Free PDF: Donovan A. Courville, The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications, 2 Vols. (1971)
Donovan Courville was a professor of chemistry. In his spare time, he wrote the most important revisionist book on the dating of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. He defended the Bible’s dating: 15th century, B.C.
He self-published his two-volume book in 1971. It is difficult to locate a copy.
The book was ignored by Egyptologists. This was predictable. Courville promoted a chronological reconstruction along the lines of the one offered by Immanuel Velikovsky in Ages in Chaos. Velikovsky is a pariah for ancient historians. Not for Courville.
. . . . Velikovsky should be credited with the first serious attempt to point out that there is no genuine possibility of arriving at any credible harmony between Old Testament history and current views, and that the solution lies in the direction of a complete reconstruction of the chronology of the ancient world (Vol. 1, p. 128).
Courville went far beyond Velikovsky’s revision. He was a revisionist’s revisionist.
In 1974, I gave a lesson to R. J. Rushdoony’s Sunday morning Bible study, held in Westwood, California. I mentioned the 13th-century dating of exodus. After the meeting, Rushdoony told me to read Courville’s book. I ordered a copy. I read it. I then recorded a revised presentation, which Rushdoony’s tape producer sent to subscribers.
I found his narrative difficult to follow. He was not a well-organized writer. So, I wrote to him. I asked him to write a summary article on Old Testament biblical chronology for The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, which I edited.
He was retired from Loma Linda University. He asked me to drive to Loma Linda for a talk. He was interviewing me. I met with him. In our discussion, he mentioned that he had published the book under the name “Challenge Books.” He said that he was then contacted by a publishing company with that title. He was asked not to use that name. He agreed. He changed his company’s name to Crest Challenge Books. But it was too late. The book never went into a second edition. He never used the new publisher’s name.
He agreed to write the article. I published it in the Summer 1975 issue. It is here.
This week, I paid to have the book scanned and made searchable. I also appended the 1975 article. It is a large file. It may take two minutes to download. Download it here:
The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications
From Gary North, here.