A RETAKE ON THE JEWISH CALENDAR
by hilda terry
Learning of the dismissal of the Passover story as a myth, due to lack of archaeological proof found in the time of Rameses ( about 1250 BC), revived an old question about "timing." Discovery of the Ipuwar Papyrus, a Middle Kingdom document paralleling the story of the Exodus from an Egyptian point of view, at first dated as early bronze, was dismissed as almost a thousand years before Rameses.
Scholars and students are often confronted with the confusion of obsolete text that never dies. When diggers fail to dig up traces proving the presence of Hebrews where popular history has put them, the tendency is to dismiss the Old Testament as fiction.
Take Joshua and the battle of Jericho. Because the demise of Jericho took place around 1500 BCE, far too early for the battle to have taken place after an Exodus of 1250the story of Joshua was dismissed along with to the mythological Exodus.
A very heavy strata of ashes suggests the city had been completely destroyed by fire, as related in the bible, except for puzzling casks of wheat remaining in most of the homes. This mystery is cleared up in the Bible. It tells us that God had forbidden the Israelites to plunder or take anything from the city. Apparently, they had obeyed the commandment. One small piece of the wall with a few houses still attached was thought to have been the home of Raehav, the prostitute whose family was protected because she had aided the Israelite spies. The possibility of Jericho’s ruin being misdated was argued and reexamined. The date was reaffirmed.
What if the Exodus happened long before Rameses; before the battle of Jericho, in fact? On reading the translated Ipuwar text, it appears that the dating must be wrong because of the more specific details in the Exodus account. For instance, in Ipuwar 4:14, it simply says; “Trees are destroyed.” In Exodus 9:25, we read “...hail broke every tree in the field.” Whatever the dating was based on, these words clearly indicate that the Exodus must have been written by witnesses who were there; that it may well have been written before the Ipuwar papyrus. Since I already had a problem with the belief that the Jews were slaves in Egypt for some thousand odd years before an Exodus of 1250 BCE, I have spent the next 30 years or so looking for redatings that might bring the narratives together.
Emmanuel Velikovsky, reviewing simultaneous events of record, challenged the prevailing prognosis. Velikovsky suggested Athmose 1 (1555 - 1530), as the Egyptian ally of King David; Thutmose 1, (1530-1515), a father-in-law to King Solomon; and Queen Hapsephut as possibly the Queen of Sheba, putting the Exodus no later than 1500 BCE. Queen Hapsephut & Thutmose, circa 1500/1400 BCE, are consistent with what is known of Egypt AFTER the Exodus.
Scarabs of Amenhotep III (1420ish) found in the ruins of Jericho, placing Amenhotep III contemporary with a thriving Jericho, were dismissed as probably having been dropped there much later by Egyptian soldiers passing through. This is unlikely. Rameses, circa 1304/1237 BCE, was known to have come long after the Amenhoteps. Found in Amarna were a number of pleas for the king to send archers to protect his lands, several of which were addressed to Amenhotep IV (1385-1358) from Abdi- Hiba, king of early Jebusite Jerusalem long before that city was taken by David and Joab.
The Exodus could have occurred under the last Hyksos Pharaohs, or perhaps under Amosis who liberated Egypt from the Hyksos (1575)or the first of the kings after the conquest of Egypt by the Thebes or the Hitites. Or, yet again, at a time of which we know nothing. Recent findings by Manfried Bietak puts the conquest of Egypt by the Thebes at 1580 BCE.
Redating the Exodus to follow a brief period of dissatisfaction with any one of these changes in Egyptian rule would bring Joshua to the gates of Jericho about when he could’ve made it. This readjustment supporting Velikovsky’s deductions places the Exodus prior to 1500 BCE, at the very latest.
In 1995, the Jewish calendar gives the year 5,755. It would have been around 3,750 in zero BCE. If, while doing the Laws, Moses tackled the calendar while he was about it, and you put the Exodus around a decade or two after being enslaved by the conquering Thebes, you have roughly 1550 years from Exodus to zero BCE. That would work if you figure the authors probably added an arbitrary two thousand years up front to accommodate what were probably common beliefsAdam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Jonah and the whale, etc..
From Abraham to Joseph you have four generations. Then you had the Israelites prospering in Egypt, still keeping track of their tribal genealogy from the sons of Jacob until a hostile regime turned them into slaves.
You have genealogy tracking Moses through Amram out of Jochebad, sister of Amram’s father Kolath tracked back to Levy. Say 300 years give or take.
