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The Exodus

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This article is about the events related in the Torah. For other uses, see Exodus (disambiguation).

The Exodus (Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, Modern: Yetsi'at Mitzrayim, Tiberian: jəsʕijaθ misʕɾajim, "the going out of Egypt") is the departure from Ancient Egypt of the Israelites, as described in the Hebrew Bible. Narrowly defined, it refers only to the events in Book of Exodus, but also frequently takes in the subsequent wanderings in the Wilderness described in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy.

According to the Biblical account, the Israelites, led by Moses and Aaron, departed from bondage in Egypt to return to the Land of Israel where their forefathers had lived and which they had been promised by G-d. The Exodus forms the basis of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The term is derived from Exodus 14:8, "וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, יֹצְאִים בְּיָד רָמָה" ("the children of Israel went out with a high hand" Exodus 14:8)[1] and "הַיּוֹם, אַתֶּם יֹצְאִים, בְּחֹדֶשׁ, הָאָבִיב" ("This day you go forth in the month Abib." Exodus 13:4)[2] The full term יציאת מצרים meaning "Exodus (Greek for 'departure') from Egypt" is used in the Passover Hagadah that was authored almost 2,000 years ago in the times of the Mishnah and is used in Jewish scholarship as in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah.[3][4][5][6] There are academics who question the historical nature of the Exodus story.[7][8][9]

Narrative

According to the Torah, (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, called the Pentateuch in the Old Testament), the Children of Israel entered Egypt when Joseph was vizier. After Joseph's death a pharaoh "who knew not Joseph" arose. Fearful that the Israelites would take over the land, he enslaved them and set them to building his cities. God revealed himself to Moses, and commanded him to lead the people out of Egypt to the Promised Land (Canaan). With God's help Moses confronted Pharaoh and his magicians and led the Israelites out of Egypt, "and it came to pass at the end of four hundred and thirty years, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the Land of Egypt" at the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 12:41 in the Masoretic Text)

From Egypt the Israelites traveled through the wilderness to Sinai, the Mountain of God. There God revealed Himself in cloud and thunder, and offered them a Covenant: they would keep His torah (i.e., law, instruction), and in return He would be their God. The people accepted, and God gave them their laws and also instructions for the Tabernacle, which would be His dwelling place among them.[10] From Sinai they journeyed on to Kadesh-Barnea, arriving in the second year after leaving Egypt, and there they remained for 38 years. God gave them manna and water in the wilderness, but they complained against Him and longed to return to Egypt, and even Moses was disobedient, so that God declared that the entire generation that had left Egypt would pass away in the wilderness before a new generation would enter Canaan. The Israelites then journeyed to Moab, on the borders of Canaan, where Moses addressed them for the last time, recalling their journeys and giving them new laws. His death (the last reported event of the Torah), concluded the 40 years in the Wilderness, and the Israelites were free to begin the conquest of Canaan under their new leader, Joshua.

Cultural Significance

Main article: Passover

On the night before leaving Egypt, the final plague inflicted by God on the Egyptians was the killing of the first-born. However, to save the Israelites, they were instructed to mark their doors with blood, so that the avenging angel would see it and know to "pass over" that house. On that night, the Israelites were instructed only to eat unleavened bread as they would be leaving in haste. This event instituted the Jewish festival of the Passover.

Historicity

Route

Possible Exodus Routes. In Black is the traditional Exodus Route. Other possible Exodus Routes are in Blue and Green.
Main article: Stations list

There is little agreement as to the route that would have been taken by the Israelites. Whilst there is a lot of information in the book of Exodus about the route, there is very little that can, with certainty, be ascribed to modern-day locations. Two mountains feature prominently in the landscape of the Exodus: Sinai and Horeb. Neither of these has been identified with certainty.

