The Sean McDowell Show - Was the Exodus Real? (with Titus Kennedy)

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

Dr. Titus Kennedy is to talk about some of his favorite evidences for the Exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt. Join us for some more context, analysis of the historical and cultural setting of the Exodus , and a deeper understanding of the texts. Dr. Titus Kennedy believes a solid historical case can be made that the Bible got it right. We discuss key findings that support the traditional biblical chronology of the exodus. READ: Unearthing the Bible: 101 Archaeological Evidences that Bring the Bible to Life, by Titus Kennedy (https://amzn.to/3Ph0lMf) WATCH: 20 Archaeological Evidences for the Old Testament (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idW27rreYNw) READ: A Rebel's Manifesto, by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/3u8s2Oz) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Is there actually any evidence for the Exodus? How might we respond to the claim that we frequently hear that there's no evidence for the Exodus? Well, my guest today, Dr. Titus Kennedy, is an archaeologist. He's an author of a great book called Unearthing the Bible that we're going to get into today. And he's a professor with me at Biola University. And he takes a contrarian position on the Exodus and thinks there's some very good evidence we're going to unpack today. Dr. Kennedy, thanks for coming back to the show.

Thanks for having me back, Sean. Absolutely. Well, let's just jump right in. There's so much we can talk about here. And I want to know from you first, what is the common view among modern historians and archaeologists about the Exodus and the subsequent wandering in the desert? Well, today, the vast majority of scholars in many different fields would view the Exodus as mythical. And so they're saying it basically never happened.

You know, some of them might talk about, oh, there's a historical memory of some sort of group of people migrating, but essentially what's found in the Bible and the book of Exodus, they're saying that didn't happen. The main reason I think really falls into two different categories. One is coming from an ideological or a scholarly perspective, going back to the documentary hypothesis. And that's the whole idea about what are the sources for the Hebrew Bible and when were earlier books, were written much later than they claimed to be by anonymous authors, and that a lot of it was just propaganda. So they're saying it's unhistorical. And that's the schematic that they're looking at

when they're looking at these early biblical stories. And so they're presupposing, essentially, that they shouldn't be historical even. Now, that came about partly as a result of the lack of archaeological evidence when this theory really came about was in the 19th century when it came to fruition, so to speak. People had ideas before. But then if we look even later, up to the mid the mid 20th century we're also seeing a lack of clear archaeological evidence for the exodus that late you know into the 1950s and so and then when scholars are assessing this they're of course they have professors who came from before them they're looking at articles and books that were published earlier, and they're

saying, where is the evidence for that? And so it was essentially decided in academia, and it's a settled question. And so very few people are really looking into, is there new evidence for the Exodus and what may have been found within recent decades that could help us to answer that question? That's really helpful to say it's a matter of philosophical approach and consensus. But as you argue we're going to get into, it seems that the tide may be shifting, at least in terms of the available evidence that's been found. Now, as we start, tell us what position you take on the exodus and why. I take the position that the Exodus was an historical event, and I do so because for my investigation and investigations of many colleagues and other scholars who I haven't met, but I've read or listened to, they have uncovered and I have looked at what seems to be evidence for components of the Exodus story.

We're not going to cover or be able to connect every single passage in the Exodus story to archaeological evidence. But there is a framework and there are many specifics also that I think that we now have evidence for. And to me, that's really compelling. And I think it supports the view that this ancient text is telling a story of something that actually happened. I'm looking forward to getting into some of these pieces that tell a story that supports the Exodus, in your view. But first off, I think a question is helpful for people and myself.

What kind of evidence should we expect for an event like the Exodus roughly 3,000 plus years ago? Yeah, and that's a great question because people need to be going into this with the proper expectations. And what we should expect is very minimal archaeological evidence of an event like this because we need to look at it in broader terms. Forget about it as a Bible story. Just think about it as some event in history. Well, what is it? We have an ethnic group living in Egypt who are part of a larger slave population who then leave the country during a period of calamities, and they show up in the east you know east of there in in canaan and they settle there and so if we're thinking about what kind of archaeological

