Class Six
Portents of Christ
Genesis 26 to Exodus 2; a ladder to heaven, a coffin in Egypt, and an ark of bulrushes
Genesis 26 opens up with Isaac repeating his father’s behavior during a famine, only this time the place of refuge is not Egypt but the land of the Philistines. While God’s promise to Abraham is repeated here to Isaac, things look pretty bleak for a couple for whom it was hoped back in chapter 24:60 would produce billions of descendants.
The Philistines are first mentioned back in chapter 21 and Abraham lived among them “for many days”, it says. Who were the Philistines? Snell states that Palestine derives it’s name from the Philistines, who were seafaring people who had “afflicted Egypt”. Those who settled around modern Gaza are best known and he also says that they were called something different, Tjekker, further north. They came from the Aegean Sea and brought Mycenaean pottery from Greece with them. They had five major cities, each ruled by a despot, and Snell says that they tried to control the hill country of Palestine, probably starting out as the Pharaoh’s mercenaries; of which the Egyptians used quite heavily. Greek mercenaries were used through the ancient near east affecting language and culture, preparing the way for Alexander’s eventual conquests and the spread of the common or Koine’ Greek language with which the New Testament was written. Bienkowski and Millard’s “Dictionary of the Ancient Near East” concurs with these statements. Durant barely mentions them in his history.
According to Ussher, quoting Christian historian Eusebius from his work ‘Chronicles’ who was quoting Castor of Rhodes, the reign of the Argives in Greece began in 1856BC. Also, quoting Varro from his work ‘Human Antiquities’ Ussher refers to Inachus as the first king About the time of Issac’s move to Philistia (1796BC?) for a respite from the famine, the Ogygian Deluge was supposed to have occurred in Greece and this is found in the works of Hellanicus, Castor, Thallus, Diodorus Siculus, Alexander Polyhistor, and Julius Africanus as reported by Eusebius.
Now, for some definitions. The Argives were of Argos one of the foremost Mycenaean cities of the Peloponnesus. In Homer's Iliad, "Danaans" ("tribe of Danaus") and "Argives" commonly designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans. The Greek geographer of the second century, Pausanius, as reported in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, states with regard to the Argives, "from the earliest times... have loved freedom and self-government, and they limited to the utmost the authority of their kings:"
The Peloponnesus is the part of Greece south of the Isthmus of Corinth. The Philistines may have come from there escaping the constant struggles that occurred as the Greek city states were forming.
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Another possiblity is that they were refugees or colonists from the fallen Minoan civilization of Crete. The Minoans were a mercantile people who engaged in overseas trade and showed signs of a highly developed civilization from the middle of the last half of the second millenium (around 1700BC) onward. Things to remember would be the mythical king Minos and his labyrinth uncovered by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, the palace of the Minoans. Their pantheon of gods was headed by a goddess. In mythology the labyrinth was an elaborate maze that contained the Minotaur, a half man half bull, which was eventually defeated by the Athenian hero Theseus, who Plutarch states was the son of Zeus and was contemporary with the Atlanteans.
Another event of note was the Ogygian Deluge, which I just mentioned. This event is considered by many to be mythological while others consider it to be a real time happening. During the reign of Ogyges, King of Boetia, in Greece, there was supposed to have been a disastrous flood. The Roman writer, Varro, states that the Planet Venus underwent a strange change before this flood. Ev Cochrane reports that this planet was worshipped almost universally in the ancient world but not always as a good thing. The Aztecs in Mexico viewed Venus as a harbinger of disaster. The modern “alternative science” writer Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that the formation of and subsequent activities of the planet Venus was the cause of great catastrophes on the earth. The Ammizaduga tablets of Babylon, considered by some to be the oldest astronomical tablets extant or still in existence talk about Venus’ ability to adversely affect the affairs of mankind.
