Actual EVIDENCE for the Exodus (with Titus Kennedy)

is there actually any evidence for the exodus how might we respond to the claim that we frequently hear that there's no evidence for the exodus well my guest today dr titus kennedy is an archaeologist he's an author of a great book called unearthing the bible that we're going to get into today and he's a professor with me at biola university and he takes a contrarian position on the exodus and thinks there's some very good evidence we're going to unpack today uh dr kennedy thanks for coming back to the show thanks for having me back sean absolutely well let's just jump right in there's so much we can we can talk about here and i want to know from you first what is the common view among modern historians and archaeologists about the exodus and the subsequent wandering in the desert well today the vast majority of scholars in many different fields would view the exodus as mythical and so they're saying it basically it never happened you know some of them might talk about oh there's a historical memory of some sort of group of people migrating but essentially what's found in the bible in the book of exodus they're saying that didn't happen the main reason i think really falls into two different categories one is coming from an ideological or a scholarly perspective going back to the documentary hypothesis and that that's the whole idea about what are the sources for the hebrew bible and when were they written and who wrote those and essentially it's saying that the the hebrew bible especially the earlier books were written much later than they claimed to be by anonymous authors and that a lot of it was just propaganda so they're saying it's it's unhistorical and that's the the schematic that they're looking at when they're looking at these early biblical stories and so they're presupposing essentially that they shouldn't be historical even now that came about partly as a result of the lack of archaeological evidence uh when this was this theory really came about was in the 19th century uh when it came to fruition so to speak people had ideas before but then if we look even later up to the mid 20th century we're also seeing a lack of clear archaeological evidence for the exodus that late you know into the 1950s and so and then when scholars are assessing this they're of course they have professors who came from before them they're looking at articles and books that were published earlier and they're saying where is the evidence for that and so it was essentially decided in academia and it's a settled question and so very few people are really looking into is there new evidence for the exodus and and what may have been found within recent decades that could help us to answer that question that's really helpful to say it's a matter of philosophical approach and consensus but as you argued we're going to get into it seems that the tide may be shifting at least in terms of the available evidence that's been found now as we start tell us what position you take on the exodus and why i take the position that the exodus was an historical event and i do so because for my investigation and investigations of many colleagues and other scholars who i haven't met that i've read or listened to they have uncovered and i have looked at what seems to be evidence for components of the exodus story you know no we're not going to cover or be able to connect every single passage in the exodus story to archaeological evidence but there is a framework and there are many specifics also that i think that we now have evidence for and to me that's really compelling and i think it supports the view that this ancient text is telling a story of something that actually happened i'm looking forward to getting into some of these pieces that tell a story that supports the exodus in your view but first off i think a question is helpful for people and myself is like what kind of evidence should we expect for an event like the exodus roughly three 000 plus years ago yeah and that's a great question because people need to be going into this with the proper expectations and what we should expect is very minimal archaeological evidence of an event like this because we need to look at it in broader terms forget about it as a bible story just think about it as some event in history well what is it we have an ethnic group living in egypt who are part of a larger slave population who then leave the country during a period of calamities and they show up in the east you know east of there in in canaan and they settle there and so if we're thinking about what kind of archaeological evidence is going to be left behind this uh partial slave population that exits the country there really shouldn't be much now we have other material in the exodus story locations and people and some events that you know we might more plausibly expect to uncover something about those geographic places those names or officials but in terms of the overarching story we really shouldn't expect to find much of anything and it really shouldn't be surprising actually if we found nothing it was 3500 years ago roughly you know over 3000 years ago you just don't find so many details of archaeological evidence for migrations so if we found nothing it wouldn't mean that it was false but in fact we have positive evidence to make this case we're going to get into now how much you make of the point that in sense of we wouldn't expect to find a lot because if this event happened as is described in exodus it'd be pretty embarrassing and humiliating for the pharaoh of that day to be decimated by a group of slaves and to lose slaves uh how