I watched Dr. Ehrman’s “In the Beginning” courses. They prompted this thought: The authors of Genesis do not present an explanation for why god either allowed or caused a famine in the promised land, prompting Joseph’s brothers to seek grain from Egypt and thus reuniting all of Jacob’s sons. The power of god and providing for his chosen people in the promised land during a famine presents a great setting for faith lessons, moral lessons, etc. yet this theme is omitted for a seemingly more convoluted story of reunification and faith that takes extended years to achieve. In fact, god relies on a foreign people to provide grain for his chosen people, rather than god providing for them. Surely a missed opportunity by the authors.
Dr. Ehrman, any thoughts about this omission?
For more than 3 centuries (1450-1125) Canaan was a ** you do not have permission to see this link ** of the New Kingdom of Egypt. Pharaos controlled the land through garrisons, fortresses (the main one in Jaffa) and local chieftains acting as governors. The ancestors of Israelites were Canaanites; Egyptians from their point of view were “foreigners” but all of them were ruled by the same empire. Something similar happened to Celtic or German tribes conquered by Romans.
A good book about this subject is the essay written by Donald Redford in 1992, “Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times”.
Famines were relatively common and nomadic shepherds (Shasu) often moved to the Nile Delta, but they were allowed by Egyptians to camp there.
Israeli archeologist Zeev Herzog in his 1999 essay “Deconstructing the walls of Jericho” stated:
“Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently across thousands of years and were hardly exceptional.”
The story of Joseph is not literally true, but it was developed to connect the Patriarchs cycle and the Exodus.
I recommend an interesting article written by rabbi David Aaron and published on the site ReformJudaism.org: “The Joseph Story – Fantasy, Jewish Style”.
“If we relate to this literature as history, we will apply the wrong genre criteria in evaluating its meaning. There is no evidence of there ever having been an Israelite who governed over Egypt. Attempts to link Joseph with historical personages or to sketchy references in ancient annals to short-lived foreign rulers all fail. This is not history. We have here a Cinderella-like fairy tale, where the despised brother not only ends up making good, but of all things, ascends to the most powerful political position in a foreign land, barely a notch below the authority of the monarch himself.”
** you do not have permission to see this link ** as well* but the myth may reflect ancient warped memories of real events (“mnemohistory” looks not at reconstructing the facts of what actually transpired, but seeks to recreate a record of how the original event – or person – is remembered by posterity), including the droughts and famines that affected the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean between the end of Bronze Age and the beginning of Iron Age.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
“There is evidence for drought and unprecedented famine during the last years of the thirteenth and the early decades of the twelfth century BCE that appears to have affected the entire region. We know that the Early Iron Age was definitely more arid that the preceding Bronze Age. Analysis of pollen from coastal regions of Syria and Cyprus, oxygen-isotope data from mineral deposits in Israel, stable carbon isotope data in pollen cores from Lake Voulkaria in western Greece, and sediment cores from the Mediterranean, show that there was a drop in surface temperature, all of which indicate the onset of a drought 3,200 years ago that may well have lasted about 300 years. This change in climate would obviously would have caused crop failures, famine, and human migrations. Scarcity of resources would have caused problems including violence at home and overseas. Texts and evidence suggest that Ugarit finally fell because of outside invaders, but it was obviously severely weakened by famine. Voices from last Ugaritic letters bare this out: “There is famine in our house. We will all die of hunger.” “Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it!””
Of course, when the Bronze Age Collapse happened (XII century) proto-israelites were still polytheists and the deities to “blame” for famines were El, the Sky Father of Canaanites and Ba’al: Ugaritic records show him as a weather god, with power over lightning, wind, rain, and fertility. The dry summers of the area were explained as Baʿal’s time in the underworld and his return in autumn was said to cause the storms which revived the land.
*(essays written by scholars like Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts”, ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and Lester Grabbe, “Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?” ).
Not related, but since in my previous post I talked about “mnemohistory” I’d like to add that some events actually happened during the Bronze Age Collapse could have contributed to the birth of the myth of the “plagues” (the final version was written centuries later).
