To: 2MAR$ who wrote (38155 ) 6/27/2013 12:36:32 PM From: longnshort Respond to There was a fire in the Great Library of Alexandria, most records from that era are gone. BUT. The historian Josephus writing in the first century states: "Pharaoh’s daughter, Thermuthis, was walking along the river bank. Seeing a basket floating by, she called to her swimmers to retrieve it for her. When her servants came back with the basket, she was overjoyed to see the beautiful little infant inside . . . Thermuthis gave him the name Moses, which in Egyptian means saved from the water" . . . Having no children of her own, she adopted him as her own son." Josephus says the daughter of pharaoh was Thermuthis, which sounds an awful lot like the royal name Thutmose or Thutmosis. According to history, Pharaoh Thutmose and his wife Queen Ahmose had two daughters, Neferubity, of whom little is known, and Hatshepsut who later became Queen and bore the title 'King's daughter'. Hatshepsut married her stepbrother Thutmose II as arranged by her father. After her father's death, her husband Thutmose II became pharaoh, but Hatshepsut was really in power. Queen Thutmose II if you will. She became one of Egypt's greatest rulers. She coreigned with her husband from approximately 1504-1490 B.C. If indeed Thutmose III was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, his acts recorded in history would have been consistent with how the bible portrays him as personally leading his army against the Israelites. The following inscription was found in Egyptian records detailing one of his well known military campaigns where he personally led his army against the Canaanites at the fortress of Megiddo: "Then the king moved to the front of his army . . . Where his majesty [Thutmose III] triumphed over them as leader of his troops." biblehistory.net Apirus, Hebrews are mentioned in many places. Some Egyptian monuments mention an enigmatic people: the "Apiru". In one of these was carved on the stone walls a scene depicting men working at a wine press. Beneath the picture was a title which ran: "Straining out wine by the Apiru". The date of the monument is believed to be during the reign of queen Hatshepshut and Tutmose III, about the year 2290 (1470 b.c.e.). Scholars immediately recognized the similarity of the word "Apiru" to "Hebrew", with a scene depicting manual labour, as described in Exodus for Hebrew people under bondage in Egypt. From the Papyrus Leiden, dated to the reign of Ramose II, about the year 2510 (1250 b.c.e.), the following statement is made in a letter: "Issue grain to the men of the army and to the Apiru who draw stone for the great pylon of Ramses II". However, the Masoretic Hebrew text dates from the 4th century AD and the earliest surviving copy is from the 10th century. The Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX) was made under Ptolemy I in the 3rd Century BC and the earliest copy is centuries older than the oldest full Masoretic text we possess. It records the full version of Exodus 12:40 as:- "Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt and Canaan, was 430 years." This rendering of the verse is also found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, again older than the Masoretic text. Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews' (XV:2), writing in the 1st century, also gives the length of time from Abraham entering Canaan to the Exodus as 430 years. Therefore, in the Masoretic text, it is safe to say that the words "and Canaan" - i.e. the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - have been omitted in transcription over many centuries. Furthermore, I Chronicles 7:22-27 records ten generations from Joshua back to Joseph's son Ephraim, who was a boy of around five years when Jacob arrived in Egypt. Taking a standard average generation length of 20 years, we again arrive at a sojourn time of approximately 200 years. Josephus (op.cit.) records that from the time of Jacob's entry into Egypt until the Exodus there was a period of 215 years. Adding this to the Exodus date of 1447 BC from Edwin Thiele's biblical chronology, we arrive at a date of 1662 BC for Jacob's arrival in Egypt. Alternatively, by adding 430 years, we arrive at a figure of 1877 BC for Abraham's arrival in Canaan. debate.org.uk Tel el Amarna Tablets Although Egyptian history was monolithic throughout the millennia, a revolutionary change took place under a young king of the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty. His name: Amenophis IV. He dismantled the polytheistic religion of his forefathers and recognized only one god, Aten, the sun disk, as the supreme ruler of the universe. Amenophis changed his name to "Akh-n-Aten" and moved his capital from Thebes to Akhetaten, today's Tel el Amarna. There, some 120 years ago, archaeologists found a huge number of cuneiform tablets representing the official correspondence between Egyptian kings, mainly Amenophis III and his son Akh-n-Aten, and the governors of Canaanite
