In popular culture, Rameses II (ruled 1279 – 1213 BC) is almost always portrayed as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He is most famously portrayed as such in the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, but he has also appeared in this role more recently in the 1998 DreamWorks animated musical drama film The Prince of Egypt, in the 2013 History Channel miniseries The Bible, and in the 2014 epic film Exodus: Gods and Kings.
It may come as a surprise to many people, then, that the Book of Exodus never actually gives the name of the pharaoh who supposedly tried to keep the Israelites from leaving. Instead, throughout the book, the pharaoh is merely referred to by the Hebrew word פַּרְעֹה (par‘ōh), which is the source of our English word pharaoh. How, then, did we all come to think of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus? And, more importantly, who was the real pharaoh of the Exodus? Let’s delve back into the mists of antiquity and find out the truth.
Rameses II and the Exodus
The idea that the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus was Rameses II arose from the fact that, in the Book of Genesis 47:11 and the Book of Exodus 12:37, the Israelites are described as living in the “district of Rameses” in Egypt and, in the Book of Exodus 1:11, the Israelites are described as building the city of “Rameses” for the pharaoh.
Until the nineteenth century, Europeans had very little knowledge of ancient Egyptian history. Most of what was known came from the Bible and various writings in Greek, especially The Histories, written by the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC); surviving portions of the Egyptika, written by the Egyptian priest Manethon, who lived in around the early third century BC; and The Historical Library, written by the Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BC).
As Europeans learned more about Egyptian history in the nineteenth century, many Christian scholars began to interpret the reference to the Israelites building the city of “Rameses” to mean that the Israelites worked on the construction of the city of Pi-Rameses, which was built as the new capital of Egypt under Rameses II. They therefore came to the conclusion that the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus must be none other than Rameses II.
The idea that Rameses II was the pharaoh of the Exodus was popularized in the first half of the twentieth century through books, such as the 1944 novella The Tables of the Law by Thomas Mann. It was, however, the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, which was produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille, that really canonized Rameses II as the supposed pharaoh of the Exodus.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a colossal statue of Rameses II from Luxor
A few slight problems…
The problem with the identification of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus is that the Book of Exodus 1:11—the same verse that claims the Israelites built the city of “Rameses”—also claims that the Israelites built the city of Pithom. The word Pithom, though, only appears in the written record as the name of a city from the late seventh century BC onwards.
Furthermore, we know from archaeological evidence that the ancient city of Pithom was located at the site of tell el-Maskhuta in northeastern Egypt and the city was founded by Pharaoh Necho II at some point between c. 609 and c. 606 BC. The site was not inhabited during the time of Rameses II in the thirteenth century BC.
In other words, the cities of Pi-Rameses and Pithom were built roughly six hundred years apart. There is no way that the Israelites could have built both of them for the same pharaoh. Also, the construction of Pithom in the late seventh century BC puts it later than the archaeologically-confirmed destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and only about a decade earlier than the archaeologically-confirmed Siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in around 597 BC.
There is also the additional problem that Egyptologists and archaeologists have literally searched for evidence of the Exodus for centuries and they have found absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Likewise, there are no records or inscriptions of any kind whatsoever from any time close to the time when the Exodus is supposed to have taken place that even hint at a historical Exodus.
There is no archaeological or contemporary written evidence for the presence of anything even remotely approaching the hundreds of thousands of Israelites in Egypt that the books of the Torah claim were present there, no archaeological or contemporary written evidence for the plagues of Egypt, and no archaeological or contemporary written evidence for the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, their wanderings in the desert, or their arrival in Canaan.
Believe me, this isn’t because Egyptologists haven’t been looking. Many Egyptologists have been devout Christians and Jews who would have been thoroughly exhilarated to find evidence to support the narratives in the Book of Exodus. Even for those Egyptologists who are not Christian or Jewish, finding genuine, indisputable evidence to support the narratives in Exodus would be the kind of discovery of the millennium that could make an archaeologist’s career virtually overnight. The problem is that, so far as anyone has been able to find, the evidence simply isn’t there.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the site of Qantir, where the ancient city of Pi-Rameses was once located
A total lack of archaeological evidence
Now, there are some things that we just can’t reasonably expect to find archaeological evidence for. For instance, it would be absurd to demand contemporary archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus, since he was just a single man who wasn’t particularly wealthy or important during his lifetime. He’s not the sort of person we’d expect to leave any identifiable trace in the archaeological record.
