Glimpses of the Past in Genesis-Exodus

In the Torah’s accounts of people and events, there is usually no way to assign exact dates. This is a problem in constructing a history of the time, and especially in determining when the Israelites arrived in Egypt and when they left.

Forman connects the historical Hyksos invasion and rule of Egypt (18th-16th centuries BCE) to the biblical narrative of Joseph’s rise and Jacob’s migration into Goshen, suggesting the Hyksos period’s Semitic-friendly climate helps explain the Israelites’ welcome and subsequent prosperity, and that the later “king who did not know Joseph” reflects the native Egyptian dynasty’s expulsion of the Hyksos. Turning to demography, he applies standard population-growth formulas to the Exodus census of 603,550 men and finds that natural increase from Jacob’s household of seventy over 430 years would require a growth rate roughly 37 times the ancient world average, concluding that immigration of other Abrahamic offspring, or a smaller actual population than the text’s number suggests, must supplement natural increase to account for the multitude that left Egypt.