Grace Theological Journal 2.1 (Winter, 1961) 5-14 .
Copyright © 1961 by Grace
Theological Seminary; cited with permission.
THE TIME OF THE OPPRESSION AND THE EXODUS
JOHN REA
Member of the Faculty
Moody Bible Institute
The problem of the date of the Exodus of
the Israelites from
it is an
extremely important one in Biblical studies, for, as Edwin R. Thiele has said,
chronology
is the one sure basis of accurate historical knowledge. Scholars have
wrestled for
over 2000 years with the questions of Hebrew chronology in the O.T. Many
dates have
long since been firmly fixed to the satisfaction of all; others remain
unsettled.
With respect
to any date still in question new evidence demands new investigation of the
problem in
the hope that the new insight gained by intensive study may furnish a more
reasoned
solution.
The chronology of
determined
on the basis of its relationships with Assyrian history. For the chronology of
Egyptian
history, for which scholars have determined dates with the greatest degree of
certainly of
any nation in the
with regard
to their dates about ten or fifteen years for the period in which we are
interested,
so one cannot yet arrive at dates with absolute finality.) Thus a knowledge of
Egyptian
history is essential to the O.T. scholar, for the key to the chronology of
events
throughout
the entire second millennium B.C. in the O.T. is the date of the Exodus from
Various
Solutions of the Problem
The early date.--At present among
O.T. scholars there are two main views concerning
the date of
the Exodus. One is that the Israelites left
around the
middle of the 15th century B.C., and the other is that they did not leave until
the 19th
Dynasty during the 13th century. The
early date view best accords with certain
data in the
Bible, such as the 480 years between the Exodus and the beginning of
Solomon's
temple (I Kings 6:1) and the 300 years from the conquest of
the time of
Jephthah (Judg. 11:26).
A late date.--The view for the date
of the Exodus which has been held by a majority of
scholars
during the past century, and hence which has become more or less
"traditional,"
is the one
which places that event at some time in the 13th century B.C. The most
persuasive
arguments are those of Albright and others who place the Exodus early in the
reign of
Rameses II, about 1280 B.C. As one surveys the literature of those who support
a
late date of
the Exodus, he soon discovers that very few of the writers believe in a unified
movement of
all twelve tribes from
and
Joshua. In order to handle certain
extra-Biblical evidence, such as the date of the
destruction
of
southern
This article
was read before the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological
Society,
journal. 5
6 GRACE
JOURNAL
date are
obliged to imagine either a two-fold exodus and entry into
centuries or
that some of the tribes of
theories may
attempt to handle all the bits of external evidence, they obviously run
contrary to
the great body of Scripture which presents the Exodus and the Conquest as an
episode
which involved all twelve tribes of
Since the Pentateuch and the book of
Joshua clearly teach that the Exodus was a
united
movement from
into
since the
Exodus was of primary importance as the event which gave the Israelites their
freedom from
bondage and welded them together into a nation under the hand of God;
since it was
the event most often appealed to by the prophets and psalmists as an example
of the
mighty working of their God in the affairs of men on earth; and since incidents
in
the Exodus
and Wilderness journey are often spoken of in the N .T. as authentic; then the
problem of
the Exodus is not merely that of one date versus another date. Rather the
problem is
doubly serious, for it involves one's method of interpretation of the
Scriptures
and one's
view of the origin of the religion of
regarding
the date of the Exodus, "Much more than chronology is really involved,
since
the view
that we take of Israelis religious development is materially affected by the
solution we
adopt.”1
It is my belief that only an early date
for the Exodus agrees with the Biblical data and
allows for a
unified Exodus and Conquest, and that only a unified Exodus and Conquest
are in
harmony with the clear statements of the divinely-inspired Scriptures and with
the
true nature
of the religion of
The
Oppression of the Israelites
In any discussion of the dates of the
Exodus it is necessary to deal also with certain
events which
actually took place during the time of the oppression of the Israelites. By
approaching
the record of Exodus chapters one and two in a superficial manner many
writers have
arrived at unbiblical conclusions regarding the setting of that greatest of all
events in
the history of the nation of
store-cities
in Exodus 1:11, Pithom and Raamses, scholars have been quick to place the
bondage of
19th
Dynasty. In so doing they apparently
have not cared how many other passages of
Scriptures
were contradicted or tossed aside.
