Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Lloyd,

Here's my Chronological understandings on the Text of the Hebrew Bible :

1540 BCE Hyksos Expulsion (the Historical kernel behind the Hebrew Bible's
                  Fictional Exodus).
13th century BCE presumed Exodus date of many Humanists, including YOURSELF.
                   Exodus in this century is untenable for following
reasons:
                   -Arad is an abandoned tell in this era, no king to oppose
Israel or Joshua.
                   -Heshbon not founded yet, so Sihon didn't oppose Moses.
                   -Dibon is unoccupied so it can't be conquered in the
Sihon victory song.
                   -Egyptologists are unaware of any "mass exodus" of
Asiatics from Egypt
                     to Canaan at any time during this century or the
following century.
12th century BCE arrival of Philistines (Pelest of Rameses III) in Canaan
                  proof stories about Abraham and Philistines (ca. 2300 BCE)
is untenable. Also proof
                  Exodus story is untenable (cf. Israel's fear to leave
Egypt via the
                  way of the Philistines for fear of that nation in 1450
BCE)
12th century BCE founding of Tell Heshban as a poor, tiny village
                  -in this century Zoan becomes a capital and residence of
Pharaoh,
                   proof traditions about Moses confronting Pharaoh at Zoan
is untenable
                   ca. 1450 BCE or even in the 13th century BCE (1250 BCE
Exodus)
8th century BCE Tell Hesban is now a mighty walled city, worthy of being
                   the capital of Sihon the Amorite's Trans-Jordan Kingdom,
proof
                  the Exodus account is untenable and never happened as
portrayed
                  in the Hebrew Bible.
704 BCE Nineveh becomes capital of Assyria, its appearance in Genesis is
                proof Moses didn't write the book back in 1450 BCE.
660 BCE Gyges of Lydia makes contact for the first time with Assyria in the
                days of Asshurbanipal, who states his fathers had never
heard of
                Lydia (Luddu), proof that "Lud" in Genesis is not older than
the 7th
                century BCE.
550 BCE Medes make contact with Lydia & make an alliance; the Greeks
                become aware of Medes via Lydia, and create the myth that
Medus
               of Athens is founder of the Medes and thus a descendant of
               Iapetus/Japheth.
               - in this same era, PROSE HISTORIES APPEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME
among
               the Greek Logographers (earlier histories were in Poetry)
               -The Hebrew Bible's Primary History, Genesis to 2 Kings ends
its
                account in 560-550 BCE (2 Kings 25:27), ALL THIS HISTORY
BEING IN PROSE.
490 BCE Persian royal court's propaganda that Greece is to be invaded to
              reclaim Athens as the Medes' patrimony, citing the Medus myth.
             This accounts for Genesis' Japhethic descent of Madai. Proof
Genesis
             is a 5th century BCE creation.
458 BCE by this date all are dead who would have known Jericho never had an
Iron Age
            wall built in the days of Ahab (9th century BCE) by Hiel the
Bethelite, in use through 587 BCE' s Exile.
            - The nation assembeled by Ezra to Jerusalem to hear "The Torah"
realize that they
           are in violation of Torah by their foreign marriages. I argue
Ezra created "The Torah"
           and the Primary History, Genesis to 2 Kings.

Now the "Historical Kernels":

Jericho's fallen walls are attested in the Early Bronze Age. This has been
preserved in Joshua's account, but torn out out of its true historical
anchoring and placed in the Iron Age.

Beersheba is an Israelite foundation, as suggested in the Abrahamic
narratives, but of the 12th century BCE, not 2300-2000 BCE as suggested by
the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest pottery possesses Philistine wares, providing
proof of their presence when the site was first settled. The Hebrew narrator
"goofed" and placed the Philistine presence here back into the 2300-200 BCE
era. This is proof that some traditions about Abraham couldn't be older than
ca. 1000BCE allowing a couple of centuries for the nation to forget just
when the Philistines had arrived (ca. 1178 BCE).

I have discovered that the internal chronology of the Hebrew Bible, in
conjunction with the New Testament, gives a date of 1540 BCE for the Exodus
which matches the 1540 BCE Late Hyksos Expulsion date espoused by Kitchen.

Khamudy is the last known Hyksos pharaoh, so if anyone has a right to the
name "Moses" it would be him, not Ptah-Mose (son of Seti I). He is a prince
of Egypt (being a Pharaoh), and he is an Asiatic, and he may have led his
people back to Canaan (actually driven back by Pharaoh Ahmose and his
Egyptian forces). The Hyksos expulsion is the only known mass exodus in the
annals of all Egyptian history. Where bible scholars (Conservative or
Liberal) are getting the notion that Egyptian history "supports" an Exodus
in the course of the 15th through 12th centuries BCE is beyond me and the
Egyptologists !

Weinstein:

"The reactions of some religious conservatives to the recent archaeological
discoveries have not been unexpected. A few simply ignore the archaeological
data and continue to hunt for ever more signs of Semitic peoples in Egypt
during the New Kingdom. Such an approach, however, can never demonstrate the
historicity of the Exodus. One cannot use the discovery of a new literary
parallel between the Old Testament and an Egyptian text, or yet another
'scientific' or 'natural' explanation for one of the biblical plagues or the
miracle of the sea, or the identification of more Semitic names and
Levantine culture items in 18th an 19th Dynasty Egyptian contexts, to
postulate an exodus. Nor does it really matter whether the Egyptian place
names in the biblical account are truly Ramesside in origin or, as Redford
has posited, more appropriate to the Saite and Persian periods. And it makes
little difference how many Asiatic prisoners Sety I, Ramesses II, or even
Ramesses III brought back from Canaan compared to their predecessors.THE
ONLY QUESTION THAT REALLY MATTERS IS WHETHER ANY (NONBIBLICAL) TEXTUAL OR
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIALS INDICATE A MAJOR OUTFLOW OF ASIATICS FROM EGYPT TO
CANAAN AT ANY POINT IN THE 19TH OR EVEN THE EARLY 20TH DYNASTY. AND SO FAR
THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS NO.
The effort by some scholars to transfer the date of the Exodus from the 13th
century BC back to the 15th century BC is even more insupportable on
archaeological grounds. This earlier date maintains a biblical linkage to
the Exodus by relating the alleged event to the reference in 1 Kings 6 to
the Exodus having taken place 480 years prior to the start of construction
of the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. Recent champions of this theory
include John Bimson and Bryant Wood. Bimson's efforts to date the
destructions of the Middle Bronze Age towns to the 15th century BC are
flawed by a host of Egyptological,stratigraphic, and chronological problems,
and to date, no Syro-Palestinian archaeologists or Egyptologists have
accepted his chronological and historical analysis of the date. As for Wood,
his argument is based on a redating of the destruction at Jericho from the
16th century BC to the end of the 15th century BC and suffers from a number
of serious deficiencies in the interpretation of the archaeological and
radiocarbon evidence."
(pp.93-94, James Weinstein, "Exodus and Archaeological Reality," in Ernest
S. Frerichs & Leonard H. Lesko, eds., Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence. Winona
Lake, Indiana. Eisenbrauns. 1997. ISBN 1-57506-025-6 hdbk)

Lloyd, Weinstein's observations would appear "to blow out of the water,"
your notion of Moses (Ptah-Mose) leading an Exodus out of Egypt in the 13th
century BCE, he being the son of Seti I . Your posited scenario just doesn't
hold up to the lack of evidence of "a major outflow of Asiatics" as noted by
Dr. Weinstein.

All the best,

Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany