101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #72:
Egypt enslaved Israel for four hundred years.
The Myth: And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a
stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them
four hundred years. And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and
afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers
in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall
come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. (Gen. 15:13–16)
The Reality: The Bible has several contradictory passages about how long
Israel remained in bondage, and even ancient Jewish scholars were confused about
the duration.
One of the biblical myths most widely accepted as fact is the claim that the House
of Israel spent four hundred years as slaves in Egypt. This belief, contradicted by other
passages in the Bible, stems from a reading of Genesis 15:13–16, which mistakenly
combined two different traditions as if they were one.
In the text, God spoke with Abraham and predicted that his seed would be
afflicted for four hundred years in a land where his descendants shall be strangers but
in the fourth generation they would return (implicitly, to their home land). As
presently written, the narrative indicates that the four hundred years and the four generations
encompass the same timeframe. There is an error in this standard biblical
interpretation, and we will reconstruct the original intent, but first, let’s look at some of
the other evidence concerning the duration of Israel’s stay in Egypt.
According to the Book of Exodus, Israelite slavery began sometime after Joseph
died when“there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Exod. 1:8).
Exodus also says that the total sojourn (i.e., the period of freedom plus the period of
slavery) of Israel in Egypt lasted 430 years (Exod. 12:40). The sojourn began with the
arrival in Egypt of either Joseph or Jacob—the text is not specific. Joseph came to
Egypt at the age of seventeen; Jacob arrived during Joseph’s thirty-ninth year. Joseph
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