Stumbling onto the Date of the Exodus

 

Right now this is just doodling.... But I stumbled on an old post where people were discussing when Abraham was born. Rex Kerr, who I do not know, left a well thought out answer for a younger date than normally given. See his answer below. If you take his reasoning (215 year time in Egypt, 40 years in wilderness is part of the 400 years) and combine it with the Septuagint's number for the gap between the Exodus and the temple(440 not 480 years) then this would give a middle date Exodus and a date for the conquest that would fit will with the end of the Amarna period. Thus all of those letters near the end of Akhenaten's reign complaining of the kingless "ha-ri-bu" would indeed be the Hebrew conquest. 

For this to be so, the Exodus would have to occur during the reign of Amenhotep III. Right now the party line is that Egypt was ascendant through all his reign, but that somehow things fell apart for his successor. I would look for signs that the last half of his reign saw a weaker Egypt than the first part.  

Amarna Letters 1360–1332 BC

Amenhotep II 1391–1353 or

1388–1351 BC

Akhenaten 

• 1353–1336 BC^[3]
• 1351–1334 BC^[4]

 

From an old "Christianity" thread. 

The best way to find this estimate is to take known historical dates and work backwards from there using dates and durations in the Bible.

The Mesha Stele has been dated to about 840-850 BCE, and seems to pretty clearly describe the time of Omri. If we assume it was written when the events happened, not long afterwards, we can use it to work backwards. Omri's reign began in the 31st year of Asa and lasted twelve years, which means that Asa's reign began around 870-890. Previously, Rehoboam ruled for 17 and Abijah for three. Although the transition is not entirely clear to me, the prior ruler was apparently Solomon for 40 years. In his fourth year, he started to build the temple, which was 480 years after leaving Egypt. So that takes us back 20+36+480 = 536 years further, to 1406-1426 BCE as the dates for the exodus.

Now we come to a difficult stretch because there are, to my knowledge, no clear chronological links between Moses and, say, Joseph. Moses' grandfather Kehat was with Jacob on the way into Egypt, and if you add up all the ages that's a maximum of 350 years (actually surely less, since Kehat was not an infant), but it's not clear what the minimum was. The most direct statement is Genesis 15:13, which puts four hundred years between Abraham's offspring and the exodus. Since the phrase is "in a land that is not theirs", and Ishmael and Isaac did not start off owning the land, it seems that the most harmonious interpretation is that this was 400 years from Ishmael's birth. We find that Abraham was 86 years old at the time. The 400 years probably didn't end until after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, so that's 360 years from Ishmael's birth to the exodus.

Therefore, according to historical and Biblical evidence, Abraham was born somewhere in the range of 1852-1872 BCE and died 175 years later (1677-1697). If the 400 years are accounted for differently, these dates could change significantly.

For what it's worth, other people have studied the matter and come up with different timelines; it's complicated by the lack of accurately-dated historical evidence for events prior to David upon which to anchor the timeline.

^{(Beware of lots of little edits to fix up small mathematical errors and other details.)}

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edited Sep 29, 2011 at 18:56

answered Sep 29, 2011 at 18:51

Rex Kerr