II Dealing with the textual issues of the Bible

Now, if one compares the proposed dates for the Exodus with the time the Israelites spent in Egypt, he will come up with a lot of confusion and disparaging dismay and despair!

For one; the Hebrew text of Exodus (12:40) says plainly;

that the Israelites spent 430 years there (Egypt).

But a perusal of the “Septuagint”, the Greek translation of the Bible performed by the Jewish Hellenized Alexandria community of Egypt says that;

"the dwelling of the sons of Israel which they spent in Egypt and in Canaan was 430 years"!

This confusion is further compounded by four other internal inconsistencies namely;

a1 Chronicles (5:27-29) says that Moses and Aaron, were fourth generation descendants of Jacob's son Levi!, which would mean that only three generations with an average of 143 years each, preceded them!

This count would clash immediately with 1 Chronicles (7:20-27) which says that “Joshua”, the younger servant of Moses, was a 12th generation descendant of Levi's brother Joseph! Giving 11 generations from Joseph to Joshua averaging 39 years each!

b) The Egyptian’s historical record, to the dismay of the neophyte as well as to the disarray of the specialist Egyptologists, remains adamantly silent and provides almost no direct clue or support for such happening!

c) the mitigated evidence dug in different place of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, where the event is supposed to have taken place, has led contemporary archaeologists either;

1) to doubt the event, or

2) to place its happening from the thirteenth century B.C.E. onward, in complete disaccord with either the biblical exegetes of old or the classical historians who placed the event, contrary to what is stipulate verbatim in (Exodus 12:41), two or three centuries earlier, making it one and the same with the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmosis 1 {Ahmosis Nebpetyrê around (1550-1525)} (photo 7) of the 18th Egyptian’s dynasty!

d) The Torah (תּוֹרָה), on the other hand, of which the original autograph, has been lost since the Israelite’s exile to Babylon (586 B.C – 538 B.C) and is extent today only in secondary copies either in Hebrew, as in this circa 1192 Sephardic Sefer Torah from Spain (photo 8), or in translation from Hebrew into other ancient languages, suffers from two internal structural inconsistencies;

1) Loss of meaning due to any translation of the original autograph, as is true of any translation.

2) Errors in copying and even subtle or direct tampering with the texts.

Now, even after taking these two defects into consideration, the prospective investigator looking for an absolute timing of Exodus, to anchor the whole history of Judaism, has still to jump over a big hurdle presenting itself in the form of an overabundance of numbers, leading back, when one reads them literally and at their face value either; to the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, all of which, besides not resolving the biblical accounts adequately, lack the necessary scientific support of archaeology!

Archeology nowadays, serves the dual role of;

1) Anchoring the event in its true geographical setting and as;

2) An acid test for the historicity of capital events of this sort.

From the above considerations, and given that resolving the Exodus date is of scientific relevance, for its own sake, to all the three sisters’ faiths concerned, it goes without saying, that one has to put his theology as well as his ideology behind him and stick to the standard of scientific enquiry with no “a-priori “stance.

Now, concerning the connection between the big narration of the Bible and Archeology, the results are best summarized by Dr. Stephen C. Meyers25 (photo 9) in an article entitled; “The Date of the Exodus According to Ancient Writers”26 as follows;

- 1- Most of the ancient writers equated the Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt around 1570- 1550 BC, {Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

- 2- Most ancient writers put the Jews in Egypt for 215 years or less. { Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

- 3- All took the 400 or 430 years to cover the time in Egypt and Canaan. { Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

- 4- Most counted the 400 years from the birth of Isaac, or Abraham's entry into the land of Canaan. { Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

- 5- None of the ancient writers including the apostle Paul said the Jews were in Egypt for 430 years { Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

And concerning the big divide separating conservatives and liberal on this issue, Dr. Stephen C. Meyers summarized their respective positions as given below27;

1) Liberal scholars place Israel in Canaan around the 13th century BC while conservative scholars place Israel in Canaan at 1406 BC. { Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

2) Both conclusions seem to be wrong according to archaeological evidence….{ Results at variance with Moslem scholarship’s findings}

And with this summary of the findings of the Jewish-Christian’s scholarship, we are ready to investigate the Moslem’s findings.

End

To be followed by the Judeo-Christian-secular’s scholarship y Part 2

1 Coined also as; postmodernists, deconstructionist, revisionists and minimalists by the conservatives.

2 This identification, while opposed by the conservatives in general and J. Bimson in: John J. Bimson; 1978, “ Redating the Exodus and Conquest”, Sheffield, , pp. 35-48, in particular, is in the right direction as we will prove latter.

3 He ruled Egypt for 13 years and some Egyptologists differ on this matter, giving him a reign of between 15 and 20 years.

