THE DATE OF THE EXODUS

1KI 6:1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.

If you go to your encyclopaedia or most any reference book, you will be able to discover that the date of Solomon's rule is fairly well established and the date of the 4th year of his reign would be 967/966 BC. In our opinion, the most accurate and authoritative book on the subject of dating the Hebrew Kings is "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings" by Edwin R. Thiele. You can order this book from any book store if they do not have it in stock.

With this date established (967/966 BC) we need to go back 480 years, as the above scripture indicates. This would place the date of the Exodus at 1447/1446 BC. I will state at this point that we do not consider any outside source above the scriptural reference, so we will look no further for more information as to the date.

We will, however, look for historical references and inscriptions which may verify this date. The following information is just such a verification, and is from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" 1985 ed. vol. 4 pp. 575,6:

"The next date is given by a medical papyrus, to which a calendar is added, possibly to insure a correct conversion of dates used in the receipts to the actual timetable. Here it is said that the 9th day of the 11th month of year 9 of King Amenhotep I was the day of the helical rising of Sothis- i.e., 1538 BC. This date, however, is only accurate provided the astronomical observations were taken at the old residence of Memphis; if observed at Thebes in Upper Egypt, the residence of the 18th dynasty, the date must be lowered by 20 years- i.e., 1518 BC."

When we came across this information, we had already constructed our chronology of the 18th dynasty, which took about 3 years. We show year 9 of Amenhotep 1 to be 1519 BC- and this reference places his year 9 at 1518 BC, if the observance was noted at Thebes, which is where their royal headquarters were. This was a very exciting confirmation which is based on solid astronomical evidence. It, at the very least, placed the 18th dynasty at exactly the right place in the time scale. For it to have fit so extremely well was far more than we could have asked for!

For more information on Biblical chronology, see our chronology later in this volume with references, etc.

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