Maybe the Canaanites were never indigenous to Eretz Israel?

There is an interesting tension among us defenders of Israel, between the Leftist desire to stress the indigeneity of Jews to Israel, and the more Conservative Religious Zionists who are not so afraid to brag about how Biblically the Israelites conquered people there before them. 

I have mostly chosen to stress when this issue comes up that whatever your moral opinion of what happened in Biblical Times, the only way anyone in the Common Era can claim descent from the Canaanites who lived in the land of Israel (the Canaanites of other Levantine countries are a different matter) is through the Canaanites who was absorbed into the Population of Israel, by the time of Solomon all those Judges 1 hold outs in the Valleys were defeated. That includes any Canaanite DNA that arguably exists among the Palestinians, some of them may descend from Jews and Samaritans who converted to Christianity and/or later Islam, but for them the only claim would be Blood Quantum.  And the Philistines had no descendants left even before Alexander came. 

However I recently watched a video from the YouTube channel titled Dig about Canaan and the Canaanites. They aren’t someone who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture but the facts I learned from it are still interesting. Including that when going to Early and Early-Middle Bronze Age texts, the references that would predate even the time of Abraham, Canaan as a Geographical term referred originally to mainly the area around Baalbek, Sidon was defined as to its South.

Genesis 10:19 is at face value, based on how we’re used to interpreting certain names seemingly saying the opposite, that Sidon was the northern limit of Canaan. But I think a more careful reading can imply something consistent with what the Dig video revealed. 

Genesis 10 is written from the standpoint of where Noah’s Family first settled after The Flood, where your approach to the regions of Lebanon and Israel would be coming from the north. So in that context “Sidon as you go to Gerar” is a southern border. 

Genesis 10:19 is the only time the name Gaza appears in Genesis, in fact the only time it appears in the Pentateuch, so in that context it being a different Gaza is not beyond the realm of possibility. Ghazzeh is a location in Lebanon along the Litani River in the Western Beqqa District, it shows up on the Wikipedia Disambiguation page for Gazza so clearly it’s considered a cognate name.  And a Gazza that you’d stop at “as you go to” Sodom and Gomorrah from the north makes way more sense as this Gaza then the one in the Gaza Strip. 

And I already talked about how Lasha is likely the same place as Leshem/Laish which would eventually be renamed Dan.  A Northern limit of Israel that’s also a Southern Limit of Canaan. 

These Canaanites were already settling in Eretz Israel by the time of Abraham. The Amorites in particular doing so as conquerors like they also conquered much of Iraq from the start of the Isin-Larsa period.  But people were there before them.

The City of Jericho is archaeologically considered to be arguably the oldest city on Earth. The destruction of its Middle Bronze IIC layer around 1580-1540 BCE is the only one that matches the description in the Book of Joshua due to details like the extensive burning. But this was neither the first or last time the city would be in some way destroyed and rebuilt. 

Et-Tell, which I talked about in my Ai post, was an Early Bronze Age city from before 3000 BCE to its destruction around 2400 BCE. There’s also Lachish, as well as Megiddo and Arad which like Jericho may even have been Cities of a sort already even before the Bronze Age. 

2400-2300 BCE seems to be a period of decline for Earl Bronze Israel, many cities were destroyed then and possibly already having their original populations replaced, partially or fully.  This could be when the Canaanites first invaded. 

So what was the Biblical Genealogy of the Pre-Canaanites of Israel?

The Southern most parts, especially where the Philistines would later live, were Egyptian Outposts during the Very Early Bronze Age. 

If you’re willing to entertain a not entirely Global Flood view then perhaps some of them, those Pre-Bronze settlements were surviving non Noahites? The local Samaritans have a tradition that Salim Nablus (which I identify with Salem of Genesis 14 and Shalem of Genesis 33 and Salim of John 3) was founded by Yered son of Mahalaleel before The Flood.  Yered had many sons and daughters, it could be while Enoch “walked with God” that his branch of the Yeredite line moved somewhere else to where the hypothetical Local Flood happened (probably the Persian Gulf region). 

However, is it possible Abraham’s Family was not actually indigenous to where their story begins in the latter part of Genesis 11? 

I agree with the view that Ur Kasdim was Urkesh, Urkesh and Harran were both cities in modern Turkey, east of the Euphrates and North-West of Assyria. Because this era is sometimes called either Padan-Aram or Aram-Nahrain some verses call Abraham an Aramean based on where he grew up, but his genealogy goes back to a brother of Aram named Arphaxad. 

Arphaxad himself does not seem to have given his name to any ancient people or region, and I consider all of Bill Cooper’s proposals for Arphaxad in After The Flood dubious. 

I remain doubtful that the Post-Flood Cainan/Kainan/Kenen was ever original to the Genesis 10 or 11 genealogies, but I do believe he’s an authentic inclusion in Luke 3 meaning someone by that name associated with the Aprhaxadite genealogy in some way did exist at the right time. It’s possible he’s the Patronym of the Kenite Tribe which produced Jethro the Father in Law of Moses a Priest in Midian (but not Midianite himself). My theory that Salah married a daughter of Cainan would then suggest there is a pattern of Kenites marrying their daughters into the line of Salah. And as the father of a Pre-Aaronite Priesthood maybe he’s also Melchizedek?

Salah may have lived in the Wadi Sallah area in the Tubas Governorate. Salah and Shelah are distinct names in Hebrew, and Shelah of Judah wouldn’t be the namesake of a place in northern Samaria. Bill Cooper couldn't consider this because he was distracted looking for the Arphaxad line only in Mesopotamia. Tel El-Farah by Wadi Sallah commonly identified with Tirzah was an Early Bronze I and II city that was then uninhabited from about 2750 BCE to 1820 BCE. 

Genesis 40:15 calls where Joseph was before he was sold into slavery (Shechem if you want to be very specific) the Land of the Hebrews. Which can justify saying this is the original land of settlement for Eber/Heber. Neither Hamor or his son Shechem are never called Canaanites so maybe they descend patrilineally from an unnamed son of Eber. Genesis 11:17 says Eber lived after he begat Peleg and had more sons and daughters, more than one son even when excluding Peleg. 

Joktan’s sons are associated with places in Arabia, especially Yemen, but Havilah shows they may have extended pretty far north. The way that’s described suggests they may have left where they originally were. Meaning maybe Peleg stayed where Salah and Eber lived. Or maybe Peleg left the Salah area too, but Bill Cooper’s claim of a Phalgu where the Chebar and Eurphates meet I can’t independently verify, same with his claims for Reu/Ragau.

Maybe the Egyptian name for this region, Retjenu, could be related to Reu/Ragau?

Serug did live in Aram-Naharin however giving his name to the area now known as Suruc but more anciently as Serugh or Sarug. 

It could be that some of the Pelegites left Israel for Padan-Aram during or after the conquests that destroyed Et-Tell and Early Bronze incarnations of Jericho and many other cities. 

Remember that Abraham was not alone when he came to Israel from Haran, nor was it just his family and a few servants, he was able to raise an army of 318 men from his household at a time before he even had Ishmael yet. 

Salem isn’t Jerusalem

The popularly declared Melchizedek Temple in Jerusalem isn’t actually old enough to go back to the time of Abraham, there was a good un-biased analysis of it by the Armstrong Institute of all people. They mistakenly identify it with the "City of David" location of The Ark but that was a Tent. 

I had argued what I'm about to about Salem on a different blog in the past, but because I fell for the Melchizedek Temple hype I abandoned it, but now that I know that doesn’t hold up, I’m revisiting the issue again with some new information.

Genesis 14 is not the only time Salem is mentioned in Genesis, people just miss the other one because of a difference in transliteration. In the Hebrew text Shalem in Genesis 33:18 is the exact same name. 

The Genesis 33 Shalem is a City of Shechem, in fact Shechem is never a City name in Genesis but this general area, in fact using Shechem as a geographical term at all seems to be one of those anachronisms, it was named after the son of Hamor. So no Shechem wouldn't be mentioned by name in the Ebla Tablets. Since I place the time of Jacob and Joseph as Middle Bronze IIA at the latest the entire Genesis narrative predates Shechem ever becoming a major fortified city. 

Before the city named Shalem is where Jacob pitched his tent on land he bought from Hamor, the same land in which Joseph would be buried centuries later. Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32.

The non Canonical book of Judith 4:4 also places Salem in the allotment of Ephraim.

Salem’s other appearance in the Hebrew Bible is Psalm 76:2. I already argued that Zion here isn’t Jerusalem but Bethlehem. The gist of my reading of the verse is the same, God’s Tabernacle and Dwelling Place “YHWH is there” being different locations is actually consistent with Ezekiel 40-48’s geography where YHWH-Shammah is in the southern third of the Holy Portion but the Tabernacle (misleadingly called a Temple in Translations) is in the exact center. 

I think the Salem/Shalem of Genesis is also Salim in John 3:23. Aenon is a Hellenized form of the Hebrew/Aramaic word for Spring, so this could be any Spring in the Nablus Governorate. There is a village today called Salim in the Nablus Governorate east of Nablus and west of Joseph’s Tomb that has ruins going back to the Early Bronze Age. Ain al-Kabira is a Spring near it. 

Both David Rohl and Immanuel Velikvosky’s Revised Chronologies involve identifying the Shalem Ramses II Miamun captures in his 8th Year Campaign as recorded at the Ramesseum with Jerusalem, for Rohl that’s making him Shishak and for Velikovsky it’s to make him Necho. But the Egyptians were calling this city Jerusalem, form Middle Kingdom Execration Texts to the Amarna Letters. 

The Mount Ebal site isn't Joshua's Altar

The biggest issue is that it’s on the North Side of the Mountain while Gerizim is to the South, and Ebal is the taller of the two mountains. Since the blessing ritual foretold in Deuteronomy 11 and 27 and fulfilled in Joshua 8 requires people to stand on both mountains facing each other, Joshua’s Altar must have been on the south side.

But also when I read Deuteronomy and Joshua I don’t picture a full structure like this site, I picture just the Stones with the Law written on them, Stones that were probably removed at some point and so are unlikely to be found by archeologists. 

The site is supported by the same Biblical Archaeology YouTube Channels that promote the 1446 BC Amenhotep II Exodus simply because they want to cling to every seemingly Bible Verifying Archaeology site that isn’t seen as complete wackery like Ron Wyatt’s claims. So they ignore or explain away the fact that it is archaeologically an early Iron Age site. 

