The Rebellion of Korah

After the decree of forty years, despair in the camp found a leader. Korah, a Levite and cousin of Moses, wealthy and respected, came forward with an unanswerable-sounding charge: you take too much—the whole congregation is holy and God is among them, so why do you raise yourselves above the assembly? Dathan and Abiram of Reuben joined him, along with two hundred and fifty leaders of the community, men of renown. Moses fell on his face and proposed a test with pans of incense; he also tried to negotiate, sending for Dathan and Abiram, who answered, we will not come up. The next morning it ended quickly and terribly: the earth opened beneath the tents of the ringleaders and swallowed them, and the two hundred and fifty were consumed by fire. When the people then blamed Moses, a plague broke out and Aaron stopped it by standing with incense between the dead and the living. Aaron's staff blossomed overnight and bore almonds.

Here the chronologies differ not by years but by a century. Seder Olam Rabbah places the Exodus in 1313 BCE. The prevailing academic date is the thirteenth century, the time of Ramesses II: its firm anchor is the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah of 1208 BCE, the first mention of Israel outside the Tanakh, where Israel is already in Canaan. A minority of scholars holds to the fifteenth century, reckoning by the plain count of I Kings 6:1 — four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to Solomon's Temple. The timeline shows the prevailing dating.