much do do you how much credence do you give to that point because that seems to even lower the bar even further this is something that egyptologists would tell you that the ancient egyptians in their official or royal annals did not record their losses or their embarrassments and so if that is the kind of event that we're looking for we're not going to find it in inscribed into the walls of the temple that some pharaoh had commissioned to talk about events during his reign that's just not gonna happen and that's fairly typical of ancient cultures they didn't record their losses and their embarrassments at least not in the official records but as you said earlier and i reiterated an absence of evidence in this type of situation does not mean that it didn't happen now we can't demonstrate that it happened if we have an absence of evidence but we also can't demonstrate that it didn't happen just because we haven't yet found something now we have you have this what's called a point a to point b argument which we're going to get into but a couple questions first before we jump in again that i think will be helpful sometimes claims are made that the population figures in exodus and numbers of the 100 thousands are not translated correctly and the real number should be in the tens of thousands what do you make of that idea is it possible is it probable or unlikely so it's first of all it's it's plausible based on the options we have for translating this particular hebrew word and and if we look at all of the different numbers connected to the exodus population and those various passages then it's it's very plausible there's really only one passage that is a serious problem but when we look at things like archaeological demography so studying ancient populations through archaeology and we look at other ancient sources that discuss this question or the population of the hebrews at that time such as in menetho or in josephus all of that data suggests that it was a much smaller population like around 100 000 or less people and logistically that makes a lot more sense too so i think that that suggestion is plausible i think that it's even likely and i think there are some strong arguments that that can be made to demonstrate that from a variety of uh different types of evidence so if that were the case then the common translations in the english bible that has hundreds of thousands might be mistaken and lead to different expectations in terms of the archaeological evidence we would find is that correct right yeah absolutely and that is a component of the story that has been criticized archaeologically just on the basis again of logistics of things like how could that many people have moved from here to there all the sacrifices also you know the population of egypt overall at the time these things just not lining up it caused a real problem for many scholars and then resulted in them just throwing out the exodus story because they look at specific sections like this and they say that doesn't make any sense so you know the whole story must not have a lot of credence well there's also a big debate about the dating of the exodus itself can you tell us which position you take on the dating of the exodus and why would date the exodus to the 15th century bc and in egyptian terms this would be during the 18th dynasty now i do do so for two major reasons the first is the chronological information that we get in the hebrew bible i i take those specific numbers that are given as real numbers rather than figurative or idealized types of numbers we have passages like first kings 6 1 that tells us in the fourth year of solomon's reign in the month of ziv and then it says it was the 480th year after the israelites came up out of egypt so it gets into some really detailed numbers and i would then say all right well let's look 479 years earlier other people take different views on that they look at it as 12 idealized generations of 40 years and we have other passages though like judges 11 26 that says the israelites have been in the land for about 300 years in the time of jephthah which would be about 1100 bc okay well we could also with a different hermeneutic say again oh that's just uh i that's just an idealized number of figurative number and even in first chronicles where it talks about 19 generations between moses and solomon which fits really well with the 15th century bc idea they might also say again this is just some kind of uh figurative genealogy that's not meant to be taken exact like that so i don't think that we can solve it hermeneutically we're going to always be running around each of the circles but what we can do then is evaluate the archaeological evidence for these different chronological frameworks and see which is the one that seems to yield the the archaeological evidence for the exodus or the or the best uh most clear evidence and i would say the 18th dynasty does and that's what we can look at today well some of the facts we're getting into are just fascinating the first time i learned some of this but i want to make sure audience sees that your dating is based on biblical passages like first kings six when the temple is born temple is made etc dating back to the exodus itself and extra biblically some of the facts we're going to look at you think line up nicely and tell us there's good reason to believe the biblical story of the exodus taken straight forward happened now walk us through and then then after this one we're going to jump right into particular evidence but explain your approach to this because when people are looking at the evidence for the exodus they approach it with a different