So far, no inscriptions or documents of
any kind have been found in
witness to
the occurrence of the Exodus, for the mention of
Merneptah
refers to the later time when
of external
evidence to confirm the Biblical record need not destroy confidence in its
historicity.
Comparatively little excavation has been done in the Delta of the
which area
the Israelites resided. Furthermore, the
pharaohs were not given to telling
about their
defeats and times of public disgrace.
Rather their, inscriptions were cut on
temple walls
with the purpose of exalting themselves as the living Horus, the son of the
god
Amun-Re'. And if the pharaoh of the
oppression or the pharaoh of the Exodus had
mentioned
the Israelite slaves or their leader Moses in some public inscription, it would
not be out
of keeping with the known practice of some of the rulers of
king to have
chiseled out the record.
Oppression
by the Hyksos
The king who knew not Joseph.--The verse
Exodus 1:8, "Now there arose a new king
THE TIME OF THE
OPPRESSION AND THE EXODUS 7
over
what dynasty
he belonged, at any rate, is the question. Because of the name Raamses of
one of the
store-cities many who hold to a late date for the Exodus believe that Rameses I
(1315-1313
B.C.) or his son Seti I (1313-1301), the father of Rameses II (1301-1234), is
the king
involved (e.g., G.E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology, p. 60). Others who also take
the late
date think, however, that the 18th Dynasty Egyptians enslaved the foreign
Israelites
when they did not flee from
been driven
out of the Delta (e.g., H.N. Orlinsky, Ancient Israel p. 34). Unger (Arch. &
the O.T., p. 144) and many others who subscribe to the early date of the
Exodus (in the
18th
Dynasty) also interpret Exodus 1:8 in the same way.
Neither of these views, however, takes
into consideration all the facts in the context of
Exodus
1:1-12. The Joseph narrative in Genesis seems to indicate that Jacob and his
sons
descended
into
illustrious
12th Dynasty, perhaps around 1850 B.C. Now if Ahmose I (1570-1545 B.C.),
the founder
of the 18th Dynasty, were the “new king,” then nearly 300 years passed
before the
Israelites began to be oppressed. Or, to
state the problem in another way,
many more
generations than the one specified in verse 6 intervened between Joseph’s
death about
1775 B. C. and the beginning of the time of bondage. In Genesis 15:13,
however, God
told Abraham: "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be sojourners in a
land that is
not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred
years" (italics mine). Yet if the enslavement of the Israelites
began around the middle of
the 16th
century B.C., and if the Exodus took place around 1447 B.C., 480 years before
Solomon
began the
affliction.
A second thing to notice carefully is the
exhortation made by the “new king” in
Exodus 1:9,
10:
And
he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of
and mightier than we: come, let us
deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and
it come to pass, that, when there
falleth out any war, they also join themselves
unto our enemies, and fight against
us, and get them up out of the land.
Several questions may be asked. If the "new king" belonged to the
native Egyptian
18th
Dynasty, would he, or could he truthfully, say that the Israelites were more
and
mightier
than the Egyptians? Perhaps yes, if only
the native Egyptians in the Delta were
in mind; but
certainly not if the whole nation of
whom he
addressed himself. Let it be remembered that at the time when the "new
king"
arose, the
children of
at the time
of the Exodus. Another question: Would the victorious Egyptians who had
just driven
out the armed Hyksos feel that these Semitic shepherds were mightier than the
proud,
strong Egyptian armies? A third question:
What enemies did the Egyptians fear
who might be
expected to ally themselves with the Israelites and wage war against the
Egyptians?
