The Exodus

This article is about the events related in the Torah. For the second book of the Torah and the Old Testament, see The Book of Exodus. For other uses, see Exodus (disambiguation).

"Departure of the Israelites", by David Roberts, 1829

The Exodus (from Greek ἔξοδος exodos, "going out") is the founding myth of Israel; its message is that the Israelites were delivered from slavery by Yahweh and therefore belong to him through the Mosaic covenant. It tells of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt following the death of Joseph, their departure under the leadership of Moses, the revelations at Sinai (including the ten commandments), and their wanderings in the wilderness up to the borders of Canaan. The exodus story is told in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and their overall intent was to demonstrate God's actions in history, to recall Israel's bondage and salvation, and to demonstrate the fulfillment of Israel's covenant.

The historicity of the exodus continues to attract popular attention, but most histories of ancient Israel no longer consider information about it recoverable or even relevant to the story of Israel's emergence. The archeological evidence does not support the story told in the Book of Exodus and most archaeologists have therefore abandoned the investigation of Moses and the Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit". The opinion of the overwhelming majority of modern biblical scholars is that the exodus story was shaped into its final present form in the post-Exilic period, although the traditions behind it are older and can be traced in the writings of the 8th century BCE prophets. How far beyond that the tradition might stretch cannot be told: "Presumably an original Exodus story lies hidden somewhere inside all the later revisions and alterations, but centuries of transmission have long obscured its presence, and its substance, accuracy and date are now difficult to determine."

The Exodus has been central to Judaism: it served to orient Jews towards the celebration of God's actions in history, in contrast to polytheistic celebrations of the gods' actions in nature, and even today it is recounted daily in Jewish prayers and celebrated in the festival of Pesach. In secular history the exodus has served as inspiration and model for many groups, from early Protestant settlers fleeing persecution in Europe to 19th and 20th century African-Americans striving for freedom and civil rights.

Origins

A Semitic slave. Ancient Egyptian figurine. Hecht Museum

The opinion of the overwhelming majority of modern biblical scholars is that the Torah (the series of five books which consist of the book of Genesis plus the books in which the Exodus story is told) was shaped in the post-Exilic period. There are currently two important hypotheses explaining the background to this: the first is Persian Imperial authorisation, the idea that the post-Exilic community needed a legal basis on which to function within the Persian Imperial system; the second relates to the community of citizens organised around the Temple, with the Pentateuch providing the criteria for who would belong to it (the narratives and genealogies in Genesis) and establishing the power structures and relative positions of its various groups. In either case, the Book of Exodus forms a "charter myth" for Israel: Israel was delivered from slavery by Yahweh and therefore belongs to him through the covenant.

The final form of the Pentateuch was based on earlier traditions. These have left traces in over 150 references throughout the Bible. The earliest are in the prophets Amos (possibly) and Hosea (certainly), both active in 8th century BCE Israel; in contrast Proto-Isaiah and Micah, both active in Judah at much the same time, never do; it thus seems reasonable to conclude the Exodus tradition was important in the northern kingdom in the 8th century BCE, but not in Judah.

In a recent work, Stephen C. Russell traces the 8th century BCE prophetic tradition to three originally separate variants, in the northern kingdom of Israel, in Trans-Jordan, and in the southern kingdom of Judah. Russell proposes different hypothetical historical backgrounds to each tradition: the tradition from Israel, which involves a journey from Egypt to the region of Bethel, he suggests is a memory of herders who could move to and from Egypt in times of crisis; for the Trans-Jordanian tradition, which focuses on deliverance from Egypt without a journey, he suggests a memory of the withdrawal of Egyptian control at the end of the Late Bronze Age; and for Judah, whose tradition is preserved in the Song of the Sea, he suggests the celebration of a military victory over Egypt, although it is impossible to suggest what this victory may have been.

