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I refer not only to the miraculous aspects of the narrative, but to its factual framework. If the fundamental facts of the departure from Egypt and of the constitution of Israel are true, that is, if archaic elements of the 12 Tribes which later merged were enslaved in Egypt, fled from there, wandered in the wilderness, acquired national dimensions and a culture based on the Law (Torah), under the leadership of Moses, the Pentateuch must be considered substantially truthful, from a historical standpoint. And, if the time when the events occurred is that the Bible indicates (sixteenth century b. C.), then the entire framework of the history of Middle East nations, including Egypt and Assyria, will have to be reviewed in the points of disagreement with the Pentateuch, which are not few.
To say it clearly, it is undeniably revolutionary to think that the facts narrated in the Pentateuch can be historical truths, since the majority of contemporary historians and archaeologists no longer believe it. And, provided that the external evidence about the Exodus itself is too lacunary, what casts doubt on the position of those scientists is the weakness of the points in which it disagrees with ever reiterated statements of the Pentateuch.
It must be clarified that the facts I will try to reconstitute are not a bundle of events literally described in the five “books of Moses”. Bible History is not literal but literary, as far as it was composed and preserved in the form of texts. However, the readers habit of thinking the texts convey facts exactly as they happened makes literary History literal.
Of course, the texts which transmitted the early History of Israel are in the Pentateuch, but the written sources used by the authors of these books were produced much before. I assume that these sources were the result of a continuous work of telling and retelling the facts which they preserved. But this is not the only assumption that has to be made about the Exodus and the formation of Israel. For any set of facts to form a reasonable account about a true nation of Hebrews it is necessary to assume the existence of a leader such as the biblical Moses. Without him, Pentateuch data disassemble and lack all feasibility, from the viewpoint of comparative history. In fact, without Moses it is impossible even to form a hypothesis about Pentateuch history.
The actual existence of the Jewish leader, however, is a problem connected to the insertion of his lifetime in a certain section of historical time. Of course, if someone looks for Moses in the 20th century, he will not find him. The same is true if we seek him in any other time in which, for clear reasons, he may not have existed. So, the historical Moses must first be associated with a period in which he may have reasonably existed.
Unfortunately, a doubtful consensus was formed not only about Moses’ time, but also about the events recorded in the books of Joshua and Judges. The problem can be thus simplified: in the internal chronology of the Bible, about 973 years passed between the Exodus and the Babylonian Captivity (605 a. C.). Of that period 433 years correspond to other small captivities under neighbouring nations, and periods of freedom under the judges. But historians usually recognize only 100 to 150 of the 433 years. They overlap the remaining years or consider them a mere literary invention. Of course, this understanding leads to the location of any early event about 350 years after the time in which the Bible places it. The Exodus and the formation of Israel in the wilderness are absolutely no exceptions. They tend to be drawn to the thirteenth century b. C. by the elimination of most of the Period of Judges.
One may wonder if such a mutilation of time can claim any historical ground. If we look closely at biblical and other historical data, we will find no clear reason for it. For example, by 1200 b. C., the Philistines moved from southern Europe to Asia Minor and the Middle East. Judges tells us that a branch of their invasive wave and the Ammonites oppressed the children of Israel that dwelt beyond the Jordan (Judges 10:8). By that time, Jephthah came to the king of Ammon. In the message he conveyed to that oppressor, Jephthah referred to a chronological key. He said Israel had dwelt in Transjordan for already 300 years (Judges 11:26). If we sum up the years which elapsed from the oppression of Israel by Cushan-Rishathaim (Judges 3:8), which inaugurates the Period of Judges, to the judgeship of Jair, right before the Ammonite-Philistine oppression, we will reach 301 years.
No internal or external reasons demand the disregard of these 300 years. If we cut them off, the Philistine invasion will become contemporary to the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, which brings in some historical difficulties. There was little room, in Old Palestine, for such simultaneous invasions. Admitting them would be like conceding that two rival armies could invade and partake a poor province together. How could enemies fight for the same land, and not fight against each another? The Bible gives absolutely no hint of armed conflicts of Israel against the Philistines at so early a time. So, there is no reason to assume the purge of 300 years. And if we go 973 years back from the best dated event of Old Testament (conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar), in 605 b. C., we arrive at 1,578 b. C. This is the time of the Exodus, in accordance with the internal evidence of the Bible. Of course, other chronologies could find some years more or some years less than the number I mentioned. That is not what I am fighting for here.
