Early or Late Emergence of Israel (Egypt Series) - Chris McKinny and Mark Janzen

Welcome to OnScrib's Biblical World, a podcast exploring the history, archaeology, geography, and cultures of the Bible. Visit us at onScrib.study/biblicalworld. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Biblical World Podcast on Matlinch coming to you from Egypt College and Vancouver. In this episode, you're going to hear a discussion about the early versus late emergence of Israel and that word "emergence" is deliberate and provocative and hopefully this episode will inform you more about that and give you some handles for thinking and deciding what you believe about that topic. So without further ado, enjoy this episode. Welcome back on script Biblical World listeners. I'm excited to continue our series dealing with Egypt and the Bible today with my good friend and colleague who haven't seen it a while. Mark Janssen, I am your host, Chris McKinney and today we're going to dive into a controversial topic, the date of the Exodus conquest settlement, the emergence of Israel, you might say in one one way. Mark, how you doing? I'm good, just getting settled into the new friendly confines here at Lipscomb, got the new office here and got all moved and you know we had that break because I was moving and that's always a huge endeavor though very exciting and I know you've been out of the country a lot but we are back and the swing of things hopefully get into a routine here for recording less of a gap. Yeah, definitely and I would say the most important thing we'd say is first of all congratulations on your new gig there at Lipscomb University and the linear archaeology department. Yeah, linear archaeology. The linear center of archaeology. The linear center of archaeology, I couldn't quite remember the name and for those listeners we just did an episode in the field with one of Mark's colleagues Steve Ortiz where he talks about linear center of archaeology and so that's great news. It's so good to have you there and I'm excited to dive into this fun controversial topic about the date of the Exodus, the date of the conquest and once you start us off what are some texts that inform us about the date of the Exodus and the conquest if we think about the biblical text and then we can get more into how that relates to archaeology, history and so on. So you have your two big verses for dating the Exodus I would say there's of course more there's judges and things like this but they're really first kings six one and Exodus one eleven and so I'll start reading with the first king six one which says in the 480th year after the people of Israel came out of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign in the month of Ziv which is the second month he began to build the house of the Lord so pretty straightforward we have 480 years after they come out of Egypt I.e. the Exodus Solomon in his fourth year begins building the temple so we do the math thinking of a Syrian chronology and on the eponym lists which record eclipses at any rate there's not really any debate about Solomon's reign and you do the math for the 480 and you end up with an Exodus at I think most early date proponents would say 1446 what give or take a year is it in the 480th year so maybe it's year 479 they came out right you get that kind of thinking but this call it 1446 BC for now and then of course we have Exodus one eleven which mentions that the Israelites built two store cities for Pharaoh Pithome and Ramses and Ramses is unanimously essentially unanimously agreed to be the writing of the Egyptian city Pyrameses and so this is really important for chronology because it would have been started by Settie the first in the 19th dynasty and then finished by Ramses the great early in his reign again there's really not much debate about Ramses reign like his his chronology so that's 1279 to about 1213 so somewhere in the early part of that is when they would have built the city which would of course not sink up with the 480 years mentioned in first kings so right at the outset we just need to know if you're taking both verses literally there is a contradiction in Pyrameses as the city we referenced a few episodes back because of how incredibly archaeology was there and the fact that the branch of the Nile it was on dried up so they abandoned it around 1150 1130 somewhere in there and it's a great mark for the author marker of authenticity because why would they know about this place if they weren't there when it's long gone by the time the text takes its final shape so it's a it's like I think a real good kernel of authenticity but it doesn't fit the reference in 1 Kings chapter 6. Yeah I think that's that's that's very clear and maybe I'll just kind of reiterate the point and say playing devil's advocate here you have one text that presents some math that deals with the settlement that deals with the Exodus that you have a known number let's say we know that Solomon's fourth year is something like 967 or 966 and then you just simply add 480 to that and you get to 41446 and the reason why we know 966 as you alluded to is actually because of extra biblical material not because of anything internally with the Bible we know that from she'shack actually as well as some a Syrian text which is also Egyptian because we know that she'shacks campaign was something like 925bc which is 5 years after Solomon's reign and that's also to his mention in the Bible so one of those strands of evidence is a mathematical equation 966 plus 480 equals 1446 and then you do the rest of the biblical chronological math from there you can go back and you can know that Abraham was 2166bc or you can go the other direction and you can figure out using the biblical chronological math if you should choose to do it that way the other one in Exodus 111 is more a cultural thing and in the sense that it deals with specific material culture why would the writer of the book of Exodus make a reference to the city of Ramses the great being built and constructed that doesn't fit the time period in other words if it was 1446bc that we have the Exodus Ramses is 200 years or so from arriving on the scene it's something like the difference between Harry S. Truman and let's see if I can get my history right and Jonathan Edwards I mean it's a huge gap in terms of in terms of time sequence and so which one is which one is right and I think I think that that I said is important is even the so-called early date view here is based upon other extra biblical synchronisms like the fact that we know Solomon's reign it's based upon extra biblical data not internal biblical data itself and that's going to be one of our big questions is as historians as archaeologists you're an Egyptologist I'm a geographer archaeologist we try to know the actual things about what happened now a lot of times we can say well this is as far as we can take it but as people who consider the biblical text to be a reliable source for history in general how do we how do we make these things work and you might even say how do we approach the evidence which one gets the dominance you know which like when they contradict archaeological evidence or seemingly contradict archaeological evidence in biblical text which one wins or is that kind