Archaeology and Israel in Egypt

Hello, my name is George Sparks, and I'll be speaking for Bible Interact on the second part of the exodus, exodus part 2, which I've entitled Let My People Go. I just want you to understand that we're not going to be talking about just the traditional exodus as you would read it through the scriptural narrative or the Bible, because you can do that at any time. You can open your Bible and read about the exodus. We understand the story by watching the Ten Commandments. This is going to be more academic. We're going to look at different viewpoints of understanding the scriptures and also some different outlooks on how to interpret them. So, first we're going to start in Exodus chapter 1 verse 11. It says, Therefore, they that set over the taskmasters, or set them over by taskmasters, to afflict them with their burden. And they built the cities of the Pharaoh called Python and Ramsey. So, in other words, we have two cities being built by the Hebrews, and they're under the taskmasters of the Egyptians. Now, because of the names of the cities, Python and Ramsey, we can assume, and it's not always good to assume, that many would assume because we have the name of Ramsey's, the Pharaoh of the exodus would be of that same name. Ramsey's the second, or Ramsey's the great, which would put us into the 19th dynasty, or the 13th century BCE. And we already talked about different theories. Now, if this happens to be the case, then we would be in the land of Goshen, or the Northern Nile Delta, also called Lower Egypt. Now, just because it's on the higher part of your map, the upper part of your map, does not mean it's Upper Egypt. No, we go by the direction of the Nile. The Nile flows from, you can say, from south to the north. Because in the south, the elevation is higher in the land, higher elevation, okay? So, Upper Egypt is actually down south on your map, and Lower Egypt is north, towards the top. So, when we say Lower Egypt, that can be confusing. So, in the Nile Delta, the land of Goshen, the location of, you can say, Lower Egypt, we have the cities of Ramsey's and Python on the map, and you can see the traditional route, where we go into the Sinai, and we have there, you know, a Byzantine church, that is the traditional location of the, the location where the Ten Commandments are given to Moses. Is this the case or not? We really don't know. But you can say one mountain is as good as the next, because in the Epic of the Exodus, we do have the tradition, or, you can say, within the scriptural narrative, that there is, in the journey of the Exodus, the giving of the law, the Ten Commandments. Where this happened? In Sinai, or later on, we'll talk of a second location, that has come to light within the last maybe 10 to 20 years. Or we could say, it's not a new theory, it's just been revisited once again, okay? So we have a journey from the Sinai to the land of Midian, where Moses was once there before, where he speaks to Jethro, and is giving a wife named Zipporah, which was Jethro's daughter. Now, you shall no more give the people, this is the Egyptians, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, no more straw to make brick. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the number of the bricks which they make shall lay upon them, shall not diminish. In other words, you're going to get, we're not going to get the straw for you anymore, you're going to have to get it yourself, plus, you're going to have to make the same amount of bricks. So the job is going to be harder. Why is this unique? We talked about this before. Because in the land of Canaan, they did not use straw in their bricks. So somebody, at one point, had to be very familiar with the Egyptian way of making mud brick, because in Egypt, they used straw and mixed it with their brick, but in Canaan, they did not. So it makes you probably say, hmm, somebody had to be in Egypt to understand this. Now, this is an actual hieroglyph, pictorial text, and if you look, it depicts slaves and taskmasters, and what they're doing, they're actually making bricks. So the Bible says that the Egyptians had slaves, and the slaves were making bricks, and guess what? We even have pictures of them representing the taskmasters forcing these slaves to make bricks. No problem with that in the scripture whatsoever. In Exodus chapter 1 and verse 16, it says, And he said, when you do the office, this is the Pharaoh, when you do the office of the midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool. Now, it's also translated the two bricks. If it be a son, then you shall kill him, but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. So what this has to do, possibly, is controlling the population of the Hebrew, because the Hebrews are growing mightily, and there's a large population of them. And what does this represent? What does this, in the mind of an Egyptian, a traditional Egyptian in the northern Nile Delta, foreigners in the northern Nile Delta becoming populous again, would probably remind them of the time period of the Hyksos. And remember, the Hyksos took over the northern Nile Delta and ruled for over a century, and actually chose for themselves Pharaohs. Do the native Egyptians want this to happen again to them? No. So this is a preventive measure by controlling the population. Now, this is kind of interesting. I was searching the web to try to find any design of hieroglyphs depicting women giving birth where they are symbolically kneeling, standing between two bricks, and I was able, after several hours, to find two. And I made some slides so you can see them. Between the two stones. Now, if you look where I have the red circles, like in the center of the red circles, you'll see, actually, this child, this infant, baby, being birthed with his head coming down, straight down, because of gravity. So the Egyptians were relying on gravity to give