Lecture

In the last lecture, we outlined the route of the later journeys of Israel. In this lecture, number 21, we must discuss the date of the Exodus. Part of the argument concerns the situation of Edom and Moab at this time that we have just outlined. Part depends on the situation in Egypt and the situation of the cities in Palestine. As far as the date of the exodus is concerned, the biblical data indicates a time of about 1400 B.C. In I Kings 6:1 it says that Solomon’s Temple was built 480 years after the exodus. The date of the Temple was about 960 B.C. So adding these figures, we can get the date of the exodus at 1440 B.C. It may be noted that the Septuagint figure of I Kings 6:1 is 440 years making the exodus 1400 years, just forty years later than the Masoretic Text, the Hebrew, would give. Another verse gives rather good, general support to this date, which may be called the early date of the exodus. In Judges 11:26 Jephthah, who is one of the later judges, claims that Israel had been settled in Trans-Jordan for 300 years before his day. Jephthah is a later judge and can hardly be placed after about 1100 B.C. This would support the date of 1440 or 1400 for the exodus.

This date is largely denied by critics who hold a late date. The date they give would be around 1250 to 1200. They would not be so sure that the children of Israel spent just 40 years in the wilderness. Anyhow, it must be admitted that the Israelites were in the land of Palestine a little earlier than 1200, perhaps about 1220, depending on your date of Merneptah. Merneptah, one of the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, tells us in one of his memorial inscriptions that he conquered different cities and places in Palestine and he names Israel, the first place where Israel is named in an extra-biblical source. The argument of the critics depends on a number of factors. But those who are unwilling to give credence to these numbers from Kings and from Judges usually emphasize about four problems for the early date. We’ll take up these problems and give suggested answers to them.

The first point is that Edom and Moab had no settled population from about 1900 to 1200 B.C. according to archeological surveys. These archeological surveys were surface explorations that were done by Dr. Nelson Glueck some time ago. Dr. Glueck went over this territory and would come to a city, a tel of ancient times, a ruined city, and go up and down the sides of the tel and collect potshards that had been washed out. Not by excavation, but by simple surface picking up, he found a collection of shards in each place. Then he would study these shards to see which ones came from an early date, middle date, late date, and so on. And he would find, from this exploration, the times when the cities would have been occupied. His claim is that these cities of the Moab/Edom territory were not occupied between 1900 B.C. and 1200 B.C. At about 1200 B.C., he says, there were some cities that were occupied, fortresses built, across Edom, which the Israelites would have had to avoid. At 1200, the Israelites could not have conquered the Edomites. But at 1400, there would have been no problem; they would have gone right on through Edom.

I think we ought to say that Glueck’s surveys are not the last word on the subject. They were not the result of extensive excavation, as we have said. Also, since then some items have been found in a tomb in Amman. Here there was a tomb coming from the late bronze period–this crucial period of around 1400 B.C. It had a wealth of objects in it and it showed that there was an occupation of that territory at about 1400 B.C., which would have been brought into question by Glueck’s survey and conclusions. So we may say, first of all, that Edom and Moab were perhaps more extensively occupied than Glueck imagined. Also, we should say that Glueck only said that they were not occupied by a sedentary population. He would not deny, himself, that there may well have been nomadic tribesmen wandering back and forth over Edom and Moab. We might say that a wandering group of tribesmen in Moab and Edom would have been a formidable fighting force just as formidable as the wandering tribesmen of the Israelites. So it does not actually say either in the Bible that the Israelites could not go through Edom or Moab. God told them that they should not distress the Moabites and Edomites because they were brothers. Now they were distant blood relatives through Moab and the son of Lot and through Edom, the brother of Jacob. But, also, one might suppose, that God told them not to distress these people because they were brothers in their habits of life as well. They may well have been nomads just as Glueck would have urged in this time. So God told the Israelites not to go through there, not because there was a string of forts that they could not take, but because it was His will that they should be fresh for the battles with Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites to the north who did, after all, have cities, extensive cities, which the Israelites did conquer.

The second argument that those who urge the late date of the Exodus allege is that Jericho was not conquered in 1400 B.C. as the earlier excavator had claimed. Some years ago, Dr. John Garstang of England excavated some parts of the ancient mound of Jericho. He claimed to have found a wall that was burned and that fell down outward; doubtless because this was the time when Joshua marched around, and he would say an earthquake or something miraculously turned these walls outward and the Israelites went straight through. He dated these walls at about 1400.