Although the biblical Mt. Sinai is most frequently depicted as Jebel Musa in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, no evidence of the Exodus has been found there. A few of the cities at the start of the itinerary, such as Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified. Kadesh-Barnea is presumably found, but it was reported that its earliest occupation during the Ramesside era was centuries too late even for a Late Exodus. 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, or even the Gulf of Suez (SSE of Succoth) and the Gulf of Aqaba (S of Ezion-Geber). It is apparent from scriptural usage of the "Red Sea" (lit. Yam Suf, i.e. the "Sea of Reeds"), that the term was used to refer to both the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez, but the meaning of the term can be easily read to refer to a papyrus marsh in Egypt as well.

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, the northerly route along the Mediterranean coast. Also, a line of Egyptian forts along this highway would have aided pursuers, but, even so, some scholars support its claims. This leaves the Way of Shur and the Way of Seir as probable routes, the former having the advantage of heading toward Kadesh-Barnea. Finally there are the southern routes which depend on the identification of Jebel Musa with Sinai, although this association dates only from the 3rd century.

Logistics

Exodus 12:37 refers to 600,000 adult Hebrew men leaving Egypt with Moses, plus an unspecified but apparently large "mixed multitude" of non-Hebrews;[11] Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550.[12]

If taken literally the total number involved, the 600,000 "fighting men" plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude," would have been two million or more,[13] equivalent more than half of the entire Egyptian population of around 3-6 million. [14] The loss of such a huge proportion of the population would have caused havoc to the Egyptian economy, yet no such effect has been discovered. Archaeological research has found no evidence that the Sinai desert ever hosted, or could have hosted, millions of people, nor of a massive population increase in Canaan, estimated to have had a population of between 50,000 and 100,000, at the end of the march.[15] The logistics involved also present problems: Eric Cline, points out that 2.5 million people marching ten abreast would form a line 150 miles long, without accounting for livestock.[16]

Hebrew University professor Abraham Malamat has proposed that the Bible often refers to 600 and its multiples, as well as 1,000 and its multiples, typologically in order to convey the idea of a large military unit. "The issue of Exodus 12:37 is an interpretive one. The Hebrew word eleph can be translated 'thousand,' but it is also rendered in the Bible as 'clans' and 'military units.' There are thought to have been 20,000 men in the entire Egyptian army at the height of Egypt's empire. And at the battle of Ai in Joshua 7, there was a severe military setback when 36 troops were killed." Therefore if one reads alaphim (plural of eleph) as military units, the number of Hebrew fighting men lay between 5,000 and 6,000. In theory, this would give a total Hebrew population of less than 20,000, something within the range of historical possibility.

Dating the Exodus

The traditional bible chronology would date the Exodus to around the mid 15th century BCE. This is around the reign of three or possibly four pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Thutmose II (c.1493-1479 BCE), his sister-wife Hatshepsut (1479-1458 BCE), and her nephew-husband Thutmose III (1479-1425 BCE). (The accession date of Thutmose II is debated, and it is possible that his father Thutmose I may have been pharaoh in the earliest years of the period). None seem likely candidates for the pharaoh of the Exodus as narrated in the Bible, nor do the known patterns of Near Eastern history for the period fit the impression given by the Exodus story: Egypt's Middle East empire was at the height during this period, and the Israelites, had they entered Canaan c.1460-1400 BCE, would have found themselves confronting Egyptians rather than Canaanites. However, the Egyptians did not settle Canaan, but rather exercised tributary lordship over the Canaanite cities.

David Rohl's 'New Chronology' shortens the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt by almost 300 years, subsequently placing the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Djedneferre Dudimose (Dedumesu, Tutimaos, Tutimaios) in 1450 to 1446 BCE, coinciding with an Exodus date of 1447 BCE. [17] Rohl, however, has limited support among scholars in his field.