Late Exodus proponents like David Falk promote it because broadly an early Iron Age date for Joshua suits them. But since the use of this site starts in 1220 BC it’s actually too early for Falk’s model which has the conquest start in 1215 BC 40 years after the death of Ramses II’s first son, which is the earliest plausible Ramses II Exodus date. 

The fact that the animals offered here were all Levitically Clean is evidence this was an Israelite not Canaanite site, I won’t dispute that. But this wouldn’t be the only Israelite cultic site we’ve found not otherwise mentioned in Scripture, there’s also the Tel-Motza Temple and the Tel-Arad Temple. 

Arad is easy enough to expect such a thing from due to its association with the Kenites, the Pre-Aaronic Priesthood of the Father In-Law of Moses in Judges 1:16. 

But Motza is a very obscure place mentioned in The Bible only once.  I had at one point tried theorizing it was Nob using Isaiah 10 as evidence it must be very close to Jerusalem, but Isaiah 10 also seems to be intending locations north of Jerusalem, the direction from which  Assyria’s Army was approaching. 

Back to the subject of this northern Ebal Altar. I at first considered Jeroboam (the theory that his calves at Bethel and Dan were like the Cherubim of a Nationwide Holy Place and so his Capital of Shechem was where Sacrifices were made), but he’s too late for 1220-1000 BC even in Ussher’s timeframe for Solomon. 

There is a certain type of Fundamentalist who thinks Josiah’s ban on making sacrifices anywhere other than The Temple must have applied all the way back to Moses because it seems at face value similar to the commands in Leviticus 17:3-4 and Deuteronomy 12:13-14 and 18.. That of course would be a problem for even Joshua’s Altar still being used after The Tabernacle was set up at Shiloh. 

In the case of Deuteronomy this ignores the context of verse 12 being about the Levites in many Gates and verse 15 saying you can eat flesh in any Gates which would seem to contradict Leviticus 17 saying you only eat Animals offered in Levitical Sacrifices. The word for “One” in Deuteronomy 12:14 is Echad, the same word that says The Lord is One which Trinitarians should take note of.  Deuteronomy 12:21 clarified that these offerings can be made at other places that are far from the main place. Joshua 22:10-34 shows that the Trans-Jordan Tribes had at least one Altar of their own. 

The natural reconciliation of these issues is that sacrifices have to be made at proper Levitical Location.  Which means any of the Levitical Cities from Joshua 21 could house legitimate places for Sacrifices. Not all of them had whole structures like these built, but it seems some did and maybe more will be found some say.

Shechem (which both mountains are considered part of) is one of those cities, it could be the Shechemite places for offering was originally where Joshua’s Altar was, but some events that happened during the transition from the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age caused it to change. 1220 BC is in my preferred timescale for the very late Judges period.

Or since Shechem was also the border between Ephraim and Manasseh they may have had places for making Sacrifices both on the South of Gerizim for Ephraim and the North of Ebal for Manasseh. That could be part of why Western Manasseh has Levitical cities in Joshua 21 then other tribes, they were also sharing Shechem with Ephraim. I assume Gerizim is less excavated than Ebal because of its sacredness to the Samaritan Community, even if no remains exist there could be any number of reasons Ebal’s Early Iron Age altar survived but Gerizim’s did not. Or maybe Ebal always had the larger full structure because it was for sharing with Manasseh. 

City names that appear only in Joshua 21 are likely known by other names elsewhere including early in Joshua, that’s what I’ve already argued in prior posts about Ai/Hai and Kibzaim. Since Motza/Moza appears only in Joshua 18 and Almon only in Joshua 21 the possibility that they’re the same can’t be ruled out. It’s also possible that Nob is another name for Gibeon or the part of GIbeon where the Levites lived.

The only proposed locations for Ramoth-Gilead I consider plausible are those south of the Zargo/Jabbok River, it’s in the territory of Gad not Manasseh and is the middle of the Trans-Jordan Cities of Refuge leading me to conclude it should be close to the same latitude as Shechem. It may also be the site of the Joshua 22 Altar and Penuel. 

But also sometimes the Israelites did just do things they weren't supposed to. 

On the mostly unrelated subject of the textual variations in the references to these Mountains in Deuteronomy. The DSS fragments of Deuteronomy and the LXX agree that the Altar was on Ebal. 

To the people who argue that even independent of everything else the Samaritans are clearly inserting about Gerizim it feel wrong for the Law to be placed on the Mountain of The Church rather then Blessing. Christians should realize that this perfectly predicts Paulian theology in Galatians 3:10-13. 

It is precisely the fact that the Law being on Gerizim in the SP fixes an apparent problem that proves it's not the original, people don't altar texts to create problems. Same with Terah's lifespan being shortened in Genesis 11. 

Stephen was probably not a Samaritan

There is a claim out there that a lot of the odd things Stephen says in Acts 7 can be explained by him perhaps being a Samaritan or influenced by their traditions. While I found this idea interesting at first, I quickly came to realize that the specific pillars of the claim are faulty.

Stephen is Pro-David while the Samaritan Tradition is Anti-David. The way Stephen uses Psalm 132 even implies the location of David's Tabernacle not Solomon’s Temple is the true intended location of the Mishkan, not very compatible with the Samaritan Gerizim tradition. Stephen also quotes Prophets the Samaritan don’t recognize like Isaiah and Amos. 

The Samaritan Pentateuch reflects the Samaritan Custom of saying Shehmaa (The Name) instead of Adonai (The Lord) as stand in for the Tetragrammaton. Stephen in Acts 7 is definitely following the Jewish custom here, in verses 30-37, 49 and 59-60. Saying The Name did also become a custom in Rabbinic Judaism, but it seems to have developed later, I’m aware of no example of it in the First Century CE or BCE. The New Testament certainly never does it, the word name is only ever a descriptor never used as a Name or Title for God. 

Some of the things alleged to be explained by textual differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text, like saying 75 rather than 70 people went to Egypt, are just as easily explained by following the Septuagint which is what you’d expect from him being a leader in a Greek Speaking Jewish Community, but more than that so were his accusers which included Jews of Alexandria and Cyrene the specific communities most likely to be attached to the LXX. Stephen’s quote of Amos is another case of him using the LXX. 

As an enemy of LXX primacy and the popular claim that the NT consistently uses it I consider Stephen in Acts 7 the one case where the Septuagint likely is the source material being used.  I believe the overall message of Stpehen’s sermon is inspired by the Holy Spirit, but since he’s not an Apostle I wouldn't treat as infallible specific details unique to him or his choice of text. 

Saying Terah died right before Abraham leaves Harran at 75 is not a conclusion you need the Samaritan Pentateuch to come to.  In fact if you aren’t stopping to do the math then it is in all versions the natural conclusion since Genesis describes Terah dying and then Abraham being called out of Harran. Now sometimes Genesis does describe things like this out of order, especially when changing which generation is now the Main Character, so this alone isn’t proof Stephen was right on this matter but it does show you can jump to this assumption no matter which text you’re using. 

The apparent contradiction caused by the math that only the SP lacks is easily resolved by remembering that Genesis 5:32 and 6:10 and 7:13 and 9:18 and 10:1 all list Noah’s sons as Shem, Ham and Japheth while the rest of Genesis 10 clearly treated Japheth as the oldest and explicitly says he is in verse 21. Sometimes the sons are named not in birth order but in an order that lists the one the overall Biblical Genealogy goes through first. So Abraham being listed first in Genesis 11:26-27 repeats that pattern, Nachor seems to be Terah’s first born since he and his descendants inherited Terah’s land in Harran. 

It’s Acts 7:16 that really seems to a casual observer very Samaritan.  Except that the Samaritan Pentateuch doesn’t actually disagree with the Masoretic text on either issue Stephen is alleged to be contradicting the Masoretic Text on. In the SP the first three Patriarchs are buried at Mamre in Kirjath-Arba aka Hebron and Jacob not Abraham bought a field near Shechem from Hamor/Emmor the father of Shechem/Sychem. We also say in verses 8-9 that Stephen used the term Patriarch primarily of Jacob’s sons, not Jacob and his ancestors. And verse 15 explicitly distinguished the fathers who died in Egypt he’s talking about from Jacob.

Stephen is not directly saying that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried in Shechem, the intent to me is clearly to refer to people who died in Egypt and were at first laid to rest there until the Exodus. The actual Hebrew Bible Texts only directly refer to Joseph having his body moved and buried at Shechem on the land bought from Hamor in Joshua 24:32, but it's reasonable to infer others were with him. 

Saying Abrahm bought the field from Emmor is not quite as easy to explain. It could be it was land Abraham intended to buy but it wasn’t carried out till Jacob.  Like how Elisha fulfilled some missions first given to Elijah like anointing Jehu and Hazael. We do know that Abraham had spent time in the area of Shechem in Genesis 12:6 where he did build an Altar.

People just assumed off vibes that saying something unusual about Shechem sounds Samaritan.  I do see some people word this as about Samaritan Traditions not the SP text itself, but whether or not such a tradition exists, it’s not the only way to come to Stephen’s conclusion. The Samaritan tradition is that all of Jacob’s sons were buried at Shechem, not just Joseph, no contradiction on where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried. Stephen could be referring to that, or he could be referring to sons and grandsons of Joseph.  The only Shechem based Samaritan disagreement about events involving Abraham is wanting the location of Isaac’s offering in Genesis 22 to be Moreh rather than Moriah, that too involved no textual difference it seems just interpreting them to be the same name, and is irrelevant to anything in Acts 7.

Stephen also doesn't have to be a Samaritan to see himself as a descendent of specifically the Joseph Tribes, Ephriam and Manesseh. I do believe the Samaritans descend from Ephraim and Manesseh into the gentiles settled in the region by the Assyrians as I talked about in a prior post. But they aren’t the only descendents of Ephraim and Manesseh, those who in 2 Chronicles 30 took part in Hezekiah’s Passover I believe became citizens of Judah and thus Jews. 

Another appeal to Samaritan tradition is the idea that God first called Abraham when he was still in Ur Kassidim.  Nothing in the actual Text of Genesis contradicts such a thing, I'm sure you can find plenty of purely Jewish fan fiction depicting God already calling Abraham at Ur Kassidim.  In fact the KJV reading of Genesis 12:1 says " no YHWH had siad unto" implying now isn't the first time.

