The Exodus: Difference between revisions

The Exodus (Greek word έξοδος, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, Modern: Yetsi'at Mitzrayim, Tiberian: [jəsʕijaθ misʕɾajim] Y'ṣiʾath Miṣrayim, "the exit from Egypt") is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible. Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan described in the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Some scholars believe that the story of the Exodus were written by Moses as an eyewitness to the events,^[1] but the majority argue that their general characteristics make more sense if seen as primarily a work of the late-Exilic/early post-Exilic period (late 6th/early 5th centuries BC).^[2]

The Book of Exodus tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh reveals himself and offers them a Covenant: they are to keep his torah (i.e. law, instruction), and in return he will be their God and give them the land of Canaan. The Book of Leviticus records the laws of God. The Book of Numbers tells how the Israelites, led now by God, journey onwards from Sinai towards Canaan, but when their spies report that the land is filled with giants they refuse to go on. Yahweh then condemns them to remain in the desert until the generation that left Egypt passes away. After thirty-eight years at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea the next generation travel on to the borders of Canaan. The Book of Deuteronomy tells how, within sight of the Promised Land, Moses recalls their journeys and gives them new laws. His death (the last reported event of the Torah) concludes the 40 years of the exodus from Egypt.

The exodus from Egypt is the theme of the Jewish holiday of Passover ("pesaḥ"; the term continues to be used in the Passover Hagadah.^[3] At the beginning of the Exodus narrative the Israelites are instructed to prepare unleavened bread as they will be leaving in haste, and to mark their doors with blood so that the "Angel of Yahweh" will "pass over" them while killing the first-born of Egypt. The Hebrew name for the festival, "Pesaḥ," refers to the offering made at the Temple during the festival. Despite the biblical story, the passover festival originated in a magic ritual to turn away demons from the household by painting the doorframe with the blood of a slaughtered sheep.^[4]

While some scholars still follow the traditional belief that the story of the Exodus were written by Moses as an eyewitness to the events,^[5] the majority argue that their general characteristics make more sense if seen as primarily a work of the late-Exilic/early post-Exilic period (late 6th/early 5th centuries BC), except for Deuteronomy, which belongs to the late monarchy (late 7th century).^[6]

There are currently a number of competing theories on the sources which lie behind the Exodus story. The oldest, dating from the 19th century, is that the four books from Genesis to Numbers were created separately, each of them telling the same story, between c.950 BCE and 550 BCE, and then united by an editor about 450 BCE. This theory (the documentary hypothesis) enjoyed widespread support through most of the 20th century, but came under increasing criticism after about 1970 and is now not so widely referred to as it once was.^[7]

One of the more influential post-documentary hypothesis theories is that of John Van Seters. He sees three major strands within the narrative, that of Deuteronomy, a Jahwist source, a Priestly source. Despite being in the form of a retelling of the Exodus story, the book of Deuteronomy is universally recognised as the oldest of the sources, composed about 625 BCE. Van Seters sees the Jahwist source being written about 530 BCE, during the Babylonian exile, using a large and diverse body of traditional material. The Priestly writer or writers then expanded this about 400 BCE, during the Persian period.^[8] (The Oxford Bible Commentary follows Van Seters's approach but has a slightly different set of dates: the Jahwist material 7th-6th centuries, overlapping Deuteronomy, the Priestly author late 6th or 5th century, a little earlier than Van Seters thinks).^[9]

Van Seters's approach is called the "supplementary hypothesis", as he sees the Jahwist as a basic text which was then "supplemented", added to, by the Priestly authors. The third approach is called the "fragmentary hypothesis", and is essentially a more complex version of Van Seters's approach. It sees the four books (Deuteronomy is held separate again) growing separately from each other through a process of central "blocs" which were gradually expanded with additional material until they were combined in a long drawn out and complex process. Thus the stories about the Israelites in Egypt, their flight across the Red Sea, the giving of the Law and the wanderings in the wilderness, are each seen as having their own history before being combined with each other and with the material in Genesis. This approach, like both the others, sees a Priestly writer (or writers) at the final stage.^[10]

