Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

The 15th century date for the exodus has been shown to have absolutely no
historical or archaeological basis. Not that there is "proof" for a 13th
century Exodus, but there is at least archaeological and literary evidence
of a huge crisis, in Egypt, Canaan and the whole region, during which the
Egyptian empire fell apart, the Philistines and other so-called "Sea
Peoples" arrived and the tribal society that we call "Israel" emerged in
the Canaanite highlands. This would be the most logical time to look for
the events behind what the Israelites remembered as the Exodus. However, by
the time the story was written down, the tradition had long since been
transferred from the historical to the literary. The writer found it
convenient the make ALL his charachters speak Hebrew - just like the
etymology of "Babel" in Gen. 11:9.
Even if this Pharaoh had been a Semite (and we really don't know all that
much about the "Hyksos" anyway), I doubt that the writer would have been
aware of the fact.

Yigal



At 06:56 PM 6/19/2003 -0500, Karl Randolph wrote:
>How do we know that the princess in question was not a Hyksos princess,
who spoke a semitic language similar to Hebrew, hence Moshe derived from
“to draw out”?
>
>The Biblical chronology gives a mid 15th century date for the Exodus,
which rules out Rameses being the pharoah of the Exodus. I have long
suspected that the pharoah of the Exodus was Hyksos from other clues in
Exodus and history. If my suspician is correct, then the whole discussion
trying to relate “Moshe” to an Egyptian root is moot.
>
>Mesha (MY$() is clearly from “to save”.
>
>Karl W. Randolph.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>
>Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 14:36:33 -0400
>To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] RE: Mesha & Moshe
>
>> Thank you Kevin. The article can be viewed online at:
>> 
>> http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BR/bswbbr1903f1.html
>> 
>> 
>> Yigal
>>
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Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.