methodology your methodology is very helpful and you kind of call it a point a to a point b argument explain so if we take it down to the most basic level the exodus story is a movement of some people from point a to point b we have hebrews living in egypt prior to time one okay that would be the exodus and then we have hebrews settled in canaan after time one and so they've they were here and then they moved here and we have a chronological framework for that so if we have evidence of hebrews living in egypt prior to the exodus and then evidence of hebrews popping up in canaan after the exodus that is the general story that we've got and you know hopefully we would at least be able to demonstrate those two things otherwise we really can't say that we have archaeological or historical evidence for the exodus we just say we have an ancient text that tells us so we're not looking for a particular text that just gives us everything we're piecing together the time frame and the events and we find these kind of puzzle pieces that fit the narrative and support the biblical account as a whole is kind of this methodology which makes a lot of sense so let's start with point a so to speak do we have reason to believe that the hebrews were actually living in egypt the time that the book of exodus would describe that they were there we do and we could look at a few different components of this argument i would start more broadly with is there evidence that semites were living in what the bible calls the land of goshen prior to the exodus that is the northeast nile delta region we even have the name goshen or or something very similar to it found in a 19th dynasty egyptian text that puts it in that region so we know it's the right area and it was an ancient name and as far as semites living there yes definitely we have a huge amount of evidence it's several different archaeological sites like tele-dabba which is a very important site we've got tel ritaba we've got telemass kuda we tell yahudia so these are all sites where we have semites living during what is called the second intermediate period and 18th dynasty in some of those sites also now that is the pre-exodus period and that evidence consists of things like specific types of pottery and weapons uh burials that were typical of people from canaan not from egypt gods deities and things like that were imported we even have inscriptions with semitic names found in these places at that time so that idea is fine uh egyptian artwork shows immigration and texture as immigration into egypt from canaan so that was being our our hottest type of evidence okay so point a pre-exodus time we find semitic people and tell us why you made the distinction between semites and the hebrews so semites is the broader group designation roughly we might call that people who spoke an ancient semitic language so this would include everybody from canaan essentially and within canaan at that time you would have had different tribal groups and different clans and families well the hebrews came from one family right so they eventually became their own tribal group but they're still semites so we we just needed to see is there evidence for that type of people living in egypt before but we can get more specific than that and we can look at is there evidence of hebrews living in egypt not just general semites well let's do that and i think the papyrus brooklyn helps us answer this question and in particular uh not only semites but hebrew people at least those with hebrew names as slaves is that right yeah that's right this is an incredibly important artifact in my opinion at least for establishing that hebrews lived in egypt prior to the exodus and that's because we have on papyrus brooklyn this list of servants in egypt from about the 17th century bc and many of the names of these servants were semitic names and by the way these these people had their original name changed into an egyptian name just like happened to joseph but even uh in more detail some of these semitic names are actually names that we find for hebrews in the bible so most of them are feminine names so we're going to be looking at some of these are feminine versions of male names we're familiar with but feminine versions of names like asher and issachar and jacob we also have the name shifra which appears in exodus chapter one that's the name of one of the hebrew midwives we've got a compound name with david we've got a compound name with eve or hayah and then we even have someone's name that was apparently hebrew that's how it's it's transliterated at least in egyptian hieroglyphs so this seems to me really strong evidence for hebrews living in egypt prior to the time of the exodus because you really can't get more specific than names that are used by a particular ethnic group uh we can't say that like this pottery form was only used by the hebrews prior to the x's that just doesn't work with material culture so if unless we had a text that was saying the songs of jacob were here in you know we the next best thing is biblical hebrew names of people who are servants there prior to the exodus so when was this written and this presumably lines up with the chronology that you're laying out right yeah this dates to about the 17th century bc so it's in this time called the second intermediate period it's a little murky chronologically but we can put it within that century basically so we're talking about 200 plus years before the exodus something like that okay so point a in the pre-exodus era we have evidence for semites non-egyptians from canaan in the area and then as we get to the period of the exodus uh dating at least around