by
Damien F. Mackey
“In fact, the current chronology of Egypt has led to
anachronisms and misdating all across ancient world history, creating a
situation of collateral damage that is only now being felt and realized by
erudite scholars”.
Simon Esses Benloulou
Professor Gunnar Heinsohn was only partly correct
when he wrote that: “The worst enemy of Israel’s
history, indeed, is biblical chronology. Whoever puts his faith in it cannot
help but be tempted to extinguish ancient Israel from the map. This is not only
true for anti-Semites, anti-Zionists and neutral researchers, but even for the
best and the brightest of Israeli scholars”.
(“The Restoration of Ancient History”, as quoted
at):
Israeli archaeologists and biblical minimisers,
such as Israel Finkelstein, have by now advanced far into the process of ‘extinguishing
ancient Israel from the map’. Recall, for instance, Finkelstein’s silly boast
to National Geographic (“Kings of
Controversy”, December, 2010): “"Now, Solomon … I think I destroyed
Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!”
The problem, however, is not professor Heinsohn’s
so-called “biblical chronology”, but the ill-fitting conventional chronology
and archaeology that historians attempt to attach to the real biblical chronology.
Thankfully, there are Israeli (Jewish) scholars
and writers, for example Simon Esses Benloulou, who are picking up on that fact
(“Exodus From Egypt. Rewriting the History Books”):
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:7ayIHRrBPBQJ:www.hsje.org/pdf/Exodus%2520From%2520egypt.pd
Yetziat Mitzraim, our exodus from Egypt, is one of the pillars and
foundations of our faith and the focal point of many of our misvot. If one looks into modern history books, or reviews the
scholarly consensus among mainstream Egyptologists, a slight problem arises. By
their account, we were never there and we never left, at least not the way the Torah
depicts it.
As
believers, the children of believers, the faithful among the Jewish Nation have
never been moved by the scholarly consensus in any discipline which contradicts
the truths of the Torah. As our rabbis correctly note, time and again claims
against the Torah, backed by whatever popular flavor of scholarship the era
espouses, have been overturned by later discoveries.
The
situation with regard to Egypt however, has caused difficulties for many
unaffiliated Jews who would like to believe in the Torah, but remain separated
from Orthodoxy by “empirical” issues. In fact, a great amount of controversy
was stirred up a few years ago when a leading figure in the “Conservative Movement” went on record stating that because of the evidence, or lack
of it, he did not believe in the Torah account. The irony of the situation is
underscored by the fact that a growing number of secular scholars have uncovered
historical evidence and unravelled the facts supporting the Torah narrative.
Conventional Theories
Our
historical tradition places the Exodus at the generally accepted date of 1476
BCE .
This
period correlates with the 18th Dynasty, in which we
find many internal and contemporaneous records that document the period very
well. The problem vis-à-vis Egypt, is that there is no indication of the
servitude of the Israelites, the Ten Plagues, a mass exodus, or any substantial
consequential diminishment of Egyptian power, as would be expected according to
the events relayed in the Torah.
Egypt’s
power and eminence during that period and thereafter, was tremendous and almost
unparalleled. Thuthmose III, the great conqueror, was the reigning pharaoh at
the time and his career has been very well documented.
He
expanded Egyptian dominion in many regions including Canaan, Syria and Mesopotamia.
According
to the Torah’s account, the destruction in Egypt was massive and precluded any
national expansion of this kind.
The
population in Egypt is estimated to have been between 2-4 million at the time.
A mass desertion of over two million people and the drowning of the entire army
would have left the country debilitated. According to the Ramban and Seforno,
the Egyptian army wasn’t able to recover from the chaos for at least 40 years
(Ramban, Seforno, Devarim 11:4).
The
evidence at Canaan, as related by Kathleen Kenyon, an archeologist that did
excavation
in Israel in the 1950s, particularly Jericho, also did not support this date or
any date within 500 years that conformed to the narrative in Yehoshua. However,
a 13th
–century date could be made to fit very loosely but not
conform at all closely to the description in the Neveim (Prophets).
Focusing
on the cities of “Pitom and Raamses” mentioned in Shemot, which the
Jewish
people built for Pharoah, and the misidentification of the Egyptian king
Shoshenk as
Shisak of the Neveim, led the scholars
who could not accept a 15th-century date to key in on a 13th-century exodus date, with Raamses, who reigned at the time,
being the Pharaoh of the oppression and his successor, Merneptah, the Pharaoh
of the Exodus. This solidified the 13th-century
exodus date which is now accepted in the history books.
Of
course placing the Exodus in Merneptah’s reign indicates a date that is
incompatible with our tradition. It is also impossible that these two kings were the Pharaohs of the oppression and the exodus respectively,
upon comparing the Torah’s account to the details of Raamses’ and Merneptah’s
reigns. Additionally, the Egyptians were in a constant state of war at this
time with the Hittites. Had a destruction of the Egyptian army occurred, the
Hittites would have swept in and taken over the country.
Because
of these issues (among others) and the prosperity that characterized Egypt at
this time (13th
century BCE) academics have concluded that perhaps a few
Semitic slaves escaped around that time and the Jewish nation had romantically
kept this as a national memory.
So
we find that both the 15th-century date (as per our tradition) and the 13th-century date that scholars decided upon leave no room for
an Exodus as depicted by the Torah. An exodus of the Torah’s proportions is
therefore summarily dismissed by historians as myth.
But
there is a problem with their conclusions, however – even by academic
standards, they are just plain faulty.
Revisionist Dating
A
growing body of scholars, dubbed lovingly as “revisionists,” have proven, in a fashion
undeniable to an unbiased mind, that the entire Egyptian dating and chronology (the
so-called current chronology) is faulty.
Mackey’s comment: See e.g. my
article:
Fall of the Sothic
theory: Egyptian chronology revisited
Simon Esses Benloulou continues:
In
fact, the current chronology of Egypt has led to anachronisms and misdating all
across ancient world history, creating a situation of collateral damage that is
only now being felt and realized by erudite scholars.
Pioneers
that noticed the incongruities in Egyptian chronology and ancient world
chronologies
included the famous physicist, Sir Isaac Newton, and more recently,
Velikovsky
, Courville , Bimson , Rohl , and James , just to
name a few.
Some
of the problems, as we now know, are that many kings listed in Manetho’s King List
reigned in parallel, rather [than] sequentially, and there were often
co-regencies.
This
knowledge, among other facts, collapses Egyptian history by as many as 700
years, according to one revisionist scenario. What we now have are different
and more realistic dates for the different dynasties that fit better, both with
data from other kingdoms, and also the Neveim.
Recently
mainstream scholars such as Emmanuel Anati and Rudolf Cohen have
concluded
in their work on Canaan that the mysterious invaders from the period known as
the Middle Bronze Interchange, who conquered Canaan, were in all likelihood the
Israelites of Yehoshua
(Joshua). This conclusion calls either
for a monumental reevaluation of the current dating systems or some extremely
convoluted measures to reconcile the incongruities. In fact, it is now
postulated
by
some that Kenyon erred in her assessment of the situation in Canaan and that
she had dated the destruction at Jericho erroneously. ….
Mackey’s comment: On this
important site, see e.g. my article:
Really Digging Jericho
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