Charles F Aling

The relationship between Egyptian and Biblical history is one of the great questions of both disciplines. After all, the great event of Jewish history is the Exodus, and the Exodus was from Egypt and involves... some Pharaoh. Some unnamed Pharaoh. Some very hard to identify Pharaoh.

So there is a definite need for books like this one, trying to connect the two. Sometimes we can do it pretty accurately -- we can be confident, e.g., that the Pharaoh Shishak was the same as the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshonk. And the Pharaoh Neco of the end of the book of Kings is Neco II.

Except -- both of those two are after 1000 B.C.E., the cutoff for this book. This book is primarily about the contacts between Egypt and the Jews prior to the period of the monarchy and the events covered in the historical books (Samuel, Kings, Chronicles). The matters covered are primarily Abraham's sojourn in Egypt, Joseph's arrival there, and the Exodus.

And that is a problem, because the Bible tells us so little about Egypt itself in that period. We have no name for any of these Pharaohs. We have little information about their society. All we have are a few chronological pegs, which depend largely on the length of the period of the Judges plus the reign of Saul.

And that isn't enough. We cannot say with any confidence who was Joseph's Pharaoh, or the Pharaoh of the Oppression, or the Pharaoh of the Exodus. In fact, we have at least a century's swing on all of these monarchs.

This book acknowledges that -- sort of. Attention is paid to the known facts of Egyptian history as discovered in non-Biblical sources and by archaeology. But the clear attempt is to make all these conform, somehow, to a very strict reading of the Biblical text. The result has much, much more Bible in it than History. If you are convinced the Bible is literally accurate, it may be very comforting. If you want to determine the truth as best you can, it may not be very convincing.… (altro)