But contrarily to all this, archaeological and historical consensus tends to place the Exodus not in the sixteenth, but in the thirteenth century b. C. And though claiming non-biblical evidence to support it, the consensus disregards a whole body of information about the Exodus which is also parallel to the Bible. Part of this information is included in the description Josephus gives of the Exodus in his major work about Jewish Antiquities. Josephus refers to the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, the only one who recorded the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos and their subsequent expulsion. As Josephus clearly identifies the Israelites that left Egypt with the Hyksos, the association of his account to Manetho’s is to be regarded logical and of considerable authority.
According to Josephus, after Manetho "protested he would draw the history of Egypt from the holy books, he said that our ancestors, having gone there in large numbers, had become masters of all [exactly as the Hyksos did], but after some time they were expelled from there and settled in Judea" (JOSEPHUS, Flavius. Response to Apius. In History of the Hebrews. 5th ed., Rio de Janeiro: CPAD, 2001. Livro Primeiro, Cap. 9. p. 720).
We know the Hyksos were Semites, just like the Hebrews. And also like the sons of Jacob, they came from Palestine, which they ruled at about the same time they subdued Egypt. Archaeologist John Arthur Thompson, from Cambridge University, explains: "Palestine had a feudal organization in that period. It consisted of several small states, which paid allegiance to the king of the Hyksos" (Thompson, John Arthur. Archaeology and the Bible - when science discovers faith. 2nd ed., São Paulo: Christian Life, 2007. p. 61).
The testimony Josephus borrowed from Manetho is, therefore, the first outer evidence that the Exodus took place at the end of the Hyksos Period, in the 16th century. It cannot be displaced by archaeological data without very good explanation, which I fear is not sufficiently present in the works of modern archaeologists and historians.
But there is another extra-biblical evidence of the same fact. I refer to the absence of direct accounts of the output of the Hebrews in Egyptian annals. We know that, unlike all previous and subsequent periods, in which names and deeds of the rulers of Egypt were carefully recorded, during the rule of the Hyksos (1730-1570 a. C.), Egyptian Story plunges into deep silence. According to Werner Keller: "No nation of the Ancient East gave us its own history as faithfully as Egypt. For nearly 3,000 years, we can follow the names of pharaohs, and know the succession of dynasties of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms almost without a flaw. No other people so accurately traced its important events [...] but the information abruptly ceases by the year 1730 b. C. Since then Egypt is involved in deep darkness. Only in 1580 b. C., testimonies resurface" (KELLER, Werner. The Bible told the truth. 3rd. ed., São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1958. pp. 88-89).
John Thompson also wrote about the silence of the Hyksos Period: "We know that the kings of 17th Dynasty did their best to erase all traces of the Hyksos rulers. Their names were removed from monuments, and all written records were destroyed" (THOMPSON, John Arthur. Opus cit. p. 61).
The suspension or suppression of historical records of the Hyksos time allows us to understand why the tumultuous exit of the Israelites was not explicitly described in Egyptian annals. Although Egypt maintained the most complete record we are aware of, in remote antiquity, the period it remained under the rule of the Hyksos is marked by a large data gap because those data were destroyed.
There is no similar gap, in the period of the 19th Dynasty. Even less in the reign of Ramses II, in which the Exodus is usually placed by historians. In the book Egypt in the time of Ramses, Pierre Montet summarizes what is known about the golden age of the second Ramses: "No portion of Egypt’s vast empire was neglected by Ramses I and his successors [includind Ramses II]. From Nubia to Pi-Ramses and Pitum, how many cities were founded, how many buildings were extended, restored and even erected! They provide abundant documentation about that period, which is completed by numerous papyri dating from the XII and XIII centuries, as well as novels, controversies, collections of letters, lists of works and workers, contracts, minutes" (Montet, Pierre. Egypt in the time of Ramses - 1300 a. C. to 1100 a. C. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990. pp. 15-16).
In contrast to the lack of information about the Hyksos Period, we have plenty of documents on the reign of Ramses. Montet tells us why: "Pharaoh is the son of a god. He did nothing without the permission of that god, and often with his help. So, remembering the heroic deeds of his reign was honoring the gods" (Opus cit. p. 13). It was a duty of all Pharaohs to honor the gods. That was done by preserving narratives of their deeds as kings. Therefore, nothing that Ramses did in his days was omitted in the documents mentioned by Montet. So we may ask why the utilization of Hebrew work to build cities, temples and other buildings does not appear in them. Why Pharaoh’s interviews with Moses and Aaron were not recorded in those documents? And the output of the Israelites? And their persecution by the Egyptian army? Why the Egyptian version of such events was not recorded in the vast collection of documents available? It is clear that the information gap can be justified for the Hyksos Period, but not for Ramses’.
