Message #22106

[Sarah]

Identification as Hebrews

Josephus and Apion

In his Against Apion, the 1st-century AD historian Josephus Flavius debates the synchronism between the Biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and two Exodus-like events that the Egyptian historian Manetho apparently mentions. It is difficult to distinguish between what Manetho himself recounted, and how Josephus or Apion interpret him.

Josephus identifies the Israelite Exodus with the first exodus mentioned by Manetho, when some 480,000 Hyksos "shepherds" left Egypt for Jerusalem.[20] The mention of "Hyksos" identifies this first exodus with the Hyksos period (16th century BC). If Manetho mentioned "Jerusalem", it may correspond with the Biblical account when Israelites under Joshua defeated the army of Jerusalem's city-king (Joshua 10:23).

Apion, with anti-Jewish bias, identifies a second exodus mentioned by Manetho when a renegade Egyptian priest called Osarseph led 80,000 "lepers" to rebel against Egypt. Apparently Manetho conflates events of the Amarna period (in the 14th century) and the events at the end of the 19th Dynasty (12th century).[citation needed] Then Apion additionally conflates these with the Biblical Exodus, and contrary to Manetho, even alleges that this heretic priest changed his name to Moses.[21] Many scholars[22][23][24][25][26] interpret "lepers" and "leprous priests" non-literally: not as a disease but rather as a strange and unwelcome new belief system.

Josephus records the earliest account of the false but understandable etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Bedouin-like "Shepherd Kings", which scholars have only recently shown means "foreign rulers".

Some scholars, while continuing to promulgate the idea of a Hyksos conquest of Egypt, assert that Josephus inaccurately associated the Hyksos with the ancient Israelites. This is primarily due to the fact that there is little or no information from ancient Egyptian sources to fill in the records of the period covering the thirteenth through the seventeenth dynasties. Based on random bits of information, Egyptian folk lore, and much conjecture, some historians conclude that during the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties Egypt was under the domination of the Hyksos, and assume that a waning of native Egyptian power was limited to only the thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties.

As to a Hyksos “conquest,” some archaeologists depict the Hyksos as “northern hordes . . . sweeping through Palestine and Egypt in swift chariots.” Yet, others refer to a ‘creeping conquest,’ that is, a gradual infiltration of migrating nomads or seminomads who either slowly took over control of the country piecemeal or by a swift coup d’etat put themselves at the head of the existing government. In The World of the Past (1963, p. 444), archaeologist Jaquetta Hawkes states: “It is no longer thought that the Hyksos rulers... represent the invasion of a conquering horde of Asiatics... they were wandering groups of Semites who had long come to Egypt for trade and other peaceful purposes.” However, this view, still makes it difficult to explain how “wandering groups” could have gained control of Egypt, especially since the twelfth dynasty, prior to this period, is considered to have brought the country to a peak of power.

From the foregoing it is evident that there is considerable confusion, not only in ancient Egyptian history, but also among its modern interpreters concerning the Hyksos Period. Consequently, no concrete conclusion about the validity of this period can be reached. However, it may be that Manetho’s account, as quoted by Josephus, is simply a garbled Egyptian tradition. It should never be forgotten that the recording of history in Egypt, as in many Near Eastern lands, was inseparably linked with its priesthood, under whose tutelage the scribes were trained. So it would not be unusual if, in an effort to rewrite history, the scribes and priests invented some propagandistic explanation to account for the utter failure of the Egyptian gods to prevent the disaster that the Hebrew god brought upon Egypt and its people. In the pages of history, even recent history, there are many examples of such gross misrepresentation—the oppressed are depicted as the oppressors, and innocent victims as dangerous and cruel aggressors.

Therefore, if preserved with some accuracy by Josephus, Manetho’s account (written over one thousand years after Israel’s exodus from Egypt) perhaps represented the distorted traditions handed down by succeeding generations of Egyptians to explain away the truth about Israel’s residence in their land. Should this be the case, the Hyksos would be none other than the Israelites, though portrayed in a distorted manner.