Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 11/17/2004 5:10:20 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
kwrandolph AT email.com writes:


> Marianne, I know that you're agnostic, but even you can't rule out an 
> exodus occuring during the Hyksos period of fleeing Semitic slaves. I 
> remember 
> reading that Beitek in his excavations found evidence that the Hyksos were 
> not 
> on good terms with even all the Semitic population in the Nile delta, let 
> alone the native Egyptians, so a restive group of Semites fleeing during 
> the 
> Hyksos period cannot be ruled out.

I am a Jew like any other Jew.  Not an agnostic.  But, for me, this business 
has nothing to do with religion--but rather history.  Egyptian and Israelite 
(I can't say just "Jewish").  I don't rule out anything.  In fact, I recently 
argued in the "editorial" section of an Egyptological magazine contra a 
person 
who claimed Hyksos can't be equated with Jews.  My response was that, 
according to Manetho, there was more than one dynasty of "shepherds" (or 
"shepherd 
kings" in the explanation of Manetho of the etymology of the term).  And we 
really don't know the ethnicity of these Hyksos dynasties.  They may have 
been 
contemporary--or not.  Regardless, I wrote that if there were any of Jacob's 
tribe 
living in the north of Egypt at the time when it was attacked by Ahmose, the 
Theban prince, they would have surely sought shelter within the fortified 
city 
of Avaris-- of the legendary great walls--, in the eastern Delta, once they 
found out that Ahmose was "on the water", as his army came on the Nile.  And 
been expelled with the rest once Avaris fell.