Josephus said the Israelites and the Hyksos were not only relatives, but distinct contingents of the same people. He based this theory on the Egyptian historian Manetho, who is the sole ancient source of information about the expulsion of the Hyksos. It is true that inaccuracies can be pointed in Josephus’ theory, but they do not remove all its historical worth. Josephus is based on the fact that, in ancient times, kinship and common origin from Canaan made Hebrews and Hyksos one people, for all practical purposes, and his statement does not make little sense.
However, the group that took the power, in the Nile Delta, was that of the Hyksos, not the Israelites. Under such conditions, it is not unlikely that the Hyksos even oppressed the descendants of Jacob, forcing them to build up cities and do other heavy works. Josephus describes such works as digging "several dikes to stop the waters of the Nile and channels to get them. They made our ancestors work on building walls to surround cities, on raising pyramids of prodigious height and forced them to learn difficult arts and crafts” (JOSEPHUS, Flavius. Opus cit. art. 85, p. 79).
It is true one can also oppose arguments to the identification of the Israelites with the Hyksos, such as Pharaoh's statement that "the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and mightier than we" (Ex. 1:9). In this verse, the king of Egypt mentions the Israelites as different from his own people. However, as explained, Josephus hypothesis does not imply a total identification of the two groups. Hyksos and Israelites were distinct waves of immigrants from one people. The conquest of political power by the group that arrived later also differentiated them. Pharaoh referred to these distinctions, in order to justify the oppression of the Hebrews.
When properly interpreted, Exodus 1:19 favors the theory which locates the Exodus at the end of the Hyksos Period, since the Israelites, as foreigners, could hardly be more numerous than the Egyptians, which had been in their country for millennia, but could surpass the Hyksos in number. Having got into Egypt before the Hyksos, the Israelites could indeed be more numerous than they, what explains the fear of the king of Egypt that the sons of Israel would become stronger than they.
Another argument that can be mentioned against the theory of Josephus is that, when the Israelites left Egypt, they did not go through the "land of the Philistines". The exact words of Exodus are: "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Perhaps the people will change their minds when they see war and will return to Egypt" (Exodus 13:17).
We know that the Philistines settled in the coastal region of Palestine only by 1200 or shortly thereafter. Thus, the reference to "the land of the Philistines", in Exodus 13:17, is an anachronism typical of ancient literature. The author’s intention was to assert that the Israelites passed through the land which was latter possessed by the Philistines.
The war mentioned in the verse did not involve the Philistines, because they were not there yet. In fact, the word war, in that verse, means military movements on the Mediterranean coast. The Jerusalem Bible explains: "This was the normal path, parallel to the coast, passing by Sile (El-Kantara current), dotted with wells and patrolled. The group that fled certainly did not take it" (Jerusalem Bible. 5th printing, São Paulo: Paulus, 2008. Exodus 13:17, footnote 3. p. 120). The ambiance of the Exodus in the sixteenth century demands that the policing mentioned in the footnote was exercised by the Hyksos, who ruled the place at that time.
But the strongest argument in favor of the location of the Exodus at the end of the Hyksos Period, is the fact that the Group of Moses, who came out of Egypt, is generally described as small, because it had serious difficulties to overcome Amalek (Exodus 17). Nevertheless, the censuses of the Book of Numbers indicate nearly 600,000 Israelis apt for war, shortly after. The best explanation for the transition from a small group to a huge nation is the proximity between the Exodus and the expulsion of the Hyksos. The Israelites and the Hyksos went out of Egypt almost simultaneously. So, the two contingents may have gradually gathered in the desert and formed one nation.
None of these data clashes with the treatment Josephus develops of the two peoples. It also explains why, although the Group of Moses was militarily weak, Israel became a powerful nation after the merger with the Hyksos warriors.
Thus, we see the problem of the Exodus time cannot be solved by simply refusing the Bible’s inner evidence in favor of outer evidence provided by archaeological findings. We will deal with these findings in another article. However, if we are to rely on outer proofs, we should look not only to excavations, but also to historical records written as close as possible to the events. In short, we should take all outer proofs, not only some. And the whole picture of both inner and outer proofs shows us that the Exodus is more likely to have taken place in the 16th than in the 13th century. This means that the scientific location of the Exodus, to say the least, is shadowed by big clouds of doubt.