Back to the Minoan civilization and some things to remember. Before the Minoan civilization suddenly disappeared in the middle of the second millennium BC, possibly due to a huge volcanic eruption on Thera, which may have been the model for Atlantis in Plato’s work, it was a highly advanced civilization. A medical bag has been found in a tomb at Nauplion in Crete dating to about the time of the culture’s extinction that contained forceps, drills, scalpels, all made of bronze but at least a thousand years before their use in mainland Greece. The Minoans also used lightning rods on the temples built on high mountains. The palace at Knossos had indoor toilets which have not been improved upon until the present day. The Minoans enjoyed spectator sports and, if their artwork is a correct representation even had stadiums in which to enjoy them.
In Plutarch’s ‘Lives’, Theseus is the first hero mentioned. In keeping with Satan’s counterfeiting of the promise of the virgin birth of Christ in Genesis 3:15, Theseus, like Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and so many other heroic figures of past mythology and history, including Alexander, was said to be the offspring of a human woman and a god. Satan’s lying deceptions are found interwoven throughout history and are not the subject of secret conspiracies for the truth of his falsehoods is written right on the surface for anyone who wants to see, to see, unless perhaps they suffer from the
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blindness mentioned in 2 Corinthians 4:4 and the resultant delusions promised by God to the unbelieving evil world (Isaiah 66:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:11).
At this point it might be worth mentioning an important event in Egyptian history, the invasion by the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings. Durant says that the Hyksos were just one of a series of nomadic peoples that conquered Egypt and were changed by the wealth and easy living of the conquered, then when they lost their tough, barbaric edge, they were defeated themselves. The Hyksos ended the Middle Kingdom era of Egyptian history. His statement that the Hyksos probably introduced the horse to Egypt is absurd on its face, as if the Egyptians had no prior contact with other Asian people or animals. Snell defines the period of the domination by the Shepherd Kings (we’ll see later that in Joseph’s time the common Egyptian detested shepherds while the ruling class welcomed them) as the Second Intermediate Period and dates it between 1786BC and 1558BC. Ussher, quoting ancient historian Eusebius quoting even more ancient historian Manetho, has them being defeated and leaving Egypt at least 30 years before the events of Genesis 26 while Dr. Floyd Jones has the Pharaoh who embraced Joseph later as being one of these Hyksos. As in the case of all conquerors or those who enslave others, the conqueror or enslaver usually adopts the culture of the conquered or the slave before the tables are turned. Bienkowski and Millard state that the Hyksos ruled the 15th dynasty between 1650 and 1550BC. Ussher has them expelled in 1825BC. Remember, barring any definitive dating that is not arguable or evidence which is subject to interpretation and controversy we can only conclude that the events described in this part of Genesis are occurring in the first half of the second millennium before Christ, somewhere between 1500 to 2000BC. The word, Hyksos, is a Greek derivation of an Egyptian phrase, meaning “rulers of foreign lands”.
Moving on past Jacob and Rebekah’s deception of Isaac and Esau, Laban’s deception of Jacob, and Jacob’s reunion with Esau in chapters 27 – 33, and passing over the ladder to heaven of chapter 28, which is the Lord Jesus Christ according to John 1:51, we come to the story of Joseph, which begins in Genesis, chapter 37. Joseph is sold into slavery and eventually winds up in the “employment” of an officer of Pharaoh. He winds up in prison which eventually results, in Chapter 41, in Joseph, now 30, as being second in command of the entire nation of Egypt, under the Pharaoh. The question many scholars ask if who was Joseph in the extra-biblical historical record of ancient Egypt? There are many beliefs as to his identity outside of the Biblical record. We know what God calls him but what did the ancient Egyptians call him? Verse 45 of chapter 41 says that the Pharaoh called him Zaphnathpaaneah, which, according to Strong’s concordance means “treasury of the glorious rest”.
Durant would place Joseph’s life at around 1900BC but also implies he is only a mythical figure, the subject of poetic imagery. Most historians view the entire Bible in this light as
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what they hold as valuable in human history is in direct opposition to what God regards as of the utmost importance. Ussher places Joseph’s promotion at 1715BC which places him during the Hyksos domination of Egypt, as Floyd suggests. This is believable in light of the Biblical record and in spite of my admiration for Ussher’s work I think his dating of the Hyksos invasion and expulsion to be incorrect.
