Answers in Genesis--Fall 2016--Lesson 6: Chronology Conundrums

Everybody doing? We got the spiritual people here this morning. Right. Anybody else watch the, watch the baseball playoffs?

No, you guys don't care. You heard what? Yeah, yeah, he came in and closed the game. Yeah, this is one of my favorite times of the year is baseball playoffs.

A lot of fun stuff going on. All right, Hope you guys had a good week in the Lord. we're gonna pray. And then we have some fun stuff to look at.

Let's go ahead and pray together. Lord, we thank you for your kindness and goodness to us today. And we ask Lord that you just bless our time of study. we also just pray for all of our children that are studying, similar material on, on just your work in Joseph, and your work in the Exodus.

we ask God that our children would grow up to be those that trust your word. And those that also understand its authority and and that they can do a good apologetics when they are challenged in their faith. And we pray that you guide us this morning as we look at an important apologetic issue. And that you would guide us in Christ's name we pray.

And all God's people said, Amen. All right, we're gonna be trying to basically answer the question that you see on the screen there, and that is, how does the secular timeline of Egyptian history relate to the Bible? It's not uncommon at all to turn on your television and you start watching National Geographic or the History Channel and, especially around the time of Christmas and Easter, there's always a new program that comes out that is challenging some other aspect of the Bible, and they're normally interviewing all these scholars that are telling us how that the Bible is not unique from any other religious text.

And how that in fact we don't have any evidence of this particular aspect of biblical history and so all the, all the scholars weigh in, somehow they conveniently forget to interview any of the, the biblical scholars or they go out and they find some hick from the back hills of Bakersfield.

I can talk about Bakersfield because I'm from there. I'm getting a mean look from some Bakersfield folks over here. And then, you're expected to just believe that National Geographic and these other channels have a corner on the truth. So this, the issue that we're gonna look at is an important issue because basically as we're gonna see, many, archaeologists and experts in Egyptian history would argue that there's basically no evidence for the exodus.

And shouldn't you expect to see some evidence if you've got literally millions of people marching around the desert, you've got 10 plagues coming down upon Egypt, you've got supposedly this Hebrew guy named Joseph who rises to high power in Egypt. Wouldn't you expect to see some evidence somewhere? Of Joseph, some evidence of a Jewish people enslaved, in Egypt and the standard response today is there is no evidence for that therefore what we have in the Bible is at best just a a myth, a Jewish myth to establish Jewish civilization.

At worst, it's just a hoax.

And so that needs to be responded to. And so we're gonna respond to it, within the context of our curriculum, the seven C's of History. We will be taught, the title of this lesson is Cron Chronology Conundrums. Next week we'll be talking about Moses.

And, so we're gonna, we're gonna do a little bit of review from last week and then we're gonna mix, we're gonna be looking at various passages of scripture and mixing it with some video from a professor who actually has expertise in this area. And while the video called Digging Up the Past is somewhat dated, archaeology can be very dated., there's lots of, it's not like every, every year there's brand new information that totally overturns every aspect of archaeology, although sometimes it happens, but we're gonna be looking at Doctor Downs, 4 of his videos as he presents evidence for an alternative viewpoint on Egyptology.

So in this class, we've tried to establish the authority of the scripture that the Bible is authoritative because it comes from no one less than God Himself. We've argued for the fact that the Bible is inerrant, it's without error because it comes from a God who cannot lie.

And so as we apply that to today's topic, we start with the Bible. The Bible says that there was a Joseph who, was taken into Egypt. He rose to second in command, and there, and Israel turned into slaves. We start there because we believe the Bible's authoritative and God cannot lie.

We also believe that the Bible has been preserved. We've talked about this, that there's a human and a divine aspect of perseverance, that the Bible is also sufficient. So even if there were no documents outside of Scripture to demonstrate the veracity of the truth claims in the narrative of the Exodus, we would still believe the Bible. When we study the Bible, we use literal historical grammatic hermeneutic.

This is where people would wanna move away from our hermeneutic because, hey, if we're not seeing archaeological evidence of the exodus, therefore, let's just make it a spiritual story that's meant to encourage people and that solves the problem of this alleged historical issue. Now, we look at the Bible literally, we look at historically today, we're not gonna be talking about Gshika. We're not gonna, we're not gonna try to take the easy route out and say that the exodus is just Gshika, just a story, and we look at the grammar.

And so therefore we do exegesis, not is of Jesus.

We're trying to figure out what, what does the Bible actually say in context, not just what do we want it to say. Couple of weeks ago, we talked about the fact that we need to consider that the Bible influence our geology, doesn't mean that the Bible's geology book, but if the Bible does talk about things that are important to geology, like A worldwide flood that would affect geology, that should affect our geology. So we understand that the flood was a global event that greatly impacted the earth and we must consider the flood and other factors described in scripture as we can talk about or think about the ice age and other, other things.

we also talked a couple of weeks ago about just God's sovereignty and history.

So we let the Bible affect our geology, we let the Bible affect our history. We don't believe that the Bible is all history, reports all history. It's not merely a history book. But where it does touch on history, we let the Bible, affect our philosophy of history.

