history to find where the story fits and then you look for support by trying to match up the details of the story with what we know of the details of history.
Let's try doing that with the Exodus. We need to look for a period in history when Palestine underwent massive cultural change, when most of its cities were destroyed, when a new people with nomadic habits came into the land. Then you need to look for a developing culture among these new people that culminates in a period of unrivalled strength and prosperity - in other words, the kingdoms of David and Solomon. Let's compare this specification with what we know of the history of Palestine.
Ancient history is divided up into periods or ages. The first age once you are past the pre-historic eras like the Paleolithic and Mesolithic is the Neolithic or New Stone Age.
Stone was followed by the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, but once people learned to make a stronger alloy you have the Bronze Age. This lasted for such a long time that archaeologists divide it up into three distinct ages - Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age and these are further subdivided into Early Bronze I, Early Bronze II, III and IV, Middle Bronze Age I, II, III and Late Bronze Age I, II, III. Finally you have the Iron Age, which is divided into Iron I and Iron II. After that you are into named periods - the Persian Period, Greek Period, Roman, Byzantine, Omayyid, Mameluke and so on.
Iron Age I is usually taken to be the start of the Exodus and the Israelite period - though why this is so I have no idea. The book of Joshua makes it clear that iron was very rare at the time of the Exodus and it was only later that the records speak with bated breath about Israel's enemies who did have iron - Jabin, king of Hazor, had 900 chariots of iron! Iron II is claimed to be the period of the kings of Israel leading up to the Exile followed by the Persian period.
This is what the Israel Museum has to say about these Iron Ages:
The Israelite Period II (Iron Age II 1000-587 BC) There is a special significance in the finds exhibited from this period as nearly all are associated in some way with events and information described in the Bible, especially from the Books of Kings and Chronicles. Among the highlights are the decorated architectural elements from large royal structures at Jerusalem, Hazor and Megiddo, ivories from the palace of Ahab in Samaria and ostraca and seals written in paleo-Hebrew, some of which mention names familiar to us from the Bible. Such inscriptions often look unimportant, but they can be momentous. The "House of David" stele inscription from Tel Dan and two minute silver scrolls inscribed with the Priestly Benediction (cf. Num 6:24-26; Ps 67:2) found recently in a Jerusalem tomb are both of great import for historical and Biblical studies.
Then going back in time we have Iron Age I and this is how the Israel Museum describes it:
The Early Israelite Period (Iron Age I 1200-1000 BC) The permanent exhibits of this period thus reflect the various people who occupied different parts of the land; the Philistines by pottery decorated with birds and fish in metopes indicating its Mediterranean inspiration; Canaanite cult stands, pottery and tools showing continuity from the Late Bronze Age; and the simple utilitarian pots and large storage jars, made by the inhabitants of the central hill country - the early Israelite settlers.
Notice those words, "showing continuity from the Late Bronze Age". In other words, there is no change of culture between Late Bronze and Iron I, no new people, no new religion. This does not sound like the battles and massacres of the Conquest described in the Biblical books of Joshua and Judges.
How about the Late Bronze Age?
Through much of the Late Bronze (Canaanite) Age (1550-1200 BC) Canaan was subjected to Egyptian rule. The exhibits from this period include numerous imported luxury goods - pottery, metals, jewellery - from Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. These have been found throughout the country in tombs, temples and palaces. All this glitter once induced scholars to see the Late Bronze Age as a period of great prosperity, but there is another face to this period: the number of settlements decreased markedly from the previous period and few rural settlements are known. This tells us that a large element of the popularion had reverted to nomadism again.
Notice that in the Late Bronze you have great prosperity, but also - and particularly towards its end - rural depopulation. The Israel museum interprets this as some of the population reverting to nomadism, but another interpretation could be that it is a sign of increased urbanisation, rather like in our modern civilisation where the countryside is almost deserted because people move to the cities or because great nobles build up large estates.
We turn now to the Middle Bronze:
The Middle Bronze (Canaanite) Age (2000-1550 BC) saw the resurgence of city-states, whose main urban centres were surrounded by massive earthwork fortifications. Contrary to what such ramparts would lead us to expct, destruction layers are conspicuously lacking in archaeological strata of this era until its last century. The impression is generally one of peaceful co-existence. Commerce - with Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean region - was on a larger scale than ever before; this was truly a period of internationalism.
Before we comment on this, consider what the Israel Museum has to say about the period between Early and Middle Bronze:
The period between the Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age is called the Intermediate Bronze Age (2300-2000 BC). This indicates that economic, social and political organisation were different from what immediately preceded and followed. Society had fragmented into smaller, more mobile (often nomadic) groups when the large urban centres of the Early Bronze Age collapsed.
Notice that in what the Israel Museum website calls "Intermediate Bronze Age" you have the collapse and destruction of the large urban centres - the cities, in other words - of the Early Bronze Age. You have them replaced by a nomadic population. You have a completely different culture whose social and political organisations were different from what went before and what followed
It seems clear to me that this "Intermediate Bronze Age", or Middle Bronze I as others call it, is the period of the Exodus. Middle Bronze age is the period of the judges leading through increasing peace and prosperity to the kingdoms of David and Solomon during the Late Bronze Age. The divided kingdoms encompass the Iron Age and it is hardly surprising that they show no cultural change because they are the same Israelite culture as was present during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages.
The evidence seems overwhelming for Palestine, but it leaves us with two very important questions: 1. What about Egypt? and 2. What was the date of the Exodus?
