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Monday, June 4, 2018

Jewish scholars waking up to Revision of Exodus


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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”):


 

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 Movementwent 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

 


 

Image result for kenyon at jericho

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