We believe that God is actually in control of history. He, we're not, we're not DS where we think that God wound it up and just let it go. There's too much evidence in the Bible of God being very involved in the affairs of humankind. So we see God's sovereign hand in sending Joseph, for instance, into slavery, sending him to prison, raising him to be second in command over Egypt.

through all his trials, God gave him favor in the eyes of his masters, eventually making him the ruler in Egypt. Also last week, We talked about how that God did not make a mistake in sending Israel to Egypt. we can trust God when his people are, favored by the culture in which they live and when his people fall into disfavor. So, Jacob's people were in favor at a certain point, then a new leader rose up that did not know Joseph, they fell into disfavor, and God is in control of all of those things.

Are you guys able to see that pretty well? Is that, OK. So part of what we're gonna be looking at this morning, on the top, you have the traditional view of the Egyptian dynasties. And down at the very bottom, you'll see the dates.

So, all the way back, 2800 BC you have the, the dynasties listed up there. but when we put the Bible into the chronology, based upon the, chrono genealogies that we've looked at in the past and other things, we would date the flood about 2300 BC and then Babel somewhere around 2200 BC. And so, basically, one of the issues here is this puts the traditional view of Egyptian history puts Egypt before the flood. That's a big problem from a biblical perspective.

What we're gonna be looking at today is Down's revised chronology. He argues for an overlap of the dynasties, that the dynasties that we have, they're not, they don't just run one right into the other, but they actually overlap. And just like that you have a history of, in, in, in Israel's history, you have a history of the northern tribes. What do we call the northern tribes after the Civil War?

Israel, and then you have the southern tribe or tribes. What do we call the southern tribe? Judah, so you have Israel and Judah, and so you have this concurrent history that's going on, north and south in Israel, and Downs and others argue that there's a similar thing that goes on in Egypt where some of these dynasties actually overlap. and so it's not one right after the other.

Moreover, there is no unified opinion amongst Egyptologists on the dynasties. There are many different theories. anytime you're dealing with, a, a science that deals with the past and trying to reconstruct the past, you're always going to have various theories because people are going to They're gonna have certain working assumptions that guide other decisions. A lot of times, you don't know the working assumptions unless you read some of their, pivotal works or whatnot.

a lot of times what you get, especially in college and high school, is you just get the conclusions. You don't always get all of the assumptions that went into them making certain decisions. And so that's, that's part of what we're gonna be looking at. Basically, in a nutshell, what Down suggests is that the period of Joseph and on into the Exodus occurs within the 13th dynasty.

And what he basically argues letting the cat out of the bag is that when people are trying to look for evidence of the exodus, they're looking at the wrong dynasty. and so he's gonna give several pieces of evidence for his theory, and then we're gonna try to see, we're gonna look at some scriptural passages, and then we're also going to try to examine his theory because it is just a theory, it's not Bible, but we're gonna see, does this seem like this gives a good rational explanation for what we find.

In the scriptures. So we're gonna play video one and then we're gonna come back up and read Genesis.

We're gonna go back and forth between 4 different videos and we'll see what you guys think. Does that sound good? Brian, do you have the ability or do how to shut like our lights, front lights down so we can see the, or turn all the lights down so we can see the video better? Or, or would that be somebody else?

That might be somebody else. OK. maybe, would somebody be able to go try to find Can I send somebody on a Say it again. Oh, you've got it?

OK, OK, cool. Oh, thank you so much. All right, let's play Video one, do I have to click one more time? OK, thank you.

Now there is one more very interesting aspect of this pyramid. People often ask me, how old are the pyramids? Well, by the usually accepted chronology, these pyramids were built about 2600 BC. But if we accept the biblical chronology, it means that the universal flood occurred about 2300 BC.

Now that means that this pyramid would have to be later than that. In fact, according to Doctor Emmanuel Velikovsky's revised chronology, it would place at about the 19th century BC and that would be about the time that, Abraham visited Egypt. you have the record in the Book of Genesis of Abraham coming down here to Egypt and talking with the Pharaoh and so forth. Now remember where Abraham came from.

He came from U of the Chalde and Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations there from 1922 to 1934 revealed that the The Sumerian civilization was the world's first civilization, and they had a remarkable understanding of mathematics and astronomy and trigonometry and other sciences. Well, now, Josephus, the Jewish historian, made a very interesting statement, and I want you to listen to what that statement says. Abraham communicated to them, that is the Egyptians, arithmetic and delivered to them the science of astronomy.

For before Abraham came into Egypt, they were unacquainted with those parts of learning, for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt.

So if that is correct, and Abraham came here during the time of Khufu, that would explain something very interesting. You see, this pyramid is exactly square. It is exactly level. It is exactly orientated north, south, east and west.

And if you were to take a circle with the top of the pyramid as the center of the circle and apply the formula to pi R. You would find that that would be the exact circumference of the base of the pyramid. Well, either that's a remarkable coincidence or it means that the Egyptians at this time knew the formula to Pia. Where did they get it from?

Well, if Abraham imparted to them this knowledge, that would explain it all. And so it raises the interesting possibility that the Egyptians may indeed, as Josephus says, have learned their astronomy and their mathematics from Abraham, who brought it from Ur of the Chalde. All right, we'll go ahead and bring the lights back up. And you guys have in your In the packet that you picked up or if you printed it up last night, on page 47.

You guys have some fill-ins here. You guys see that? So on page 47, we're gonna look at part one. Abraham may have brought the mathematical and scientific understanding that helped Pharaoh, which pharaoh build the Great Pyramid, according to the video.

Well, I got to cheat cause I, I watched this yesterday and did all my, did all my homework. It's Khufu, Khufu. I don't know exactly how you spell that, but Pharaoh Khufu. the historian, or which historian records that Abraham brought the knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to the Egyptians?

