In Abraham 2:7 we read of chariots:
For I am the Lord thy God; I dwell in heaven; the earth is my footstool; I stretch my hand over the sea, and it obeys my voice; I cause the wind and the fire to be my chariot; I say to the mountains—Depart hence—and behold, they are taken away by a whirlwind, in an instant, suddenly.
Weren’t chariots only invented much later than Abraham’s day? Why would Joseph mention them?
John Gee remarks:
The “horse and horse-drawn chariot” are supposed to have appeared in Egypt “toward the very end of the Hyksos occupation.” Some think the first organized Egyptian “chariotry division” was fought at the battle of Megiddo under the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Thutmosis III. Others assign the first Egyptian chariot battle to either Thutmosis III’s father, Thutmosis II, or grandfather, Amenhotep I. Some have gone so far as to argue that the introduction of the chariot forms the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East.
…Abraham, however, lived before the Hyksos. The most probable time for Abraham’s life would range from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty through the beginning of the Fourteenth Dynasty. The Hyksos, on the other hand, ruled Egypt during the later Fifteenth Dynasty.
– John Gee – “The Wind and the Fire to Be My Chariot”: The Anachronism that Wasn’t
Gee goes on to explain that while the chariot may not have entered Egypt until Hyksos times in the second millennium BC, it entered the Near East in the third millennium BC.
What were the chances chariots would be attested both archaeologically and textually in times and locations relevant to Abraham?
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