Talk:The Exodus/Draft

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The Exodus (Greek ἔξοδος, "exodus", "way out", ) is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.

Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan described in the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The exact historical basis of the events described in the exodus narratives continues to be an active area of scholarly study.

Summary
See Exodus 13 and following chapters

According to Jewish dating, the Exodus took place in the year 2448 from Creation (1313 BC). Some two hundred years earlier, the Jewish people, then numbering 70 souls with Jacob as their patriarch, went down to Egypt during a famine. After the death of Jacob’s twelve sons, the Egyptian Pharaoh enslaved the Jews with backbreaking labor, beginning in the year 2331 (1430 BC). Yet even as they were oppressed, they multiplied; according to Rashi, each woman gave birth to six babies at a time. After more than 100 years of slavery, God tells Moses to confront Pharaoh and perform Ten Plagues, the last of which, the Death of the Firstborn on the night of the fifteenth of Nisan, finally convinces Pharaoh to "let my people go". Five days before the Exodus, on the tenth of Nisan, God commands the Jews to set aside a lamb as a Pesach sacrifice, to be slaughtered in the afternoon of the fourteenth and eaten on the night of the fifteenth. That same night, the Jews are to use the blood of the sacrifice to paint their doorposts and lintels so that the angel of death will "pass over" them as it killed all the firstborn in Egypt. The Jews leave Egypt en masse the next morning.

Seven days after the Exodus, the Israelites experience the miracle of Crossing the Red Sea, in which they traverse the dry seabed safely and their Egyptian pursuers are drowned when the waters come together again. Six weeks after that, the Jews come to Mount Sinai, where God gives them the Ten Commandments and offers them a Covenant: they are to keep his Torah (i.e. law, instruction), and in return He will be their God and give them the land of Canaan. Moses ascends the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights to receive the Tablets of the Law, but when he descends, he finds members of the nation worshipping a golden calf, whereupon he breaks the Tablets and prays for the nation's continued existence. The Book of Leviticus records the laws which God gave to Moses. The Book of Numbers tells how the Israelites, led now by God with Moses at their leader, journey from Mount Sinai towards Canaan, but when their spies report that the land is filled with giants they refuse to go on. God then condemns them to remain in the desert until the generation that left Egypt dies. In the thirty-eighth year from the Exodus, the next generation travels on to the borders of Canaan. The Book of Deuteronomy tells how, within sight of the Promised Land, Moses recalls their journeys and gives them new laws. His death (the last reported event of the Torah) concludes the 40 years of the Exodus from Egypt.

Cultural significance
The Exodus from Egypt is considered one of the most important events in Jewish history, as it marks the "birth" of the Jewish nation. The Exodus is the central theme of the Jewish holiday of Passover and the main subject of the Passover Haggadah. The Exodus is mentioned in the first of the Ten Commandments which establishes faith in God and is the first of the Six Remembrances that the Torah commands Jews to recall every day.

Jewish tradition mandates other national and personal reminders of this pivotal narrative in daily life, under the rubric Zekher l’yetziat Mitzrayim (זכר ליציאת מצרים, “remembrance of the going out from Egypt”). These include the mitzvot associated with Passover, such as the removal of leavening from the home and the eating of matzah (unleavened bread) during the holiday. Other examples are the wearing of tefillin (phylacteries) on the hand and forehead, the wearing of tzitzit (knotted ritual fringes attached to a four-cornered garment), and the affixing of a mezuzah to the doorpost of one’s home. The observance of Shabbat and the holidays of Shavuot and Sukkot are also considered memorials to the Exodus. The remembrance of the Exodus is encapsulated in the daily recital of the Shema, in the Kiddush for Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and in other prayers in the liturgy.

The Exodus is also important in Islam, where it is mentioned in the 26th sura of the Quran, and in Christianity, where its significance has been compared to that of the gospels.

The Exodus and Judaism
The Exodus, and belief in the events of the Exodus as described in the Torah, has a central position in classical Rabbinic Judaism. Together with the narrative of Creation as stated in the first chapters of Genesis, the Exodus is cited in Jewish payers and prayer books and in the writings of Torah and rabbinic scholars considered authoritative in Judaism. The Exodus and Creation are cited in the payers and texts for over 2000 years as literal proofs for the intervention of God in the affairs of mankind. By observant Jews being required by Jewish law to recite the blessings and prayers mentioning both Creation and the Exodus they are thereby affirming and attesting that those events revealed God's powers and that therefore there is an obligation to have faith in God and in His existence. The following demonstrate the practical implications and application of this in some of Judaism's rituals:

Daily prayers
The "Song of the Sea" (שירת הים, Shirat HaYam, also known as Az Yashir Moshe) is a poem that appears in the Book of Exodus of the Hebrew Bible, at. It is followed in verses 20 and 21 by a much shorter song sung by Miriam and the other women. The Song of the Sea was reputedly sung by the Israelites after they crossed the Red Sea in safety, and celebrates the destruction of the Egyptian army during the crossing, and looks forward to their future conquest of Canaan. The poem is included in Jewish prayer books, and recited daily in the morning shacharit services.

The Exodus and the Sabbath
The Friday night Kiddush consists of various blessings prior to partaking of the first Shabbat meal on every Friday night. Both Creation and the Exodus are cited in the blessings. In the Hebrew text of Friday night kiddush|second half of the blessing, the Exodus is cited directly: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with His commandments, and hoped for us, and with love and intent invested us with His sacred Sabbath, as a memorial to the deed of Creation. It is the first amongst the holy festivals, commemorating the exodus from Egypt (זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם). For You chose us, and sanctified us, out of all nations, and with love and intent You invested us with Your Holy Sabbath."

The Hebrew phrase זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם is also translatable as "A memorial of the Exodus from Egypt." The ArtScroll prayer book provides this commentary: "Ramban explains that the Sabbath and the Exodus are intertwined. The Sabbath is symbolic of God's creation; the Exodus was His demonstration to humanity that He controls nature and manipulates it as His will sees fit. In turn, the events of the Exodus bear witness to God's creation - and hence, His mastery - of the Universe. The Sabbath on the other hand, is the backdrop of the Exodus, because the concept it represents explains how the events of the Exodus were possible."

The Exodus and the Jewish Holidays
Similar to the observance of the Sabbath, in the course of the observance of the main Biblically mandated Jewish holiday particularly the שלוש רגלים Three Pilgrimage Festivals, explicit mention and recital of the Exodus and Creation is stressed for the same reason described for the Sabbath. The traditional wording of the evening Kiddush includes: "...And You gave us, Lord our God, with love, [Sabbaths for rest and] festivals for happiness, holidays and times for joy, this day [of Shabbat and this day of]...[With love], a holy convocation, a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt (זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם). Because You chose us, and sanctified us from all the nations, [and Shabbat] and Your holy festivals..."

The phrase זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם can also translated as "in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt." The Hebrew Publishing Company's version of the Machzor holiday prayer book (translated and annotated by Philip Birnbaum) states that: "זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם ("in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt") refers to Pesah, Shavuoth and Sukkoth, directly connected with the Exodus from Egypt. The same phrase is elsewhere applied to the Sabbath on the basis of Deuteronomy 5:15 'Remember that you were once a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; hence the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."

Textual background
There are currently a number of competing theories on the composition of the four books Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy, and they can be grouped into three broad "models". The first, the documentary hypothesis, proposes that the four books (actually five - the models include Genesis) were originally four separate documents, treating the same subject (i.e. the Exodus) written at various times between the 9th and 6th centuries BC and combined about 450 BC. This theory dominated biblical scholarship from the late 19th century to the 1970s. The second, the "supplementary" model, had been popular before the documentary hypothesis dominated the field and has re-emerged since the 1970s. It holds that that there was a single original document which was then expanded by "supplements", again with the end product emerging around 450 BC. The third, the "fragmentary" model, proposes that the four books were combined by a single author from a host of "fragments", meaning small texts as well as oral traditions (sagas and folk-tales), again c.450 BC.

The most recent ideas on the origin of the five books place Deuteronomy in the late 7th century with a revised version in the 6th, and the other four books in the Persian period of the 5th century. It is generally agreed that the Exodus tradition behind the five books predates the narrative as told in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (since it also appears in the 8th century prophets), but there is no consensus on just what might lie behind the tradition.

While the story in the books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy is the best-known account of the Exodus, there are over a hundred and fifty references scattered through the Bible. The earliest mentions are in the prophets Amos (possibly) and Hosea (certainly), both active in 8th century Israel; in contrast Proto-Isaiah and Micah, both active in Judah at much the same time, never do; it thus seems reasonable to conclude that the Exodus tradition was important in the northern kingdom in the 8th century, but not in Judah.