birth. Now, so we got a slide on your left and also a slide on your right, right side. And you can see, it looks like you got a baby coming out and dropping to the ground, and his arms are outstretched like there was a field goal or something. But here we have indication by hieroglyphs, ancient hieroglyphs, that the Bible is saying something that is very accurate. How would they know? Between the two bricks. Once again, something very unique to the Egyptian culture. Now, Exodus chapter 3 and verse 1 and 2. Now, once again, I'm going to warn you that I'm not going to be reading the traditional Exodus because you can do that yourself. What we're going to do is look at some scholarly levels of this Exodus and bring some highlights to this, some interesting topics. Now, Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro. Now, Jethro is also called Ruel. So these two names can be interchangeable. And I'll explain to you why this is the case later on. His father-in-law, the priest of Minyan, Jethro, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb or Sinai. And the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush. So the burning bush. The burning bush is speaking to Moses somewhere on Mount Sinai. Now, why do we have two names, Jethro and Ruel? Some scholars would say that we have two texts being represented by these two names. When we see Jethro, it is a text that has been written by the southern tradition of, you could say, of Judah. And when we see Ruel, it's the name given to the same individual, but it's the tradition of the Israelites in the northern territory. Now, this would be after they have divided after Solomon's death around 922 BC, where Israel and Judah split. And so the nation divides. Now, once again, how do we scratch our heads and say, why is this? Why do we have two names? We also have two names for the holy mountain where the law was given. We have Sinai, which was the, once again, the traditional site for the tribes of the south, so Judah, so when we see Jethro, we usually see Sinai. And when we see Ruel, we usually see the name of the mountain as Horeb. Why? Some scholars have suggested that we have scribal, you could say, intervention here where we have two traditions, one of the northern tribes, one of the southern tribes. And we, now, they don't try to hide this because if they're trying to hide it, they would only use one name, but they leave the names there. So we're hearing both sides. You see the tradition of the event by the northern tribes and the tradition of the exodus by the southern tribes. I actually think it's quite fair. I think it's quite fair. Okay, and this is incorporated in the biblical narrative. An angel of Jehovah appeared unto him, appeared to Moses in the fire in the midst of the burning bush. So in result, whether it's Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, Moses is speaking to the burning bush. Now, we have two traditional sites for the holy mountain. One is in the wilderness between the two, we might say, red seas today, the terminology, the Red Sea in Sinai, where we have the monastery of Saint Catherine, the Byzantine monastery, but we also have a second site close to where the tribe of Midian was located. And we'll take a slide of that real quick here. We'll fill a slide. And they get the second traditional location for Mount Sinai through the translation of Galatians chapter 4 and verse 25, okay? And here the Apostle Paul is saying, Hagar, remember Hagar, was an Egyptian by birth. He's a native Egyptian who stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia, in Arabia. So it doesn't say Mount Sinai, which is in Sinai. It says Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia, although this text is 2,000 years old. So the Arabia of today might have different national boundaries of the Arabia that was 2,000 years ago. So we got to take all of this into consideration. It is a figure of the present city of Jerusalem in slavery with all its people. Now, all we're looking at is where Mount Sinai possibly is located during the time period of Jesus, during the time period of the Apostle Paul. And in Galatians, it appears here that it's in Arabia. So here we have another type of exodus, traditional exodus out of Egypt, where they go from south of the Bitter Lakes, north of, you could say, the Suez Canal today, and over to the Gulf of Aqaba, and they have this location where they cross called Pahakero, and they cross into the land of Midian. If you can see the right-hand side of your, right-hand side of the screen, of the slide, you'll see a view of Mount Jebel al-Lawz, which is another supposable site, okay, for the giving of the law, okay, the Ten Commandments. So you can look this up, Google it, J-E-B-E-L, Jebel al-Lawz, L-A-W-Z. Google it, and you'll get more information because we can't talk about this one site, we don't have enough time. But I just want you to make you aware of this so it doesn't hit you sideways if somebody says, but what about this location? Symbolism and belonging. I like to talk about the circumcision just for a second because circumcision was a tribal marker, a marker or symbol of a covenant to Yahweh. But you know what? The Egyptians also circumcised, they did, as a way of cleanliness to them. So they would shave their bodies, and they were clean. If you see an Egyptian with hair, they're usually wearing a wig, okay. But if you see on an ancient text, a fresco, a hieroglyph on the wall of an Egyptian, a foreigner such as a Canaanite would have a beard and long hair. So for the Canaanites, hair was acceptable. For an Egyptian, not so, okay. So the Egyptians also circumcised. Could it be, now this is just a suggestion, could it be that circumcision also is a way of saying that these are my people who I took out of Egypt? Why? Because they were circumcised also. In other words, a sign of an Egyptian was also circumcision and clean shaving. Since