Many scholars have drawn the conclusion that the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is not a historical event, based upon erroneous information and assert that “the exodus is a history that never happened”. Similarly, much of academia rejects the biblical narrative of the destruction of Jericho and Israel’s conquests of the promised land claiming that “Joshua destroyed a city that wasn’t even there.”
Recent revelations by Egyptologist, archeologist, historian and author Dr. David Rohl and Christian author and film maker Tim Mahoney are breaking that paradigm. Together they have teamed up to dispel the myths, misconceptions and presuppositions that have led to these incorrect perspectives in a documentary entitled Patterns of Evidence. What follows is a brief overview of their findings.
Errors in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics by Jean-Francois Champollion in 1822 became the foundation that virtually every subsequent Egyptologist worked from to establish a chronological history of Egypt. The incorrect association of the Pharaoh Shoshenq I with the biblical Pharaoh Shishak (2 Chronicles 12:2-9, 1 Kings 11:40 and 1 Kings 14:25) and the resulting synchronization of Egyptian and Israelite chronology became the template that was used erroneously going forward.
Since the Bible indicates the timing of Shishak’s invasion in 2 Chronicles 12:2, the year of 925 BC was established as central to the reign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I. This resulted in the affixing of 945 BC as the beginning of the 22nd dynasty and also placed Ramesses II (19th dynasty) as Pharaoh at the time of the exodus. What made this problematic was archeology could find no record of the exodus during the period of Ramesses II and scholars then rejected the historicity of the Bible for lack of evidence.
Getting Things Right
Proper interpretation of Shoshenq’s war campaign by Rohl revealed that his excursions took him to the northern kingdom of Israel and not Judah therefore he could not have been the same Egyptian king as the Shishak mentioned in the Bible. Furthermore, historical records from other nations such as the Hittite Treaty Cuneiform (a treaty between the Hittites and Egypt), in language much closer to Hebrew, identifies Pharaoh Shysha as the Egyptian signatory. The Greek translation of this name is Ramesses.
Based upon the similarities in the Hittite alphabet and the language of the Hittite inscriptions in comparison with the Hebrew Torah, Shysha is the same pharaoh as Shyshak which completely alters the timelines of accepted Egyptian chronology. Therefore, Ramesses II could not have been the pharaoh at the time of the exodus.
Additionally, the Israel Stele, which is a declaration by the Pharaoh Merneptah (Ramsesses II’s son), depicts Israel being laid waste and corroborates the hieroglyphic message of the wall of Karnak war scenes. This proves that Ramesses II was not a contemporary of Moses as the movie The Ten Commandments portrays and much of society has accepted, since Israel was not yet a nation in the promised land at the time of Moses.
The context of these inscriptions illustrates that Israel was a nation along with the Hittites, Libya and Syria at the time of Ramesses II, which aligns him with Solomon not Moses. The hieroglyphics also show Israel having chariots in the battles in which they were conquered. The people that Moses led out of Egypt possessed no chariots or horses (Exodus 12).
A New Chronology
By incorrectly interlocking Egyptian chronology with the Bible and positioning Ramesses II as the pharaoh at the time of the exodus, all archeological research became skewed to the erroneous timeline. Most historians placed the exodus roughly around 1160 BC and adjusted the biblical calculations to match, implying the Bible was untrustworthy. Therefore, the generally accepted dates of Egyptian history are seriously wrong. In reality the exodus was much earlier.
The destruction of the city of Jericho is key to unlocking this mystery. When the site at Jericho was excavated in the 1950’s it was determined that it was destroyed long before the assumed arrival of Joshua around 1210 BC. There was no evidence that Jericho existed for 600 years prior to this.
When we reconcile the exodus with the corrected Egyptian chronology, it perfectly explains why there is no evidence for the existence of Jericho between 1350 BC and 1150 BC. Joshua destroyed the city prior to 1350 BC! Archeologists found the city much deeper than the period they assumed and what they did find supports the biblical narrative. The walls had imploded and the city was burned to the ground. Additionally, the stores of grain were full indicating that the siege was not a long one. There was no evidence of survivors.