that time we have evidence of hebrew names and being kept as slaves is that our two components so far is that fair yeah we we can look at the slavery evidence that even goes beyond this list of servants because we have a variety of egyptian texts and different egyptian artwork that also demonstrates that semites or what they often called asiatics were being used for slave labor specifically in the 18th dynasty that the beginning of that dynasty is really when that exploded and that is something that also i think fits perfectly with the exodus story so is there evidence archaeological evidence that slaves were forced to work such as constructing buildings making bricks as the exodus story reports and what would that evidence be yeah absolutely probably one of the best known and really a great visual comes from the tomb of this official wreck mira and on part of the walls there there's a scene in which it shows foreign slaves some of whom are semitic making mud bricks and then carrying these bricks over and then constructing buildings but we also know that this happened from other egyptian texts there's a one of the hermitage papyri that also talks about immigrant people semis being forced into public building projects so we we definitely know that was going on just like the exodus talks about and is this found and i i'm afraid i might mispronounce it but the louvre or lovre leather roll does that support this case as well it does that one specifically looks at mud brick making and quotas so that comes from the 19th dynasty just after this where i would place the exodus period although some would put it in that that time and this talks about how a group of slaves was no longer had straw to use in the making of their mud bricks which is really essential component to help keep it together and as a result they didn't meet their quota so the quota is stated then it says bricks they brought they failed to do that and and because of it they were beaten now if we go to the book of exodus we see the same things happen the the israelites were part of the labor force that was supposed to make mud bricks and then they weren't given any more straw and they couldn't make their quota and as a result they got punished they got beatings for it so exactly the same historical context is happening there okay i don't want people to miss that we've got good evidence archaeological evidence outside the bible for semitic people in the area of egypt before the exodus we have hebrew names of people that date to the time of the exodus evidence that they were made make bricks with quotas and buildings just as we see in the exodus story now you have this other component you've talked about that fascinated me i never heard this before it was called the wane of the heart what is that and how does it allude to the exo story uh presumably in terms of pharaoh's heart being hardened so the weighing of the heart was a process in egyptian theology that one had to go through in order to make it to paradise in the afterlife and this this process is shown on a lot of ancient egyptian artwork including going back to the time of the exodus and the basic scene would be that there are these scales and on one side of the scale you have the feather of truth and then it's weighed against the deceased's heart and if the heart is too heavy then they don't go to paradise now in the egyptian viewpoint the more you would sin the heavier your heart would become so if we go and look at moses's discussions with pharaoh we see this talk about hardening of the heart right well if you look at it in hebrew there's actually two different words that are used so it talks about how pharaoh made his own heart heavy which by by implication is that he is sinning and sinning by opposing yahweh and then the other component of that is that it says that god strengthened pharaoh's heart basically so that he could make it through the plagues so egyptians or people from that time period israelites presumably too they would understand exactly what was being said theologically that pharaoh is sinning making his heart heavier and he is not going to make it to paradise because of that okay so this point we have he we have the hebrew people in egypt during the time of the exodus as slaves uh making bricks etc but then you talk about what you call the possibility of an egyptian remembrance or record of the plagues what's called the admonitions of an egyptian sage but more commonly as far as i understand it the ipad were papyrus what is this and how might it help us in understanding the case for the exodus so this is an egyptian papyrus that dates to the 13th century bc at least the copy that we have there's only one copy known in existence today it was composed sometime before that so before the 13th century bc and the author his name was ipower so that's why it's often called the ipo or papyrus now most scholars put the composition pretty early like at least the second intermediate period some would even put it in the middle kingdom in the past some even pushed it farther back but if we look at details of the linguistics some of the words and phrases that are used there they only come into use in the 18th dynasty and so it looks more like it was composed in the 18th dynasty or at least rewritten with the language at that time now the content is something that got people interested in this text in terms of connecting it to the exodus because in general it's a poem that is talking about destruction and death throughout the land of egypt but but there are some really interesting lines in there like the river has turned to blood so the nile river is turned to blood it's all