The XII century was a time of violence, social unrests, famine, migrations (the Sea People) and forced displacement. But we have some hints of lethal diseases too. The mummy of Pharaoh Ramses V (reign 1149-1145) indicates that he suffered and subsequently died from smallpox due to lesions found on his face. He was thought to be one of the earliest known victims of Variola virus.
For decades riots erupted in many cities of the Kingdom. The earliest recorded labour strike in history occurred in Deir-el-Medina during the reign of Ramses III (1186-1155 BC), and the archaeologist Eric Cline cites the destruction of the Canaanite city of Hazor as “caused by an internal rebellion of the city’s inhabitants”. This reflects general unrest among the populace who would have been suffering as a result of famine and drought.
It lasted at least until 1125, when Canaanites managed to destroy the Egyptian fortress of Jaffa*.
Just guessing, but the death of the Pharaoh and an epidemic ravaging the people of Egypt could have been easily interpreted by enemies as a “divine punishment”.
*The Book of Joshua conflates several independent fights between disparate groups over the centuries, and artificially attributes them to a single leader. “Indeed, a reconsideration of the broader outlines of the biblical narratives suggests that the Exodus tradition is a mnemohistory of Israel’s ‘coming up out of Egypt’ (as per the biblical description), during the New Kingdom and after many centuries, when Canaan could be regarded as a proper extension of Egypt (see Hendel 2015). In this sense, Israel’s exodus from Egyptian controlled territory was not a physical departure out of Africa, but flight from the violence gripping Canaan during and after the abandonment of Egyptian strongholds. The conquest narratives of Joshua embody the political tumult and violence accompanying the transition and its aftermath, ‘when there was no king in Israel’, while vignettes in Judges expose the security concerns of Israel’s constituencies. Although the fit may be less than perfect, a refugee model provides the most appropriate means of further interrogating these traditions for the purpose of understanding to what extent they may permit a view into the early Israelite experience”. Aaron A. Burke “The Decline of Egyptian Empire, Refugees, and Social Change in the Southern Levant, ca. 1200-1000 BCE”.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
The Joseph story has archaeological proof.
There was more than one exodus story in ancient history. Moses did not have a showdown with Ramesses the Great (Ramesses II).
I cover the Joseph story and the Exodus story in my book Historical Accuracy.
mb1980
Aaron A. Burke “The Decline of Egyptian Empire, Refugees, and Social Change in the Southern Levant, ca. 1200-1000 BCE”.
Steve Campbelll, Author of Historical Accuracy
That is a paper on academia.edu. It is not a book on amazon. I did see the author page for Aaron A. Burke.
Maybe, before February 2023, I will have a paid membership with academia.edu and will write and upload a paper.
JAS said
As is so often the case there is an awful lot of speculation, convenient filling in of blanks, and selective connecting of arbitrary dots. Is this fragment from a stature of Joseph, or someone upon whom the story of Joseph is based? Maybe. Is it someone else entirely? Maybe.
Interesting tho.
I’d like to know what other scholars are opining about this.
File this under: TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
One thing you learn in the study of ancient history is that nothing is that simple. Beware the archeologist who finds exactly what they’re looking for. Who wants to bet that this will be another “First Century” Mark? Of course if I am wrong I will be the first to admit it. Will they?
About the supposed statue of Joseph – Tell el-Dab‘a tomb – and other related topics, I recommend this ** you do not have permission to see this link ** written by the late Dr. Hector Avalos.
Multicolored coats were relatively common.
The “documentary” Patterns of Evidence is popular in U.S. conservative circles and is often quoted by evangelicals bloggers but is an example of fringe scholarship, largely based on the so-called new chronology developed by David Rohl, ** you do not have permission to see this link ** by mainstream Egyptologists and not supported by radiocarbon dating.
The same producer and film maker, Tim Mahoney, tried to defend the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Torah!
Sorry, but as historian (I hold a PhD in history) I find it very ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
It jumps to conclusions too quickly, cherry picks and conveniently ignores too many problems.
The exodus is a very complex multi-layered tradition developed through several centuries and probably conflates distorted memories of different events (from the expulsion of Hyksos, as suggested by ** you do not have permission to see this link ** (2021) video interview with Israel Finkelstein, part of a cycle of Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel are good starting points.