the Hebrews don't shave, what's another symbol that my people were in Egypt, and I freed them, okay. Maybe circumcision. In the same way, you might think of a gang today, a motorcycle gang, and they got a certain tattoo, and they're all part of that gang. So if you see that tattoo, it represents not just that individual, but the power of that gang that they belong to. How about the military? Many of you served in the military, and you might have a unit patch. Or maybe above the unit patch, you have the American flag, saying that you belong to the confederations of the United States, okay. So in the same way, if you are part of the confederation of those that came out of Egypt, of those that followed the worship of Yahweh, what was one of the symbolisms in the flesh? You can't tattoo that was against the law, the Torah. But you would have circumcision. Okay. Now, Zipporah. Remember, Zipporah is Moses' wife. Zipporah took a flint and cut the foreskin off her son and cast it at Moses' feet. And she said, surely a bridegroom of blood are you to me, because of the circumcision. Now, they're back in Egypt, and Jehovah turned. This is Exodus chapter 10 and verse 19. And Jehovah turned an exceedingly strong west wind. This was one of the plagues, which took up the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea. Now, once again, I did this just to point out the Red Sea also being the Reed Sea, or what we call the Yam Suh. So, if I question a biblical speaker that would come to, let's say, a conference, and they're talking about the Exodus, and they assume that the Red Sea is the Red Sea that we have today, that makes me question the material that he is lecturing about. Because it's common knowledge among scholars that the Red Sea means the Yam Suh, which is the Sea of Reeds. And reeds do not grow in salt water. So, you cannot have, according to this text, a crossing in the traditional Red Sea that we have today, if that's the case. All right? And it says that there's not one locust. They all blown into the Red Sea, or the Sea of Reeds. Now, on this particular map, we show you the city of Ramses and Sukkoth. But if you look, it'll say the Bitter Lakes, the Bitter Lakes, right above what we have the Suez Canal today, right in that general area. So, could this be the location of the crossing? Some scholars say it could be. And the best we can do is make that assumption, saying that it's possible that something happened years and years ago. Now, the Passover lamb. Now, I say the Passover lamb, I'm going to give you another suggestion. The Passover lamb could be a totem, a representation of the land of Canaan. And what do I mean by this? Well, in like fashion. Like Thanksgiving for us. We use a turkey. And it's a totem of our early colonists here in the United States. Now, you don't have to be an actual person that came by way of the Mayflower, do you? We come together as if we're all American citizens, and nobody questions that. And we celebrate the Thanksgiving together, even if our relatives didn't come by way of the Mayflower. What does that mean? That you don't have to be a Hebrew that came out of Egypt to celebrate the Passover. There are certain requirements. But just because we have a large number of Hebrews later on during the time period of the judges and Iron Age 1, the time period of the kings, maybe we could say, hey, how this happened? Because of population? True. But that doesn't mean that all these people came directly out of Egypt. And the Bible actually gives us a little text for this as well. And Moses said, Exodus chapter 11, Moses said, about midnight will Jehovah come out of the midst of Egypt, he will go out. And it says this actual text has to do with the death of the firstborn. You read it many times. And the firstborn of the Egyptians will die. And the firstborn of the maidservants will die. And even the firstborn of the cattle will die. Now, how is this prevented? Well, it's prevented because of the Passover blood. And it's the blood of the lamb, the blood of the lamb. Now, the lamb, if it's a tradition of, let's say, a totem of the land of Canaan, this is by way, you could say, entering of the Exodus tradition, the entering of the Exodus story, if you will. And they put, and they shall put or take the blood of the lamb and put it on two side posts and the lentil upon the house where they shall eat it. Just like we eat the turkey today, that celebrates the Thanksgiving of, you could say, our heritage of our land, that we have settled in the land. The pilgrims had a really tough first year. Remember that? And then they celebrated that they still exist. We're in the land. We inhabit it. We're here. We're still here today. And we celebrate that by eating the Thanksgiving Day turkey. In the same way, you might think, in the same way, in some similarities, we have the lamb representing the land of Canaan. Now, we have other traditions that follow because of the faith of Christianity. And I'm aware of that, too. OK. And they shall eat the flesh in that night and roast it with fire and also in leavened bread. With bitter herbs, they shall eat it. To remember, they came out of haste out of Egypt. They didn't have time to really cook. Here's a little traditional painting. Exodus chapter 12. This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat it. But every man's servant that is bought for money, when he has circumcised him, he shall eat it. A sojourner that is hired servant shall not eat it thereof. In other words, one of the requirements, if you want to eat the Passover, is that you have to be sacrificed. You have to have circumcision. Now, and the children of Israel sojourned from Ramses to Succoth, about 600,000. And they were on foot. And there's 600,000 men besides children. So this is going to lead us to a large population of 2.5 million. We talked about this before. That's an extremely high number. And some have