Dating the Exodus

Hey all. In regards to the "New Chronology", I really urge you all to check out the following website that documents a lot of arguments against David Rohl and his ilk in their attempts to undermine the "traditional" chronology of the Ancient Near East.
http://members.aol.com/Ian%20Wade/Waste/Index.html
Rohl has made a lot of money by playing to the heartfelt desire's of Christians (his books are really well written and look beautiful; gotta give him credit on that). However, Rohl makes many errors and in his own publications ignores many facts that demonstrate the complete unfeasability of his ideas. One should proceed with extreme caution when reading his work. Yes, we can adjust the current chronology. However, this will consist of tweaking the current chronology by a few years at most, not adjusting by centuries. There has just been too many discoveries over the past two centuries to be overturned by one or two problems that Rohl and others may latch onto.

It is interesting to compare the Bible to other works of ancient history written many centuries after the events it purports to record. Consider Manetho, who wrote the famous history of ancient Egypt. There are many, many problems in his work and not all can be attributed to later copyists (we actually don't have his original work surviving). Manetho included a lot of folklore about the kings whose reigns he listed including stories about the eviction of the Hyksos that had been thoroughly transmogrified through time. I'll try to include it here tomorrow so you can all appreciate it as it goes a long way to understanding how the story of the Exodus seen in the Bible came to be and how it originated in the story of the Hyksos eviction from Egypt in the 16th century BC. Everything in the Bible cannot be described as a simple fairytale, although for some stories, such as Noah's Ark, this can be the only explanation. The Exodus, however, is a story framed around severely distorted historical events. I have to admit that for me trying to find the actual date of the Exodus is equivalent to trying to figure out the exact date on which Arthur married Guinevere. Anyway, I'll include more tomorrow.