• Inerrancy and the Exodus
• Scripture vs. Archaeology
• Biblical Evidence for 1446 B.C.
• Biblical Evidence for the 13th Century B.C.
• Archaeological Evidence Confirming 1446 B.C.

When approaching the question of when exactly the biblical Exodus took place, I had to ask myself, “Why does it matter?” As long as we can trust that the Exodus did happen at some point in history, does it really matter what the actual date was?

I believe it is important for at least three reasons. First, so we can have an historical context to place the biblical account within for the sake of better understanding the text. This helps us to grasp what God intends from the text so that we may rightly apply it in our own lives. Second, it provides a more vivid, fixed, and certain historical setting for the biblical narrative to help lend credibility with unbelievers and critics who would readily relegate the story of the Exodus to the realm of myth and fantasy. Third, and most importantly, being able to date the Exodus is important because the inerrancy of the Bible is important.

§Inerrancy and the Exodus

To understand why the date of the Exodus is tied to the claim that the Bible is inerrant requires a bit of explanation. The Exodus account is mentioned in other places in Scripture, and while dates are not mentioned, lengths of time certainly are. If those lengths of time are viewed as round numbers, exact precision is not required. However, a discrepancy of 150-180 years cannot be so readily explained, and therefore calls the inerrancy of the text into question.

One instance of a length of time being specified is found in 1 Kings 6:1, which tells us that Solomon began building the temple 480 years after the people of Israel left the land of Egypt. Now, 480 could be a round number, but not quite so rounded as, say, 400 or 500 would be. There is wiggle-room for a difference of maybe 5 years more or less, such that it could have been between 475-485 years, rather than exactly 480, but it could not have been 430 years, as no one would round that number to 480, nor would it be legitimate to do so.

We are relatively certain that Solomon began building the temple in about 966 B.C. This is because 2 Chronicles 12:2-9 tells us that Shishak, Pharaoh in Egypt from 945-924 B.C., invaded Judah in the fifth year of Solomon’s son Rehoboam’s reign. Before Rehoboam succeeded his father, Solomon had reigned for 40 years, and he began building the temple in the fourth year of his reign. So there is only a period of 41 (40 + 5 - 4) or so years between the founding of the temple and Shishak’s invasion. The recods of this invasion indicate it occurred in 925 B.C., toward the end of Shishak’s reign. Subtracting 41 years from the date of Shishak’s invasion gives us the 966 B.C. (-925 - 41 = -966) date for the founding of the temple, and subtracting another 480 years from that date gives us 1446 B.C., or thereabouts, for the date of Israel leaving Egypt in the Exodus.

Yet there are many who argue that the Exodus occurred in sometime in the 13th century B.C. which was only about 300 years prior. I don’t know about you, but I would not consider it in any way acceptable to round 300-325 years up to 480. If the later date of between 1290-1270 B.C. is taken to be accurate in spite of this, then Bruce K. Waltke has this to say on the matter:

“Either the biblical prophet-historians have committed a historical blunder, and therefore the Bible is less than a completely trustworthy historical document on which man can rest his faith, or the numbers in the Bible must be interpreted as meaning something other than their face value.”

Or to say it another way, either the Bible is wrong about the 480 year figure, or that number doesn’t really doesn’t mean what it seems to mean. This calls into question either the inerrancy of Scripture, or the natural, grammatical historical, reading of the text. So, yes, the date of the Exodus is important indeed.

§Scripture vs. Archaeology

There are several ways one could go about investigating the date of the Exodus. For my purposes, we will assume that the Bible is accurate in everything it says, in the sense that it is intended to be understood, and it is simply a matter of interpreting the text properly. I readily recognize that this is a massive assumption that I have not proven in this paper. However, it is a subject that would require a separate paper to explore, and is therefore outside the scope of this publication. At this time I merely intend to prove that anyone who accepts the Bible as the inerrant Word of God will find the early date of the Exodus to be the only valid option.

Don’t worry, though. I am sure my time in seminary will afford me ample opportunity to write separately on the issue of inerrancy which we are here assuming. Stay tuned.

This means that the text itself will be our primary source of evidence for the date of the Exodus, with archaeological evidence providing support, rather than proof. In their introduction to the Old Testament, Raymond Dillard and Tremper Longman III explain the limited value of archaeological evidence by saying, “They are not brute facts with which the biblical material must conform and that can prove or disprove the Bible. Archaeology rather produces evidence that, like the Bible, Must be interpreted.”