Dan and the cities they renamed

I hold the view that Leshem in Joshua 19 and Laish in Judges 18 are not the same. But more importantly then that I doubt Tel-Dan is either.

Tel-Dan I think is Dan-Jaan in 2 Samuel 24:6 which is a Trans-Jordan location. 

In the context of Joshua 19:47 I think Leshem is a location outside the allotment just described but not as far from it as others.  And to help explain the context of the reference to Dan in the Son of Deborah is probably a coastal port city. 

So I lean toward Tel-Gador which was inhabited going back to the Early Bronze Age so there were people there before the Danites. It seem to be the only real Bonze Age settlement the Coat of Israel north of Joppa/Jaffa but south of Dor. Yet it's currently not believed to be mentioned in The Bible.

Laish introduced in Judges 18:7 and mentioned again in 14 and 27-29 is associated with a Beth-Rehob the only other reference to which is 2 Samuel 2:6 where it seems like close to Zobah/Homs leading me to conclude it's in the Dan used as an idiom for Israel's Northern border.  

A Rehob is also linked to the "entering in of Hamath" in Numbers 13:21 believed by scholars to be Labweh the source of the Orontes River in northern Lebanon north of Baalbek in the Baalbek District. But there is room for interpretation on that. 

A Rehob is also part of the allotment of Asher, possibly in it's north. 

I also think Laish was probably not a Coast city because given Sidon's sea faring nature it's hard to imagine Sidonians in a coastal city being this cut off.

If we take the entering in of Hamath being Labweh view, then Laish as Duris, Jdeide, Deir El Ahmar or Ras-Baalbek could all be plausible. Unless we interpret Beth-Rehob as part of Mount Lebanon and the Labweh is in the valley to it's East but Laish in a valley to it's West, in which case I'd look in the Kadisha Valley in the Bisharri District of the North Governorate. 

But in a the other model I'm looking in the Hula Valley, but west of the Joran, not in the Golan Heights, either within the pre 67 border of Israel or in the Marjayoun District of Lebanon.

Even in the context of a modern southern identification for Laish, I still The Bible hints at the Danites in time migrated further north. DNA evidence shows the Christian Population of Lebaon (Majority Maronite but with some notable Melkite Communties) are closely related to the Jews, even more so then the Arabs are. So I my theory is they descend from the Danites while the Muslims descend of Lebanon from the Canaaites.

And that's why I'm also looking at cities and regions that are still majority Christian rather then Muslim. 

I've been considering that the traditional identification of Biblical Hazor is wrong and that the archeological site currently known as Tel-Hazor which was destroyed by Fire about 1200 BC could be Laish. A Chronology that places Judges 18 about 1200 BC is not implausible. 

I haven't come to a final conclusion yet. 

Update May 10th: I have changed my mind on Leshem and Laish being separate location, mainly because  finally noticed Lasha in Genesis 10:19. All three of those names are clearly variations of the same name.

The Coffin of The Covenant

I want to engage in some speculation about the full Symbolism of The Ark of The Covenant. 

The Hebrew word translated Ark in reference to The Ark of The Covenant is not the same as for Noah’s Ark, for Noah’s Ark it’s a word that means barge or ship. The word used of The Ark of The Covenant however of Arown which is a bit more mysterious. 

The word is only ever used to describe two other things.  One is a collection box that was once attached to the Brazen Altar, I don’t think that is too significant.

However the first time the word Arown appears in Scripture, the first association it ever has, is also the last verse of the first book of The Bible.  Where it is translated “Coffin” when describing the burial of Joseph.

I find that interesting, especially because while Christians rarely talked about the idea of The Ark being symbolically a Coffin the idea has subconsciously always been there.  Every ancient large Church that is a Martyrium, a giant Mausoleum enshrining someone's burial place, its set follows the tendency to echo the layout of The Temple/Tabernacle in a way that places where the Body rests right where The Ark would be. From The Church of The Holy Sepulcher to St Peter’s Basilica to the ancient Martyrium of Philip at Heiropolis. 

How would the contents of The Ark fit this idea though?

I Believe in Soul Sleep, The Body and Soul and not separated during physical death, they rest together awaiting The Resurrection. 

The Soul and Spirit are also separate things in The Bible as seen in verses like Hebrews 4:12. The Spirit leaving The Body at Death is Biblically supportable if you take a certain verse in Ecclesiastes at face value, but there are issues with taking Ecclesiastes verses at face value.

Human Beings are Triune entities, Spirit and Soul and Body 1 Thessalonians 5:23. And in Hebrews 9:4 The Ark contained three things. The Jar of Manna (Exodus 16:33-34), The Rod of Aaron (Numbers 17:8-10) and the Tablets of The Law (Exodus 25:16-21). 

Exodus 16 refers to the Manna as Bread from Heaven, and in New Testament theology Bread represents The Body. 

I don’t believe Paul is saying the Jar/Pot was actually made of Gold, Exodus 16 would have mentioned that if it was, he’s saying “Pot of Gold” as an idiom for a Pot continuing something valuable which Paul then reveals to be the Manna. This word for Pot is Stamnos which the New Testament only uses here and the LXX only used in Exodus 16:33, the Hebrew word used is also unique to this one verse, but the root it comes from is the Hebrew word for “thorn” used in Job 5:5 and Proverbs 22:5 which is also the root of the word used in Numbers 33:55 and Joshua 23:13. 

Aaron’s Rod in Numbers 17 miraculously sprouted life, and is a Symbol of Aaron’s Priestly Authority. It represents the Spirit, the animating force. 

The Greek word for Soul is Psyche, The Soul Biblically is your Personhood and Personality, your Self in a sense. What the Heart and Mind represent Biblically are parts of that. 

Jeremiah 31:33 says “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people”.  Paul quoted that in Hebrews 8:10  “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people” and Again in Hebrews 10:16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them”.

So The Tablets of The Law are symbolically The Heart and Mind, The Soul. 

When The Ark was placed in Solomon’s Temple we’re told only The Tablets of The Law were still in it, meaning the Jar and the Rod may have been removed by the Philistines when they had it, or some other point. 

In the context of this Symbolism it further strengthens my Soul Sleep view, The Soul Remains in The Grave even if the Body and Spirit have withered away. The Soul is immortal in a sense, but not in the sense Platonists think. 

Nimrod and Babel theory.

Exactly 1903 years elapsed from the founding of Babylon to the capture of Babylon by Alexander the Great. This calculation and number of years was made according to astronomical observations by Porphyry, as we find in Simplicius, in his second book "de Coelo". This he affirms to have been transmitted into Greece from Babylon by Chalisthenes at Aristotle's request.  Since Alexander captured Babylon in 331 BC that places it's founding in 2234 BC.  The so-called Weidner Chronicle (also known as ABC 19) states that Sargon of Akkad had built Babylon "in front of Akkad" (ABC 19:51).  The short chronology has Sargon reigning in 2234 BC, so these sources line up. The Babylon of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar is not old enough to be the first Post-Flood city.  And if there is indeed evidence of some settlement around there prior to Sargon, maybe that is the still unidentified city of Akkad? 

On the subject of Babel's name.  Ignace Gelb argued in 1995 that original name was Babilla, of unknown meaning and origin, as there were other similarly named places in Sumer, and there are no other examples of Sumerian place-names being replaced with Akkadian translations. He deduced that it later transformed into Akkadian Bāb-ili(m), and that the Sumerian name Kan-dig̃irak was a loan translation of the Semitic folk etymology rather than the original name. So some this fits the already implied implication from what's said about Sargon, that some other place had this name first.

I used agree with David Rohl on both Enmerkar king of Uruk as Nimrod and Eridu as Babel, and I still agree that all the attempts to make Nimrod anyone more recent then Enmerkar on the Kings list are silly, including Gilgamesh who reigned later in the same dynasty with two kings between them.

When I look at the Sumerian King's List another candidate for Nimrod would be Etanna of the first Dynasty of Kish, he's defined as the first Conquer, at least in the Post-Flood world. The ten names preceding Etanna on Kish's list are names of Animals so that feels artificial inflation.  And before that is Kullassina-bel which is a phrase that means "all of them were lord" so that's clearly a memory of when Kish was a Democracy.  Kish is a name that is very arguably Cognate with Cush, even within Hebrew The Davidic Psalm 7:1 refers to a Benjamite Cush who I believe is the same person as the Kish who was the father of Saul in 1 Samuel 9:1.

However it could be possible that Etanna and Enmerkar are different names the same King was remembered by in different cities.  

Enmebaragesi of Kish a contemporary of Gilgamesh in the 17th century BC is called the first builder of Enlil's Temple at Nippur in one text. So Nippur's House of Heaven is also to young though it too had this significance transposed onto it and so maybe was also called Babel.

The Emerkar and the Lord of Aratta poem is why those two are seen as going together as it attributed the building of the Temple in Eridu to Enmerkar. But I disagree with the popular assumption that Nimrod was involved in building the Tower of Babel, Genesis doesn't describe The Tower of Babel as built by a King at all but as an act of Democracy.  A Babel was simply part of Nimrod's empire later. 

Meanwhile within the context of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta poem Eridu's Temple is not the first ever built, the Temple of Inanna is Uruk itself has been there for awhile. Eridu's Temple is looking in the wrong direction, Abzu refers to the Abyss, while Babel's tower should be a House of Heaven. 

When Berosrus swaps out Eirdu for Babylon as the very first city it's because he is serves records form the time when Nabuchadnezzar's Babylon was the Capital, so the official propaganda inflated that city's antiquity. 

Eridu's importance in Sumerian Mythology was as the first Pre-Flood City, it was never where important things happened after The Flood. Meaning if it's in Genesis it's in chapter 4 not 10 or 11. Genesis 4:17 I believe should be translated "And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he (Enoch) builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son."  The common view that Cain founded the city is contradicted by the fact he was curses to be a vagabond till he died. The next verse tells us the name of Enoch's son was Irad, a name that could become Eridu. 

Uruk can be argued to be the first City depending on exactly how you define a city, settlements like Eridu are older, but the true fullness of what a city is was arguable was achieved by Uruk first.

https://youtu.be/7jQUwWtbFjE

https://youtu.be/4AGK0YteOE0

Uruk is also arguably a twin city. It's oldest area is the Anu District centered around it's oldest Temple to Anu the god whose name mean Heaven, then it expanded to the Eanna district built around the Temple to Inanna. Maybe when Genesis 10:10 says "the beginnings of his Kingdom were Babel and Erech" it's referring to these two separate districts of Uruk. And then after that Genesis 10 is describing the Uruk expansion which did extend as far north as Nineveh in the 4th Millennium BC. And that expansion I believe happened under Enmerkar. 

