![]() This figure can be adjusted by where we put Abraham on the Egyptian timeline and how many years the Egyptian sojourn lasted these are not agreed upon by everyone. The difference between the two is therefore 2,400 – 1,300 = 1,100 years that need to be taken out of the Egyptian timeline, however we choose to do it. On the biblical timeline, Abraham visited Egypt at about 1900 BC (counting a 215-year sojourn), giving us 1,900 – 600 = 1,300 years between Abraham and the merger at 600 BC. If we put Abraham’s Egyptian visit at around 3000 BC secular (beginning of Dynasty I), we have a period of 3,000 – 600 = 2,400 secular years between Abraham and the merger. We can calculate how many years we are looking to subtract from the Egyptian timeline between Abraham and 600 BC to make it overall the same length as the biblical timeline. ![]() The result is a wide difference in the amount of time Porter and Osgood have removed from the historical Egyptian timeline (3000 – 600 BC) by their respective methods. Then he takes out a further 250 years in the Third Intermediate Period, for an overall reduction of 1,650 years. By doing this, he reduces the Egyptian timeline by 1,400 years in one fell swoop. He shortens the time in the Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, and Middle Kingdom periods by subscribing to the Courville (1971) scheme of overlapping of dynasties (see fig. On the other hand, Osgood (2022) defends the king-lists. His total reduction in the Egyptian timeline from the first dynasty to merger at about 600 BC is 600 + 300 years = 900 years. Porter therefore removes a total of 840 – 540 = 300 years from these two periods. The secular timeline gives 840 years to this period (see Shaw 2003, 481–483). Porter (2022) then goes back through the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods (Dynasties I–VI), allowing 540 years through unproven assumptions, such as an average of 15 years per reign. He admits (I give him credit for this) that he hasn’t been able to shorten this interval enough, as his date for the Exodus works out to 1560 BC, taking roughly 600 years out of the Egyptian timeline instead of 700. He shortens this period with assumptions about the lengths of the pharaohs’ reigns, a methodology that I find unconvincing. He then discusses in some considerable detail the period from the end of the Old Kingdom to 609 BC this latter date is when Pharaoh Necho kills Josiah (2 Kings 23:29), approximately the date when the two timelines merge. He also appeals to stratigraphical (layer) sequences by archaeologists but gives no reasons why this should prove anything about the lengths of pharaohs’ reigns. Porter (2022) waves aside the Egyptian king-lists as “unreliable” (no proof of this is offered), and instead prefers to use information from “inscriptions, papyri and tomb paintings, etc.” These sources could be less solid than they appear, however, because of the well-known propensity of the Egyptian pharaohs to glorify themselves. But how they deal with this divergence of the two timelines is quite different. The Differing Methodsīoth Porter and Osgood date the Exodus at about 2150 BC on the Egyptian timeline, 700 years earlier than the widely accepted biblical date of 1450 BC. Their placement of the Exodus at the end of the Old Kingdom, approximately at the end of Dynasty VI, is a stance with which I concur. It is with interest that I see Porter (2022) and Osgood (2022) address the very important topic of where to position the Exodus in the secular Egyptian history. ![]() Keywords: Biblical chronology, Early Dynastic, Egyptian chronology, Egyptian history, Exodus, Exodus pharaoh, Ipuwer Papyrus, Old Kingdom, overlapping dynasties, timeline synchronization Introduction
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