Josephus, anybody know when Josephus lived? Yeah, so he's in the first century. And so, an older view, this, let me, how do I, how do I say this? It used to be that, or one view of history is that the closer a historian is to the actual facts of the event, the more trustworthy they tend to be, although they can be obviously influenced.

they, they might have some outside influences as, as to why they're making certain conclusions. today we tend to be, as CS Lewis talks about, chronological, we have chronological snobbery. If we, if something is more recent, we tend to think it's more true. So a recent view of history or a more recent, Egyptologist would have greater.

impact in our thinking than someone like Josephus who's actually closer to the time period and, and had probably some pretty amazing things at his fingers at that time. which particular book records the encounter between Abraham or which particular chapter in Genesis records the encounter between Abraham and the Egyptian royalty? Well, it's chapter 12. I'll just let the cat out of the bag.

And let's go ahead and open to Genesis chapter 12. And let's take a look at that part of the scriptures that we were just looking at in the video or they were just speaking of. So in Genesis chapter 12, verse 10 to 16, Now, there was a famine in the land and Abraham went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land, and it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt that he said to Sarai, his wife, indeed I know that you are a woman, a beautiful, countenance, therefore, it will happen when the Egyptians see you that they will say, this is his wife, and they will kill me.

but they will let you live.

Please say, you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake and that I may live because of you. So it was when Abraham came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman and she was very beautiful and the princess of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and he treated Abraham, well for her sake. And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys and camels. So we get certain impressions from The text here about Abraham and his wealth and his connection with the royalty as he comes through, but from the Bible, is there any mention of an exchange of ideas about mathematics or astronomy from Genesis chapter 12.

No, there's nothing in the text, that says this. So how should we treat the idea that Abraham brought the knowledge that helped, Khufu build the pyramids? how should we treat that knowledge? Yeah, Doctor Downs, he's an Egyptologist.

He has a, he has a, he has a PhD in archaeology. That's basically all I know about him. Yeah. I can, I can give you more information.

I know that he's, he's, all these videos are listed on the Answers Bible Curriculum website, but I could, I could look it up and get you some more information next week. Yeah, Yeah, definitely. So how, how should we treat the knowledge that Doctor Downs is giving about Abraham perhaps bringing mathematics and astronomy down to Egypt? Yeah, exactly.

Yes Yeah, this is really no different than the types of things that you'll see on the History Channel or National Geographic. They interview some guy who has expert or some guy who has expertise in the area. They say, well, we know from Josephus, there's this quote from Josephus about Abraham bringing mathematics and astronomy down to Egypt. We know that the Sumerians were an incredibly advanced culture.

And that it appears that mathematics and astronomy, that they were very advanced and they perhaps brought that information out to Egypt, but we can't say we know for sure that Abraham was the guy that brought it down. So we have to be very careful in how that we, we handle both the biblical data versus the claims that various professors would make. All right, let's go ahead and take a look at the next video, as Doctor Downs establishes, the, actually, let's, actually, no, let's open up to Genesis 37 1st.

Let's take a look at this scripture passage first before we look at the next video to set that up.

So in Genesis 37, I'm reading starting in verse 17, and I'm sorry, Brian, if we could bring the lights back up just for a second. Genesis 37 and 17. And the man said, They have parted from here and I heard them say, let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan.

Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them. they conspired against him to kill him and they said to one another, look, the dreamer is coming, come therefore, let us kill him and cast him into some pit, and we shall say the beasts have devoured him. and so go down to verse 23. So it came to pass when Joseph had come to his brothers that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors.

They took it, cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty and there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat a meal. Then they lifted up their eyes and looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing spices, balm, myrrh on their way to carry them down to Egypt. So Judah said to his brothers, what profit is there that we kill our brother and conceal his blood?

Come let us sell him to the Ishmaelites. Look, our hand will be upon him, and so on. Verse 28, then the Midianite traders came by, and so the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit. And sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver, and they took him to Egypt.

Now when I When I typically read this story, and I think of a pit, I don't know about you, I just think of a, a big wide hole that was dug into the ground that perhaps Joseph could have crawled out of if he wanted to. but what we're gonna see here in a second is, is a pit, the same type of terminology would have been used of the thing that you're gonna see here, and this is in Dothan. I just gave away the answer. Where was it that the, that Joseph threw his brothers into the pit?

Dothan. And then we'll pay attention to the video cause we're gonna come back and do some fill-ins and ask you guys to build a, we're gonna give you a little mini quiz right after this, video. This well is at the foot of the hill on which Dauphin is built. The stones up near the top are of fairly recent origin, but those stones down the bottom are very old.

Well, it is possible that into this pit, which was dry at the time, Joseph was lowered, with the intention of leaving him there by the brothers. However, after a while, Judah came along and he said, Look, why don't we make a quick shackle out of this? and a caravan of camels was coming along and he said, Let's sell him as a slave. Well, these Midianite traders took Joseph down to Egypt, and there they sold him to an officer by the name of Potiphar.

Apparently Joseph decided if he was going to be a slave, he might as well be a good one, and he was so reliable that Potiphar promoted him to be the head over his household. Unfortunately for Joseph, there was some false accusation made against him, and he was flung into prison. Well, while he was in prison there. The two servants of Pharaoh, a butler and a baker, were also flung into prison, and one day Joseph came along and he found them looking very disconsolate, and he said, What's your problem?

Well, the butler said we've had some dreams and we don't know what the meaning is. Oh, Joseph said, tell me, I'll tell you the meaning, God knows the meaning. So the butler said, well, I dreamed that I had 3 bunches of grapes and I squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup. Well, Joseph said, that's easy.

It simply means that after 3 days, you're going to be restored as Pharaoh's butler to squeeze the grapes into his cup. And when the baker heard that, he thought, that's pretty good. And he said, well, I dreamed that I had 3 baskets of of bread on my head. And the birds came and ate up the bread.

Joseph said, that means that after 3 days, you're going to lose your head. Well, it happened just exactly as Joseph had predicted, and when the butler was restored, Joseph said, hey, just remember me when you get out because I shouldn't be in here. But unfortunately the butler completely forgot about it, and it wasn't until about 2 years later that Pharaoh had a dream. And he did not know the meaning, called in the wise men.

They couldn't tell him. And it was then that the butler suddenly remembered, Oh yes, I remember that fellow in prison. So he told Pharaoh about it. And so Pharaoh said, Well, bring him here.

And so Joseph was brought in and Pharaoh told him the dream. He said, I dreamed that there were 7 fat cows came up out of the River Nile. And they grazed there and then 7 thin cows, so thin you couldn't believe it, came up and they gobbled up the 7 fat cows. Well Joseph said, I'll tell you what that means.

It means that there's going to be 7 years of plenty, and that will be followed by 7 years of famine. The Nile is going to stop flowing just about, and there'll be a famine. So you better gather together, appoint somebody to gather together all the grain during those 7 years of plenty, so that when the 7 years of famine comes, you'll have enough to eat. And so Pharaoh said, well, that's a good idea and what better person could we have to do all this than Joseph.

And so Joseph was appointed as the vizier of Egypt. Now the question is, who was this pharaoh? Which one? I personally consider that the chronology of Egypt needs to be shortened, and in that case, this incident would take place at the beginning of the 12th dynasty of Egypt.

And in particular, the pharaoh concerned would be the pharaoh called Sesostras the 1st, and I think I have some good reasons for thinking that. This is a statue of Sisostras the First. Actually he's quite a nice looking guy, don't you think? Almost a smile on his face.

And there's another group of statues in the Cairo Museum. They're clustered around a shrine. There's 10 statues altogether, and they're all identical, and they show him also as a nice looking fellow. And there's another statue that shows him as a shepherd with a shepherd's crook in his hand.

In other words, he was looking after his people. He had an interest in his people. Now, he was the one who made this obelisk over here, and it has inscriptions on all four sides, they're all identical, and this was the first large obelisk that was ever made. Now it is called the Pillar of honor, and the biblical record says that Joseph married the daughter of the priest of honor, and that fits right in, in this place here.

And so I would identify Sesostras the First as the pharaoh under whom Joseph was promoted to be vizier. Now there is something else. The biblical record indicates that Joseph was a very prominent figure. I'd like you to listen to what the biblical record says in the book of Genesis.

Chapter 41. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word. Only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you. And he had him ride in the second chariot which he had, and they cried out before him, Bow the knee.

So he set him over all the land of Egypt. Now, did you notice just what respect was paid to Joseph? People bowed down in front of him. Now that doesn't usually happen with a vizier, but it so happens that under Sesostras the First, we know from history that there was such a vizier, and his name was Mentuhotep.

The very well known Egyptologist Brutt described the activities of this vizier. I want you to listen to what it says. In a word, our Mentuhotep, who was also invested with several priestly dignities and was Pharaoh's treasurer, appears as the alter ego of the king. When he arrived, the great personages bowed down before him.

So you see this fits in very well with the biblical account, and we do have such a vizier under Sesostras the First, but there's other evidence too to support what I'm saying. Well, here we are in the Fayume, this remarkable oasis that supports so many people, and here I think is something very significant. You see this canal, it's a very large canal, and it comes a long way and flows into this oasis which is below sea level and it is a vast lake, and it brings fertility to this whole area.

Now the interesting part is that this is called Joseph's Canal, and nobody knows where it got that name, it seems to go back a long way.

And it is my opinion that this canal, which was dug during the 12th dynasty, the early 12th dynasty, was dug during the time of Joseph, who knew that a 7 year famine was coming, and so he had this canal dug to provide fertility to the land of Egypt during this time. Now there's something else I think is very significant. And that is further downstream is a place called Beni Hassan. And at Beni Hassan, there are some tombs, and one of these tombs has on the wall a beautiful painting, well it used to be beautiful, it's faded now, of some Semitic immigrants who had come into Egypt, and there it shows the type of clothing they wore, the type of domestic animals they had, the type of weapons, and you'll even notice that this fellow had brought his portable TV with him, well actually it's a musical instrument anyway.

So this shows the Semitic immigrants during the 12th dynasty. Now who were they? I don't say that they were Joseph and his family, but I do consider it highly likely that they were the Israelite people who had fanned out over the land, and this man thought it significant enough to put it on the wall of his tomb. Now there is one more thing I want to tell you about.

One of these tombs was made by a man by the name of Ammon. And he also was during the time of Sesostras the First, and he left on the wall of his tomb a record of his good deeds. That's what they mostly did, told the gods what a good fellow they were, and among other things, he referred to what he did to prepare for a coming famine. Now Jan will read you a statement from a historian and a translation of this wall inscription.

