Truth
Exodus: Christian Apologetic 2
Abstract
Two million Israelites did not cross the Sinai on their way out of Egypt, despite the biblical implication as to this number (Ex 12:37).Hershel Shanks, Editor, BAR
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 16 May 2002
Semites in Egypt
J Maxwell Miller and John H Hayes, note that “the authenticity of the Egyptian background of the narratives is thought to support the claim that the stories do reflect an historical presence of Israel in Egypt” sometime in the second millennium. As sensible historians, they do not see this confirming the biblical story. Names like Moses, Hophni, Phinehas, Merari, Pithom and Ramesses are authentic Egyptian names, but they too do not confirm the story. Pithom and Raamses were cities that existed for centuries in Egypt.
Egypt was a great culture through good times and bad for 3000 years BC. Mainly the times were reasonably good becasue Egypt had the regular inundations from the mighty Nile river that kept the crops growing even when no rains came. As a consequence, in any regional drought, the nearby people in Canaan would seek sustenance in Egypt, and the Egyptians usually gave it, by allowing the starving Semites to stay until the drought alleviated. Papyrus Anastasi VI records that an entire Edomite tribe gained permission to enter Egypt to avoid starvation. Not only that, but for long periods, Canaan was ruled from Egypt as a colony, so there was traffic in people between these countries. Hoffmeier wants to tell his Christian thumb-suckers that this shows that the bible is plausible and therefore true. It is plausible all right because it relates nothing that was not common knowledge when these romances were written.
J M Miller and Hayes point out that a knowledge of Egypt could not have been uncommon for a literate Canaanite to possess, given Egypt´s long time occupation of the region. The authors of Exodus might easily have been familiar with Egyptian conditions, and certainly would have been if the book had been written in Egypt. The earliest external knowledge we have of the Jewish scriptures is their translation into Greek for the library of Alexandria by the Ptolemies in the third century BC. This might have been when the exodus was elaborated from an earlier mention merely that Jews had been slaves of the Egyptians—meaning they had been enslaved because Canaan was an Egyptian colony for centuries.
In respect of Moses and the exodus, Kevin Miller says Hoffmeier agrees with his critics: such a momentous event would not have transpired without being recorded. But, he says:
I don’t know of any surviving papyrus documents from Egypt’s Delta. It’s too wet. And papyrus is where most of the records were kept. The inscriptions that we see on statues and temple façades tend to be propagandistic, what-we-want-you-to-know messages. And where papyrus records have survived, they tend to be from the desert areas. So we have very few of the day-to-day court records of 3,000 years of Egyptian history.
Well, he is the Egyptologist, but it sounds desperately like special pleading. Did the Egyptians not realise, even though they lived there, that the delta was wet and not a suitable place to keep papyrus records? The Pharaohs of Egypt were kings of upper and lower Egypt, except when the system broke down as it did on a few occasions and then there were multiple kings. The Eighteenth Dynasty, when, the biblicists tell us, the Israelites were building Pi-Ramses, was a powerful dynasty, the last really strong one in Egyptian history. Yet these kings did not have the gumption to take their papyrus records up the river where it was dryer so that they would keep. Despite them being utterly stupid, by some good fortune large numbers of papyri have survived, and Kitchen and Hoffmeier must be glad they did, but it was purely accidental, they claim.
No one need be an Egyptologist to consider the literary character of the exodus story. All you have to be is free of Christian and Jewish indoctrination, and even many Christians and Jews are free of it enough to make up their own minds in these cases. The ten plagues, a two million slaves running away into a desert, death dealing angels, pillars of fire, manna from heaven, the sea dividing, miracle upon miracle—all bellow out that the story is fabulous. It is a myth. None of this is plausible in the least, and yet the evidence for it is… “whatever seems plausible.” Christianity Today admits that direct evidence for the exodus is missing, but tries to convince us that all these wonders were real history by coming up with circumstantial evidence!
