Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

Two points, the first you can ignore as theologically based:

1) Biblical teachings were based on history. Therefore, it was important that the recorded histories be accurate. That would include their dating. That includes reporting the accurate negative events in Israel’a history as well as the positive events. In this regard, Biblical belief differed from other belief systems.

2) Archeological evidence indicates that the historical account of the Exodus occurred during the 13th dynasty of Egypt, generations after Joseph and before the Hyksos invasion. By all accounts, the Hyksos were expelled long before Akhenaton. The archeological evidence from several sources indicates that the Tel Amarna letters dated to the ninth to eighth centuries BC.

Therefore, any speculation based on combining the names of the patriarchs or those connected with them with Egyptian language from a millennium later  is as silly as saying that because Old English had the word “sote”, that therefore the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was English.

Karl W. Randolph.