No one was unhappy in my days, not even in the years of famine, for I had tilled all the fields of the gnome of. Up to its southern and northern frontiers, thus I prolonged the life of its inhabitants and preserved the food which it produced. And so I consider all of this points to the fact that Sesostras the First was the Pharaoh under whom Joseph was the vizier of Egypt. OK.

So one of the points that Doctor Downs gives, we actually rehearsed last week, and that is the quote that came from the particular tomb of preparing for famine, and do you guys remember us rehearsing that quote? if you guys look at. You're on, we're on part two in your book, page 48. So, in the shortened chronology that Doctor Downs is advocating, which pharaoh was ruling Egypt at the time of the famine?

Yeah, Sassotra switch 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1st. Joseph married a daughter of the priest of An and is likely identified as whom? Him. Yeah, a mental help.

Yeah, a mental hip from the Egyptian record. It is interesting that during this dynasty that you have, the priest of own being identified on that obelisk, and then he does marry, a daughter of own, but that again, that's just, that could be just circumstantial, but at least it's, it's one evidence that Doctor Downs is putting forward. and then we also have paintings that show Semitic people in the 12th dynasty, and there is also a record of what in this period where food was stored.

Yeah, so there's a, there's a record of famine.

So there's basically 4 arguments that are being made here. And Doctor Downs is basically just reiterating what other Others have also argued, so you've got the obelisk pillar of on, and why is that significant? Why is the obelisk pillar of An significant? Because Joseph married a daughter who was right in the Bible, it's called the from the priest of An.

And this is around the 12th century before, so this would be before the Exodus period. So it's right around the period that the, this is the theory that's being put before us. You have Joseph in the 12th dynasty and then I'm sorry, I said century before 12th dynasty, and then you have the Exodus in the 13th dynasty. secondly, the Bible describes Joseph as a prominent figure before whom people bowed.

there is another figure that is called Anem, Anetohep, that is described as being Pharaoh's treasurer, and people are bowing before him. To me, that's not a super strong argument, other than the fact that people, as he argues, people did not normally bow before foreigners. So this, Amenhotep is noted as being a foreign treasure. So he was not an Egyptian.

So that's the connection is, here's somebody who's not an Egyptian, they have a high office and they're being bowed down to and Doctor Downs is arguing that in Egypt, in Egyptian culture, people just did not bow down to foreigners. Yup. Yes. Well, this particular priest was known for having no sons.

He only had, daughters. There was, he had no sons whatsoever. And so, Joseph married, and it's right around the same time period that they're suggesting. So if, if there's only one thing, if there's only one factor, but what he's trying to demonstrate is that there's several different factors all around the same, the same time period that would make it.

Not, that this is, this is a, a logical argument that there's some, some reason, it's it's, it's plausible, any time you're trying to reconstruct history, you're never able to argue for certainty. no matter how much people want, historians want to tell you that they're arguing from certainty, anytime something's in the past, you're talking about probabilities, plausibilities, and then what's just not, what's, what's just not plausible. So he's, he's arguing for plausibility. Yep.

No, they would not have bowed down. That's what, that's his argument is they would not have bowed down to a foreign treasure. So to have evidence of them bowing down to amenhotep, if I'm saying that right, is unique because the Bible says that they did bow down before Joseph and there's evidence of this other foreign treasure being bowed down before. So No, they would, yeah, there, there does seem to be evidence of them bowing down to vice regents, yeah, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of them bowing down to foreign vice regents.

In fact, in fact, it's not just an argument from silence, it's an argument from their documentation that they would not bow down to a foreigner. Just like, in the scriptures it talks about how the Joseph wouldn't even eat with, they wouldn't even eat with the Hebrews, they wouldn't even be in the same room with them and eat with them, let alone bow down to a foreigner. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, it could be. and then thirdly, the other argument that he's making is Joseph's canal that was dug during the 12th dynasty. And so you have this thing and, and, and this is something that we actually covered, I forget how long ago we covered this, maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago, that there's not any known, there's nothing historically where people know why they call it Joseph's Canal. in fact, What's befuddling is the typical chronology of where you would put if Joseph ever made it to Egypt, and historians doubt that.

they would not put Joseph in the 12th dynasty. And so why is this, this particular canal called Joseph's Canal, they don't really know. but in this theory, this, there's a reason to call it Joseph's Canal if Joseph was actually there. Then you also have the tomb of Benna Hassan.

that has, Semitic immigrants during the 12th dynasty. So there's clearly immigrants being drawn on the tomb that shows Hebrews, Hebrew slaves. And so the question is why do you have Hebrew slaves in this 12th century or 12th dynasty, tomb. and again, is he arguing that the, the Semitic slaves are Joseph's family members?

No, he's just arguing for the presence of Semitic slaves that they are, that you can observe them in a tomb. Then you also have one of the tombs called of a, a person named Amani, who writes that he had prepared for a famine during the time of Sesostras the First. And so, you take all of those arguments together and Doctor Downs is assembling information that other archaeologists have put together and he says, I think this, this fits, this at least is plausible that we have Joseph in the 12th dynasty and the Jews or Semitic people in the In the 13th dynasty.

So let's with that, let's Let's go ahead and play video 3, and then we're gonna look at Exodus.

So take some notes on video 3. Having to do with Sesotris the 3rd. So let's take a look at this. Now we come to the 5th king of the 12th dynasty whose name was Sesostras III.