4 Many critics have noticed the artificiality of this number, since 480 is simply 12 generations of 40 years each!.

5 American Orientalist, archaeologist, biblical scholar, linguist and expert on ceramics His upbringing bears the stamp of the evangelical American Methodist Church. His seminal works include; "New Light from Egypt on the Chronology and History of Israel and Judah" (1953). For him, the narration in Genesis is historical, and there is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the biographical details..

6 Egyptologist at the University of Liverpool (retired). He published; “Pharaoh Triumphant: the Life and Times of Ramesses II “, Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1982.

7 Jewish scholar and Professor of Jewish History at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His most popular book is a general survey of the biblical world entitled; “The Bible and the Ancient near East”, co-authored with the late Cyrus H. Gordon (1997).

8 He is an avowed Zionist resident of Kibbutz Ein Shemer south of the port city of Haifa. He was introduced to the discipline at age 35 after his legs were severely injured in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. While hospitalized, Zertal was visited by archaeologist Yoram Tsafrir, who himself had sustained serious injuries in his legs in a previous war and who makes a practice of visiting soldiers with severe leg injuries. Tsafrir’s enthusiasm for archaeology and his own success as an archaeologist, despite his physical handicaps, helped move Zertal to study archaeology. Eventually, he enrolled at Haifa University. .He is now the Chairman of the Dept of Archaeology at the University of Haifa! He published; “"Has Joshua's Altar been Found on Mount Ebal?", Biblical Archaeology Review XI (1985), pp. 26-44 among other articles and books.

9 He is one of the Jewish apologetic schools. He was a former Rabbi of the Orthodox congregation in Calgary, Alberta  (Canada), presently lives in Kiryat Sefer, Israel, and lectures at the Aish  Hatorah Discovery Seminar. He does not hide his biases and phobia, which are anathema in science, whenever an occasion presents itself. He criticizes for example the seculars; Herzog and Israel Finkelstein for being convinced of their position from their own studies! For him, studying anything, except the Torah is valueless!

10 Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Linguistics, Tel Aviv University

11 Andalusian litterateur, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present day Spain.[4] He was a leading proponent of the Zahiri School of Islamic thought and produced a reported 400 works of which only 40 still survive. See his biography in Wikipedia.

12 She was born in 1963 in Stavanger, Norway. Her doctoral thesis from the Faculty of Theology, Oslo University was entitled; “Facts in the ground-Biblical history in archaeological interpretation of the Iron Age in Palestine.".(2001).

13Dever, William G. is a Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Arizona; He wrote; “What Did the Biblical Writers know and when did they know it? What Archaeology and the Bible Can Tell Us about Ancient Israel”,   Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

14 He published; “Early History of the Israelite People” (Brill 1992) and “the Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (1999).

15 University Of Sheffield, England. Revisionism, as it is now generally termed, began as a deliberate movement within Biblical studies in 1992 with his book by entitled; “ In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Noteworthy is his essay; "What separates a Minimalist from a Maximalist? Not much," published in Bible archaeology Review, 2000-MAR/APR Vol. 26, #2, Pages 24 to 27; 72 & 73.” And also his two books; “Whose Bible Is It Anyway? », Continuum; 2nd edition (Dec 7 2004) and “The Bible, as History, Flunks New Archaeological Tests Is the Bible history? What does the archeological record show?”

16 He teaches at the University of Sheffield, UK. He wrote “The Invention of Ancient Israel” in the same vein as Edward Saied’s classic; “Orientalism”. He is more critical of the Zionist agenda behind archeology and protests against the use of history "to validate modern political stances". He published; The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (1996).

17 He teaches at the University of Copenhagen, department of Biblical Studies. He wrote “Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites”, Continuum Intl Pub Group, 1991 and “Prelude to Israel's Past: Background and Beginnings of Israelite History and Identity”, Hendrickson Pub., 1998.

18 Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University. He took part in the excavations of Hazor and Megiddo with Yigael Yadin (the smuggler of the Dead-Sea Scrolls) and in dig at Tel Arad and Tel Beer Sheba with Yohanan Aharoni. He published books and Wrote articles on archeology see his article; ” Deconstructing the walls of Jericho: biblical myth and archaeological reality. Prometheus 4:72-93 (2001) among others.

19 Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University

20 An Israeli archeologist affiliated with the University of Tel Aviv. He served as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University from 1996-2002. He wrote; “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts », “The Bible Unearthed : Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, 2001 »,and “David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, 2006 » among others.

21 G. Rendsburg, "Down with History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies

22 This is a false pretence.

23 What their” being Jews” or the lack of it has to do with their field of enquiry?

24 This is the classical petty war cry so dear to the Zionists, when they feel flat beaten or cornered.

25 Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, in Seattle, Washington.

26 In “Biblical Archaeology”, Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies, based on his doctoral dissertation thesis entitled; “The Date of the Exodus in Ancient Writings”, link {http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodusdate.htm }

27 Idem.