Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

See some points below.

Peter Kirk


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Subject: Exodus and the Philistines
Author:  <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com> at Internet
Date:    31/01/2000 22:48


The Pentateuchal accounts of the Exodus possess a number of "historical 
markers" within the body of the texts suggesting that whoever wrote the book 
of Exodus, it certainly wasn't Moses or even a "near contemporary."

Humanist scholars posit an Exodus occuring ca. 1250 BCE in the 13th century, 
preferring the reign of Ramses II (1292-1225 BCE), and certainly before 
Merneptah, who's victory stela mentions that "Israel's seed is not" 
(1225-1215 BCE).

PK: They can posit what they like, but as Jack just pointed out there 
is hardly a thread of evidence for this.

The anonymous author of the Pentatechal narratives, Genesis through Exodus 
and the invasion of Canaan, "betrays his hand" via anomalies within the text 
that modern scholarship has noticed and pointed out.

The Philistines are believed to be one of the so-called Sea Peoples tribes 
called "Pelest" by Ramses III (1198-1167 BCE), who records their attempted 
invasion of Egypt (1177 BCE), their defeat and eventual settlement in 
coastal Canaan which came to be called Philista. He mentions their sudden 
appearance in Anatolia, their overwhelming Syria and coastal Canaan shortly 
before the inavsion of Egypt.

PK: Maybe they "are believed" by some, but they have not and cannot be 
proved to be the same. I have suggested that Peleshet was an ancient 
(pre-Sea Peoples) name of the area around Gaza. The "Philistines" of 
Genesis and of your "way of the Philistines" reference were simply the 
inhabitants of that area at that time. Either Rameses III's "Pelest" 
had acquired that name during a short stay in Peleshet, or else the 
similarity of the names is coincidental. An alternative theory would 
be that these are anachronisms introduced by a later redactor to 
replace obsolete proper names. So you cannot use this as secure 
evidence for dating.

Contra Hoffmeier's belief that Exodus was composed toward the end of the 
Late Bronze Age, that is before 1200 BCE ( cf. p.226, James K. Hoffmeier, 
Israel in Egypt, The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, 
1996), the author of Exodus obviously was not writing the Exodus account in 
1250 BCE or 1200 BCE, because he would have known that the Philistines were 
not yet settled in Canaan and thus they would not be poised to fall upon any 
invaders using the so-called "way of the Philistines" from Egypt to Canaan.

PK: Your logic is odd here! Your 1250-1200 author of Exodus would not 
have known this or anything else about the Philistines if they did not 
arrive in Canaan until a later date. But I know what you mean.

<snip>

Of course, as everyone knows the anonymous Pentateuchal author was probably 
not envisioning an Exodus circa 1250 BCE, for later on in 1 Kings 6:1, we are 
told the Exodus was 480 yrs. before Solomon's 4th yr (966 BCE) giving an 
Exodus date of 1446 BCE, almost  300 yrs before the arrival of the 
Pelest/Philistines.

PK: So why spend such a long time building up a straw man to knock 
down?

A common error in Pentateuchal studies is to overlook the fact that the 
Exodus narratives are a part of a greater literary composition, a National 
History, extending from Genesis to 2 Kings...

PK: This is not a "fact", it is a hypothesis which you can only 
demonstrate by circular reasoning.

<snip> - much repeated material