The Exodus, though, is one of those things that you definitely would expect to find archaeological evidence for. Indeed, you would expect to find mountains of evidence for it; it supposedly involved an entire nation living in slavery in Egypt for generations, ten massive plagues that supposedly utterly devastated the land of Egypt, and an entire nation leaving Egypt, wandering in the desert for generations, and eventually leading a bloody invasion of Canaan.
If any of this really happened, we would expect to find archaeological evidence for it all over the place, but we don’t. Christian apologists have tried to argue that maybe the Egyptians covered up all the evidence for the Exodus because they found the crisis embarrassing, but this is totally far-fetched.
The events described in the Book of Exodus are depicted on an absolutely epic scale and, although our records of Egypt in the thirteenth century BC are not as good as we would like them to be, it is inconceivable that something on the scale of the Exodus could have happened and not left any evidence at all behind.
Even if the entire Egyptian population had been fully dedicated to the task of hiding all the evidence, there’s no way they could have done it. Someone would have written about it or alluded to it. There would be massive graveyards for all the people who died from the plagues. There would be some physical trace of the devastation left behind somewhere. We just don’t have any of that.
It is, of course, possible that some historical event much smaller than what is described in the Book of Exodus might have happened and eventually given rise to the myth of the Exodus as we know it today. If such an event really happened, though, we have no evidence of it and it is impossible for us to recover any information about what the event really was. Moreover, the event must have been so much smaller and less dramatic than the Exodus of legend that it is not even worth calling it “the Exodus.”
ABOVE: The Seventh Plague, painted in 1823 by the English Romantic painter John Martin
Earliest surviving references to the Exodus in the northern prophets
Now, it is clear that, by the middle of the eighth century BC, the people of the northern kingdom of Israel were evidently telling some kind of story about their ancestors having come from Egypt and journeyed through the wilderness.
We know this because the Book of Amos, which is generally agreed to have been written in the northern kingdom sometime around 750 BC or thereabouts, contains two references to a story in which the God of Israel is said to have brought his people out of Egypt. The first of these references occurs in Amos 3:1, which reads as follows, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):
“Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt.”
The second reference occurs in Amos 9:7, which reads as follows in the NRSV:
“Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
The Book of Hosea, which is generally agreed to have been written in the northern kingdom of Israel sometime in around the late eighth century BC, several decades after the Book of Amos, also contains several similar references to a story about God bringing the nation of Israel out of Egypt (see, for instance, Hosea 2:15 and 13:4-5).
These earliest surviving references to the Exodus, however, come from over at least four and a half centuries after the Exodus is traditionally said to have taken place. Furthermore, although the references are clear enough to establish that Amos and Hosea were familiar with some prototypical version of the Exodus legend, they are too vague to establish much else beyond this. We should not assume that the authors of these books were familiar with the same version of the Exodus story that most Jews and Christians are familiar with today from the Book of Exodus.
ABOVE: Illustration of the prophet Amos as a shepherd by the French illustrator Gustave Doré from 1866 (left) and painting of the prophet Hosea by the medieval Italian painter Duccio di Buoninsegna from between c. 1309 and 1311 (right)
When the Book of Exodus was really written
The Book of Exodus itself is full of anachronisms—like the mention of the Israelites building the city of Pithom—that strongly suggest it was written long after the events it describes are supposed to have happened. Biblical scholars are pretty sure based on internal clues that the vast majority of the book was probably written during the time when the Judahites were living in captivity in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The first deportation of Judahites to Babylon took place in around 597 BC. The Babylonian captivity ended in 539 BC, when King Cyrus II of the Achaemenid Empire conquered the city of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. All internal evidence indicates that at least a large portion of the Book of Exodus was written during the time between those years.