Freud’s theory that Moses was an Egyptian in the house of the Sun King is misguided. Zipporah, mother of Mose’s son Gideon was of the Midianites who circumcised in the thirteenth year. This was okay with Moses until he got sick. Zipporah had to circumcise her son right away when Moses thought God was going to kill him for not doing it on the 8th day as commanded the seed of the Covenant. Moses WAS Jewish and he KNEW it. Moses may have made it up to Zipporah by replacing the circumcision at 13 with the bar mitzvah. If you’ve written a bunch of laws, you need readers who can read them.
Here, again, you have the mischievous Hand of God. Every Jewish boy is expected to learn to read the Laws for his thirteenth birthday. If you learn to read, you may as well learn to write, and nobody ever said sisters couldn’t sit in on the tutoring. Because of this custom, if you’re looking ahead as God presumably was, you had literate Jews living among the illiterates through all those centuries. You couldn’t come up with a better method for cutting off Jews with hatredthe best way to make sure they’re never allowed to forget who they are.
That’s probably why God had to make sure Abraham was willing to go along with the sacrifice before closing the deal. Smart God. Or smart Nature, if you prefer.
At one point in my research, I found a description of the Ipuwar Papyrus as MID bronze age, bringing it closer than the original early bronze age reckoning. Science News June 29,1996, (vol. 149) reports new data from Cornell University's Peter Ian Kuniholm group yielding an exact chronology of tree ring dating of eastern Mediterranean life from 2220 BCE to 718 BCE; datings independent of existing assumptions, gaps of evidence, and debates. In calibrating a sequence of radio-carbon dates using rings from a variety of ancient timbers, they identified what they call a floating chronology of 1503 years from around the second millennium BCE that could not be pinned to exact years.
The scientists then obtained 18 high precision radio-carbon dates from a juniper log at a Turkish archaeological site. Statistical comparison to radio-carbon measurements from Europe and North America, matching another old Turkish tree, establishes calendar dates in chronological sequence for eastern Mediterranean. Possibly a volcanic eruption on Thera, spewing dust, drastically changed the topography. If the theoretical date of Thera's eruption of about 1628 BCE proves correct, substantial changes can be expected in the entire chronology of ancient Egypt, including the date of the Exodus as well as the dating of Papyrus.
Nothing on Ipuwar turned up on Internet. Through all these years, the only thing I’ve ever found was a letter in Biblical Archeology May/June 1998 issue. The letter was from a Ralph I. Fusso in Edson NJ. I tried to find his phone number and drew a blank, but the letter did recount the list of similarities. Fusso refers to “The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, commonly known as the Papyrus Ipuwar. “ Because this information is apparently too obscure for popular access, I am taking the liberty of passing it on assuming that Mr. Fusso won’t mind.
EXCERPTED credit to RALPH I. FUSSO
letter in Biblical Archeology May/June 1998 issue.
Papyrus 2:2 The river is blood. Exodus 7:20 The river was turned to blood.
Papyrus 2:6 Blood is everywhere. Exodus 7:21 Blood throughout all the land of Egypt.
Papyrus 2:10 - Gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire. Exodus 9:23-24 And the fire ran along the ground.
Papyrus 4:14 Trees are destroyed. Exodus 9:25 And the hail...brake...every tree in the field.
Papyrus 9:11 - The land is not light. Exodus 10:22 And Moses stretched out his hand... and there was a thick darkness.
Papyrus 2:13 - He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere. Exodus 12:30 For there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Dating these finds is still an inexact science. Not in my lifetime, and perhaps not in yours, but eventually, as they get smarter, they’re going to find the Exodus and a whole lot more falling in place when they start looking for things in the right time periods.
While I’m no more reliable than my sources, here’s where I am now.
ALL DATES BCE (before common era)
Semitic alphabet begun (2000)
Abraham leaves Ur in Chaldea. (c-2100)
Generation span to Moses (estimate 300 years) (1800)
Conquest of Egypt by Thebes (1580)
Bronze age (traditional dating) ( 2000 to 1501)
Ipuwar Papyrus first dating, Early Bronze Age (2000)
Ipuwar Papyrus later dating Mid Bronze Age current estimate (1750) -
------ Getting closer -------
Conquest of Egypt by Thebes (1580)
MY ROUGH GUESS for the Exodus - between (1800 &1555)
Thera Volcano 1629. Dust on palace, dynasty 1550, pushed back to (1629)
Battle of Jericho (1500)
Amenhotep l - (1555 to 1530) Amenhotep 111 - (1420)
Athmose 1, (1555-1530)
Athmose 4 built Amarna- (1385)
Thutmose 1 - (1530 to 1515)
Queen Hatsepart, wife of Thutmose 11, ruled for child Thutmose 111 until (1480)
King DavidTraditionalprobably wrong (1,000)