Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
Lesson #53
Break out your maps and histories as we travel again in our
time machine to examine history & geography through a biblical world view. Sorry
I got a little busy and missed a month last time we discussed the sojourn in
Egypt of the nation or tribe of Israel. Now let's fast forward about 430 years
to around 1526 BC with the birth of a man named Moses. This marks the beginning
of the end for Israel's time in Egypt.
As we come to the account of Moses we find that at the
age of 40 around 1486 BC he flees to Midian after having killed an Egyptian and
fearing for His life. Since this takes us into the period from 1500 to 1000 BC
lets first briefly look at some of the other significant events taking place
around the world at the time. Around 1100 BC Tiglath-pileser I Founds the
Assyrian empire which will later play a significant role in the nation of
Israel. A primitive Greek alphabet starts to appear at this time, The first
Chinese dictionary containing 40,000 characters was written, and around 1200 BC
the Standard Akkadian version of the Gilgamesh epic was written. The events described in Homers Iliad and
Odyssey are to have taken place around the 12th century BC. The Evidence of
some Mesoamerican pyramid building starts as early as 1100 BC and the Olmec
culture come has it beginnings in around 1500 BC. Some new technologies of this
time are sundials, water clocks, and the Iron Age takes hold in Syria and
Palestine.
Let's get back to Moses shall we? After spending his
youth being educated and trained to become part of the Egyptian royal
household, probably right alongside the next pharaoh, Moses finds himself
tending the flocks of his father in law Jethro of Midian at the base of the
holy mountain. Sometime in late 1447 BC Moses sees the famous burning bush that
is not consumed which leads to His first encounter with God. He is told very
clearly (even though he protest that he is not up to the task), that he is to
deliver the nation of Israel from bondage in Egypt. By the way if you notice
the dates and do the math Moses is 80 years old by the time he begins his
encounter with the Pharaoh of Egypt in 1446 BC.
This a shorter lesson than usual but we did cover 80
years so we will pick up next month with the plagues.