Just a personal note.
Evangelicals defend inerrancy because they see the whole bible as “inspired” and because they see biblical criticism as a threat to “eternal life” (a prize for the blind believer, as stated ad nauseam in the gospel of “John”), while Israeli scholars don’t have a theological agenda and are open minded.
Funnily – but not surprisingly – the secular archaeologist Zeev Herzog, when wrote his famous article against the historicity of Patriarchs and Exodus and Conquest, received harsh criticism and threats of eternal damnation and divine punishment by US fundamentalists… NOT by orthodox Jews or Muslims.
People love myths… even when religion is not involved.
I am Italian, from Tuscany.
In recent year the “mystery” of Etruscan origins was finally solved thanks to archaeology and ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Greek historian Herodotus believed that the Etruscans descended from Anatolian and Aegean peoples who fled westward following a famine in what is now western Turkey.
Another Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, countered that the pre-Roman civilization, despite their Greek customs and non-Indo-European language, were natives of the Italian peninsula.
“While recent archaeological evidence, which shows little evidence of migration, has been tilting in favor of Halicarnassus’ argument, “a lack of ancient DNA from the region has made genetic investigations inconsistent,” the study researchers said in the statement. To resolve this, the scientists collected ancient genomic information from the remains of 82 individuals who lived between 2,800 and 1,000 years ago across 12 archaeological sites in central and southern Italy.
After comparing DNA from those 82 individuals with that of other ancient and modern peoples, the scientists discovered that despite the strong differences in customs and language, the Etruscans and their Latin neighbors shared a genetic profile with each other. In fact, the ancestry of both groups points to people who first arrived in the region from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Bronze Age. After these early Etruscans settled in northern and eastern Italy, their gene pool remained relatively stable — across both the Iron Age and the absorption of the Etruscan civilization into the Roman Republic. Then after the rise of the Roman Empire, there was a great influx of new genes, likely as a result of the mass migrations the empire brought about”.
The academic debate is pretty much ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Etruscan civilization was a late stage of Villanovan ** you do not have permission to see this link **, flourished locally during Iron Age, between X and VIII century BCE (very much like proto-israelites were descendants of Canaanites, not immigrants); they DID not come from Lydia. Dionysius was right.
But here in Tuscany where I live you can still find laymen and amateur historians arguing in favor of the Eastern origins.
Once in a while on local newspapers I read articles claiming that “new evidence” was found but usually is just wishful thinking.
Don’t take me wrong, I acknowledge the fact that through the centuries some Semites (does not means “Israelites”) became high rank officials.
It’s not odd, because the Levant and Canaan, in fact were a part of Egypt and the members of local aristocracy were raised as Egyptians.
This tends to happen in multi-ethnic empires, the late Roman Empire had several generals of German or Barbaric descent.
Thomas Romer is his book “the invention of God” explores the possibility to find an actual historical figure behind the legend of Moses; but he comes to the conclusion that “They do look a bit like Moses or Joseph but none of them would be really fitting as the historical Moses or Joseph”.
The closest “match” could be Beya or Baya, a Canaanite high bureaucrat with a double name (Semitic and Egyptian).
In documents he is called a Syrian (Hurru = Hurrian or Harran-born) Asiatic.
Toward the end of Ninteenth dinasty, during the reign of Sethi II (1203-1197) he became chancellor or vizir. When Sethi II died without a clear heir, Baya backed the claim of a boy named Siptah, who became the next Pharaoh – a puppet – and was supported by Asiatics (probably troops and not slaves) in the city of Pi-Ramesse. It happened before the reign of Ramses III (1186-1155) when Egypt was facing famine and attacks of Sea Peoples.
But he was ** you do not have permission to see this link ** for treason around 1192.
“French Egyptologist Pierre Grandet combined two broken parts of an ostracon, which yielded the following: Year 5 III Shemu the 27th. On this day, the scribe of the tomb Paser came announcing “Pharaoh—Life! Prosperity! Health!—has killed the great enemy Bay(a).”[31] This suggests that in the fifth year of his reign, Siptah has Baya executed as a traitor.“
So it would be arbitrary to turn him into a successful leader like the biblical Moses.
