The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus

Tradition [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996], 199). 12. While any given pharaoh of Egypt’s New Kingdom received a throne-name (praenomen) upon his accession—either as the sole monarch or as the coregent for a senior pharaoh who wanted a smooth regnal-transition at the time of his imminent death—he merely appended this praenomen to his nomen, the birth name that had always been with him. Each name was enclosed in a cartouche. 13. See 1 Kgs 11:40, 14:25; and 2 Chr 12:2, 5 (twice), 7, and 9. The fact that this new trend began during the reign of Shishak (Shoshenq I) should be of no surprise to the student of Biblical history, since Shishak’s reign signaled both the beginning of a new ruling dynasty, the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt, and the beginning of foreign rule under pharaohs who hailed from Libya. 14. See 2 Kgs 23:29, 33, 34, 35; 2 Chr 35:20, 21, 22; 36:4; and Jer 46:2. Pharaoh Hophra is named once as well, though his name appears only in a prophetic writing, where God calls him, “Pharaoh Hophra, King of Egypt” (Jer 44:30). 15. Any temptation to doubt the historicity of the Biblical text on account of the presence of an unnamed pharaoh should be avoided vigorously, since “surely historians would not dismiss the historicity of Thutmose III’s Megiddo campaign because the names of the kings of Kadesh and Megiddo are not recorded” in the ancient Egyptian accounts (Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 110). 16. Ibid., 109. 17. Ibid. 18. James K. Hoffmeier, “The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II,” in The Context of Scripture: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, vol. 2, ed. William W. Hallo (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000), 21. 19. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 87, 109; Wood, “The Rise and Fall,” 478. 20. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 109–110. Hoffmeier incorrectly identifies these enemies of Egypt from the first Asiatic campaign of Amenhotep II as “Nubian tribes,” and “Nubian chieftains,” thus attributing them to the nation of Nubia, or Cush, located directly to the south of Egypt. The partly defaced geographical name on the Memphis Stele is certainly not t3 Nhsy, “the Nubian Land,” as some have restored it to read, but Takhsi (Anson F. Rainey, “Amenhotep II’s Campaign to Takhsi” JARCE 10 [1973], 71). Der Manuelian remarks that the location of the district of Takhsi has been settled with little dispute, with the only difference being whether it was situated north or south of Kadesh on the Orontes River (Peter Der Manuelian, Studies in the Reign of Amenophis II [Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1987], 51–52). Redford adds that the Syrian district of Takhsi “probably lay close to, and perhaps northwest of, Damascus” (Donald B. Redford, “The Coregency of Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II,” JEA 51 [Dec 1965], 119). 21. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 110. 22. Ibid., 87. 23. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?,” 602. A textual variant has arisen in 1 Kgs 6:1, with the original text reading either “480th year” (MT and Vg), or “440year” (LXX). Though the antiquity of the LXX renders its text important for determining the originality of any variant in the Hebrew Bible, the MT possesses greater authority than any ancient translation, including the LXX. “[The MT] has repeatedly been demonstrated to be the best witness to the [OT] text. Any deviation from it therefore requires justification” (Ernst Würthwein, Text of the Old Testament, 2nd ed., trans. Erroll Rhodes [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 116). Moreover, the LXX has been shown to be inferior to the MT in chronological matters (Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994], 90–94). Since no scribal error led to a faulty reading in the MT, “480th year” is taken to be the original reading. See http://exegesisinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=85 for a complete resolution of this textual variant in 1 Kgs 6:1. 24. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?,” 601–602; Thiele, Mysterious Numbers, 80. As does Young and the present writer, Kitchen also prefers 967 BC as the year of the inception of the Temple’s construction (Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 203). 25. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?,” 599–603. Advocates of a 13th-century-BC exodus have yet to explain the remarkable coincidence of the Jubilee cycles, which align perfectly with the date of 1446 BC for the exodus. 26. Moreover, the exact month and day of the exodus can be deduced, as God both established for Israel a lunar calendar that began with the month of Nisan (originally “Abib,” per Exod 13:4) and precisely predicted the day of the exodus. The new moon that began the month of Nisan in 1446 BC reportedly occurred at 19:48 UT (Universal Time) on 8 April (as detailed on the webpage http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/phase/phases-1499.html), assuming there were no significant variations in the earth’s rotation, apart from the roughly 25 seconds per centurythat NASA allows for the tidal retardation of the earth’s rotational velocity. However, two variables must be factored into the equation: (1) The date used to mark the new moon varies slightly according to the point of observation. In the Eastern Nile Delta, where the land of Goshen and the Egyptian royal city of Memphis were located, the time is 2.1 hours ahead of longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian, so the new moon should have been observable in Egypt at 21:42 + 2.1 hours = 23.48 hours, or 11:48 pm. Since 11:48 pm was after sunset on 8 April, and sunset was the standard time for Egypt’s priests to declare a new moon upon observing the moon’s crescent, they would not have declared a new month that night. Instead, they would have waited until the next night, which for now can be assumed to be 9 April. However, (2) the earth’s rotational velocity has varied on two prior occasions, beyond the variable of 25 seconds per century, a factor not acknowledged by NASA. The first occasion was the “long day” of Joshua, in which “the sun stood still and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies,” an event that transpired “for about a full day” (Josh 10:13). Strictly speaking, the earth—and not the sun—stood still, and of necessity the moon’s relative proximity to the earth did not vary, so the moon stopped moving as well. The second occasion was during the days of Hezekiah, in ca. 703 BC, when the shadow went back “ten steps” on the dial (2 Kgs 20:10), a terrestrial phenomenon that represents a retrograde motion of the earth. Since the length of these ten steps and the position of the sun at the time are unknown, exactly how much time this represents is unclear, but it probably did not exceed a few hours. Thus these two events together represent a variation of about one full day, meaning that the first day of Nisan in Egypt actually fell on Friday, 10 April. From here, the biblical text can extrapolate the exodus date. The Lord said that on the tenth day of the month (19 April), each Jewish family was to slaughter an unblemished lamb and eat the Passover Feast (Exod 12:3). On the 15th day of the month (before sunset on 25 April), the morning after the Death Angel came at about midnight and struck down all of the firstborn of Egypt (Exod 12:12, 29), the Israelites began their exodus (Exod 12:33, 34, 39; Num 33:3). Since they counted their days from dusk to dusk, the 15th day of the month included both the Friday night in which the Death Angel passed over them, and Saturday’s daytime hours, during which they departed. Therefore, the exodus may be dated with relative confidence to 25 April 1446 BC. 27. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 124. 28. Alan Millard, “Amorites and Israelites: Invisible Invaders—Modern Expectation and Ancient Reality,” in The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan



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