Do Exodus and the Patriarchs Have Any Historical Basis?

I was watching a Nova documentary on archaeology and the Old Testament, that supported some parts of the Old Testament but challenged others. In particular, the predominant view about the origins of the Israelites, according to the experts interviewed, seems to be that they mostly emerged from the local Canaanites rather than from migration from Egypt to claim the land promised to Abraham by Yahweh. But that belief in Yahweh somehow came to them from outside Canaan. And that evidence outside the Bible of a large scale migration of Hebrew slaves from Egypt led by Moses is weak or non-existent. Does anybody have more information on this?

 

There is a big world outside the bible.

 

OK, and your point is.....

 

Does anyone have more information on this?

 

Egypt never documented defeats ..

"We just got our asses kicked by a bunch of slaves".

Dont sound like a popular hieroglyph..

Hebrews escaped : Egypt be like ,, what Hebrews, there was never any Hebrews here..

The other side the tale. Hebrews be like,,, The sea opened up and they all drown ect

Egypt be like :Who drown, sorry youre mistaken, none of our troops were out that days..

Kinda like modern media times..

 

Those damn modern media times

 

Yup. History is written by the victors, who rarely recorded any defeats.
Just one more example of the "intrinsic integrity" that is prevalent in the Bible.

 

very Good

 

Egyptian troops didnt catch up with them.. Then the tide came in. They were never drown as the Hebrews claimed. There wouldnt be any evidence if they turned around and went home. Searching to sunken armaments, weapons where they were said to drown is futile ..

Heck, Im not even a Hebrew fan.
Fricker fracker fire crack sis boom bah Egypt Egypt Ra Ra Ra (football).. but Im going have to go with my faith on this one..

 

well, Ive been living 43yrs & there is very little evidence to prove I even exist in reality..

 

And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods...

 

Not only is there no evidence of such a huge migration--it would be a miracle on a par with the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea! But there are alternative explanations that are in keeping with a naturalistic explanation: (1) the likelihood that the figures were exaggerated from centuries of retelling around the campfires; (2) the possibility that the numbers are symbolic, based on numerology; and/or (3) the possibility that the English translation of "elph" to mean "thousand" is mistaken. I think all of these are plausible. Hyperbole is common in the retelling of tales involving national heroes and exploits. Numerology is likely to have played a part. The Israelites were wandering in the desert for forty years. Forty is a number that is repeatedly encountered in the Bible: the rain for forty days & nights in the Noah story, 40 years of Philistine oppression, 40 years each for the reigns of Kings Saul, David and Solomon, 40 days before Jesus' Ascension, etc. The number 6 is the day on which Adam and Eve were supposedly created in Genesis, and generally stands for humanity. The number 600 is used a couple of dozen times in the Bible--possibly because in Chaldean astronomy 600 ('the divine number) marks the end of a cycle where lunar months correspond with solar years. Notably, Pharoah's chariots pursuing the Israelites numbered 600. As for the 600 thousand figure, the term "elph", which was translated "thousand", can also mean clan, family, or tent. The 600 can describe heads of households. Allowing for a wife and several children each, this would give a figure closer to4,00-6,000 descendants of Yaacov plus a smaller number of maybe 1,000 non-Israelites whom the Bible indicates joined the exodus. A group that size might plausibly have been intimidated by a pursuing army of 600 chariots. But 600,000 makes a better story.

 

Exodus wasn't written as history, in the sense we use the term today. It was written at different stages of history by different groups of scribes with different agendas: to provide a unifying myth and mission statement for the nation of Israel; to rally sentiment against Egypt in the seventh century BCE; to console an exiled nation during the Babylonian captivity; and to celebrate liberation and renewal after the return from Babylon by comparing it to an analogous experience in the past. In that sense, it can be regarded as historical fiction, myth or legend. As metaphor, it's been, and continues to be, powerful to those who have experienced bondage of one kind or another and see the promise of deliverance. And like other myths, there may be kernels of historical fact underlying the legend. There seems to have been a Troy, albeit without Helen and Achilles; there seems to have been a King Arthur, although probably not a round table and knights involved in miraculous exploits. There are tantalizing tidbits of fact in the Exodus story that keep scholars employed in the continuing quest for a factual basis to the legend. Here are a few:

(1) There were Hebrews interacting with Egypt and the Caananites during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. They were called Haibiru by the Akaddians and Apiru by the Egyptians--a term that designated more a loose collection of nomadic or semi-nomadic invaders,outlaws and mercenaries, including Semites and non-Semites, than an ethnic group. Independent evidence of them can be found in the Amarna letters from fourteenth century Caananite vassal cities to their Egyptian protectors to asking for help against Apiru raiders. The Apiru took the cities of Meggido and Sechem. Stellae at Memphis and Karnak record that 3600 Apiru were taken prisoner by Amenhotep II in a campaign in Caanan around 1420 BCE. Ramses III bequeathed Apiru serfs to Egyptian temples, and Ramses IV sent 800 Apiru to work in the quarries. Ancient Semitic graffiti in an Egyptian mine reads "El, save me from this mine". (El was the pre-Exodus Caananite designation for God.)

(2) Manetho, a third century BCE Egyptian historian, tells an Egyptian version of Exodus, equating the Hebrews with the hated Hyksos, whom he blames for ruining his country. The Pharaoh Amenophis (Greek for Amenhoptep) overthrew the Hyksos and put 80,000 of them to wok in the quarries. But a renegade priest of Osiris named Osareph (probably a composite of Osiris and Joseph) brought them back and led a ragtag band of Hyksos, "lepers", and other undesirables in an uprising against Pharaoh Amenophis. Osareph told his people to reject the gods of Egypt. Later he changed his name to Moses. Pharoah regained control and drove them out of Egypt. They settled in Caanan. The reliability of this account is certainly questionable. Manetho got some of his facts wrong: e.g., he says Hyksos meant "Shepherd Kings" when it actually meant "foreign rulers". But the Hyksos occupation of Egypt certainly happened during the Second Intermediate Period of Egyptian history (1640-1550 BCE).

The Hyksos don't seem to be the same as Hebrews (they were a heterogeneous grouping and competing theories have linked them to Akkadians, Hurrians, Amorites, Amalekites, etc.) but many of them were Western Semites and some of their kings had Caananite names, and to Egyptians all Western Semites in their country may have looked alike. A signet ring found at Avaris, the Hyksos capital, bears the name Yakub (Jacob). Interestingly, in 2006 the History Channel aired a documentary The Exodus Decoded put together by Simcha Jacobovici (the "Naked Archaeologist" who is mainly a film producer) that pursues the Hykso=Hebrews theory at length. I think Jacobovici is a sensationalist given to leaps of over-generalization, but the theory may deserve further looking into.

(3) Other possible evidence from the Egyptian side are records of events suggesting biblical plagues. The Ahmose stele (aka, the Tempest stele) unearthed at Karnak tells of a great storm and darkness of truly biblical proportions during the reign of Ahmose I. Two things are noteworthy: Ahmose I was the pharaoh who drove out the Hyksos; and the stele speaks of the one God who caused this: "A thick darkness without the least light spread itself over the Egyptians". Darkness is one of the plagues mentioned in the Bible. The God referred to may be Horus, the sky god, but the name isn't given. The date for this is around 1550 BCE. Then there is the Ipuwer papyrus (of unknown date, though believed to be 13th century) describing a period of turmoil in which servants abandoned their subordinate status. One striking passage says "the river is blood and one drinks from it. "Presumably, this is not to be taken literally and refers to red dirt in flood waters, but the similarity to biblical passage where Moses turns the water to blood is uncanny.

It's difficult to fit these pieces together into a coherent story, but they may have influenced the memory of the Hebrew scribes who wrote the Bible.