According to the late Ron Wyatt, controversial and often ridiculed Biblical Archaeologist and the basis for Anchor Stone International at anchorstone.com, the identity of the biblical Joseph matches that of Imhotep, the vizier or prime minister of Pharaoh Djoser.
This group reports on their website that Imhotep translated means the “voice of IM” or “I Am”. However, dating Imhotep to the building of the first pyramid creates a problem for traditional archaeology as there is a near 1,000 year discrepancy between Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt and the building of that pyramid.
The dating of Joseph’s influence in Egypt is certainly a topic of interest. The discovery of a canal and the extinct lake called the “Sea of Joseph” by the American engineer, F.C. Whitehouse, over a century ago and the inscriptions found in Egypt referring to the seven years of famine and the seven years of plenty are quite intriguing to say the least. The problems and controversies surrounding the various voices regarding the dating of ancient Egypt make this even more difficult to study. Egyptology and Biblical Archaeology are two of the most fascinating fields of the sciences dealing with the past. It is dangerous, however, to assume, without critical questioning, the stance of any one individual university or any one influential celebrity such as Flinders or Kenyon in regard to when things actually happened or if they happened at all. Many a person has lost their faith in the Biblical record over an assumption made by a science “celebrity” that was revealed by later discoveries to be wrong or a blatant falsehood. Before accepting any statement by someone outside of the Bible as being dogma please investigate for yourself. The so called “facts” of history can change with each new publication of a scientific journal and in the end it is only the Bible that you can count on as your final authority. It has been said that given enough time, science will catch up with the Bible. In saying this I do not mean to show disrespect for the scientific method. It is the best means we have of discovering the natural world, however, broad pronouncements and categorical statements about historical facts made with limited evidence and biased in favor of one theory or the other must be taken for what they are; conjecture.
Moving to China for a moment; it is at this time where the Shang Dynasty is supposed to sit in Chinese history. First, and I am speaking from Durant here, there is a period of legendary rulers clouded in obscurity and lost in the mists of time, then in the late third millennium according to traditional historians there began the reign of Fu Hsi, Shen Nung, the first Huang Ti, Yao, Shun, the Hsia Dynasty, Yu, Chieh Kuei, and then in the second half of the second millennium, the Shang. Remembering that the
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historical record can easily show, rather than consecutive rulers of a place, a list of rulers who reign concurrently, at the same time, you need to look critically at the way in which these reigns are dated. One belief of the origin of the Chinese was about the first man named P’an Ku, after working for 18,000 years to make the universe, finally accomplished the task in 2,229,000BC. As he worked his breath became the wind and the clouds, his voice became the thunder, his veins the rivers, his flesh the earth, his hair the grass and trees, his bones the metals, his sweat the rain, and the insects that clung to his body became the human race.
The earliest kings, the Chinese said, ruled 18,000 years each, and struggled hard to turn P’an Ku’s lice into civilized men. Before the arrival of these Celestial Emperors the people were supposedly like animals, eating raw flesh and knowing their mothers but not their fathers. Then came emperor Fu Hsi, who, with his queen, taught human beings marriage, music, writing, painting, fishing with nets, the domestication of animals, and the feeding of silkworms. He appointed Shen Nung upon his death, who introduced agriculture. Then Huang Ti, whose reign lasted only a century rather than thousands of years introduced the magnet and the wheel, built the first brick buildings, and the first observatory. Yao was such a good ruler that Confucius lamented that there was a golden age during his reign that China had fallen from over the centuries. Shun created the calendar and standardized weights and measures. Yu, a great engineer, mirrors the great embanker of Egypt fame who saves the Chinese from floods and establishes the Hsia or first civilized dynasty. The emperor, Chieh, makes 3,000 Chinese jump to their death in a lake of wine. Chou Hsin, inventor of chopsticks, brings the dynasty to an end. Western invaders founded the Chou dynasty which overthrew Chou Hsin. What is clear is that the feudal states that developed arose from isolated agricultural communities, each weak one being absorbed by a stronger neighbor until a handful fought for power. According to ancient tradition, before the Chou dynasty was the Shang. One of the Shang emperors, Wu Yi, was an atheist who defied the gods, blasphemed the spirit of heaven, and played chess with it, eventually being killed by a bolt of lightning. In keeping with Satan’s worldwide counterfeiting of the promise of the virgin birth of Christ in Genesis 3:15 the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find in China the holy mother, Shing Moo, being pictured with a child in her arms and glory around her as if she had been painted by a Roman Catholic artist.
