Bible Chronology
The Date of the Exodus
At the end of the previous lesson we asked two questions: What about Egypt? and What was the date of the Exodus? Before we attempt to answer them, however, I want to look at some more evidence for an Intermediate Bronze Age Exodus by returning to Jericho.
As Garstang found and Dame Kathleen Kenyon confirmed, Early Bronze Age Jericho ended in catastrophe when its strong walls collapsed outwards, down the slope of the tel. Garstang attributed this to an earthquake, the Bible says that the Children of Israel marched round the city seven times in perfect silence and then suddenly shouted. The truth is probably a combination of both stories.
At Adam, about twenty miles north of Jericho, the River Jordan flows between high banks and several times in recorded history an earthquake has caused those banks to collapse, daming the river so that the river bed downstream of Adam was exposed and dried out. According to the Biblical book of Joshua, when the Children of Israel came to the Jordan they could not cross over until suddenly the river was blocked at Adam, enabling them to walk across the now dry river bed. This, to me, is clear evidence of an earthquake.
A week or ten days later the Israelites march around Jericho and give their famous shout. Whether that coincided with some aftershocks or whether the shout and the vibration of all those marching feet was enough to topple the already weakened walls, I do not know, but the walls dramatically collapsed and the Israelites swarmed into the city.
However they did not loot it, for Joshua had commanded that everything and everyone in it was to be destroyed as an offering to God. Outside the collapsed walls is a three-foot thick layer of pink ash, marking the place where that command was fulfilled.
When Dame Kenyon excavated at Jericho she found that the Early Bronze Age people buried their dead in chambers dug out at the bottom of deep shafts. These tombs were buried in silt washed down from the hills to the west and Kenyon attributed this sudden episode of silting to deforestation - with the trees cut down there was nothing to hold the soil in place and the winter rains brought it cascading down into the plain.
According to the Biblical book of Joshua, when the Israelites couldn't conquer the Canaanites with their much-feared iron chariots, they abandoned the attempt to colonise the plains and instead went up into the forested hill country where they cut down the trees to clear land for agriculture.
In other words, wherever you look, the findings of archaeology and the details of the Bible story match exactly - providing you put the Exodus in the Intermediate Bronze Age and not in the Iron I Age.
But it is not just at Jericho: at Shiloh the excavators found an area that had been artificially flattened - the rock had been cut away on three sides to leave a large, flat platform 75 feet wide and at least 150 feet long. There were large deposits of animal bones on this platform and the excavators identified this as a place of sacrifice but to their consternation no temple was found. However because the pottery associated with the animal bones came from Intermediate Bronze/Middle Bronze, they concluded that it must be a high place.
The Bible tells us that the sanctuary had a courtyard 150 feet long and 75 feet wide - the exact dimensions of the flat area at Shiloh. The Bible also tells us that the tabernacle was pitched at Shiloh during the time of the judges but, because it was a tent, we need hardly be surprised that the excavators found no evidence of a temple!
The most interesting evidence comes from the Negev in the south of Palestine. Dr Rudolph Cohen, a director of the Israeli Antiquities Service, worked in the Negev for thirty years, including during the period when Israel controlled the Sinai. Down at Kadesh Barnea he discovered a large number of temporary stone huts dating to the end of the Early Bronze period. He was able to trace the pottery associated with these huts all the way across the Sinai desert and up into southern Palestine. He believes that this group of nomads who came out of Egypt, spent a relatively short time at Kadesh Barnea and then moved into Palestine are his ancestors, the Children of Israel during the Exodus.
But what about Egypt? We have seen that there is no way the story of the Exodus can fit into the period of the powerful Eighteenth Dynasty, but if we look back into the Intermediate Bronze Period, which is the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties, we find a very different story. Egypt was crammed with Semitic slaves - the Biblical Hebrews. The government was weak and the final ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty was a woman - could she have been Moses' adoptive mother? Several officials of the Twelfth Dynasty record in their tombs that they provided food for their people during the years of famine. One of the viziers in Egypt during this period had unusual powers and records in his tomb that men ran before his chariot proclaiming, "Bow the knee!"
Joseph, acccording to the Biblical story, was vizier of Egypt with sweeping powers - and the Bible recounts that heralds ran before his chariot proclaiming, "Bow the knee!"
During this time the Egyptian economy underwent a radical change when private ownership of property virtually disappeared: all land except for that owned by the temples and priests passed into the hands of the king. The Bible records that during the famine Joseph sold food to the people for money, then for their land and finally for themselves, reducing them to serfdom. The only ones exempt were the priests!
The most interesting evidence, however, comes from the Fayyum, an oasis to the west of the Nile Valley. Water is brought to the Fayyum through a canal called "Bahr Yusuf" or "Joseph's Canal", reflecting an ancient tradition that the canal was dug by Joseph as part of his preparations for the seven years of famine.
Sir Flinders Petrie, excavating at the Pyramid of il-Lahun in the Fayyum, found the village in which the builders of the pyramid lived. The village is divided into two parts, one part with large, luxurious villas; the other, cut off from the first by a strong wall, consisted of tiny one-room dwellings arranged in long rows side by side and back to back, indicating that the people here were of very low status and probably not free - slaves, in other words.
