More Data and Considerations on Dating the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt

The Eruption of Thera: Date and Implications From the Thera Foundation
http://www.therafoundation.org/articles/chronololy/theeruptionoftheradateandimplications calls for a rethinking of chronology.

From past radiocarbon dates, and the shape of the calibration curve between c. 1625-1525 BC, there appear two possible results: an ambiguous result compatible with both a high or lower chronology ... or that including a result compatible with the 17th century BC radiocarbon analysis.

The weighted average from the five dates with carbon-13 normalization in the central 12 (P-2791, P-2793, P-2795, K-3228, K-4225) is c. 3351 ± 32 BP. Calibrated on the Pearson and Stuiver (1986) curve this yields: c. 1687-1618 BC. The weighted mean of the five dates on samples pre-treated with NaOH in the central 12 (P-1889, P-1892, P-1894, K-3228, K-4225) is c. 3330 ± 25 BP. Calibrated on the Pearson and Stuiver (1986) curve this yields c. 1676-1609, 1552-1547 BC. [/b]

1552-1547 B.C. - for those trusting Carbon dating; or within 150 years for those that don't as much (from 1687 or 1676 B.C. worst case scenario), still puts 1551 B.C. as more highly likely than a 1400s dated Exodus. That is, Santorini / Thera may well have blown (like Krakatoa) and contributed to the Exodus events in Egypt after all.


James B. Pritchard's "Ancient Near Eastern Texts" Princeton, 1969, lists on pp. 252-253 the stela of the Seti family at Tanis, dedicated by Ramesses II, in which he lists his family struggle as Ra / Re 's representative as being 400 years old.

...(5) His majesty commanded the making of a great stela of granite bearing the great name of his fathers, in order to set up the name of the father of his fathers (and of) the King Men-maat-Re, the Son of Re: Seti Mer-ne-Ptah, (Seti I) and abiding forever like Re every day: Year 400, 4th month of the third season, day 4,' of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt....

That is, beginning 400 years prior, Ram II's ancestor was a high priest of Ra/Re who sparked the revolt against the Hyksos. Depending on when we date the stela, this will determine when the revolts of Egypt against the Hyksos began...and it took many decades to succeed.

on p.231, we read a proclamation which says:

"...since the Asiatics [the Hyksos] were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland, and vagabonds [the Hebrews] were in the midst of them, overthrowing that which had been made. They ruled without Re, and he did not act by divine command down to (the reign of) my majesty. (Now) I am established upon the thrones of Re...."


The Jews are listed in Egyptian terminology, not as Jews or Asiatics, but as bums and vagabonds (depending upon the translator). Have Egyptologists followed upon this "vagabond" terminology...the ones who were in the midst of the Hyksos Asiatics and who also overthrew them? Now, there may be those who wish to espouse different dates than me by centuries in regard to the Exodus...but the historical record can be reasonably interpreted to support my thesis. That's all I need to do: present a sound thesis based on historic data that is verifiable by a couple or several sources independent of each other in antiquity, reaching the same conclusions. Acadaemia very often can't even do that.

In regard to my Egyptian date support, we can always bring up Tell el-Yahudiyeh, and others, which even the Israeli Antiquities Authority says falls into the 30 year margin of era criteria some may pine for.


Eusebius: Chronicle -- Egypt from 1st father to Cleopatra's death as 2206 years

[p131] THE EGYPTIANS

How [the history of] the Ethiopians is included in the chronology of the Egyptians, and [the times when] the Ptolemaei ruled over Egypt and Alexandria.
How the Egyptians have kept records of their dates.
After the chronology of the Chaldaeans, the Assyrians and the Hebrews, it it time to move on to the records of the Egyptians.
Diodorus, in the first book of his historical library [ 1.44 ], writes as follows: "Some of them tell the story that the first rulers in Egypt were gods and heroes, who ruled for slightly less than 16,000 years;

[note the very obvious hyperbole and myth-making aspect of the account]

the last of the gods who ruled there was Horus the son of Isis. Then men became kings of the country, in the time of Myris, and have continued for slightly less than 5,000, until the 180th Olympiad [60-57 B.C.], when I [Diodorus] visited Egypt, in the reign of Ptolemaeus, who was called the New Dionysus.

