Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jack Kilmon <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

Peter Kirk wrote:

> Dear Walter,
>
> I have read all of your postings this month, but I don't recall any of
> them mentioning the dating of the book of Exodus. You have made some
> unconvincing arguments on the date of Genesis, but there is no reason
> to assume the same dating for Exodus.
>
> As for the 1250 BCE dating of the Exodus event, it seems that this is
> an even more than usual obvious example of the scholars' trick that we
> have seen too much of on this list recently - the move from "X
> happened before Y" to "X happened IMMEDIATELY before Y". In this as in
> so many other cases X, here the Exodus event, may have happened
> centuries or even millennia before Y, here the carving of the
> Merenptah stele. For other X's, read the composition of various books,
> and for other Y's, mentions of certain cities in Assyrian tablets.

Until such time as their is archaeological or epigraphic evidence to support
a bronze age mass exodus of Jews from Egypt, I consider any attempt to
"date the Exodus" in the same light as dating Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark.

The kernel of historicity that may be buried in this legend may be the
expulsion of the Hyksos and like Ramses at Kadesh, it is not uncommon
for defeats to be transformed into victories by the story tellers.  The bottom
line is an event for which there is no evidence cannot be dated regardless
of appeals to collateral historical events.

Jack
jkilmon AT historian.net