Once we examine the Book of Exodus as a work of fiction written by Judahites living in captivity in Babylon—a people whose homeland had been taken from them, whose city had been utterly demolished, whose Temple had been destroyed, and whose God seemed to have abandoned them—it starts to make sense why the story is told the way it is.
To a people who knew nothing but enslavement and misery and who felt that they had lost everything, the story of the Exodus was supposed to be a tale of hope. The message of the book is, essentially: “Don’t despair; our ancestors were living in captivity once before and our God saved them then. He’s certain to save us too.”
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the so-called “Jerusalem Chronicle,” a Babylonian clay tablet describing the sack of Jerusalem in 597 BC by the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar II
The real reason why the villain of the Book of Exodus is an Egyptian pharaoh
In this context, it also starts a make a lot of sense why the pharaoh in the story is not given a specific name; although the author of the Book of Exodus probably knew the names of a few Egyptian pharaohs from remote antiquity, he chose not to give the pharaoh a name because the pharaoh is supposed to be, in some sense, a generic figure standing in for all tyrants who might seek to oppress the Jewish people.
Why is the tyrant in the story specifically an Egyptian pharaoh? Well, it could be that the pharaoh was already the villain in the version of the story that prophets like Amos and Hosea were already familiar with before the Babylonian captivity and the authors of the Book of Exodus simply expanded the story they already knew into a full-length epic. It could also, however, be because, in the sixth century BC, when the Jews were living in captivity in Babylon, aside from the Babylonians, the Egyptians were seen as the Judahites’ greatest enemies.
It is possible that, when the Book of Exodus was first being composed, there were still some people alive who could personally remember when the great Judahite king Josiah was killed in combat against the forces of Pharaoh Necho II in the Battle of Megiddo in around 609 BC. Those who couldn’t remember it because they hadn’t been born yet when the battle took place had probably heard about the battle from their parents or grandparents. That event surely would have solidified the idea in many Judahites’ minds that the Egyptians were their enemy.
Rameses II is not the pharaoh of the Exodus because the pharaoh of the Exodus is a fictional character who is not given a name—probably on purpose. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the original audience of the Book of Exodus would have been thinking of Rameses II when they heard the story. (As I discuss in this article from August 2019, though, Rameses II is definitely Ozymandias, the Egyptian pharaoh mentioned in that famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Fans of Rameses II can take that as a consolation prize, I suppose.)
Necho II is not the real pharaoh of the Exodus either because, as I said before, the Exodus didn’t really happen. Nonetheless, when the original audience of the Book of Exodus heard about the evil, oppressive pharaoh, many of them undoubtedly would have been thinking of Necho II.
ABOVE: The Death of King Josiah, painted by the Italian painter Francesco Conti (lived 1681 – 1760)
It is interesting that you deny the historicity of Jesus, which we have a great deal of evidence for, but yet you insist on agnosticism as to whether the Exodus really happened, even though we have absolutely no reliable evidence for the Exodus.
As far as the existence of a city by the name of “Pithom” in the thirteenth century BC is concerned, the Old Testament scholar Niels Peter Lemche writes in his essay “Is It Still Possible to Write a History of Ancient Israel?” which is included in the book Israel’s Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography, edited by V. Philips Long, page 398:
In other words, according to Lemche, the name Pithom does occur in some ancient Egyptian texts prior to the Saite period, but it does not occur as the name of a city. If you believe that this information is incorrect, please provide your own sources to demonstrate this.
Also, I expressly state later in my article that the story of the Exodus probably existed before the Book of Exodus itself was written. The passage you quote was talking about the writing of the actual Book of Exodus, not the development of the story of the Exodus in a more general sense.
LOL, Lemche is not an Egyptologist, nor an archaeologist. In addition, he is a minimalist. Minimalists are a small group who have been laughed out by the more mainstream set of contemporary archaeologists, such as William Dever. Dever has written a pretty devastating critique of Lemche’s book, perhaps you should take a look at it.