Hebrew
All of this provides the Exodus accounts with some degree of “plausibility” but it really offers no confirmation of it in the least. Apologists still like to maintain the discarded idea that the Hyksos were the Israelites, but mostly will not use it directly. Instead, they bring forward the evidence that there were people with Semitic names in Egypt in the second millennium, implying that all Semites are Jews and therefore these people were the Israelites.
Semites had a large part to play in the history of the eastern Nile Delta, referred to as Goshen in the Exodus traditions. John Bright, whose paraphrase, with additional commentary, of the bible has been read by devout Christians as if it were some independent confirmation of it, argues:
Semitic shepherds were frequently allowed to enter Egypt during times of famine, like the twelfth-century Shasu from Edom… and that Israel’s historical entry into Egypt might well have occurred in this manner.
Bright, in so arguing, also refers to Semitic loan-words in the Egyptian language as a further demonstration of the depth of Semitic influence in Egypt. In addition, he also refers to the Apiru in Egypt, to Egyptianized Canaanite deities, and to the use of Semitic slaves in the Ninteenth and Twentieth Dynasties.
For most of its pre-Roman history, southern Levant was an Egyptian colony and buffer against the Asiatics. The Amarna letters show that the “kings” of the Canaanite cities were considered to be local officials, called mayors by the Egyptians, and were abjectly fawning and submissive. These Canaanites were the Israelite slaves. They were slaves of the Egyptians but most of them were not slaves in Egypt, unless the colony of Palestine was considered itself to have been annexed into Egypt itself. That is possibly true and would make the Israelites truly Egyptian slaves. They were still, however, not slaves in the delta and had no need to escape because they were already at home!
In one of those miraculously surviving papyri, called Leiden Papyrus 348, orders are given to “distribute grain rations to the soldiers and to the Apiru who transport stones to the great pylon of Rameses.” K Miller compares it with Exodus 1:11, where the Hebrews “built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.” Biblicists “believe” the Apiru are identically the same as the biblical Hebrews, the Ibrim—Israelites, in other words, and therefore Jews. In cuneiform sources the word appears as “Habiru” or “Hapiru.” If the word “Apiru” does mean “Hebrew,” then Hebrews might have been among the Egyptian slaves who built Rameses’ capital in the thirteenth century BC, just as the bible says. K Miller thinks that all that is needed to settle the question is a firm link between Apiru and Hebrew or Ibrim.
Yet, the very name Hebrew opens another whole can of biblical worms, because the Hebrews are assumed to have been the Jews or Israelites when the bible itself distinguishes Israelites and Hebrews. The Jewish scriptures are written in a language called Hebrew which is otherwise western Semitic, a language spoken widely across the litoral of the Levant and not just by Jews or Israelites. These AW! pages take the Hebrews to be the various nations of the Persian province called Abarnahara, the “Abar” part of it being the same root as Ibrim meaning “beyond” or “across”—“eber.” The province was across the river Euphrates, and evidently all of the people there were called Hebrews—Beyonders! The situation is even more complicated because the people who became the “Beyonders” also called the people on the other side of the river “Beyonders” too! Then it might mean captured Assyrians, or even Indo-Europeans. More generally, in the Egyptian texts, Apiru means foreigners, social outsiders, and renegades.
The point of all this is that no one can satisfactorily identify Hebrews with Israelites, unless one of the lucky papyri preserved actually identify them directly. To show that Apiru meant “Beyonders” still does not explain who the “Beyonders” were. They finished up being identified with the Jews simply because it was the Jews who survived with their sacred history written in a language called Hebrew that they solely inherited. The Apiru, theorized as being the Hebrews, may have no direct connexion with the nation of Israel.
The Semitic loan-words entered into the Egyptian language long before any specific, likely time period for the exodus from the circumstances just mentioned, and from the earlier Asiatic invaders no doubt. The Middle Kingdom text, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, suggests that Semites were already part of Egyptian culture before the Hyksos rule. There is nothing to show that these Semitic references in second millenium Egypt were to a coherent group or ethnos of Semites rather than a lot of individuals like the large numbet of individual French people who work in the UK and the British who similarly work in France. They are not herded into a ghetto and treated as second class citizens or a nation of slaves.
In the Second Intermediate Period, Egypt was split into bits. The SIP lasted from 1786 to 1570 BC, and in this time of little more than 200 years there were almost as many kings. Many were ruling simultaneously so Egypt had broken up. Upper Egypt was separate for much of the time and Lower Egypt seemed to be split into at least two kingdoms ruled by the Asiatic princes.
Asiatics had been settling in Lower Egypt and eventually their numbers were great enough for them to control the region. These Asiatics seem to have come mainly from Canaan, and Peter A Clayton says their homeland was Phoenicia. Their rulers called themselves the Heka Khaswt or in Greek, the Hyksos, meaning Rulers of Foreign Lands. They were Egypt’s fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties dating from 1675 to 1552 BC. The apologists determine that these Hyksos were the Israelites and we can read:
Under these foreign rulers, the ascent of a non-Egyptian, for instance the patriarch known as Joseph, to power seems very plausible.
Indeed it does, but Joseph was a Semitic slave who rose to power as an administrator under an Egyptian king, not a foreign prince who took control because the Egyptian kings had become weak and Egypt disorganized. These significant difference are always ignored by dishonest shyster apologists.
Eventually the kings of Upper Egypt in league with the Nubians threw out the Hyksos. The Hyksos show that some Semites from Canaan went to Egypt, and that Egyptians forcibly expelled them—the plot of the biblical accounts of the exodus. Since Manetho the source of our basic knowledge of the Pharaohs of Egypt knew this, the authors of Exodus might well have done, since the likely time and place of its composition was Ptolemaic Egypt.
A monument known as the 400-Year Stele may have been the inspiration for Genesis 15:13 which foretells that the family of Abraham will be “strangers in a land not theirs and they shall be enslaved and oppressed 400 years.” Nahum Sarna notes that “the biblical author linked the 400th anniversary of Hyksos domination commemorated on the stele—that is, the 400 years between the rise of the Hyksos and the rule of Rameses II, who erected the stele—to the 400 year enslavement of the Israelites.”
Knowledge of the Hyksos might have given the authors of Exodus the basis of their plot. One can say that the authors of Exodus had an idea of some Egyptian history, and this is the tenuous link between the biblical exodus accounts and external history. By no means does it confirm that the Hyksos were the Israelites, but it does suggest that Ptolemaic Egypt was the place where these facts were known.
The Date of the Exodus
The biblical chronology of the exodus does little to support the historicity of the exodus as it often contradicts itself and seems to be largely symbolic in nature. The length of the Israelites’ stay in Egypt is listed as 400 years in Genesis 15:13, four generations in Genesis 15:16, and 430 years in Exodus 12:40-41. Josephus makes it 215 years, and a still later rabbinic source gives 210 years.
The dating of the exodus also has long been controversial. 1 Kings 6:1 gives a clear historical marker for the end of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt:
In the 480th year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord.
Biblicists agree that Solomon, the son and successor of David, and noted in the bible as the builder of Israel’s first temple, came to the throne in about 960 BC. If so, then the exodus would have occurred in about 1440 BC.
Biblical scholars are reluctant to say that this is the time when the exodus most likely occurred. Doubt is cast over this time period for three reasons. First of all, as Maxwell Miller states:
Forty and multiples of forty are in evidence throughout Genesis–2 Kings. There were forty years of wandering in the wilderness following the exodus, for example. The interval from the exodus to Solomon’s building of the Temple is recorded as 480 years (1 Kg 6:1). From that point to the return of the exiles from Babylon turns out to be another 480 years.
Nahum Sarna is also amongst those who say that the 480 years cited in 1 Kings should not be taken literally. The skeptical reader will notice that the bible can be wrong in specific details but cannot be wrong in the big picture. Sheler assures us Sarna is amongst the many “scholars,” who say the 480 years is merely a conventional “long time,” being twelve generations of 40 years each, 40 being the conventional time span of a biblical generation.
The chronology in the bible is schematic, like the chronologies of other ancient races, and is usually exaggerrated. The mention of the cities in Pithom and Rameses in the exodus account would place the exodus around the thirteenth century. The pharaohs in power in the fifteenth century, Thutmosis III (1479-1425 BC) and Amenhotep II (1425-1410 BC), were strong kings and were unlikely to have put up with a rebellion of slaves that easily.
So, biblical dating does not fit with other biblical texts or with what is known of ancient Egyptian history. But, never deterred, the Christian tells us “the flaw is far from fatal.” The used car dealers that God employs as His apologists can always come up with something. They say the 1 Kings chronology is a theological statement not history in the modern sense, and the exodus can be placed in the thirteenth century, in the days of Ramses II, where other biblical clues place it.
Here is the usual double standard. A minor adjustment to dating can be a theological statement, but the whole of the story of the exodus is not merely a theological statement. It must be true history despite the missing external evidence. A Minimalist does more conscientiously what these used car dealers do. What does not find corroboration elsewhere is discarded! That is the whole story of Moses and the flight from Egypt.
So, the thirteenth century BC is most commonly cited as the time of the exodus. The bible’s mention of the cities called Ramses, referred to as Pi-Rameses in Egyptian texts, and Pithom as the locations of Israelite labour most assuredly links Rameses II with the exodus. Rameses II moved the capital of Egypt to the North East Delta and named the new city after himself sometime during his reign from 1279 to 1213 BC. Rameses II was known for his ambitious building projects and for forcing large numbers of civilians to participate in this construction. The name Pithom also surfaces “in several Egyptian texts dated from the Ramesside to the Christian Period, and is mentioned in connection with the city of Tkw, biblical Succoth (Ex 12:37), a city which also existed in the Ramesside period.”
The apologetic scheme to account for the exodus notes that, with the death of Rameses II, Egypt was severely weakened, and with the collapse of the nineteenth Dynasty in 1200 BC, the “enslaved nomads” could escape. Note that these “enslaved nomads” were either “slaves” or “nomads” but could hardly have been both. if they were originally nomads then, after 400 years of slavery, they could have known nothing of the nomadic existence. Whether they were slaves or not, if they were living settled lives in the Nile Delta, then they were not nomads. Such nonsense is propagated by apologists to explain the fact that these supposed slaves were able successfully to live as nomads for 40 years.
Apologists also think the thirteenth century is the most likely time for the exodus because Israel is first mentioned on the Merneptah Stele of about 1200 BC. If Israel was mentioned in a monument at that time, the Israelites must have been already settled there, and so they must have left Egypt about 1250 BC, on the biblical evidence. This is when Rameses was at his height! The appearance of highland villages in Canaan is attributed to the Israelite settlers. In fact, settlers from Egypt would show a great deal of Egyptian culture in their archaeological remains, but the culture of the highland villages is uniform with preceding Canaanite culture, making it unlikely, if not impossible, that the Israelites were indeed immigrants and not native Canaanites.
The conclusion, from this largely negative evidence, that biblicists come to is that “the basic events of the exodus, miracles aside, are plausible and fit well into the thirteenth century BC.” More rationally, the exodus is a late romance based on the expulsion of the Hyksos but set at the time the Rameses 400 year stele was erected.
Exodus
Recent discoveries of military outposts on a road leading from Egypt into Canaan, built by Pharaoh Seti I and earlier kings in the thirteenth century BC, shed new light on why a northern route for the exodus would have meant war for the Israelites. Exodus 13:17 states:
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer, for God thought, If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.