The Hyksos had been expelled, pushed back into
at Sharuhen
had been captured by the Egyptians after a three year siege. There does not
seem to be
any enemy strong enough to invade the Delta anywhere on the horizon by the
middle of
the 16th century B. C.
The logical answer to these problematic
questions would seem to be that a Hyksos
king was the
"new king" of Exodus 1:8. The
text says he "arose over
wayyaqam...'al
Mitsrayim.
8 GRACE
JOURNAL
In Hebrew
the verb qum plus the preposition 'al often have the meaning
"to rise against"
(e.g., Deut.
19:11; 28:7; Judg. 9:18; 20:5; II Sam. 18:31; II Kings 16:7); but they never
have the
meaning of assuming the throne of a nation in a peaceful, friendly manner. It is
certainly
true that the Hyksos arose against
have had
reason to hate the descendants of Jacob because of the episode at Shechem
(Gen. 34)
and Jacob's later fighting with the Amorites (Gen. 48:22), Amorites being one
of the main
elements of the Hyksos people (Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity,
p. 202,
n.4).
If the "new king" was a Hyksos
ruler, the oppression could have begun soon after
1730 B.C.,
for the Israelites were very near the Hyksos center in the northeastern section
of the
Delta. From 1730 until 1447 B.C. is not
quite 300 years. This is not the full
400
years of
affliction of Genesis 15:13, but it is a lot closer than the 100-120 years of
bondage if
the Israelites were not enslaved until the 18th Dynasty. If the "new king" is a
Hyksos
ruler, there is no need to say that his complaint that the Israelites were more
and
mightier
than his own people is an exaggeration.
The Hyksos filtered into
gradually
and were not strong enough at first to capture much of the country. If the "new
king"
is a Hyksos ruler, he had real reason to expect war with his enemies the Egyptians
at any time
in the near future. Since Joseph and his
people had gotten along so well with
the
Egyptians, it was only natural for the Hyksos to suspect that the Israelites
might join
themselves
to the Egyptians.
There is one more logical reason why the
Hyksos must have persecuted the children of
did not the
Israelites choose to leave
expelled? For surely the Jews could see clearly the
hatred which the Egyptians had for
Semitic
peoples and would have fled from possible bondage or torture, had they been at
one with the
Hyksos and not already afflicted and hated by the latter. The question can
be put in another
way: If the Israelites were associated
with the Hyksos, why did the
Egyptians
distinguish between the two Semitic groups and not drive out the Jews along
with the
hated Asiatics? But if the Hyksos
enslaved the Israelites, then certainly the Jews
would have
had no desire to depart with the Hyksos, and the Egyptians could have easily
seen that
there was a distinction between the two peoples. We can surmise that after a
brief
relaxation of the oppression started by the Hyksos, the Egyptians found it
to their
liking also to enslave the children of
reasons. The Jews furnished a source of manpower
needed to reconstruct buildings and
cities in
of the
stirred-up hatred on the part of the Egyptians for all Asiatics. That the Egyptians
did afflict
the Israelites may be seen in the latter half of Exodus 1, beginning with verse
13.
Pithom and Raamses.--The manner in
which the enslavement of the children of
was carried
out is stated as follows in Exodus 1:11, 12:
Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with
their burdens.
And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses. But
the more they
afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread
abroad. And
they were grieved because of the children of Israel.
The holders of the late date of the Exodus
become extremely positive in their
assertions
concerning this passage. Finegan, e.g.,
says:
THE TIME OF THE OPPRESSION AND THE EXODUS 9
The basis of the theory now to be
considered is the statement in Exodus 1:11
that the
Israelites "built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses." Raamses
hardly can
be other than Per Ramesese, the "House of Ramesses (II)," which has
been
identified with Avaris-Tanis . . . .
Unless we are to regard Exodus 1:11
as an erroneous or anachronistic state-
ment, we
must conclude that Ramesses II was the Pharaoh of the oppression.2
(Italics
mine.)
