Did the Exodus Really Happen?

SHANKS, HERSHEL

Did the Exodus Really Happen? HERSHEL SHANKS PASSOVER, RABBI DAVID WOLPE of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, delivered a sermon that made him famous. According to the...

...And so it was told from generation to generation...
...And it is true...
...If you read the Bible carefully you will see that the Biblical author recognized this (the 12 tribes even included fishermen on the Mediterranean coast...
...I suppose this conclusion is also supportable by archaeology: Such a large number of people in the desert for 40 years would surely have left some archaeological remains and none have been found...
...For example, at Kadesh Barnea, where, according to the Bible, the Israelites spent 38 of their 40 years of wandering, archaeologists have been unable to discover anything there relating to the Exodus period...
...Then he went on to state (correctly), that nevertheless it didn't say Israelites were in Egypt (as if this were the point he was making...
...The second kind of factual assertion in the Biblical account of the Exodus is the details—the number of people, the places they stopped, the amount of time they spent at each stop...
...He knows his conclusions will be criticized...
...That's what I was saying, according to all the evidence, didn't happen...
...He admits there is possibility that he may be wrong...
...In his fluster, he incorrectly referred to the 7 1/2-foot black granite monolith as a "seal...
...It is not demonstrated by direct evidence, however...
...there, archaeologists have found the city that the Bible says Israelite slaves built...
...This apdy illustrates Rabbi Wolpe's confusion...
...As to the 600,000 men, he thinks if this detail is an exaggeration, the whole story may have to be thrown out...
...In Jerusalem, they build with stone...
...While there is no direct physical evidence of Israel in Egypt, the story is certainly plausible...
...Or maybe even the Biblical writer never thought it actually happened, but was writing to make a theological point...
...Rabbi Wolpe's basic error lies in a failure to distinguish these different kinds of factual assertions, and of, in fact, appearing to conflate them...
...He does not discuss whether it is true in the big picture— that Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, and that they escaped and went to Canaan where they established their own country—"die Grossen Ziige, the grand sweep of matters," in Goethe's phrase...
...But my doubt is not based on my knowledge of the archaeological evidence...
...According to the Biblical text, the Israelites were forced to build the store cities of Pithom and Ra'amses with mud bricks mixed with straw (at one point they even had to collect their own straw—Exodus 5:7...
...They would be free to argue that ancient Israel never existed because there is no direct evidence of Israel's existence at such an early date...
...Rabbi Wolpe responded: "What Shanks is saying— and, by the way, he and I don't disagree...
...It is based on my attitude toward miracles generally...
...Rabbi Wolpe and I apparendy do agree on this...
...With respect to miracles like the plagues and spurting of the sea, he seems to indicate that archaeological evidence refutes this...
...Moreover, archaeologists have identified a city named Pi- Ra'amses (the House of Ra'amses), rhe great delta residence of the pharaohs of the 19th and 20th Egyptian dynasties...
...Rabbi Wolpe's first error is in speaking imprecisely— he seemed to imply that the miracles (including the parting of the sea) had been effectively disproven by archeological evidence...
...At first, the rabbi denied, that it referred to Israel, then corrected himself...
...In the continuing discussion of the question- and-answer session, I was then brought into the conversation by a questioner who referred to articles I had written in Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review...
...Again Rabbi Wolpe: "The border at the time of Ramesses was very closely controlled and there are records from the various border sites...
...My friend Avraham Malamat, a distinguished senior Biblical historian at Hebrew University, refers to these kinds of fact, adopting a phrase from Goethe, as "die Grossen Ziige, the grand sweep of matters...
...He preserves as much wiggle room as he can...
...A prominent Austrian archaeologist has identified a house excavated in Egypt as having the architecture, known as a "fourroom house," typical of Israelite houses...
...According to the newspapers, on Passover morning he told his congregation that the Exodus never happened...
...But for this accidentally found stele, the Biblical bashers would have a field day...
...What if it's just a story...
...An Egyptian text recounts how slaves escaped from the eastern frontier and a posse was sent to re-capture them...
...Indeed, except for the Merneptah Stele, there is no direct evidence of Israel's existence for another 450 years or so...
...Most Jews are more skeptical...
