Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Jack:

What are you trying to say? If Moses wrote to an audience 
that included people who had experienced the situation 
under slavery in Egypt, they could fill in much of the data 
that modern historians decry as missing.

----- Original Message -----
From: tladatsi AT charter.net
> 
> Karl & Bryant,
> 
> The key element that the author seemed to have known was
> that the audience would understand that the Egyptians
> feared invasion and/or internal revolt.  This fear was used
> to explain the enslavement / oppression of the Israelites.
> The oppression of Israelites actually moves forward the
> liberation of the Israelites by increasing their numbers
> and sets in motion Moses mission.  This is the key literary
> (irony) and theological (Yahweh`s control of the situation
> despite appearances to contrary) point.
> 
> How would either of these point be served by the author if
> the king in question were Hyksos?.

How would it be different if the king were Hyksos?

> ....    As is agreed, the fact
> that of he very existence of the Hyksos was (and is)
> largely unknown.

If the king were Hyksos, then it would be known so well to 
the Israelites that it would be beyond mention. By the time 
Moses went to pharaoh to demand Israel's exit, the 
Hyksos had been in Egypt enough generations that they 
were considered one of the peoples of Egypt: Egyptians 
because they also ruled Egypt.

Of course, the native Egyptians didn't consider it that way, 
they remembered, but they were neither players nor 
audience to the narration.

> ....      Even if the author were aware of this
> historical nuance, it would be counter-productive to try to
> use this nuance in story.

Here's a case where the author may have known (if it 
were Moses, he most certainly did) but this was one of the 
details that did not advance the central message of the 
story, so was left out to make a more compact narration.

> ....      No one would have got it.  It
> would simply confuse the audience and the blunt the point
> of the story.  (Imagine watching the movie *The10
> Commandments* and Yul Brenner started going on about being
> Hyksos and ruling both the native Egyptians and those
> foreign Israelites.  Even it were historically true, it.... served
> no point whatsoever).
> 
Exactly.

> This is an entirely different issue from what occurred
> historically in Egypt during the Hyksos period and any role
> the Israelites might have played then.  This is an
> archeologically issue that does not inform the translation
> or meaning of Ex 1.
> 
Huh??

It may not affect directly the translation, but it certainly 
would affect our understanding of Egyptian history and the 
role that Israel played in it. Thus it would have an indirect 
affect on how we understand the text.

> It is also an entirely different question from how Ex 1 was
> composed and how the historical events in Egypt may have
> influenced its composition.   If we accept that Moses is
> the only author who composed it after the Exodus and he
> himself understood all of these nuances, he made no serious
> effort to incorporate them into the text.  If Ex 1 were
> composed by one or more later authors who worked with some
> pre-existing oral or written tradition (as the DH folks
> would assert) which had some historical core in a possible
> Hyksos ? Israelite relationship, they seem to have made it
> far less than clear.  This could be either because they had
> no understanding of the history contained in these
> traditions and found it confusing, or, even if they did
> understand them themselves, they knew their audience would
> find it confusing.
> 
Or going into all the excruciating detail would detract from 
the message that the author wanted to impart. After all, 
all these details were irrelevant to the story. They have 
relevance only to modern historians who try to correlate 
ancient Israelite history with other ancient histories, such 
as from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Then the moderns make 
a big stink when they don't find what they expected.

> If you would like an analogy (or even if you don`t),
> consider the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville.   It is
> based on an actual great sperm whale known as either Mocha
> Dick or Big Tom.  This whale actually sank a New England
> whaling ship by ramming it.  It was notoriously dangerous
> and had killed and maimed other whalers.  These historical
> facts do not inform the literary or theological thrust of
> Melville`s book.  Whatever roots in actual history, if any,
> are found in Ex 1, they do not assist us in understand or
> translating Ex 1.  This is not a general rule, only an
> observation for this particular story.
> 
Excuse me, I'm a little dense. How does this story differ 
from all other stories in the Bible? I don't quite see what 
you are getting at with this analogy.
> 
> Jack Tladatsi


It looks as if you are confusing interpretation with 
translation.

If I were to translate the passage in Exodus, the exact 
identification of the king as Hyksos makes no difference 
to the words used in a translation. But in discussing the 
passage, that's where I'd make note of where the pattern 
of details points to a Hyksos pharaoh. There I'm adding to 
the text, and will identify it as such. Likewise, to insist that 
the pharaoh in question was indigenous Egyptian adds to 
the text. When looking at the text itself, it can be read both 
ways, though I think the evidence leans towards the 
Hyksos.

There is a theological reason to want to identify the 
pharaoh of the Exodus, but that's outside the scope 
of this discussion group.

Karl W. Randolph.

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