![]() ![]() As it happens, though, Egyptian records mention a Pharaoh who reigned for 94 years, and not only 94 years, but from the age of six to the age of 100! This Pharaoh was known in inscriptions as Pepi (or Phiops) II. Such a long reign – 94 years! – sounds fantastic, and many people would hesitate to take this Midrash literally. Malul, we are told, reigned from the age of six to the age of 100. The Pharaoh who preceded him, whose death prompted Moses’ return to Egypt (Exodus 2:23, 4:19), was named Malul. When we break free of this artificial restraint, the picture changes drastically.Īccording to the Midrash 3, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was named Adikam and he had a short reign of four years. Since the Iron Age has been thought to be the time when Israel first arrived in Canaan, the Late Bronze Age has been called “The Canaanite Period,” and historians have limited their search for the Exodus to this time. ![]() And while the bulk of Velikovsky’s conclusions have not been borne out by this research, his main thesis has: the apparent conflict between ancient records and the Bible is due to a misdating of those ancient records, and that when these records are dated correctly, all such “conflicts” disappear.īoth Thutmose III and Ramses II date to a period called the Late Bronze Age, which ended with the onset of the Iron Age. Velikovsky’s work sparked a wave of new research in ancient history. In 1952, Immanuel Velikovsky published Ages in Chaos, the first of a series of books in which he proposed a radical redating of Egyptian history in order to bring the histories of Egypt and Israel into synchronization. The only option is to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with the generally accepted dates for Egyptian history. And as in the case of Thutmose III, the Egyptian records make it clear that nothing even remotely resembling the Exodus happened anywhere near his time of history. By “correcting” the Bible and setting a generation equal to twenty five years, these imaginary twelve generations become 300 years.Īside from the fact that such “adjustments” of the Biblical text imply that the Bible cannot be trusted, Ramses 11 was a conqueror second only to Thutmose III. 2 In order to do this, they had to reduce the time between the Exodus and the destruction of the Temple by 180 years, which they did by reinterpreting the 480 years between the Exodus and the building of the Temple (1 Kings 6: 1) as twelve generations of forty years. They have drawn connections to the best-known Pharaoh of that name, Ramses II, or Ramses the Great, and set the Exodus around his time, roughly 1134 BCE (1300 BCE). Some historians have been attracted by the name of the store-city Raamses built by the Israelites before the Exodus. While it is interesting that this date actually saw the death of an Egyptian ruler – and there have been those who tried to identify Queen Hatshepsut as the Pharaoh of the Exodus – the power and prosperity of Egypt at this time is hard to square with the biblical account of the Exodus. In this year, the greatest warlord Egypt ever knew, Thutmose III, deposed his aunt Hatshepsut and embarked on a series of conquests, extending the Egyptian sphere of influence and tribute over Israel and Syria and crossing the Euphrates into Mesopotamia itself. They have had little luck.Īccording to Biblical chronology, the Exodus took place in the 890th year before the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 421 BCE (generally accepted date: 587 BCE). The drowning of the Egyptian armed forces in the Red Sea left Egypt open and vulnerable to foreign invasions.įrom the days of Flavius Josephus (c.70 CE) until the present, historians have tried to find some trace of this event in the ancient records of Egypt. Hail, disease and infestations obliterated Egypt’s produce and livestock, while the plague of the first born stripped the land of its elite, leaving inexperienced second sons to cope with the economic disaster. In the course of Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to let us leave and the resultant plagues sent by Hashem, Egypt was devastated. The Exodus from Egypt was not only the seminal event in the history of the Jewish People, but was an unprecedented and unequaled catastrophe for Egypt. For as you have seen Egypt this, day, never will you see it again.” (Exodus 14:13) “And Moses said unto the people: Do not fear! Stand and see the deliverance of Hashem which he shall do for you this day. The author contends that the most important event in Jewish history has been occupying the wrong slot in the accepted archaeological timeline. ![]()
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