throughout the land of egypt and that you know people reading that they just immediately think oh yeah that was like the exodus story and so that's where the connection initially came in but if you read through the text there are a variety of different components that have parallels in the exodus story and and this is not just some crazy ideas right the the foremost scholar in the world on this papyrus actually says in his book on it that he notes there are linguistic and thematic parallels between what ipperwar's writing and the exodus story or the exodus plagues but he says because neither text is writing about an historical event they can't be talking about the same thing gotcha so that's that's the general view but there there are things in there like the sun or the power of the sun god ra not being seen uh you know the darkness the the blood as i mentioned megan pestilence throughout the land grain being destroyed uh some kind of disease causing physical disfigurement and pain all these different people are dying mourning uh rebellion against the sun god the the absence of the egyptian gods the pharaoh not doing his job and then uh gold silver and jewelry being in the possession of the slaves so these are all things that we see in the exodus story and those parallels i think are very powerful uh obviously we do have linguistic and thematic parallels but if the chronology could line up and they're talking about historical events then i think what we have here is a poetic version from from an egyptian not the royal annals talking about that time of exodus so this is admittedly built on some debate about the dating of it and the interpretation so it's a possibility but maybe just a strong possibility you would say for an egyptian record in a more poetic way that seems to match up so we wouldn't expect this but i guess you would say this is another interesting piece of the puzzle that adds to the cumulative case that makes it more likely is that fair yeah yeah i think it's plausible and i think it's an interesting text that we need to look at and consider uh it is it's again it's not an official royal document it's the work of a public or a bard so it's gonna be a little bit different than when we're reading the pharaoh's animals but it we also couldn't say that this is definitive evidence again like you said there are debates there's different interpretations about the time of composition and if it's talking about historical events so if your chronology is is correct which pharaoh would have ruled during this time and is there any evidence that ties this pharaoh to the exodus uh i would take the position that the pharaoh at the time of the exodus was almond hotep was second and i do believe that we have several at least pieces of circumstantial evidence that connect this pharah to the exodus there's there's no smoking gun so to speak with an inscription of him talking about hebrew slaves exiting but there are several components of the exodus story that we see illustrated during his reign that you know as one thing we could say that's just a coincidence but as several it really got to get us thinking this seems to line up this could be the guy well let's talk about a few of those i know you've hinted at one is his the character what we know from the exo story and externally from other writings about this pharaoh how does the character help with this i think the character helps with it because we see in the exodus story that the pharaoh is depicted as extremely arrogant and stubborn and amenhotep is exactly that kind of pharaoh he even wrote in his own text that he was the greatest king that had ever existed and then he talks about crazy feats like he could shoot arrows through the thick bronze target which physically just not possible or or he could row a boat by himself faster than a whole crew of sailors he was at the head of the army supposedly killing all of his enemies and the foreign princes by himself so he really seemed to be compensating for something and incredibly confident in himself and as a result you know most egyptologists they see the things that he talks about and he writes about himself and they just say you know this guy liked to brag and this stuff is propaganda but it really does at least fit the psychological profile so the psychology matches up what about archaeologically you've talked about what's called the memphis steely of amenhotep so amenhotep ii he had what seems like two military campaigns one was at the beginning of his reign and one was a few years in about year nine so in year nine of his reign he talks about how he went into canaan and he essentially did a slave raid he took back all of these people as prisoners to be used as slaves in fact if you total them up it's about a hundred and one thousand slaves that he supposedly takes back and he says he put back over a thousand chariots and over 13 000 weapons of war so if we're looking at the exodus happened just before this and they lost a big component of their slave population and they lost all their chariots and they lost a bunch of soldiers they need to resupply and egyptologists look at this text and they say again this is exaggeration it's some propaganda he didn't take that many people or all that stuff probably but you know whether he did or not what the text demonstrates i think is that he wants to show people that he has done this so if those events happen it would really make sense that he wants to put this out there for everybody in egypt to see guys i fixed the problem i got some new slaves for us i got chariots i got weapons we're gonna be okay what about moses serving in the court when he's younger and then