Israel Pre-Exodus

In "Tempest and Exodus" by Ralph Ellis, the author raises this question, "Why are so many Egyptian locations apparently explained in the Bible as being in Syria/Palestine? The problem the translators were faced with was the obvious duplication of locations in Egypt and Palestine, and there are two possibilities as to how this occurred.

Either the scribes have replaced many of the Egyptian names in the texts with Judaic alternatives, which seems unlikely; or, after the exodus of the Hyksos/Israelites to Palestine, the people named many towns in their new land with the names that they had been used to in Egypt. This is not only highly likely, it can be demonstrated as fact.

A typical example of this transposition is the biblical land of Goshen. Now in the Bible, Joseph brought his family to live in Goshen:

And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and they children's children, and thy flocks, and they herds, and all that thou hast. (Genesis 45:10)

We know that Joseph was in Egypt at the time and that his family came to live in Heliopolis, so, in this case, Goshen was a province near Heliopolis. However later in the Bible, Goshen also turns out to be a province in Palestine." - Joshua 11:16.

Heliopolis is actually another example. This is the Greek name for the city of On which was also known as Bethshemesh to the Egyptians. Strong's actually give us 4 locations for this town, south-west Judah, Naphtali, Issachar, and Egypt. In 1 Samuel 6 it has to be the Egyptian city. In fact in Jeremiah 43:13(KJV) we are told emphatically that Bethshemesh is in the land of Egypt. However in the Revised Version 'they' have tried to cover this up, changing the name to the Greek Heliopolis and the Good News Bible simply removes the city name altogether and just reads 'Egypt'.

Babylon is yet another, and in this instance history records that the Babylon which was in or near Cairo was named after the Sumerian city - "Diodorus tells us that this settlement was populated by prisoners whom Sesostris bought from the Mesopotamian city of Babylon, who named it after their own city." (Tour Egypt web page).

The Bible not only confirms that Israelites lived in Egyptian towns and cities bearing the same names as later communities in the land we now know as Egypt, but also [glow=red,2,300]THE BIBLE TELLS US CLEARLY THAT ISRAEL WAS AT ONE TIME PART OF EGYPT[/glow]. At the very least it was the Delta region, and more probably it was the whole of Lower Egypt extending as far south as Uaset, i.e. Thebes/Luxor.

Samuel-1 4:10 And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter;for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.
Samuel-1 4:11 And the ark of God was taken

These verses tell us that the Philistines, which may be another name for Egyptians from Upper Egypt, won a battle against Israel and took from them the Ark of the Covenant.

Samuel-1 6:2 And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to the ark of the LORD? tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place.
Samuel-1 6:3 And they said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty; but in any wise return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.

From other verses it looks very likely that the Ark was radio-active and made the Philistines/Egyptians very sick or even killed some of them. In any case they had had enough of it after seven months and wanted to get rid of it.

In fact there is evidence in ancient Sumerian writings that the Benben stone was taken by them around 2,100 BCE and that it was 'charged up' in some way. Tony Bushby has researched this and written up his findings in "The Secret in the Bible" [King Djoser reigned from about 2,667 to 2648 BCE.

This may seem a bit early for the events described below in Samuel-1 6:14 but that doesn't mean to say that the field was not still known as being of Joshua, especially with his well known Pyramid standing there.] Egyptian texts record that the Benben was back in the original Temple of the Benben'...The Great Pyramid, by 750BCE.

Samuel-1 6:7 Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them:
Samuel-1 6:8 And take the ark of the LORD, and lay it upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him [for] a trespass offering, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away, that it may go.
Samuel-1 6:9 And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Bethshemesh, [then] he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that [it is] not his hand [that] smote us: it [was] a chance [that] happened to us.

Here we have some indication that Bethshemesh is occupied by Israelites.

Samuel-1 6:10 And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home:
Samuel-1 6:11 And they laid the ark of the LORD upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the images of their emerods.
Samuel-1 6:12 And the kine took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh, [and] went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside [to] the right hand or [to] the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Bethshemesh.

Samuel-1 6:13 And [they of] Bethshemesh [were] reaping their wheat harvest in the valley: and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see [it].

The men of Bethshemesh were rejoicing to see the Ark come back to them. Remember, the Philistines/Egyptians of Upper Egypt, only wanted to get rid of it. They were unlikely to dump it in another part of their own country.

Samuel-1 6:14 And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Bethshemite, and stood there, where [there was] a great stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the kine a burnt offering unto the LORD.
Samuel-1 6:15 And the Levites took down the ark of the LORD, and the coffer that [was] with it, wherein the jewels of gold [were], and put [them] on the great stone: and the men of Bethshemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the LORD.

Jeremiah 4:13 proves that Bethshemesh was in Egypt and since this was then the domain of the Israelites as shown in the above verses of 1 Samuel, it follows that this area which we know to be part of modern day Cairo, was then Israel. Joshua had to have been a land owner or even a king, and the great stone must therefore be a disguised inference to one of the Pyramids.

Joshua must therefore be the King Djoser who built one of the first pyramids. (Assuming this to be correct then there has to be another King Djoser following the reign of Akhenaten/Moses, i.e. 'Joshua the Son of Nun'.

