Putting The Pieces Together Part II: The Israelites, slaves or kings?

As we saw in my last post, Simcha Jacobovici, film director and producer, has been on the search to find evidence for one of the greatest stories ever told; the Exodus. This next piece of Jacobovici’s puzzle is often disputed. It is the claim that the Israelites are a people the Egyptians call the Hyksos. The name in Hieroglyphics is Hykussos, which means “foreign rulers.” You have scholars who agree and disagree that the Hyksos and the Israelites are one in the same. The evidence that Jacobovici reveals is very compelling, and he gives hints that he agrees with this claim but his real thoughts on the matter are concealed. In this post I won’t deal too much with my thoughts on this argument, but I will write my hypothesis of the Hyksos and the Israelites in an upcoming post--- Because this claim made about the Hyksos and Israelites being the same group of people is just that: a hypothesis, speculation.

Jacobovici starts this section of his video with explaining as much as he can about a group of people that once ruled Lower Egypt, which the Egyptians called the Hyksos. There’s not a lot to know about the Hyksos, but since the discovery of their capital city, Avaris, I’m sure that will change and a great deal of information about these ancient people will be found. Jacobovici remarks that “Egyptian history clearly states that the Hyksos, who ruled mighty Avaris, were Semites like the Israelites and that they left on a mass exodus known as the ‘Hyksos expulsion.’” He goes on to say “If the Hyksos expulsion and the Biblical Exodus are really one in the same event, then perhaps we can find the long sought after proof for the Biblical Exodus during the Hyksos period.” A famous author, Dr. Charles Pellegrino, agrees with Jacobovici that the Hyksos expulsion and the Biblical account are the same event, and the same people group. Dr. Pellegrino states: “We have in the Bible the story of the Semites leaving Egypt and going eastward from Egypt. At the same time, independent of the Bible, we have a story of the Hyksos being expelled from Egypt. I think definitely the two stories are related. They’re describing the same event from different view points.” Scholars have different analyses on this issue and Jacobovici shows us this in his documentary: “But most scholars say that the Hyksos and the Israelites cannot be equated, because the Hyksos left Egypt hundreds of years before Moses was born.” Because of the conflict between the Hyksos and the Israelite enigma, the date of the Exodus has been moved around quite a bit, but Jacobovici explains that many scholars believe that “The Chronology of ancient Egypt cannot be tampered with.” One of these scholars is Professor William Dever from the University of Arizona: “You can play with Egyptian dates, you can move them up maybe ten years and down ten years, but you can’t move them up or down fifty or a hundred years. That’s not possible, and yet many people try to do that, they try to adjust chronology to fit their pre-determined notion of Biblical history. You can’t do it.” Jacobovici responds to Dever’s report with a single sentence “But maybe we have to.” Then he goes on to say, “What if scholars are placing the Exodus in the wrong time period? Imagine the confusion if in the future scholars date World War II to the 1990’s.” Many scholars date the Exodus at 1270 B.C.E. but, as we can clearly see, Jacobovici’s goal is to place the Exodus in the Hyksos period, 1500 B.C.E. To reach this goal he introduces a scholar who gives a similar date to his. Professor John Bimson states: “The Bible gives information that would put the Exodus about four hundred and eighty years before the early years of Solomon in the middle of the 15th century B.C.” Jacobovici replies by saying Bimson’s “Calculations move the Exodus from its present date to 1470 B.C.E. Less than hundred years from the traditional date for the Hyksos expulsion.” From Bimson’s date Jacobovici is now able to place the Exodus at the date he believes is best suitable. “These [The dates] are too close to write off as a coincidence, so we have a new date for the Exodus; approximately 1500 B.C.E.”

This is where I will put my input. I agree with Jacobovici on his dating the Exodus around 1500 B.C.E., because of the Ahmose Stele, and the eruption of the Santorini volcano (which we will get into in my next post). But what I do not agree with is Jacobovici’s attempt to place the Hyksos and the Israelites as the same people in one, and to set the Hyksos expulsion and the Exodus as the same event. Placing the Hyksos and the Israelites as the same people cannot be possible. Dr. Charles Pellegrino stated that the Hyksos expulsion and the Exodus were similar stories, but just because they are similar does not make them the same story. Similarity does not equal equivalency; to be like something is not to be that thing. To be like God does not mean that you are God. In the garden of Eden Adam and Eve didn’t seek after being like God, for they were already made in his likeness, they sought after His God-hood; they sought to be God. So the Israelites may look similar to the Hyksos, but that doesn’t mean they were the people that once ruled Lower Egypt (I will deal more of this in an upcoming post).

Here I would like to go over a few points that I believe we need to look at before assuming that the Hyksos and Israelites are the same in one, for to do that is to get rid of the biblical account completely. First, Jacobovici just compared Ahmose’s Stele to the biblical account, and because both claim that the storm and darkness occurred then the Biblical author is expounding truth. (On a side note I wish to interject that when the Ahmose Stele says that “The storm and the darkness happened when [G]od, in the singular, manifested his power.” Well that just goes to prove God means what he says. For all throughout the book of Exodus (7:5, 7:17, 8:22, these are just a few verses), God tells Moses that He will show Egypt His power so they will know that He is God). Second, if you take the Biblical account of the storm and darkness to be true, you must take the rest of the account to be true. You can’t pick and choose what is true and what is false, if some of it is true then you must look on the whole as truth. What if we picked and chose truth and falsities with our history books today, like with the Holocaust? We would say something like this: “The Nazi’s were in Germany and under Hitler, but they didn’t do anything harmful; they were humanitarian.” Imagine the absurdity, but because it’s the Biblical text and it’s a religious text it’s okay to pick and choose what we think is truthful and what we think is falsity, right? No, to do this is not alright. So when the Bible mentions the Israelites as slaves, more than once, and has no recoding of them ever once ruling Lower Egypt, or any part of Egypt. We then must take what the Biblical author writes to be true.

This brings me to my third point. How can you place slaves on the same column as kings? For the Hyksos in the history of Egypt were kings and ruled Lower Egypt for some time until the Theban rule of Upper Egypt fought to expel them. Israel had no intention of having a king at this time, and did not request a king until the time of Solomon and Saul. So if we are taking the Biblical writers to be truthful in their information, which Jacobovici thinks they were when they mentioned the storm and darkness in Exodus. Isn’t it interesting that IF the Israelites were the Hyksos, the rulers of Lower Egypt, wouldn’t the Bible have mentioned it? But no, in fact the first mention of an Israelite being king is with Saul. Also, lastly, the Pharaoh during the Exodus narrative fought rather hard against God to keep the Israelites as his slaves. Why would a Pharaoh who expelled the Hyksos and wanted them out of the land, along with most likely his father and all Theban rulers, fight so hard to keep the Israelites, if they are that Hyksos? So if we claim the Israelites as the Hyksos my last sentence would read like this: “Why would a Pharaoh who fought so hard to get the Hyksos out of rule, and the area itself, fight so hard to keep them as slaves?” It just doesn’t make sense. So from this we can conclude that the Hyksos and the Israelites are two very different types of people groups. It is broad speculation to put “foreign rulers,” kings, in the same category as the Egyptian forced labor, Israelite slaves.

The final thing I come to in this post is Simcha Jacobovici’s proof that the Israelites were the slaves of Egypt that the Bible asserts them to be. To retain this proof Jacobovici and his crew had to travel to Serabit El Khadim, and he quotes: “For thousands of years Egyptians mined turquoise in this area, often they used slave labor.” So if the Israelites were truly enslaved, as the Bible claims them to be, then this would be the place to find the evidence. Jacobovici continues “We came here to find proof of the slaves that Moses led to freedom. But even if we found evidence for the presence of slaves, how could we be sure that they were Israelites? The Bible provides us with two clues: first, the follower’s of Moses did not use Hieroglyphic writing like the Egyptians. Rather the Biblical tradition states that they used an early form of alphabetic writing. Also, the Israelites did not worship Egyptian gods, but a single god that the Bible calls ‘El.’” So the key for Jacobovici is to find both of these things in Serabit El Khadim, so does he succeed? The answer he gives us is: “And sure enough there are slave inscriptions here, and one of them records a 3500 year old cry, ‘El save me.’” So here again is archaeological proof, from Simcha Jacobovici’s documentary, that the Biblical author was not lying; the storm and darkness happened and the Israelites were indeed slaves. So why didn’t the Biblical author write of the great rule the Israelite kings had of Lower Egypt, and their reign, if they really are the Hyksos? Wouldn’t that be too much of an enormous event for the Biblical author to forget? The Egyptians sure didn’t forget the Hyksos rule. Also, then why is Saul mentioned as the first king or Israel, and the first Hyksos ruler isn’t even brought up? So, we come again to the title of this post; were the Israelites slaves, or kings?