by
Damien F. Mackey
“The ancient Israelites created “a historical saga so powerful that it led
biblical historians and archaeologists alike to recreate its mythical past— from stones and potsherds,” said Israeli scholar and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. …. In other words, according to them, the Exodus never happened. Critical scholars like Halpern and Finkelstein view the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt as
mere storytelling, but with a moral message”.
Randall Price
Introduction
What a spiritually-filled and action-packed document the Book of Exodus is!
Even before we have managed to reach Chapter 4 - the return of Moses to Egypt from the land of Midian - so many exciting, agonising, yet providential events have occurred. These are:
- The enslavement of the growing nation of Israel - which had long had it good in the fertile region of Goshen where Joseph had settled it - by a new dynastic Pharaoh to whom Joseph meant little (Exodus 1:8);
- the slaves set to task to build mighty store cities, Pithom and Raamses (v. 11);
- the Pharaoh’s cruel order for male children to be slaughtered, to limit the birth-rate of the Israelites (v. 16);
- the birth of Moses and his rescue from death - all strategically planned by his mother - by his being rescued from the water by the daughter of Pharaoh, she giving him the name, “Moses” (2:1-10);
- the adult Moses going amongst his people and seeing their affliction, their fighting amongst themselves, and Moses killing an Egyptian overseer (vv. 11-12);
- Pharaoh learning of this and determining to kill Moses, who flees for his life to the land of Midian (v. 15);
- Moses then assists the seven daughters of the priest of Midian against some shepherds who had driven them from the well, Moses then watering their flock for them (vv. 16-17);
- Moses identified by the priest’s daughters as “an Egyptian” (v. 19);
- the priest welcomes Moses and gives him in marriage his daughter Zipporah (v. 21):
- the couple has a son whom Moses names “Gershom” (v. 22);
- during Moses’s long sojourn in the land of Midian the Pharaoh who had sought his life dies, and persecuted Israel groans in its misery (v. 23);
- God hears their groaning and is concerned for them (vv. 24-25).
All of that fascinating data takes us only, in fact, to Chapter 2 of the Book of Exodus.
Is it simply story-telling, as many claim, “pure myth” (see below)?
For, the burning question today is: Did it all really happen?
Those Biblical minimalists
Many historians, archaeologists and biblicists deny that the Book of Exodus is history, insisting that it is merely a type of didactic fiction, or the like. For example:
https://israelmyglory.org/article/how-do-we-know-the-exodus-happened/
“The actual evidence concerning the Exodus resembles the evidence for the unicorn,” declared Pennsylvania State University Jewish Studies Professor Baruch Halpern. …. The ancient Israelites created “a historical saga so powerful that it led biblical historians and archaeologists alike to recreate its mythical past—from stones and potsherds,” said Israeli scholar and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. …. In other words, according to them, the Exodus never happened. Critical scholars like Halpern and Finkelstein view the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt as mere storytelling, but with a moral message”.
Previously I have noted other views along these same lines:
Today, people laugh at the very idea of the Plagues and the Exodus.
The story of the Exodus, Michael D. Lemonick wrote in “Are the Bible Stories True?” (TIME, Sunday, June 24, 2001), “involves so many miracles” - plagues, the parting of the Red Sea … manna, from heaven, the giving of the Ten Commandments - that critics take it for “pure myth”.
In this regard he referred to Fr. Anthony Axe, Bible lecturer at Jerusalem’s École Biblique, who has claimed that a massive Exodus that led to the drowning of Pharaoh’s army would have reverberated politically and economically throughout the entire region. And, considering that artefacts from as far back as the late Stone Age have turned up in the Sinai, Fr Axe finds it perplexing that - as he thinks - no evidence of the Israelites’ passage has been found.
And I have been told by a learned Dominican priest that the Bible is all about Theology, and that Moses, Joshua, never wrote down anything.
What is it with Dominicans and literal biblical interpretation?
On this, see e.g. my article:
Père M-J. Lagrange’s exegetical blancmange
(2) Père M-J. Lagrange’s exegetical blancmange
Now, in the following article we read of further such scepticism:
Hebrews in Egypt before the Exodus? Evidence from Papyrus Brooklyn
/ Uncategorized / By Archae27
The presence of Hebrews in Egypt prior to their departure is a key component in the Exodus story, leading to the eventual formation of the Israelite nation and the subsequent settlement of Canaan.