Excavations by William F. Albright in the 1930s failed to find traces of the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities c.1400 BCE which could be expected from an Exodus c.1440 BCE and the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan forty years later as described in the Book of Joshua; this was confirmed by Kathleen Kenyon's careful excavations in the 1950s at Jericho, where she found that the site had been uninhabited at that time and for centuries after. The Biblical date also places the Exodus in the reign of Thutmoses III, a Pharaoh whose mummy was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1881, and whose Egyptian records do not mention the expulsion of any group that can be identified with over 2 million Hebrew slaves, nor any events which could be identified with the Biblical plagues. Thutmoses III and his successors retained a strong grip over Palestine, yet the Exodus story makes no mention of any Egyptian presence there. For these reasons Albright shifted his date for the Conquest to c.1250 BCE, which would fit with evidence of destruction at Beitel (Bethel) and other cities from around that period. Albright's "late" Exodus/Conquest model was rejected by later archaeologists: the collar-rimmed jars which he believed to be an Israelite innovation have been recognised as the indigenous development of forms originating in lowland Canaanite cities centuries earlier,[18], and while some "Joshua" cities, including Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo and others, have destruction and transition layers around 1250-1145 BCE, others have no destruction layers or were uninhabited during this period, with Jericho being perhaps the best-known example.[19].

Nevertheless, a "late" Exodus date has some limited support today among conservative Christians such as Kenneth Kitchen, who strongly promotes a late date, and suggests about 1255-1215 BCE[20]. It cannot be later, he says, because the Pharaoh Merenptah refers to Israel in Canaan in 1209 BCE. It cannot be in the 15th century BC, in part, because (he believes) the legal form used in the Sinai covenant was not yet in use, and at that time there would have been no Delta capital to march from.[21]

The expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt c.1540 BCE has been advanced as a plausible origin for the Biblical Exodus, despite obvious discrepancies between Egyptian history in the period of the Hyksos and the story told in the Torah: the Hyksos were in Egypt for only a little over a century, against the 400 years described in the Bible, they left Egypt as defeated foreign rulers rather than as fleeing slaves, and the Pharaoh Ahmose pursued them across northern Sinai and into southern Canaan, where their arrival c.1500 BCE (if the Exodus story of 40 years of Wilderness wandering is followed - the Egyptian record implies a much shorter period) would leave a 250-year gap before the first appearance of proto-Israelite artefacts in the archaeological record. Nor does the Bible story give the impression that Egypt had more than one Pharaoh at this time (the Hyksos 15th dynasty ruled in the Delta and the native Egyptian 17th dynasty in the Nile valley to the south, with the 16th dynasty as a line of petty kings on the margin).

The Exodus has also been connected with the eruption of the Aegean volcano of Thera in c.1600 BCE, on the grounds that it could provide a natural explanation of the Biblical "Plagues of Egypt" and some of the incidents of the Exodus, notably the crossing of the Red Sea. The 2006 documentary film by Simcha Jacobovici is a well-known example of the theory, although Jacobovici's dating of the eruption to c. 1500 BCE to combine with the Hyksos hypothesis lacks scientific support.

Critical Evaluation

Many archaeologists[22], including Israel Finkelstein, Ze'ev Herzog and William G. Dever, regard the Exodus as non-historical, at best containing a small germ of truth. In his book, The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200 BCE, recognized by most archaeologists as the earliest settlements of the Israelites.[23] Using evidence from earlier periods, he shows a cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures. Finkelstein suggests that the local Canaanites would adapt their way of living from an agricultural lifestyle to a nomadic one and vice versa. When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples, the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.[19] Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for 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.[24]