The Anu Ziggurat in Uruk was the tallest building in the world from when it was built (around 4000 BC according to mainstream archeology) till the Pyramid of Djoser was built in the 27th century BC.  I suspect it was originally just built to be the Temple of Heaven and the idea of a specific god named Anu came later. The ancient name for the Anu district was Kullaba or Kulab, and a district was also given that name in the later classical Babylon. 

David and Middle Assyria

In a prior post I defended Ussher’s timeline of the Divided Kingdom, putting the death of Solomon in 975 rather than 930 BC.. 

I have now observed that Middle Assyrian history synchronizes well with that. 

First for context, prior to the Omrid period, I do think one thing the Assyrians could have called the Israelites is Aramean.  The Israelites called themselves Arameans in certain contexts as seen in Deuteronomy 26:5, and I think the Assyrians may have used it for all Semites of the Western Levant. 

Tigaleth-Pileser I from 1114-1076 BC had secured control as far south-west as Phoenicia, and it’s noted that new polities were forming among the Arameans, these could be Zobah, Hamath, Damascus and Israel under Saul.

Asshur-bel-kala was King of Assyria from 1073-1056 BC, during his reign Assyria lost a lot of that territory to Arameans.  

These Arameans could be David himself if you take a Maximalist interpretation of how far David conquered, if you believe the Euphrates mentioned in 2 Samuel 8:3/2 Chronicles 18:3 is the Mesopotamian Euphrates.  I have argued for maybe that but definitely every Euphrates reference from the time of Abraham through Joshua being either the Litani or the Orontes, but in order for this Davidic reference to be the Litani it’d have be referring to David conquering all the way north to the source of the Litani and further since Berothai is identified with a city just south of Baalbek.  

It is perhaps more likely these are displaced Arameans migrating into Mesopotamia after David conquered Hadadezer of Zobah. These Aramean Hordes would continue to be noted under the following Assyrian Kings l their contemporaries in Babylon. 

Asshur-rabi II alone refers to a singular King of the Aram, he would be contemporary with Solomon who built Tadmor(Palmyra) and Baalath in Syria. But the King he referred to could have been Rezon of 1 Kings 11:23. 

This weakness of Assyria in dealing with Arameans would continue until Tigaleth-PIleser II 966-935 BC contemporary with the last yeas of Solomon, the reigns of Rehoboam and Jeroboam into the time of Asa. 

His successor Ashur-dan II from 955-914 BC made the real first success in pushing back the Arameans. He was contemporary with Asa down to the second year of Jehoshaphat. During Asa’s later reign when Benhadad of Damascus first became a problem for Israel and Judah, he could be looking to claim Israelite territory because of what’s lost to the Northeast to Assyria. 

Ussher’s dates for Omri are 920-918 BC. So this makes it plausible the first contact between Assyria and Northern Israel was under Omri explaining why Assyria identified that kingdom with Omri consistently going forward. Though Omri founding Samaria as the primary capital city going forward may also be enough reason to explain why he’d be viewed as the founder. 

Adad-nirari III reigned from 911-891 BC. His reign corresponds to a rise in prominence of the Phoenician sea trading empires. That fits him being a contemporary of Ahab in Ussher's chronology who was married to Jezebel the daughter of one of Tyre’s most powerful kings.

The Ruins of AI

I want to start by clarifying that I am not willing to question the archaeological consensus on the dating of Et-Tell. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it plays a role in the history of AI that confirms The Bible as reliable history. 

Ai is first mentioned when Abraham comes there, and it seems to be already called Ai which means Heap or Ruin. That’s uncertain because Genesis does use anachronistic place names, but when the newer name is because of something The Israelites or Patriarchs of some Biblical protagonist did we are told what the older name is in the account of the renaming, Dan was originally Laish or Leshem and Bethel was originally Luz.  If Ai was only ever called a Heap because of Joshua 7-8 then Joshua 7-8 would record the older name. But it isn’t, it’s the valley not the city that is given a new name, Achor, no older name is given for it, but I can believe a valley went unnamed for a long time, not a city.

The destruction of Et-Tell and creation of that Heap of stones so many jumped to wanting to identify with Joshua 7-8 is actually dated to around 2400 BC.  I have a post arguing for an early Isin-Larsa period for Genesis 14 which would be around 2100-1950 BC, but even with the older chronologies I’ve considered with a Maxmailist view of when to start the 430 years with the oldest theoretical date for The Exodus, since there was only 330 years from the bright of Abraham to the death of Joseph in my understanding of Genesis chronology, Abraham was still born after 2400 BC. 

So that Heap was already there to be called a Heap when Abraham first came there at 75 in Genesis 12. 

This is where the fact that other sites for AI have been proposed comes in. It’s possible the name does in fact refer to more than one Tell in this general area. In Genesis Ai is never called a City, just Ai. In Joshua it’s possible that just as Bethel refers to both the Altar that Jacob built and the nearby city, that Ai too refers to both the Heap and a city near the Heap.

After Joshua destroyed the city of Ai in chapter 7 and 8 another Heap of Stones was created. There were now two Heaps. 

Ai/Hai does not appear as a city or place name anywhere during the descriptions of the tribal allotment in chapters 15-21. But in chapter 21:22 when listing cities given to the Kohathite clans of the Levites in the territory allotted to Ephraim there is one called Kibzaim, which means Double heap.

I have another post proving the Shiloh Tabernacle wasn’t in the city currently traditionally identified with Shiloh but is the site of Abraham and Jacob’s Altars between Luz and Ai, Bethel. And that included arguing one of these Kohathite cities should be East of that Tabernacle since the children of Korah were Kohathies and they’re supposed to be keepers of the Gate of The Tabernacle which means they should be East of it. 

This also means a third city area could have been founded. Making at least three of the proposed Tells identified with Ai relevant. 

What I’m undecided on is which of the other potential Ai candidates play which roles in my hypothesis. 

Only Et-Tell has its own Wikipedia page. So it’s hard for a lay person to research what Archeologists think about any of these independent of their Biblical Identifications. 

As someone who is an Inherentist and even a Literalist on a lot of things it’s controversial to be literalist about, I still consider Biblical Dates to be flexible.  To me Kathleen Kenyon’s date for the Destruction of Jericho is perfectly compatible with a Biblical timeline that trusts what Paul said in Acts 13. So I’m looking for an AI candidate destroyed at the same time as Jericho Archeologically for the city of Joshua 7-8.

Khirbet Haiyan is interesting as a very early candidate before Et-Tell was settled on. But it seems neither it nor Khirbet el-Khudra had any Middle or Late Bronze occupation. Some have argued Haiyan is specifically the much later Benjamite Ai from around the time of the Captivity. 

Khirbet Nisya has a heap of stones that look right. But I then learned it’s tied to an alternate Bethel location. 

As of my beginning to write this it is only really Khirbet el-Maqatir I have an idea of where it is relevant to Et-Tell and Bethel since it’s laid out in Expedition Bible’s sloppy video on the Problem of Ai..For some reason they think Maqatir is located too far south to qualify as still East of Bethel yet their own depiction of the layout looks to me like it perfectly is still East of Bethel and closer to it. 

From what I can gather, the pottery evidence as el-Maqatir is the same as at Jericho, meaning its destruction was at the same time as Jericho’s whenever that was. It’s just that unlike Jericho no one but proponents who disagree with the mainstream view of Jericho’s Archeology are talking about it. So Google’s AI overview is going to wind up quoting a website saying Maqatir has a Late Bronze rather than Middle Bronze destruction layer. 

The alternate Bethel site linked to Nisya is also supported by some Maqatir supporters. And what I learned I didn’t even realize before is that the Expedition Bible guy’s really strict definition of what it means to be East of some other place doesn’t line up perfectly for Et-Tell and Beiten either. 

The arguments made about the Roman Mile Stones better fitting Al-Bireh as where Eusebisu and Jerome said Bethel was are compelling. Also since Bethel is supposed to mark the North-South border of Benjamin and Ephraim I am starting to think Beitin is too far north. And it looks too far east to be west of the main road going from Jerusalem to Shechem.

Part of that debate is whether Bethel and Beth-Aven are separate locations, they seem to be Joshua 7-8, in which the name of Beitin works as coming from Beth-Aven way better then Beth-El. 

But let’s leave that aside and return to el-Maqatir.

Expedition Bible’s attempt to refute it being Ai include comparing its proposed Western Gate to the Solomonic Gates at Hazor, Gezer and Megiddo, not very honest. 

Cheremon's Amenophis could be who you think.

This is a follow-up to my post about Amenophis in Manehto as Quoted by Josephus. 

After dealing with Manetho in Against Apion Book 1 section 32 Josephus recounts a certain Cheremon’s version of the Exodus, which Josephus then critiques in the following two sections. 

As someone who believes Manetho as received by Jospehus was already corrupted from the original in part by these Alexandrian Judeophobes, it’s possible that this story in Cheremon predates and references to Moses ever being added to Manetho, but it would probably have to be older then Cheremon himself for that to be the case. 

This account also has a Pharaoh named Amemenophis and he also has a son named Rameses.  One thing I glossed over in the prior post is Josephus saying Seti II was also called Ramses, in fact he winds up calling him Rameses more than he does Seti/Sethos.  There are to my knowledge no Egyptians records of Set II having Rameses among his names. But in the version where Seti II is the one identified with Aegyptos, Rameses is the name of his brother he had a civil war with, and since the New Kingdom loved Synchronizing Amun with Ra it’s easy to imagine Amenmese being also called Rameses. 

This version does not mention the name Osarshiph or refer to anyone as a Priest of Heliopolis. 

If we look at Cheremon’s account without Manetho based preconceptions then the only thing that might lead one to looking at the 19th Dynasty is the use of the name Rameses.  But the name Rameses was already being used in the 18th Dynasty, one just hadn’t been the King yet.  Wikipedia pages use Ramose when talking about the 18th Dynasty ones but it’s the same name in Egyptian just with arbitrary differences in transliteration. 