of like a false question well I think it is a case for me I think it is a case where something has to give because they don't on a literal reading those two verses cannot be reconciled you either take Ramses in Exodus 111 as a later editorial gloss to just sort of added it in because I guess they're trying to reach an audience that might know of it which has a lot of issues with when did they actually finalize the writing and all these kind of things or you take that 480 years and you understand it to be not literal but symbolic and you wouldn't do that unless ancient civilizations in in the middle. Mediterranean in the Near East, give you good reason to. Right, and so these kinds of interpretive dilemmas are solved and we contextualize it to the ancient world. So, okay, would they have added a later gloss like that to clarify the name of a city or a place? Well, sure, or the Caldeans, right? Would they have taken a number like 480 years and said, no, it's not literal, it's symbolic. Absolutely, the Assyrians do this constantly and they're their number that they like to use for the symbolism is the number 16 and 60 because it's a sex-adjustable counting system. And really, they do it the most, I think, with 60. And so 480, of course, happens to be 12 times 40 and I don't think we need to explain to listeners the importance of 40 in the Bible or 12. So, you to, or 12, right? So it's like, okay, wait a second. What is this number doing here? And I think it's important to recognize that in many respects, then it comes down to the type of modern thinking having to sort of take a back seat to try to get away from our sort of presentism with how numbers are literal and like set in stone and say, okay, well, what about, what about what the ancients did with them? And in the context of temple dedication and major building projects, the Assyrians especially give us evidence of this. But there's the 400 year steala in Egypt as well under Ramses, the great again. So there is some evidence that would suggest that we should strongly consider the possibility that this number is symbolic, which is kind of mind-boggling to our way of thinking. But again, it's not about our way of thinking. - Yeah, I would, I'm not gonna say I agree completely. I don't disagree either. I just think that here there's some options. I'll be able to present it that way. To answer, if I could provide an answer to the question of which one gives archeology versus Bible, I do think it's a bit of a false question. Because most of the time in my experience, what's, it's not a question of which one's right, the hard evidence of archeology or the literary evidence of the Bible. Most of the time in my experience, there is an answer in our interpretation of how we actually either are looking at the archeological evidence or our interpretation of the biblical texts. And I think that's really what we're looking at here. Which one of these texts you might say is easier to interpret for historical evidence. And I think for both of us, the conclusion is Exodus 111, it clearly has to be connected with Ramses, the great, who reigned in the 13th century because of what the archeological evidence demonstrates and because of what the historical evidence indicates with Ramses, the great. And the case of the number first King 6.1, and you could add in Judges 11.26 to that with Jeb the 300 years, is one question I would have. And I've spent a lot of time not only looking at this question, but looking at numbers in the Bible in general, I think when you get into the book of Kings, which is of course where first King 6.1 is, there are numbers that are very sophisticated, that are very much connected with administrative types of documents. And I'm talking about the reignal chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah, that I think can, even though on the face of it, if you read today and try to make sense of it without knowing the backstory, it's hard to do. And that's actually how Josephus and other, like the Septuagint, they really didn't understand how the system worked. But if you go to someone like Tila, who wrote a famous book called The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, he was able to unravel using the administrative, reignal system of Babylon in Assyria with something called a session year reckoning, non-assession year reckoning, and things of that nature, to demonstrate that the royal chronology that you have presented in the book of Kings can be unraveled, and it matches almost exactly the period of time for the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel between 931 to 722, the end of the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BC. And that's a great book if you haven't read it. It's a great resource. But the question is, okay, those are clear and they fit well. But what about a big number, like 480 years when everyone agrees, Israel had no way, or had no administrative system, where they were counting to go back to 480 years. It has to basically be based on some type of oral memory, some type of long distance memory. How were they able to come up with such a number? Well, for someone who believes in the inspiration of text, they can just simply say, God gave it to him. And that's, I guess, an option, it maybe it is an option, but given the context of what the biblical text is talking about, how do these numbers work? And the answer for a lot of these questions, especially in Genesis, like the patriarchal numbers, where the stakes really aren't that high, at least for me, is I can say, I don't know. I don't know how Sarah can both be 90 years old and someone that Avimelek, the king of Gerar, wants to have part of his harem. I don't know how those two things work together. But I can say for something like this, for the 480 or the 300 years, that you can go the symbolic route and say 12 times 40, but I actually think that there might be another option or to add to that, because that, that mathematic multiplication one is an option that's quite popular. But I wonder too, is if we think about how the biblical text is being put together, is if you could actually add up all of the numbers between Exodus to 1st King 6-1, an account for some minor contemporary things of overlap. You can easily come up with a number that's like 479. And you can do the same thing for Jebtha. In other words, from the Exodus to the time of Jebtha, when Jebtha says, for 300 years we've been here and you haven't complained, you can come up with almost exactly 300 years, just using the internal numbers themselves in the biblical text. And actually this is exactly what Josephus does. In Josephus' antiquities of the Jews, what he does for his 1st King 6-1 version, which just doesn't follow the Maseretic Text, the Hebrew Bible, he has 595 years. And so if you go back and look at his numbers and antiquities of the Jews, all he's doing is adding up all the numbers from the time of the Exodus to that point in his story. And so, and actually that represents a type of passage of time, a type of calculation, and it's showing what's happened to that point. Now, is it the way we would think about numbers? Is it the way that we would aggregate or create, that George Washington became president on, was it 1783? And therefore, we are however many years from that point. No, but the other question is, how would they even have had the ability to account for these long distances, these long passages of time? We know the Assyrians could, but they created a system where they could name every year. It was named by a governor's official, an event that happened, and a city. So every year had a specific name. As far as we can tell, there was not such a system that existed in ancient Israel. And so, all those things have to be considered when we approach those numbers. And in addition, just thinking about, well, maybe they're just saying, it's a long period of time, when we get to those questions. So I would say, besides the, the kind of go to, you know, 12 times 40 is 480, there's other options under that that I've written on, and actually, this idea, I just suggested I have a paper coming out that I'll share with our listeners when it is published. - Yeah, so, lots of react to in that. I think for me, I would say that we should really start with the simple truth that when you try to do the chronology say from, let's just do Exodus through to Solomon, and you get into judges, then you have the question of regional versus national judge and overlap in the dates given. I throw Jeb the out altogether. He's a blubbering idiot. That's the whole point of his whole story in the very next passage after his 300 years claim is, you know, his rash oath and sacrificing his daughter. So I don't think he's a credible source and I don't think holding to, like, inspiration requires us to say, oh, Jeb the Settid, it must be true. Any more than we should think that what, you know, the devil tempts Jesus with is a proper use of Scripture, right? We can all recognize quotes have to be contextualized and Jeb does not a great source. But the point more so that I want to make here is that when you add up these dates and judges, you can they can kind of become all things to all people. Now, I mean kitchen has it in his book on Relatedability of the Old Testament. I'm going to reference here the second on a different note, but you know, you get this aggregate. Then he basically just puts it as 574 plus xyz. If you want to get it to 480 plus to Solomon, you can do that. Or it's even longer if you just added them all up, even with the wiggle room taken out, you're still past the date 1446bc for the Exodus. So then it's no matter what on these two dates, you are going to have to say, okay, the chronology has to have some wiggle room and we've got to understand some overlap with the judges or some numbers not to be literal. What it should ever symbol is in you use or understanding you use. I think if you just took it at face value and added straight up, the number is bigger than 480, no matter what. So no one's really doing that. So like even the even the proponents of the early date who take the 480 years literally aren't taking every number and adding it up literally. You see what I mean? So they've already got to admit that they do what I'm suggesting we do with 480. They have to do sort of elsewhere, even if it's not quite the obvious math of 12 times 40. But it would fit what you're saying with some of these other ways to interpret 480s. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And I would even just add that we actually with that first king 61 have a variety of traditions because the Septuagint which often provides a is 440, which doesn't really fit anyone's view. But and as I said before, we have Josephus coming to a text and saying, well, I'm not going to go with that 480 because it doesn't fit my math. Who's to say that in a, you know, that what we have in first king 61 was not updated to match a different tradition. You know, we have we have two. We have the Septuagint. We have the Mesoretic text. And so all I'm saying is is that should give us some pause and say, well, this is what the text says, but it doesn't really, it doesn't allow me to fit in with these other things such as the Exodus 1-11, such as other things. It's not just the Ramaside stuff, which I think we can spend a little bit more time on, but it doesn't fit with the references we have, for instance, to the Philistines. We know from extra biblical sources that the Philistines arrive at the very earliest, they're arriving in Canaan, maybe over a series of decades, but their big battles 1175 BC or 1180 BC with Ramzis, the third or battles depending on your view. And it coincides with the collapse of the larger Mediterranean world towards the end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th century. And that's actually precisely what we have in the book of Joshua. The first references that we have to the Philistines are in the land that yet remains in Joshua 13 and the Philistines and their five cities are a part of the land that yet remains. If the Exodus happens in 1446 and you have Joshua conquering the land 40 years later in 1406, then it means that the Philistines have to be around then, if you're going to be literal, and Joshua 13 says that they're there, and yet we know from history that they're not there, at least in especially those five cities, until at the very earliest, the very end of the 13th century and beginning of the 12th. So that's another aspect of material culture reference being more indicative of date as opposed to the raw numbers of chronology. And I would like Mark for you to tell us a bit more about, okay, yeah, we have the date of Ramses, you know, we know it's a rain, but we also have other, a lot of elements that not only seem to match, okay, the capital that the Israelites may have been constructing in the right there in the land of Goshen, but how that fits in overall with the story. I would say, as a way of like kind of pointing you in this direction, is that the story we have in the book of Exodus is not just an Egypt at large picture, but it's really an Egyptian lower Egypt northern story of the land of Goshen. But for those who would hold to a view that has the 15th century part of the Exodus, you know, 1446, actually the base of power where Moses and Pharaoh are going to have to have all these arguments with Aaron around is going to have to be a long night train all the way down to thebes to go to Luxor because that's where the capital is. So let it fill us in a bit more about that. Maybe we can have a conversation about how the 19th dynasty matches much better in the overall, let's say, cultural elements that we see in the story. Yeah, it's a seriously important point. It also kind of helps put a bow on this last little bit that we've been discussing about the dates and the chronology is the early date doesn't have a monopoly on the high view of scripture. Right. I'm late date. I think you are, and I think I can speak for both of us and say that we both hold scripture to be inspired and useful for history. And so if you actually just look at the Pentateuch, the date that you will come up with for the Exodus is in the reign of Ramses, the great or at least in the 19th dynasty, which is when the capital is in the Delta. And of course, thebes is still important, no one saying that they're not in thebes, but you need Ramses to the Pharaoh, I mean, to be where Moses can get to him. And that's going to happen in that time period. And various different things