Response to Letters
RE: The Exodus: Convergence of Science, History and Jewish Tradition
Judah Landa
I wish to thank both YH and MF for the time and effort they evidently devoted to the complicated and much-debated chronology of the exodus. Both present what appear to be sound arguments in favor of alternative scenarios to the one I presented in Hakirah (vol. 14), and that differ from each other. HY’s placement of the Yosef story In the Hyksos period (ca. 1650-1550 BCE) indirectly moves the exodus to around 1400 BCE, and MF places the exodus in the low 1200’s BCE. Both of these scenarios are contradicted by the three independent lines of scientific evidence that place the destruction of Jericho at about 1560 BCE, and by the other evidence I presented in support of ca. 1600 as the time frame for the exodus. These significant divergences, in turn, affect all of the history of ancient Israel.
Since only one of these dates can be correct, for the exodus in the Torah happens only once (contrary to some scholarly speculation), it is incumbent upon us to probe deeply into the veracity of the presented arguments.
Let us begin with YH’s first point, based on the apparently superfluous phrase ish mitzri (an Egyptian man) in Gen 39:1. The question he raises, as to why the Torah finds it necessary to inform us that Yosef was sold to ‘an Egyptian man’, when we already know that the event takes place in Egypt, is a good one. HY’s solution is that we need to be informed of this detail because it was an anomaly. The Hyksos foreigners who ruled Egypt at the time appointed a native Egyptian man (the one Yosef was sold to) as minister of executions, so that the hatred of the people will be focused on him, rather than on his Hyksos overlords.
None of this, of course, is in the text and other, at least as plausible, explanations exist. While the Hebrew tabahim does mean ‘slaughterers’, many commentators translate the word here as ‘butchers’ – that is, of animals, not humans (see Rashi, ad loc.). Just as Pharaoh had a minister for baking bread and one for preparing drinks (40:2), so he had a minister for preparing meat. Nor is it at all clear that Yosef’s master, Potiphar, was a prison warden, as YH asserts. Verses 39:21-23 refer three times to an anonymous prison warden, deliberately avoiding to identify him, when the Torah could have saved a few words by simply referring to him as ‘Potiphar’, who has already been named. Later, Pharaoh puts the ministers of bread and drink, who sinned against him, in the custody (mishmar) of their colleague, the minister of butchers, Potiphar, who in turn placed them in the prison where Yosef was imprisoned (40:1-3), a prison that was not necessarily under his direct jurisdiction. Nor is there any basis in the text or historic justification for assuming that, at this time, executions were taking place in Egypt on a grand scale, to justify the title of ‘slaughterer’. Ancient Egypt, we know, generally had a court system with an appeals process, with the vizier as the final arbiter of disputes and punishment.
The difficulties with YH’s theory, however, run deeper than all this. He seems to believe that the Hyksos appeared one day at Egypt’s threshold with an invading army and proceeded to take over the country. That is not how it happened. Instead, Egypt’s twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, in the decades preceding the Hyksos era, maintained a policy of tolerating, even encouraging, mass immigration from, and trade with, the east (Canaan). Egypt was teeming with foreigners, primarily Canaanites, before the Hyksos takeover. Many of these foreigners, we know, rose to positions of influence in (lower, northern) Egypt at this time. Eventually, as their numbers and influence grew, and the power of the pharaohs waned during the so called Second Intermediate period, the foreigners took over the northern portion of the country from within. In this they probably had some help from their fellow Canaanites back home.
In this context (the 1800’s BCE) the Torah needs to inform us that Yosef’s master was, not a Canaanite ‘landsman’ whose ethnicity he was familiar with, but a strange and alien native Egyptian, who would be expected to oppress him. And that despite this, “Yosef found favor in his eyes” (39:4) because “God was with Yosef” (39:2). Looking at it this way, the specification of ish mitzri is directly connected to what the Torah says immediately afterward. This is not all that different from the Torah’s informing us, also apparently unnecessarily, that God came to Laban ‘the Aramean’ (Gen 31:24) when we well know by then that Laban was an Aramean (31:20). The point is to emphasize that to protect Yaakov, God would communicate even the likes of Laban, the Aramean (the deceptive, oppressive, idol worshipper that we know he was).
The choice we have here is this: Do we adopt an interpretation based on speculation that is contradicted by the evidence (Yosef ca. 1800 vs. 1600 BCE), or do we go with an understanding that adheres more closely to the plain meaning of the text and that is in agreement with the evidence? I choose the latter approach.
In his next point, YH argues that in marrying Yosef, Asnat, the daughter of Poti-Phera, the priest of On, could not have been a native Egyptian, since we are told that Egyptians would not even eat with the Hebrews, as it was an abomination to them (Gen 43:32). Asnat must therefore have been, claims Henkin, a daughter of the Hyksos ruling class.
This is incorrect on multiple grounds. First, the word ivri in the Torah, in this context, cannot refer to ‘Hebrews’. The Egyptians would not have adopted a custom not to associate with ‘Hebrews’ at a time when the Hebrews constituted one small family (Yaakov and his descendants) in a distant land. The Hebrews would not even have been on the ’radar screen’, so to speak, of the Egyptians. Nor is it correct to say, as YH later asserts, that ivri here refers to the inhabitants of the other side of the Euphrates River, or to all Semites, as YH’s third definition would have it. Rather, ivri here is cognate with the widely used term in the ancient Mideast, hibaru, a term applied by the urbane, settled and relatively well to do folk in reference to the nomadic ‘riff-raff’ out there struggling to eke out a living, such as the shepherd under-class that Yosef’s brothers appeared to belong to. It was a condescending, derogatory appellation, not associated with a particular ethnic group but with an economic class of people.
Second, the priest of On is certainly to be identified with Heliopolis, known to the ancient Egyptians as Iunu. This ancient town housed the temple dedicated to the native Egyptian (as opposed to the Hyksos foreigners) sun-god (thus the ‘Helio’) known as Ra. This is reflected in the priest’s name Poti-Phera, from the Egyptian pa-di-pe-ra, meaning ‘gift of the house of (the sun-god) Ra’. While the Hyksos allowed the native Egyptians to maintain their priestly class and religious practices, they would be highly unlikely to honor their newly crowned vizier, Yosef, by giving him a wife associated with a priesthood they did not revere.
It was the native Egyptian reigning Pharaoh, not a Hyksos ruler, who orchestrated the marriage of Asnat to Yosef, as the Torah informs is in 41:45. This renders mute all speculation as to his or her preferences in this regard. In marrying a woman associated with the elite and influential native Egyptian – not Hyksos – priesthood, Yosef was elevated from his former lowly status as a hibaru to a member of the upper class of Egypt. This was precisely what Pharaoh intended. When Yosef’s brothers later arrived in Egypt, they appeared as the hibaru that they were and did not disguise (bearded shepherds, in contrast to the clean-shaven Egyptians), and the Egyptians of Yosef’s household preferred not to associate with these ivrim (Gen 43:32).
YH’s next point, that since the brothers did not recognize Yosef it must be concluded that he blended in with the Semitic Hyksos rulers, is not persuasive. For as stated above, Egypt during the twelfth dynasty, preceding the Hyksos era, was teeming with foreigners, many of them Semites, many of them achieving prominence. Yosef could easily have blended in with them. Also, as vizier over Egypt, Yosef’s clean-shaven face (see Gen 41:14) was likely masked, in whole or in part, as was the custom of the highest Egyptian officials in ancient times while performing their official duties. This would make it additionally difficult for the brothers to recognize the once bearded Yosef they saw twenty-two years earlier. (Unfortunately, this reverses the beard/no beard dynamic presented by Rashi on verse 42:8 from the Talmud and Midrash.)
YH’s remaining arguments are similarly addressed by the above considerations. The speculation pertaining to the interaction between Potiphar’s wife and Yosef, while interesting, is obviously debatable. Alternative interpretations abound.
Many of MF’s points were addressed in my article, as he himself notes. I am, however, animated to make the following observations.