However, skepticism about the historical validity of the Exodus story has spread through both academia and the general public over the last century. One of the key problems for asserting the Exodus narrative as historical has to do with the supposed lack of archaeological confirmation for Hebrews living in Egypt. Current academic consensus views the events described in the book of Exodus as myth, without any indication of an historical core, and now a topic which the vast majority of scholars decline to investigate due to their certainty that the story is fictional. Scholars have made claims that according to archaeological investigations, “Israelites were never in Egypt ….
The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites’ presence in Egypt” (Zeev Herzog). Another archaeologist concluded that investigation of the Exodus story is pointless because of the alleged absence of evidence, stating that “not only is there no archaeological evidence for such an exodus, there is no need to posit such an event …. I regard the historicity of the Exodus as a dead issue” (William Dever). ….
Maybe all of these biblical minimalists have a point?
The point that they do have is that they are all right in a conventional context, but, unfortunately for them, the conventional context is all wrong.
Indeed Fr. Anthony Axe, for instance, is right in saying that an event such as the Exodus would have had widespread political and economic ramifications; but because he has been conditioned to thinking according to the Sothic-based time scale, Fr. Axe is unable to see the wood for the trees, so to speak. For, contrary to the conventional view, the Egyptian chronicles do give abundant testimony to a time of catastrophe reminiscent of the Exodus, and archaeology does clearly attest the presence of an invasive people sojourning for a time in the Sinai/Negev deserts.
Michael D. Lemonick, in “Are the Bible Stories True?”, will also cite the claim of Magen Broshi, curator emeritus of the Dead Sea Scrolls (d. 2020), that the Israeli archaeologists of the 60’s-80’s “... didn’t find a single piece of evidence backing the Israelites’ supposed 40-year sojourn in the desert”. But the reason for this is that is because they were always expecting to find such “evidence” in a New Kingdom context.
I like to say that Israeli archaeologists are forever pointing to the wrong stratigraphical level for a biblical person or event while ‘standing in’, so to speak, the real archaeological level.
Some independently-minded conventional scholars
Professor Emmanuel Anati
The error of looking to the New Kingdom for the Exodus scenario has already been pointed out by professor Anati.
Commenting on Michael Lemonick’s reference to “Israeli archaeologists of the 60’s-80’s”, I have written previously:
Not so professor Emmanuel Anati, who has realised that the conventional placement of a mild exodus to the Late Bronze Age, supposedly of Ramses II, is hopelessly inaccurate. Thus he has written (The Mountain of God, 1986):
In the last 100 years, many efforts have been invested on finding some hints of the Israelites and their exodus in the Egyptian ancient literature. In the many Egyptian texts that date to the New Kingdom ... there is no mention of the flight from Egypt or the crossing of the "Red Sea".
Not even the general historical and social background correspond. ... If all of this tradition has a minimal basis in historical fact, then it cannot have been totally ignored by the Egyptians. ….
Nor, according to Professor Anati, did they ignore it:
... The relevant texts do not date to the New Kingdom at all, but to the Old Kingdom. In other words ... the archaeological evidence ..., the tribal social structures described in the Bible, the climatic changes and the ancient Egyptian literature all seem to indicate that the events and situations which may have inspired the biblical narrations of Exodus do not date to the thirteenth century BC but ... to the late third millennium [sic] BC.
Professor Anati still accepts the conventional dating of the Old and New Kingdoms.
But this only means that his discoveries are all the more meaningful, because he has not set out to make a chronological statement.
Dr. Rudolph Cohen
Dr. Cohen, Deputy Director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority (until 2005), when asked which Egyptian dynasty he considered to be contemporaneous with the Exodus events, nominated the Middle Kingdom’s 12th dynasty.
That is very close to the mark.
In this regard he referred to the Ipuwer Papyrus as describing the conditions in Egypt that could be expected as the result of the ten devastating plagues (cf. Exodus 7-12).
Dr. Cohen (d. 2007), of course, was not the first to have suggested the relevance of the Twelfth Dynasty, or of the Ipuwer Papyrus, to the situation of the Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus. Dr. Donovan Courville had discussed in detail its suitability as the background for the enslavement and ultimate deliverance (Exodus 1:8-5:22).
There is plenty of biographical detail to be found in the Book of Exodus, though recorded there in an extremely concise fashion.
It has been left to revisionists to fill in the details, to read between the lines, because, as I wrote above, “the conventional context is all wrong”, their lines are often crooked.