Josephus tells us that his ancestors built pyramids in Egypt:
Having forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, the Egyptians became very abusive to the Israelites and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river and to build walls for their cities and ramparts that they might restrain the river: they set them also to build pyramids. Josephus, Antiquities II,ix,1
This statement that has been rejected by scholars on the grounds that all the pyramids were built before the Israelites arrived in Egypt and in any case, the Israelites made bricks and the pyramids are built of stone. Yet here are pyramids built of bricks - and the bricks are made of mud mixed with straw. If we put the Exodus back in the Intermediate Bronze Age, then these Twelfth Dynasty pyramids could have been built by the Israelites.
The fascinating thing is that these pyramid builders disappeared. Dr Rosalie David of the Manchester Museum in Britain has written a book The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt. This is what she says about the builders of the pyramid of il-Lahun.
It is apparent that the completion of the king's pyramid was not the reason why Kahun's inhabitants eventually deserted the town, abandoning their tools and other possessions in the shops and houses.
...
There are different opinions of how this first period of occupation at Kahun drew to a close ... The quantity, range and type of articles of everyday use which were left behind in the houses may indeed suggest that the departure was sudden and unpremeditated.
In other words, exactly as the Exodus story describes, the Israelites left in a hurry, almost unexpectedly, leaving behind everything they could not carry.
Before the Exodus, however, the Bible tells us that there were a series of plagues, beginning when Moses turned the water of the River Nile to blood and culminating in the death of the firstborn. In between were plagues of storm, locusts, and disease that left the land of Egypt devastated.
Some who have studied the problem of the Exodus have concluded that Egypt's history has been very badly confused. The usual schema of history is as follows:
| Pre-dynastic |
| Early Kingdom |
| First Intermediate Period |
| Middle Kingdom |
| Second Intermediate Period (Hyksos) |
| New Kingdom |
| Third Intermediate Period |
| Persian Period |
The Third Intermediate Period is highly questionable and many scholars reject it. You might like to search on the Internet for TIP - Third Intermediate Period. Some have suggested that the First and Second Intermediate Periods are, in fact, one single period and that the Early and Middle Kingdoms existed at the same time. This would produce a schema like this:
| Pre-dynastic |
| Early Kingdom/Middle Kingdom (Hyksos) |
| Intermediate Period |
| New Kingdom |
| Persian Period |
If this is true, then it is from the end of the Early/Middle Kingdom period that we have the famous lament known as "Admonitions of a Scribe" or the Ippuwer Papyrus, now housed in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden, Holland. This is part of what its unknown author says:
THE ADMONITIONS OF IPUWER
(Translator: John A. Wilson) ... A man regards his son as his enemy. ... A man of character goes in mourning because of what has happened in the land. ... Foreigners have become people everywhere.
... Why really, poor men have become the possessors of treasures. He who could not make himself a pair of sandals is (now) the possessor of riches. ...
... Why really, many dead are buried in the river. The stream is a tomb, and the embalming-place has really become the stream.
... Why really, nobles are in lamentation, while poor men have joy. Every town says: "Let us banish many from us.
... Why really,... dirt is throughout the land. There are really none (whose) clothes are white in these times.
... Why really, the land spins around as a potter's wheel does. The robber is (now) the possessor of riches.
.. Why really, the River is blood. If one drinks of it, one rejects (it) as human and thirsts for water.
... Why really, laughter had disappeared, and is [no longer] made. It is wailing that pervades the land, mixed with lamentation.
... Why really, grain has perished on every side... Everybody says: "There is nothing!" The storehouse is stripped bare; its keeper is stretched out on the ground.
... Behold now, something has been done which never happened for a long time: the king has been taken away by poor men.
... Behold now, it has come to a point where the land is despoiled of the kingship by a few irresponsible men.
... Behold, she who had not (even) a box is (now) the owner of a trunk. She who looked at her face in the water is (now) the owner of a mirror.
... Behold, cattle are (left) free-wandering, (for) there is no one to take care of them. Every man takes for himself and brands (them) with his name.
This sounds exactly like we would expect after the plagues that God sent on Egypt, the water turned to blood, lamentation over the firstborn, grain destroyed, cattle without herdsmen and the king "taken away" by "poor men", the escaping Hebrew slaves - and notice what followed, for Egypt was so devastated and weakened that invaders, the barbarian Hyksos, marched into the land. Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, tells us, "At this time god was angry with us and invaders captured our land without a battle."
Where was the feared Egyptian army? Exodus tells us that "Pharaoh and his chariots drowned in the Red Sea."
The only question remains, "When was the Exodus?"
We have seen that there are questions over the Bible chronology which tells us that the Exodus took place 480 years after the start of Solomon's temple. It is possible, therefore, that we have to move the Exodus back much further than 1445 BC, extending the period of the judges to cover the gap. On the other hand, we have also seen that there are good reasons for shortening the history of Egypt by at least two hundred years and possibly by much more.
David Rohl, in his fascinating book A Question of Time, suggested that Egypt's history needs to be shortened by 400 years. Immanuel Velikovsky suggested 600 years. I would like to be definite and give you a clear answer - the Exodus happened on this precise date. Unfortunately I cannot do so; the evidence is still being studied, it is still inconclusive.
One thing is certain, however. The chronology of Egypt is no longer regarded as fixed and certain. It needs revision and a new generation of scholars is being trained at Cambridge University and in Israel who will not be afraid to look again at the evidence - all the evidence.
As a Bible-believing Christian, I have no doubt that when the final results are in and the date of the Exodus is settled, it will be found to be very close to 1445 BC, the date given in the Bible.