The appearance of the name Ramesses in Ex 1:11 pertaining to the store cities the Israelites built ‘for Pharaoh’, does not establish that the pharaoh’s name at the time these store cities were built was Ramesses, just as the appearance of the name Ramesses in Gen 47:11 in the context of the Yosef story does not establish that the pharaoh in Yosef’s time was named Ramesses (something no one supports). The only thing these names establish is that the land (in the case of Gen 47:11) and the city (in the case of Ex 1:11) became known, at some point, by the name of Ramesses.
Consider the Torah’s words in Ex 1:11. “And it (Israel) built store cities for Pharaoh, et Pithom vi-et Ramesses.” This may mean that they built store cities at Pithom and at Ramesses. The Hebrew et (ess in Ashkenazic pronunciation) is notoriously challenging to translate, as it is often not apparent what meaning it imparts to the text. It is clear, however, that it sometimes means ‘at’, as it does, for example, in Gen 33:18. Now, the Hyksos capital at Avaris, known at the time as Hat-Waret, was located in the same place where the city Pi-Ramesse (‘house of Ramesses’) was later established during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses. So the Israelites built Hat-Waret ‘for (the Hyksos) Pharaoh’ at (what later came to be known as) Ramesses (Pi-Ramesse).
The argument based upon the Philistines and the Book of Judges (Shoftim) is flawed on two grounds. One, the era of the Judges spans about six hundred years, from after Joshua to King Saul, and the Philistines appear only toward the end of that time span (despite all the attention paid to them in the book). Two, Jephthah’s message with its ‘three hundred years’ comment (Judges 11:26) makes no sense if, as MF contends, Joshua was active ca. 1200 and King Solomon builds the temple at about 970 BCE, as discussed at length in section VI-d of my article.
Contrary to MF’s assertion, the archaeological data I presented in favor of ca. 1600 BCE as the date of the exodus was not based “mainly on evidence from one specific location (Jericho) only.” Section VII of my article presents quite a range of other avenues of archaeological evidence, in addition to the over-arching web of biblical and historical considerations. And the evidence pertaining to Jericho, approached from three independent scientific directions, is in my view mighty indeed. Ha-hut ha-mishulash lo bimhaira yinataik. And Jericho’s destruction must come after the exodus. That is a foundational aspect of the Torah’s chronology; it is not a matter of interpreting a word here or a phrase there.
By contrast, the so-called ‘solution’ I present on page 205 of the article to conceivably negate the evidence from Jericho, upon which MF says he relies, is quite anemic. It assumes a small, imaginary replacement city to the large but destroyed MBA Jericho, a city for which no evidence exists where we would expect to find at least some supporting data. This city exists only in the inventive minds of those who need it to rescue their hypothesis. And the counter-evidence from the new Israelite settlements in the central highlands of ca. 1200 BCE, the centerpiece of MF’s position, is not persuasive. It demonstrates merely that the Israelites built new settlements at that time, in that area; it does not demonstrate that the Israelites were nowhere in the country in the decades prior to that period.
MF recognizes that the Merneptah Stele of ca. 1210, in which the ‘people Israel’ appear in a list of that pharaoh’s claimed conquests, poses serious difficulties for his position that Merneptah was the pharaoh of the exodus. Indeed it does. But the difficulty runs even deeper than MF seems to realize. Up to very recently it was widely assumed that the Merneptah Stele represents the earliest extra-biblical reference to ‘Israel’, thereby compelling the exodus to occur (more than four decades) before 1210 BCE (to allow for the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness of Sinai). In recent years, however, a previously ignored Egyptian stone inscription, resting unobtrusively in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, has gained much attention in the world of Egyptology. It almost certainly contains a reference to ‘Israel’, and it is to be dated epigraphically to as early as ca. 1400 BCE (Van der Veen, Theis and Gorg, in The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, vol. 2:4, 2010, p. 15-25). If this is correct, the earliest extra-biblical reference of ‘Israel’ as a people or state occurs some two centuries earlier than anyone previously thought. (This came to my attention after I wrote the article.) This, of course, moves the exodus to a date much earlier than the thirteenth century and Merneptah. Why not, in light of all the evidence, move it a bit further, to ca. 1600 BCE?