evidence is going to be left behind this uh partial slave population that exits the country there really shouldn't be much now we have other material in the Exodus story, locations and people and some events that we might more plausibly expect to uncover something about those geographic places, those names or officials. But in terms of the overarching story, we really shouldn't expect to find much of anything. And it really shouldn't be surprising, actually, if we found nothing. It was 3,500 years ago, roughly, over 3,000 years ago. You just don't find so many details of archaeological evidence for migrations. So if we found nothing, it wouldn't mean that it was false. But in fact, we have positive evidence to make this case we're going to get into. Now, how much you make of the

point that in sense of we wouldn't expect to find a lot because if this event happened, as is described in Exodus, it'd be pretty embarrassing and humiliating for the pharaoh of that day to be decimated by a group of slaves and to lose slaves. How much credence do you give to that point? Because that seems to even lower the bar even further. This is something that Egyptologists would tell you, that thegyptians in their official or royal annals did not record their losses or their embarrassments and so if that is the kind of event that we're looking for we're not going to find it in inscribed into the walls of the temple that some pharaoh had commissioned to talk about events during his reign. That's just not going to

happen. And that's fairly typical of ancient cultures. They didn't record their losses and their embarrassments, at least not in the official records. But as you said earlier, and I reiterated, an absence of evidence in this type of situation does not mean that it didn't happen. Now, we can't demonstrate that it happened if we have an absence of evidence, but we also can't demonstrate that it didn't happen just because we haven't yet found something. Now, you have this what's called a point A to point B argument, which we're going to get into. But a couple questions first before we jump in again that I think will be helpful. Sometimes claims are made that the population figures in Exodus and Numbers of the 100,000s are not translated correctly,

and the real number should be in the tens of thousands. What do you make of that idea? Is it possible? Is it probable or unlikely so it's first of all it's it's plausible based on the options we have for translating this particular hebrew word and and if we look at all of the different numbers connected to the exodus population in those various passages then it's it's very plausible there's really only one passage that is a serious problem. But when we look at things like archaeological demography, so studying ancient populations through archaeology, and we look at other ancient sources that discuss this question

or the population of the Hebrews at that time, such as in Manetho or in Josephus, all of that data suggests that it was a much smaller population, like around 100,000 or less people. And logistically, that makes a lot more sense too. So I think that that suggestion is plausible. I think that it's even likely, and I think there are some strong arguments that that can be made to demonstrate that from a variety of uh different types of evidence so if that were the case then the common translations in the english bible that has hundreds of thousands might be mistaken and lead to different expectations in terms of the archaeological evidence we would find is that correct right yeah absolutely and that is a component of the story that

has been criticized archaeologically just on the basis again of logistics of things like how could that many people have moved from here to there all the the sacrifices, also the population of Egypt overall at the time, these things just not lining up, it caused a real problem for many scholars, and then resulted in them just throwing out the Exodus story, because they look at specific sections like this, and they say, that doesn't make any sense, so the whole story must not have a lot of credence well there's also a big debate about the dating of the exodus itself can you tell us which position you take on the dating of the exodus and why i would date the exodus to the 15th century bc and in egyptian terms this would be during the 18th dynasty. Now I do do so for two major reasons. The first is the chronological information that we get in the Hebrew Bible.

I take those specific numbers that are given as real numbers rather than figurative or idealized types of numbers. We have passages like 1 Kings 6.1 that tells us in the fourth year of Solomon's reign, in the month of Ziv, and then it says it was the 480th year after the Israelites came up out of Egypt. So it gets into some really detailed numbers. And I would then say, all right, well, let's look 479 years earlier. Other people take different views on that. They look at it as 12 idealized generations of 40 years. And we have other passages, though, like Judges 11, 26, that says the Israelites have been in the land for about 300 years in the time of Jephthah, which would be about 1100 B.C. OK, well, we could also, with a different hermeneutic, say again, oh, that's just that's just an idealized number of figurative number. number and even in first chronicles where it talks about 19 generations between moses and solomon

which fits really well with the 15th century bc idea they might also say again this is just some kind of uh figurative genealogy that's not meant to be taken exact like that. So I don't think that we can solve it hermeneutically. We're going to always be running around each other in circles. But what we can do then is evaluate the archaeological evidence for these different chronological frameworks and see which is the one that seems to yield the archaeological evidence for the Exodus or the the best most clear evidence and i would say the 18th dynasty does and that's what we can look at today well some of the facts

