Bible Chronology
Not the Eighteenth Dynasty
In 1 Kings 6:1 we are told that Solomon started building his famous temple in Jerusalem in the 4th year of his reign, which was exactly 480 years after the Children of Israel came out of Egypt. We have already seen that Solomon came to the throne in 971 BC; the fourth year of his reign, allowing for his accession year, would therefore be 966 BC. Counting back inclusively means that the Children of Israel came out of Egypt in 1445 BC.
That seems very plain and simple, but unfortunately there are problems, both with the Biblical chronology and with Egyptian history. In the first place, what does the Bible author mean by "when the Children of Israel came out of Egypt"? Does he mean "when they left Egypt" or does he mean, "when they arrived in Palestine"? There are forty years between the two events!
Most scholars take it to mean "when they left Egypt", so I'm going to work with that, but bear in mind that this is yet another place where there is uncertainty.
The second thing we need to ask is, How accurate and reliable is this figure? Some have pointed out that 480 years is a suspiciously round figure; it is twelve times 40 years and not only is twelve significant in Israel's history - there were twelve tribes, after all - but 40 years was the common idea of a generation, so it could be that the figure is a mythical one meaning no more than twelve generations or even an ideal number of generations.
It would be quite easy to dismiss these quibbles as supposition and guesswork, the product of doubters and sceptics, were it not for one inconvenient fact: in the book of Judges we have the record of all those who ruled in Israel in the period between Joshua and Saul, the first king of Israel. These records commonly take a form like this: "The children of Israel rebelled against the Lord and He sent certain enemies to oppress them for twenty years. Then the Lord raised up Joe Bloggs and he delivered Israel and the land had peace for forty years."
| Judge | Oppressor | Period of oppression | Period of peace | Elapsed |
| Othniel | Cushanrishathaim | 8 | 40 | 48 |
| Ehud | Eglon | 18 | 80 | 146 |
| Deborah | Jabin | 20 | 40 | 206 |
| Gideon | Midianites | 7 | 40 | 253 |
| Abimelech | 3 | 256 | ||
| Tola | 23 | 279 | ||
| Jair | 22 | 301 | ||
| Jephthah | Ammonites | 18 | 6 | 325 |
| Ibzan | 7 | 332 | ||
| Elon | 10 | 342 | ||
| Abdon | 8 | 350 | ||
| Samson | Philistines | 40 | 20 | 410 |
If you add all these periods of oppression and peace together, you come up with a total of 410 years, which seems to fit in nicely with the 480 years. Unfortunately there are a number of problems and uncertainties with this number.
At the start of the period you have 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. This is followed by an uncertain number years - perhaps twenty or thirty - during which Joshua, Moses' successor, ruled the Israelites. He was followed by a generation of another twenty to forty years before the first of the judges.
Then there is the assumption that each of the judges succeeded his predecessor or was immediately followed by another period of oppression. Surely it is more likely that a judge ruled over Israel for the stated period of peace, then he died and there was a period of years while the Children of Israel strayed once more and then God brought another oppressor on them to punish them. There might even be a whole generation between the death of a judge and the start of more oppression, just as there was between the death of Joshua and the first period of oppression.
Then there is the uncertainty regarding Samson: we are told that the Philistines oppressed the land for 40 years and then we are told how an angel of the Lord appeared to Samson's mother. Does that mean 40 years until the angel appeared or 40 years until Samson grew up and began to judge Israel? If the former, then there were at least 15-20 years before Samson was old enough to get married and to start his battles against the Philistines.
At the end of the period of the judges you have an unknown number of years between Sampson, the last of the judges, and Samuel, who anointed Saul the first king of Israel. According to some versions of the Bible, Saul reigned for 40 years, which introduces all sorts of difficulties that are solved if we accept Josephus' figure of twenty years. David reigned for 40 years and then, at the end of the period you have Solomon who ruled Israel for 4 years before work on the temple started.
Adding all these figures together you get 40 years of wandering in the desert, 410 years for the judges, at least 64 years for Saul, David and the first four years of Solomon. This adds up to 514 years and we still haven't taken account of the time of Joshua's rule, of the generation that followed him and of the period between Sampson and Samuel! In other words, 514 is the minimum figure - but the total given in the book of Kings is 480 years!
Most Biblical scholars attempt to preserve the 480 figure by assuming that some of the judges were merely local rulers who did not govern the whole of Israel but only a small part of it. There may have been two or even more judges ruling at the same time.
On the other hand you may wish to ignore the 480 years figure and take the judges as consecutive; in that case you can push the Exodus back to 1520 BC or as much as a century or two earlier, but in either case you run into problems with Egyptian history.
Whether you use 1520 BC or 1445 BC, you have the Exodus taking place right in the middle of the Glorious Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, the age of Tutankhamun and the Valley of the Kings, Karnak Temple and the wonders of Luxor. This was one of the most powerful dynasties Egypt ever knew and it is also one of the best known from the historical point of view. The records are so complete that at certain times it is possible to give a day-by-day account of what went on in the royal household.
The uncomfortable fact is that the Exodus simply could not have happened during the Eighteenth Dynasty. There is no year when the land was devastated by plagues, no year when a large number from the workforce suddenly disappeared from the economy, none of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs were drowned in the Red Sea, and at no time during this dynasty was Egypt so weak that two million slaves could escape.
In other words, the Exodus simply could not have happened during the Eighteenth Dynasty.