Well let us try to unpack the first 2 chapters of Exodus by providing it with a proper historical context.
Revisionist scholars setting things straight
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had presented a compelling case for both the Ipuwer and Ermitage papyrii’s being recollections of the plagues and devastation of Egypt:
http://www.hermetics.org/exodus.html
An important argument set forth by Velikovsky involves the papyrus of Ipuwer placed into the Leiden Museum in the Netherlands in 1828. This papyrus appears to relate events that occurred in the early ages of ancient Egypt. According to academicians it contains riddles or prophecies, however it openly relates a number of catastrophes that befell Egypt. The Nile turning to blood, the waters being undrinkable, the death of animals, the sky becoming dark, fires, earthquakes, hungry and destitute Egyptians are among these. If Velikovsky is correct then it disproves the contention that there is no trace of the events related in the Pentateuch recorded in Egyptian history. ….
Israel’s enslavement
The growth of the Israelite population in Egypt, broadly termed amu (‘Asiatics’), occurred during the reign of the dynastic founding king, Amenemes (Amenemhet), Twelfth Dynasty: “Both the teachings of Amenemhet and the Prophecies of Neferti make reference to Amenemhet having to deal with a large Asiatic (‛3mw) population within Egypt”:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2233&context=facpub
Amenemes (Amenemhet), the founding king of the Twelfth Dynasty, was the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, who decreed the slaughter of the male Hebrew babies.
Immense building works in the Goshen region, east of the Nile Delta occurred in this period.
The presence, then, of Hebrew slaves and labourers is attested by the Brooklyn Papyrus (35.1446), potentially supporting the biblical narrative of the Hebrews’ presence in Egypt with its list of 95 names including 30 Semitic (Hebrew) names.
It is dated to the Thirteenth Dynasty, some of whose officials, as we have found, served the Twelfth Dynasty.
The occurrence of the name “Shiphrah” and other Hebrew (NW Semitic) type names in the late Middle Kingdom’s Brooklyn Papyrus had constituted an integral part of my detailed argument that Egypt’s:
Twelfth Dynasty oppressed Israel
https://www.academia.edu/38553314/Twelfth_Dynasty_oppressed_Israel
Here is just a part of what I wrote there:
The widespread presence of ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt at the time would help to explain the large number of Israelites said to be in the land. Pharaoh would have used as slaves other Syro-Palestinians, too, plus Libyans and Nubians.
As precious little, though, is known of Cheops, despite his being powerful enough to have built one of the Seven Wonders of the World, we shall need to fill him out later with his 12th dynasty alter ego.
In Cheops’ daughter, Mer-es-ankh, we presumably have the Merris of tradition who retrieved the baby Moses from the water.
The name Mer-es-ankh consists basically of two elements, Meres and ankh, the latter being the ‘life’ symbol for Egypt worn by people even today.
Mer-es-ankh married Chephren (Egyptian, Khafra), builder of the second Giza pyramid and probably, of the Great Sphinx. He would thus have become Moses’s foster/father-in-law.
Moses, now a thorough-going ‘Egyptian’ (cf. Exodus 2:19), must have been his loyal subject. “Now Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man of power both in his speech and in his actions”. (Acts 7:22)
Tradition has Moses leading armies for Chenephres as far as Ethiopia. Whilst this may seem a bit strained in a 4th dynasty context, we shall find that it is perfectly appropriate in a 12th dynasty one, when we uncover Chephren’s alter ego.
From the 12th dynasty, we gain certain further elements that are relevant to the early era of Moses. Once again we have a strong founder-king, Amenemhet I, who will enable us to fill out the virtually unknown Cheops as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8. The reign of Amenemhet I was, deliberately, an abrupt break with the past. The beginning of the 12th dynasty marks not only a new dynasty, but an entirely new order. Amenemhet I celebrated his accession by adopting the Horus name: Wehem-Meswt (“He who repeats births”), thought to indicate that he was “the first of a new line”, that he was “thereby consciously identifying himself as the inaugurator of a renaissance, or new era in his country’s history”.
Amenemhet I is thought actually to have been a commoner, originally from southern Egypt.
I have thought to connect him to pharaoh Khufu via the nobleman from Abydos, Khui.
“The Prophecy of Neferti”, relating to the time of Amenemhet I, shows the same concern in Egypt for the growing presence of Asiatics in the eastern Delta as was said to occupy the mind of the new pharaoh of Exodus, seeing the Israelites as a political threat (1:9): “‘Look’, [pharaoh] said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us’.”