And I considered him to be the pharaoh referred to in the book of Exodus chapter 1 and in verse 8, where it says now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them. Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them.

Well, I consider that by now Joseph would be dead and this would be the Pharaoh referred to in this verse, and believe me, he's a nasty looking character, just the fellow you would expect. To do this thing. For instance, there is this statue of him in the Cairo Museum. Do you notice the downturned, sour mouth that he's got and the nasty expression?

And then here's another statue of him, a similar appearance. And then here is this sphinx of him. I just wouldn't like to know this fellow, and I think he's the pharaoh referred to here. Sisostras the 3rd was followed by Amenemhit the 3rd, and he also was a nasty looking character, as his statues indicate.

Here's one for instance in the Luxor Museum. And he reigned for 43 years. This is his pyramid that he built here, not a very big pyramid today, but originally it was covered with stone and a lot bigger than this. Today all that is left is the core of the pyramid, which is made of mud bricks that are laced with straw.

In fact, you can see the little flecks of straw that were in there. And after all that. What we would expect, isn't it, because here in Exodus chapter 5 and in verse 7 it says, You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick as heretofore. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.

So I think that this was the Pharaoh who was responsible for this. Another interesting point is that Amenemhet III had a daughter, no sons, and that daughter had no children. Her name was Sebek Nefre Ray, and this would explain why she went down to the River Nile and saw her little baby Moses in a basket there. You might wonder well why would an Egyptian princess take a little baby from the slaves and propose to make him the next pharaoh?

Well, you see, she wasn't down there having a bath or taking a swim. She was down there for ceremonial purposes, worshiping the god Harpi, the river god, the Nile god, and he was the fertility god, and of course she'd need a god like that if she was infertile, and so she was down there worshiping the god Harpi. The fertility god. Alright, and so she sees this little baby comes along and regards it as a gift of the fertility god Hapi, and I think probably she called him Hapi Moses.

You see, Moses means drawn out of or born of. In other words, born of the river god Hapi. There are a number of pharaohs called that. For instance, there was Tutmosis, born of the god Tut.

There was Ramosis or Rameses, born of the god Ra. So here we have Moses, born of the god Harpi. Well, he was the baby who was to become the next Pharaoh, but he disappears off the scene, and it's not hard to understand why. There was a king by the name of Amenemhet the 4th, who was intended to be the heir of Amenemhet the 3rd, but suddenly he disappears from the scene.

I think that was Moses myself, because he was forced to flee at the end of this man's reign. And so we come to the end of this dynasty, and I think it fits in very well with what we know of the biblical history. OK. we're running a little short on time and I don't want to miss the last video, but what's the name of this?

Particular pharaoh that Doctor Downs is suggesting again? So Sesostras the 3rd, he believes that this is likely the guy in Exodus 1:8 after Joseph's death. He shows us, one of the, particular pyramids. actually, the pyramid that he shows us is the remains of the pyramid of Aminahet the 3rd.

And what would make him think that perhaps that that was the, one of the pyramids built by the slaves in Egypt? What's one of the pieces of evidence he points to? Yeah, so straw in the bricks, which would not have been common in some of the other, pyramids. Amenehat the 3rd had only one daughter.

Anybody remember her name? Although it's right there in your handout if you're looking at it. Yes, Sobek Nefrew. I think I'm gonna ask my sons or daughters to name my first granddaughter that Sobek Nefrew.

She has no children. Now, the text does say that she went down for a bath, but what is Doctor Down suggesting? What bath is this that she's going down for? Yeah, it's, it's more of a ceremonial cleansing, perhaps to worship the god, happy a fertility god.

I don't know why the fertility god is called. Happy, but that's supposed to be a joke. when, so, so she goes down and she believes perhaps that, the gods have provided for her Moses. let's go ahead for the sake of time, we're gonna look at the last video.

Let me, read one thing here real quick in answer to Gary's question. I'm glad he brought that up because That was actually Supposed to be on my things to, it was actually on my things to do list this week and I never got to it. But Doctor Downs is a field archaeologist who takes a group of tourists to the Middle East every year. At the conclusion of the tour, most of the tourists stay behind and work as volunteers on his digs which are under the auspice of the Israeli Antiquities Authority.

he publishes a monthly archaeology newsletter called Diggings and the magazine Archaeological Diggings, which is distributed by new news agents throughout Australia. he also records a weekly 15 minute archaeology talk which is broadcast over dozens of radio stations all over the world, including Moscow Radio and conducts a monthly archaeology club in the Wesley Mission in Sydney. and there was one other. Thing.

I'm forgetting, there's another note that I had down somewhere, but my Alzheimer's brain is kicking in. Anyway, so that's a little bit about Doctor, Doctor David Downs. Oh, the video that we're watching comes from 1988. So that's 2 years after I graduated from high school.

So. let's, let's take a look at our final video, and this, to me was the most interesting one. Well, now we're visiting the tomb of Sisostras the 2nd, you see it over there in the distance, also a mud brick pyramid. And this particular pyramid was made by Sir Sophus II, and it was excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie in the year 1891.

And Rosalie David published a book only in 1986 in which she highlighted some of the discoveries made by Petrie, and he found that there was an entire city here which was occupied by Semitic slaves, if you please. We'll go to the top of the pyramid, and I'll point out the city from there. Well, I don't want to have to climb that pyramid every hot summer day, but from here you can look out and see where the temple was and where the city was that Petrie excavated. Now he found evidence there that it had been occupied by the workmen who lived and who worked on building these pyramids, and he concluded from the evidence that they were Semitic slaves.