That said, I hope to show both…

1. That the text of the Bible itself provides ample of evidence for the early date of the Exodus.
2. That the archaeological evidence fits with the early date, as well.

Meanwhile, the late date would require us to compromise our conviction regarding integrity of the biblical account.

§Biblical Evidence for 1446 B.C.

The first textual evidence is the passage 1 Kings 6:1 itself, which I have already mentioned. Proponents of the late date argue that this passage doesn’t really mean 480 years, but rather “a representative number to stand for 12 idealized generations of 40 years each.” These supposed twelve generations only being about 25 years in reality would mean that the Exodus occurred about 300 years before work on the temple began, giving a date of about 1260 B.C. However there is no indication in the passage or the surrounding context to suggest that 1 Kings 6:1 is talking about anything other than 480 years. Any attempt to make the 480 years amount to a shorter period of time is imposed upon the text in order to fit the conclusion that the Exodus must have occurred later.

Since we’re counting generations, another important textual consideration is 1 Chron 6:33-37, which tells us there were at least 18 generations between Korah in Moses’ time and Heman in David’s time, which would mean 19 generations between Moses and Solomon. The length of 480 years provides ample time for 19 generations of more than 25 years each. The later date of the Exodus, with its mere 324 years forces the length of these generations down to an average of only 17 years each, which is not likely.

The entire book of Judges provides another basis for critique of the late date, since adding together the length of time each judge served Israel amounts to just over 400 years. This can conceivably be reduced to the 350 years required for the early date of the Exodus, if we grant that some of the judges’ terms of service overlapped. However, the late date would require us to fit all of these judges’ terms into only 170 years, which is simply not possible.

The book of Judges also gives us an interesting length of time that can play a part in dating the Exodus, found in Judges 11:26. John MacArthur pointed to this text as evidence for the early date saying,

“Jephthah noted that, by his day, Israel had possessed Heshbon for 300 years. By calculating backward and forward from Jephthah, and taking into account different periods of foreign oppression, judgeships and kingships, the wilderness wanderings, and the initial entry and conquest of Canaan under Joshua, this amounts to 480 years and, thus, the early date is confirmed.”

We know that Jephthah’s time was about 1100 B.C., since he was two generations or so preceeding the first king of Israel, Saul. Remembering that Solomon’s reign began in 970 B.C., his father David reigned from 1010-970, and Saul reigned from 1050-1010. Two generations before him would have been right around 1100 B.C. for Jephthah’s time. If you subtract 300 years from then, you have Joshua conquering Heshbon, east of the Jordan, in about 1400 B.C.; well before the late date of the Exodus supposes Israel as having even left Egypt. Yet, it fits well with the early date, leaving time for 40 years of Israel wandering in the wilderness, to have them leaving Egypt in the 1440’s B.C.

§Biblical Evidence for the 13th Century B.C.

The above is quite compelling, in my opinion, but we can’t ignore the textual evidence that seems to support the late date for the Exodus. It comes down to one primary text, which I think is easily dealt with when compared with the weight of the testimony supporting the earlier date.

It is argued that Exodus 1:11 tells us the Israelites built the city of Raamses, and the argument is that this is referring to a city which was built by the Pharaoh Rameses II, who reigned in the 13th century B.C. But this is not solid ground to stand on. There is no need in the text to identify the city the Israelites built with the city Rameses II built, except for similarity in name. Remember that the Israelites settled in the land of Rameses in Genesis 47:11, which was long centuries before Rameses II’s time.

There is another problem with identifying the city of Rameses in Exodus 1:11 with Rameses II, having to do with the date of Moses’ birth. Moses was 80 when he led the people of Israel out of Egypt. If the late date of 1290-1270 is true, then Moses would have been born between 1370-1350 B.C., and the book of Exodus depicts the people of Israel building the city of Raamses at or before the time of Moses’ birth. This would mean they built the city named after the Pharaoh Rameses II at least 35 years before he was Pharaoh, since his reign did not begin until 1279 B.C.

§Archaeological Evidence Confirming 1446 B.C.

This brings us to the archaeological evidence for the early date. Since we have seen that the evidence provided by Scripture itself is overwhelmingly in favor of the early date, our concern is to see if the archaeological evidence supports or contradicts our conclusions. This is not a matter of finding proof for what the Bible says, but of finding corroborative evidence.