That Asiatics were particularly abundant in Egypt at the time is apparent from this information from the Cambridge Ancient History: “The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period [of the Twelfth Dynasty] must have been many times more numerous than has been generally supposed ...”. Dr David Down gives the account of Sir Flinders Petrie who, working in the Fayyûm in 1899, made the important discovery of the town of Illahûn [Kahun], which Petrie described as “an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty”.
Of the ‘Asiatic’ presence in this pyramid builders’ town, Rosalie David (who is in charge of the Egyptian branch of the Manchester Museum) has written:
It is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt.
It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as ‘Asiatics’, although their exact home-land in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined .... The reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear.
Undoubtedly, these ‘Asiatics’ were dwelling in Illahûn largely to raise pyramids for the glory of the pharaohs. Is there any documentary evidence that ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt acted as slaves or servants to the Egyptians? “Evidence is not lacking to indicate that these Asiatics became slaves”, Dr. Down has written with reference to the Brooklyn Papyrus. Egyptian households at this time were filled with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names.
Of the seventy-seven legible names of the servants of an Egyptian woman called Senebtisi recorded on the verso of this document, forty-eight are (like the Hebrews) NW Semitic. In fact, the name “Shiphrah” is identical to that borne by one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded to kill the male babies (Exodus 1:15).
“Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households [prior to the New Kingdom]”, we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Amenemhet I was represented in “The Prophecy of Neferti” - as with the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 - as being the one who would set about rectifying the problem. To this end he completely reorganised the administration of Egypt, transferring the capital from Thebes in the south to Ithtowe in the north, just below the Nile Delta. He allowed those nomarchs who supported his cause to retain their power. He built on a grand scale. Egypt was employing massive slave labour, not only in the Giza area, but also in the eastern Delta region where the Israelites were said to have settled at the time of Joseph.
Professor J. Breasted provided ample evidence to show that the powerful 12th dynasty pharaohs carried out an enormous building program whose centre was in the Delta region. More specifically, this building occurred in the eastern Delta region which included the very area that comprised the land of Goshen where the Israelites first settled.
“... in the eastern part [of the Delta], especially at Tanis and Bubastis ... massive remains still show the interest which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta cities”.
Today, archaeologists recognise the extant remains of the construction under these kings as representing a mere fraction of the original; the major part having been destroyed by the vandalism of the New Kingdom pharaohs (such as Ramses II).
The Biblical account states that: “... they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick”. (Exodus 1:14). ….
[End of quotes]
For the historical Moses in a Twelfth Dynasty setting, see e.g. my articles:
Moses in Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty
(5) Moses in Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty
Joseph in Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty, Moses in Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty
(5) Joseph in Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty, Moses in Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty
For the historical Moses and his flight to Midian to escape the wrath of Pharaoh, see e.g. my article:
Moses, from the comforts of Egypt to the desert landscapes of Midian
(5) Moses, from the comforts of Egypt to the desert landscapes of Midian
For Moses during his sojourn in Midian, see e.g. my article:
Moses, his marriage in Midian, and the holy Mountain of God
(5) Moses, his marriage in Midian, and the holy Mountain of God
This takes us into Chapter 3 of the Book of Exodus, and the spiritual Burning Bush episode:
The Burning Bush theophany directing Moses back to Egypt
(5) The Burning Bush theophany directing Moses back to Egypt
Moses and the Burning Bush
3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you[b] will worship God on this mountain.”
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.[c] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[d] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation.
16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
18 “The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
21 “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. 22 Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.”
Moses will be tasked with waging war on all of the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12).
There have been terrific articles written on the subject of how each individual Plague was directed at one or other Egyptian god (including Pharaoh).
For example, Joe LoMusio’s article:
“Against the Gods of Egypt” - Identifying the Ten Plagues
(5) "Against the Gods of Egypt" - Identifying the Ten Plagues
Exodus 12:12
Against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.
Just before the tenth and final plague brought upon Egypt, God proclaims to Moses that the calamities befalling Pharaoh and his people were divine judgments against all the gods of Egypt. This astonishing statement is repeated in Numbers 33:4, where, referring to the Egyptians, we read, “Also on their gods the LORD executed judgments.” While both statements could be interpreted as relating only to the tenth and final plague, there is a greater possibility that all the plagues should be considered, as each of them can be understood as relating to the various gods and cult practices of the ancient Egyptians. ….