And to seal the fate of individuals like Lemch further, Dever has gone ahead and written a giant history of ancient Israel. Check it out: William Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah, SBL Press, 2017. Definitely the best book on the topic there is. There’s no trusting the much publicized, but little academically convincing minimalists. When the Tel Dan Inscription was discovered in 1993, Thomas Thompson got such a heart attack that he immediately jump-accused it of being a forgery. I can tell that this entire article was written after reading a couple papers and maybe a book or two by some minimalists.
Unfortunately, not much information has been found on the Jewish Exodus from Egypt to Canaan. The more you go back in history, the scarce traits of the past become; and so it seems that happened to the Exodus. One document worthy to be read, which bears extreme resemblance, if not entire, with the biblical account of the Exodus is the Ipuwer Papyrus. There he wrote words which when read by whoever has to some extent biblical knowledge, whether he be a beliver or an un-believer thereof, will cause him to establish parallels between the two accounts. Here follows some of the things we wrote there:
Indeed, the river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men shrink from human beings and thirst after water …. (Exodus 7:20, 18: “[A]nd all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. … [T]he Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water ….”)
Indeed, [hearts] are violent, pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere, death is not lacking …. (Exodus 9:15: “[T]hat I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence ….” Exodus 7:19: “[T]hat there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt ….”)
Indeed, all animals, their hearts weep; cattle moan because of the state of the land …. (Exodus 9:3, 6: “Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain. … [A]nd all the cattle of Egypt died.”)
Behold, the fire has gone up on high, and its burning goes forth against the enemies of the land …. Indeed, gates, columns and walls are burnt up …. (Exodus 9:23-24: “[A]nd the fire ran along upon the ground …. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous ….”)
Indeed, everywhere barley has perished …. (Exodus 9:31: “And the flax and the barley was smitten ….”)
The land is without light …. (Exodus 10:22: “[A]nd there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.”)
Indeed, men are few, and he who places his brother in the ground is everywhere …. (Exodus 12:30: “[T]here was not a house where there was not one dead.”)
Indeed, every dead person is as a well-born man …. Indeed, the children of princes are dashed against walls …. (Exodus 12:29: “[A]t midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of the Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon ….”)
Indeed, laughter is perished and is [no longer] made; it is groaning that is throughout the land …. (Exodus 12:30: “[L]oud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died”; New Living Translation.)
All is ruin! … Indeed, that has perished which yesterday was seen …. Ipuwer laments the utter—and sudden—destruction of the land.
As the Bible describes, for the initial plagues, the Egyptian magicians attempted to replicate the miracles. This they did to varying degrees of success, before they recognized their power as completely useless. As with the Bible, Ipuwer also mentioned the downfall of magicians. Indeed, magic spells are divulged; smw- and shnw-spells are frustrated because they are remembered by men.
Ipuwer made another interesting note: Indeed, the ship of [the southerners] has broken up; towns are destroyed and Upper Egypt has become an empty waste. The Bible states that the Israelites occupied the land of Goshen. This was a major area within Lower Egypt, in the Nile Delta region. Egypt, during the first half of the second millennium b.c., was divided into two areas: Upper Egypt in the south, ruled by native Egyptians, and Lower Egypt in the north, inhabited and governed by “foreigners” originally from Canaan. At the end of this period, Upper Egypt gained power and overthrew Lower Egypt. It is interesting that Ipuwer here made specific mention of the utter destruction of Upper Egypt. God stated that the land within which the Israelites dwelled—Goshen, within Lower Egypt—would be spared. For example: “And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there …. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail” (Exodus 8:22; 9:26).
After the final, 10th plague of Egypt (the death of the firstborn), the Egyptians were desperately urgent for the Israelites to leave. They offered up all kinds of personal belongings and treasures to them, in what the Bible describes as the “spoiling” of the Egyptians.
Here, the Ipuwer–Exodus parallels continue:
Indeed, poor men have become owners of wealth, and he who could not make sandals for himself is now a possessor of riches …. (Exodus 12:35-36: “And the children of Israel … borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment …. And they spoiled the Egyptians.”)