If that is what God thought, why did he not think he would destroy the Philistines while preserving His people? He had no compunction in sending a murderous angel just at this time to kill the Egyptian first born. What suddenly made him so moral about the Philistines? Perhaps the practical answer is that it would leave a hostage to fortune. The authors knew that there were no records or even legends of the Philistines ever having to fight a mass of escaping slaves. What is more, the Egyptians would also have preserved records of major battles on the chief route out of Egypt to Asia, and indeed, the Egyptians would have had to get involved. The practical problems of writing a sacred history that is not demonstrably false dictates that the miracle has to extend to the people escaping by a deserted and depopulated route.
God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness.
Christianity Today continues with a plain denial of their earlier excuse that the papyri about Delta matters were all sodden and rotten. Anastasi III is a letter to guards at a “border crossing” between Egypt and the Sinai, which shows that in the thirteenth century the Egyptians had tight control of the border, allowing no one to pass without a permit. The letter describes two slaves who, K Miller writes “in a striking parallel to the Israelite escape” flee from the city of Rameses at night, are pursued by soldiers, but disappear into the Sinai wilderness. An official writes to the border guard:
When my letter reaches you, write to me about all that has happened. Who found their tracks? Which watch found their tracks? Write to me about all that has happened to them and how many people you send out after them.
So, the Egyptians were able to preserve a papyrus about delta matters despite the wet. It tells a tale about only two slaves escaping and treats it as an important matter, but two million is too unimportant to record. The concern of the official over an apparently minor matter proves that the Egyptians could hardly have regarded the somewhat more major incident with equanimity.
No level of dishonesty passes these people by. If defending the bible gets too tough, then they just change it. It is all right for defenders of the faith to change it to suit themselves, then. What they do not like is critics to change it. It is not consistency but it is typical. K Miller reports Hoffmeier as saying:
If it seems incredible to believe that 600,000 men plus women and children could have survived as a people in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years, we may be misinterpreting the number.
This is Hoffmeier again, supposedly not a biblical critic!
The Hebrew word eleph can be translated “thousand,” but it is also rendered in the Bible as “clans” and “military units.” When I look at the question as an Egyptologist, I know that there are thought to have been 20,000 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. If you have an army of 600,000, that’s not a big setback.
The head count was a lot less than Exodus 12:37 says. It was not 600 thousands but 600 military units. Hundreds? Tens? 36 in 6000 troops still does not seem a serious loss. Perhaps the military units were individual male slaves! 36 in 600 is getting serious, but it is looking even more miraculous that 600 slaves should have conquered 15 fortified cities and a whole country. Suddenly, the numbers in the bible becomes open to interpretation. Why then not interpret the whole story by treating it as allegory? That is the Minimalist line.
Merneptah
Christianity Today now turns to the Merneptah Stele, a seven-foot high, black granite inscribed stone, as evidence that Israel existed in 1208 BC. The Pharaoh proclaims:
Canaan is plundered with every hardship.
Ashkelon is taken, Gezer is captured,
Yano’am reduced to nothing.
Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more.
Biblicists consider this stone to be proof of the exodus. Israel was already in Palestine in 1208 BC. Yet, any proper reading of the inscription tells a story that the biblicists do not want to read. Israel is identified with Canaan. Ashkelon and Gezer are cities of the coastal plain, bracketed by the descriptions of the people as Canaan and Israel. Jerusalem is not mentioned! Merneptah thinks Israel is what the bible calls Philistia!
Biblical critics have not sought to deny what is inscribed on the stele, although K Miller says they “downplay its significance.” The name of Israel must have started sometime in history, and this stele shows it was at this point, if it is correctly dated. The Stele does say, though, that Israel is laid waste, which is the precise opposite of what the bible says. History does not find any Israel again for hundreds of years, suggesting that Merneptah was more correct than the bible was.