However there is currently no known correlation with a Pharoah named Amenhotep with a son named Ramose. The only Ramose who was the son of a Pharoah was the son of Ahmose the first 18th Dynasty Pharoah. Then there is the father of Senenmut who likely lived during the reigns of Amenhotep I through maybe the early years of Hatshepsut. Then there is one who was a Vizier under Amenhotep III and Akhenaton, and a general during the Amarna period, and possibly another general.

Of course there is also the matter that the Meneptah discrepancy is not the only time when Manetho called Amenophis doesn’t line up with who we call Amenhotep.  And Manetho could still be who the creator of this story got the name from.

Manetho’s first Amenophis has the right reign length to be Amenhotep I but is placed too late in the sequence The scholars Wikipedia cites use reign length to decide who is who in Manetho which for the Amenhoteps works here and here alone. The first Amenophis’s placement in the sequence is as the brother and predecessor of Hatshepsut (called Amesses but this is the least disputable identification, the 18th Dynasty had only two ruling Queens and only she reigned between 21 and 22 years, the name Amesses probably comes from her mother Ahmose) telling me he’s supposed to be Tuthmosis II with an exaggerated reign length.

The second and last 18th Dynasty Amenophis in Manetho has a reign length that lines up perfectly with none of the Amenhotep, but the same scholars cited by Wikipedia say he is Amenhotep II. He is in the placement of Amenhotep II however, being the 4th King after Hatshepsut. Orus has the reign length of Amenhotep III but is in the placement Akhetnaten as the father and predecessor of the other ruling Queen called Achenres by Manetho, among her known Egyptian names was Ankheperure, she didn't rule 12 years but isn’t the only one Manetho gives way too long a reign length to.

In Manetho as quoted by Josephus the Pharaoh in the place of Amenhotep II is Mephramuthosis who also has a pretty close reign length, 25 years and 10 months. He’s followed by a Tuthmosis who reigned about a decade, a rare case of Manetho using the right name in the right position and the right reign length. 

So could the popular Exodus Pharoah choice Amenhotep II have had a son also known as Ramose? Well there is an Ahmose who was High Priest of Ra at Heliopolis and is presumed to be Amenhotep II’s son. 

Let’s step back a moment.  Remember the Ramose I referred to before as a son of Ahmose?  Well it’s actually who his father was, our source for him is a much later 2oth Dynasty Tombs depicting various Pharaohs and Princes where the order seems to be random. 

My using Hatshepsut as the main anchor in how I deciphered Manetho’s account of the 18th Dynasty has the issue of there being only 3 Pharoah’s before her not 4. There is ambiguity on when to distinguish Dynasty 17 from 18, they are technically the same Dynasty by the same Royal Family definition. Dynasty 17 as we know it isn’t in Manetho at all, his later transcribers just mirror the Hyksos account there.  Cheremon’s account of Amenophis kind of sounds like the entire Hyksos period condensed to the reign of one Theban King. 

But the reason this still isn't a final gotcha for Amenhotep II theorists is how this narrative makes the Pharoah of The Oppression the same as the Pharoah of the Exodus. And if it's possible to deduce a separation from it it's that Amenophis was The Oppression Pharoah and his son the Exodus Pharaoh.

The reason why we call the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled the Pharoah of the Oppression traditionally is because a casual reading of Exodus with no attempt to synchronize with known Egyptians history it's natural to assume the Pharoah who "knew not Joseph" and Oppressed the Israelites and when Moses born and from whom Moses fled were all the same Pharoah. These hostile retelling are oddly more faithful to that assumption then any modern theories informed by actual Egyptology. 

In addition to all the things Josephus should be taking issue with in these hostile versions of The Exodus, he also objects even to the suggestion that the Jews are of partly Egyptian stock. But that is consistent with what The Pentateuch says, it was a Mixed Multitude (Exodus 12:38 and Nehemiah 13:3), probably mostly made up of other slaves, but slavery in Ancient Egypt wasn’t categorially race based the way the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was, those slaves would have included Egyptians who were outcasts, some perhaps exactly the way these accounts are describing. “Leprosy” in ancient text usually doesn't mean the exact disease we today associate it with, even Albinos were included in it. Leviticus 24 refers to a person whose mother was a Danite and father was an Egyptian, they probably weren’t the only one. Deuteronomy 23:7-8 makes clear Egyptians in the congregation are to be Nationalized. 

The overarching theme of these hostile retellings of The Exodus is to change it from a story of slaves escaping a tyrant who wouldn't let them go to outcasts being forced out of a country that didn’t want them, and blaming them for everything that was going wrong.  To us moderners neither version makes The Jews look like the bad guys or the Egyptians look good. And the tragic irony is that kind of thing would become the origin story of Modern Israel.

Acts 13:17-22 vs 1 Kings 6:1

There is a conflict between the face value reading of these passages that most Bible Literalists don’t want to face, and when they do they have oddly decided it’s Paul who needs to be reinterpreted.

1 Kings 6:1 says Solomon started building The Temple in the 480th year since the Exodus, while Paul says after the 40 years wandering and then the conquest of Canaan then there were 450 years of Judges then 40 years under Saul then David who we know reigned 40 years.

Honestly people prefer just citing 1 Kings 6:1 because it’s convenient, they want to say the total time frame of this entire era is settled by one simple verse and not actually properly divide the Word of Truth, they don't want to actually check the difficult math. 

Adding up the numbers in Judges on their own also agrees with Paul, it totals 450 years from the start of the first oppression to the Anointing of Saul. And it also vindicates Jephthah in Judges 11 by showing it was 300 years from the beginning of the first oppression to the beginning of the Ammonite oppression in Judges 10, meaning if anything Jephthah and Paul were rounding down. 

Those numbers were based on math first done by people before whose names I've forgotten unfortunately, but it was based on including Samson 20 years as Judge within the Philistine Oppression because he arguably never fully liberated Israel from the Philistines. Which is based on the wording of Judges 15:20. 

I have long favored the approach that 1 Kings 6:1 is excluding the periods of oppression for some ceremonial reason. But as I've become more open to the Amenhotep II Exodus model recently, I decided to revisit these matters and look into how apologists seek to reconcile this from the other angle. 

First thing I found was someone arguing that Acts 13 only reads this way in the Textus Receptus and we should trust the Alexandrian Manuscripts. Naturally I am firmly opposed to that approach.  I’m not a strict KJV Onlyist but I am in agreement with them on the matter of the source texts.  It looks like the Alexandrians sought to reword things so it could conform with a shorter timeline because they liked to shorten Biblical timeframes in Alexandria hence the LXX version of Exodus 12:40-41, or for that matter the LXX version of 1 Kings 6:1 which changed it to the 440th year. 

That’s an issue for the Late Exodusers, I imagine they say once you agree not to take a certain time period passage at face value obviously they would exaggerate not deflate. But since no serious scholar thinks the LXX is the original of 1 Kings 6:1 we see there is sometimes a willingness to deflate. But there are also times when if anything it would serve your agenda to round down your estimate, to say at least this much time had passed.

The other method was arguing that the various Judgeships in Judges overlap. This ignores how things are worded, they record oppression, then rest, then oppression again, then rest again.  Some periods of Rest aren't claimed to be one single Judge, but the general period of rest between oppressions, like the 80 year rest that began with Ehud (it doesn’t actually lay he personally was alive that whole time) or the 40 years that began with Deborah. 

Early Exodus proponents want this adding up of years in Judges to vindicate Jephthah; they cite him all the time as a second witness against the Late Exodus model. It is self serving to then read the text differently after that, and the room for overlaps will still not be enough to fix an over 90 year discrepancy. 

I also think it is possible to conclude a 40 year reign for Saul from The Books of Samuel alone, but it involves the matter of the controversially difficult to translate or even understand in Hebrew opening of 1 Samuel 13, which in Hebrew uses the word for Son but the KJV obscures that. Of Saul’s 4 sons by his wife, the youngest Ishbosheth is excluded when listing Sons Saul already had when he became King in 1 Samuel 14:49 and 31:2. I think 1 Samuel 13 is telling us Saul had a son in the first year of his reign and that is naturally Ishbosheth.  And we’re later told Ishbosheth was 40 when Saul died and he began to reign in 2 Samuel 2:10.

I’ve also struggled with the fact that the model I favored in the past doesn’t have enough time between The Exodus and the first oppression for Joshua to die before the first oppression. Joshua 14:7 tells us Joshua was 40 when he spied out the land during the second year of the wandering in Numbers 13-40, and Joshua 24:10 and Judges 2:8 say he was 110 when he died. Which means he died about 31 years after the start of the conquest and 24 years after when the initial conquest is typically viewed to have ended. And Judges 1 and 2 clearly seem to place his death before the first oppression. 

The Late Exodus proponents who argue against taking 1 Kings 6:1 at face value with the agenda of wanting a smaller time period typically argue it’s a symbolic number representing 12 generations of 40 years. They seek to roughly equate that to 12 generations of 20 years but I could translate it into 12 generations of 50, 60 or 70 years based on various Biblical significance those numbers have, but 50 is all I’d need, roughly 600 years. I find that logic interesting, but the language of 480th Year still has me feeling it means an exact count.  Their 20 year logic is because we today assume that's when males would start having kids, but Isaac didn't have Esau and Jacob till 60, and Jacob didn't start having kids till over 47. Moses likewise didn't marry Zipporah till he was 40. 

Which got me to wondering why the author of this part of Kings even thought he could know such an exact year?

Remembering the context that this is about The Temple, which will replace The Tabernacle once it’s finished. I think about The Tabernacle rituals that are done annually, particularly Yom Kippur near the middle of each Torah Year. They may have been keeping records of how many times they did each of those. And perhaps during the oppressions they were prevented from observing them by the oppressors. 

And/or maybe they had stopped doing them for a while after the Philistines destroyed the Tabernacle Shiloh and took The Ark, The Ark and Tabernacle were not in the same place again till Solomon consecrated The Temple. Maybe they were in a sense Levitically in the 480th year until The Temple was consecrated. 

So the weight of The Biblical Data definitely supports a longer view of the time from Exodus to Solomon, the face value reading of 1 Kings 6:1 stands on its own.  It takes two or more witnesses to establish something, the face value reading of 1 Kings 6:1 has no second witness. 