we're going to get into are just fascinating the first time i learned some of this but i want to make sure audiences that your dating is based on biblical passages like 1 Kings 6, when the temple was made, etc. Dating back to the Exodus itself. And extra-biblically, some of the facts we're going to look at, you think, line up nicely and tell us there's good reason to believe the biblical story of the Exodus, taken straightforward, happened. Now, walk us through, and then after this one, we're going to jump right into the particular evidence, but explain your approach to this, because when people are looking at the evidence for the Exodus, they approach it with a different methodology. Your methodology is very

helpful, and you kind of call people from point A to point B. We have Hebrews living in Egypt prior to time one. That would be the Exodus. And then we have Hebrews settled in Canaan after time one. And so they were here, and then they moved here. And we have a chronological framework for that. So if we have evidence of Hebrews living in Egypt prior to the Exodus, and then evidence of Hebrews popping up in Canaan after the Exodus, that is the general story that we've got and you know hopefully we would at least be able to demonstrate those two things otherwise we really can't say that we have archaeological or historical evidence for the Exodus we just say we have an

ancient text that tells us so we're not looking for a particular text that just gives us everything. We're piecing together the time frame and the events, and we find these kind of puzzle pieces that fit the narrative and support the biblical account as a whole is kind of this methodology, which makes a lot of sense. So let's start with point A, so to speak. Do we have reason to believe that the Hebrews were actually living in Egypt the time that the book of Exodus would describe that they were there?

We do, and we could look at a few different components of this argument. I would start more broadly with, is there evidence that Semites were living in what the bible calls the land of goshen prior to the exodus that is the northeast nile delta region we even have the name goshen or or something very similar to it found in a 19th dynasty egyptian text that puts it in that region so we know it's the right area and it was an ancient name. And as far as Semites living during what is called the second intermediate period and the 18th dynasty in some of those sites also. Now that is the pre-Exodus period, and that evidence consists of things like specific types of pottery and weapons, burials that were typical of people from Canaan, not from Egypt. God's deities and things like that were imported.

We even have inscriptions with Semitic names found in these places at that time. So that idea is fine. Egyptian artwork shows immigration and text shows immigration into Egypt from Canaan. So that would be our broadest type of evidence. Okay, so point A, pre-Exodus time, we find Semitic people. And tell us why you made the distinction between Semites and the Hebrews. So Semites is the broader group designation. Roughly, we might call that people who spoke an ancient Semitic language. So this would include everybody from Canaan, essentially. And within Canaan at that time, you would have had different

tribal groups and different clans and families. Well, the Hebrews came from one family, right? So they eventually became their own tribal group, but they're still Semites. So we just needed to see, is there evidence for that type of people living in Egypt before? But we can get more specific than that, and we can look at, is there evidence of Hebrews living in Egypt, not just general Semites? Well, let's do that. And I think the Papyrus Brooklyn helps us answer this question. And in particular, not only Semites, but Hebrew people, at least those with Hebrew that Hebrews lived in Egypt prior to the Exodus. And that's because we have on Papyrus Brooklyn this list of servants in Egypt from about the 17th century BC. And many of the names of these servants were Semitic names. And by the way,

these people had their original name changed into an Egyptian name, just like happened to Joseph. But even in more detail, some of these Semitic names are actually names that we find for Hebrews in the Bible. So most of them are feminine names. So we're going to be looking at some of these are feminine versions of male names we're familiar with, but feminine versions of names like Asher and Issachar and Jacob. We also have the name Shiphrah, which appears in Exodus chapter one. That's the name of one of the Hebrew midwives. We've got a compound name with David. we've got a compound name with Eve or Haya. And then we even have someone's name that was apparently Hebrew. That's how it's transliterated, at least in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. So this seems to me really strong evidence for Hebrewsrews living in egypt prior to the time of the exodus because you really can't

get more specific than names that are used by a particular ethnic group uh we can't say that like this pottery form was only used by the hebrews prior to the exodus that just doesn't work with material culture so if unless we had a text that was saying the sons of Jacob were here in Egypt, the next best thing is biblical Hebrew names of people who are servants there prior to the Exodus. So when was this written? And this presumably lines up with the chronology that you're laying out, right? Yeah, this dates to about the 17th century BC. So it's in this time called the second intermediate period. It's a little murky chronologically, but we can put it within that century, basically. So we're talking about 200 plus years before the Exodus, something like that. Okay, so point A, in the pre-Exodus era, we have evidence for Semites, non-Egyptians from Canaan in the area.