about the text in the Pentateuch suggests that we are living in the, like you said, lower Egypt and northern Egypt, in other words, and that we are not traveling back and forth to Cebes. We're not at Karnak or Luxor Temple. We're not at the base of power for the 18th dynasty, which would be that 1446 date. And I think it's really important to note that because if we don't take a date from a later passage of scripture that's talking about something like the Exodus, and we don't contextualize it properly, which is to say 480 years could be a number of things, or we take what Paul says about Sinai in Arabia in Galatians and don't recognize what Arabia encompassed in his day, then we get way off. I mean, it's really broad way to put it, but that's how you get people thinking Sinai is in the complete wrong peninsula. Because within the data within the book of Exodus itself and the larger Pentateuch, you know to place it in southern Sinai. Within the Exodus and Pentateuch narrative for when this takes place, there are ramicide isms, not thutmostidisms, if you will, to use the famous Pharaohs of each time period. Some things that the 19th Dynasty doing with 10 like that. But it's like that. But it's like covering for shrines, right? Yeah, I just coined that, I think. That's a ramicide innovation, and we're going to hopefully have in another episode or so an expert on that and to talk to us more about it. So that's just a little teaser. But the point here that matters most is if you take the Exodus and Pentateuch narratives as your primary source within the biblical data, you don't end up at 1446. And of course we'll talk about the archaeology and some of that too. But within the, with with pie ramsies, of course the point is the narrow window of time that it's used roughly from ramsies the second to 1140, 1130 in there. Some people put it at 1150. And that's hard geology, right? That's a hard science saying this branch of the river is gone. And then Egyptology saying, well a ramicide city, capital city, regional capital at the very least on a dried up branch of the river is no splendid city after all. And then they move the whole thing to essentially what will become tannis. So these aren't like up for really any debate in interpretation. This is the capital and then it moves because of the dried up branch. And so that gives us a window of time for the narrative that is crucial. And that's within the narrative itself not an external biblical source. Because I think sometimes people think, oh Bible, one book because of the theological things. And I agree with that on the theology and that God's grand story of redemption. But when we're talking about specific to details like dating the Exodus, we should be starting with the Exodus book itself and then Pentateuch and then beyond. Yeah, I completely agree and I would say that if the early date were to be the correct interpretation, we would expect to read instead of Ramzis of Ars or something in this area, which is the predecessor to P Ramzis or Ramzis in the area. And if we were if the Exodus is something very, very late as a development, we would expect to read Zohan or Tannis, which is the success of what Psalms do. Psalm 78, exactly. I was just going to say the other thing that maybe helps answer your question a minute ago is I kind of finished that is the narrative going from Joseph through departing Egypt in the Exodus has them, you know, Joseph and his brothers going back and forth a couple times they're in the land of Goshen and they're not taking weeks to get back to him, right? It seems like a short journey. I mean, I know that's not the most precise thing in the world, but they're not going all the way through the rest of Egypt and the semites in the archaeological record are all over the Delta, not down in the thebes. The Hicksos, maybe perhaps starting some of that of course are semites ruling in the Delta in the previous era. So this is all perfectly in keeping with what we should expect for the seasonal migration that then becomes a more permanent one that is the backdrop of the story fits this time period too. Yeah, I think that's a great point and in terms of like a clarifier, I would say when we say Egypt today, we have a map in our head of boundaries with the Nile running through it. When Egypt is said in ancient Egypt, it's the Nile. Like it's everything around the Nile and maybe a little bit in its, you know, in its broader floodplain for the Bible. And like, you know, in a way, sister too. Yeah, for the Bible, it's mostly 90% of the time a reference to Northern Egypt, to lower Egypt because that's the place that they had access to. And I'll give a couple more teasers. I would just simply say without giving too much away when we talk with David Fall Copoli about the Ark of the Covenant and maybe eventually if we refer to Ron Anikler, they both have written books recently on the Ark of the Covenant and both have made the same general case that they fit in very closely with New Kingdom parallels. And the best parallels for that are 19th, not 18th Dynasty. And we could point to others as well with the Tabernacle fitting in closely as Josh Burmese. So I will say it's not, the Ramicide era doesn't have a total monopoly on all of that. I don't want to overstate it earlier. We do get just general New Kingdom, which would be the early date as well. But the better comps, I guess you could word it that way for now, do fit the 19th, the Ramicide era. And again, we'll definitely be talking more about that in a future episode. But I think the other thing that we need here, and again, I'll bring up Kenneth Kitchen, who's, you know, a Mount Rushmore Egyptologist, who's the reason Ramicide studies exist, basically, and has written that length on practically everything you can imagine within the ancient Near East. And when he talks about chronology and the Exodus in his honor, the reliability book, which is now 20 years old, right? But which there is a way to get an updated version, but not going to happen. But he, he notes the importance for external controls precisely because what we were talking about earlier, where the numbers can be manipulated sounds a little too sinister because I don't think anyone's doing it with those kind of intentions, but they can be, they can be squeezed into any view fairly easily that we need external controls. And he would then go on to suggest that the best external control is the reference to Ramzis, pyramzis in Exodus 1-11, because this is not something that's going to be, you know, argued over or have a bunch of interpretive dilemmas attached to it like some of the rest of the chronology. And that allows the discussion to be more productive because it's an external control. Yeah, I think one of the, anytime you have this discussion, you always have to kind of like, like your book, which is a great book. You know, in fact, we have five episodes on this that people want to go back and listen to at the five views of the Exodus. We interviewed all five of the authors if you want to get different perspectives on this. But the question is really part of a package. It's not just Exodus and then you can have conquest and settlement. They all go together because it's a historical sweep of events that happen. And the focus is often