Canaan? OOPS, Wrong Country: A Novel Insight of the Exodus Story Review

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(More customer reviews)An excellent pursuit of clarity in unbiased academic research; bearing the fruits of truth and far reaching implications concerning honest analysis of scripture.
Although such light all too often goes unheralded, one can only hope that Dr. Avner Ramu will continue presenting such wonderful commentary concerning historical truths in relation to biblical foundations.

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About the bookReading the Old Testament of the Bible frequently results in encountering contradictory accounts which may confuse the reader and raise doubts on the credibility of the text. In this book the author analyses the historical, geographical, and biographical material of the Bible in an effort to resolve some of these issues. Here is an example: As early as the 4th century AD, certain places in the Sinai Peninsula were referred to as the Biblical stations on the route of the Hebrew's journey from Egypt to Canaan. Extensive archeological excavations in the Sinai area have not substantiated this traditional belief. Egyptian sources indicate that in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, Canaan was an Egyptian province and the Sinai Peninsula was under tight Egyptian control. Therefore, it would have been unreasonable for Moses to take the Hebrews out of Egypt in an eastward direction. In fact, such a claim does not appear in the Bible, and we are actually told that because the Philistines were then in Canaan "God turned the people around". For the understanding of the Exodus story it is essential to locate the geographical site of Biblical Goshen, where the Hebrews had resided for some four hundred years. Although it is generally presumed that Gohen is situated on the eastern edge of the Nile delta, this location is disputed and there is no mention of it in Egyptian documents. James K. Hoffmeier noted that while the prophet Jeremiah, who traveled to Egypt at the beginning of the 6th century BC (passing through the northeastern region of the delta), referred to several place-names in Egypt, he never mentioned Goshen.Intensive farming was always practiced in the Nile delta which wasconsidered to be the bread-basket of Egypt. It is unlikely that theEgyptians would allow a foreign pastoral clan to settle there and lettheir herds of sheep and goats to graze on their arable land. In fact,when we hear Joseph telling his brothers: "you shall reside in theland of Goshen, because all shepherds are abhorrent to theEgyptians", we may conclude that Goshen was not in the delta regionbut was located in some non-cultivated grasslands, such as the smallpatches of land along the Nile in Upper Egypt or in Nubia. The nameGoshen could be a variant of the Biblical word Cushan, a term used bythe ancient Egyptians to describe the regions south of Egypt. It isquite remarkable that certain phrases in the book of Exodus describingthe life of the Hebrews in Egypt, appear similar to those found inEgyptian documents which relate to the Nubians residing in the areaadministrated by the Egyptian viceroys (who bore the title:"Pharaoh's son"). In addition to the exploitation of Nubia, someNubians were enslaved and exported to Egypt. The reality of twodifferent Hebrew communities is attested to by the Biblicalinformation that the response of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt to Moses'message was unlike that of the other Hebrew community. The location ofGoshen in Nubia would also explain why the plagues inflicted upon theEgyptians, who mostly resided in the delta region, spared the Hebrews.In this book the author indicates that the geographical distribution of the Hebrew people forced Moses to execute their Exodus from Egypt along a route that is very different from the one traditionally believed to had been journeyed by the Hebrews.