From Hislop’s ‘The Two Babylons’ we have; “The name of Shing Moo, applied by the Chinese to their "Holy Mother," compared with another name of the same goddess in another province of China, strongly favours the conclusion that Shing Moo is just a synonym for one of the well known names of the goddess-mother of Babylon. Gillespie (in his Land of Sinim) states that the Chinese goddess-mother, or "Queen of Heaven," in the province of Fuh-kien, is worshipped by seafaring people under the name of Ma Tsoopo. Now, "Ama Tzupah" signifies the "Gazing Mother"; and there is much reason to
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believe that Shing Moo signifies the same; for Mu was one of the forms in which Mut or Maut, the name of the great mother, appeared in Egypt (BUNSEN'S Vocabulary); and Shngh, in Chaldee, signifies "to look" or "gaze."”
It should of interest to compare the involvement of the “sons of God” with humankind in Genesis 6, and the worldwide legends of heavenly visitors giving special knowledge to people.
It is in this general period of time that the Aryan migrations and invasions of Dravidian India are said to begin. The Dravidian are the non-IndoEuropean inhabitants of India who now occupy the southern portion and Sri Lanka, which formerly was known as Ceylon. They Aryan invaders were closely related to Persians or Iranians today with regard to language. Very little is known of the warfare between the invaders and the dark-skinned early inhabitants. But, it was the synthesis of the Aryan and the Dravidian that produced the new Hindu civilization, after 1400BC, according to traditional historians.
It can be added that migration into South America and Oceania or the Pacific Islands begins in this time frame with a very limited historical record consisting of controversially dated ruins, human remains, pottery, and folklore. It will be a few hundred years before there is an historical record which we can study clearly. Australia will remain in the Stone Age until the European invasion and colonization thousands of years later.
It is by Joseph’s position of power in Egypt that the family of Jacob is able to survive yet another famine by taking up residence there. It is interesting also to note that Genesis begins with God, traces nearly half of human history, and ends with a coffin in Egypt, a land obsessed with death and the after-life. Petrie believed that they came into Egypt around 1650BC and left around 1220BC. Durant defers to him and says, in rejection of the Biblical record, that we don’t know if they entered as free men or slaves and like Westcott and Hort, the fathers of the modern Bible translation movement, believed that Moses was a mythical figure. Petrie suggests that they followed the path of the Hyksos, Egypt’s semitic invaders. Ussher has Jacob’s family moving to Egypt in 1706BC, using the strict Biblical record. Floyd, who gives a date of the Egyptian sojourn of 1780 to 1546BC, notes that the period under discussion is one of great obscurity in Egyptian history. After studying the works of L. Wood, J. Davis, M. Unger, Petrie, Breasted, Eerdmans, H.H. Rowley, Gardner, Hall, Harrison, W.F. Albright, Bunsen, J. Free, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, and S. Schults, all noted Egyptologists and Bible scholars, and many quoted by everyone from Hislop to Durant, concludes that Joseph rose to prominence under a Hyksos king and Moses led the Jews out of Egypt under a native Egyptian king who would not have been so favorably disposed toward them.
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The argument for a late sojourn and exodus based on the statement that they built the
treasure city of Rameses who did not rule until the 19th dynasty, according to some, is irrelevant in light of the use of the name, Rameses, before any Rameses ruled, in a burial painting of Amenhotep III of the 18th dynasty at least 60 years before the rule of any Rameses. In fact, Amosis, 16th century founder of the 18th dynasty bore the name of Rameses, meaning Son of Ra, probably as a throne name and perhaps representing a term much like Son of God, as Ra was the principal god of the Egyptians, the S-U-N.
