As you are asking good questions and seeking rather than just accepting or dismissing, another area you should question is the Exodus dating, as counting back through Genesis requires understanding this. Again, I will copy and paste what I wrote
As noted, having a ‘BC’ date for a Jubilee allows us to date back the event years provided in Genesis in a format we can better understand, but those records ended with the Exodus and Israel’s entry to the Promised Land. The entry would have occurred on a Jubilee year, as 50 years after entering, Israel was required to celebrate a Jubilee year, and every subsequent 50 years. Determining the exact year of the Exodus has been problematic for Scholars and historians, as the Egyptians did a good job of hiding this blight from their historical records, but not a perfect one. Historically, we know the lineage of Egyptian Pharaohs, and some facts of their lives, but dating reigns of rule is only approximate to within a few decades, due to the Egyptian efforts to change historical records of reigning years.
Historians have been interested in who was Pharaoh at the time of the Jewish Exodus, as I, researching the subject, was distracted by this God’s calendar project. The following is from my Egyptian Pharaoh research notes. I’m not sure where I copied this information from, and I added the additional relevant research info to the various Pharaohs listed in the top section.
View attachment 296330
In reading this, we should first appreciate that historical years of rule are approximate and could be off by a few decades (As an example, Britannica has Amenhotep II reign as 1425 – 1400 BC. But the duration of various reigns tends to be quite consistent (within a few years). Historians also debate whether the Exodus is of high and low Chronology which is separated by more than 100 years. The article above is based on the High Chronology position, the consensus basis of many historians. High Chronology is the historical premise of a 15th-century (BC) Exodus, between 1401 – 1450 BC based first on biblical input and then aligned to other outside historical event information. Low Chronology ignores biblical input with an effort to place the Exodus with the extensive building efforts of Rameses II, sometime in the 13th century. Middle Chronology, least favored, attempts to combine elements of the other two.
The beginning premise for High Chronology is the unknown date of when Solomon began building the temple. Professor Petrovich's basis is 967 BC, and Dr. Hoeh dates it at 964 BC. Historian consensus puts the 1st Temple construction around 970 BC, give or take a decade, based on other historical record alignments. King Hiram of Tyre is an example. He knew both King David and his son during his reign (980 – 947 BC). See 2 Samuel 5:11, 1 Kings 5:1-18, and 1 Chronicles 14:1
We can count forward Scripturally based on,
1Kings 6:1
And it came to pass in the four hundred and [a]eightieth year after the children of Israel had come 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.
But we noticed the footnote [a] before eightieth. The footnote is because the Jewish
Septuagint translation indicates 440 years as opposed to 480. Adding 480 years to 970 BC results in 1450 BC, forming the upper-range date of the Exodus, and points to
Amenhotep II as the Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus. He had an estimated reign of 27 yrs (1453 – 1426 BC). It appears a little force-fitting of dates occurred by historians to better conform to 1Kings 6:1, as Britannica has Amenhotep II’s estimated reign from 1425 – 1400 BC.
One of the main reasons for the focus on
Amenhotep II, is that when the Angel of death passed over Egypt, the Pharaoh’s first-born son died, but the Pharaoh did not. Pharaoh Amenhotep II was not a first-born son, nor was the next ruler, Thutmose IV, who was Amenhotep’s father’s son born to a concubine. There isn’t much in the way of family records about Amenhotep II, or why the child of his father’s concubine Tiaa would succeed him, other than he did have an older brother who had died.
With further research, we will find the Pharaohs before Amenhotep II fit well with the biblical story of Moses. The following is from Encyclopedia Britannica about Thutmose II (
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thutmose-II), where Moses' story would have begun, with the killing of all newborn Hebrew slaves
Thutmose was born to Thutmose I, his predecessor, by one of his secondary queens, Mutnofret. Thutmose II married his fully royal half-sister, Hatshepsut, at an early age. According to an inscription from Aswān dated year one, a chief from northern Kush, around the Second Nile Cataract, fomented a revolt against Egyptian suzerainty and threatened the garrisons stationed in Nubia. The king dispatched a force with orders to quell the rebels and execute their males. One of the chief’s sons was taken captive to Egypt, probably to be Egyptianized and returned to his country as a client ruler. Some time later, as shown by the biography of one of the soldiers who had accompanied his father, Thutmose II sent forces against some nomads in southern Palestine.
Besides these references, little is known of Thutmose II’s reign.
Thutmose was born to
Thutmose I, his predecessor, by one of his secondary queens, Mutnofret. Thutmose II married his fully royal half-sister,
Hatshepsut, at an early age. According to an inscription from
Aswān dated year one, a chief from northern Kush, around the Second
Nile Cataract, fomented a revolt against Egyptian suzerainty and threatened the garrisons stationed in Nubia.
The king dispatched a force with orders to quell the rebels and execute their males. One of the chief’s sons was taken captive to Egypt, probably to be Egyptianized and returned to his country as a client ruler.
Some time later, as shown by the biography of one of the soldiers who had accompanied his father, Thutmose II sent forces against some nomads in southern Palestine.
Besides these references, little is known of Thutmose II’s reign.
It appears that Thutmose II, having dealt with a revolt in Egypt, took to executing males and sought further vengeance in southern Palestine, pointing to the potential of the Hebrews being part of the revolt. Could this be his motive behind the killing of the male newborns of his Hebrew slaves? Male Hebrew infants were his future slave workers, a commodity not to be disposed of lightly.
But Infant Moses survived when Pharaoh Thutmose II’s daughter found Moses floating in a basket on the Nile. She obviously knew she couldn’t bring a Hebrew male baby into the presence of her father, so she arranged for Moses to remain with his mother until he was weaned, with hopes to someday be able to raise him as her own. When Thutmose II died shortly after, she would find favor with her more compassionate mother, Hatshepsut, who would assume her husband and half-brother’s position of Pharaoh. Hatshepsut had provided her husband with 2 daughters (one of whom died early) but not an heir son by the time of her husband’s early death. A son had been born to Thutmose II, just before his death, but he was the son of a concubine and not the queen.
