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  • From: kwrandolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Jericho, Rameses, & San Fransisco
  • Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 22:41:11 -0700

Dear David:

I read a book a while back attributing Beitek (sp?) claim that the site of the Hyksos capital, Avaris, was built on the site of an Egyptian port that had a pre-Hyksos name of pi-Rameses. That Israel called it by its pre-Hyksos name indicates that they had come to Egypt before the Hyksos. After the Hyksos were expelled, the site remained unimportant until the time of Rameses I or thereabouts.

Thus there is no need to posit either a late date of Jacob's arrival in Egypt nor that later writers were writing anachronistically.

Years ago I came to the conclusion that Exodus occurred during the time of the Hyksos who were concerned that Israel would pose a danger to them. Israel called the Hyksos pharaoh "Egyptian" because he ruled Egypt (the same way later writers called the Mongol rulers "Chinese" or in more recent times the Manchus). The fly in my understanding is that the traditional dates for the Hyksos is earlier than the Exodus, but then I learned that other writers more learned than I also question the traditional dates, making my understanding a possibility.

If the traditional dates are off by two or more centuries as some have claimed, that would put the beginning of the iron age at the time of King David. Tanakh mentions that David ran extensive iron works. That would explain how Israel, a small, weak country with a history of being a vassal nation to its neighbors, could suddenly become a world power under David: he had wrested the secret of tempering iron into steel from the Philistines and armed his soldiers with steel while his enemies were all still armed with bronze.

While my understanding is not the statements of an expert (my main interest being lexicography) I don't see how it can be ruled out.

Karl W. Randolph.


----- Original Message -----
From: <david.kimbrough AT charter.net>

A different way to look at the issue is to consider that
the OT in four separate locations assoicates the Isrealites
with a region of Egypt called "Rameses" which appears to be
located in the North-East corner of the delta (Gen 47:11,
Exd 12:37 Num 33:3, Num 33:5). " Rameses " is not
inconsistent with the city of "Pi-Rameses ", near "Pi-Thom".
Although it is not certain when Pi-Ramesses was built, it
was probably not built before Ramesses I (who was born in
the north eastern delta and died in 1290 BC) although it
may have been built by Seti I. If we take the OT at face
value and assume that "Rameses " is the same as "Pi-
Ramesses ", then according to Gen 47:11 Joseph settled in
Rameses no earlier than the mid 1200?s BC.

Of course this may be an anachronism. If it is assumed
that the author(s) of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers were
writing many centuries after the fact, they may have used
the name of a region of Egypt that they and their readers
were familiar with, not knowing it was built after then
exodus.

All of this is assuming the actually was a battle of
Jericho. If for the moment that it is assumed that City IV
was in fact destroyed by fire as Kenyon argued, that does
not mean that it was destroyed by the Isrealites or that
the fire was the result of warfare. Both the cities of
Chicago and London were destroyed by fire that had nothing
to do with war. In 1908 most of San Fransisco was
destroyed by fires caused by an earthquake. If three
thousand years from now archeologists were to examine the
ruins of San Fransisco, they would find a layer of upended
foundations and carcoal. They might conclude that San
Fransisco was destroyed by invading isrealites.






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