you know what is it 40 years later comes back and there's a new pharaoh does that chronology match up i i think that is a vastly under appreciated and overlooked component of the story so we have as he said moses he kills the egyptian he flees into the wilderness he's there for 40 years then god tells him hey the pharaoh who is pursuing you has died you can go back to egypt now well that seems to indicate that the pharaoh who was in power when moses left continued to rule for those 40 years and so we're essentially looking for the pre-exodus pharaoh who has a reign of 40 or more years now there are hardly any pharaohs in egyptian history who who rule more than 40 years one of the few happens to be the father of amenhotep ii who was in power 54 years so i think that is something that lines up really nicely and again it's circumstantial but we don't have many options at all in terms of where that could be placed in egyptian history that's amazing like i realize people are going to assess this evidence differently based on their expectations their understanding of scripture and history but to me this is more than i would have expected as you piece these parts together that fit the story of the exodus now this next one we're going to talk about when i read it i was unaware of this and kind of blow blown away that you talk about evidence for the plague involving the death of the firstborn and in particular the death of the son of pharaoh in what's called i believe the dream steely talk about that yes so the dream steely was situated between the paws of the sphinx so everybody knows about the sphinx that giza and this this came about what seems to be as a result of the next pharaoh so thutmose iv he was the son of amenhotep ii who became the next bear he seems to be needing divine endorsement to legitimize his role as the next king so he writes this text and places it there and he he gives us this whole story where he talks about one day he was out hunting and he took a nap by the sphinx and the god of the sphinx came to him and said hey if you clear the sand away from me i'm going to make you the king so he's giving him a divine endorsement and blessing he does this little thing for him and so it makes it sound like all along dude most the fourth was the son who was supposed to become the king and the gods you know they had set that up and they gave him a special divine revelation that that would happen and so everybody in egypt should be like oh this is great the gods they knew what was going on they planned it because the thing is most the fourth was not the firstborn son and heir of amenhotep ii he had an older brother in fact his older brother seems to appear on that steely the figure of him but he's he's partially scratched out we don't know a whole lot about him uh it seems his name was also almond hotep he was a priest and he he just disappears from history i presumably dies rather than you know fled egypt or something like that okay you know this happened right this happened sometimes but it's really interesting this sequence of events where it's situated chronologically we might have the mummy of this prince maybe uh there's a possibility that it's this mummy called unknown man c that was found in the cache of these royal 18th dynasty mummies there's some other ideas about uh instead of a first son named ahmed hotep that it was he had a different name but anyway we know that most iv was not the firstborn son and his older brother who was the heir disappeared mysteriously so he seeks divine endorsement and if these plagues happen and the firstborn of pharaoh died then we would expect something like this to happen that is so interesting there's far more pieces of this story that we have possible connections to that are what we would expect if it were true but is it fair to say we're going to get into more of the evidence that because people begin with the assumption many scholars that this is mythological that they're not looking at this evidence not piecing this together interpreting it in a different fashion is that fair yeah when you come with the presupposition that the story is mythical and there's not going to be any evidence for it or or you might even be looking in a different time period then then of course they're going to look at things differently and they're going to they're going to i think individualize the components of the evidence rather than look at it as a cumulative story or a cumulative case and they will say like okay that's interesting about the dream steely but just because his older brother died and then he got a divine endorsement doesn't mean he died the play well of course not but we're not looking at all these things in isolation we're looking at all of this different circumstantial and some not so circumstantial all together flowing with this story this narrative that's laid out in exodus and the probability for all of those things happening together all of the circumstances and some of you know more ambiguous but less circumstantial happening in the right sequence the right time all the right way that probability is so low that i think we're able to say we have strong evidence for the plausibility of this story being corroborated archaeologically titus it seems like those who take a different position than you just lament the lack of what they consider positive evidence is there on the other hand is there evidence put forward against the biblical position and i imagine it could be that they found that the pharaohs of this time you know for example like his firstborn became the next pharaoh like if he found that out and he was called the firstborn that would seem