on who's the fare of the Exodus, who, you know, how that fits. And I think to riff on that point in bringing up the settlement pattern of where the Israelites thought Egypt was or, you know, the setting of the Exodus was. And that really seems to be Goshen. And then the early date view to make sense of what we know about mid 15th century, Egypt would have to be in an upper Egypt, in and around thebes in the air of Luxor, which doesn't fit. You could also say the same thing about the settlement pattern and the political situation that existed in the 15th and 14th centuries in Canaan itself, which is to say Canaan was absolutely dominated by New Kingdom Egypt from the conquest of Tutmost III all the way through until the end of the Ramicide period. And so not only do you have a problem internally of, you know, even the Exodus story and how that works, but once Israel finally emerges and comes into, let's say, the land of Canaan, we're coming into a landscape which would be Joshua and Judges that is absolutely controlled by a whole host of important pharaohs, whether we're talking about Oman, Oman, Ophidote, Ophidote, Ophidote III, even Acha-Nought, in which we have the Amarna correspondence. For him, for sure. For him. All these guys are Ramzis campaigns heavily in this area. And there's no reference to this in Joshua or Judges. And it seems to fit, in my opinion, much better towards the end of New Kingdom's control when Egyptian power is weakening in Canaan as opposed to at its pinnacle. Essentially, the early date view for it to work, it has to argue that Tutmost III, who conquers Canaan, has only conquered Canaan for, like, less than a generation, and almost the rest of the Exodus events, the wilderness wanderings, the type of book of Joshua and Judges, they happen when Egypt is an absolute domination of the land of Canaan, which doesn't make, in my opinion, nearly as much sense as simply to say that once Israel arrives, Egypt is at least on the way out, if not completely on the way out. So that's one thing. Yeah, and I think one of the forgotten points in that conversation that I think is certainly applicable here is people are, okay, so the New Kingdom runs until the end of all these Ramzis, you know, 11th Ramzis, the 12th, you get all these Ramzis, 11th being the last decent one, but Ramzis III is the last like, militarily powerful Pharaoh, and he doesn't really do anything much in the Lava. I mean, I know he throws some azeatics on the wall at all, but his claim to fame in terms of military is fighting the sea people. So even after Ramzis the great, you're already seeing the Egyptians not have a strong presence in their own records with much precision for campaigns in the Lava. I mean, you've got Merneptas, one off campaign in the, of course, the famous victory steal, but most of that's about the Libyans, right? It's like 28 lines of it are about the Libyans, and the last three are about Syria, Palestine. So, and then after Merneptas, here's the forgotten point, there's a huge crisis of succession before Ramzis III sort of stabilizes things again, but they never really recover in terms of an empire not to the scope, at least of its strength as the 18th dynasty had. And so you don't even need to get to the end of the new kingdom. You can do the end of the 19th dynasty and see the empire starting to lose control. And the empire never struck back. And that gives people like the Israelites that know it never struck back. No, got to work that Star Wars in whenever we can. Shameless you are, no? So the point being, it's a long process of decline, and that gives that kind of a group like the Israelites has a bit of a window there. I just have a really hard time seeing what their window for carving out their own turf is in the 18th dynasty. Even in Amarna, most of the tall just will tell you now that this old idea that Akinat and just letting the whole thing go is probably not true. But Horme have at least as representing Egypt's interest in the area. And there's still the correspondences with the Hittites. It's like politically and militarily, it's a little harder to see the window for the Israelites if you want to talk about it in that bigger history kind of picture. Whereas the end of the 19th dynasty and even the 20th dynasty, and certainly after that, the archaeology says, okay, here is a whole different sort of settlement pattern, less Egyptian data. Of course, there still have some strongholds, but the extent of control has waned if that's maybe the best way I can think to put it. And that gives the Israelites that window, I think. Yeah, and I think the best proof of a comparison to that is it's precisely the window for the Philistines also. They emerge as a, yeah, people that have been around in this, the history of the wider ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world, but they reform and become something distinct and new precisely in this period that we're suggesting the Israelites do. Now they do so in a way that is different than the Israelites in that they lay claim to an area of places I like to call the Wers-Wers along the coast with these five Philistine cities, Gath, Ekran, Ashto, Dashkullan, and Gaza. And the Israelites are going to settle in a different area, but the point is is that the vacuum left after the end of the 19th Dynasty is pretty big. And it's going to last really for the rest of the Iron Age. And that power vacuum is going to be filled first by groups like the Philistines and the emergence of the Israelites. And there's probably canonites mixed in with the Israelites too. And then these territorial states that we're going to have in the Iron 2, Lichuda, Israel, Amon, Moab, Edom, and so on. And then that power vacuum is going to be filled completely with the arrival of new empires with the Assyrians. And so I think just as a point of comparison, that fits very nicely. Now if we take the next and the Assyrians, if I can jump in for a second, sorry, the Assyrians, they were also part of the late Bronze Age big club of brothers in the Egyptian text. So that's their first proper empire. They also wane. And it's like when the cats away, the mice will play in terms of military history. That's where Israel, Ayrham, maybe to see people, I mean, they're pretty powerful militarily, but at least historically at that point in time, they're new. They're the mice and the mice will play. But then the Neo Assyrians, now we do have a Star Wars empire strikes back, right, later in the Iron 2, of course. So that window, you know, fits for not just the Israelites, there's other groups that take advantage of it too. And so if you're looking for even in the regional history, you've got this window in the whole region where a group like theirs lights can form a nation. And then that gets you to David and I like, how does he make a kingdom? Well, that's perfect timing. Yeah. I think when people have this question in their mind, like they're thinking specifically like biblical geography, biblical landscape, Dan de Berchovah, and that's the listings in Israelites. But as you just alluded to, it's the collapse of the Hittite Empire. It's the collapse of the Assyrian Empire. It kind of survives, but okay, fine. It's the collapse of the Egyptian Empire. They do better than the rest, but