Patterns of Evidence - Exodus
Timothy P. Mahoney, Director and Producer
A Thinking Man Film Production
Released in theaters January, 2015
Movie/DVD – 115 minutes
I went to see the movie “Patterns of Evidence – Exodus” on the first day it played in theaters, January 19, 2015 (http://www.patternsofevidence.com). It played again later on January 29. I highly recommend it, if you get a chance to see it or purchase the DVD.
It is about how one man, Tim Mahoney, tracked down all of the evidence for the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt that he could find in the world. He put together an impressive amount. The key to understanding the Exodus is to realize that Ramesses II was not the pharaoh of the Exodus. The Exodus likely was at the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt – was probably the cause of the end of it – but Ramesses II was pharaoh in the New Kingdom.
The word ‘Ramesses’ appears three times in the (Douay-Rheims) Bible and is described in Exodus 1:11 as one of the cities that the Israelites built. However, there is another city, Avaris, which sits below the site of the later city of Ramesses which is almost certainly where the Israelites lived while in Egypt. The word ‘Ramesses’ probably replaced the word ‘Avaris’ in early copies of the Torah so today all Bibles say ‘Ramesses.’
One of the biggest arguments that archaeologists make against the Old Testament is that there is no evidence for the Exodus. Well, there is plenty of evidence, but it is all at a different time frame than where it is expected. If you adjust the time frame, everything fits. That is the major premise of the movie.
There was a compound found in Avaris that was discovered to have started out as a Syrian-style house, which was enlarged into a palace and had twelve large tombs on the grounds. One tomb was shaped like a pyramid and had a large statue in it that had non-Egyptian features and had a cloak with various colors still visible on it! Could it be anything other than the tomb of Joseph?
If you put this movie together with the book/DVD on Mt. Sinai from Bob Cornuke (http://www.baseinstitute.org), you should be convinced that the Biblical account of the Exodus is for real. You would have to deny a lot of evidence to believe otherwise.
Anyway, it is all very similar to the arguments for and against a literal six-day creation, six thousand years ago. If you remove the biases and take a hard look at the evidence, it supports the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Eric Bermingham
January, 2015