Since Garstang’s day, Ms. Kathleen Kenyon, a very accomplished British archeologist, has also dug in Jericho and she has contended that Garstang totally misunderstood these walls. She declares that the walls, which he based some conclusions on, were not walls of the late bronze period at all, but were walls dating really from about 3000 B.C. and that there was no Jericho in the days of Joshua. It must be started; however, that Garstang had other evidences besides the walls. Garstang excavated tombs in and around Jericho and in these tombs there was, of course, a wealth of pottery, which can be used for dating purposes. In the tombs, he found a couple of scarabs. Scarabs are small beetle-shaped jewels. Ladies used them recently in scarab bracelets. These beetle-shaped jewels have, on the flat underside, the name of the pharaoh inscribed. So a particular scarab would be cut in the time of a particular pharaoh. Well, Garstang found a couple of scarabs of Amenophis III. Amenophis the Magnificent reigned at about 1400 B.C. The scarabs could not have been manufactured earlier than 1400 B.C. They could indeed have found their way into these tombs somewhat later than 1400, but not before. So we must say that the territory around Jericho was occupied; there were people living in Jericho up to at least 1400, possibly later, but at least up to 1400. Then it is noteworthy that among the remains in these tombs Garstang found practically no Mycenaean pottery. The Mycenaean-type pottery is pottery that is imported from Mycenae in Greece. This Mycenaean pottery is found all through Palestine as an import item beginning at about 1400 and going to about 1200. It was just in those two centuries that the Mycenaean peoples had control of the Mediterranean. Their commerce was extensive and their nice, fine polished pottery flooded into Palestine and is found in most of the excavations of cities that were occupied at that time. But very, very little of it is found in Jericho. Cities to the north of Jericho have it, but not Jericho. So the absence of the Mycenaean ware would argue that Jericho was not occupied in that period after 1400. So what we have is the scarabs to show that it was occupied until 1400, the absence of Mycenaean ware to show that it was not occupied very long after 1400, which would put, actually, the conquest of Jericho very close to 1400.

These arguments are not lost on Ms. Kenyon who also excavated the tombs around Jericho. In her very helpful book Archeology in the Holy Land, Ms. Kenyon says that Jericho did fall sometime in the 1300s. She said that the evidence is not very extensive because, actually, there was a good bit of erosion in the period when Jericho lay idle. According to the Bible, it lay idol for a long time. Joshua cursed the man who would rebuild Jericho and it was not until the times of the monarchy that this was done. So for some hundreds of years Jericho lay idol and in the period of erosion, a good bit of the evidence had been swept away. So Ms. Kenyon does come to the conclusion that there was a small settlement on Jericho, and maybe, indeed, not very extensive, that was there until about 1325. So she would put the date of the fall of Jericho around 1325. It is interesting to notice that this date does not fit the late date of the exodus at all. The late date of the exodus, around 1250 or 1200, cannot be held according to the evidence, what evidence there is, from Jericho. We might also say that, of course, archeological evidence of this nature is general. You do not find in the ruins of Jericho a calendar with dates: one, two, three. When Ms. Kenyon says 1325, we must note that this is not very far away from the Septuagint date, which is, remember, 40 years later than the Hebrew text. The Septuagint date would be 1360. So it is really not impossible that Jericho did fall close to 1360 and Ms. Kenyon’s evidence would not be opposed to that. So the fall of Jericho, if it has any baring one way or the other, it would seem to favor at least the early date. Perhaps the Septuagint phase of that early date; the 1400 date for the exodus, 1360 for the conquest.

The third argument that critics rely upon is that the cities of Palestine were destroyed in a great wave of destruction at about 1200. A number of studies are mentioned. Hazor is taken as a prime example. Of course, Jericho itself has been discussed already. Hazor, the head of the northern confederacy that Joshua attacked. Joshua, remember, invaded the center of the land; he went from Jericho up the valley leading to Ai, then to Gibeon,—Gibeon, just a little north of Jerusalem—and then down on the other side toward the sea, down the valley of Aijalon. By quick strokes, Joshua had cut the land in two. He turned south and conquered the confederacy of five cities to the south and then he turned north. This is all quickly said before Joshua took, of course, some years of bitter campaigning. How many years, we really do not know for sure. But Hazor was said to be the head of the northern kingdoms. Joshua fought against Hazor and burned it. It does not say that Joshua burned very many cities, but Hazor was one of them. Jerusalem was burned, but apparently only partially burned. The book of Judges says that the children of Israel could not occupy Jerusalem. We must distinguish between conquering and occupying. Joshua conquered the land in the sense that he broke the back of military opposition. On the other hand, the cities were not all at once occupied by the Israelites. Those that were not at once occupied probably shut their gates and made later conquest in detail rather difficult. It should be remembered that according to the Bible, Hazor was rebuilt and it was the enemy of Israel during the time of the Judges and was conquered again by Deborah and Barak. Finally, was made a headquarters for Solomon, one of his chariot cities. Well, the archeological information from Hazor tells us that it was burned at about 1200 and destroyed, and laid idol until Solomon rebuilt it about 950. Now if the 1200 B.C. destruction was done by Joshua, the question then is how was Hazor one of the oppressing kingdoms that bothered the Israelites, and which Deborah and Barak fought about during the time of the judges? If Deborah and Barak fought against Hazor and conquered it, they must have fought against it before 1200 because there was no Hazor after that. So it seems to me that the mention of Hazor, actually, is an argument in favor of the early date of the exodus. We know that there were many of the cities of Palestine that were destroyed, or at least changed hands, at 1400 B.C. We know this because there were a series of tablets, written which we call the Amarna tablets, at the Amarna age from 1400–1360 B.C. These Amarna Tablets were written to the king of Egypt asking for help against the invaders, who are called robbers, and a few times are called Habiru. At that time, a number of these cities were conquered by somebody. So we are not limited to saying that these cities were conquered at 1200–they were indeed–but they were also conquered at 1400. The question is which wave of conquest was due to Joshua and was there a later wave due to somebody else?

