The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and BabyloniaPinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Religion
The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia
Pinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Having made these statements, he proceeds to examine the whole question.
He asserts the correctness of the view, that Amosis, the founder of the
eighteenth dynasty, was the prince who knew not Joseph. The first king of
this new dynasty, he calculates, came to the throne two years after
Joseph’s death. With regard to the reign of Rameses II., he refers to the
festival of the Sothis period which was celebrated in the thirtieth year
of his reign. Starting from this period,(76) which, according to Oppolzer,
was renewed in the year 1318 B.C., he calculates that the first year of
Rameses II. was 1347 B.C., and that the Exodus took place in his
thirteenth year, _i.e._ 1335 B.C.
According to the _Pirke di Rabbi Elieser_, Dr. Mahler says, the departure
of the Israelites is said to have taken place on a Thursday. “This view is
also held in the Talmud (cf. Sabbath 87B), and the _Shulchan-Aroch_ also
maintains that _the 15th Nisan, the day of the Exodus, was a Thursday_.
This all agrees with the year B.C. 1335, for in that year the 15th Nisan
fell on a Thursday, and indeed on _Thursday the 27th of March (Julian
calendar)_.”
If we accept the theory that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Exodus,
and that the Exodus took place in 1335 B.C., then Moses, who was eighty
years old at the time of the Exodus, must have been born in the year 1415
B.C., _i.e._ the fifteenth year of Amenophis III. Now the chief wife of
this ruler was queen Teie (see p. 275), a woman who was certainly of
foreign, probably Asiatic, race. In all probability, therefore, Teie,
being an alien and of a different religion from the Egyptians, was not by
any means in favour with the Egyptian priesthood, however much the Pharaoh
may have delighted in her. The daughter of such a woman, as will easily be
understood, would find little or no opposition to the adoption by her of a
child of one of the Hebrews, an Asiatic like her mother. This, of course,
would explain excellently how it was that Moses came to be adopted and
educated by an Egyptian princess at her father’s court, and that he had no
real sympathy with the people among whom he lived, though it raises
somewhat of a difficulty, for it is hard to understand how the Egyptian
king, sympathizing, as we may expect him to have done, with Asiatics,
should have ordered the destruction of their children. Nevertheless,
circumstances may easily have arisen to cause such a decree to be issued.
Another difficulty is, to explain who the people hostile to Moses were,
who in the thirteenth year of Rameses II. died (Exod. iv. 19). This has
generally been understood to be the king and one or more of his advisers,
though this objection, like the other, really presents no difficulty
worthy of the name, as there was no indication that the king was included.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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