Cultural significance

Main article: Passover

The exodus is remembered daily in Jewish prayers and celebrated each year at the feast of Passover. The Hebrew name for this festival, Pesach, refers to God's instruction to the Israelites to prepare unleavened bread as they would be leaving Egypt in haste, and to mark their doors with the blood of slaughtered sheep so that the "Angel of Death" or "the destroyer" tasked with killing the first-born of Egypt would "pass over" them. (Despite the Exodus story, scholars believe that the Passover festival originated not in the biblical story but as a magic ritual to turn away demons from the household.)

Jewish tradition has preserved national and personal reminders of this pivotal narrative in daily life. Examples include the wearing of tefillin (phylacteries) on the arm and forehead, the wearing of tzitzit (knotted ritual fringes attached to the four corners of the prayer shawl), the eating of matzot (unleavened bread) during the Pesach, the fasting of the firstborn a day before Pesach, and the redemption of firstborn children and animals.

Historicity

Possible Exodus routes. The traditional Exodus route is in black; other possible routes are in blue and green.

Overview

The view of mainstream modern biblical scholarship is that Exodus story originated not as history, but to demonstrate God's purpose and deeds with his Chosen People, Israel. Nevertheless, although the exodus story is primarily theological, it is a theology telling how the Israelites' bondage and salvation, and the covenant with their God and its fulfillment, all took place in history.

Numbers and logistics

According to Exodus 12:37–38, the Israelites numbered "about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children," plus many non-Israelites and livestock. Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550 men aged 20 and up. The 600,000, plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites would have numbered some 2 million people. Marching ten abreast, and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 150 miles long.

Against the 2 million implied participants in the exodus was an entire Egyptian population in 1250 BCE of around 3 to 3.5 million. No outside evidence has been found that indicates Egypt ever suffered the demographic and economic catastrophe such a loss of population would represent, nor that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds. It is also difficult to reconcile the idea of 600,000 Israelite fighting men with the information that the Israelites were afraid of the Philistines and Egyptians.

Some have rationalised the numbers into smaller figures, for example reading the Hebrew as "600 families" rather than 600,000 men, but all such solutions have their own set of problems. The most probable explanation is that 600,000 symbolises the total destruction of the generation of Israel which left Egypt, none of whom lived to see the Promised Land, while the 603,550 is a gematria (a code in which numbers represent letters or words) for bnei yisra'el kol rosh, "the children of Israel, every individual".

One usual explanation given by some scholars, such as historians Egyptologists Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier, for the reason there's no outside verification for the Biblical Exodus, is that the defeat was so embarrassing to Egypt, and details regarding events, numbers, and figures were suppressed, as was the habit of many other great world powers in history, so that Egyptian priests, kings, scribes, and record-keepers subsequently could not allow themselves to honestly record what happened, but would tend to hide certain facts or unflattering details, and many times embellish others. Proffesor Berman wrote: "We have to rely on monumental inscriptions, which, being mainly reports to the gods about royal achievements, are far from complete or reliable as historical records. They are more akin to modern-day résumés, and just as conspicuous for their failure to note setbacks of any kind." Mainstream scholars such as Donald Redford consider such arguments as having the fatal flaw that "not one blip of evidence for them has ever surfaced on the radar" (meaning positive evidence of the Exodus).

Archaeology

A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit". A number of theories have been put forward to account for the origins of the Israelites, and despite differing details they agree on Israel's Canaanite origins. 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, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.

Anachronisms

Despite the Bible's internal dating of the Exodus to the 2nd millennium BCE, details point to a 1st millennium date for the composition of the Book of Exodus: Ezion-Geber, (one of the Stations of the Exodus), for example, dates to a period between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE with possible further occupation into the 4th century BCE, and those place-names on the Exodus route which have been identified – Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Ramesses and Kadesh Barnea – point to the geography of the 1st millennium rather than the 2nd. Similarly, Pharaoh's fear that the Israelites might ally themselves with foreign invaders seems unlikely in the context of the late 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. The mention of the dromedary in Exodus 9:3 also suggests a later date of composition – the widespread domestication of the camel as a herd animal was thought not to have taken place before the late 2nd millennium, after the Israelites had already emerged in Canaan, and they did not become widespread in Egypt until c.200–100 BCE.