Other archeological discoveries also verify biblical truths. At Hazor they found a tablet naming King Yabni – Addu which confirms the biblical narrative of Joshua putting King Jabin to the sword (Joshua 11:1-11; Judges 4:2, 7; 23-24). At Sachem a stone was found next to a temple that had been destroyed by fire (Judges 9:45-49), that is none other than the Covenant Stone erected by Joshua (Joshua 24:25-28).
The 13th Egyptian Dynasty
This new information places the exodus at the end of the 13th Egyptian dynasty. When Egyptian archeology is examined under this light it reveals a new narrative that is congruous with the Israelite discoveries. Pharaoh Didimose is recorded as the last pharaoh of the 13th dynasty and he was not a celebrated leader. This is logical since he was the king at the time of the ten plagues and the exodus. The 13th dynasty was followed by the Hyksos period.
At the end of the 13th dynasty, the Hyksos invaded Egypt, killed the pharaohs and conquered the land with apparently little resistance. Jewish historian Josephus quoted an Egyptian priest named Manetho who wrote about a king called Tutimaeus (Greek for Didimose) and that God (not Egyptian gods) smote the Egyptians which was followed by an invasion of Egypt from the east that, “Easily seized it, without striking a blow.” This is rational since the entire Egyptian army was destroyed in the Red Sea (Exodus 14:23-28), which left the nation vulnerable to external forces.
Archeological digs in the Goshen area of the Nile delta have exposed the remains of the Semite settlement of Avaris which abruptly ceased to be occupied around this time. This settlement was home to the Israelite population from the time of Joseph through to the time of Moses. Several years after the exodus, a new city was built on the same location named Pi Ramesse, hence the reference in Genesis 47:11.
Artapanus of Alexandria, a Jewish historian, wrote about the pharaoh that raised Moses, identifying him as Khenophres (Greek) or Khanerferre (Egyptian) which corresponds to Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV who was the 29th ruler of the 13th dynasty (about 1710 BC). He was the father of Maris who was Moses’ foster mother. This aligns with the archeological evidence suggesting the exodus occurred much earlier than previously thought.
The error of equating the pharaohs Shoshenq and Shisak and synchronizing the Bible and Egyptian chronology based on this correlation has distorted the interpretation of archeological evidence of both the Bible and of Egypt. Dr. David Rohl has reconstructed the Egyptian chronological history and realigned it with an accurate perspective that encompasses archeological, historical and biblical relationships under new light.
Not only is this a significant development for understanding the interconnectedness between Israel and her stature within the region but it also lends credence to the veracity of the Bible and demonstrates that scripture is not at odds with scientific evidence and history. The exodus is a verifiable event.
Deceiving Society
The modern era has propagated many misconceptions that society has grown to accept as truth. The incorrect dating of Egypt’s history by Champollion, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Lemaitre’s big bang theory, Letronne’s cosmology and others have been embraced by academia and used to disparage the Bible. Humanity has uncritically consumed the rhetoric and the effects have additively contributed to the presuppositional worldview that the Bible must be fiction.
This wilful ignorance of the truth has become justification for the conflict between science and faith. It is furthermore used as fuel for the fire to remove religion from contemporary society by a secular agenda based on naturalism. This worldview has perniciously led to the acceptance of sin as a valid lifestyle choice that has Satan beaming with pride (pun intended).
Rather than attempting to interpret scripture from a worldly point of view, which results in a distorted portrait of biblical events, analysing historical evidence from a biblical perspective results in a concise and rational exposition of history. The bible is much more than the ancient scribblings of uneducated and primitively naïve and unscientific men as many would have you believe. It is the most authenticated ancient document known to man. It is the word of God.