[p133] "For the great majority of that time, the country has been ruled by native kings; but for short periods it was ruled by Ethiopians, by Persians and by Macedonians.

There were only four Ethiopian kings, and they did not rule in a single sequence, but at separate times; in total, they ruled for slightly less than 36 years.

During the supremacy of the Persians, which was established when Cambyses conquered the [Egyptian] people by force, and which lasted for 135 years, the Egyptians rose in revolt, because they could not endure the harsh government and the impiety [of the Persians] towards the native gods.

Then the Macedonians and their descendants became kings, for 276 years. For the whole of the rest of the time, [Egypt] was governed by native rulers, who consisted of 470 kings and 5 queens.

"Records about all of these rulers have been kept by the priests in their sacred books, which have been continuously handed down from one [generation] to another, since the most ancient times. These books tell about the character of each king, their virtue and their bravery, their spirit and their nobility, as well as the achievements of each of them in their reigns. However it is unnecessary, and moreover worthless, for us to write down the deeds of each of them; especially since many of them were judged to be insignificant even in their own times." That is what Diodorus says.

And now it is right and fitting for us to add to this Manetho's account of the Egyptians, which seems to be a reliable history.

From the Egyptian records of Manetho, who composed in 3 books commentaries about the gods, demi-gods, spirits, and the mortal kings who ruled over the Egyptians, up until the time of Dareius the king of the Persians.

The first man amongst the Egyptians was Hephaestus, who discovered fire for them; he was the father of Sol [the Sun]. After him came [(?)Agathodaemon; then] Cronus; then Osiris; then Typhon the brother of Osiris; and then Horus the son of Osiris and Isis. These were the first rulers of the Egyptians. [p135]

After them, one king succeeded another until the time of Bidis, for a total of 13,900 years - calculated by lunar years, which lasted for 30 days. That is the period which we now call a month, but the men of that time called it a year.

[Note this...that these thousands of "years" were de facto only lunar months. We are not just talking 12 month lunar adjustments between 365 and 360 day years. This would merely adjust 1158.3 years at 360 days to a year = 1141.65 years. The actual calculation is an hyperbole of years being 30 day months. Divide the sum total by 12 months and then divide into a 365.25 rounded up to nearest hundredth year, multiplying at .9856. This gives a quick approximation as the historical intent of the testimony.]


After the gods, a race of demi-gods ruled for 1,255 years. {de facto, 1255 months at 103 years}

After them, other kings ruled [the country] for 1,817 years.
{149.23 years as adjusted to the formula given}

After them, 30 kings from Memphis [ruled] for 1,790 years;
{147 years}

and then another ten kings from Thinis ruled for 350 years. {28.74 years}

And then the shades and demi-gods were kings, for 5,813 years.
{477.44 years}

The total for all of these is 11,000 years - which are lunar years, or months.

The total time, which the Egyptians assign to the gods and demi-gods and spirits is 24,900 lunar years - which is the equivalent of 2,206 solar years.

Cleopatra to the first Egyptian leader is then at max-out chronology in the historical testimony, only from 30 B.C. extending back to 2236 B.C.

Hence, there is clear testimony according to the ancients, that for modern Egyptologists and others to date Egypt older than the Flood of Noah or into any period pre-2300 B.C., is INACCURATE.

Over 100 years ago, an extensive write up on the historical documents of Egypt showed that at the Karnak Inscription, there is a reference to the name of Rome as being present in Egypt in the 1300s B.C.
(cf. ANCIENT RECORDS OF EGYPT, Historical Documents, EDITED BY JAMES HENRY. BREASTED
VOLUME 3, The NINETEENTH DYNASTY, CHICAGO: THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
May 1906, p.266). In that case, ROME was the name of a high priest of an idol deity.

As I have demonstrated earlier, there was a direct relationship with Isis and Greece, in which Isis was actually the Greek girl named Ceres, who became queen of Egypt, and then called IO by the Greeks. IO, which is a mathematical formula (the basis of the formation of later Greek letters of its alphabet) and a statement...beginning here, eternity begins. Or, more literarily: "As a civilized society, time begins for us here...", or something to this effect.