To bring some not inspired but still perhaps enlightening Extra Biblical Testimony into this, there’s Flavius Josephus.  He was from a Cohen Family and had access to Temple Records. In Antiquities of the Jews Book 20 Chapter 10 he says based on counting the terms of the first 13 High Priests (Aaron to Abiathar) that it was 612 years from Aaron being consecrated in the same year as The Exodus till Solomon built The Temple. 

Abiathar was deposed early in Solomon’s reign, but we don’t have the exact year, it seems to have been before The Temple construction started. So it could be 480 is really 612. Making a 132 year difference. 

That makes the 16th Century BC date for the destruction of Jericho the most likely conclusion. If we had taken that approach to Biblical Chronology all along then Kathleen Kenyon’s discoveries would have never been a problem. 

The Samaritan tradition actually places the entry into the Promised Land under Joshua in 1639 or 1638 BC.  That’s too ancient to be reconcilable with the other data in my view. 

Of course the Samaritans having that as a calendar start date in the first place is interesting.  Leviticus 25 says to start the counting of the Levitical and Sabbatical years after entering The Land.

Perhaps another factor in 1 Kings 6:1 is in-spite of how it’s worded it's actually starting it’s count of whatever it’s counting with the entry into the land not actually the Exodus. Maybe in a sense they weren’t fully fully out of Egypt until they were in The Land?  

Aram-Naharin in Judges is clearly the Mitanni Empire, Naharin is what the Egyptians called Mitanni, and so a 1446 BC Exodus is too late for that 8 year oppression under Aram-Naharin to line up historically with when Mitanni exerted influence in Canaan. Critics of The Bible will say either Mitanni never actually conquered Canaan directly but that's fine, they ruled it through Canaanite proxies. It's like today calling areas Hezbollah controls ruled by Iran because it functionally is. It was during the reign of Amenhotep II that Mitanni ceded Canaan fully to Egypt. 

I'm kind of growing attracted to identifying the end of this 8 year oppression with Tuthmosis III's Battle of Megiddo in his year 22 or 23.  Judges 3 does not give a lot of details about this oppression or how God helped Othinel end it. The role played by Egypt could easily be a detail left out of the retelling and why it doesn't get the full scale account later liberations do.  

Update May 0th 2026: I've decided to tweak some things. But it still requires more then 480 years form Moses to Solomon.

Exactly what Paul says about Saul's 40 years is not the typical way of saying a King reigned that long, and he doesn't attribute 40 years to David, we get that from the Hebrew Bible. And my Ishbosheth theory also has holes, none of the verses that exclude him form Saul's sons are set before he became King, in fact they all come after the contentious opening of 1 Samuel 13. 

Meanwhile 1 Samuel 7:2 commonly quoted as giving Samuel a Judgeship of 20 years isn't about how long Samuel was a Judge, verse 15 says he Judges Israel all the days of his life, it was The Ark being at Kirathjearim that was for 20 years. Meaning it should be read as saying from the same year Eli died till when David took the Ark out of Kirathjearim 7 years into his reign was 20 years. 

The numbers I was using a the start of this sot would put the 8 year Oppression under Aram-Nahrain from 1500-1492 BC when counting back from the conventional dates for Solomon. I now feel compelled to subtract 47 years from that giving us 1453-1445 BC.  But there is still some wiggle room.

So a synchronization with 1457 BC and Tuthmosis III's Battle of Megiddo is plausible. 

Manetho’s Amenophis isn’t who you think.

As someone who is open to an Amenhotep II Exodus model, and strongly opposed to any 19th Dynasty Model. I’m going to advise Early Exodus daters to stop thinking the name Manetho uses is some kind of proof. 

The name Amenophis isn’t the only thing about this Pharoah that Manehto as quoted by Josephus says, it also placed him in a clear chronological sequence as the Pharaoh following the Rameses Miamun who reigned 66 years, and he is then followed by his son a Seti/Sethos. Basically he is in the place of Merneptah, 19th Dynasty models were originally based on Merneptah as the Pharaoh of the Exodus and Rameses II as the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled, it was the Israel reading of the Merneptah Stele that changed that. 

Manetho is to blame for the 19th Dynasty Exodus model, Jospehus’s quotations of Manetho exist in the context of a discourse that was happening between Alexandrian Jews and Alexandrian Judeophobes. Part of it is the antiquity of the Exodus, there is over 300 years from the Expulsion of the Hyksos (start of what we call Dynasty 18) to when this Amenophis becomes king.

So it really bugs me to see enemies of the 19th Dynasty model advocating for Manetho and defending his reliability. It’s funny when they dismiss the “multiple versions of Manetho” by saying to just trust Josephus’s version.  Because Josephus himself seems to be using conflicting versions of Manetho. 

In Against Apion Book 1 Josephus first lays out his own view on where The Exodus happens in Manetho’s chronology of Egypt in sections 14-16. Then much later in sections 26-31 goes about refuting what he dislikes in Manetho. He must have written these sections on different days borrowing different manuscripts from the Library because there is a discrepancy. They agree on the key chronological placement of this Amenophis I laid out above. But in the first version Seti I doesn’t exist (there is no one between Rameses I and Rameses Miamun) and it’s Seti II who has a civil war with his brother. But in the second version Seti I does exist and it’s he who has the civil war with his brother. The existence of Seti I makes the second version more accurate. But it's easy to assume the civil war with a brother fits Seti II’s conflict with Amenmese. But we don’t know if Amenmese was Seti II’s brother or not. The “Tale of Two Brothers” text is not as similar to what Josephus describes as some claim either. It is still uncertain whether or not Seti I had any siblings. It’s also possible Manehto made up this brother just to make an identification for Danaus and Aegyptus for his Greek audience, but others think Manetho didn’t name Danaus and Aegyptus at all and those are just Josephus’s or some prior transcriber's speculations. The story even as it’s described when in the Seti II placement better matches Seti I since conquered parts of the Levant. The Vizier of Lower Egypt during Seti’s reign was Nebamun, the son of a Ramose so he could have been confused for another son of Rameses I if he wasn’t. 

Also the division into 30 Dynasties doesn’t come from Manetho himself, there is no hint of it in Josephus's quotations.  That comes from the later transcribers. Which is why it’s possible to skim Josephus here and miss that he’s left the 18th Dynasty, but even then this is the 3rd Amenophis to show up in Josephus’s list of Egyptian Kings following the Hyksos expulsion, not the second. 

I’m growing partial to the theory that the original version of Manetho didn't mention Moses or the Israelites or Jerusalem at all, in either the Hyksos context or the 19th Dynasty context, and all of this was stuff added later. 

What I do believe is that Manetho did tell a story set in the late 19th Dynasty that was a distorted memory of the history involving Chancellor Bay and Irsu from Papyrus Harris I conflating them and how they tied into the civil war between Seti II and Amenmese, calling that composite figure Osarsiph for some reason. A statue of Bay has been found at Heliopolis so he could have been a Priest there. Then these Judeophobes further fused that narrative with Moses and The Exodus. 

Some who want to keep using Manetho as evidence for the Exodus Pharoah being an earlier Amenhotep while acknowledging all of this could say “when that story got conflated with The Exodus is when Merneptah’s name was changed to Amenhotep/Amenophis because people remembered that was the name of the Pharaoh of the Exodus”.

The thing is this isn't the only time Manetho calls a Pharaoh by a different name than modern Egyptologists are used to, his 18th Dynasty rarely uses names we recognize, nor is it the only time he gets their reign length wrong (Merneptah reigned only a decade while this Amenophis reigned 19 years). Manetho's version of the 18th Dynasty as quoted by Josephus even gets the order wrong.

 I do think Merneptah’s Manethoean name change to Amenophis predates the story’s conflation with The Exodus or maybe even Manetho himself receiving it. 

For one thing it’s possible the Manetho text Josephus used the first time didn’t have this 19th Dynasty Exodus at all, though it has its own issues with being the original. Josephus when he’s refuting Manetho accused him of making this Amenophis up completely, yet he was there in exactly the right position in the version he quoted earlier as reliable history. But since in that version Amenophis was placed before the two brothers Josephus wanted to make the Exodus significantly more ancient then, it served his agenda to include his years. 

This Amenophis and Osarsiph narrative also involved another person named Amenophis, the “son of Papis”. So could the name of some contemporary of this Pharaoh accidentally had his name given to the Pharaoh?

When you go to the Wikipedia page List of children of Rameses II, Merneptah is listed as 13 among the sons, being it seems the oldest son to not predecease his long lived father. And the son listed as 14 is Amenhotep. We have no further information on him, we don’t know if his mother was one of the main wives, he doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page.  Maybe his mother's name was something corrupted to Papis?  Rameses II did have a daughter named Pypuy who could’ve been named after her mother, or…. Rameses did add some of his own daughters to his Harem. 

Maybe this brother of Merneptah named Amenhotep was a very important advisor to Merneptah? And lived a decade longer being still around during the civil war between Seti II and Amenmese? And thus some oral memories of the late 19th Dynasty confused him with the actual Pharaoh and gave him a 19 year reign?  There is plenty of historical precedent for a King's brother becoming the de facto actual ruler when the King is away on military campaign, like Richard and John in England. Heck Josephus's Manetho just referred to it happening earlier in Egyptian history.

If the Pharaoh of The Exodus was a 18th Dynasty Amenhotep, Manetho as quoted by Josephus got the name right purely by accident. 

Joseph identification theory.

Some of the chronologies I’ve been considering would place Joseph during the time of Amenenhat III. I came to that conclusion before looking at the Viziers of Amenenhat III. But it also fits when we archaeologically know about his role in the history of Avaris. 

The Vizier that most caught my eye was Zamonth or Samontu, a name that Zaphnath from Genesis 41:45 could be a corruption of. 

His wife was named Henuptu, a name possibly rendered later as Henut, so I could see Asenath as having a connection to that. However contrary to popular assumption the name Asenath is a Hebrew name not Egyptian, it’s possibly a different form of Asnah from Ezra 2:50. But it could also be the same root as Asa being combined with Anath. So Genesis is referring to a Hebrew name she was given, not her original Egyptian name. 

One of their sons was named Senebtifi. His name means “the one who will be healthy”. Which is a different meaning I could see coming from the logic of what Joseph says explaining the name Manasseh in Genesis 41:51. 

One of their sons, probably the younger, was Ankhu whose name meant “life”, “living” or “he who lived”. Ephraim means Double Fruit, giving what Fruit often symbolically in The Bible Ankhu being his Egyptian name makes sense. 