The residence of the family of Jacob in Egypt and the subsequent events of the story of the Exodus are hotly contested among traditional historians. Some regard the entire thing as a myth, while others say that there is no evidence either for or against. I have even read where some conjecture that it was the Jews who built the pyramids even though these structures are not mentioned by name in the scriptures. Moses’ identity in secular history is also one of debate and challenge. You will read some that say that the Egyptian woman who adopted the baby in the ark of bulrushes was the woman who eventually became Pharaoh herself, Hatshepshut. Not surprisingly, many archaeologists claim Moses never existed. The “fathers” of all modern Bible versions, the Anglican clerics, Westcott and Hort, also did not believe that Moses was anything but a mythological character. Moses is even thought of by some to have been an alternate name for the Egyptian pharaoh who commanded the worship of one god, Aton, the man who supposedly introduced monotheism, or the belief in one god, to the Egyptians, Akhenaton.
Nevertheless, there are so many gaps in our knowledge of ancient Egypt that basing your belief on the existence of a Biblical personage on whether or not some clue has been unearthed in an archaeological dig yet, is foolish to say the least and shortsighted at best. Belief in the Biblical record is much more certain and clear than relying on what has been found or will be found in an ancient, much robbed tomb or in an ancient garbage heap. Sooner or later, if you continue your education you will run into such works by unbelievers as Sigmund Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism” designed to overthrow your faith. Freud will be mentioned in this course much later as one of the destroyers of western civilization but that is for much later.
According to Strong, Moses means “drawn”, as in “lifted out”. The scripture’s own built in definition in Exodus 2:10 agrees. There is no known secular record of his early life as an Egyptian prince outside of the much later recording by the Jewish traitor and historian, Josephus. As according to Kneisler there are approximately 80,000 flood stories in 72 languages there are also parallel stories concerning Moses’ birth and retrieval from the Nile. Satan counterfeited the birth of Moses in the account of the Akkadian king, Sargon, whose own mother allegedly saved him by hiding him in an ark of bulrushes as reported in Roux’s “Ancient Iraq”, written in 1964. Although you can find a few parallels to
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Biblical events in ancient myth all you have to do is to read these myths and read the Bible to see how fanciful and incomplete the myths are and how matter of fact, and reasonable the Biblical account is.
Ussher claims that Moses was born in 1571BC. Josephus calls the Egyptian princess who found him, Thermutis, as did Epiphanius and other chroniclers, according to Ussher. The next year, Cecrops, an Egyptian transported a colony of Egyptians to Greece. I mention this because I want to keep reminding you of the interaction between Greece and the superpowers of the Middle East at that time. According to Eusebius, but in opposition to Plutarch who insists on a more ancient origin, this is the basis for the founding of the city of Athens. Eusebius quotes another ancient historian, Castor. In spite of the claims of the writer of the modern book, “Not Out of Africa”, the Greeks themselves would later claim that they derived much of their science, philosophy, and religion from Egypt with key Greek historical celebrities even spending time in Egypt.
The Egyptian historian, Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, wrote that the Hyksos were removed from Egypt by Tethmosis, who was king of Thebes or upper Egypt, close to the Mediterranean Sea. This was in a place called Auaris. He had an army of 480,000 men. Unable to actually defeat the Hyksos, an agreement was made that they should leave Egypt. The chronicler Apion called this king Amosis in his lost work, ‘Egyptian Affairs’, quoted by Ussher, and also recorded by Justin Martyr in his ‘Exhortation to the Greeks’ and by Clement of Alexandria in his ‘Stromateis’.
Exodus 2 ends with God hearing the groaning of the Israelites who now were under a king who was not familiar with Joseph and who had no regard for them. The theory then is that Joseph came into Egypt under a Hyksos Pharaoh and Moses was raised by the family of a native Egyptian one. At this time, historians claim that Assyria was dominant on the other side of the Red Sea but that Canaan was ruled by independent towns or cities each with their own king. Canaanite religion was vile and degrading, the worst of the religions influenced by Satan, with temple prostitution, ritual child sacrifice, incest, and bestiality as common events although many of these things were common in religion from India to the Nile. The land that God had promised to Abraham was filled with the most wicked sin and depravity. The Jews were ready to leave Egypt and the land was ready to be cleansed of the evil that possessed it.