And then as we get to the period of the Exodus, dating at least around that time, we have evidence of Hebrew names and being kept as slaves. Is that our two components so far? Is that fair? Yeah, we can look at the slavery evidence that even goes beyond this list of servants because we have a variety of Egyptian texts and different Egyptian artwork that also demonstrates that Semites, or what they often called Asiatics, were being used for slave labor, specifically in the 18th dynasty. The beginning of that dynasty is really when that exploded.

And that is something that also, I think, fits perfectly with the Exodus story. So is there evidence, archaeological evidence, that slaves were forced to work, such as constructing buildings, making bricks, as the Exodus story reports? And what would that evidence be? Yeah, absolutely. Probably one of the best known and really a great visual comes from the tomb of this official Rekhah and on part of the walls there there's a scene in which it shows foreign slaves some of whom are semitic making mud bricks and then carrying these bricks over and then constructing buildings but we also know that this happened from other egyptian texts there's a one of the hermitage papyri that also talks about

immigrant people samites being forced into public building projects so we definitely know that was going on just like the exodus talks about and is this found and i i'm afraid i might mispronounce it but the louvre or louvre leather roll does that support this case as well it does that one specifically looks at mud brick making and quotas so that comes from the 19th dynasty just after this where i would place the exodus period although some would put it in that time. And this talks about how a group of slaves no longer had straw to use in the making of their mud bricks, which is really an essential component to help keep it together. And as a result, they didn't meet their quota. So the quota is stated, and it says bricks they brought, they failed to do that and and because of it they were

beaten now if we go to the book of exodus we see the same things happen the the israelites were part of this labor force that was supposed to make mud bricks and then they weren't given any more straw and they couldn't make their quota and as a result result, they got punished. They got beatings for it. So exactly the same historical context is happening there. Okay, I don't want people to miss that we've got good evidence, archaeological evidence, outside the Bible for Semitic people in the area of Egypt before the Exodus. We have Hebrew names of people that date to the time of the Exodus, evidence that they were made make bricks with quotas and buildings, just as we see in the Exodus story. Now you have this other component you've talked about that fascinated me. I'd never heard this before. It was called the weighing of

the heart. What is that and how does it allude to the Exodus story, presumably in terms of Pharaoh's heart being hardened. So the weighing of the heart was a process in Egyptian theology that one had to go through in order to make it to paradise in the afterlife. And this process is shown on a lot of ancient Egyptian artwork, including going back to the time of the exodus and the basic scene would be that there are these scales and on one side of the scale you have the feather of truth and then it's weighed against the deceased heart and if the heart is too heavy then they don't go to paradise now in the egyptian viewpoint the more you would sin the heavier your heart would become so if we go and look at moses's discussions with pharaoh we see this talk about hardening of the heart right well if you look at it in hebrew there's actually two different words

that are used so it talks about how pharaoh made his own heart heavy which by it by implication is that he is sinning and sinning by opposing yahweh and then the other component of that is that it says that god strengthened pharaoh's heart basically so that he could make it through the plagues so egyptians or people from that time period, Israelites presumably too, they would understand exactly what was being said theologically, that Pharaoh is sinning, making his heart heavier, and he is not going to make it to paradise because of that. Okay, so to this point, we have the Hebrew people in Egypt during the time of the Exodus as slaves, making bricks, etc. But then you talk about what you call the possibility of an Egyptian remembrance or record of the plagues, what's called the admonitions of an Egyptian sage, but more commonly, as far as I understand it, the Ipawar papyrus. What is this and how might it help us in understanding the case for the Exodus?

So this is an Egyptian papyrus that dates to the 13th century BC, at least the copy that we have. There's only one copy known in existence today. It was composed sometime before that, so before the 13th century BC, and the author, his name was Ipuar, so that's why it's often called the Ipuar Papyrus. Now, most scholars put the composition pretty early, like at least the second intermediate period. Some would even put it in the Middle Kingdom in the past, some even pushed it farther back. But if we look at details of the linguistics, some of the words and phrases that are used there, they only come into use in the 18th dynasty. And so it looks more like it was composed in the 18th dynasty, or at least rewritten with the language of that time.