According to Exodus 12:37-38 NIV, the Israelites numbered "about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children," plus many non-Israelites and livestock.^[11] Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550. ^[12] The 600,000, plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites would have numbered some two million people,^[13] compared with an entire estimated Egyptian population of around 3 million.^[14] Marching ten abreast, and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 150 miles long.^[15] No evidence exists that Egypt ever suffered such a demographic and economic catastrophe, nor is there evidence that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds,^[16] nor of a massive population increase in Canaan, which is estimated to have had a population of only 50,000 to 100,000 at the time.^[17] Some scholars have interpreted these numbers as a mistranslation - reading the Hebrew word eleph as "600 families" rather than 600,000 men, reduces the Hebrew population involved to roughly 20,000 individuals,^[18][19] - but the view of mainstream modern biblical scholarship is that the Exodus story was written not as history, but to demonstrate God's purpose and deeds with his Chosen People, Israel; the essentially theological motivation of the story explains the improbability of the scenario described above. ^[20] It has also been suggested that the 603,550 people delivered from Egypt (according to Numbers 1:46) is not simply a number, but contains a secret message, a gematria for bene yisra'el kol ros, "the children of Israel, every individual;"^[21] while the number 600,000 symbolises of the total destruction of the generation of Israel which left Egypt, none of whom lived to see the Promised Land.^[22]

While some archaeologists leave open the possibility of a Semitic tribe coming from Egyptian servitude among the early hilltop settlers and that Moses or a Moses-like figure may have existed in Transjordan ca 1250-1200, they dismiss the possibility that the Exodus could have happened as described in the Bible.^[23] A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus narrative of an Egyptian captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness,^[20] and it has become increasingly clear that Iron Age Israel - the kingdoms of Judah and Israel - has its origins in Canaan, not Egypt:^[24] the culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite. Almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.^[25]

The late origins of the Exodus story are evident also in the many anachronisms which characterise it: to take just a few examples, Pharaoh's fear that the Israelites might ally themselves with foreign invaders makes little concern in the context of the 2nd millennium, when Canaan was part of an Egyptian empire and Egypt faced no enemies in that direction, but does make sense in a 1st millennium context, when Egypt was considerably weaker and faced invasion first from the Persians and later from Seleucid Syria,^[26]

Other anachronisms point to a period in the mid-1st millennium: Ezion-Geber, (one of the Stations of the Exodus), for example, dates to a period between the 8th and 6th centuries BC with possible further occupation into the 4th century BC,^[27] while the place-names on the Exodus route which can be identified - Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Ramesses and Kadesh Barnea - point to the geography of the 1st millennium rather than the 2nd.^[28]

The chronology of the Exodus story likewise underlines its essentially religious rather than historical nature. The number seven, for example, was sacred to God in Judaism, and so the Israelites arrive at Sinai, where they will meet God, at the beginning of the seventh week after their departure from Egypt,^[29] while the erection of the Tabernacle, God's dwelling-place among his people, occurs in the year 2666 after God creates the world, two-thirds of the way through a four thousand year era which culminates in or around 164 BC, the year of the rededication of the Second Temple.^[30]

