Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peter_kirk AT sil.org>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: Exodus and the Hyksos


Peter Kirk:

> You are indeed right that your ideas are not going to settle well. And
> here is why: your method is inconsistent. You seem to be taking
> certain Biblical dating data very literally and adding it up to get
> the date of the Exodus, but other Biblical dates you arbitrarily write
> off: "Israel was not in bondage for 400 years in Egypt, that is
> fiction." In this you are being inconsistent, as also when you insist
> that the dating of the Exodus was correctly preserved but very little
> of the actual narrative is historically correct.

WM:
Dear Peter

I am not being anymore "inconsistent" than Dr. Safren and other fellow
humanist scholars who "arbitrarily" declare that some chronologies in the
Bible are to be believed while others are to be dismissed. For example, as
Dr. Safren has argued, humanists regularly dismiss as reliable any dates
before the monarchy period (the reigns of David and Solomon).  So, my
methodology is identical to theirs, some dates are to be accepted and some
are to be dismissed. The variance is not in a different methodology, it is
that I believe I have demonstrated that the only feasbile event in the whole
of Egyptian history where large numbers of Asiatics left Egypt for Canaan
has to be the Hyksos expulsion (Redford agrees with me on this point), and I
have presented from Acts 13:18-21, 1 Kings 2:10-11 and 1 Kings 6:1, a
chronology that securely places the Exodus at 1540 BCE some time in the
reign of Pharaoh Ahmoses I (variously dated 1552-1527  BCE by differing
authorities). I did not invent these numbers, I merely added up 2 + 2 = 4,
very simple arithmetic. The fact that you and others do not wish to accept
the testimony of the Jewish and Early Christian traditions which preserved
these numbers, is not my problem, but yours.

As regards your observation about by being "inconsistent" in denying a 400
year bondage in Egypt for the Israelites, I pointed out that Egyptian
records reveal the Hyksos ruled Egypt for 200 years, they were not an
enslaved populace. So, naturally, I must conclude that the text (bible) has
to be in error on this point.  As I have pointed out in an earlier post, I
do not take the bible at its word, I try to prove it and "cross-examinate"
it at every point. Points that hold up to investigation are accepted, points
that fail are rejected. The bible's chronology puts the Exodus at 1540 BCE,
about the time of the Hyksos Exodus, so, I must conclude the bible is
correct on this point. The 400 year bondage however doesn't square with the
Egyptian information, so I reject it. I see nothing "inconsistent" or
"seriously flawed" in my methodology or research strategies.

All the best,

Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany