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The Exodus

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"Departure of the Israelites", by David Roberts, 1829
This article is about the events related in the Torah. For other uses, see Exodus (disambiguation).

The Exodus (Greek word έξοδος, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, Modern: Yetsi'at Mitzrayim, Tiberian: [jəsʕijaθ misʕɾajim], "the exit from Egypt") is the mythical 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.

With the exception of conservative scholars who hold to a Mosaic authorship of the Torah, modern scholars agree that the Exodus narrative myth is a composite account composed long after the events described.[1] Again with the exception of some conservative scholars who consider the narrative historical,[2] it is also generally agreed that the narrative was not conceived as history in the modern sense, but as a theology set against a historical background, illustrating how the God of Israel acted to save and strengthen his chosen people, the Children of Israel, and that it is therefore inappropriate to approach miraculous events such as the burning bush and the plagues of Egypt as if they were actual history.[3]

Narrative

The Book of Exodus tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to 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.

Etymology and cultural significance

Main article: Passover

The term is derived from Exodus 14:8 - "וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, יֹצְאִים בְּיָד רָמָה" ("the children of Israel went out with a high hand") and Exodus 13:4 - "הַיּוֹם, אַתֶּם יֹצְאִים, בְּחֹדֶשׁ, הָאָבִיב" ("This day you go forth in the month Abib"). The term יציאת מצרים was translated into Greek as "Exodus (Greek for 'departure') from Egypt".

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.[4] This portion of the narrative is the etymological basis of the festival's name, and the exodus from Egypt is the theme of the Jewish holiday of Passover; the term continues to be used in the Passover Hagadah.[5]

Route and date

There are many 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 a nation building mythology describing the relationship of Yarweh and his chosen people, the Israelites, and that it is therefore inappropriate to approach its story in terms of secular history or reality. The events described are miraculous and are thusly held to be above the scrutiny of scientific reasoning and natural law.

Route

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

The Torah lists the places where the Israelites rested. A few of the cities at the start of the itinerary, such as Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified as 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, or even the Gulf of Suez (SSE of Succoth) and the Gulf of Aqaba (S of Ezion-Geber). The biblical Mt. Sinai is frequently depicted as 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.

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.

Date

Main article: Pharaoh of the Exodus

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 in 1450 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC);[6] this hypothesis could be tested by searching for archaeological evidence of the invasion of Canaan and the destruction of its cities as described in the Book of Joshua.

By the mid-20th century it had become apparent that the archaeological record contradicted the biblical chronology. The mummy of Thutmoses III had already been discovered in 1881,[7] and Egyptian records 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, such as Jericho, 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.[8] The evidence which led to the abandonmnet of Albricht's theory include: the collar-rimmed jars have been recognised as an indigenous form originating in lowland Canaanite cities centuries earlier;[9] 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;[10][11] and the Merneptah Stele indicates that a people called "Israel" were already known in Canaan by the reign of Merneptah (1213-1203 BC),[12]

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

Critical evaluation: Exodus and the origins of Israel

Archaeology

Archaeologists such as Israel Finkelstein, Zahi Hawass,[18] 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 BC, recognized by most archaeologists as the earliest settlements of the Israelites.[19] 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. 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.[20]

Anachronisms

Some elements of the Exodus narrative point to an origin in the mid to late 1st millennium BC: Pharaoh's fear that the Israelites might ally themselves with foreign invaders, for example, makes no sense 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.[21] Other anachronisms point to a period in the mid-1st millennium: Ezion-Geber, for example (one of the Stations of the Exodus, dates to a period between the 8th and 6th centuries BC with possible further occupation into the 4th century BC,[22] while the names of those places on the Exodus route which can be identified - Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Rameses/Piramesse - also point to the geography of the 1st millennium rather than the 2nd.[23]

Numbers and logistics

Exodus 12:37 refers to 600,000 adult Israelite men leaving Egypt with Moses, plus an unspecified but apparently large "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites;[24] Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550.[25] The 600,000 "fighting men" plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude," would have numbered some two million,[26] equivalent to about half the entire Egyptian population of around 1.5-5 million;[27] marching ten abreast, and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 150 miles long[28] and required 1,500 tons of food, 4,000 tons of wood as fuel and 11,000,000 gallons of water each day.[29] 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 of animal, 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.[10] (In order to resolve this problem Hebrew University professor Abraham Malamat has proposed that the word eleph, "thousand," should be read as referring to military units, which is a valid alternative meaning; the number of Hebrew fighting men would therefore lie between 5,000 and 6,000, giving a total Hebrew population of less than 20,000.)[30]

Extra-Biblical accounts

The earliest non-biblical witness to the Exodus story is the Egyptian historian Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt for the Greek pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BCE). Manetho's Aegyptiaca is lost, but the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus has preserved two passages which parallel the biblical story of the Exodus. In Book I:75-90 of Against Apion, Josephus set out to prove that the Jews were the most ancient of all peoples, and the originators of history, law, and literature - these being claims which Josephus had made in a previous work, his "Antiquities of the Jews", and which Greek critics had doubted. In order to refute his critics Josephus cites Manetho, who, he says, described the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their dominion over and expulsion from Egypt, and, according to Josephus's report of Manetho, their subsequent foundation of the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Josephus identifies the Hyksos with the Jews, and draws the conclusion that Manetho thus confirms their non-Egyptian origins and the antiquity of the Exodus story.[31]