There are many well-known incidents in the story of the Exodus, including the crossing of the Red Sea (possibly more accurately, the Sea of Reeds), the revelation at Sinai, the giving of the Tablets of Law, the incident of the golden calf, the gift of manna in the desert, the miracle of the rock of Meribah, the treachery of the Amalekites, Balaam and his talking donkey, and the story of the scouting of Canaan. Modern scholars point out that the Exodus was intended as the history of the relationship of God and his chosen people, the Israelites, and that it is therefore inappropriate to approach its story in terms of secular history: "We do the Exodus narrative a profound disservice by uncritically seeking natural interpretations for the clearly miraculous, and it is misguided to supply scientific explanations for such non-historical events as the ten plagues of Egypt, the burning bush that spoke to Moses, or the pillars of cloud and fire that accompanied the Israelites in the wilderness."^[31] Nevertheless, such discussion continues to attract interest, and the following section discusses some of the more popular aspects of the Exodus story. According to Carol A. Redmount, while the form of the story is historical, it is best seen as theology set in a narrative framework, illustrating how the God of Israel acted to save and strengthen his chosen people, the Israelites; from this point of view, it is inappropriate to approach miraculous events such as the burning bush and the plagues of Egypt as history.^[31]

The Torah lists the places where the Israelites rested. A few of the names at the start of the itinerary, including Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified with archaeological sites on the eastern edge of the Nile delta,^[32] as is Kadesh-Barnea,^[33] where the Israelites spend 38 years after turning back from Canaan, but other than that very little is certain. The crossing of the Red Sea has been variously placed at the Pelusic branch of the Nile, anywhere along the network of Bitter Lakes and smaller canals that formed a barrier toward eastward escape, the Gulf of Suez (SSE of Succoth) and the Gulf of Aqaba (S of Ezion-Geber), or even on a lagoon on the Mediterranean coast. The biblical Mt. Sinai is identified in Christian tradition with Jebel Musa in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, but this association dates only from the 3rd century AD and no evidence of the Exodus has been found there.^[34]

The most obvious routes for travellers through the region were the royal roads, the "king's highways" that had been in use for centuries and would continue in use for centuries to come. The Bible specifically denies that the Israelites went by the Way of the Philistines (purple line on the map to the right), the northerly route along the Mediterranean coast. This leaves the Way of Shur (green) and the Way of Seir (black) as probable routes, the former having the advantage of heading toward Kadesh-Barnea.

The Jewish tradition ascribes the commencement of the events of The Exodus to the year 2448 AM (1312 BCE).^[35] In the first half of the 20th century the Exodus was dated on the basis of 1 Kings 6:1, which states that the Exodus occurred 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple. Equating the biblical chronology with dates in history is notoriously difficult, but Edwin Thiele's widely accepted reconciliation of the reigns of the Israelite and Judahite kings would imply an Exodus around 1450 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC).^[36] By the mid-20th century it had become apparent that the archaeological record made this date impossible. The mummy of Thutmoses III had already been discovered in 1881,^[37] and Egyptian records of that period do not mention the expulsion of any group that could be identified with over 2 million Hebrew slaves, nor any events which could be identified with the Biblical plagues. In addition, digs in the 1930s had failed to find traces of the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities c.1400 BC - in fact many of them, including Jericho, the first Canaanite city to fall to the Israelites according to the Book of Joshua, were uninhabited at the time. The mounting lack of evidence led William F. Albright, the leading biblical archaeologist of the period, to propose an alternative, "late" Exodus around 1200-1250 BC. His argument was based on the many strands of evidence, including the destruction at Beitel (Bethel) and some other cities at around that period, and the occurrence from the same period of distinctive house-types and a distinctive round-collared jar which, in his opinion, was to be identified with in-coming Israelites.

Albright's theory enjoyed popularity around the middle of the 20th century, but has now been generally abandoned except by some conservative Christians.^[38] The evidence which led to the abandonment of Albricht's theory include: the collar-rimmed jars have been recognised as an indigenous form originating in lowland Canaanite cities centuries earlier;^[39] while some "Joshua" cities, including Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo and others, have destruction and transition layers around 1250-1145 BC, others, including Jericho, have no destruction layers or were uninhabited during this period;^[17][40] and the Merneptah Stele indicates that a people called "Israel" were already known in Canaan by the reign of Merneptah (1213-1203 BC).^[41]