George
Ernest Wright is much more dogmatic in his statements:
Now the point which
must be stressed is this: if the Israelites worked in labor
battalions on the construction of the city of
reign of Rameses II. . . and perhaps that of his father, but not
before. . . . We
now know that if there is any historical value at all to the
store-city tradition in
Exodus (and there is no reason to doubt its reliability), then
Israelites must have
been in
much digging at
single object of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty has been found
there. The city
was destroyed by Pharaoh Amosis I (1570-1546), and was probably
not
reoccupied before the end of the 14th century.3
(Italics his.)
While the identification
Zoan-Tanis-Avaris-Per Ramesese may not yet be absolutely
certain, it
may be assumed to be correct. Whether
this city was at the site of San el-Hagar
or at Qantir
twelve miles to the south makes little difference, for apparently at neither
site
have remains
of the 18th Dynasty been uncovered. Thus
it must be recognized that if
Biblical
Raamses was
in the 18th
Dynasty. Yet the orthodox defender of the early date
cannot admit of an
anachronism.
Furthermore, if there is a better possible explanation of the occurrence of
the name
Raamses, it would be preferable than to claim that it is the modernization of
an
obsolete
place name by some later scribe, as Unger does (Arch. & the O. T., pp 149f).
In
not one of
the passages where the name Raamses occurs (Gen. 47:11; Exodus 1:11;
12:37; Num.
33:3) is the more ancient name given.
One Scriptural method of explaining
an archaic
name may be illustrated by the case of Zoar: ". . . the king of Bela (the
same is
Zoar)" (Gen. 14:2, 8).
If those who insist on the late date of
the Exodus believe that Exodus 1:11 is reliable,
they
certainly have to overlook or discount many other interrelating passages of
Scripture. If there is any sense of order and continuity
in the narrative in the early
chapters of Exodus,
then the beginning of the enslavement and the building of Pithom
and Raamses
took place before the birth of Moses.
Certainly chapter two with its
account of
Moses' birth during the time of oppression necessarily follows
chronologically
the early
stages of the oppression described in chapter one; and the building of Pithom
and Raamses
was one of the first tasks given to the enslaved Israelites. But Moses was
eighty years old at the time of the Exodus
(Exod. 7:7); he was 120 at his death.
Thus
even if the
late date of the Exodus (about 1290-1280 B.C.) were correct, Moses would
have been
born about 1370-1360 back in the 18th Dynasty (1570-1315 B.C.). Therefore
it is
impossible to hold that Rameses II was the Pharaoh who ordered the Israelites
to
build for
him the store cities of Exodus 1:11, and at the same time to do justice to the
rest
of
Scripture.
10 GRACE
JOURNAL
Notice that according to the early date of
the Exodus (c. 1447 B.C.) Moses would also
have been
born in the 18th Dynasty, around 1527 B.C.
But the first chapter of Exodus
clearly
indicates that there was quite an interval of time between the beginning of the
oppression
and the birth of Moses at the time of the order to kill all the male babies
born
to the
Hebrew women. Certainly several
generations of Israelites may be indicated by
the words of
Exodus 1:12. Another period of perhaps a
generation may be implied in the
blessing
which God bestowed on the mid-wives in giving them families and descendants
(Exod.
1:20f). The result of combining the
Biblical data and the archaeological evidence
concerning
the Egyptian site of
that it
would seem that the Hyksos were the ones who first enslaved the children of
and used
them in building their store-cities. This is the conclusion of the French
scholar,
R. Dussaud
(according to Rowley, From Joseph to
Joseph p. 25n).
The question then will be asked, if the
Hyksos were the oppressors in Exod. 1:11, how
are we to
explain the appearance of the name "Raamses" in an age prior to the
19th
Dynasty? It is my opinion that the name
"Raamses" may actually have been used during
the Hyksos
era, and then discarded by the reactionary Egyptians of the 18th Dynasty.
