(5) From Birth of Abraham to the Exodus. Gen. xxi :5, gives age of Abraham at the birth of Isaac, who was 6o years old at the birth of Jacob (Gen. xxv:26). Gen. xlvii :9, gives age of Jacob when he went to Egypt. Exod. xii :4o states defi nitely the length of the sojourn in Egypt at 430 years, for which the 400 of Gen. xv :13, and of Stephen's speech in Acts vii :6. may be taken as round numbers. But the LXX and the Samari tan Version divide the 43o years into two equal parts, calling the first the sojourn of the patri archs in Palestine, and the other 215 years the sojourn in Egypt. Hence the following table: however, both of these kings were no mean sov ereigns, and apparently controlled both Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula, it may be better (with Kittel, Maspero, \Viedemann, and others), to place the exodus in the time of anarchy, and hence of weakness, which was in the xxth dynas ty; McCurdy would place it in the last years of the reign of Rameses III (not later than B. C. 118o to 1148) or after that, but probably B. C. izoo. This date leaves the time for the wander ing migration, called in round numbers forty years, ending about I t5o.
(6) From the Exodus to the Building of the Temple. This period is said in I Kings vi:1, to be 48o years; the LXX says 440. Solomon began, it is there said, to build the temple in the fourth year of his reign, that is, three full years after his succession, which is dated at B. C. 993 by Dunck er, and at 1017 by Oppert, and at intermediate dates by others. The foundation must be dated, then, as late as B. C. 900 or 1014. But 48o years earlier carries us back to B. C. 1470 or 1494 for the exodus. But the Egyptologists, with their present light on the time of Menephtah, cannot put the exodus, if it occurred in his time, further back than B. C. 1300, cutting this period from 480 years to about 300. Really, the book of Judges gives very few data. I f we tabulate the times mentioned between the exodus and the temple, we have this result : The main question here is the time of the going into Egypt and of the coming out, in relation to Egyptian history. The stay in Palestine was con verted into the 43o years because Palestine was a long time under Egyptian sway, and was cer tainly so at the time of the exodus and probably fifty years later, covered by the round number, forty years, as the time of the wandering. It is now generally agreed that Joseph could have been received and advanced, as told in Genesis, only (luring the time of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, one of the last of whom was Apepi (Apho phis). But the time of the Hyksos is uncertain: they were in Egypt several centuries, and were driven out not later than B. C. 1530. Other dates ; iven for the close of this period are: Wiede 1750; Brugsch, 1706; Mariette, 1703; Raw li son, Lepsius, 1591. Then followed the great dynasties, the xviiith and xixth, during which the Egyptian power was extended over Idumwa, Palestine, and Phoenicia. Their
dine lasted till about 1200: Mariette says 1288: Lepsius, 1269: not later than 118o, says Wen The Pharaoh of the oppression, under whom the children of Israel built the treasure cities Pithorn and Raamses (Exod. i:11) was Rameses II. This fact, long conjectured, has been defi nitely settled by Naville's identification of Pithom and discovery that it was built by Rameses II. The Exodus has usually been assigned (by Brugsch, Ebers, Rawlinson. Sayce, and others) to the reign of Al enephtalt (Merenptah) or Seti II, the immediate successors of Rameses 11. Since, This shows that the judgeships and the foreign oppressions overlapped each other, each being sometimes local in the land, and thus contem poraneous. The recurrence of to and its mul tiples, 20, 40, 80, shows that the numbers are vague and imaginary. No satisfactory chronology of the period is possible. Every period of time given in the table is either questionable or lapped upon some other except the three years of Solomon; and if the forty years assigned to him is as vague as other round numbers, even that is uncertain. The time necessary for the conquest is reckoned at thirty years. The twenty years assigned to Sam uel are a doubtful inference from 1 Sam. vii :2; in I Sam. vii :15 it is said that he judged Israel all the days of his life: the next chapter represents hini as old when he aids in making Saul a king; and there is no evident' connection between the stay of the ark at Kirjath-jearim and his office as judge, which must have lapsed, at least from the calculation, when Saul became king, though the people seem to have regarded Saul as general of the army and Samuel as their judge at the same time.
Saul's reign is put down as forty' years; but Paul probably used forty as an equivalent of many; for he surely knew that no length of reign is as signed in the Old Testament. Duncker allows his accession at toSo and his reign to have been twenty-two years; Noeldeke gives him ten ; Hales, thirty-four ; Josephus, twenty.
Now counting from i2oo, the most probable date of the Exodus to Duncker's date for the founding of the temple. the latest allowable date, we have 207 years in place of 480; and if we put back the Exodus to Mariette's date of the end of Dynasty xix, we have only 295 years. The number 480. four times 120, was asumed as a typical round number for a long time, 120 being itself made by the mystic number three and the vague number forty. But this number 48o seems to have been fixed in the text very early, since only the LXX varies from it, giving instead 440. Josephus, how ever, had as little regard for it as for his own con sistency, his datings summing up at 592, 612 and 632 years. Even Paul's statement (Acts xiii 22) does not sustain 480, as he makes 45o years be tween the death of Moses and King Saul.