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The Exodus
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The Exodus , is the term used for the escape, departure and emancipation of the enslaved Israelites freed from Ancient Egypt as described in the Hebrew Bible, mainly in the Book of Exodus.
The term is derived from the experience of the Israelites who are described as "??????? ??????????, ???????? ?????? ?????" ("the children of Israel went out with a high hand" Exodus 14:8) and "???????, ?????? ????????, ?????????, ????????" ("This day you go forth in the month Abib." Exodus 13:4) The full term ????? ????? 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.
In the Hebrew Bible story, the Israelites were led by Moses and Aaron.
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Encyclopedia
The Exodus , is the term used for the escape, departure and emancipation of the enslaved Israelites freed from Ancient Egypt as described in the Hebrew Bible, mainly in the Book of Exodus.
The term is derived from the experience of the Israelites who are described as "??????? ??????????, ???????? ?????? ?????" ("the children of Israel went out with a high hand" Exodus 14:8) and "???????, ?????? ????????, ?????????, ????????" ("This day you go forth in the month Abib." Exodus 13:4) The full term ????? ????? 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.
In the Hebrew Bible story, the Israelites were led by Moses and Aaron. The goal was to return to the Land of Israel where their forefathers had lived and which, according to Jewish lore, they had been promised by Yahweh. The Exodus forms the basis of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Biblical narrative
Torah/Pentateuch
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)
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. 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.
The Exodus in the Prophets
There are scattered references to the Exodus in the Prophets, e.g. Hosea 11:1 ("When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt called My son") and Amos 2:10 ("Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite"). These references give little detail, but at least establish the existence of the Exodus tradition in 8th century BCE.
Route
There are a number of possible routes the Exodus might have taken. Many of the listed places are not identifiable with their modern day counterparts, and the information present in Exodus and related texts present little information regarding geographical landmarks. The itinerary that the Israelites followed after their departure from Egypt is given in both narrative form and in itinerary form. A few of the cities at the start of the itinerary, such as Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified, and the journey's second half consists of more well known places. 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. Although the biblical Mt. Sinai is most frequently depicted as Jebel Musa in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, no definitive evidence of the Exodus has as yet been found there, and even Sinai's location is not widely agreed upon by scholars. Dozens, if not hundreds of routes of the Exodus have been proposed; and where many of the stops in the Itinerary are located depends in no small part on where one wishes to locate Sinai and/or Horeb.
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 westward 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.
Some of the more prominent routes for travelers 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 as well. The Bible specifically denies that the Israelites went the Way of the Philistines (Ex. 13:17), but even so, some scholars suggest a more northerly route along a land bridge adjoining the Mediterranean. As the warfare with the Philistines was a concern for the Israelites, however, and given the flat denial of the northern highway, an Exodus route that crosses this land bridge seems unlikely — especially considering the military situation that might present itself by being trapped between two hostile forces at either end. Beitak also describes a line of Egyptian forts along this King's Highway, known both from Egyptian texts and archaeology, which would most likely principally aid pursuers. Pi-hahiroth, (e.g. Ex. 14:2,7), is interpreted as the "mouth of the canal", but since Pi- may also be the Egyptian word for royal city, we might look for an Egyptian rather than a Semitic root for this name. Thus far, no satisfactory Egyptian root has been proposed, and so the Hebrew translation may be correct. It should be pointed out, however, that canals connecting to a number of lakes may meet this description, so we should not press its localization too far until other nearby parts of the routes are more secure. This leaves the Way of Shur and the Way to Seir as probable routes, the former having the advantage of heading toward Kadesh-Barnea. Finally, various southern routes, all incorporating very similar suggestions for site locations, are notable due to their popularity, and the association of Jebal Musa with Mt. Sinai, an identification only known to go back to the Third Century CE. There also would have been some doubling back involved just before leaving Egypt, in addition to merely following the main highways. Three possible crossing routes at the Bitter Lakes are shown, and the Gulf of Aqaba is another popular candidate, but this crossing is not shown for the sake of clarity.
On the map at the upper right, three of the important highways and the traditional southern route are shown.
- The Way of Shur: (blue line) This route has the advantage of leading to Kadesh-Barnea, a stop on the Itinerary which has probably, but not necessarily been identified. (A turn back toward Kadesh-Barnea is also indicated with this line, which is not part of the Way of Shur.)
- The Way to Seir: (green line) This could be regarded as an Exodus route after crossing e.g. at the Bitter Lakes, or as part of a scenario placing the crossing at the Gulf of Aqaba. A number of theories, with some support from , place Mt. Horeb / Mt. Sinai variously at Mount Bedr or Jebel al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia. However, note that is most comfortably read as having Mt. Hor and Sinai west of Ezion Geber.