They also had a daughter named Seneb, nothing in Scripture contradicts Joseph and Asenath having a daughter, sometimes the daughters just aren’t mentioned. 

Ankhu had a daughter named Senebhenas who was married to the “overseer of the half domain” whatever that means named Wepwawethotep.  She could be the Sherah of 1 Chronicles 7:24. 

Ankhu’s sons Reseneb and Iymeru I thus think can be identified with sons of Ephraim from 1 Chronicles 7 and Numbers 26. 

Moses in 18th Dynasty Theory

I have been very skeptical of the Amenhotep II as Pharaoh of the Exodus model, first because as my recent prior posts about Biblical Chronology show I favor Exodus dates older than 1446 BC, and because I have reasons for favoring the low chronology to the high chronology. 

But then I stumbled upon something potentially vindicating of it I have to share. Even as I remain undecided on the full implication. 

But first I need to state one aspect of the Amenhotep II model I find silly is identifying Hatshepsut as the Daughter of Pharaoh in Exodus 2 and Moses with Senenmut. Senenmut had a known Egyptian family, they were commoners but definitely not foreign slaves. The High Chronology timeline this model favors as the flight of Moses happening during the reign of Hatshepsut. That daughter ruling Egypt during all this would be a very weird thing to not mention. 

It’s commonly assumed a 1446 BC Exodus means a 1526 BC Birth for Moses.  But in my careful reading of Acts 7 and Exodus 2, I’d say the Three Months are also a separate time period. Each period of 40 years begins and ends around Passover, meaning the Birth of Moses could be the Hanukkah season, and in this timeline that means right at the end of 1527 BC. 

In which case Amenhotep I would be the Pharaoh when Moses was born, he had a daughter named Ahmose who was a wife of Tuthmosis I. Ahmose bore Tuthmosis I two daughters but no known sons. But I should not that a granddaughter of the current Pharoah would probably also be called Daughter of Pharaoh as a title. If the Daughter of Pharoah of Exodus 2 is a daughter of Tuthmosis I then I would consider Neferubity more likely then Hatshepsut. Neferubity's name mean "Beauties of Lower Egypt" so her spending time in the Nile Delta makes sense. 

Tuthmosis I has an obscure son whose mother is unknown named Wadjmose. No Tomb was built for this son, yet he didn’t inherit even though it looks like he was older than Tuthmosis II. It may be he was never an actual son but a ward being raised in the royal household.

And now for the real main point of this post. 

Some have theorized that Moses, or Moshe in Hebrew, was originally a fuller Egyptian Name but that he dropped the Theophoric part when he became a strict Monotheist. Usually people suspect an Egyptian word for water or The Nile River, like Hapi.  But when you read Exodus 2 closely, it's possible when the Daughter of Pharaoh says "because I drew him out of the water" she was making a comparison to the reeds (or flags in the KJV) that were growing out of the water which the basket containing Moses was found floating amongst.  

I double checked to make sure I wasn't just assuming, and the reeds that grow in the Nile Delta area are typically green. The Wadj part of Wadjmose is a word for the color green but also associated with happiness and prosperity. 

And it was also the name of a god, Wadj-wer was an Egyptian god whose name meant " the great green", he was a personification of the Mediterranean Sea but also symbolized the riches of the Waters of the Nile. He was strongly associated with the Lagoons and Lakes of the northern Nile Delta, exactly where Avaris and later Pi-Rameses were located.  

The fate of Wadjmose is unknown; we don't have his Mummy, but a depiction of him on a tomb built for his Egyptian tutor named Paheri. He had another tutor named Senimes. Sounds like he fits Acts 7:22 pretty well. 

If I made a movie based on this theory, I’d identify the Egyptian he killed with Senenmut. 

Late Date Exodus proponents have a major problem.

Dr. David Falk is willing to acknowledge the Biblical use of Anachronism when talking about the use of Rameses as a place name in Genesis, or calling The King of Egypt Pharoah in Genesis, but not for Exodus. 

Falk’s justification for this not working for Pi-Rameses in Exodus is the term translated “Store Cities”, somehow that precludes this being anything other than the Israelites building that City when it was founded by that name. 

The problem is that view doesn’t fit Ramses II as the Pharaoh of The Exodus, it would make him an Earlier Pharoah on the timeline, that Pharaoh who had the Israelites build those cities can be still the same as the one when Moses was born or from whom Moses fled when he turned 40 at the latest, but there was definitely at least one change of Pharoah during the 40 years in between. At the earliest Pi-Rameses was founded during the reign of Horemheb.

However the near universal acceptance of the Israel reading of the Merneptah Stele has forced them to rule out any later Exodus model later than Rameses II. 

I do not believe Israel was ever an Exonym for Israel prior to the birth of Christianity. OT era Gentiles called the Israelites Hebrews or Aramean, or referred to specific Tribes or houses, or specific cities or regions. 

Attempts to debunk the Jezreel reading of Merneptah Stele usually just resort to strawmaning it by thinking the proof that this isn't a City name rules Jezreel out.  Jezreel the city was founded by the Omrids so no one thinks that’s what Merneptah mentioned, most Biblical uses of the name are to the Valley, especially early on, it was the name of the Valley long before the city existed.  I have no doubt that the Canaanites of the valley felt they were the seed of an ancestor figure named Jezreel, which could have been true, a tribe of the Hivites or something.  Jezreel is a name commonly interpreted as meaning “God will Sow” because of how the word for “Seed”, Zerah, is one of its core roots. So what the Menreptah Stele says about their “Seed is naught” makes perfect sense as a play on the name Jezreel. Ya know what cities are suspiciously missing from the Merneptah stele given what Canaanite cities were mentioned just before this? The cities of the Jezreel Valley from 1 Kings 4:12, Joshua 17:17 and Judge 1:27 like Megiddo and Bethshean. Megiddo Stratum VIIA is contemporary with Merneptah at least in its end. 

As much as part of me wants to make my support of the Jezreel reading a distinction without a difference, as long as my Chronology places this in the Judges period I'm reminded of how Judges 1 specifies that it was int he Valleys and Plains the Canaanites held out when the Israelites too over the mountains. That's also why I can't agree with the Talmudic tradition that Kitron of Judges 1:30 is Sepphoris, instead the Canaanites of Kitron and Nahalol may be among the people of Jezreel who Merneptah wiped out.  Also archeologically Sepphoris (whatever it was originally called) doesn't show up till the Iron Age.

The Israel reading being correct is also a problem for the Rameses II Exodus view. Mernepetah reigned only about a decade and the victory this Stele celebrates is supposed to be before his year 5, so at least 40 years since the Exodus would force The Exodus to be fairly early in Rameses II’s long reign, forcing the birth of Moses to be probably back in the 18th Dynasty given how short the reigns of Rameses I and Seti I are currently considered to be, thus before the founding of Pi-Rameses.Horemheb began his reign in 1319 BC so even if all of Exodus 1-2:9 including the birth of Moses happened right away, 40 years later would still bring us to the year Ramses II became King. To be fair Rameses II is believed to have become King in May and Acts 7 can be interpreted as implying Moses' flight happened exactly 40 years before the first Passover, so late March or early April, but that’s still cutting it close. And the problem with placing the Exodus in Rameses II’s year 40 or 41 is we know which of his sons was legally considered the first born from year 25 to year 40, it was Rameses the firstborn of Isetnofret, the first born of Nefertari had died in year 25.

That’s another thing about a Rameses II Exodus model, we don’t have as much wiggle room for when in his reign the Plague of the First Born could have happened, we know exactly when each time a current first bone of his died. And the only one to happen soon enough to allow the flight of Moses to be from a prior Pharaoh is year 25 when Amun-her-khepeshef died. And that is too soon, it placed the flight of Moses back in the reign of Horemheb and his birth back in the reign of Tutankhamun. There is zero chance The Bible meant the eldest still living son of Nefertari which was Meratum following this point, he was never crown prince and I firmly believe what Exodus means by first born here is the appointed Heir. But even he didn’t die till year 46 at the earliest. 

I’m willing to entertain the possibility of not accepting the implausible life spans of Genesis at face value, but Moses' 120 years is absolutely not implausible.  The ability of humans to live that long today is NOT because we're living longer now, the average life expectancy statistics people abuse are factoring in the massive drop in infant mortality. Psalm 90:10 records that the Ancient Israelites absolutely saw between 70 and 80 as the average life expectancy and Genesis 6 tells us that 120 was known to be possible.  As someone who is 40 right now,, I can absolutely relate to that being the age when someone would want to get in touch with their roots they only abstractly knew about before. Also when Falk wanted to criticize someone taking the Abraham was born when Terah was 70 view of Genesis 11-12 he really took the attitude of “how dare you question Stephen's inspired knowledge of Old Testament chronology in Acts 7”, and that’s also exactly where Moses being 40 when he fled came from. Moses being 80 at the time of The Exodus comes right from Exodus 7:7, no NT clarification necessary, and Aaron being 83 shows this is exact ages they are recording not poetic estimates. 

Honestly I do think it's possibly to deduce a 40 year age for Moses during the events of Exodus 2:11-21 from the Pentateuch alone. Verse all says when Moses was "grown", there are a number of ages that could imply base don different standards with some even arguing we psychologically fully grown till 40. This same Hebrew word being used to describe someone's age appears in one other passage f the Pentateuch, Genesis 38:11-14 where it's used of Shelah for when he should be old enough to marry, and low and behold in Exodus 2 getting married is also something Moses does during this year. Now to use saying your aren't old enough to marry till 40 sounds odd, but that was when Isaac married Rebecca in Genesis 25:20 and how old Esau was when he got married in Genesis 26:34, with his twin Jacob being instructed to go find a wife that same year. Those are the only times The Pentateuch directly links marriage to an age. So it looks like the Patriarchs were part of a culture where the norm was for men to not get married till 40. 

In spite of what I shall do rhetorically in this post, I ultimately favor a much earlier Exodus, chronology.  So that isn’t why I oppose the Israel reading, it is simply what the facts lead me to conclude.

Remember the chapter divisions were not in the original texts, the start of Exodus 3 is directly in the context of the end of Exodus 2.  Exodus 2:23 days a very long time passed before the King who Moses fled from died, and then presents his death as a key impetus for God finally taking action, telling Moses it’s safe to return to Egypt because those seeking him are dead now. So I lean towards The Exodus happening mere months after the Pharaoh takes the throne, Rameses doing so in May makes his ascension too early. But it makes it being during his reign Moses fled very plausible. 

