Cherry-Picking Data

As I have discussed elsewhere in this blog, there is a tendency among more traditionalist scholars to date the exodus to 1446 BCE. Their reasoning is straightforward: 1 Kings 6:1 tells us that the exodus occurred 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon's reign; the fourth year of Solomon's reign is typically dated to 966 BCE; therefore the exodus occurred in 1446 BCE. Done and done.

Except not so fast. First, the Septuagint (LXX) has 440 years where the Masoretic text (MT) has 480. So, if we prefer the Septuagintal text, that gives us a date for the exodus at 1406 BCE. That's a relatively minor matter however, and easily resolved by preferring one variant over the other. More urgently, and as I've also discussed in this space, Ruth 4:18–22 records only six generations between the exodus and David, and thus seven between the exodus and Solomon. This would tend to suggest far less than 480 years, unless each generation spanned seventy or so years. But the data is even more complicated. Proponents of the 1446 BCE date like to point to 1 Chron. 6:33–37, which lists eighteen generations between the time of David and the time of Moses' contemporary, Korah. This would place Solomon nineteen generations after the exodus. Scott Stripling has taken this to a triumphalist extreme, noting that if a generation is equal to twenty-five years, then Solomon lived ca. 475 years after the exodus (because nineteen times twenty-five equals four-hundred and seventy-five). For fun, let's see what happens if we apply this method to other relevant biblical genealogies.

In what follows, I am assuming (with Stripling) that a generation equals twenty-five years. I am also—in order to dramatize the results—assuming that the resulting count in years should be backdated from 966 in order to arrive at an approximate date for the exodus. I am also using the same method to generate dates for the beginning of Israel's sojourn in Egypt, which according to Gen. 15:13 began four hundred years before the exodus and according to Ex. 12:40 four-hundred and thirty years (which would mean on a traditionalist account that takes these numbers—or at least one of them—as given, that the sojourn began in either 1876 or 1846 BCE. Of course, if the 440 of the Septuagint is to be preferred at 1 Kings 6:1, then the sojourn could have begun alternatively at 1836 or 1806 BCE).

Passage	Generations	Total Years	Resulting Date
Ruth 4:18–22	Exodus to Solomon: seven (exodus generation= Amminidab) Sojourn to Exodus: three (Perez begins the chronology; he was born in Canaan, and among those who went down to Egypt)	From exodus to Solomon=175 years From beginning of sojourn to exodus=75 years	Exodus=1141 Sojourn begins= 1216
1 Chron. 6:3–10	Exodus to Solomon= fourteen (exodus generation=Aaraon)	From exodus to Solomon=350 years	Exodus=1316
1 Chron. 6:33–38	Exodus to Solomon=nineteen generations (Moses generation=Korah) Sojourn to exodus=three (sojourn generation=Levi)	From exodus to Solomon=475 years From beginning of sojourn to exodus=75 years	Exodus=1441 Sojourn begins=1516
1 Chron. 6:39–43	Sojourn to Solomon=Fifteen (sojourn generation=Levi)	From beginning of sojourn to Solomon=375 years	Sojourn begins=1341
1 Chron. 6:44–47	Sojourn to Solomon=fourteen (sojourn generation=Levi)	From beginning of sojourn to Solomon=350 years	Sojourn begins=1316

 

So, did the sojourn begin in 1876, 1846, 1836, or 1806 BCE (as different combinations of the texts of 1 Gen. 15:13, Ex. 12:40, 1 Kings 6:1 MT and 1 Kings 6:1 LXX might suggest)? Or 1516 or 1341 or 1316 or 1216, as Stripling's approach to genealogies might suggest (depending upon which text one uses)? And did the exodus begin in 1446 (as 1 Kings 6:1 MT might suggest)? Or 1406 (as 1 Kings 6:1 LXX might suggest)? Or 1441, 1316, or 1141, as Stripling's approach to genealogies might suggest (depending upon which text one uses)?

Ultimately, Stripling has not shown that the biblical data converges on 1446 BCE, as he asserts. Rather, what he has shown is that, yes, one can pick out two pieces of data from a bewildering mix of material—ignoring the rest—and interpret them in such a way as to maximize their congruence (I mean, why is a generation an average of twenty-five years as opposed to thirty?). In other words, he knows how to stack the deck. But no effort is made to deal with these equally biblical data which by Stripling's own method yield wildly divergent dates for the sojourn and exodus.* This does little to commend his argument for an "early" exodus.

*Wood, writing in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society fifteen years ago vaguely suggests—in a footnote—that the genealogies apart from 1 Chron. 6:33–37, with its eighteen generations from exodus to David, are "truncated." But for this to truly account for the biblical data the way that a ultra-literalist like Wood would like, we must assume that this genealogy—which lists only three generations for the 430 years of the sojourn—too contains significant truncation. Indeed, it would be one of the most truncated genealogies among the lot. Thus even our best source of data is on Wood's account missing a lot of material. This is apart from the fact that the genealogies give no real hint of skipping generations, and moreover Ruth 4:18–22 is reproduced in Matt. 1—where we are explicitly told that there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David. This isn't a problem for critical scholars, but it is for ultra-literalists because it means that Matthew is blithely unaware that in fact there were eighteen generations just from Moses to David alone—thus meaning that there were far more than fourteen from Abraham to David. In short, the ultra-literalist, Christian fundamentalist argument for an exodus in 1446 BCE fails because not only does it involve a very healthy dose of eisegesis rather than exegesis, but moreover violates its own operating principles by resting upon arguments that sharply contradict scripture itself.