The
following 19th Dynasty apparently witnessed antagonism against the domination
of
the Theban
priests and their violent suppression of the theology of Aten, by bringing
about a
return to Hyksos traditions and to the cult of the despised god Seth. Note the
startling
conclusions of W.F. Albright:
The Ramesside house actually traced its ancestry back to a Hyksos
king whose
era was fixed 400 years before the date commemorated in the
"400-year Stela" of
family, very possibly of Hyksos origin, since his name was Sethos
(Suta). . . .
Ramesses II established his capital and residence at
"House of Ramesses" and where he built a great temple of
the old Tanite, later
Hyksos god Seth (pronounced at that time Sutekh).4
Now if the Ramesside dynasty may be traced
back to the Hyksos rulers, and if the
dynastic
name Seti or Sethos is a Hyksos name, then it is equally possible that the name
Rameses or
Raamses was a Hyksos name or at least was used by them in
where few
records from that period have been found.
Since certain Hyksos kings did use
the name of
the god Ra or Re' combined with other words in their throne names, it would
not be
illogical to find such a name as "Ra-meses" in that era.
The Pharaoh of the Oppression
According to the early date of the Exodus
Thutmose III (1504-1450 B.C.) was the so-
called
Pharaoh of the Oppression. He was one of
the greatest, if not the greatest, of all
the pharaohs
of Egyptian history. After he actually
gained control of the throne about
1483 B.C.
following the death of his hated aunt/stepmother/mother-in-law Queen
Hatshepsut
(perhaps the pharaoh's daughter of Exodus 2:5, while she was still a teenage
princess),
Thutmose III reorganized the army of
the space of
nineteen years into
tribute from
them. For such military exploits Dr. J.
P. Free has termed him the
"Napoleon
of
THE TIME OF THE OPPRESSION AND THE EXODUS 11
Thutmose III must be the ruler whose death
is recorded in Exodus 2:23. He reigned
alone for
about thirty-four years (1483-1450 B.C.).
This long period agrees well with the
Scriptural
statement that the pharaoh died after oppressing the Israelites for "those
many
days." God's command to Moses, "Go, return into
sought thy
life" (Exod. 4:19), implies that the same king from whose face Moses fled
into Midian
is the one who died in Exod. 2:23. Since
Moses was in Midian and Horeb
for more
than 30 years,5 the reign of the Pharaoh of the Oppression had to be
a lengthy
one. The
only pharaohs in the 18th and 19th Dynasties who ruled more than 30 years
were
Thutmose III, Amenhotep III (1410-1372), Horemheb (1349-1315), and Rameses II
(1301-1234). The evidence of Merneptah's Stela that
his reign
prevents our considering his father Rameses II as being the Pharaoh of the
Oppression. Horemheb could not have been that ruler
because he was the last king of the
18th
Dynasty, and Rameses I, first king of the 19th Dynasty, ruled only a year and
four
months and
was too old to bear the burdens of kingship alone and thus to have been the
Pharaoh of
the Exodus. Nor could Amenhotep III very
well have been the Pharaoh of the
Oppression,
for his son, Akhenaten (1380-1363), the "heretic king" who tried to
install
the worship
of Aten as the religion of
Exodus.
Akhenaten moved to the site of Amarna and built a
capital of
engrossed in
this task and in his religious views that he neglected international affairs
and
took little
interest in building in the Delta region.
Also, the character of Akhenaten, who
apparently
was a sickly, effeminate man who died before he was thirty, does not agree
with the
strong, cruel nature of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Thus the only pharaoh of the
four that
enjoyed long reigns who could have been the predecessor of the Pharaoh of the
Exodus and
thus himself the Pharaoh of the Oppression was Thutmose III.
One more detail which may indicate that
Thutmose III corresponds to the Pharaoh of
the
Oppression may be noted: If Moses were a
favorite of Hatshepsut, whom Thutmose
hated with a
vengeance, then we can easily imagine that Moses was also the object of the
wrath of
Thutmose. Thus when Moses killed the
Egyptian and brought himself in that
way before
the attention of the new monarch, he was obliged to remain in exile as long as
that great
pharaoh lived.