That is exactly what we do find, and one of the places archaeologist have looked is the ancient cities that Joshua conquered in Canaan. If the evidence supports a conquest of Canaan around 1400 B.C., then that would lend credence to an Exodus in the 1440’s. Samples of pottery from that time period suggest that another culture moved into the area about that time. Since the Israelites only destroyed a select few cities, and simply took over the rest (Joshua 11:13), including all of their goods, this would make sense. Jericho and Hazor, two cities which the Israelites are said to have burned, (Joshua 6:24 & 11:13) show evidence of having been burned during that time period. Hazor is especially notable, since there is evidence it was destroyed two other times which could give evidence to the later date of the Exodus, which favors the last of the three, except that evidence shows that it was never rebuilt after this third burning, yet Judges 4:2 tells us that the king of Canaan at the time reigned at Hazor. If Hazor was destroyed by the Israelites when Joshua conquered Canaan, and not rebuilt afterward, then the king of Canaan in Judges could not have ruled from there, unless he enjoyed ruling from an ash heap. However, if it was destroyed by the Israelites at an earlier date, rebuilt and then destroyed permanently much later, then that would allow for the account in Judges.

Another significant piece of archaeological evidence is the “Israel Stele,” or “Merneptah Stele.” This inscribed stone tablet includes the Pharaoh Merneptah’s account of his conquests in the land of Canaan at the time, which is reliably placed as being written in 1208 B.C. In this account, he is depicted as defeating Israel during his conquests in Canaan saying, “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more.” However, if Israel really did leave Egypt in the Exodus during Ramses II’s reign, around 1270 B.C., they would not have even been in the land of Canaan yet, let alone have had time to establish a national presence in the land. As archaeologist and pastor Bryan Windle notes:

It is doubtful that there would be enough time from 1270 BC to 1208 BC to account for the Exodus, the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the seven-year Conquest of Canaan, the settlement of the tribes in their territories, and the establishment of a national presence in the land, all before Merneptah claims to have conquered the Israelites. Merneptah’s Canaanite campaign instead likely dates to the time of the Judges, when the nation of Israel was already settled in Canaan.

Another thing we can look for as evidence for the dating of the Exodus is an economic decline in Egypt, having lost so much slave labor all at once. We do see exactly this after the reign of Amenhotep II in the 15th century B.C. Indeed, before the end of his reign, Amenhotep II led a raid into Palestine to bring an unusually large number of slaves back home to Egypt. His predecessor, Thutmose III had made similar raids in which he boasted of having taken 5,903 slaves on his first campaign. Amenhotep II had also made previous raids in which he said he took 2,214 captives home as slaves. In the raid he made after the early date of the Exodus, though, he claims to have taken 101,128 captives as slaves. Why such a drastically higher number than other raids? It would make sense if he needed to replenish as many of the slaves lost in the Exodus as he could.

To round out the archaeological evidence, the Amarna letters should be mentioned. In these letters, the Canaanite kings request aid from the Egyptian pharaoh against a people they call the ‘Apiru. Now, this was a term used to refer to a social class known as nomadic raiders and plunderers. Considering the amount of trouble these particular ‘Apiru were causing the Canaanite kings of the time, and our suggested date of the early conquest of Canaan by the nomadic Israelites, it is possible that the Canaanites referred to the Israelites with this derogatory term. C. De Wit, who believed that most of the archaeological evidence favors the later date, nevertheless said that while there is no direct correlation between the ‘Apiru and the Hebrews, the Hebrews could be identified as ‘Apiru. In other words, Hebrews may have been considered ’Apiru, but ’Apiru are not necessarily always and only Hebrews. This is probably the least substantial of all the archaeological evidence presented, but it does seem to fit with the time table, and by no means contradicts the biblical account.

So we see that the Biblical evidence weighs heavily on the side of those who would place the date of the Exodus at 1446 B.C. while the archaeological evidence certainly allows for this assertion and even provides some strong support. The late date, however, is hard-pressed to try and fit into the biblical timeline, despite some archaeological support it has on its side. Archaeology, with its heavy reliance on subjective interpretation, should not be used as the primary basis for the date of the Exodus, especially when we have the sure and steadfast testimony of the Word of God to guide us.

*I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. (Genesis 20:2-3)