[glow=red,2,300]There was!! [/glow]Horemheb fits the bill since he too was a General and he too knocked down city walls - those of Akhetaten. His throne name was Djoser Setepenre. Nun was the God Nun, or Nnu who was god of the 'Heavenly Deep' and here we have our Noah.)

Hosea 13:4 Yet I [am] the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for [there is] no saviour beside me.

Since writing the above I began to wonder about Gerar. It could be no small town in Israel, well surely not with a king, Abimelech. In fact reading between the lines in Genesis 20, I venture to say that Abimelech was none other than Abraham himself. The Bible can be very devious when it tries to hide realities yet keep to the folk stories. Genesis 10:19 puts Gerar on the Canaanite/Egyptian(Israel?) border. Would the Egyptians have been content to have a town large enough to have its own King right on their border? I don't think so. Gerar has to have been Cairo whose name was once Kherar.

Revelations 11:8 And their dead bodies [shall lie] in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

We can easily see that this verse has been edited, when we remember that the Book of Revelation was once known as "The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis" (Purchased by the Roman Senate in 510BCE from the Oracle, Sybil). This is not one of the verses that has been identified by Tony Bushby as being identical, word for word with 'The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis', possibly for the reason that it had been edited by Eusebius or one of his associates.

Jerusalem was the site of crucificion in the fictitious gospel story, so why on earth would it have been spiritually called Sodom or Egypt). Unless of course this is the original 'Jerusalem' of Egypt that is being referred to. Without reference to the original Mysteries we can only guess at how this verse once read, e.g. "And their dead bodies ....in the street of the great city which is called Sodom in Egypt".

Deuteronomy 26:5 "And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish [was] my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:"

This verse makes it very clear that the Hebrews were not just slaves. To be a Nation, great, mighty and populous, they had to be the Ruling class and the greater part of the population of Lower Egypt.

Ralph Ellis found more clues in the Bible, which give away the fact that Egypt was not always the country with the boundaries that we see today. At one time Egypt was recognized by the Bible Scribes as being way to the south of the Delta region.

We do know that Egypt was Two Lands with two rulers and even when one King ruled Upper and Lower Egypt he wore two crowns. It isn't so clear though that Egypt proper was always in the south, and that Lower Egypt in the north was quite a different country.
In Ralph's book, "Jesus Last of the Pharaohs", he looks closely at this confusion:
From page 24: "...I think a compelling case can be made that Abraham was not just a Semitic king, but an Egyptian Hyksos Pharaoh and, for this, we must look at his travels in Egypt. The Biblical Genesis, for example, includes a tale of Abraham going down into Egypt to buy grain, as there was famine in the land. (Genesis 12:10).

In his travels, Abraham meets a pharaoh who comes from the south of Abraham's land.

However, if Abraham were just a minor king from Palestine or from the Sinai, he would have had to travel more to the west than south to go into Egypt and meet a Pharaoh. Yet on each occasion this event takes place, it is reported that he travelled to the south. If Abraham were an Asiatic, there is no kingdom to the south of Palestine to travel to.

Equally, if Abraham were an Egyptian Hyksos Pharaoh, there is no land to the north of Egypt that Abraham could have travelled from. Yet the texts seem to be unanimous on this point, so does this preclude Abraham from being either an Egyptian or an Asiatic? Are the texts totally confused and unreliable?

I believe that the ancients were well aware of what south meant.
There seems little reason to change the texts, and the Bible seems to be quite specific, as this section is repeated more than once. Yet this strongly indicates that Abraham was not in Egypt at the time, so how does this square with the hypothesis that Abraham was, in fact, a northern Hyksos Pharaoh, living in Egypt?

This argument has been used on numerous occasions by the orthodoxy to indicate that Abraham was based in Judaea and that he travelled 'down' (southwest) into Egypt. But the Bible may not be quite so mistaken about the compass direction of Egypt from Palestine. This may be a cartographical misunderstanding; the ancient definition of Egypt may not be the same as ours.

The historian, Josephus, seems to confirm this when he says of the Jewish Sicarii sect that had fled from Alexandria, that:
....six hundred of them were caught immediately; but as to all those that fled into Egypt and to the Egyptian Thebes, it was not long ere they were caught also...(Josephus JW 7:416)
But these Sicarii were based in Alexandria, in the Nile Delta, the land of the Hyksos, and yet they fled south into Egypt. Clearly the boundaries of Egypt had a different terminology from that of today. William Whiston, the compiler of the works of Josephus, notes:
Since Josephus informs us that some of these Sicarii went from Alexandria into Egypt and Thebes, Relland well observes, from Vossius, that Egypt sometimes denotes 'Proper' or Upper Egypt, as distinct from the Delta and the lower parts near Palestine.

Accordingly he adds, those that say it never rains in Egypt, must mean Proper or Upper Egypt, because it does sometimes rain in other parts. (Josephus –Whiston comments)

In this case, the Bible is not wrong; the texts ring clear and true, if we know how to interpret them correctly. Abraham was traveling south, form the lands of the Hyksos in the Nile Delta – which is known as Lower Egypt and lies in the north of the country – and down into 'Egypt proper', to Thebes in the south, which is known as Upper Egypt. Many hundreds of years later, the Sicarii were following the same path as Abraham into Egypt."

So now it is just a question of names. We tend to just say, 'Lower Egypt', but in ancient times, it was ISRAEL.