The Location of Pharaoh's Court
The Biblical data.--The entire
context of Exodus 5-14 reveals that the place where the
pharaoh was
residing during the time of the ten plagues and the Exodus itself was not far
from the
certainly
lay in and to the north of the fertile valley which links the Delta region with
lake
Timsah and
the Bitter lakes of the
Tumilat. Near its western end lies Tell Basta, the
site called
Age, which
was situated on the royal canal6 leading
to the
the canal
with the easternmost or Pelusiac arm of the
southeast of
the present-day town of
Exodus 5:6, 10 and 12:31 force one to
conclude that Pharaoh's residence was no more
than one to
three hours away from the center of the
the
phenomena of the plagues of the flies and the hail (Exod. 8:22; 9:25f) falling
upon all
the land of
very edge of
12 GRACE
JOURNAL
at that
time, removed to some extent from the territory which the native Egyptians
settled.
In the time
of the 19th Dynasty, however, when the capital was at Tanis-Rameses, many
of the
principal building projects of Rameses II were in the Wadi Tumilate or
region
itself. At that time the Egyptians lived
all around and in the midst of
excluding
that area as though a despised captive people were dwelling there.
Pharaoh is residence was in a city
(Exod. 9:33) and it was in sight of the river, year
(7:20-23),
which almost invariably means the
Delta. Cities like
from the
channel of the
The problem of the Eighteenth Dynasty
capital.--Since I Kings 6:1 places the Exodus
about 1447
B.C., the Biblical date means that the Exodus occurred in the 18th
Dynasty.
The capital
of all the kings of that dynasty, however, was at
away from
the
could to
prevent the Israelites from leaving
Exodus.
Rowley delineates the problem for those who hold the early date of the Exodus
when he
says: "No known building operations of this Pharaoh (Thutmose III) took
place
in the Nile
Delta region, and he is not known to have had a royal residence in that
district"
(FJJ, p. 24). I shall attempt to show
that the first half of this statement is
incorrect,
and that there is a fair amount of evidence that his son, if not Thut-
mose
himself, did have a royal residence in the Delta.
The fact of two viziers in the
Eighteenth Dynasty.--The vizier of
minister,
the highest administrative official of the state; he was likewise the
commandant
of the
capital and the chief justice. Up to the
reign of Thutmose III all of
within the
sphere of one vizier's authority. But to
handle the greatly increased business
of
government, that pharaoh divided the labors of the vizier's office between two
men;
one resided
at
at
that
Thutmose III appointed a separate vizier for
his
estimation was the proper execution of the royal commands in the Delta and the
lower
reaches of
the
pharaoh had
a secondary residence for himself to stay in on his tours of inspection, in
Archaeological evidence of 18th
Dynasty buildings in the Delta.--There is much
evidence
that Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, and other pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty did
build
extensively in
magnificent
red
Rei in
employed in
the building operations known to have been carried out at
Dynasty
rulers.
