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  1. Walter Mattfeld
    December 6, 2018 @ 7:32 pm

    There are several different dates proposed for the Israelite Exodus. As pointed out by Ross Patterson (of New Zealand) in this video (at 18:01 minutes) 1 Kings 6:1 has 480 years elapsing from the Exodus to Solomon’s building of the Temple circa 966 BC, giving a date of circa 1446 BC for the Exodus. However, another popular date is circa 1260 BC, much later. It is derived from the Bible’s statement that the Exodus began at an Egyptian city called Ramesses, which had been built by the Israelites. Pr-Ramesses was built by Ramesses I and II, between circa 1300-1200 BC. Two Egyptologists, Kenneth A. KItchen and Eric K. Hoffmeier, have had a close look at the Bible’s internal chronology and concluded that about 600 years elapsed from the Exodus to Solomon’s Temple, NOT 480 years! This gives an Exodus date of circa 1546 BC instead of 1446 BC. In 1546 BC the founder of the 18th Egyptian Dynasty, Pharaoh Ahmoses I, is driving out Canaanites/Asiatics from Egypt’s eastern Delta, who have risen to power there, they are called the Hyksos or “shepherd kings.” The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (circa 70 AD) in his History of the Jews, associated the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt with Israel’s Exodus. So, Josephus saw 1546 BC as the Exodus date. In the 1950s Dame Kathleen Kenyon of England, excavated ancient Jericho and determined that its last defensive wall had fallen due to earthquake activity and that upon its fall the city was set on fire by attackers whom she identified as being Ahmoses I ‘s Egyptians who had chased the Hyksos back into Canaan and then conquered Canaan making it part of the Egyptian empire for 400 years (until circa 1130 BC). Jericho’s last wall was never rebuilt. In the 10th century BC an un-walled village arose at Jericho, built atop the fallen, burnt walls of 1546 BC. The Bible credits a people lately arrived from Egypt (Joshua’s Israelites) as burning Jericho’s fallen walls, and Kenyon has Egyptians burning the city in 1546 BC. She believed the Exodus was circa 1260 BC, in the reign of Ramesses II, and said there was no wall in those days to collapse and be burnt by a 1260 BC Joshua and Israel. In the 1960s-1990s archaeological field surveys in modern Jordan (biblical Moab) revealed that some of the cities conquered by Moses and Joshua did not come into existence until Iron Age I (circa 1200-1100 BC). Conclusions, based on the archaeological evidence: Apparently the Bible is recalling real events, verified by archaeological findings, (1) Jericho’s fallen burnt walls of circa 1546 BC and (2) Moab’s cities founded no earlier than 1200-1100 BC and conquered by Moses and Joshua. That is to say two historical events separated in time by several hundred years have been fused together and presented as one event in the Bible. The BIble tells us that after Israel conquered Canaan, she sinned against God and married the Canaanites, and worshipped their gods. So Iron Age I intermarriages (1200-1100 BC) caused the Israelites of Iron Age II (circa 1100-587 BC) to correctly understand that via their Canaanite grandparents of Iron Age I, they were the heirs of the Hyksos Expulsion of 1546 BC. This is why the Bible preserved the two historical events and fused them together. Another Egyptologist, Professor Donald B. Redford (a Canadian), has opined that Israel’s Exodus is recalling the Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1546 BC, because it is the ONLY event in Egyptian history of a large Asiatic Community leaving Egypt and returning back to Canaan, being pursued by Egyptian chariots (as portrayed in he Bible). I find Redford’s proposal as plausible. For more info Google “Mattfeld Hyksos Israelite Exodus.”

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