Talkbacks World Jews on high alert ahead of Pesach

The discoveries made by the new archaeology discredited a great exodus in the 13th century BC. Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land, for the good reason that the latter was Egyptian territory at the time. And there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the pharaonic empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders. The book of 1 Kings 6:1 gives what appears to be a clear historical marker for the end of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt: "In the 480th year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord." Biblical historians generally agree that Solomon, the son and successor of David came to the throne in about 962 B.C. If so, then the Exodus would have occurred in about 1438 B.C., based on the chronology of the 1 Kings passage. That date does not fit with other biblical texts or with what is known of ancient Egyptian history. But the flaw is far from fatal. Sarna and others argue that the time span cited in 1 Kings -- 480 years -- should not be taken literally. "It is 12 generations of 40 years each," notes Sarna; 40 being "a rather conventional figure in the Bible," frequently used to connote a long period of time. Viewing the 1 Kings chronology in that light -- as primarily a theological statement rather than as "pure" history in the modern sense -- the Exodus can be placed in the 13th century, in the days of Ramses II, where it finds strong circumstantial support in the archaeological record. thirdly, it wasn't strictly Pharoah's daughter who looked after Moses the Child because it was was customary at that time that women of the Pharoah were called Banot Pharoah and Pharoah's men called Bani Pharoah.