In a recent work, Stephen C. Russell traces the 8th century prophetic tradition to three originally separate variants, in the northern kingdom of Israel, in Trans-Jordan, and in the southern kingdom of Judah. Russell proposes different hypothetical historical backgrounds to each tradition: the tradition from Israel, which involves a journey from Egypt to the region of Bethel, he suggests is a memory of herders who could move to and from Egypt in times of crisis; for the Trans-Jordanian tradition, which focuses on deliverance from Egypt without a journey, he suggests a memory of the withdrawal of Egyptian control at the end of the Late Bronze Age; and for Judah, whose tradition is preserved in the Song of the Sea, he suggests the celebration of a military victory over Egypt, although it is impossible to suggest what this victory may have been.

Historicity
Contemporary scholars "have arrived at wildly differing judgments concerning the historicity of the exodus narrative." Conservative scholars, both Jewish and Christian, see the story as a generally reliable account. Maximalists agree that there is a historical core to the narrative while minimalists believe that there is little or no historical content in the narratives. Debate over the historicity of the exodus is closely linked to the question of the ethnic origins of Israel, because many academic theories posit that Israel developed from indigenous Canaanite stock. If this is true, then during the Late Bronze Age, when the exodus is supposed to have occurred, the Israelites were already in Canaan and could not have come from Egypt. The consensus in critical circles is that there was never any exodus of the proportions described in the Bible, though outside such circles there is less skepticism. The story is best seen as both theology and history, a story illustrating how the God of Israel acted to save and strengthen his chosen people. The dominant historical concern of the exodus narratives are to demonstrate that God acts in history. According to Redmount, "It is this compelling historical grounding of the narrative that sustains most scholars' belief in an actual historical origin of the exodus events." Others disagree, and the debate continues to attract attention to this day.

A prominent viewpoint is that if a historical exodus did occur, it was much smaller in scale than the biblical narratives suggest. It may have taken the form of a gradual Israelite departure from Egypt, lasting for many years and occurring in phases. A minority argues that the exodus did not occur in any form. Conservatives usually argue that it occurred in a manner similar to that described in the bible. Much recent scholarship "consigns the exodus to the shadowy realm of folk tradition into which critical historiography cannot penetrate," denying the applicability of historical method to the exodus altogether.

Archaeology and documentary evidence
Archaeological research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness. Egyptian records of that period do not mention the expulsion of any group that could be identified with over two million Hebrew slaves, nor any events which could be identified with the Biblical plagues. However, according to Redmount, "By their very nature archaeological finds are generally unsuitable for establishing detailed historical interpretations." The earliest extrabiblical mention of Israel is the Merneptah Stele, which indicates that a people called "Israel" were already known in Canaan by the reign of Merneptah (1213-1203 BC).

The earliest non-Biblical account of the Exodus is in the writings of the Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera: the Egyptians blame a plague on foreigners and expel them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, takes them to Canaan, where he founds the city of Jerusalem. Hecataeus wrote in the late 4th century BC, but the passage is quite possibly an insertion made in the mid-1st century BCE. The most famous is by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BC), known from two quotations by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus. In the first, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their dominion over and expulsion from Egypt, and their subsequent foundation of the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Josephus (not Manetho) identifies the Hyksos with the Jews. In the second story Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people," led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses. Manetho differs from the other writers in describing his renegades as Egyptians rather than Jews, and in using a name other than Moses for their leader, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses may be a later addition.

Logistics and anachronisms
Aside from the issue of the external evidence for the exodus, some critics look to the document itself and question its internal reliability, raising logistical and chronological challenges to its veracity.

According to Exodus 12:37-38, the Israelites numbered "about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children," plus many non-Israelites and livestock. Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550. The 600,000, plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites would have numbered some 2 million people, compared with what Kantor estimates to be an entire Egyptian population in 1250 BCE of around 3 to 3.5 million. If they marched ten abreast, and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a 150 miles long line.

This creates a logistical difficulty for the Biblical narrative, because some argue that the Sinai desert could not have hosted these millions of people and their herds. In the Bible, this is explained through the claim that God miraculously provided manna and quail for the Israelites to eat and water for them to drink while they were in the desert. Some scholars have rationalised the Biblical numbers into smaller figures, for example reading the Hebrew as "600 families" rather than 600,000 men, and others have thought it probable that the 603,550 people delivered from Egypt (according to Numbers 1:46) is not simply a number, but a gematria (a code in which numbers represent letters or words) for bnei yisra'el kol rosh, "the children of Israel, every individual;" while the number 600,000 symbolises the total destruction of the generation of Israel which left Egypt, none of whom lived to see the Promised Land.