Extra-Biblical sources

Josephus

In his Antiquities of the Jews and Against Apion, Josephus recounts a distorted tale supposedly from Manetho, identifying the expulsion of the Jews both with the Hyksos, and with the expulsion of a group of Asiatic lepers, led by a renegade Egyptian priest called Osarseph. It appears this tale is a conflation of events of the Amarna period, of the earlier Hyksos expulsion, and events throughout the 19th Dynasty.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Exodus 14:8 (mechon-mamre.org)
  2. ^ Exodus 13:4 (mechon-mamre.org)
  3. ^ "Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaryah said: 'I am like a man of seventy years old, yet I did not succeed in proving that the exodus from Egypt must be mentioned at night-until Ben Zoma explained it'." Passover Hagadah translation, (chabad.org)
  4. ^ אָמַר לָהֶם רִבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲזַרְיָה, הֲרֵי אֲנִי כְּבֶן שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה, וְלֹא זָכִיתִי שֶׁתֵּאָמֵר יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם Passover Hagadah according to Mishneh Torah (Hebrew original), (mechon-mamre.org)
  5. ^ "It happened that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarphon were reclining in B'nei Berak. They were discussing the exodus from Egypt." Passover Hagadah translation, (chabad.org)
  6. ^ מַעֲשֶׂה בְּרִבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר וְרִבִּי יְהוֹשׁוּעַ וְרִבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲזַרְיָה וְרִבִּי עֲקִיבָה וְרִבִּי טַרְפוֹן, שֶׁהָיוּ מְסֻבִּין בִּבְנֵי בְרָק; וְהָיוּ מְסַפְּרִין בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם Passover Hagadah according to Mishneh Torah (Hebrew original), (mechon-mamre.org)
  7. ^ Teresa Watanabe, "Doubting the Story of Exodus", Los Angeles Times April 13, 2001
  8. ^ I Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, eds., From Nomadism to Monarchy (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994)
  9. ^ Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-2126-X.
  10. ^ More accurately, His "name" would dwell in the Tabernacle - the word has overtones which are not easily translated into English.
  11. ^ Exodus 12
  12. ^ Numbers 1
  13. ^ Mattis Kantor ("The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia" Jason Aronson Inc., 1989, 1992) places the estimate at 2 million "[i]n normal demographic extensions...."
  14. ^ Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded and [1], [2], and [3]).
  15. ^ Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts" (Free Press, New York, 2001, ch.2, ISBN 0-684-86912-8)
  16. ^ Cline, Eric H. (2007), From Eden to Exile: Unravelling Mysteries of the Bible, National Geographic Society, ISBN 978-1426200847 p.74
  17. ^ David Rohl, "A Test of Time" (ISBN 0-09-941656-5) , chapter thirteen, especially pages 341 to 348
  18. ^ Mary Joan Winn Leith, "How a People Forms", review of "Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines and Early Israel" (2001), Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2006, pp.22-23
  19. ^ a b Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher (2001). The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86912-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ Kitchen, K.A., On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003), p206-7
  21. ^ Kitchen, K.A., On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003), p309-10
  22. ^ Teresa Watanabe, "Doubting the Story of Exodus", Los Angeles Times April 13, 2001
  23. ^ I Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, eds., From Nomadism to Monarchy (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994)
  24. ^ Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-2126-X.

Further reading

  • Encyclopedia Judaica. S.v. "Population". ISBN 0-685-36253-1
  • Yilgal Shiloh. "The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas and Population Density." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 239, (1980): 25-35. ISSN 0003-097X
  • 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
  • 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
  • Manfred Bietak. Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos: Recent Excavations, London: British Museum Pubs. Ltd, 1995. ISBN 0-7141-0968-1. Here, Bietak discusses Thutmose III era finds in the vicinity of the later city of pi-Ramesses.
  • Thomas E. Levy and Mohammed Sajjar. "Edom & Copper", Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR), July/August, 2006: 24-35.
  • Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence, edited by Frerichs, Lesko & Dever, Indianapolis: Eisenbrauns, 1997. ISBN 1-57506-025-6 See esp. Malamat's essay there.
  • Theophile Meek, Hebrew Origins, Gloucester, MA.: Peter Smith Pub. Inc., 1960. ISBN 0-8446-2572-8
  • John J. Bimson. Redating the Exodus. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1981. ISBN 0-907459-04-8
  • 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.
  • 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
  • Richard E. Friedman. Who Wrote the Bible?. HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. ISBN 0-06-063035-3. (an introduction for the layman to the view that there are in all probability multiple sources for the "Books of Moses")
  • Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0-684-86912-8
  • Amnon Ben-Tor. "Hazor - A City State Between The Major Powers." Scandinavian J. of the OT (SJOT), vol. 16, issue 2, 2002: 308. ISSN 0901-832
  • Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
  • John J. Bimson and David Livingston, "Redating the Exodus," Biblical Archaeology Review 13:05, Sep/Oct 1987.
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