First Kings 6:1 reports that the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt occurred 480 years before King Solomon’s fourth year when work on the First Temple began.

“And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.”

Part 1: The Story
Part 5: Rebutting the “Early Date” of the Exodus (Pi-Ramesses)
Part 7: The Moses of Legend and Myth

On a strictly literal interpretation, if Solomon’s fourth was around 967 BCE (a date not derived from the Bible itself), then the exodus must have occurred about 1446 BCE. This literal reading is, however, mistaken on several fronts.

The immediate problem is that the proper literal reading of the relevant biblical texts (and not the 480 years of First Kings alone) does not arrive at a date of 1446 BCE for the exodus. If the readers dates back from the beginning of the reign of King Solomon and the years of previous kings and judges recorded in 1 and 2 Samuel, Judges, and Joshua, a period of 633-650 years elapses between King Solomon’s fourth year and the exodus (Hoffmeier 2007, 2). The date of the exodus would then be around 1600–1617 BCE.

A second issue with the literal interpretation is that the Book of Exodus refers explicitly to the forced labor of the Hebrews in Egypt before the events of the exodus. In particular, they were to construct the store city Raamses (1:11). The Rameses of this verse is Pi-Ramses, which was the capital city of the pharaoh Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE). Yet, the Hebrews being forced to build this city while enslaved in Egypt means the exodus could not have occurred before 1270 BCE, the date the city was completed (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 65). The literal interpretation of the 480 years cannot be correct.

How is one then to interpret the 480 years of First Kings 6:1? Given the aforementioned criticisms, a generational reading is superior. Old Testament scholar Peter Enns explains,

First, reading 480 years literally rather than symbolically is an assumption—and a fairly modern one at that. In the Old Testament, numbers, especially nice round numbers, often are either exaggerated or have symbolic value. For example, Moses is eighty years old at the exodus (Exodus 7:7) and one hundred twenty at his death (Deuteronomy 34:7). Ancient Jewish tradition completes the picture by adding that Moses is forty years old when he fled to Midian in chapter 2, thus neatly dividing Moses’s life into three forty-year periods. The Israelites also spend precisely forty years in the wilderness. Later, Jesus spends precisely forty days in the wilderness. Forty is a go-to number symbolizing a complete or “right” period of time, and “480” is twelve times forty—twelve likely symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. The number is symbolic. It draws on ancient conventions of the symbolic value of round numbers to mark off a sacred moment. (2021, 11)

In addition, much evidence exists for generational or non-literal interpretations in the broader context of the Ancient Near East, the world of the biblical writers, including that of the author of First Kings.

In Mesopotamia, there are what are called “long-distance” dates (Reade 2001). One source presents 720 years between two kings of Assyria, Ilu-shuma (20th century BCE) and Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned c. 1243–1207 BC). This number is likely based on scribes attributing 16 years to a reign, and since there were 45 kings between these two kings, the 45 x 16 = 720 years (Reade 2001, 4). The Kassite Dynasty is ascribed 576 years, which may represent 36 rulers x 16 (=576 years). The reign of six kings listed on the Assyrian king-list comes to 96 (6 x 16). To also a biblical example, the time of local peace that followed Ehud’s strike against Moab lasted “80 years” (Judges 3:30), with 80 looking more like a two generational (2 x 40 years) figure than a strictly literal one.

Julian Reade’s comprehensive analysis provides many more examples, which include the years between the construction and reconstruction of sacred temples and the length between the reign of rulers found on two Assyrian king-lists (2001, 4-5).

References

Enns, Peter. 2021. Exodus for Normal People A Guide to the Story-And History-of the Second Book of the Bible. Lansdale, Pennsylvania, United States: Bible for Normal People.

Finkelstein, Israel., and Silberman, Neil Asher. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York City, New York, United States: Simon and Schuster.

Hoffmeier, James. 2007. “Rameses of the Exodus Narratives is the 13th Century BC Royal Ramesside Residence.” Trinity Journal 28:1-9.

Reade, Julian. 2011. “Assyrian King-Lists, the Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus Origins.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 60: 1-29