Chronology

Most scholars state that 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, 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 the re-dedication of the Second Temple in 164 BCE.

Route

Main article: Stations list

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, as is Kadesh-Barnea, 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 CE and no evidence of the Exodus has been found there.

Date

Main article: Pharaoh of the Exodus

Attempts to date the Exodus to a specific century have been inconclusive. 1 Kings 6:1 says that the Exodus occurred 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple; this would imply an Exodus c.1446 BCE, during Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty. However, it is widely recognised that the number in 1 Kings is symbolic, representing twelve generations of forty years each. (The number 480 is not only symbolic – the twelve generations – but schematic: Solomon's temple (the First Temple) is founded 480 years after the Exodus and 480 years before the foundation of the Second Temple). There are also major archeological obstacles in dating the Exodus to the Eighteenth Dynasty: Canaan at the time was a part of the Egyptian empire, so that the Israelites would in effect be escaping from Egypt to Egypt, and its cities were unwalled and do not show destruction layers consistent with the Bible's account of the occupation of the land (e.g., Jericho was "small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified (and) [t]here was also no sign of a destruction". (Finkelstein and Silberman, 2002).

William F. Albright, the leading biblical archaeologist of the mid-20th century, proposed an alternative 13th century date of around 1250–1200 BCE for the Exodus event and the entry into Canaan described in the Book of Joshua. (The Merneptah Stele indicated that a people called "Israel" were already known in Canaan by the reign of Merneptah (1213–1203 BCE), so a date later than this was impossible). His argument was based on many strands of evidence, including archaeologically attested destruction at Beitel (Bethel) and some other cities at around that period and the occurrence of distinctive house-types and round-collared jars which, in his opinion, were "Israelite". Albright's theory enjoyed popularity at the time, but has now been generally abandoned in scholarship: the so-called "Israelite" house-type, the collar-rimmed jars, and other items which Albright thought distinctive and new have now been recognised as continuations of indigenous Canaanite types, and while some "Joshua" cities, including Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo and others, have destruction and transition layers around 1250–1145 BCE, others, including Jericho, have none or were uninhabited during this period.

Details in the story hint that a complex and multilayered editing process has been at work: the Exodus cities of Pithom and Rameses, for example, were not inhabited during most of the New Kingdom period, and the forty years of wilderness wanderings are also full of inconsistencies and anachronisms. It is therefore best to treat the Exodus story not as the record of a single historical event but as a "powerful collective memory of the Egyptian occupation of Canaan and the enslavement of its population" during the 13th and 12th centuries (Ann Killebrew, 2005).

Extra-biblical accounts

Egyptian texts

The "Admonitions of Ipuwer" dates from the end of the 13th Dynasty (1770-1650 BCE), or, more probably, from the Second Intermediate Period (c.1650-1550 BCE). Written in the form of a dialogue between the sage Ipuwer and the creator, Ipuwer accuses both the creator-god Re and the king of having neglected their roles, and as a result the the social order is overturned and various natural disasters fill the land. The afflictions besetting Egypt described in this text are "remarkably similar" to the ten plagues of Egypt, including such details as plague, darkness, and the sound of wailing and moaning filling the land, "the river" (the Nile) turning to blood, and the destruction of cattle and animals, but scholars have identified this and similar works (Ipuwer being the most ambitious) as examples of a common Egyptian literary genre, with little or no basis in historical events.

Greek-period texts

The Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera (c.320 BCE) wrote a history of Egypt in which he told how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. The most famous Greek-era mention of an exodus-like event is by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), known from two quotations by the 1st century CE 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. 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, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition.

See also

• Invented tradition
• Ipuwer Papyrus
• The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Exodus Story
• Va'eira, Bo, and Beshalach: Torah portions telling the Exodus story

References

Bibliography

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External links

• Exodus 12 and following chapters