Modern theories on the date - all of them popular rather than scholarly - tend to concentrate on an "early" Exodus, prior to c.1440 BC. The major candidates are:

• The 2006 History Channel documentary The Exodus Decoded revived an idea first put forward by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus, identifing the Israelites with the Hyksos, the non-Egyptian rulers of Egypt expelled by the resurgent native Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, c.1550-1530 BC. However, there are numerous difficulties with the theory, and it is not accepted by scholars.^[42][43]
• David Rohl's 1995 A Test of Time attempted to correct Egyptian history by shortening the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt by almost 300 years. As a by-result the synchronisms with the biblical narrative have changed, making the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Djedneferre Dudimose (Dedumesu, Tutimaos, Tutimaios) the pharaoh of the Exodus.^[44] Rohl's theory, however, has failed to find support among scholars in his field.^[45]
• From time to time there have been attempts to link the Exodus with the eruption of the Aegean volcano of Thera in c.1600 BC on the grounds that it could provide a natural explanation of the Plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea - geologist Barbara J Sivertsen's 2009 book "The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of the Exodus" is the most recent.^[46]

The earliest non-biblical account of the Exodus is by Hecataeus of Abdera (late 4th century BCE): the Egyptians blame a plague on foreigners and expel them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, takes them to Canaan, where he founds the city of Jerusalem.^[47] More than a dozen later stories repeat the same basic theme, most of them with a marked anti-Jewish tendency.^[47] The best-known is that by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), known from two quotations by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus. In the first Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their dominion over and expulsion from Egypt, and their subsequent foundation of the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Josephus (not Manetho) identifies the Hyksos with the Jews.^[48] In the second story Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people," led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses.^[49] Manetho differs from the other writers in describing his renegades as Egyptians rather than Jews, and in using a name other than Moses for their leader^[47] - many scholars regard the identification of Osarseph with Moses as a later addition to the text,^[50] although the question remains open.^[51]

• Ipuwer papyrus
• Torah portions telling the Exodus story: Va'eira, Bo, and Beshalach

• Carol Meyers, "Exodus" (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• James Hoffmeier, "Ancient Israel in Sinai:the evidence for the authenticity of the wilderness tradition" (Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Noll, K. L. "Canaan and Israel in Antiquity" (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001)
• Dever, William, "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?" (Eerdman's, 2001)
• Dever, William, "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" (Eerdman's, 2003)
• Mark McEntire, "Struggling with God: An Introduction to the Pentateuch" (Mercer University Press, 2008)
• Jan Assman, "Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism" (First Harvard University Press, 1997)

• Johannes C. de Moor. "Egypt, Ugarit and Exodus" in Ugarit, Religion and Culture, Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Ugarit, Religion and Culture, edited by N. Wyatt and W. G. E. Watson. Münster, Germany: Ugarit-Verlag, 1996. ISBN 3-927120-37-5
• John J. Bimson. Redating the Exodus. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1981. ISBN 0-907459-04-8
• Nahum Sarna. "Six hundred thousand men on foot" in Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel, New York: Schocken Books (1996): ch. 5. ISBN 0-8052-1063-6
• Thomas E. Levy and Mohammed Sajjar. "Edom & Copper", Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR), July/August, 2006: 24-35.
• Yohanan Aharoni. The Archaeology of the Land of Israel. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982. ISBN 0-664-21384-7. This book is notable for the large number of Ramesside cartouches and finds it cites throughout Israel.
• Encyclopaedia Judaica. S.v. "Population". ISBN 0-685-36253-1
• Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence, edited by Frerichs, Lesko & Dever, Indianapolis: Eisenbrauns, 1997. ISBN 1-57506-025-6 See esp. Malamat's essay there.
• Hershel Shanks, William G. Dever, Baruch Halpern and P. Kyle McCarter. The Rise of Ancient Israel: Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution October 26, 1991, Biblical Archaeological Society, 1992. ISBN 1-880317-05-2
• Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0-684-86912-8