Your analysis is the very approach that has been consistently applied for more than 100 years… to keep the timeline of the Bible “intact and sacrosanct”, and unavoidably from whatever historical material that relates to an actual Exodus.
Exodus 13:17 says “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:” < !!! this would be around 1200 BCE to 1130 BCE.
But don’t worry, Jon, it is not my intention to try to introduce the Harris text into the models Joshua is working on. But the Harris text just reinforces in my mind why I can only be a Unitarian Universalist in this world of ours:
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If the Bible is portraying a Hyksos expulsion, or some event in the Amarna period, as Exodus, then its historicity is out of whack.
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If the Bible is portraying an Exodus event at c. 1250 BCE, that’s still too early. Why? Because the Exodus cannot avoid the Phillistine highway if the Philistines are not yet installed in the Levant yet! But even if I accepted your 1250 BCE timeline, I think you will find it compresses the O.T. narrative to a painful degree:
1250 BCE - 40 yrs = 1210 BCE
Just 10 years later, c. 1200 BCE, we read about these events:
"On the right hand side of the Pylon is the “Great Inscription on the Second Pylon”, which includes the following text: The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands, All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms: from
Hatti,
Qode, [< aka Kode, aka Kizzuwadna]
Carchemish,
Arzawa and
Alashiya on, [< island of Cyprus, aka Alasiya, aka Elishah (Ezekiel 27:7)]
being cut off [ie. destroyed] at one time.
A camp was set up in Amurru. [< the pro-Hittite region around Kadesh.]
They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being.
[^The Sea People paused north of the Egyptian frontier to remove any threat from
the rear.]
They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: “Our plans will succeed!”
[65: Translation by John A. Wilson in Pritchard, J.B. (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, Princeton 1969., p.262. Also found in Breasted, 1906, volume 4, p.37, §64.]
In reliefs on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu documenting Year 8 of Ramesses III, whatever year that might be, there is a climactic battle, perhaps just as crucial as the one at Marathon some 8 centuries later!
[7: Silberman, Neil A. (1998), Seymour Gitin, Amichai Mazar, and Ephraim Stern, eds., “The Sea Peoples, the Victorians, and Us”, Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Essays in Honor of Trude Dothan, Israel Exploration Society, (pp. 268–275); p. 269.]
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This battle is almost always confused with the final battle at the Egyptian delta! The historic battle, known as the “Battle of Djahy” [also spelled Zahi], was fought in the future territory of Lebanon!
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As Ramesses III notes in an inscription from his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu: “I equipped my frontier in Zahi (Djahy) prepared before them.”[3: Extracts from Medinet Habu inscription, trans. James H. Breasted 1906, iv.§§ 65-66.] Let’s estimate this time to be around 1178 BCE (according to a couple of different sources.
This is followed up by the Sea People fleet attacking the Delta region, presumably in the same year (1178 BCE).
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Conclusion?: I’m not so sure I have any dramatic conclusion, other than this: If the Sea People had marched a significant land force (with family wagons) from Ugarit to northern Lebanon, and then engaged in a tremendous conflict against Egypt somewhere to the East of Tyre or Sidon … around 1078 BCE … what part of the O.T. would have been around that time?
Numbers?
Joshua? < Mentions Philistines - Lots!
Judges? < Estimated to cover 100 to 125 years?
Samuel? < Mentions Philistines too.
Just something to consider… the timeline below: