The Date of Joseph's Arrival in Egypt

Regarding the date of the arrival of Joseph in Egypt, there are three major views:[1]

1) After 1400 B.C. (H. H. Rowley and Cyrus H. Gordon)

2) During the Hyksos period (ca. 1730-1570 B.C.)

3) During the 1800s B.C.

Although the majority of scholars place Joseph in the Hyksos period,[2] the biblical evidence does not seem to support this view. Gleason Archer Jr. provided an excellent

discussion:[3]

1) The Hyksos were Asiatic invaders that ruled Lower and Middle Egypt for about 108 years during the 17^th So they served him by himself, and them by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is loathsome to the Egyptians (Gen. 43:32) century B.C. Yet, the Egyptian dynasty during Joseph's stay in Egypt showed contempt for Asiatic foreigners:

2) The Egyptian government abhorred shepherds, unlike the Hyksos, who were known as the shepherd kings.

46:31 Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's household, "I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and will say to him, 'My brothers and my father's household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me; 46:32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.' 46:33 "When Pharaoh calls you and says, 'What is your occupation?' 46:34 you shall say, 'Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,' that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is loathsome to the Egyptians."

3) "The first chapter of Exodus presents an array of data almost irreconcilable with the usual supposition that the 'new king who knew not Joseph' was an Egyptian of the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Dynasty."[4]

4) "The statement of the Pharaoh reported in Exodus 1:8-10 is quite pointless in the mouth of a native Egyptian. It would have been the grossest exaggeration to assert that the Israelites were more numerous than the Egyptians, but it was quite possible that  they were more numerous than the warrior caste of the Hyksos themselves."[5]

John Davis made two other valid points that are worth noting here:

5) When Joseph finally met the Pharaoh, he shaved himself before the meeting (41:14). "Had Pharaoh been a Hyksos king, shaving would have been unimportant. But native Egyptians were clean-shaven, making it eminently important."[6]

6) Pharaoh would set Joseph over all of the land of Egypt (41:41). The Hyksos ruled only a part of Egypt.[7]

All of this evidence points to Joseph's entrance into Egypt being ca. 1800 B.C. which is in line with 1 Kings 6:1:

Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD. (1 Kings 6:1)

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[1] Davis, Paradise to Prison, 266-67.

[2] Ibid., 266.

[3] Gleason L. Archer Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, rev. ed. (Moody, 1985), 221-25.

[4] Ibid., 223.

[5] Archer, Old Testament Survey, 223.

[6] Davis, Paradise to Prison, 275.

[7] Ibid., 276.