what does that lead to? It leads to peoples that we hadn't heard of before that are exactly mentioned in the Bible in the early part of the Iron Age. It's the Philistines of the Israelites we mentioned, but it's also the Arameans. It's the Hittites. It's these states that characterize the northern and southern Levant throughout the rest of the story that weren't there before or the peoples were, but they weren't organized into these types of peoples because they were under the control of the Hittite Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Matanian Empire, or the Egyptian Empire. And so once again, what's the catalyst for this? It's the end of the world. It's the end of the mercantile, international theater that characterized Le Bronze Age. And one of the impacts of that is the emergence of these states, which is pretty cool if you're thinking about it from even a theological perspective. The providential side of that, I think, is very, very interesting. I was just going to say, I think the point you make is a great one because it's something that people are not necessarily always thinking about. It's the wider sweep that this fits in so nicely with. Yeah, and I tell my students, we talk about the Le Bronze Age collapse because we're Empire-focused. And as historians, that's where most of the texts come from. I mean, that's what makes the Bible truly unique is that it's this gigantic text from one of the smaller-got-groups. But so we're Empire-focused. We call it a collapse, but to people like Aram, or to Aramians, excuse me, Israelites, Phoenicians on a certain level, that they've always been kind of valued for the trading, this isn't a collapse so much as an opportunity. And like David has perfect timing. So yeah, you can call it providential pretty easily. But if we bring it back to the date of the Exodus, what's the window where Israel can do all this when the empires are still pretty strong, even with some chaos during the Amarna period, it's right back to recovery under Ramses the Great. The hit-tites don't fall apart yet. You know, like, so just a bigger picture, I think, fits the late date too. And let's talk to you about the archaeology. I know that's more in your wheelhouse and the settlement patterns. You want to address that for a few? Yeah, I do. I think that's very important. In some sense, it's the, I don't want to say it's the most distinctive, but it is just as distinctive as saying Exodus 111, already alluded to the fact that the Philistines are mentioned right there in Judges 1. They're mentioned right there in Judges 13. And to me, that was one of the big things. If we go back to our original question, which is more historical, this text versus this text. To me, it was like a text like Joshua 13, which says this is the land that yet remains, that Joshua hadn't conquered yet, the land of the Philistines. And so I would say to someone who is on the fence about 1 Kings 6, 1, what do you do with Joshua 13, which says the Philistines have not been there, have not been conquered by the Israelites, and we know that they were there at the earliest, at the late 13th century, beginning of the 12th century. But even if we look at the campaigns as are listed in the book of Joshua, and I've done quite a bit of study on this, Joshua is very much a home base for me, for much of research. You mean there's geography in Joshua? There's a bit of geography in Joshua. And I would have a view of the book of Joshua that presents, I think a pretty good, I don't want to say that we can say everything in it is historical, I'm not saying that it's not. I'm not going to try to prove every single aspect of that story, because to me I think that's a hard thing to do, and not necessarily something I'm all that interested in. But if we just take the first 12 chapters of the book, which is the battles, especially chapters 5 through 11, it presents the Israelites going up against some of the more important Canaanite city states in the region. And all of those end up appearing in Joshua 12, which is if you haven't read, it's probably not part of your memory versus the king of X killed by Joshua. You know, it's in its 30 of these. And it's essentially a map. It's a map of the land. It just did that in their Sunday school. It's a map of the land of Canaan. And another paper we have coming out soon, what I demonstrated is that if you look at Joshua 12, what you have is most of the important Canaanite city states in the land of Canaan. And all of them, with the exception of the ones that get mentioned the most, Jericho, I, and Arad, every single one of the other ones have clear late Bronze Age remains. Jericho is a bit of a question, I is a bit of a question, Arad is a bit of a question. I think there's actually, Jericho does have LB. It's just late Bronze Age. It's just a question as to how it works. But the rest of those 30 all are important late Bronze Age city states. And so what that tells us is the author of the book of Joshua knows what the Canaanite map looks like. It knows what the late Bronze Age, Canaanite city state world looks like. And the maps that he gives after that, Joshua 13 through 21 of the different tribal areas is actually different. It's not Canaanite major city states. Some of them are included, some are not. And what I did by dissertation on in Joshua chapter 15, which is a composition of a boundary list and a town list, what I found is for that section, we have something like 130 sites that are mentioned in Joshua 15 and another small section for Benjamin in Joshua 18, only 40% of those sites have late Bronze Age. Where they all have Iron Age because that's the time period that it reflects, but whereas Joshua 12, almost every town that's mentioned there is a Canaanite site occupied in the late Bronze Age. And so what's that saying is that the historical section or the narrative section, let's say, seems to reflect that Canaanite world. Whereas some of the other stuff is clearly showing signs of development where it's probably an administrative document, I would even take this a step further though. If we go to some of the specifics, like let's say a hot sore, hot sore, the biggest and baddest Canaanite town out there, occupied continuously from the middle bronze to the end of the late Bronze Age, middle to the end of the 13th century, it has a single destruction layer. It's been said in the past that it had multiple destruction layers. It has one. It has one at the end of its history, the end of its Canaanite history where this 200 acre size site is destroyed. And I would go with Omnonventor. Galadine before him and say that the likeliest candidate for this is the Israelites which are mentioned in the book of Joshua. And so the fact that it has this destruction layer and only one, according to the archaeologist, not multiple ones that fits very closely with a 13th century view. And not only that, it has signs within that destruction of the mutilation of idols where the heads are knocked off intentionally at least according to Omnum and Tor is another aspect of this that I think fits well. So the conquest side of it, I would say in Joshua 12, if we're just looking at a text, points to a nice view that the map that the author of Joshua has in his head of Canaan matches what we see at the