Thursday, November 5, 2015
Even Steven's Summary of Patterns of Evidence
I recently watched Patterns of Evidence, a 2014 documentary about the historicity of the Exodus. I may write a post about it next week (we'll see). Here, I want to link to a summary of the documentary's arguments. It is by Even Steven. See here. I have at least two disagreements with the summary. First, I disagree with what the summary says about the Hyksos: I do not think that the documentary was equating the
Hebrews with the Hyksos, but rather was suggesting that the Exodus made
Egypt incredibly weak, and that was what made Egypt so vulnerable when
the Hyksos invaded. Second, the summary says or implies that the documentary dates the Exodus to 1450 B.C.E. That was one view presented in the documentary. The problem is that
1450 B.C.E. was after the time of the Middle Kingdom, which is when the
documentary seems to believe the Exodus took place, and that is one reason that there is an
attempt to align the chronologies.