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

194 101 Myths of the Bible
lived to the age of 110. Since the bondage didn’t begin until after Joseph’s death, Israel
had to be in Egypt prior to the bondage for at least seventy-one years if we count from
Jacob’s arrival. If the total sojourn in Egypt lasted 430 years, then the maximum period
of slavery could only be 359 years (430 – 71 = 359).
Were there four hundred years of bondage or only 359 years? Actually, neither,
because other biblical passages shorten the period even further.
The line of descent from Jacob to Moses spans five generations: Jacob, Levi,
Kohath, Amram, and Moses. According to various passages in Exodus, Levi lived 137
years, Kohath 133 years, and Amram 137 years. Moses led the Exodus at the age of
eighty. Since Levi and Kohath both came into Egypt with Jacob, the maximum period
of the sojourn could only be 350 years—Kohath’s 133 years, Amram’s 137 years, and
Moses’ eighty years—and only if we assume that Kohath fathered Amram in his last
year of life and that Amram fathered Moses in the last year of his life, neither of which
assumptions are very credible. Therefore, if the maximum sojourn is only 350 years,
the maximum period of bondage could be no more than about 280 years (since the
bondage started about seventy years after the beginning of the sojourn).
As early as the first century A.D. and probably well before that, the Jewish historians
and biblical scholars of the time recognized that something was wrong with the
numbers. A tradition developed that the 430-year sojourn actually combined two separate
periods of 215 years each, the first beginning with the arrival of Abraham in
Canaan and the second beginning with the arrival of Jacob in Egypt. By this tradition,
the sojourn lasted no more than 215 years, and the bondage, therefore, couldn’t have
been more than about 145 years. Genesis states that the period of time from Abraham’s
arrival in Canaan to Jacob’s arrival in Egypt is 215 years, but there is no direct evidence
that the period of time from Jacob’s arrival to the Exodus lasted 215 years.
To appreciate the confusion this caused in the first century A.D., consider that Josephus,
the leading Jewish historian of that time, wrote in one part of his biblical history,
Antiquities, that the sojourn lasted 215 years, but elsewhere in the same book wrote
that the bondage lasted four hundred years, and made no effort to reconcile the two
conflicting claims. Furthermore, in his calculation of the 215-year span he used data
that contradicted the chronology in Genesis.