But the most pertinent evidence of all comes from Tell Basta, the
site of ancient
route of all
travel to and from Asia, whether by the northern road through
Daphne, and
Pelusium, or by the
THE TIME OF THE OPPRESSION AND THE EXODUS 13
southern
road through Heroopolis at the then extended head of the
an important
position to hold. So strategic was it that the first of the Libyan kings of the
22nd
Dynasty, Sheshonq I (the Biblical Shishak, I Kings 14:25), transferred his
residence
to
discoveries
of his came from the 18th Dynasty. The
earliest of these was a stone of
Amenhotep
II. It is a red granite slab with two panels.
In each panel the king is seen
standing and
making offerings to the god Amun-Re' who sits on his throne, and is spoken
of as
"he who dwells in Perunefer."7 Seti I of the 19th Dynasty reused this stone
when he
built a
temple at
motive as
follows: "I believe that when he
renewed the monuments of Amenophis II he
was actuated
by a religious motive, by the desire to propitiate Amon, perhaps at the
moment when
he entered on his Asiatic campaigns, for which
the starting
point" (ibid., p. 31). Scarabs and
remains of a temple built by Amenhotep III
have also
been found at
Records from the life of Amenhotep II.--Clinching
evidence appears in the records
about his
life that Amenhotep II often resided in or near the Delta. Thus it would not be
out of place
for him, the Pharaoh of the Exodus according to the early date view, to be
staying
nearby the "ghetto"of his rebelling slaves. First of all, we know from a scarab
that
Amenhotep II was born at
some times
in his father's reign (the reign of Thutmose III). Then we know that as a
youth he
would often ride from the royal stables in
Sphinx at
gave himself
the title "Divine Ruler of Heliopolis.” Best of all, William C. Hayes
states
in his
recent book; The Scepter of Egypt, concerning Amenhotep II:
In his youth he had been
appointed by his father as commandant of the
principal base and dockyard of the Egyptian navy at Peru-nefer,
near
where he seems to have maintained large estates and in the
vicinity of which he
and his successors appear to have resided for extended periods of
time.8
Peru-nefer,
according to John Wilson of the Oriental Institute, now seems to have been a
district
near
connections. Thus Amenhotep II does not seem to have been
averse to residing near
Semitic
peoples in the Delta area. As the god
incarnate he could have stayed in the guest
house of the
temple he had erected at
houses for
the convenience of the "divine" Pharaoh. Labib Habachi, a native Egyptian
archaeologist,
has recently excavated at
Amenhotep II
erected in
Bastet. He also states with regard to
it was the
point of departure to Sinai and
used often
to go."9
Other records indicate that Amenhotep II
made three military expeditions into
which came
in the third, the seventh, and the ninth years of his reign. If the Exodus
occurred in
1447 B.C., that would have been the fourth year of Amenhotep's kingship.
He then
would have had about three years to rebuild his army after the disaster
suffered
by his crack
troops in the engulfing waters of the
the
east-central part of the Delta, would have served well as the military base or
staging
area for the
Asiatic campaigns of Amen-
14 GRACE
JOURNAL
hotep and
his father Thutmose III. Thus I conclude
that it was
end of the
his
insubordinate Hebrew slave laborers.
DOCUMENTATION
1.
Harold Henry Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua ("The Schweich
lectures of the
British;
Academy," 1948;
2.
Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton:
1949), p.
107.
3. George
Ernest Wright, Biblical Archaeology (
1957), p.
60.
4.
William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (2d
ed. with a new
introduction;
Doubleday Anchor Books; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1957), p. 223.
5.
The ruler from whom Moses fled was a man--"He sought to slay
Moses" (Exod.
2:15); thus
it could not have been Hatshepsut. But
Thutmose III ruled alone only 34
years. Moses may have been slightly older than 40
when he broke with the Egyptian
court, and
yet near enough to that age so that he could be said to be (approximately) 40
years
old. Compare Luke's statement that Jesus
was about thirty years old at the time of
His baptism
(Luke 3:23); yet our lord, must have been closer to 33. The only passage
which states
Moses I age at the time of his escape to Sinai is Acts 7:23; literally it
says:
"And
when a time of forty years was being filled for him, it came into his heart to
visit
his
brethren, the sons of
possible
that the length of Moses' training in all the wisdom of the Egyptians after
being
weaned and
taken from his mother, is what is meant.
Thus Moses may have been 43 or
more when he
fled to Sinai and 77 when Thutmose III died, for the Exodus probably
occurred in
the 4th year of Amenhotep II's reign.
6.
This canal was in use during the 12th Dynasty and was employed by
Hatshepsut's
mariners on
their voyage from
History of
into what is
now
the
Israelite crossing of the Red Sea took place north of the present
7.
Edouard Henri Naville,
8.
William C. Hayes, The Scepter of
for the
9.
Labib Habachi, Tell Basta, Supplement aux Annales du Service des
Antiquites de
l'Egypte. Cahier No. 22 (
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
Grace
Theological Seminary
www.grace.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at: