The Exodus Myth

[Paul Bethke]

They never know what they might catch....

Rincewind you have presented a very well written account for which I have no immediate way of responding.
There is certainly a lot of interesting things being said, that would take a year to analyse.
I doubt if there could be a counter presentation, because it will be this one said this, and that one said that.
There may be people who can present evidence to verify the Exodus.

But what one person has said sums it up—take away the Exodus you take away the central point of the faith.
So in order to establish the faith—there must be evidence presented to confirm the Exodus.

 

[HansMustermann]

@lpetrich:
The theory isn't really new. I've engaged into just that kind of speculation before, before discovering that Josephus beat me to it by nearly 2000 years.

The problem with that is that it's rather unsupported, and often counter-factual. Ain't that usually the case when pulling stuff out of the ass to fit a story?

E.g., the problem with the Thera eruption is that it's at the wrong time AND in the wrong direction to explain the Exodus as the Hyksos marching in the direction of the plume.

1. The explosion happened in mid-17 century BCE, but that's when the Hyksos INVASION happened, not their expulsion. The expulsion, as you note, happened about a century later. The notion that there would still be a plume for them to follow, to explain the Bible narrative, is simply nonsense.

2. If you actually look at a map, it's in the awfully wrong direction too.

Basically if there's any connection with the Hyksos, that would be with their coming INTO Egypt, not their going OUT of it.

Mind you, even the invasion still is actually about 20 years off the mark for Thera, but who's counting when we're at just making BS up to rationalize the Bible, right?

And that's just the beginning of the problems.

E.g., there is no record to say they were going through any marsh, and in fact everything we do have points at a chase through northern Sinai and into southern Canaan. So inventing a marsh to rationalize the bible account is just that: it's just inventing stuff, not doing history.

E.g., for all we know, the escaping Hyksos were a small enough army to take just one city and hastily fortify it, but then that city is taken and razed by Ahmose and then they just disappear from history. We don't hear about some big migratory host waging war across Canaaan and taking cities left and right.

Which kinda we should have, since that was a major trade route between very literate provinces, and soon thereafter would be invaded by Egypt.

Also, if it were the Hyksos that conquered half of Canaan there, that would have happened between 1550 BCE and the Amarna letters around 1350 BCE. So we kinda should find some mention about some mighty Jewish kingdom there that the Egyptians either conquered or ran into problems with or was attacking its new vassals or such. But there seems to be nothing there to fit that description.

The more damning part is that the Bible itself doesn't support that. Jerusalem for example was conquered by the Egyptians in that period, and far from being ruled by followers of Joshua and that gang, it was ruled by client-kings appointed by the Egyptians. You'd think that getting absorbed back into Egypt would be a major event for a religion whose main claim is that their God got them out of Egypt, but there is nothing in the OT describing anything like that after the Exodus. Which is weird, because they have no problems including stuff like their later being rolled over by the Assyrians. So if their history starts actually in 1550 BCE, how did they miss a much more important event?

Etc.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But what one person has said sums it up—take away the Exodus you take away the central point of the faith.
So in order to establish the faith—there must be evidence presented to confirm the Exodus.

Bad news then.

 

[HansMustermann]

Agreed. Exodus is trying to say that the Israelites were helped to leave Egypt by God. Does it have in addition a non-factual moral message that God is trying, without complete success, to enunciate, like a tongue tied teenager? If that is God's purpose for the work, why is it full of false history, preposterous accounts of the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and other artefacts, and bloodthirsty commands to destroy or enslave neighbouring peoples?

That is pretty much one of my major gripes with trying to salvage the text at all, and doubly so when trying to salvage it as divine.

For a set of books called "the Law", it's actually rather piss-poor even by the standards of Roman legal standards, never mind the standards of modern western lawyers. We don't do parables, allegories, poetic language, or things whose interpretation is based on understanding local funky expressions. We define the bloody terms. If you found twenty chapters in some country's legal code rambling aimlessly about some fictive escape of the Norse from China, you'd think whoever wrote that needs to be fired, not try to salvage it.

Yet a God who's supposedly much much smarter, includes such meaningless crap as the whole pages of "X begat Y, and Y begat Z" in Numbers.

What the hell?

 

[HansMustermann]

But what one person has said sums it up—take away the Exodus you take away the central point of the faith.
So in order to establish the faith—there must be evidence presented to confirm the Exodus.

Well, that's gotta be a sign of the Apocalypse. I'm actually agreeing wholeheartedly with one of Paul's posts.

 

[Ocelot]

Israel starts with 70 people.
450 years later there are about 2 million.
In the New Kingdom, the population of Egypt may have risen from 2 to 3 million.

Clearly, it looks like the Israelites made up the majority of the population. The population of the USA is about 300 million? Just imagine the effect on the country if 200 million all decided to leave together? Disastrous, huh?
Now I don’t know what the formulae are for the calculation of population growth, but simple arithmetic show us that for the Bible to be correct, the population must have increased by a factor of 28,571 (!) during that period. Is this reasonable? It certainly looks way, way over the top to me – even if the Israelite women were treated like battery hens.

I don't meant to disagree with the gist of your argument. I believe it is supported by multiple strands and can survive without this one.

However I cannot simply ignore the opportunity to point out how fast populations can grow. The formula is exponential.

If we set the length of a generation to be 30 years then 450 years is 15 generations.

The function p(g) provides the size of the population in generation number g.

p(g) = Axe^Bxg
where A is the initial population size when g=0 and B is a constant.

With each subsequent generation, the size of the population is multiplied by e^BSince we know that p(15) is 2 million we can calculate B as follows

2,000,000 = 70xe^Bx15
2,000,000/70 = e^Bx15
log_n(2,000,000/70) = Bx15

B = log_n(2,000,000/70)/15

B = 0.684010833

So if the population multiplies by a factor of e^B that's

e^B=1.981810524

- Less than doubling every generation.

So yes that's a very high level of population growth especially in a world with high infant mortality but the question was "is that reasonable?"

I can't say it's unreasonable. A lot higher than you might expect but certainly not outside the realms of possibility. That said, the strongest conclusion you might draw from that alone would be that numbers were exaggerated not that the whole thing's a myth.

I will point out however that If we were to conclude from this that the number of people fleeing Egypt is overstated at 2 million, this does affect some of your other points.

For example if your claim is that it's implausible that 2 million people might settle in a known spot in the desert for 38 years and leave no trace then reducing the number of people doesn't help the argument. I'm sure there's a long way to go before you reach the sort of numbers you might expect to go undetected but the again I'm no archaeologist.

 

[HansMustermann]

@Rincewind:

Actually some of the population growth in the New Kingdom era was simply a case of Egypt conquering new lands. The strip along the Nile (which is really what you get if Egypt doesn't own Canaan or the Sinai that those Jews happily wander about) would actually feed some 2.1 million people total IIRC. So, yeah, 2 million out of 2.1 million leaving? It would leave a mark.

@Ocelot:
I think that while the idea of doing the maths is great, you're missing an important aspect: it's not just the growth of the Jews in the middle of some empty land, but that the Egyptians would multiply in the same period too.

Yet what the numbers in the bible imply, even taking Rincewind's numbers without my objection above is that for the totals to hold, in the same period when the Jewish slaves multiply from 70 people to 2 million, their Egyptian masters would have to LOSE over half their population.

Something doesn't add up there.

 

[Brainache]

I vaguely recall someone musing that the story of The Exodus is not so much about Jews leaving Egypt, but more likely Egyptians leaving Canaan. That the tale grew from an internal revolt against foreign rulers. Does that fit with the various timelines?

If The Hebrews kicked the Egyptians out, might later generations have thought that fighting Egyptian Rulers meant that they were in Egypt, rather than that Egypt was ruling in Canaan?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Well.... I did not have to go look very far.... serendipity serves

I am related to otherwise normal-seeming, (relatively) intelligent people who want me to organize a kosher camping trip in the Sonora Desert so they can "experience what the Children of Israel went through."

 

[Slowvehicle]

Rincewind you have presented a very well written account for which I have no immediate way of responding.
There is certainly a lot of interesting things being said, that would take a year to analyse.
I doubt if there could be a counter presentation, because it will be this one said this, and that one said that.
There may be people who can present evidence to verify the Exodus.

But what one person has said sums it up—take away the Exodus you take away the central point of the faith.
So in order to establish the faith—there must be evidence presented to confirm the Exodus.

I see. In two separate threads, you are comfortable starting with your conclusion, and calmly assuming that whatever the Bronze-Age Book of Bronze-Age Tales About a Bronze-Age 'god' actually says, you are free to trowel it into your conclusion, pretending support where there is none.

No matter how much violence you must do to the text, or to reality.

Have you learned what a circular argument is, yet?

 

[HansMustermann]

I vaguely recall someone musing that the story of The Exodus is not so much about Jews leaving Egypt, but more likely Egyptians leaving Canaan. That the tale grew from an internal revolt against foreign rulers. Does that fit with the various timelines?

If The Hebrews kicked the Egyptians out, might later generations have thought that fighting Egyptian Rulers meant that they were in Egypt, rather than that Egypt was ruling in Canaan?

Phrasings to the effect of "being the slaves of X" have been used, and still are used, to describe a foreign occupation. (Hell, Paul for example in Romans even uses phrasings like "you were slaves to sin." The figurative meaning of slavery is really that flexible and common.) So that would be one way for such a legend to start, and then be misconstrued by later generation into an epic tale of actually fleeing Egypt.

The problem though is that once you interpret it that way, then the next several chapters make no bloody sense whatsoever. Like their having to invade Canaan to conquer a new home for themselves.

One way or another, one has to admit that whole swathes of it are BS fiction. Whether it's one piece or the other, the authors ARE selling you fiction. And I'm somewhat at a loss as to why would someone be willing to salvage a tiny tiny piece of the text as yeah, THAT piece must be totally true, while admitting that essentially 90% of it is propaganda lies.

Why? Why take any information from some authors that you acknowledge at that point as making up BS?

It's like reading the Protocols Of The Elders Of Sion and, while admitting that it's by and large propaganda fiction that wasn't even written about the Jews in its first form, you can still find a paragraph that's totally true about the Jews.

 

[Craig B]

I am related to otherwise normal-seeming, (relatively) intelligent people who want me to organize a kosher camping trip in the Sonora Desert so they can "experience what the Children of Israel went through."

I suppose manna is kosher, but where can you obtain a supply? Unless it pleases the divinity to drop some in the Sonora, instead of the Sinai, Desert.

 

[tsig]

I am related to otherwise normal-seeming, (relatively) intelligent people who want me to organize a kosher camping trip in the Sonora Desert so they can "experience what the Children of Israel went through."

Maybe you could reenact getting the ten commandments that way they could revel in wickedness while someone goes up the mountain.


Manna could be hard to reproduce.

 

[tsig]

I suppose manna is kosher, but where can you obtain a supply? Unless it pleases the divinity to drop some in the Sonora, instead of the Sinai, Desert.

Personally I'd be tempted to abscond with the golden calf.

 

[MG1962]

Thinking pedantically as an engineer, a "star" would have to be in the atmosphere and really close to the location it was pointing at.

And this is why engineering degrees are not much value in discussions about astronomy.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I suppose manna is kosher, but where can you obtain a supply? Unless it pleases the divinity to drop some in the Sonora, instead of the Sinai, Desert.

Maybe you could reenact getting the ten commandments that way they could revel in wickedness while someone goes up the mountain.

Manna could be hard to reproduce.

Exodus 16:31. Coriander-honey matzo has been declared "close enough".("And, hey, can you make some gluten-free? 'Cause, you know, my kids got that thing...and chicken nuggets, right? 'Cause, you know, quail is icky.")

Yeah.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Puts Isaiah 40:3 in a whole new light.

ROFL. I never thought about that, but yeah, it does make sense now, doesn't it?

But that contradicts Deuteronomy 23:12-14. After all, it's very important that the divine foot not step in your excrement.

 

[lpetrich]

@lpetrich:
The theory isn't really new. I've engaged into just that kind of speculation before, before discovering that Josephus beat me to it by nearly 2000 years.

Where?

E.g., the problem with the Thera eruption is that it's at the wrong time AND in the wrong direction to explain the Exodus as the Hyksos marching in the direction of the plume.

You are correct about that. Egypt is also too far from Thera for the volcano to have much effect on it.

But I'm proposing that Cretan refugees had described the effects of that volcano to their Hyksos hosts and that later storytellers had conflated the Cretan refugees' accounts and the Hyksos's departure from Egypt into one narrative.

We don't hear about some big migratory host waging war across Canaaan and taking cities left and right.

The Hyksos would have disappeared into the local population.

So we kinda should find some mention about some mighty Jewish kingdom there that the Egyptians either conquered or ran into problems with or was attacking its new vassals or such. But there seems to be nothing there to fit that description.

There wasn't much of a Jewish identity back then. The Israelites emerged from the Canaanite population around 1200 - 1000 BCE.

The more damning part is that the Bible itself doesn't support that. Jerusalem for example was conquered by the Egyptians in that period, and far from being ruled by followers of Joshua and that gang, it was ruled by client-kings appointed by the Egyptians. You'd think that getting absorbed back into Egypt would be a major event for a religion whose main claim is that their God got them out of Egypt, but there is nothing in the OT describing anything like that after the Exodus. Which is weird, because they have no problems including stuff like their later being rolled over by the Assyrians. So if their history starts actually in 1550 BCE, how did they miss a much more important event?

I'm imagining that later storytellers rearranged history and made this subjection to Egypt before the Exodus event, possibly because it seemed more logical.

We escaped from the Egyptians, then the Egyptians conquered us.

became

The Egyptians conquered us, then we escaped from the Egyptians.

One is talking about oral history here, history passed down through the generations. The sort of "history" that one gets in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

 

[MG1962]

We escaped from the Egyptians, then the Egyptians conquered us.

became

The Egyptians conquered us, then we escaped from the Egyptians.

But in a sense that is the whole point of Exodus. It had to mirror the plight of the culture that wrote story all those years later. Exodus is talking the Hebrews who had gone into captivity during the Babylonian incursions. It is designed to create the hope that if people are worthy of God. God will eventually lead them to salvation through direct action.

 

[mike3]

What is the book 1984 about. Pure fiction, grounded in a backdrop of reality to produce a cautionary tale. If that backdrop is unknown to you, it completely changes the context of what the author is trying to do.

Exodus is the same. It was not trying to create historical context, it was written to try and make sense of the plight of the Jews during the Babylonian exile. There is upwards of a 600 year gap between when the events of the Exodus where supposed to have happened and when the information was written down. We have a further gap of 900 years before the book is codified into the Bible. And then a gap of 1500 years in which some people decide Exodus is absolutely true because it is in the Bible.

We are not, and never were the intended audience for Exodus.

I 100% fail to see how this does anything to the OP. The OP's points would provide a strong argument for it being fiction. You are saying it is fiction. So I see no contradiction. The OP's argument is directed at people who are claiming it is literal historical fact. To use your 1984 example: it would be like someone in the year 4500 somehow getting ahold of a copy of 1984 and then trumpeting it around as some kind of "historical truth", and then someone coming out against him and pointing out how all the available historical evidence shows that the world was most definitely not like what was described in the "1984" novel in 1984. The point of the debater would be simply to show that his claim of it being a literal, historical truth is incorrect. What the historical context was, what the author intended, blah blah blah, is not the point under discussion: simply the question of whether or not the claim of historical truth is correct. In my imaginary future scenario, the 4500 guy wouldn't be "overlaying 4500s sensibilities on the 20th century" but just pointing out from the facts that 1984 cannot possibly be historical, literal truth. So how is it any different here?

EDIT: Were you, perhaps, addressing your comments to the sentiment displayed at the end of the post?