actually looked at that word a thousand, the word thousand in Hebrew, meaning that the early traditional use of the word thousand did not necessarily mean a thousand people, but could mean a clan, a tent, a tribe. So when we look at that huge number and once again, we scratch our heads and say, hmm, 2.5, that's more than the total population of New Mexico today. We might have to go to Texas and get a few more people to join in on this exodus if we are to match the number. Makes it a little tough. All right. So. And Exodus chapter 13. And Jehovah went before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light and that they might go by day and by night. Now, how do you explain this? And this is tough. Some scholars use the volcanic eruption on the island of Thera or Santorini. It happened during the 17th, possibly 16th century. This would actually place us in the Hyksos period, which would be much, much earlier. A little bit too early. The island of Thera was colonized by Minoans, really ancient Greeks. OK. If this eruption happened during the 17th century, we're looking at 1645, 1615. And there's other evidence in Greenland because of the, you could say, the fallout from the volcanic eruption that possibly happened in around 1640. So these dates are very, very closely related, give or take 10 years. OK. If this is the case, this would put us into the Hyksos period. Definitely we had the time period of Joseph involved. So the idea of the volcanic eruption, the idea of water coming and going quite swiftly, probably because of a tsunami. Could this reflect the evidence of Thera? Possibly. Was it joined into the biblical text? You could say mixed in with the Exodus event. We don't know for sure. But I just want to make you aware of this, because if you're going to read scholarly text, they will include this and they will bring this to the forefront. And the waters returned and covered the chariots. And it actually states that even the Egyptians were floating ashore and the Hebrews saw the Egyptians floating ashore. Now, redaction in critical commentaries on the Bible. This is kind of interesting because it says that in Exodus, or excuse me, Numbers chapter 13 and verse 22, it actually mentions Tanis. And Tanis wasn't actually built until the time period of the 22nd dynasty, until, let's say, of the time of Shishak. So we're going to be around 922, a little bit before that BC. So what happens with Tanis is that around the Iron Age period, Iron Age 1, some of the structures built by Ramses and the traditional location of Ramses was moved to this location called Tanis. All right. Which means that when Tanis is used as the city of Ramses, this is during the Iron Age and it was a scribal construct. So Tanis today happens to be one of the largest archaeological sites in the Nile Delta. It's actually mentioned in Numbers 13, 22, Isaiah 19 and Ezekiel 30. And the Bible is called Zoan, so you got to look for Zoan instead of Tanis. Why is this kind of neat? Because here we have not just one or two bricks with the name of Ramses on it, but huge statues and obelisks. So it's understandable that a scribe during the Iron Age period, when he's describing the Exodus, would include Tanis because this has Ramses statues in that city that once was Ramses during the time period of the Exodus is long gone. So the Iron Age scribes believed that this location of Tanis to be the actual city of Ramses. The scriptures indicate the same thing. However, these texts were probably written during the Iron Age period by scribes during the monarchy. And then we think about the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant and what possibly happened to it. Maybe you've seen the Indiana Jones film that they take the actual Ark to Tanis. Maybe it's hidden away. Maybe it's not. In Exodus chapter 15, it says, And the people have heard and trembled, and they have actual pangs, have taken hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. Once again, Philistia, the Philistines are going to be there until around 1180 BC. This is almost 100 years later after the time period of the traditional Exodus. So actually, we have some kind of scribal intervention here. I got to make you aware of this in the text, because as academics, you're going to have to know this. All right. But we have some evidence that once again, they do come out of Egypt. The design of the Ark of the Covenant made out of acacia wood, then lined with gold, two cubits high, two cubits wide and half a cubit in length. Now, why is this kind of interesting that it had some carrying poles? Because they found identical carrying boxes in the tomb of King Tutankhamen of the 18th dynasty. Here you see the wooden box with the two carrying poles. Also, it says when they describe the the garb of the high priest, we have palm granites. Palm granites were symbolic of fertility. And in the Hebrew tradition, there's 613 seeds in a palm granite. And with 613 seeds, you have 613 laws in the Hebrew Torah. So it becomes very symbolic. The high priest wearing the palm granite, the palm granite being representation of the 613 laws. Once again, we are not looking at the Exodus and reading through it as you would in the Bible. We're looking at scholarly intervention to make you aware of some events within the text. I thank you very much for joining us. If you have any questions, contact Bible Interact, we'd be glad to answer your questions. Thank you very much. Bible Interact is a group of Bible scholars and biblical archaeologists who promote the Hebraic nature of scripture and view the two testaments as one unified message. They explain how they use a first century approach to searching the scriptures, and they share their methods and discoveries for discussion and dialogue. They invite your comments and participation on Bible Interact dot TV, where you can also find more teachings, self-study quizzes, webinars and interviews.