In taking in all this, we see that the same Ceres who is Isis in Egypt, and called IO in Greece...also is known as Demeter in ROME. The descendants of Greece and Sicily had pre-10th century B.C. patri-lineal ties to the Delta regions of Egypt.

As Europe thawed from the Ice Age, and the glacial regions of Italy -- and later France and then Germany --receded and gave way to vegetation, new areas (that were previously uninhabitable) opened up.

If ROME was so named as it was, in the 700s B.C., after an Egyptian high priest listed at the Karnak Inscription...and Isis was to be worshipped as Demeter, she who sustains with food and wine and goods...we might wish to look at the connection of trade in which Italy was founded as a Greek colony under Egyptian influence.

Perhaps Mars, the father of Romulus, was half Greek and half Egyptian royal or that of an Egyptian high priest family? Perhaps. But, if not, could Mars have married her who was a beloved sister or daughter of such a one? Perhaps. The more likely hypothetical...Mars was a hired military leader leading a trapping and trading outpost in behalf of Egypt,in an area rich with new life, following the glacial recessions upthe boot of Italy. A reasonable historical presentation for this latter possibility.

The very name of ROME may be meaning that Egypt's trade in the Mediterranean, especially in the low 800s and 700 B.C., and in the centuries going back to Osiris and Isis, was more extensive than what is usually discussed.

The idols that pass in Isaiah's day in the mid-700s B.C. from Rome to Babylon via Israeli ports and Israeli trade route passage, is not by accident. If there were pirates or local interests along the coastal regions of the north and northeast Mediterranean resisting Egypt at that time, the Egyptian merchant vessels must have been escorted by naval military war vessels of some kind.

Egyptian dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean, at least in the time of Isaiah, would likely have been thus limited to the sea lanes well south of Cyprus and Crete.

In Isaiah and post Isaiah prophets, if there is a speaking of Egyptian influence, it may extend out further than was previously supposed.

Even as recent tests in Europe have shown 5-6 knots as the perfect ramming speed in later vessel warfare, we are consistently finding that we are once again changing the perceptions and requirements we modernly place upon the ancients...often worked up by getting away into Orwellian rewrites, as "experts" digress from literary sources and focus on the commentaries on commentaries, perhaps nearer or further based -- in turn -- on the commentary of the translation or historical literary sources. That is, we need to get back to source material whenever possible, so we are less prone to the modern reinterpretation made ignorantly by finger wetting conclusions.

Modern Egyptology bases its chronology on Manetho and Eusebius...and it screws it all up.

The First Dynasty gives way to the Third Dynasty...the Second Dynasty is apart from the First and Third, but the actual simultaneous year, no one has thus far delivered. Manetho has divided the Dynasties in such a pattern as that in which we are to follow the cities until the coming of the Hyksos, and thereafter we see regularity in joining the Delta with Memphis and Thebes. That redating process only puts us into Egypt with its first family in the 2200s B.C., with few dozens to a few hundreds at the first. Even Diodorus' and Polyhistor's contributions from antiquity have shown this to Middle Bronze Age origin of what we call "Ancient Egypt" (and no older than MBA) be the case.

So how much of Assyria and Syria do we date based on what was perceived in dating through modern archaelogical processing foundations in Egyptology? Quite a bit.

As can easily be shown in regard to the Hebrew 215 year sojourn, with good fertility, great numbers in earliest Egypt can be achieved in a short number of years to produce a great labor force. The Rome / Egypt relationship in the 770s to the 740s B.C. is proving to be quite interesting...and may be as simple as the township (and later city of) ROME being a colonial outpost for trapping and trade that came into its own rather quickly.

There is much of the trade and inter-relationship of the ancient world we still don't know. It seems that most historians and scholars of the relevant fields are afraid to openly talk about and compare to the pre-industrial colonial theaters dating back to the Fall of Rome or human patterns of comparative behavior that may or may not apply to aid our understanding of the more ancient past that preceded them some 2000 or more years prior, and why.