...That, essentially, was what happened in the case of Israel...
...I prefer to explain it this way: In my home, Thanksgiving is a very big holiday...
...Yet one omission makes me wonder whether Rabbi Wolpe wants to stack the deck: He omits from his sermon all reference to the famous Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription that all agree dates from the late 13 th century B.C.E...
...We reach this conclusion because, in a historical context, the story is quite plausible...
...Add to this a certain common-sense consideration: What society would make up a history of itself as slaves, if it weren't true...
...as usual, his words seem to convey a denigration of the text as a historical matter: "Israel was in part or in whole an indigenous tribe in the land of Canaan...
...Whether the rabbi was right or wrong—and he was, I believe, wrong—his sermon nevertheless serves a useful purpose: It encourages a consideration of history and the Bible...
...The Biblical account of the Exodus includes three different kinds of factual assertions: 1. Miracles like the ten plagues and the splitting of the sea...
...He is a courageous man to take up the question...
...While it is true that Rabbi Wolpe recites some of what he calls this "counter-evidence," he never seriously considers in his sermon whether the story has a historical core and, if so, what it is...
...The Bible tells us that Canaan did indeed experience famines over the centuries and its inhabitants sometimes went to Egypt in search of food...
...This is hard to imagine...
...The bottom line seems to be that, contrary to what the newspapers said and contrary to what seems to be fairly inferred from his sermon, Rabbi Wolpe does concede that Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and does believe that they escaped into the wilderness, later to establish themselves in Canaan...
...I said 'the Exodus as depicted in the Bible.'" Why didn't Rabbi Wolpe say all this in so many words in his original sermon...
...Not so...
...Yet there is no kind of factual evidence that the archaeologist could dig up that has any relevance to whether this happened...
...The New York Jewish Week reported that Wolpe suggested "that there never was a Jewish Exodus from Egypt...
...Anyway, he said, the stele was "much disputed" .(not really, apart from the extreme "Biblical minimalists," who claim that the Israel in the stele is not the same as the Israel of the Bible...
...shortly after the Exodus) and all experts agree mentions Israel as a people in Canaan at this time...
...He knows the scholarship...
...Miracles, by definition, are divine intrusions into the natural order...
...You see why I say the rabbi is confused, or at least confusing...
...We also agree that there are uncertainties as to precisely what happened historically and also that there are some problems in fitting the text into the archaeological picture...
...the Israelites would have been considered Asiatic slaves...
...Rabbi Wolpe (interrupting): "No, I didn't even question it...
...From Egyptian records, we know that there were Asiatic slaves in Egypt...
...Even with the Merneptah Stele some socalled "Biblical minimalists" argue that ancient Israel never existed...
...Therefore, neither the historian nor the archaeologist has anything whatsoever to say about them...
...The book of Judges, on the other hand, appears to give a different, much more accurate picture...
...yet it was light in all the Israelite houses (Exodus 10:22-23...
...He then immediately gives the archaeological evidence for his conclusion: "Inscriptions from ancient Egypt make no mention of Hebrew slaves although they make mention of other lands and countries...
...That's not exacdy how he put it, however...
...No wonder people understood him as simply denying the Exodus outright...
...Most accreted later in Canaan...
...Probably only a comparatively few Israelites came from Egypt...
...He goes on, "The truth is that virtually every.modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, ifit happened at alf (my italics...
...I didn't deny there were Israelites in Egypt...
...He is also the ever-careful debater...
...And so today it is my story...
...Here the rabbi, I believe, is right...
...Knowing what we do about the terrain and numbers of people sustainable in such an environment, this figure seems inherently unbelievable...
...Then he said that it was the one exception to the fact that no Egyptian text mentioned Israel...
...This is the rabbi's critical error, because it is highly likely that in that respect the story is historically true...
...Modern scholarship does hold that the Bible is a book written by human beings (whether or not under divine inspiration) to impart a theological message—and that it exaggerates and fabricates toward this purpose...
...Responding to a questioner, Rabbi Wolpe stated: "I didn't deny the Exodus as ever having occurred...
...The Israelites, according to the Bible, settle in the area known as Goshen in the eastern Nile delta, just where anouher Egyptian text tells us Asiatics roamed in search of food, presumably during a time of famine in their homeland...