Now, the content is something that got people interested in this text in terms of connecting it to the Exodus, because in general, it's a poem that is talking about destruction and death throughout the land of Egypt. But but there are some really interesting lines in there, like the river has turned to blood so the nile river has turned to blood it's all throughout the land of egypt and that you know people reading that they just immediately think oh yeah that feels like the exodus story and so that's where the connection initially came in but if you read through the text, there are a variety of different components that have

parallels in the Exodus story. And this is not just some crazy ideas, right? The foremost scholar in the world on this papyrus actually says in his book on it that he notes there are linguistic and thematic parallels between what ifruar is writing and the exodus story or the exodus place but he says because neither text is writing about an historical event they can't be talking about the same thing gotcha so that's that's the general view but there are things in there like the sun or the power of the sun god ra not being seen you know this darkness the the blood as i mentioned making pestilence throughout the land grain being destroyed uh some kind of disease causing physical disfigurement and pain all these different different people are dying, mourning, rebellion against the sun god, the absence of the Egyptian gods, the pharaoh not doing his job,

and then gold, silver, and jewelry being in the possession of the slaves. So these are all things that we see in the Exodus story. And those parallels, I think, are very powerful. Obviously, we do have linguistic and thematic parallels, but if the chronology could line up and they're talking about historical events, then I think what we have here is a poetic version from an Egyptian egyptian not the royal animals talking about that time of exodus so this is admittedly built on some debate about the dating of it and the interpretation so it's a possibility but maybe just a strong possibility you would say for an egyptian record in a more poetic way that seems to match up.

So we wouldn't expect this, but I guess you would say this is another interesting piece of the puzzle that adds to the cumulative case that makes it more likely. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah. I think it's plausible and I think it's an interesting text that we need to look at and consider. Again, it's not an official royal document. It's the work of a poet or a bard. So it's going to be a little bit different than when we're reading the Pharaoh's Annals. But we also couldn't say that this is definitive evidence. Again, like you said, there are debates,

there's different interpretations about the time of composition and if it's talking about historical events. So if your chronology is correct, which pharaoh would have ruled during this time? And is there any evidence that ties this pharaoh to the Exodus? I would take the position that the pharaoh at the time to the Exodus I would take the position that the Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus was on and hotel the second and I do believe that we have several at least pieces of circumstantial evidence that connect this Pharaoh to the Exodus there's there's no smoking gun so to speak with an

inscription of him talking about Hebrew slaves exiting but there are several components of the exodus story that we see illustrated during his reign that you know as one thing we could say that's just a coincidence but as several it really got to get us thinking this seems to line up this could be the guy well let's talk about a few of those i know you've hinted at one is his the character what we know from the exodus story and externally from other writings about this pharaoh how does the character help with this i think the character helps with it because we see in the ex story that the Pharaoh is depicted as extremely arrogant and stubborn. And Amenhotep is exactly that kind of Pharaoh. He even wrote in his own text that he was

the greatest king that had ever existed. And then he talks about crazy feats, like he could shoot arrows through the thick bronze target, which is physically just not possible, or he could shoot arrows through a the thick bronze target which physically just not possible or he could row a boat by himself faster than a whole crew of sailors he was at the head of his army supposedly killing all of his enemies and the foreign princes by himself so he really seemed to be compensating for something and incredibly confident in himself. And as a result, most Egyptologists, they see the things that he talks about and he writes about himself and they just say, this guy liked to brag and this stuff is propaganda. But it really does at least fit the psychological profile.

So the psychology matches up. What about archaeologically? You've talked about what's called the Memphis Stele of Amenhotep. So Amenhotep II, he had what seems like two military campaigns. One was at the beginning of his reign and one was a few years in about year nine so in year nine of his reign he talks about how he went into canaan and he essentially did a slave raid he took back all of these people as prisoners to be used as slaves in fact if you total them up it's about a hundred and one thousand slaves that he supposedly takes back and he says he

took back over a thousand chariots and over 13 000 weapons of war so if we're looking at the exodus happened just before this and they lost a big component of their slave population and they lost all their chariots and they lost a bunch of soldiers they need to resupply and egyptologists look at this text and they say again this is exaggeration it's some propaganda he didn't take that many people or all that stuff probably but you know whether he did or not what the text demonstrates i think is that he wants to show people that he has done this so if those events happen it would really make sense that he wants to put this out there for everybody in egypt to see guys i fixed the problem i got some new slaves for us i got chariots i got weapons we're gonna be okay

what about moses serving in the court when he's younger? And then, you know, what is it, 40 years later comes back and there's a new pharaoh? Does that chronology match up? I think that is a vastly underappreciated and overlooked component of the story. So we have, as you said, Moses, he kills the Egyptian. He flees into the wilderness. He's there for 40 years. Then God tells him, the Pharaoh who is pursuing you has died. You can go back to Egypt now.