Now there's something else that he found too. This book by Egyptologist Rosalie David was only published in 1986, and it is on the people who built the pyramids, the actual workmen, you see. It has in particular here a chapter called the Foreign Population at Kahoo. And it says from his excavations at Cahoon, Petrie formed the opinion that a certain element of the population there had come from outside Egypt.

Now the archaeologists couldn't figure out who this foreign population were. It says here It is apparent that the Asiatics, now an Asiatic is a term that the Egyptians used for somebody from Syria or Palestine or somewhere in that region, the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt. It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as Asiatics, although their exact homeland in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined.

Now the reason that they could not determine it is because I consider they have the wrong chronology, and therefore they did not associate them with the Israelite slaves.

I believe they should be identified as the Israelite slaves. It says the reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear. In other words, we don't know who they were or how they came to be in Egypt, but put it with the biblical account, and you have the answer. They were enslaved by the pharaoh.

Of particular interest, I think, is something that Petrie found under the floors there. There were boxes. Do you see the picture of the box here, very well preserved. And this box was found under the floor as boxes were under many of the floors of the homes, and it says larger wooden boxes, probably used originally to store clothing and other possessions were discovered underneath the floors of many houses at at Cahoon.

They contained babies, sometimes buried 2 or 3 to a box and aged only a few months at death. I think that's very significant. How did they get there? Well, we know from the biblical record that Pharaoh decreed that all the baby boys were to be put to death at birth.

Some of the mothers managed to look after their babies for 1 month or 2 or 3 months, as with Moses, but then I can see the Egyptians coming along, wrenching them from the arms of the Israelite mothers, killing them, and the loving parents burying them in these boxes under their floors. One more significant point about this is as to where all these Asiatic slaves went to. Interesting, listen. There are different opinions of how this first period of occupation at Cahoon drew to a close.

The quantity, range, and type of articles of everyday use which were left behind in the houses may indeed suggest that the departure was sudden and unpremeditated. Now, how can slaves just suddenly pack up and leave, just drop off everything and leave, and here's the evidence that this is what happened. It's unbelievable, unless you accept the biblical account, that all these Israelite slaves just suddenly left Egypt in the great exodus movement. to me, that's very interesting, very interesting information.

Basically, you have an excavation. anybody remember the name of the excavator in 1891? Petrie, Petrie. so Petrie excavates this area where you have the, the village and the pyramid, and, and so they, they discovered that there's evidence that these are Semitic, slaves.

he quotes from a book that comes from 1986. They agree that there is a foreign population here, they call them Asiatics. this would not at all mean like from China or from Mongolia. This would be, people from the Palestine or some area like that.

what's the reason that Doctor Downs suggests that they can't figure out who these people were? And, and why they were there and where they went. What's, what's his main argument why they can't figure it out? Yeah, it's the wrong chronology.

they've got the dynasties organized wrongly and if you, if you take not just his suggestion, but the suggestions he's drawn from other folks, overlapping dynasties, and if this is really the 13th dynasty which lines up with the, seems to line up well with the other evidences that he suggested, then this very easily could be. Hebrew slaves. What's the other piece of evidence that he's given once they excavate some of these houses? Yeah, wooden boxes that perhaps were used to store their things but actually have, they end up becoming coffins for babies, 2 and 3 babies in a coffin.

that is pretty interesting, as well as the evidence that's coming from an Egyptologist who actually does not believe that this has anything to do with Hebrew slaves, says that these slaves suddenly disappear. We can tell from the evidence that it was sudden and unpremeditated because they left all their stuff behind and so it's like, what, we have no idea why this happened. But when you overlap this with the biblical text, what were, when a Jew was to partake of the Passover, what were they supposed to do?

They were to have their clothes on, their belt on, staff in hand.

As they took the Passover recognizing that you are gonna be departing very quickly, and every time and when Jews partake of the Passover, they're supposed to commemorate this idea of a hastily eaten meal and and and being ready to take off immediately. And so, Let's go ahead and let's, let's make some applications. We're at 10 o'clock right now. Let me give some, some applications and then I'll be up here for questions afterwards.

are we arguing in this lesson? That the evidence that's been presented by Doctor Downs and digging up the past, that this is on par with scripture. No. What we're arguing is that we start with the authority of Scripture.

We start with a God, the God gave us the Bible, so we believe the Bible, God cannot lie, so we believe what the Bible tells us. And if secular historians and if National Geographic and the History Channel tell us we're a bunch of idiots for believing that there was really such a thing as Joseph going into Egypt and an exodus, a mass exodus, even if no evidence comes out to corroborate what the Bible says, We just say, what, you're a human being, you're trying to assemble information just like everybody else.

we believe the Bible, let God be true and every man a liar. But because we know that God has given us true history, he's not just asking us to believe things that are nonsense and don't comport with reality.

It's not surprising that when we do our homework, that we do find corroboration of the biblical evidence, not that we're depending upon it. But we do find corroboration. so, let's be careful of a couple of things. I just want to read a paragraph from our curriculum that I really like the way this was stated.

we need to make sure that we're using the Bible to measure all of the ideas of Doctor Downs or anybody else. Ultimately, a lot of questions about the exact timing and details of the events remain. While the Bible is very accurate history, it is not an exhaustive history. Our modern mind expects a lot of detail and ideas written in perfect chronological sequence, but that is not what the Bible is.