...they hardly came from Egypt...
...They found only a settlement from a later period...
...In short, Rabbi Wolpe gives the impression, to say the least, that it's all a nice story, but made up...
...Nor could the historian qua historian opine on whether this happened...
...I will say this for him: He has done his homework...
...Some Orthodox Jews believe it happened just as the Bible says...
...But none, so far as we are aware, has ever suggested that its origins were as slaves...
...But my ancestors came from Kiev at the turn of the century, not with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower...
...Take the plague of darkness, which lasted three days and was so intense that people could not see one another...
...But not for God...
...Yet the Pilgrims' story is my story...
...Rabbi Wolpe, in his sermon, uses as an example almost exclusively the number of Israelites on the Exodus—2 or 3 million including women and children...
...yet for Egypt the writer properly designates mud brick with straw...
...I myself do not believe it happened, although the tradition may have grown up because, building on a kernel of truth, someone thought it happened...
...Questioner: "You questioned it...
...3. The broad sweep like the slavery in Egypt, and the slaves' escape and ultimate entry into the Promised Land...
...The last and historically most important kind of factual assertion in the Exodus account is the third kind—whether Israelites sojourned in Egypt at all and were enslaved there and finally escaped into the desert and went to Canaan where they established their own country...
...Another problem: The book of Joshua claims Israelites conquered many cities, and according to the archaeological evidence, that is not true...
...He's saying that there is a school, which I think is entirely plausible, that says there were Israelites in Egypt and some of them left...
...None of them mention the departing slaves...
...Even more revealing, Rabbi Wolpe appeared to say in the question-and-answer period just the opposite of what he had been understood to be saying in his sermon...
...Many peoples have fashioned foundational narratives recounting how they came to be, some with more, some with less historical value...
...I quote the words of the great Brandeis Uni- . versify Biblical scholar, Nahum Sarna (from a chapter on the Exodus in the book Ancient Israel that I had the honor to revise and update for a 2000 edition): "No nation would be likely to invent for itself, and faithfully transmit century after century and millennium after millennium, such an inglorious and inconvenient tradition unless it had an authentic historical core...
...The inference is that he's ready to throw it out, historically speaking, lock, stock, and barrel...
...Here Rabbi Wolpe is guilty of Bible-bashing, not because he explicidy denies these broad assertions, but because he states his case in a way that creates that impression...
...But the foundational story of the nation became the story of the Exodus from Egypt—even of those Israelites who were not themselves in Egypt...
...We do it up brown—turkey, pumpkin pie and all, with some talk about how thankful we are for our blessings, just like the Pilgrims...
...To pin things down, Rabbi Wolpe tells us "Israel was in part or in whole an indigenous tribe in the land of Canaan...
...One final item: It may in fact be true, as Rabbi Wolpe asserts, that the Israelites were joined by many other groups of Canaanites who ultimately became Israelites...
...It's all a matter of faith...
...That I have no problem with...
...Whether they happened is a matter of faith, not proven or disproven by ordinary factual evidence...
...One of their books, for example, is tided The Invention of Ancient Israel—The Silencing of Palestinian History...
...On the odier hand, he admits in the questionand- answer session that he agrees with me that the basic story is true...
...He begins his sermon, "What if the Exodus never happened...
...Are we not justified in concluding that Rabbi Wolpe is saying there was no Hebrew departure from Egypt...
...As the Jerusalem Post put it: "Wolpe told more than 2,200 congregants that the Exodus did not occur...
...That's not the same as saying there were 10 plagues, the sea split, 600,000 men went into the desert with their wives and children and eventually conquered the land of Canaan...
...HERSHEL SHANKS PASSOVER, RABBI DAVID WOLPE of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, delivered a sermon that made him famous...
...Are listeners not justified in concluding that he is saying there were no Hebrew slaves in Egypt...
...In the question-and-answer session that Rabbi Wolpe held the day following his sermon, one of his questioners brought up the Merneptah Stele...
...2. Details like the escape of 600,000 men (plus wives and children) into the desert for 40 years...

Vol. 26 • October 2001 • No. 5


 
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