25 April, 2016

Exodus Evidence, Part 1: The Absurdity of Hollywood's Flawed Biblical Chronology

Why is it that some people make claims that there "was no Exodus"? If there is archaeological evidence, where is it? When does it date to? This last question, little do people realize, is the only one that deniers get wrong. On Saturday, April 16, 2016, two days after my 23rd birthday which happened to also be the day when the mocked incident occurred, there was an SNL skit that simply reinforces this problem. It was a mockery of Soros-funded RINO John Kasich and how he linked the Passover and Last Supper together. Apparently the woman — would have to look her up to find out her name — who was hosting this SNL episode used chronological snobbery to deny that Jesus' last supper was indeed a Passover Seder celebration and accuse Kasich of "fanfictioning" Jesus into the Passover. Accusations aside, when did this SNL host claim that the first Passover occurred? "Around 1300 BC", right? Wrong!

This is based on Exodus 1:11, which makes a mention of (Pi-)Ramses as the city that the Israelites built. This city only has a brief history, archaeologists claim. The question is, is this an anachronism or a hard marker? Genesis 47:11 also makes a similar claim — the "land of Ramses" was also mentioned hundreds of years before the city existed as the place where Joseph's family settled. So, is Genesis 47:11 an anachronism, is Exodus 1:11 an anachronism, or are both of them anachronisms? Not only is this a problem in the Bible, but also in Egyptian chronology — Ramses' son, Merneptah, made a record of a battle in which Israel was mentioned as having an already established political presence, and a century before Ramses, Amenhotep III also made a stele (called the Berlin Pedestal after the museum that it's currently stored in) recognizing Israel as already existing. Moreover, the city was only known by that name — Ramses — for that short period, but Pi-Ramses is itself built on top of a much older city. Unlike Pi-Ramses, where there are in fact no Asiatic (Semitic) settlements at all, this older city is loaded with artifacts that are clearly Semitic in origin. What exactly is the name of this older city that Ramses II himself named "Pi-Ramesse" happens to be built right on top of? Avaris.

What Bible verses do we have regarding the chronology of the Exodus, that are in fact far more explicit references than Exodus 1:11, and may in fact point to Avaris as the site of this reference? For starters, we've got 1 Kings 6:1. According to this passage, it was 480 years since the Israelites "came out of Egypt", emphasis on "came", that Solomon started building his temple, which was built in 966 BC according to the chronology that most scholars use. In the original Hebrew, that word is "יָצָא", which is a word that is translated in other parts of the Bible (like Exodus 23:16 for example) as an ending or a completion — in this case, the completion of the Exodus journey. This likely means, therefore, that the conquest of the Promised Land occurred 480 years before about 970 BC, which would be about 1450 BC.

Ah, but the year of the conquest wasn't the first time that the Israelites reached the Jordan, according to Numbers 14:33. No, they first got to the Jordan 40 years before that, when, what happened? Instead of conquering the Promised Land, they see the walls of these fortified cities — Jericho, Hebron, Hazor, etc. — and grumble in fear, flee, and wander the deserts for those 40 years. 40 years before 1450 BC would mean that this event occurred around 1490 BC.

This, then, raises another question: How long did it take for the Israelites to get to the Jordan River in the first place, before grumbling in fear and coming back? According to Exodus 16:35, the time it took to go from the Red Sea, to the Ten Commandments sermon, to the "manna" and quail in the deserts, to the "border with Canaan" that would have been understood as the Jordan River to these people before grumbling, cowering, and making a go-around, was a total of, that's right, another 40 years. Start at 1490 BC and go back an additional 40 years from there, and what you end up at is a very significant year indeed: 1530 BC.

This late 16th century BC date marks a time that's just as important in Egyptian chronology as it is in Biblical chronology: it's the end of the Hyksos Period. Yes, that's right, the Hyksos, a people who brought countless artifacts of Semitic origin into Egypt, and the Israelites are one and the same people according to this reference. The ideas that the events occurred in 1300 (or 1250) BC, and that Ramses II was the Exodus Pharaoh when Khamudi is a far more likely candidate, are ideas that therefore must die. They're based on very "flimsy" Biblical indicators, according to Trinity University Professor John Bimson, despite the existence of far more explicit references to other periods, including the three I gave here that combine to point a finger directly at Avaris as being the site of the Biblical Goshen. But no, in Hollywood, this chronology-denying ignorance still abounds, unfortunately.

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