The Exodus

Since I had a few quiet moments today, I was
looking around at blogs and found this article
about the hebrew exodus from Egypt. That's not
to imply that I endorse anything you might read
at this link, just that I found the article
interesting.

http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm

There is general disagreement among scholars
about the exodus recorded in scripture. They
split hairs over all kinds of issues. That
doesn't bother me so much, I kind of enjoy the
debate. Not that it makes me believe any
different than what the Bible says. Why?
Simple. They were not there. The best that can
be done is to weigh the primary evidence and try
to make a best guess about when things happened.


As I understand it, one of the bigger problems
is making the ancient egyptian records agree
with the Bible text. The thing that bothers me
the most is that the benefit of the doubt seems
to often get placed upon the egyptian record.


There are passages in the Bible that quote exact
times and places. There isn't much disagreement
about the places mentioned in the text of
scripture, as far as I can tell. That wasn't
always the case, and in the past was a point of
criticism. Archeology has been able to verify
locations given in the Bible. So it sorta' begs
the question if the locations given in the text
prove to be reliable, why question all the time
frames?


In other words, in every case, archeology has
proven to verify the accuracy of the text of
scripture, why question what has not yet been
verified? I'm no scholar, just a doofus who
likes to play with ideas and numbers for the fun
of it.


OK. So, taking the number of people who came
to Egypt at the time that Joseph was prime
minister, when Jacob migrated (the best meaning of Habiru is migrant) as seventy. How do the
numbers work out?


Let's say the time they were in Egypt is 300
years, give or take. What will the population
be in three hundred years if you begin with an
initial population of 70?


I'd like to say that the span of a generation
is going to depend mostly on the reproductive
cycle of the normal female. In other words,
I am thinking it's safe to assume that women
will marry and bear children as soon as they
reach reproductive age. As a reproductive rate
I just assume population doubling every
reproductive cycle, which I think is a
conservative estimate.


It works out to a population of 2,293,760 after
16 generations with a reproductive generation of
18.75 years, over a 300 year time span, give or
take. That's roughly in agreement with the
scholarly time frame for the period that the
Hebrews were in Egypt. Looks good to me for a
back-of-the-envelope number. It could be
tweaked, no doubt, but I'm only trying to get
an order of magnitude number. This one fits.


Of course the next thing to do is to work out the numbers for the next 3000 years,
bringing us up to the current population. Now, in order to get a decent result for a
3000 year time period, I'll have to tweak. But if I have time, I'll give it a whirl.


Oh, yeah, the reason I want to figure out a number is because there is a number
given in the book of Exodus for the population of folks who left Egypt with Moses.
I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I'll have to look it up. I know
it's in the millions somewhere. The calculation I just made from taking the time frame given in
the academic article to see if it worked out for a ballpark population number at the time
of the exodus. Cool.