Maybe Moses could actually be listed as a son of Rameses, one of the more obscure ones. Rameses-Uderkhapesh or Rameses-Userpethi are both names that have “Meses” as part of them, and a name that could explain the origin of the name Osarseph (the relevance of that name will come up later). 

Merneptah abandoned PI-Rameses as capital but we don’t know exactly when.  The consequences of the Exodus could be a factor in why.  This would make the fight of Moses about the year 26 or 27 or 28 of Ramses II reign, this would place the birth of Moses either late in the reign of Rameses I or early in the reign of Seti I, Rameses I has no known daughter but Seti I has at least one but maybe two, Tia and Henutmire. There are extra Biblical traditions that Moses was involved in a campaign against Cush (often mistakenly confused with Nubia still), Rameses did campaign there about year 22 of his reign. 

Maybe the Israel reading of the Merneptah Stele doesn’t actually contradict the Exodus happening during Merneptah’s reign if it happened in the first year. The Stele’s poetic language is vague, it may be wrong to make assumptions about where anyone is, maybe it is another example of the Egyptians recording a defeat as a victor? 

Merneptah (or whatever name was given to the son of the Rameses Miamun who reigned 66 years) was the original 19th Dynasty Exodus model. The Israel reading of the Merneptah Stele is what changed that. Its own origins however are tied to narratives invented by Alexandrian Judeophobes of the Hellenistic Era where Moses is identified with a semilegendary 19th Century villain named Osarseph. 

Back to arguing against the Late Exodus. 

I think part of the argument against the anachronism interpretation of why Pi-Rameses appears in the text is an outdated belief that it stopped being well known or important very quickly. We now know people were writing poetry about the magnificence of Pi-Rameses over a century after the death of Rameses II, which as a proponent of Ussher’s dates for the divided kingdom brings us to about the time of Samuel. Even past then it remained the most notable city with a known name in the area of where Avaris had been. Avaris is confirmed by Egyptian records to be where Semitic immigrants from the Levant lived in Egyptian from its 12th Dynasty founding onwards till its destruction, those people were not only the Israelites but the Israelites were among them. 

I don’t believe The Pentateuch was entirely personally written by Moses.  At the very least I think none of the narrative parts really were. This was all being passed down by Oral Tradition originally. The term Torah does not refer to the entire Pentateuch but mainly the Laws given in the second half of Exodus and perhaps their key amendments provided in Leviticus and parts of Numbers. 

The written narratives I believe began being a thing during the Samuelite period, for reasons perhaps explained by the history recorded in 1 Samuel.

I believe 1 Kings 6 has subtracted the years of oppression from the real total perhaps in part because of Tabernacle records of things they were unable to keep doing properly during the oppressions. Perhaps principally the Yom Kippur ritual, they may have properly kept Yom Kippure only 480 times, or maybe 479 times given the implied conclusion count. 

The Context of Genesis 14 is the early Isin-Larsa Period soon after the fall of Ur III.

I understand why the Amraphel=Hammurabi identification is so popular, but here's the thing, Babylon looms so large in The Biblical imagination that is Babylon specifically had been his royal capital that too would have bene specified here.

Some people in their desire to really sell that identification want to treat Shinar and Babel like synonyms because of how they are sometimes paired together, but they are not.  Shinar is a region which multiple cities as we see in Genesis 10:10.  Now the reading of that verse I favor is "And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, all they in the land of Shinar.". But even in the KJV reading this still makes Shinar a region with more then one city in it. 

Ellsar is definitely Larsa, "Er-Akhu" is a known Ephates some kins of Larse had, the earliest know example is only a generation before Hammurabi but it certainly could have gone back further.

The Amorites were already invading Sumer during this period. And that is all the main etymological element Amraphel and Hammurabi have in common implies, their Amorite heritage. 

This period is when Elam was the height of it's power, this alone is when Elam leading a coalition to the Western Levant is plausible. At the start of Hammurabi's reign Elam was powerful within Mesopotamia, but still not plausible to each this far west. 

There is also the record of an Abuha Son of Ishmael during the reign of Hammurabi. This Abuha must be actually a grandson at least since that's not the same of any of Ishmael's sons in Genesis 14. So generations separated Abraham from Hammurabi. 

Pharaoh is never a word that means “King of Egypt” in The Bible.

 Most appearances of Pharoah in The Bible use “Pharoah King of Egypt” in a way that perfectly parallels other “King of” formulations like “Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar;” in Genesis 14:9.

The first Pharaoh in The Bible to be identified by a name that most scholars see as a truly specific individual name or epithet is “Shishak king of Egypt” in 1 Kings 11:40. But the grammatical structure is exactly the same as when referring to “Pharaoh king of Egypt” in verse 18 except that Shishak has replaced Pharaoh, not once in Scripture in Shishak ever called Pharaoh. 

I’m not pointing this out to argue anything as fringe as what some other people might argue, like denying that Biblical Mizraim ever refers to Kemet, or for any popular Revised Chronology theory. But it’s an observation I feel we need to stop ignoring. 

Pharoah is an Egyptian word with an Egyptian etymology and meaning, it means Great House, and it has a history that absolutely can explain how The Bible uses it. But The Bible also has its own reasons for not always being consistent with Egyptian usage or its own usage of the word.  So no, the point I made above doesn’t mean I don’t think Shishak was ever called Pharoah in the Egyptian records, he most likely was. 

I have come to agree with those who think some use of certain language in The Pentateuch is anachronistic, that its writing was not entirely made by Moses (only certain parts of what are now the 2nd half of Exodus). That is why Raamses/Rameses and Pithon appearing as place names don’t mean anything, they are identifying the general area of Avaris and On.  And so theoretically every “Pharoah” in Genesis and Exodus could predate when the Egyptians started using it as a title for the King.  It’s the Pharaoh who was contemporary with Solomon who I think is the earliest Biblical Pharaoh who needs to have been called that at the time. 

The other King of Egypt called something else and not Pharoah is “So King of Egypt” and I already argued on a different blog that I think So there is a reference to the city of Sais. 

Tirhakah the only ruler of the Kushite Dynasty mentioned in The Bible is called neither Pharaoh or King of Egypt but just King of Cush. This is something I'm sure is weaponized by the ‘Mizraim wasn't Kemet” theorists but I think as far as The Biblical Author was concerned Egypt was part of Cush at this time so just refer to Cush.  (One of my biggest pet peeves is people calling the Cushits Nubians, they are a distinct people.)

The first King of Egypt to be Biblically called both Pharaoh and some other name is Necho being called “Pharoah-necho King of Egypt”  in 2 Kings 23:29-35, but only Kings does this, 2 Chronicles 35:10-22 and 36:4 calls him only Necho and not Pharoah. Jeremiah uses Pharoah-necho as well as Pharoah-hophra, some think Jeremiah and/or his scribe Baruch helped write the last parts of Kings so him being consistent with Kings on this makes sense. 

In Egyptian records, addressing The King as Pharoah first became a thing in the Eighteenth Dynasty, a disputed example occurred during the reign of Tuthmosis III but it really seems to take off during the time of Akhenaten. But some examples that use Pharoah in the third person could be justified by how it was used going all the way back to the Twelfth Dynasty if it can be read abstractly enough. I'm thinking mainly of the songs from Exodus 15 here. 

Siamon of the 21st Dynasty was the first to have the word Pharaoh attached to his name like The Bible only does in the time of Jeremiah.  If Siamon is the Pharaoh who sacked Gezer in the time of Solomon as mainstream Academia currently believes, it’s a funny coincidence he isn’t referred to this way in The Bible but just as Pharoah. 

I’m not making this post to propose a theory for who either Shishak or the father in-law of Solomon was.  I’m still working on that.

Instead what I think is since both Pharoah and So are in a sense references to locations, and it’s not till Necho any Egyptian King of Egypt is called by an individual name. My theory is Shishak too may refer to a “where” associated with the King rather than a “who”.  In 1 Kings the name Shishak first appears not during the story he’s now most famous for but in reference to Jeroboam living as his guest, “fled into Egypt, unto Shishak king of Egypt”.

Tanis was the Capital of Egypt for the 21st Dynasty, and we already know what The Bible calls Tanis, Zoan. So the answer can’t be that simple if I’m going to argue for a 21st Dynasty ruler. 

Shishak is different from Pharaoh in that it does have a very plausible Semitic etymology.  In the Masoretic text it is in both spelling and pronunciation different in only its very last letter from Shisha, a name that appears in 1 Kings 4:3. It is derived from Shayish a word translated “marble” in 1 Chronicles 29:2, which is in turn from Shesh (Strong Number H8336) a word translated “Marble”, Linen”, “silk” and “blue” but that last one is odd since it’s not the standard Hebrew word for blue. (This Shesh is spelled and pronounced identically to H8337 which is translated Six, that seems like a coincidence though.) 

Another name derived from this root is Shashai from Ezra 10:40, but also there’s Sheshi one of the Anakim kings of Hebron in Numbers 13:22, Joshua 15:14 and Judges 1:10. But also of note is Sheshan from 1 Chronicles 2 starting in verse 31. And finally Shashak from 1 Chronicles 8:14-25. (The similarity to a cryptogram for Babylon in Jeremiah 25:26 and 51:41 is also interesting but possibly irrelevant.) 

In The Masoretic Hebrew text the difference between Shishak and Shashak is just a single Yot between the two Shins. And we know from comparing the DSS manuscripts to the Masoretic that sometimes extra Yots got added to words they weren’t originally in them to serve as vowels. 

There were grandiose Marble Palaces in Tanis, so maybe that’s what inspired the Shishak designation. 

The main point is, Shishak is a Hebrew name given to this King by the Israelites for some reason, I don’t expect to find it in Egyptian records. 

I’m considering making the case for translating the Shishak reference as “The Marble King of Egypt”.

Another thing about Biblical Shishak is that I don't necessarily think he actually fought any Battles in Canaan/Israel. 2 Chronicles 12 clarifies that there was no siege or pillage of Jerusalem, Rehoboam simply paid him a large tribute, 1 Kings 14:25-26 doesn’t contradict that it’s just less detailed. This is the reason I don’t think The Ark was taken at this time, not any of the usual arguments against a Shishak removal. 

So maybe he did siege or pillage cities elsewhere but not Jerusalem or any other city of Judah.