Timeline Tuesday: Ready for Exodus!

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Since I have been encouraging everyone to make a timeline as a visual and mathematical aid for understanding world history as detailed in the Bible I decided to take the task upon myself to reproduce the one my girls and I made in the early years of our homeschool. I wanted to show you just how long the lifespans were when the earth was young. I used the scale of 1 inch = 25 years just to make things easier when plotting the graphs on half-sheets of poster board. I did the math as far as I could based upon the information provided in Genesis before comparing my results with some of the better known works like Ussher's Annals of the World.*

One of my calculations was not coming out correctly and I could not figure where the problem was. Upon consulting a relatively new work (especially in comparison to Ussher who lived from 1581-1656) I found my error. Dr. Floyd N. Jones points out in his work, The Chronology of the Old Testament that Abraham was born 2008 year AM (anno mundi), or what I have been simply calling "years past creation" in my explanations and not in 1948 as I had calculated. This is because I had taken my information from Genesis 11:32 and had not compared it to Genesis 12:4, a difference of 60 years.

There are other places in scripture where this same type of miscalculation can occur but I had successfully found those. It was only this one that had eluded me. Abraham's father, Terah, was not 70 years old when Abraham was born but was 130. Terah was 70 years old when he became a father, but that would have been to one of Abraham's older brothers. Abraham was 75 years old when his father died at the age of 205.

One encounters the same thing when calculating Noah's sons. Genesis 5:32 makes it appear as though Shem, Ham, and Japheth were triplets when actually Shem was 2 years younger than his eldest brother.

Another interesting calculation is when one plots the events of Jacob's life. Did you realize that this mamma's boy probably didn't leave home until he was at least 70 years of age? Leah and Rachel were obviously young women, but their groom was no young man! Use the numbers given for Joseph in Egypt to help with the calculations. You'll find that Jacob was about 90 years old when Joseph was born. Scriptures tell us earlier that Jacob had served Laban 20 years before stealing away secretly with his wives, concubines, and children.

The information below was edited May 10, 2020.

This brings us to Exodus. There are two theories concerning the time of the Exodus. There are those who believe the Israelite family of slaves spent a full 400 years sojourn in Egypt. There are those who hold to the belief that the time that the Children of Israel beginning from when Joseph settled Jacob and his family into Egypt until Exodus of the slaves out of Egypt as led by Moses was not nearly that long. I hold to the latter belief. Moses tells us how old his grandpa(through his mother)/great-grandpa(through his father) Levi was when he died and we know that Levi was several years older than Joseph. Since we can calculate Joseph's date of death we certainly can extrapolate a bit to approximate dates of birth and death for Levi (who died when he was 137 years old). Levi, who was several years older than Joseph, outlived Joseph by 16 years. Moses also tells us how old his grandfather and father were when they died and how old he - Moses - was when God talked to him in the burning bush. It just doesn't add up to 400 years. However, if one goes back 400 years on the timeline from Moses' death (which would be the same year the Children of Israel went into the Promised Land) one finds herself at the time where God established His covenant with Abraham and told him that the 4th generation would leave Egypt. Let's count the generations in Egypt for Moses's all male line: 1. Levi; 2. Kohath; 3. Amram; 4. Moses. It works.

I consulted two books for an approximate time of the Exodus. One was Dr. Jones' book (mentioned above) and the other was Unwrapping the Pharoahs by John Ashton and David Down. Both works have independently come to the conclusion that the Children of Israel left Egypt for the Promised Land in the 15th century BC. Their calculations differ by 46 years, which is minor in the grand scheme of things. The reason this date is so important is that it is necessary to make the math work in I Kings 6:1 when it speaks of the building of Solomon's Temple.

Another thing that I found interesting is that both authors independently calculated that Joseph died 64 years before Moses was born. That's why there arose a Pharaoh that didn't know Joseph, and obviously didn't care about what he had done to save the Egyptians from starvation either. That's gratitude for you!

So if you are interested in dates, which I am, let's use Jones' dates for the death of Joseph and birth of Moses and lets use Ashton's names for the pharaohs in Egypt to set the stage for our study of Exodus.

Joseph died 1635 BC in Egypt
Levi died 1619 BC in Egypt - this is also the latest that Jochebed could be born. Unlike her brothers, she was born in Egypt.
Moses born 1571 BC in Egypt. His brother, Aaron, was born in 1574 BC because he was 3 years old when Moses was born.

PROBABLE PHARAOHS OF THE TIME (traditional Dynasties 12 and 13 in Egyptian history.)

Dynasty 12:
Sestrosis I - Pharoah during the years of feast and famine.
Amenemhet II
Sestrosis II
Sestrosis III - may be the last pharaoh who knew Joseph. He was a fierce warrior who had very little compassion for anyone. His son reigned after him and may have been just as fierce and uncaring.
Amenemhet III -  He had 2 daughters and no sons.
Sebeknefrure - The daughter of Amenemhet III who reigned well for 4 years after her father died. She may be the princess who found Moses in the river. There are mentions of Amenemhet IV but no signs that he ever reigned. Was this Moses? Sebeknefrure had no heir so

Dynasty 13;
Khasekemre-Neferhotep I - may have been the Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus. His mummy has never been found. He had a son named Wahneferhotep who just disappeared from Egyptian history without a trace. Neferhotep also seems to have been the last Pharaoh before the Hyksos conquered the Egyptians without a fight. It makes sense. Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the Red Sea. The people had been impoverished from the plagues and the spoils that the Hebrews took when they left Egypt. Add the fact that the first-born male from every Egyptian family, including Pharaoh's son,  had died in the 10th plague and you can see that the country was ripe for conquest.



Since this has turned into a lengthy discourse we'll save the introduction to the Gospel of Mark for next week.  In the meantime, stay current with your reading!


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