to contradict it obviously we don't have that but are you aware of direct contradictory evidence to the chronology and exo story as as you've laid out no i don't think so in the 18th dynasty i mean i really think the main argument against it is either an absence of evidence or it is a presupposition that that this story is mythological um or we could say you know it's a it's a way of explaining these things away in isolation right so yeah where where is the negative evidence right you know if we had i think one of the the more difficult ones actually might be uh a little bit more connected to when the exodus happened 15th century those are the two main and this this city name ramses right and we get into it and explain it and i could give you uh an argument why i think it works in the 15th century too but that that actually doesn't remove the exodus from history it just might be putting it in a different period and and reinterpreting some of those numbers we talked about earlier so okay you know there's really not uh definitive negative there's not an evidence against it happening okay we're just looking at absence gotcha that that makes sense now the last piece and kind of what you call the a to b argument would be is there any evidence now that the the hebrew people the israelites leave during this time period and are found wandering in the desert for 40 years now you personally went in and examined some of this evidence which i found totally fascinating talk about the evidence that actually this group of people the israelites in that place in that time wandered in the desert area that we would expect yeah so some of the projects i've been involved with like this looking at the wandering and then also conquest and settlement in kanan so for the wandering this is somewhat of a problem but again it's not unexpected because we can't expect to find archaeological evidence of nomads from 3 400 years ago like it's very difficult to even find evidence of nomads from 200 years ago in china now what we do have though is some egyptian inscriptions two in particular on a temple the celeb temple which is in northern sudan now it was southern part of egypt in the ancient times uh it was built during the reign of amenhotep iii so he is the grandson of amenhotep ii and he reigned around 1400 bc i think started just before that and reigned several years into the early 14th century you know a couple decades really so he's right at the time that the israelites would be finishing their wandering and then going into canaan with the chronological scheme that we're looking at on this temple there's a pillar that names all these different nomad groups and the ones that we can identify seem to be associating their group name with a deity so we have like nomads that are associated with all and we have nomads that are associated with are not and then we have one that says the land of the nomads of yahweh so this is the earliest mention of the name yahweh that's ever been discovered dates to around 1400 bc it's on an egyptian temple of pharaoh so the egyptians knew the name yahweh way back at that time even the pharaoh was familiar with it this inscription is actually found also on a wall of that temple there's a slightly slightly different format but it also mentions these nomads of yahweh so what in the world are nomads of yahweh doing mentioned on an egyptian temple at the end of the wandering period well they're situated east of egypt maybe in moab or trans jordan edom something like that right before they get into canaan probably and they are wanderers just as the israelites were and they're the people of yahweh and the book of numbers even talks about the israelites like that uses that phrase so to me this see this is egyptian acknowledgement of a group of who worship yahweh who are wandering east of egypt just before they settle in canaan and that is our wandering evidence you know primarily but i think it's pretty powerful yeah that's amazing like you said what would we expect to find yet we have an egyptian record that dates to the time mentions the name yahweh that's pretty powerful now last piece this puzzle we talked about the pre-exodus there's semites in the area which would include hebrew people but others during the time of the exodus we find hebrew slaves given their names making bricks doing buildings we find this account that mirrors possibly an egyptian remembrance of the plagues itself we have all these facts now we have evidence in the wanderings of these kind of hebrew people nomads of yahweh is there evidence after this i know the conquest itself is debatable and we could do that a whole other time but is there evidence then for the hebrew people showing up about the time after the exodus and the wandering in canaan itself yeah i think we can absolutely say even going beyond the debate about conquest archaeology but that there is evidence of settlement of hebrews of israelites in the late bronze age at the end of the late bronze age in canaan and some of this stuff comes from material culture uh like pottery types that are then seen later just in israelite context but some other really important more definitive things archaeologically i think like lack of pig bones at sites so that was an israelite specific practice the the what's called the israelite four-room house was a residential architecture that was used throughout the israelite period until the babylonian exile so that's something else that points to this group of people israelites and there's a huge explosion of new villages that are built and some cities that are reinhabited and you know most most archaeologists and historians would say that