An interesting but speculative hyphotesis formulated by Israel Knohl links the Joseph tale with Beya and the famine that led to Late Bronze Age collapse.
Take this with a grain of salt.
mb1980 said
Don’t take me wrong, I acknowledge the fact that through the centuries some Semites (does not means “Israelites”) became high rank officials.It’s not odd, because the Levant and Canaan, in fact were a part of Egypt and the members of local aristocracy were raised as Egyptians.
This tends to happen in multi-ethnic empires, the late Roman Empire had several generals of German or Barbaric descent.
Thomas Romer is his book “the invention of God” explores the possibility to find an actual historical figure behind the legend of Moses; but he comes to the conclusion that “They do look a bit like Moses or Joseph but none of them would be really fitting as the historical Moses or Joseph”.
The closest “match” could be Beya or Baya, a Canaanite high bureaucrat with a double name (Semitic and Egyptian).
In documents he is called a Syrian (Hurru = Hurrian or Harran-born) Asiatic.
Toward the end of Ninteenth dinasty, during the reign of Sethi II (1203-1197) he became chancellor or vizir. When Sethi II died without a clear heir, Baya backed the claim of a boy named Siptah, who became the next Pharaoh – a puppet – and was supported by Asiatics (probably troops and not slaves) in the city of Pi-Ramesse. It happened before the reign of Ramses III (1186-1155) when Egypt was facing famine and attacks of Sea Peoples.
But he was ** you do not have permission to see this link ** for treason around 1192.
“French Egyptologist Pierre Grandet combined two broken parts of an ostracon, which yielded the following: Year 5 III Shemu the 27th. On this day, the scribe of the tomb Paser came announcing “Pharaoh—Life! Prosperity! Health!—has killed the great enemy Bay(a).”[31] This suggests that in the fifth year of his reign, Siptah has Baya executed as a traitor.“
So it would be arbitrary to turn him into a successful leader like the biblical Moses.
An interesting but speculative hyphotesis formulated by Israel Knohl links the Joseph tale with Beya and the famine that led to Late Bronze Age collapse.
Take this with a grain of salt.
Nice posts.
Steefen said
Moses did not have a showdown with Ramesses the Great (Ramesses II).
About this, I agree.
Unfortunately Hollywood productions like a recent movie with Christian Bale keep this legend alive but under Ramesses II the New Kingdom reached the peak of power and strength, so a mass escape of slaves during his reign is extremely unlikely.
Egyptians had garrisons along the road named “The way of Horus” and were able to capture even small groups of fugitives.
Lester Grabbe explains quite well the trouble with a mid-XIII century exodus in his book “Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?” and in a more detailed way in “The Land of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age”, a very interesting anthology.
And the biggest problem is that since Canaan was a province of the kingdom slaves would have escaped from Egypt… to Egypt.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
This is why I find more plausible a displacement of small groups (few hundreds or thousands) during the late ramesside period (reigns of Ramses V or VI), just after the Bronze Age Collapse (XII century) when Egyptian rule on Canaan was declining, as proposed by Aaron Burke.
It was a gradual process, not a single dramatic event.
Refugees leaving coastal towns could have easily reached the highlands where proto-israelite settlements already existed, as stated by Merneptah stele.
Egypt did not surrender immediately but fought back the newly arrived Phillistines and Canaanite rebels; some new ** you do not have permission to see this link ** were built (Galon).
The main military compound of Joppa was burned during a Canaanite riot in 1135.
Egyptians conquered again the city after a short time and rebuilt the fort.
It was destroyed a second and final time ten years later in 1125.
In the same decades (around 1140) Egypt lost control over the copper mining facility in Timna.
The temple of the goddess Hathor (** you do not have permission to see this link ** have found in the area a rock stele of Ramses III) was destroyed and replaced by an open air sanctuary, that could have been one of the first places where YHWH, the main deity of nomadic Shasu / Midianites was worshipped.
According to Thomas Romer.
“There may have been groups of Shasu who escaped somehow from Egyptian control and went north into the highlands to this group called Israel, bringing with them this god whom they considered had delivered them from the Egyptians,”.
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