Various historical details may point to a 1st millennium date for the Book of Exodus: Ezion-Geber, (one of the Stations of the Exodus), for example, dates to a period between the 8th and 6th centuries BC with possible further occupation into the 4th century BC, and those place-names on the Exodus route which have been identified - Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Ramesses and Kadesh Barnea - point to the geography of the 1st millennium rather than the 2nd. Similarly, Soggin argues that Pharaoh's fear that the Israelites might ally themselves with foreign invaders seems unlikely in the context of the late 2nd millennium, when Canaan was part of an Egyptian empire and Egypt faced no enemies in that direction, but does make sense in a 1st millennium context, when Egypt was considerably weaker and faced invasion first from the Persians and later from Seleucid Syria.

Route
The Torah lists the places where the Israelites rested. A few of the names at the start of the itinerary, including Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified with archaeological sites on the eastern edge of the Nile delta, as is Kadesh-Barnea, where the Israelites spend 38 years after turning back from Canaan, but other than that very little is certain. 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 eastward escape, the Gulf of Suez (SSE of Succoth) and the Gulf of Aqaba (S of Ezion-Geber), or even on a lagoon on the Mediterranean coast. The biblical Mt. Sinai is identified in Christian tradition with Jebel Musa in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, but this association dates only from the 3rd century AD and no evidence of the Exodus has been found there.

The most obvious 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 to come. The Bible specifically denies that the Israelites went by the Way of the Philistines a northerly yet coastal route along the Mediterranean (the purple line on the map to the right indicates the Way of Shur which goes inland towards Shur, Asshur or Syria). The Arabian Trade Route (green) and the Way of Seir (black) are improbable routes, the former having the advantage of heading initially toward Kadesh-Barnea but swinging east towards Petra north of Aqaba/Eilat.

Date
The Seder Olam Rabbah (ca. 2nd century AD) determines the commencement of the Exodus to 2448 AM (1313 BC). This date has become traditional in Rabbinic Judaism.

In the first half of the 20th century the Exodus was dated on the basis of, which states that the Exodus occurred 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple, the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Equating the biblical chronology with dates in history is notoriously difficult, but Edwin Thiele's widely accepted reconciliation of the reigns of the Israelite and Judahite kings would imply an Exodus around 1450 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC). By the mid-20th century this theory had fallen out of favor, since Egyptian records of that period do not mention the expulsion of any group that could be identified with over two million Hebrew slaves, nor any events which could be identified with the Biblical plagues.

The lack of evidence led William F. Albright, the leading biblical archaeologist of the period, to propose an alternative, "late" Exodus around 1200-1250 BC. His argument was based on the many strands of evidence, including the destruction at Beitel (Bethel) and some other cities at around that period, and the occurrence from the same period of distinctive house-types and a distinctive round-collared jar which, in his opinion, was to be identified with in-coming Israelites. Albright's theory also included his idea that the cities of Pithom and Pi-Ramesses, which according to Exodus 1:11 were built by the Israelites, must have been built during the time of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt (1298-1187 BC), though this is debatable.

Albright's theory enjoyed popularity around the middle of the 20th century, but has now been generally abandoned in scholarship. The evidence which led to the abandonment of Albright's theory includes the fact that the collar-rimmed jars have been recognised as an indigenous form originating in lowland Canaanite cities centuries earlier. In addition, while some "Joshua" cities, including Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo and others, have destruction and transition layers around 1250-1145 BC, others have no destruction layers or were uninhabited during this period. The debate over Jericho is important in connection with this issue. Some scholars say that it was uninhabited during the thirteenth century and thus provides evidence against a late exodus, while others contend that though there is no evidence of thirteenth-century fortifications at Jericho, there are indications of a settlement, which may have made use of older, pre-existing fortifications instead of building new ones.

Modern theories on the date - all of them popular rather than scholarly - tend to concentrate on an "early" Exodus, prior to c.1440 BC. The major candidates are:
 * The 2006 History Channel documentary The Exodus Decoded revived an idea first put forward by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus, identifying the Israelites with the Hyksos, the non-Egyptian rulers of Egypt expelled by the resurgent native Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, c.1550-1530 BC. However, there are numerous difficulties with the theory, and it is dismissed by scholars.
 * David Rohl's 1995 A Test of Time attempted to correct Egyptian history by shortening the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt by almost 300 years. As a by-result the synchronisms with the biblical narrative have changed, making the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Djedneferre Dudimose (Dedumesu, Tutimaos, Tutimaios) the pharaoh of the Exodus. Rohl's theory, however, has failed to find support among most scholars in his field.
 * From time to time there have been attempts to link the Exodus with the eruption of the Aegean volcano of Thera in c.1600 BC on the grounds that it could provide a natural explanation of the Plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea. This theory was discussed in the History Channel documentary, and also covered in the 2009 book by geologist Barbara J Sivertsen, The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of the Exodus.