Well, that seems to indicate that the Pharaoh who was in power when Moses left continued to rule for those 40 years. And so we're essentially looking for the pre-Exodus pharaoh who has a reign of 40 or more years. Now, there are hardly any pharaohs in Egyptian history who rule more than 40 years. One of the few happens to be the father of Amenhotep II, who was in power for 54 years. So I think that is something that lines up really nicely. And again, it's circumstantial, but we don't have many options at all in terms of where that could be placed in Egyptian history. That's amazing. Like I realize people are going to assess this evidence differently based on their expectations, their understanding of scripture and history. But

to me, this is more than I would have expected as you piece these parts together that fit the story of the exodus now this next one we're talking about when i read it i was unaware of this and kind of blow blown away that you talk about evidence for the plague involving the death of the firstborn, and in particular, the death of the son of Pharaoh in what's called, I believe, the Dream Stele. Talk about that. Yes, so the Dream Stele was situated between the paws of the Sphinx. So everybody knows about the Sphinx at Giza.

And this came about what seems to be as a result of the next Pharaoh so Thutmose the fourth he was the son of Amenhotep the second who became the next Pharaoh he seems to be needing divine endorsement to legitimize his role as the next king. So he writes this text and places it there. And he gives us this whole story where he talks about one day, he was out hunting, and he took a nap by the Sphinx. And the god of the Sphinx came to him and said, Hey, if you clear the sand away from me, I'm going to make you the king. So he's giving him a divine endorsement and blessing he does this little thing for him and so it makes it sound like all along dutmos the fourth was

the son who was supposed to become the king and the gods you know they had set that up and they gave him a special divine revelation that that would happen and so everybody in egypt should be like oh this is great. The gods, they knew what was going on. They planned it. Because the thing is, Thutmose IV was not the firstborn son and heir of Amenhotep II. He had an older brother. In fact, his older brother seems to appear on that stele, the figure of him,

but he's partially scratched out. We don't know a whole lot about him it seems his name was also Amin hotep he was a priest and he he just disappears from history uh presumably dies rather than you know fled Egypt or something like that okay you know this happened right this happened sometimes but it's really interesting this sequence of events where it's situated chronologically we might have the mummy of this prince maybe uh there's a possibility that it's this mummy called unknown man c that was found in the cache of these royal 18th dynasty mummies there's some other ideas about uh instead of a first son named amenhotep that it was he had a

different name but anyway we know that thutmos the fourth was not the firstborn son and his older brother who was the heir disappeared mysteriously so he seeks divine endorsement again if these plagues happen and the firstborn of pharaoh died then we would expect something like this to happen that's so interesting there's far more pieces of this story that we have possible connections to that are what we would expect if it were true but is it fair to say we're going to get into more of the evidence that because people begin with the assumption, many scholars, that this is mythological, that they're not looking at this evidence, not piecing this together, interpreting it in a different fashion. Is that fair? Yeah. When you come with the presupposition that the story is mythical and there's

not going to be any evidence for it, or you might even be looking in a different time period, then of course they're going to look at things differently and they're going to they're going to i think individualize the components of evidence rather than look at it as a cumulative story or a cumulative case and they will say like okay that's interesting about the dream steely but just because his older brother died and then he got a divine endorsement doesn't mean he died in the plague well of course not but we're not looking at all these things in isolation we're looking at all of this different circumstantial and some not so circumstantial all together flowing with this story this narrative that's laid out in Exodus, and the probability for all of those

things happening together, all of this circumstantial evidence and some of, you know, more ambiguous, but less circumstantial happening in the right sequence, the right time, all the right way, that probability is so low that I think we're able to say we have strong evidence for the plausibility of this story being corroborated archaeologically. Titus, it seems like those who take a different position than you just lament the lack of what they consider positive evidence. Is there, on the other hand, is there evidence put forward against the biblical position? And I imagine it could be that they found that the pharaohs of this time,