- The southern route: (black line) This is the traditional route, which is based on the identification of Jebel Musa as Sinai in the third century AD (prompting the construction of St. Catherine's monastery at the time), and on the various suggestions for otherwise unknown stops on the Itinerary. Two lines lead eastward and northward, to show possible continuations to the conquest of the Transjordan. A summary of some of the many Exodus routes as proposed by various scholars can be found at:
Numbers involved in the Exodus
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; Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550.
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, equivalent to something between half and almost the entire Egyptian population of around 3-6 million. 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. 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.
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.
An alternative view is that the numbers were never meant to be taken literally, but instead conceal theological meanings which would have been obvious to an educated Israelite reader. Thus the number 6 and its multiples of 10 has the numerological value of destruction preceding a new beginning - just as Noah was in his 600th year when the Flood began and destroyed all life, to be followed by a new Creation, so the 600,000 of Exodus 12 are the generation who will die in the Wilderness before the Children of Israel enter into the Promised Land.
Dating the Exodus
The Biblical date: c. 1440 BCE
According to 1 Kings 6, the Exodus occurred in the 480th year before Solomon began to build the First Temple in the 4th year of his reign. Kings also lists the years for each king of Judah down to the destruction of the Temple, which has been reckoned by various sources as anywhere from 380 years (Tadmor and Thiele) to 410 years (Seder Olam Rabbah, the traditional Jewish chronology) to 430 years (the cumulative reign of the kings of Judah according to 1 and 2 Kings). The destruction of the Temple can be dated on non-Biblical evidence to 587/586 BCE, and a simple arithmetical calculation -- 586 + [duration of the Temple] + 480 -- places the fourth year of Solomon's reign somewhere between 1016 and 966 BCE, and the Exodus between 1496 and 1446 BCE.
The Bible-derived dates of 1496-1446 BCE bracket the reigns 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.
David Rohl's 'New Chronology' reduces the timeline of ancient Egypt by shortening the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt by almost 300 years, subsequently placing the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Djedneferre Dudimose (Dedumesu, Tutimaos, Tutimaios) to a reign from 1450 to 1446 BCE with the Exodus taking place in 1447 BCE.
"Late" Exodus: c. 1200 BCE
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 the 2-million-plus 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.
By 1957 Albright had shifted his date for the Conquest to c.1250 BCE, to fit with evidence of destruction at Beitel (Bethel) and other cities from around that period, and his prestige as the leading figure of the day in the field of Biblical archaeology led to the widespread acceptance of his revised "late" Exodus/Conquest around 1200 BCE. The 1200 BCE date marks the boundary between the archaeological periods of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age I periods, which Albright characterised by the appearance in the archaeological record of a certain type of collar-rimmed pottery: Albright, and subsequent archaeologists, identified this pottery with the arrival of the post-Exodus Israelites. 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,, 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..
Nevertheless, a "late" Exodus date has some limited support today. For example, Kenneth Kitchen strongly promotes a late date, and suggests about 1255-1215 BCE. 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 the form of the Sinai covenant was not yet in use, and at that time there would have been no Delta capital to march from.
(Sigmund Freud's 1939 book Moses and Monotheism provided an alternative argument for a late Exodus, linking Moses to the monotheistic religion of the "heretic Pharaoh" Akhenaten and implying an Exodus after Akhenaten's death, c. 1358 BCE, but the idea is not supported by mainstream Egyptologists.)
"Early" Exodus: before 1500 BCE
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.
Challenges to the historicity of the Exodus
Many archaeologists, 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. 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.
Biblical minimalists, such as Philip Davies, Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson, regard the Exodus as ahistorical. Hector Avalos, in The End of Biblical Studies, states that an Exodus, as related in the Bible, is an idea that most Biblical historians no longer support.
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.
See also
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?
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External links
- Revised 2005.
- : Me'am Loez on Beshallach IV: 50 Miracles, no. 7, says that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea in twelve paths, one for each of the tribes, and cites Ps. 136:13 which has it that the Red Sea was divided into parts during the Exodus.
- : The regarded eleventh century Talmud scholar called 'Rashi' made the comment that the Red Sea had been split "asunder in twelve pieces for the twelve tribes" to his commentary on the Psalms. Rashi's Commentary, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki or Rabbi Shlomo Yarchi, commentary on Ps. 136:13.
- (Jewish Encyclopedia)
- A recent refutation of Wood's attempt redate an early fall of Jericho to the traditional Exodus date.
- Israel Finkelstein's site on the excavation.
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