Wads4

I am not sure of the modern estimates of the chronology of that time, but I thought it would coincide with the beginning of the 17th dynasty and the Hyksos expulsion. If there were fall-out and tidal effects occuring at this time, owing to the Santorini eruption, it might have become part of the folklore of the Hyksos semitic peoples who probably included Joseph or his descendents, because the new Eqyptian kings who "knew not Joseph" would have included them all as semitic foreigners and expelled the lot of them. Stories about drowned Egyptian chariots may have been partly true or else "sour grapes" to denigrate the Egyptians for turning on the Hyksos;- a lot of maybees, but they seem plausible in the light of the exodus stories and Egyptian history. There are extensive geological strata on Thera (Santorini) which mark layers of fall-out deposit, so it must have occurred over a longish period, as well as intermittently throughout later history.
Later in the time of Elijah, about 850 BC or thereabouts, there is the passage in Kings in the O.T. where Elijah sends his servant up Mount Horeb Sinai) to look for a sign from God, and he eventually sees "a little cloud arise, like a man's hand", on the horizon, looking out to sea. Sounds like a distant volcanic eruption to me. Intriguing or no?

Wads4

I heard that it all stemmed from a hugh far eastern eruption, probably Krakatoa, whose fall-out killed off the grassy plains of the Asian steppes, and trigged the western migration of Huns etc in search of pastures new,-which triggered the Germanic invasions and collapse of the western Roman Empire, plagues, darkening of the skies , and massive die-offs.

Anat

Wads4, do you have a source for your suggested dating of the Hyksos expulsion? As far as I can see, mid-16th century BCE, coinciding with the end of the Middle Bronze Age in Canaan is the date that gets quoted.

Diogenes the Cynic

Have you read Charles Pellegrino's book, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah? He's a geologist who talks a lot about the Theran explosion in that book and actually says that the waters in the Nile Delta would have initially receeded for a brief period before the tsunami hit. He also claims (and I don't remember his evidence for this) that there were some Egyptian military garrisons stationed right in the area of deluge. An event like that -- especially if it was remembered as having taken out some Egyptian troops -- could quite plausibly have become incorporated into oral legends and conflated with the Hyksos expulsion. The Song of the Sea is one of the oldest passages in Exodus and I could see it as the basis for the Red Sea story.

Sven

False analogy.

Whatever.