yeah this is the time that the israelites emerged in canaan now a lot of them today discount the exodus even the conquest but they do say that yeah here's when the israelites popped up in canaan you know or some of them might call them proto-israelites but they just want to name something different so we absolutely do you know there's a very very famous egyptian steely called the mer neptusteli sometimes israel steely and on this pharaoh neptu talks about how he went into canaan he defeated these three cities and he says that israel's seed is no more and so he mentions these people israel in the land of canaan they're the only group of people he mentions and this is the late 13th century bc so they're they've already been there so again this point a to point b type of art argument with the names with the name of the population group with some material culture with some other circumstantial evidence that we're looking at titus couple last questions for you and we'll wrap up are you aware of further excavations and research that's being done in any way that intersects with the exodus like what might we expect in the next three to five plus years so there was a project recently finished in sinai and james hoffmeyer published some articles on this that has to do with the geography of the exodus that i think is extremely helpful showing us where some of these things happened and also at least the general time period in egyptian history there are also recent excavations at the site of tel ritaba which i think is the site of pithom which is revealing some really interesting stuff about a semitic population there prior to the exodus and then an abandonment during the reign of amenhotep ii uh there's continued research on inscriptions that have turned up not everything has been translated some of the stuff is going to be reevaluated there's a lot going on i think still with kind of the israelites settlement and conquest period in canaan that connects to the exodus so i think that in in the following years we will see some more evidence that you could put in this cumulative case and and maybe some things that are are more definitive than others so i do have to ask you about this what what do you make of the chariot wheels supposedly found at the bottom of the red sea is that true is that an urban legend that's been passed because i've been told that many times as a kid what do you make of that data so the the chariot wheels allegedly that are shown are either a type of coral reef so it's a specific species of coral that actually forms this structure that looks kind of like a wheel popping up from the the ground with an axle it's not coral that grew over a chair it reels it wheels it it's found all throughout the red sea and then you know you may have seen some pictures or video of some kind of four spoke looking gold wheel right that's not a ancient egyptian chariot wheel either and and it wouldn't be on the surface of the sand like it was displayed so there's no cherry wheels or chariots that were found in in the red sea there but uh if if people did enough digging in these possible crossing sites maybe they would find some remnant of an egyptian army i don't know it's like looking for a needle in a haystack but it's possible well you just burst the bubble of the evidence that i was given as a kid not by my dad and family heard it at some camp somewhere and literally always wondered about that but hey part of our job is to put forth the positive evidence but also dispel some maybe well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning mistakes along the way i gotta tell audience you gotta pick up a book many of the examples you gave are in titus kennedy's book unearthing the bible again unearthing the bible you have great pictures that are first class walk through these very very carefully and you also talk about uh there's a 101 archaeological facts for the bible kind of chronologically through we just looked at a slice of this with the exodus but reading this as a whole is pretty powerful and overwhelming helps you realize there's a lot we haven't found but when we approach it and the way you did kind of an a to b in light of what we would expect there's pretty good evidence for the bible historically speaking in a particular for the exodus so dr kennedy thank you for coming back on really appreciate you teaching with me at biola university for those of you watching if you've ever thought about getting a master's degree we have a full distance program in apologetics and archaeology is the kind of thing we'll do weekend classes on and discuss if you have an undergrad degree for the top rated program information is below would love to have you make sure you hit subscribe got a bunch of other fascinating conversations coming up on apologitis culture and worldview you will not want to miss again dr titus kennedy thanks for joining me and i look forward to doing it again soon yeah professor mcdowell my pleasure thanks for having me on the show

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 222,773

Keywords: Exodus, Old Testament, Israel, Egypt, Egyptians, evidence, Moses, Pharaoh, chronology, biblical, church of the apostles, archaeology, biblical archaeology, bible archeology, archeology, biblical archeology, associates for biblical research, apologetics, digging for truth, dead sea scrolls, synagogues, christianity, pharaoh hofra, jerusalem, jerubbaal, archaeological discoveries, incredible archaeological discoveries, archaeological finds, archaeological, archaeologist, archaeology documentary

Id: d_3Plj2e7FY

Length: 53min 12sec (3192 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2022