So it would fit the picture much better, really, to say that Joshua conquered Hazor at 1400 and it was rebuilt. The Canaanites came back against the Israelites, as the Bible says; it was a seesaw battle during the days of the judges and that Hazor became one of the oppressors of Israel. Then sometime during that period between 1400 and 1200 Deborah and Barak fought against Hazor and won a major victory. Hazor, however, probably continued and probably was destroyed by somebody else at 1200 and lay idol the rest of the period of the judges until Solomon’s day.

Some have said, Albright for instance, that the civilization of Palestine changed greatly between just before 1200 and just after. He figures that the Canaanites were in control until 1200 and then the poverty stricken layers of after 1200 were due to the Israelites. Well, there is no actual proof, of course, that Canaanites were rich and Israelites were poor. That may have been the case, or at least their workmanship may have been better than the wandering nomad Israelites as they came in; but actually, Ms. Kenyon, who has excavated extensively, would contradict Albright in this matter. The period before 1400, she says, was quite different from the period after 1400 and that the culture break at 1200 was rather slight. So again, the evidence in Palestine is not opposed to the early date. Indeed, the cities in Palestine, including Jericho, would favor, it seems, the early date of the exodus.

The fourth argument urged against the early date derives from the verse in Exodus, chapter 1, verse 11, which says that the children of Israel built store cities for pharaoh. It mentioned Rameses and Pithom. Now, the city of Rameses, presumably, was built by the great King Rameses. Indeed, Rameses claims to have built it. Rameses, this would be Rameses the Great, became king at about 1290 by one chronology and reigned for 67 years; therefore, to about 1223. So Rameses the Great built Rameses a long time after the early date of the exodus. If the children of Israel were working for him to build that city, the Israelites must have been in Egypt all through the period from 1400 to 1290. This would rule out the early date of the exodus. Well, we might remark that this argument does not say everything on the subject. We notice that the land of Rameses is mentioned already in Genesis 47:11, long before the Nineteenth Dynasty and Rameses the Great. It says in Genesis 47:11 that Joseph settled the children of Israel, according to the Pharaoh’s command, settled them in the land of Rameses, which apparently was another name for Goshen, or at least a part of Goshen and here it was called the land of Rameses. Now it has been held, and I think quite possibly correctly, that the word Rameses in Genesis there is what we call an anachronism. It was not called the land of Rameses when the children of Israel went into it. It was called Goshen or something else and later on, it was called the land of Rameses. Moses may have written down that they were settled in the land of Goshen and a later scribe, because the name had changed in the meantime, put down Rameses instead of Goshen because people wouldn’t understand. The situation is the same as if I would say that the Dutch settled New York. Of course, the Dutch didn’t settle New York, the Dutch settled New Amsterdam. The name was later changed to New York when the English took it over. So it is with many cities; the names change. And this city, the name very clearly did change. It was called Rameses at a later time, the days of the Great King. Its previous name was Avaris. Rameses did not build it, as we say, from scratch. Rameses built it from an earlier beginning. He rebuilt and renovated the city and called it after his own name. But it was previously called Avaris. Before that, it was called Tanis. Tanis, which is the same as the biblical word Zoan, the fields of Zoan in Egypt. So it is quite possible that we have in Exodus 1:11 an anachronism just as we do in Genesis 47:11. Then we would interpret that verse in Exodus 1:11 to mean that the children of Israel built for the Pharaoh, possibly for the Hyksos Pharaoh, built Avaris. And Avaris it was named when they built it around 1400 B.C. or a little bit before. It had previously been called Tanis; they rebuilt the city and worked in bitter slavery on that city and on many other projects, surely, in the land of Egypt. Then afterward, when Rameses the Great came, he changed the name of that city to his own name, Rameses. It is of some interest that just recently, actually in the spring issue of the Evangelical Theological Society Journal 1974, Dr. Gleason Archer–whose survey of Old Testament introduction I have mentioned–has an article in this Evangelical Theological Society Journal in which he shows the name Rameses was used in Egypt before Rameses the Great. So it may be we have been misconstruing some of these names. It may well be that some of these cities were also called Rameses even before the days of Rameses the Great.

