Which pharaoh confronted Moses?

Answer 1

According to Jewish dating, based on the Tanach (Jewish Bible), Moshe (Moses) confronted the Pharaoh in the year 2447 of the Hebrew calendar or the year 1313 BCE according to the Western calendar. This would make the Pharaoh in question Rameses I.

Recent archeological finds have found evidence supporting the exodus story based on the Jewish dating as opposed to Western dating methods.

Answer

The closest tie to the times is Thutmose II or III, who was pharoah in 1444 BC. He ruled for 54 years. Additional information from his mummy is that he had cysts that would have resulted from the plagues in Egypt and the Hittite Empire during those years. In 1906, clay tablets from the Hittite Empire corroborate with the events related in The Bible were found. Climate changes, including the rise of the Nile River also fit the times.

Answer 2

The Bible confidently states that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon's reign, which would therefore be approximately 1444 BCE. The confrontation between the pharaoh and Moses took place just before this time, placing it in the reign of Thutmose III. However, the circumstances of Thutmose' death are known, and his mummy has been discovered. He could not have been the pharaoh who confronted Moses, pursued the Israelites and was drowned in the Red Sea (eg Exodus 14:6...28: "...there remained not so much as one of them."). Moreover, the Amarna letter demonstrate that Egypt continued to exercise complete control over Palestine until well into the next century.

Because archaeological evidence has made the traditional date of the Exodus untenable, some liberal Christians have suggested that the Exodus really took place shortly before 1200 BCE, when Israelites are known to have begun to arrive in the Palestinian hinterland. This would then make Moses and Rameses II contempories. However, Rameses could not have been the pharaoh either, since he also died peacefully in Egypt and was buried there.

We do not know a pharaoh any time in the second millennium BCE who would fit the Book of Exodus, and over ninety per cent of scholars are reported to believe that there never was an Exodus from Egypt as described in the Bible.

Answer 3

The short answer is that we do not know for sure.

In the Exodus, Moses brought the Israelites out of the Egyptian slavery under the guidance of God, after God brought plagues upon the Egyptians (Exodus ch.1-12).

After the Israelites left, Egypt was in turmoil for decades. Though Israel was later harassed (Judges ch.3,6 and 10) by its smaller neighbors (Ammon, Moab, Midian), not a peep was heard from Egypt for four hundred years.

Egypt's turmoil is also borne out by the Ipuwer papyrus ("Pestilence is throughout the land....the river is blood") (Professor John van Seters, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology no. 50). The plagues were also described by ancient historians, including Herodotus and Diodorus. The Exodus is mentioned by Strabo, Berosus, Artapanus, Numenius, Justin, and Tacitus.

See also:

Archaeology and the Hebrew Bible

Refuting Bible-criticism

Answer 4

The name of the pharaoh who clash with moses was Rameses. He died trying to recapture the Hebrew slaves that he had let go after his son died. :-)