In this temporary pdf link, of a 1979 article by Willy Hartner of Frankfurt University, we are informed of the calendral cycles of 19 years, were in place in Babylonia by no later than 503 B.C.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1979JHA....10....1H&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

The significance of this is that there was a large Jewish population in the region when the calendars were perfected to a great accuracy, and this same length of a 19 year cycle, was taken to Israel (probably ff. this date of 503 B.C., but also perhaps earlier) and incorporated at that time...as the 19 year cycle still exists in Jewish calendars to this day.

This data is also consistent with the testimony by generalization (i.e., the Patristics) in the Early Church, by those who were noting a fundamental change in reckonings starting just a couple decades earlier than the latest deadline of 503 B.C. that Hartner specifies for the use of the 19 year cycle.

Wily Hartner, describes the Babylonian calendar as essentially cyclically unintelligible in its reckonings in the centuries before circa 526 B.C.
If the Assyrian calendars are looked into, one will find various cites and regions of Assyria at the same time, showing both different dates and different seasons during the same regnal year of so-and-so. One region to the north might have 3 seasons, and another to the south would have 4 seasons, for example.

Any rate...just the thought of our pin-pointing of the 19 year cycle in Time, as it being used by the Hebrews to this day and that 19 year cycle as being started between 526/525 - 503 B.C. while in Babylonia, and perhaps calculated or at least assisted by wise men from among them, I thought would be interesting to note.


In an assessment of "The Amarna Succession", by James Allen,
http://history.memphis.edu/murnane/Allen%20-%20Amarna%20Succession.pdf
we see that the inter-relationships in Egyptian Chronology cross over neat lines and go into places that Egyptian scholars don't want them to go.

You may come away reading this above temporary pdf. with an interesting conclusion / solution.

It appears that reigns of a grandfather, his daughter, and a child could co-exist in the chronology of Pharaohs as happening simultaneously...whereas modern Egyptologists are determined to neatly separate them.

Hence a king could hypothetically rule 36 years by one account, his daughter 22, her son 9, and the first king to have ruled throughout his daughter's 22 years. Yet by Manetho, in this hypothetical, he would list the first king as ruling but 14 years, NOT 36.

Egyptian girls married and were expected to produce children at age 13 (note53, pdf.). This marriageable age was also used by the Hebrews of ancient Israel as far back as Rebecca's marriage to Isaac (if Rashi is to be lacunae corrected). Boys could ascend the throne of Egypt at age 10, as did Tutankhamen. These two factors, along with incestuous lineage, must be taken into account in examining Egyptian royal chronology against Manetho's accounts.

Of another interest should be separation by racial features, so as to distinguish clans or ruler ethnicities, in order to aid in Egyptian chronology in order to make it accurate.

By example, Tuthmosis IV and His Mother, Tiaa,
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tuthmosis4.htm
strangely look more Japanese Asiatic than what we might normally expect for Egyptian lines in Africa's Egypt.

Is it possible, that in an Ice Age world prior to 1,000 B.C., there were Asiatics in the regions west of the Caspian Sea, and settled as far west as the shores of the Mediterranean before migrations took them completely East? That is a question for history, and for the saints to ask the LORD Jesus when he teaches us the meaning behind every text of the Bible in Glory.

How many went down to Egypt? 75, 71, 70, or 66?

In the New Testament, there has been a complaint raised about Jacob coming to Egypt with 75 people, while in the Hebrew Torah, the number listed is 70.

In the New Testament, Acts 7:14 states 75. The LXX states 75 in Exodus 1:5 and previously in Genesis 46:27.

Genesis 46:26 states the number at 66 in the Masoretic text. In verse 27, the number of those coming into Egypt were 70. In Exodus 1:5 of the Masoretic the number is 70. See also Deuteronomy 10:22 in the Hebrew.

That is a jump of 4 in the Hebrew or O (zero) in the Greek. What might be missed is a doubling of the two souls of the sons of Joseph from Genesis 46:26-27, plus their prior count in Genesis 46:20. Were Manassah and Ephraim now counted thrice (3 times)?

The discrepancy between the LXX and the Masoretic, and the Masoretic from itself appears to be a a matter of reckoning. It may be that in the third century BC, and certainly before Herod I came to power when all the LXX was finalized by, the scribes may or may not have altered this number after other information, such as counting children over age two, instead of just those over age three, for example. That LXX information of 75 was entered and finalized well prior to Hillel restoring the lost Hebraic Torah to Israel some 30 years after Herod I came to power. Because the anti-Christian Sanhedrin of Jerusalem sought to catch Christians in every word, it is very unlikely that Stephen, attempting to convince a Sanhedrin Katan wishing to destroy him, would have made the number 75 up. That mistake would have been pounded against Christianity to successfully disperse it if it were so. Hence, we ned to look further, and elsewhere.

When the Hillel Torah was translated in the then modern Hebrew script, it likely did so first using vastly differing letter forms just 400-500 years earlier (several letters even trading with one another), so that number was also entered in the Hebraic Script; but , we just don’t "absolutely" know. But it is possible that the Hillel Copy had 70, because Josephus (who took his reckoning in Antiquities 2.7.4,) reckoned 70 without Jacob, and 71 with him. This disagrees then with the Massorete Exodus 1:5 and Deuteronmy 10:22. What happened?

There is some unaccountability in Torah manuscript transmission. That lacking finds litle solace in being dependant on sparse Mishna to Talmudic quotations, compared to the NT manuscript fragments dating well back to within a couple generations of the disciples themselves, and having a completeness by the age of Jerome, some 50 years prior to the Leningrad Codex.

We do know that in the Second Century, about 250 years before Jerome, a war of words went up when Jewish zealots redacted out this or that word or phrase in order to deny Yeshua, and the Christians chewed them up for it. Perhaps this happened also with the text, using a new counting of souls after thus an age rather than the prior thus an age. If the family of Hebraic manuscripts became small, it made small changes more possible.

Jerome in ca. 392 A.D. probably held copies of the New Testament that were almost exclusively from the first century A.D. sources as well, being only 350 or less years removed from the 47 -57 A.D. compositions of those works (an NT author dating I can reasonably prove).

It is known (Jerome, Against Rufinius, 2.34) that where the Apostolic texts differ from the much later Masoretes in quoting the Hebraic Old Testament texts, the Apostles appear to have followed a manuscript tree that was more closer to Aramaic (if we follow the second century quotations in translation to Latin and Greek by Irenaeus) and first sources, such as the Ezra era translation of Hebrew Scriptures scribed by Hillel -- if I understand correctly -- that was brought to Rome, and cited by Josephus.

Those same copies of that master copy of the Temple, which would have included the Psalms and the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah (etc.), made available to all Israel by 6 A.D. to 66/67 A.D. in copy form from that master copy.

Jerome, himself, handled some of these same pre-LXX manuscripts, pre-dating the LXX's completion prior to the ascension of Herod the Great.

By his own testimony, Jerome says that his Hebrew copies that he was handling, were those that pre-dated even our extant Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll now on display in Israel, dating to at least 150 B.C. and possibly as old as 250 B.C.

For him to say this there would have been a clear distinction in the difference of the Hebrew epigraphy. For which aid, he sought out the best Hebrew expert of his day to learn more than just an expanded version of what he would have called "modern Hebrew" in the 4th century A.D....but an "ancient Hebrew" of the 4th to 5th century B.C. as well. The only Ante-Nicene (pre-Nicene) mention of the relevant texts I have found is from about 190-200 A.D., in which Clement repeats the number of 75, citing Genesis 46:27 (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.21) and comparing Euphorus and the 75 nations he mentions (having 72 languages and 3 dialects blending two or three of the 72 together).

So we arrive back at the Massoretes, and find that 134 texts have been tampered with by the Massoretes, who changed the name YHVH into ADNY…4 letters for 4 letters. Therefore, I presume, based on the preponderance of my research that the redaction of the original 75 to 70 was made sometime in the Second Century and retained that way in the Hebrew, and based most likely on whether or not to reckon newborns or one year or two year or three years olds...something along those lines.

I have found no Dead Sea Scroll Texts or anything of an antiquity prior to the ascension of Judah ha-nasi (ca. 190 A.D.) to demonstrate otherwise.