you know, for example, like his firstborn became the next pharaoh. Like if he found that out and he was called the firstborn, that would seem to contradict it. Obviously, we don't have that. But are you aware of direct contradictory evidence to the chronology and nexus story as you've laid out? No, I don't think so in the 18th dynasty. I mean, I really think the main argument against it is either an absence of evidence or it is a presupposition that this story is mythological or we could say you know

it's a it's a way of explaining these things away in isolation right so yeah where where is the negative evidence right you know if we had i think one of of the more difficult ones actually might be a little bit more connected to when the Exodus happened, 15th century, 13th century, those are the two main, and this city named Ramses, right? And we could get into it and explain it, and I could give you an argument why I think it works in the 15th century too, but that actually doesn't remove the Exodus from history it just might be putting it in a different period and in reinterpreting some of those numbers we talked about earlier so okay yeah there's really not a definitive negative there's not an evidence against it happening okay we're

just looking at absence. Gotcha. That makes sense. Now, the last piece in kind of what you call the A to B argument would be, is there any evidence now that the Hebrew people, the Israelites, leave during this time period and are found wandering in the desert for 40 years. Now you personally went in and examined some of this evidence, which I found totally fascinating. Talk about the evidence that actually this group of people, the Israelites in that place in that time wandered in the desert area that we would expect. Yeah. So some of the projects I've been involved with like this, looking at the wandering and then also conquest and settlement in Canaan. So for the wandering, this is somewhat of a problem.

But again, it's not unexpected because we can't expect to find archaeological evidence of nomads from 3400 years ago. It's very difficult to even find evidence of nomads from 200 years ago in China. Now, what we do have though is some Egyptian inscriptions, two in particular on a temple, the Soleb Temple, which is in northern Sudan. Now it was southern part of Egypt in ancient times it was built during the reign of Amenhotep the third so he is the grandson of Amenhotep the second and he reigned around 1400 BC I think started just before that and reigned several years into the early 14th century you know a couple decades decades, really.

So he's right at the time that the Israelites would be finishing their wandering and then going into Canaan with the chronological scheme that we're looking at. On this temple, there's a pillar that names all these different nomad groups. And the ones that we can identify seem to be associating their group name with a deity so we have like nomads that are associated with baal and we have nomads that are associated with anat and then we have one that says the land of the nomads of yahweh so this is the earliest mention of the name yahweh that's ever been discovered. It dates to around 1400 BC. It's on an Egyptian temple of a pharaoh.

So the Egyptians knew the name Yahweh way back at that time. Even the pharaoh was familiar with it. This inscription is actually found also on a wall of that temple. There's a slightly different format, but it also mentions these nomads of Yahweh. So what in the world are nomads of Yahweh doing mentioned on an Egyptian temple at the end of the wandering period? Well, they're situated east of Egypt, maybe in moab or transjordan edom something like that right before they get into canaan probably and they are wanderers just as the israelites were and they're the people of yahweh and the book of numbers even talks about the israelites like that uses that phrase so to me this see this is a e is Egyptian acknowledgement of a group of nomads who

worship Yahweh who are wandering east of Egypt just before they settle in Canaan. And that is our wandering evidence, you know, primarily. But I think it's pretty powerful. Yeah, that's amazing. Like you said, what would we expect to find? Yet we have an Egyptian record that dates to the time, mentions the name Yahweh. That's pretty powerful. Now, last piece of this puzzle, we talked about the pre-Exodus. There's Semites in the area, which would include Hebrew people, but others. During the time of the Exodus, we find Hebrew slaves giving their names, making bricks, doing buildings. We find this account that mirrors possibly an Egyptian remembrance of the plagues itself.

