Bible: Exodus

Context

Viewed as an historical document, rather than simply as a literary narrative, the book of Exodus raises a number of difficult questions, some of which cannot be satisfactorily answered. To begin with, biblical historians are uncertain as to just exactly which pharaoh is the “Pharaoh of the Exodus.” One possible pharaoh, Ramses II (r. 1279–1213), seems a suitable candidate for that honor, if only because his name is attached to one of two store cities the Israelite slaves are forced to build for their Egyptian masters: “Pithom and Rameses” (Ex. 1:11). Moreover, since the only reference to a people called “Israel” in the whole of ancient Egyptian literature can be found on a victory stele carved for the pharaoh Merneptah (r. 1213–1203), it would seem reasonable to suppose that the pharaoh who drove the Israelites out years before Merneptah came to the throne was Ramses II.

What makes this attempt at dating the Exodus so problematic is both the absence of any archeological evidence that a very large group of people crossed the Sinai in the course of the thirteenth century BCE and uncertainty about the exact size of the Israelite band crossing this territory on foot. With respect to the latter question, the biblical text is quite precise: the number of men making the crossing is given as six hundred thousand, aside from children and “other people” (Ex. 12: 37–38). Allowing, then, for women and children—not to mention an additional number of persons of possibly mixed ancestry—the total number one arrives at is well over two million people, plus a multitude of flocks and herds. Even a modern army, with all of its vastly superior logistical resources, would have a very difficult time feeding and transporting itself over such an inhospitable terrain. It is not surprising, then, that most modern historians have come to the conclusion that the story of the Israelites’ passage from Egypt is highly improbable or highly exaggerated, if not simply impossible. And since the Merneptah stele refers to the Israelites in the geographical setting of biblical “Canaan” (roughly, modern-day Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories) rather than the Sinai, there would seem to be even less reason to assume that any significant number of Israelites ever passed through the Sinai on their way to their “promised land.”

Nevertheless, a possible historical connection between the Israelites and Egyptian history and culture can be demonstrated, beyond the single reference to the Merneptah stele. For one thing, the names of Moses, Aaron, and Phinehas (the grandson of Aaron) are demonstrably of Egyptian origin, suggesting that an account of Moses’ presence at Pharaoh’s court is not entirely implausible. For another, the reference to a “Sea of Reeds”—a more literal rendering of the Hebrew phrase Yam Suf—through which the Israelites pass (Ex. 14: 21–29) could conceivably be an allusion to a marshy region north of the Gulf of Suez, where a crossing on foot at certain times of the year is feasible. While there are other biblical references to the Yam Suf apart from the Exodus story that clearly reference the Red Sea (for example, 1 Kings 9:26), the seemingly miraculous events recorded in Exodus 14 cannot have occurred as a natural phenomenon outside the Nile delta region, since even the “parting” of the waters of the Red Sea would have left a canyon as deep as the Grand Canyon for the Israelites to cross. Finally, there is an abundance of evidence pointing to the practice of enforced labor in Egypt during the years in which the Israelites are presumed to have resided there, and while Egyptian records do not identify the Israelites as “slaves,” their status as a captive or foreign population would have made their enforced labor on various construction projects quite likely.