end of the Leipronz age in the 13th century. A number of these sites were destroyed around that time period. I'm not saying Joshua and the Israelites were the ones who did that, although maybe they were, who destroyed these sites. And in the case of Hatsur, it fits very closely. But then let's think about settlement itself. And this is something that's also in the paper I mentioned earlier about the numbers of 1st Kings 6, 1, that if you look at a text like Joshua 17, which is a text that deals with the clans of the menaceites. And it's also repeated in other places in chronicles and numbers and so on. We actually have a very interesting text to compare this to, the Samaria Astrica. The Samaria Astrica come from Samaria. Astrica are potchards that were written on, in this case, they were ink. They were written at the very beginning of the 8th century BC, so the early 700s during the reign of Jehovah-Ash King of Israel or Jeroboam II. In fact, they even have their regnal years on them. Now, in, you might say, well, what does this have to do with with the settlement? Well, I'll tell you, the towns, the number of these inscriptions have town names on them, and a number of them, quite interestingly, have the name of the same clans of Vanessa that appear in Joshua 17. Almost all of them are represented, Noah and others. The Abiza rights like Gideon's hometown are Gideon's home clan of the menaceites. And what you see is that these place names can be easily identified with archaeological sites that match the same Arabic name with the same name that we see on the Astrica. So you can find the sites that it's referring to in the Samaria Astrica, where the inhabitants were sending oil or wine back to Samaria in the early 8th century. But if you look at the archaeology of these sites, none of them are founded in Leipronz age. All of them are founded either in the time period, 9th or 8th century, or in most cases, all of them were founded in the Iron One, which would be the 12th and 11th centuries BC. In other words, the biblical text in Joshua 17 talks about clans of the menaceites settling in the hills of Ephraim and menacea, northern central hills of Canaan. And what we see archaeologically is a wave of settlement of a bunch of new sites precisely in the late 13th and 12th centuries BC. And that's what archaeology shows from Adam Zertal's surveys, what from Israel Finkelstein surveys. So that seems to match in general that you have a wave of new settlements that match the Israelites. But more specifically, you have specific clans and sites that we can identify with archaeology and historical geography that match an Iron One beginning. In other words, settlement sites primarily are beginning in the very earliest late 13th century, 12th century. That's what the Israelites are doing. They're settling in small sites that develop into Israelites towns that are eventually incorporated into the northern kingdom of Israel. What the Philistines are doing is they're mostly living in the old Canaanites cities, the city states like Gaza, Gath, Ekron, and so on, and they're becoming their own political entities. And so once again, you have the sequence which matches all three of these levels. A kind of entrance, an entrance campaign, which you can, you might say fits, well, let's just use the example of Hatsur. But in terms of the settlement, we can say in general it fits with all of these different sites we have in E from Imanasa. But then the specific ones where we can point to a settlement like Joshua 17 with these clans, it also fits very closely. Yeah. So if the Exodus happens in the 15th century, where's the settlements? Where's there's no pattern of new groups in that region that would be part of Joshua judges narratives. But if the Exodus is in the 13th century, those early iron one settlements would be a pretty good fit. Now this is not to say, and I hope listeners don't take it this way, but this is not to say that the late view as we're calling it or the 13th century Exodus is like immune to criticism or doesn't have a few things to sort of still unpack. For instance, the window of time between leaving Egypt and arriving in the land in time for Merneptah to run into them in 12 to 7, 12 to 8, that's pretty tight. So it's not, I don't want it to sound like we think this is like, oh, we've got it all figured out. It's just on balance, the bulk of the evidence when we understand the biblical text in the immediate vicinity of the Exodus, including the book itself, and the archaeological evidence, and the big picture ancient Near East history, which kind of stuff we did with the cats in the mice a bit ago, it all suggests that the on balance best view remains the 13th century. If new data comes out that suggests otherwise or something, you know, along those lines, then I am all ears. I would, you know, that would be awesome if there were some great new pieces of evidence to bring to the discussion that make you really stop and pause and re-evaluate, but right now I don't think the case for the early date is as compelling when you look at all of it. And even with the the first king six part of the early date, you still have ways to understand that that don't require a 15th century Exodus. So that's just for me on balance how it all sort of plays out in the overall conclusion I would give for our listeners after we've already sort of interviewed the five guys in the book that I edited, you know, here's our view and why. And I think I hope that was useful. And again, it combines the biblical data, the archaeological data, and the bigger picture historical data. I think pretty well it's not perfect. Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think that's a good summary of the way we approached it. If I may, I would add just a couple of other things that I thought of while you were talking. I suppose you can. I think so. I would say also if we think about an episode we did altogether where we talked about the so-called curse tablet, the lead tablet from Mount Ebole. We talked about some of these issues then. That structure at the, whether it's Josh was alter or not or a structure that relates to early Israelite worship, which I think is garnering more support among archaeologists that it is an early Israelite cultic site. At the earliest, that building can only date to the very end of the 13th century. So once again, it fits in with with this view. Shiloh, the excavations there, the the structures that represent from the Israelites, it's from the Iron One. It's not from the late Bronze Age and more than that, in the highlands of Ephraim and Manasseh, you only have a few late Bronze Age sites in general. These, which is where we have the settlement, you have like a place like Shekum and Bethel and Teerza and a few others of late Bronze Age sites. The rest are new. So you go from people living there in the middle Bronze Age, then a settlement gap for new sites until these Israelites move in. And that's when we have the emergence of a lot of these sites. And that fits in again, not only with the general view of what we look at the settlement pattern, but the specific thing when we talk about a place like, okay, that's maybe say Mount Ebole, but definitely in the case of Shiloh, or at least again, according to the current