At the end of Book I (Bk.I:227-250) Josephus quotes a second story from Manetho. In contrast to the first, which Josephus says Manetho derived from priestly records, the second is said to be from "stories and rumours," and Joseph claims to quote Manetho's own words. It 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. The pharaoh is driven out and the polluted Egyptians of Osarseph wreak havoc, until eventually driven out to the borders of Syria by the returning pharaoh and his son. There Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses.[32]

The Aegyptiaca was altered by pro- and anti-Jewish editors in the centuries after it was written, and there is no means of knowing whether the text available to Josephus was actually that of Manetho.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Carol A. Redmount, Bitter Lives: Israel In And Out of Egypt, in "The Oxford History of the Biblical World" (ed. Michael D. Coogan, OUP, 1998), pp.61 ff.
  2. ^ Kitchen, Kenneth A (2003) "On the Reliability of the Old Testament", Eerdmans, pp. 309–10. ISBN 978-0802849601.
  3. ^ Carol A. Redmount, Bitter Lives: Israel In And Out of Egypt, in "The Oxford History of the Biblical World" (ed. Michael D. Coogan, OUP, 1998), p.64 (see full argument on pp. 63-64)
  4. ^ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2012&version=NIV Exodus 12:8]
  5. ^ 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)
  6. ^ Howard, David M. Jr. and Michael A. Grisanti (editors) (2003). "The Date of the Exodus (by William H. Shea)". Giving the Sense: Understanding and Using the Old Testament Historical Texts. Kregel Publications. ISBN 9781844740161. {{cite book}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  7. ^ "Tuthmosis", Egyptology Online
  8. ^ Kitchen, Kenneth A (2003). On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Eerdmans. pp. 309–10. ISBN 978-0802849601.
  9. ^ 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
  10. ^ a b Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Free Press. ISBN 978-0684869131.
  11. ^ Dever, William G (2003). Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?. Eerdmans. pp. 44–46. ISBN 0802844162.
  12. ^ Currie, Robert and Hyslop, Stephen G. The Letter and the Scroll: What Archaeology Tells Us About the Bible. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2009.
  13. ^ "Debunking "The Exodus Decoded"". September 20, 2006. Retrieved 8 August 2009.
  14. ^ "The Exodus Decoded: An Extended Review". Tuesday 19 Dec 2006. Retrieved 8 August 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Rohl, David (1995). "Chapter 13". A Test of Time. Arrow. pp. 341–8. ISBN 0099416565.
  16. ^ Bennett, Chris. "Temporal Fugues", Journal of Ancient and Medieval Studies XIII (1996). Available at [1]
  17. ^ Sivertsen, Barbara J (2009). The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of the Exodus. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691137704.
  18. ^ Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, New York Times, April 3, 2007
  19. ^ Finkelstein, Israel and Nadav Naaman, eds. (1994). From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel. Israel Exploration Society. ISBN 1880317206. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ 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.
  21. ^ Alberto Soggin, "An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah", pp. 128-9
  22. ^ Pratico, Gary D. "Nelson Glueck's 1938-1940 Excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A Reappraisal" Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 259 (Summer, 1985), pp.1-32
  23. ^ [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=YzQe_4Waz34C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Land+That+I+Will+Show+You:+Essays+in+History+and+Archaeology+of+the+Ancient+Near+East&source=bl&ots=Jjp2Y0h3Sz&sig=jauEX7cJJ8_AIVgGe9KfjDjYQzg&hl=en&ei=IQbxS-OzIpCTkAXp59HWBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false John Van Seters, "The Geography of the Exodus", in ,pp.255ff.
  24. ^ Exodus 12
  25. ^ Numbers 1
  26. ^ Mattis Kantor ("The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia" Jason Aronson Inc., 1989, 1992) places the estimate at 2 million "[i]n normal demographic extensions...."
  27. ^ www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/#rem2, see fn.2
  28. ^ Cline, Eric H. (2007), From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible, National Geographic Society, ISBN 978-1426200847 p.74
  29. ^ http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/39_exodus.html ancient-hebrew.org]
  30. ^ Abraham Malamat, "Aspects of Tribal Societies in Mari and Israel", inn XVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale: La Civilisation de Mari, Les Congrès et Colloques de l’Université de Liège, 1967, p.135 - referenced at Associates for Biblical Research
  31. ^ Arthur J. Droge, Josephus Between Greeks and Barbarians, in L.H. Feldman and J.R. Levison, "Josephus' Contra Apion" (Brill, 1996), pp.121-2
  32. ^ Arthur J. Droge, Josephus Between Greeks and Barbarians, in L.H. Feldman and J.R. Levison, "Josephus' Contra Apion" (Brill, 1996), pp.134-5

Further reading

  • 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?
  • Encyclopedia 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
  • Hoffmeier, James K. Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0-684-86912-8
  • 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 and David Livingston, "Redating the Exodus," Biblical Archaeology Review 13:05, Sep/Oct 1987.
  • John J. Bimson. Redating the Exodus. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1981. ISBN 0-907459-04-8
  • 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.
  • 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
  • Noll, K. L. Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. ISBN 1-84127-318-X. Case study of the biblical exodus can be found here.
  • 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")
  • Sivertsen, Barbara J. The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of the Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-691-13770-4
  • Theophile Meek, Hebrew Origins, Gloucester, MA.: Peter Smith Pub. Inc., 1960. ISBN 0-8446-2572-8
  • Thomas E. Levy and Mohammed Sajjar. "Edom & Copper", Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR), July/August, 2006: 24-35.
  • 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
  • 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.
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