We need to be careful not to impose our expectations on the Bible. God knew what he was doing and when he wrote it and why. And so, while the Bible does report true history, we need to be careful that we're not imposing a certain standards upon what the Bible, on the Bible and expecting it to us to give us everything in a certain exact order. It's almost like in the gospels, the gospels are written, it's given us true narrative, but if you understand the, the genre of the gospel, gospels are theological narrative.

And so many times the gospel writers are taking things in Christ's life and ordering them a certain way in order to make a theological point. they're not always meant to be like this happened and then the very next day this happened and then the very next day this happened. If you had terms like that the very next day, then we would expect that. but the gospels are actually theological narrative.

And so we have to be careful about imposing modern standards upon what God is doing in the book of Exodus. If there's ever a claim that there was no exodus from Egypt led by Moses, we must reject that idea, trusting that God has communicated to us truthfully. Everything must be viewed through the lens of scripture. And then as we, as we start with the Bible, we view it through the lens of Scripture.

We're gonna find that that our, our faith is corroborated. Let me just And by reminding you guys of something we talked about a couple of weeks ago from Doctor Edwin Yamauuchi. Doctor Edwin Yamanuchi is a biblical archaeologist, and he just, one of the things that he does regularly is just to remind people of what we can know from archaeology and what we can't know from archaeology. He says this, only a fraction of the world's archaeological evidence still survives in the ground.

Only a fraction of the possible archaeological sites have been discovered. Only a fraction have been excavated and those only partially. Only a fraction of those partially, partial excavations have been thoroughly examined and published. And only a fraction of what has been examined and published has anything to do with the claims of the Bible.

And so to say that we don't have archaeological evidence for any particular fact in the past, it's like Duh, there's all kinds of things that have happened in the past. how few documents we have of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. We have no originals of any of their writings and hundreds and hundreds of years between when they actually lived and the surviving or what we call the extent documents of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. And so, So archaeology can corroborate certain things, but we're not disturbed when we don't find archaeological evidence for every single claim that we have in the Bible.

The reality is, is the Bible, this is what a lot of people forget, is the Bible itself is an archaeological document. And so the text of Scripture is ancient. And so when you have a text of scripture making certain claims, you have an archae a piece of archaeological evidence in your hands. And so even if there are no other corroborations, you at least have that claim.

And then theologically, we'd argue once the Bible says something, if we've interpret it properly, then we can bank on it because it comes from an authoritative, a God who knows all, and a God who cannot lie. any questions that you guys have? We've done a lot today. And we are over time, but I'll, I'll take one or two questions.

Yep Yeah, Now they Yep. Right, but. He's arguing that the, that there's straw in this area where there were non-Semitic slaves. There weren't straw and used in all pyramids, but in this, in this particular pyramid, the bricks had straw in them.

It was made with straw and mud. And so that would corroborate the time period because other dynasties did not make their pyramids with straw. That's the argument. Yep.

Any, anything else? Yup, Barbara. Yes. Yep.

Yeah, and that's, that's the thing is, and this is, this is, isn't this a reoccurring theme? It's, I see a reoccurring theme as, as we've been going through this class over the last couple of years is you have a claim that the Bible makes. And then you have secular scientists who say there's no evidence for that. There's no evidence for the flood, there's no evidence for this or that, and this scient, you're just believing some pie in the sky faith concept.

But then as you actually start doing the research, you find that no, based upon their presuppositions, there's no evidence for it. But if you approach the evidence according to different presuppositions, a rational argument can be made that corroborates the biblical narrative, and this is just true. This is the same thing that we see with the Exodus. Based on the current presuppositions of Egyptology.

Yeah, there's no evidence for the Semitic. Exodus in their chronology. So what Doctor Downs or other, others are arguing is, you guys have the wrong, you're not looking in the right place. You're looking 200 yards in that direction when the evidence is here.

The evidence is in the 12th and 13th dynasty. You look at the 12th and 13th dynasty, you see Joseph's Canal, you see Semitic slaves, you see dead babies in boxes, you see straw in pyramids. You see the priestess of A. you start compiling all that information and then add that to the fact of what Edwin Yamauuchi says that you really don't find a lot of stuff in archaeology in the first place.

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack to have all that stuff lining up that corroborates the biblical story. To me, that moves beyond the plausible. And makes it probable when we're looking at it just archaeologically. And then, of course, when you just look at you and you throw in the Bible, now it makes it certain, right?

And so, I don't know, I just found, I found this, the last couple of lessons I found very encouraging and very interesting. Let's go ahead and pray and I'll, I'll be up here for other questions and appreciate you guys' interaction. Lord, we thank you so much that while we don't need anything outside of your word to corroborate what you've given to us because you are God, you're, and you are true and, and you speak truthfully, we thank you that you give us so much. Even just driving in this morning and seeing the beautiful clouds and the sun and and just the beauty of this earth, and we, and there is no evidence of any other life outside of this planet.

Your word tells us that you created life on this planet, and yet people persist to believe that there is life elsewhere when they have no evidence for it, and they deny that you created life on this planet when there's evidence all over the place for it. Lord, it's just amazing. We pray, Lord, that you help us just to trust your word and then to rejoice in the corroborations that we see in nature and in the sciences. we ask God to be with our pastors he preaches this morning and be with us as we minister to one another.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right, I'll be up here if you wanna try to fool my ignorance. And But look forward to seeing you guys next week.