 

i don't know anything about patriarchs, but i find it not unreasonable, that monotheists sought to and succeeded in leaving egypt, while the getting was good, when its polythiest beuracracy, on which its economy was based, resumed power.

i rather suspect, what "parted the red sea" were the boatmen who provided transport on it, who's sympathies may have secretly sided with the monotheists.

 

One of the problems historians have in evaluating these theories is in determining when, if at all, these events occured. Your theory that the people Moses led out of Egypt were monotheists fleeing religious persecution fits best with the view that it occurred in the aftermath of Pharaoh Akhnaton's reign. Akhnaton had tried to establish the worship of the sun god Aten as the only god. After his death, his successors restored polytheism and tried to eradicate all traces of Aten worship. In his book Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud developed the thesis that Moses was actually an Egyptian priest of Aten who allied himself with the Jews and led them out of Egypt. Freeman (Who Wrote the Bible) reports that Mosesand some of his inner circle had Egyptian names, which would support this thesis. Freud also notes the similarity between Aten and Adonai (Lord), the usual Jewish term for addressing Yahweh. This would probably mean that Horemheb (1306-1292 BCE) was the Pharaoh who pursued the Israelites, and it would be just like him.
If Exodus began at the end of his reign, and it really did take them 40 years to get into Canaan, that would get the Habiru to the Promised Land around 1252 BCE. The first documented record of Israel as a nation, the Merneptah stele, dates to around 1207 BCE, so this is possible. It would be a little early in terms of Biblical chronology. The Book of Kings indicates a date around 1440 BCE for the beginning of Exodus, but these are estimates based on other biblical events--480 years before the start of construction of Solomon's Temple, or roughly 1440 BCE. If that's right we'd have to look for a different Pharaoh (Thutmose III?) Most scholars think that the time period mentioned in in Kings is largely symbolic, representing life spans of 12 generations of 40 years each. Most historians think a thirteenth century date is more plausible, since dozens of settlements linked with the early Israelites sprung up in the hill country of Canaan in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Ramses II.

I might mention that Freud's theory is highly speculative and probably no reputable historian accepts it today. The band leaving Egypt might have been religious dissidents, but more likely included Haibru mercenaries who were restive over being subjected to corvee labor requirements (not literal slavery). More popular candidates for the Pharaoh who pursued Moses are Ramses II (1279-1213) and Thutmose III (1478-1425 BCE), both among the most powerful rulers in Egyptian history. For that reason, I actually think Horemheb makes more sense, since Egypt was still in a state of turmoil during his reign, border patrols would be weak, and he had his hands full, making it plausible that the Haibiru could escape. The mummies of Thutmose III, Ramses II and Horemheb have all been recovered (somewhat at variance with the Exodus story that Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea).

As for those boatmen transporting the Israelites across the red sea, it must have taken them awhile to transport over 600,000 people (or even a more probable 6,000 people). I think it's more plausible to accept the version of bible scholars who say that it wasn't the Red Sea, but the "Sea of Reeds" that the Israelites crossed--a marsh in which Pharaoh's pursing army got stuck in the mud or quicksand. Moses may have become familiar with the route during his years of exile.

The leading skeptics among biblical archaeologists, Finkelstein and Silberman, think that Exodus does contain elements of historical truth. They think that Exodus began as an oral tradition incorporating a variety of actual events, like the Hyksos, the pharonic construction projects, etc., and took written form in the seventh century when rivalry between Egypt and Israel had become intense and the Exodus story served to galvanize public morale and anti-Egyptian sentiment. The story was re-worked again during the Babylonian captivity, when Israel was once again in bondage, with greater emphasis on miraculous instead of naturalistic explanations of things like the parting of the sea.

Anyhow, granting appropriate license for exaggeration as the tale was retold around the campfires, maybe a few thousand Haibiru made it out of Israel and got to Canaan, after getting lost in the desert for awhile, and they united with those who were already there and forged the nation of Israel. Maybe.