archaeological evidence, seems to indicate that an area that we could associate with Israel is not in 1406 BC, but is more like 1200 at the earliest. So again, it doesn't quite fit, or I would say it doesn't fit very good at all with the early date, with the early date view. Yeah, and just to remind everyone, when it comes to the Mount Ebole, Curstablet, we're still awaiting, excitedly awaiting the official formal scientific publication, which I would anticipate being within the next several months. I mean, I don't know if I would say, oh, definitely by the end of the year, but I know that people involved are working on it and getting close to having that You know submitted the process is continuing so we'll be able to have a lot more to say about that And we'll probably do another panel episode on it. I would think So that that stay tuned, but either way this The tablet is new not the site so like the point Chris is making here is the site still dates Not to you know the the late bronze or to the 1400s or something So yeah, I think we just look at the complete picture the late date does still seem best You know this this goes back you know all the way to Albright right, you know like sometimes our scholastic forebears Did get it right? I know we all want new things to say and we all have to like publish things that advance the conversation But but sometimes it's also just as valuable to go back and evaluate and and then if the art the new archeology still giving us the same You know range of settlement at dates for the settlements Then we can go okay, so they you know even with less data that theory still I think holds water best Yeah, I think it's I think that's right in the sense that When we approach like these these different theories that are out there in any any biblical archeology course Well approaching like the five different schools of thought There's a reason why we have these different schools of thought like a conquest theory either whether it's early-data late-date peasant revolt Peaceful immigration and so on and I actually say besides the peasant revolt one which is like cold war I do have like peasants revolting like the Canaanites were Marxists I I don't think that one works. What was it? Dever was it Dever who called it Revolting peasant theory it was like Dever or kitchen or somebody what is one of these like really established sassy or guys So the revolting peasant Sorry, you cut your foot. No, no, that's good. I I think that there's actually aspects of each one of those that make a lot of sense and one of the big ones that I think And we I know we need to wrap this up here But I think one of the big ones that helps fit is the idea of Local Canaanites always being part of the story of Israel or Semites in Egypt that and that's actually all over the text like when we have Exodus The mixed multitude that goes up the fact that we have Egyptians joining the Israelites and their ranks when they leave Egypt the fact that we have Rahab the Hivites at Gibyan If we look at the genealogies even in a text like Chronicles the first Nine chapters of first Chronicles. It's clearly showing that there are local people that were Israelites that weren't part of that original story that it's always dealing with a mixture of peoples that are becoming affiliated with With ancient Israel with with the Israelites and the Judahites and the all the other smaller clans and that's right there in the biblical text but we often Think of it more in like a monolithic way like unless you're Descended right from Abraham and Sarah And can prove it you're not in And that's not at all the way that the biblical text is is is presenting the story now often it's it's focused on One family but once you look at more of like the peripheral details especially with genealogies and Some of these stories that indicate okay. Why are the Kenites? Why are they part of our team? Or why are you know XYZ tribes over here? How come we can't kill them or how come they're involved with us? It's it's because they were how Israel was formed in the first place And so I'm not suggesting there wasn't an actual group of Israelites identified themselves in Egypt I think maybe you probably there was but how and what and when they became Israelites I don't know I mean it we can't know because the text is telling us that it was a a process which actually if you think about the Human element of even our own families and our own DNA and this mixing of of both human life being messy and and descent being being messy but you need to to tell the story You got to you got to pick the thread and follow it all the way through to tell the story in a certain way and I think both of us acknowledged the the significance of the way the story is told and Following the story with the the right intent of what the author is trying to intend and yet at the same time from a Historical and archaeological perspective not letting our own Desire to you know have this have this fit exactly And ignore this other evidence over here like I mentioned with the mixing of different Different peoples included how that can also inform us to Understand what ancient Israel what have actually looked like and it's a it's a composite of a bunch of different peoples So I think that's another aspect in this as well. Yeah, we want it to be neat and tidy and it really just isn't usually or as a Negeologist I think of You know the Egyptians love dualism and they loved contradictory things and they don't mind having the deity be You know and this animal in one depiction and that animal over there in another and they don't mind that one bit and we're like Ah, how is that the same you know and so I think that's just all part of this skill of historical empathy By which I mean the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of the people living there and I think when it comes to You know is like said what patterns and who are the Israelites and the fact that there's Kate and I'd send there That shouldn't surprise us at all. I mean most of the old testament is about their inability to figure out how to follow Yahweh with these The the pressures of idolatry and intermarrying and all these things going on and that runs right in through the post-exilic period And as was like hey, you all need to not be married to any of them You know so like this is that thread as you put it before you know even that thread runs all the way through so I think These are all important things to keep in mind when we look at these huge and important topics Yeah, I agree and I think this was fun. I think it was a bit controversial But we don't mind and so we would love for you to react with with comments Even disagreements if you like leave us a rating if you would on On iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen. This was a fun Part of our series of Egypt and the Bible with Mark and Chris and we look forward to our our next Our next episode Which should be coming out in the next few weeks or so. So thanks for tuning in and until next time Keep digging You've been listening to onScripts biblical world podcast if you enjoy the show Please show your support by giving us a rating on iTunes or wherever you listen You can support the show by visiting onScript.study/donate Until next time keep digging