We have all these facts. Now we have evidence in the wanderings of these kind of Hebrew people, nomads of Yahweh. Is there evidence after this? I know the conquest itself is debatable and we could do that a whole nother time but is there evidence then for the hebrew people showing up about the time after the exodus and the wandering in canaan itself yeah i think we can absolutely say even going beyond the debate about conquest archaeology but that there is evidence of settlement of hebrews of israelites in the late bronze age at the end of the late bronze age in canaan and some of this stuff comes from material culture uh like pottery types that are then seen later just in israelite context but

some other really important more definitive things archaeologically, I think, like lack of pig bones at sites. So that was an Israelite practice. What's called the Israelite four-room house was a residential architecture that was used throughout the Israelite period until the Babylonian exile. So that's something else that points to this group of people israelites and there's a huge explosion of new villages that are built in some cities that are re-inhabited and you know most most archaeologists and historians would say that yeah this is the time that the israelites emerged in canaan now a lot of them today discount the Exodus even the conquest but they do say that yeah here's when the Israelites popped up in Canaan you

know some of them might call them proto Israelites but they just want to name something different so we absolutely do you know there's a very famous Egyptian steely called the Manetta steah stele, sometimes the Israel stele. And on this, Pharaoh Merneptah talks about how he went into Canaan, he defeated these three cities, and he says that Israel's seed is no more. And so he mentions these people, Israel, in the land of Canaan. They're the only group of people he mentions, and this is the late 13th century BC, so they've already been there. So again, this point A to point B type of argument with the names, with the name of the population group, with some material culture, with some other circumstantial evidence that

we're looking at. Titus, a couple last questions for you and we'll wrap up. Are you aware of further excavations and research that's being done in any way that intersects with the exodus like what might we expect in the next three to five plus years so there was a project recently finished in sinai and james hoffmeyer published some articles on this that has to do with the geography of the Exodus that I think is extremely helpful in showing us where some of these things happened and also at least the general time period in Egyptian history. There are also recent excavations at the site of Tel Retaba, which I think is the site of Pithom,

which is revealing some really interesting stuff about a Semitic population there prior to the Exodus and then an abandonment during the reign of Amenhotep II. There's continued research on inscriptions that have turned up. Not everything has been translated. Some of the stuff is going to be reevaluated. There's a lot going on, I think, still with kind of the Israelite settlement and conquest period in Canaan that connects to the Exodus. So I think that in the following years, we will see some more evidence that we could put in this cumulative case and maybe some things that are more definitive than others. So I do have to ask you about this. What do you make of the chariot wheels supposedly found at the bottom of the Red Sea?

Is that true? Is that an urban legend that's been passed? Because I've been told that many times as a kid. What do you make of that data so the the chariot wheels allegedly that are shown are either a type of coral reef so it's a specific species of coral that actually forms this structure that looks kind of like a wheel popping up from the the ground with an axle it's not coral that grew over chariot wheels. It's found all throughout the Red Sea. And then, you know, you may have seen some pictures or video of some kind of four-spoke looking gold wheel, right? That's not an ancient Egyptian

chariot wheel either. And it wouldn't be on the surface of the sand like it was displayed so there's no chariot wheels or chariots that were found in in the Red Sea there but uh if if people did enough digging in these possible crossing sites maybe they would find some remnants of an Egyptian army I don't know it's it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it's possible. Well, you just burst the bubble of the evidence that I was given as a kid, not by my dad and family. Heard it at some camp somewhere and literally always wondered about that. But, hey, part of our job is to put forth the positive evidence,

but also dispel some maybe well-meaning or not so well-meaning mistakes along the way. I've got to tell our audience, you've got to pick up a book. Many of the examples you gave are in Titus Kennedy's book, Unearthing the Bible. Again, Unearthing the Bible, you have great pictures that are first class. Walk through these very, very carefully. And you also talk about there's 101 archaeological facts for the Bible, kind of chronologically through. We just looked at a slice of this with the Exodus. But reading this as a whole is pretty powerful and overwhelming. It helps you realize there's a lot we haven't found. But when we approach it in the way you did, kind of an A to B in light of what we would expect,

there's pretty good evidence for the Bible, historically speaking, and in particular for the Exodus. So, Dr. Kennedy, thank you for coming back on. Really appreciate you teaching with me at Biola University. For those of you watching, if you've ever thought about getting a master's degree, we have a full distance program in apologetics.

And archaeology is the kind of thing we'll do weekend classes on and discuss if you have an undergrad degree for the top rated program information is below would love to have you make sure you hit subscribe got a bunch of other fascinating conversations coming up on apologetics culture and worldview you will not want to miss again dr titus kennedy thanks for joining me and i look forward to doing it again soon yeah professor mcdowell my pleasure thanks for joining me and I look forward to doing it again soon Yeah, Professor McDowell my pleasure, thanks for having me on the show