So these four arguments against the early date are not quite as convincing as some would think. There still is room for the biblical view of the early date of the exodus. I think we might remember that the Amarna age and the Amarna tablets do say some very interesting things for us. The great kings of Egypt of the Eighteenth Dynasty had conquered Palestine in the 1500s. They held Palestine with an iron grip until about 1400 B.C. At about 1400 B.C., the Nineteenth Dynasty was running out. Amenophis the Magnificent was busy with his buildings and let the empire disintegrate somewhat. His successor Akhenaten, the famous Echnaton heretic king as he is called, turned his thoughts to philosophy and theology and introduced a kind of monotheism in Egypt. It was a flash-in-the-pan monotheism, not exactly an ethical monotheism and did not last; but at least it absorbed all his interest and he let the Egyptian empire of Palestine go. It is not at all impossible that Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt at about 1400 B.C. and that the situation in Palestine was greatly deteriorating. That about 1360 he brought the children of Israel to the borders and Joshua carried them in. Around 1360 when the chiefs of the Palestinian cities were saying send us troops. If we do not have troops from the king of Egypt this year all the lands of the king, my lord, in Egypt will be lost. That this was the time when Joshua, partly by military conquest and partly by diplomatic conquest, entered and conquered the land.

We remember that he did not conquer all the cities. The first city he got on the mountain back of Palestine was Gibeon, which he took without a stroke. The Gibeonites had heard of the valor and success of the Israelites and gave in without fighting. So there may well have been other cities that did the same. Whether this was a source of strength or not may be doubted, but at least the conquest of Joshua may have been indeed partly military, partly diplomatic, which is very much like the situation reflected in the Amarna tablets. It is of interest to note that if this is the case, that Joshua in his conquest of Palestine was actually carving out for the Israelites a homeland from the Egyptian empire. They were not just conquering the Canaanites, but they were taking a piece of Egypt. We may say a piece of Egypt which they well deserved and which they had worked for through bitter years of slavery. So the Amarna age may well be reconsidered. This movement of peoples and disruptions in Palestine that are witnessed by these tablets, may have been the result of Joshua’s invasion or may have been the result of a movement of peoples of which Joshua took some advantage when he brought the children of Israel in and settled them on the highlands.

So this gives us something of the background for the conquest of Palestine at the moment the children of Israel are poised in the plains of Moab. They have conquered Trans-Jordan and are about ready to enter the Promised Land. There were, however, a couple of difficult things that came up. Balak, the king of Moab, feared the Israelites. He had seen their successes to the north. He had no knowledge of when they might turn south and attack him. So Balak decided that he would attack the Israelites himself. But we must remember that in ancient times, no pagan king would attack without first seeking the will of the deity. By getting a diviner, he would try to get an auspicious moment to attack the enemy forces. Balak, in following out this procedure, hired Balaam–a seer it calls him, a diviner from the northern territory–to come and curse Israel. Notice that Balak did not just want him to curse Israel. Balak wanted him to give Balak an omen that would show him a propitious time to fight Israel. Well, Balaam was warned by God in a dream, and remember the story, not to go, first of all. When finally, he was allowed to go by God he was strictly charged what not to say. But Balaam thought there was a way where he could cut corners and please all parties until God spoke to him through Balaam’s ass. Then Balaam, suitably impressed, declared to Balak that he could say nothing but what the Lord would give him. So after repeated attempts to get a “good luck” in Balak’s war, Balaam gave Balak a declaration that at future times, the Israelites would triumph and the star should rise out of Israel that should smite the corners of Sceptre. This is taken, even by the Dead Sea Scrolls, as a prediction of the triumph of Israel and the coming of the Messiah at last. So the Israelites at this time were spared a troublesome, difficult war against the Moabites, a war not of their own seeking, by God’s interference through the prophesies that God, shall we say, forced upon Balaam. The Israelites then were ready to go ahead with their conquests.