Indeed, gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise, carnelian and amethyst, Ibhet-stone and […] are strung on the necks of maidservants …. (Exodus 11:2: “[E]very woman (borrowed) of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold.”)
The Bible describes this triumphant rise of the Israelites in receiving the wealth of the Egyptians. They then proceeded to depart from Egypt in jubilation, with a “high hand.” Ipuwer continued: Indeed, noblemen are in distress, while the poor man is full of joy. Every town says: “Let us suppress the powerful among us.”
The liberated Israelites would now have the freedom to worship the true God. Ipuwer wrote: [Behold, he who did not know] his god now offers to him with incense of another …. Here again is another possible allusion to the departing Israelites, now able to worship their God, whom to that point was unknown to them (e.g., Exodus 3:13).
The Bible gives clear reasons for the destruction of Egypt and the Exodus. The Ipuwer Papyrus, on the other hand, is damaged at both ends, and isn’t so clear. However, some allusion of “blame” can be found within the text. What the ancestors foretold has arrived, Ipuwer wrote near the start of his scroll. Indeed, the events leading up to the Exodus had been foretold, some 500 years earlier (Genesis 15). Perhaps some form of this prophecy became known in Egypt (such as in Genesis 50:24-25).
In the latter part of his papyrus scroll, Ipuwer inserted a very interesting paragraph, hinting at a reason for the carnage:
He brings coolness upon heat; men say: “He is the herdsman of mankind, and there is no evil in his heart.” Though his herds are few, yet he spends a day to collect them, their hearts being on fire. Would that he had perceived their nature in the first generation; then he would have imposed obstacles, he would have stretched out his arm against them, he would have destroyed their herds and their heritage.
This has a familiar ring to the initial arrival of Jacob, his 12 sons and extended family to Egypt. They were welcomed in peacefully, as herdsmen, and were separated out from the other Egyptians in order to raise their livestock (Genesis 46:34—“for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians”). It’s as if Ipuwer was saying, If only our leader, who had allowed them into the country, had imposed obstacles and made it difficult for these people to so freely establish themselves—if only he had destroyed their herds and cattle! They would not have multiplied in our land, and caused such curses to come upon us.
And could the Ipuwer Papyrus even contain a reference to Moses? There is a possible related passage: Behold, Egypt is fallen to pouring of water, and he who poured water on the ground has carried off the strong man in misery.This brings to mind Moses’s return to Egypt in order to save his people. One of the pre-plague miracles God instructed him to perform is recorded in Exodus 4:9:
And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.
Ipuwer has often been put forward in popular literature as confirmation of the biblical account of the Exodus, most notably because of its statement that “the river is blood” and its frequent references to servants running away. However, these arguments ignore the multitude of ways in which Ipuwer differs from Exodus, such as that it describes the Asiatics as arriving in Egypt rather than leaving, and that the “river is blood” phrase may refer to the red sediment colouring the Nile during disastrous floods, or simply be a poetic image of turmoil. Most histories do not consider information about the Exodus to be recoverable or even relevant to the story of the emergence of Israel.
May 19th,2020 ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE REAL EXODUS OF THE BIBLE
To all who maybe reading this article concerning the Exodus and the names of the Pharaohs
involved with the Israelities. Firstly the event is certainly true and there indeed is evidence from recent discoveries to substantiate the Exodus and the place of their crossing as well as the dates recorded which do substantiate the
Exodus and the place of their crossing as well as the dates recorded.
The Ancient Book of Jasher (as referenced in the books of Joshua 10:13; 2Samuel 1:18 and in 2Timothy 3:8 )
reveals the full account of the Exodus and more – that answers most questions that have been asked.
The Pharaoh’s name was MAGRON [English translation] who reigned when Joseph ( Yosefin Hebrew) was at the age of 71yrs in Egypt [ancient Mitzraiym] that year was 2214 from Adam. Pharaoh’s MAGRON died in the 102nd year.
of Israel’s going down to Egypt And MELOL[English translation] his son reigned in his stead.
Fast forward to Moses time.
In the 206 year of Israel’s going down to Egypt did ADIKAM [English translation] reign over Egypt as his father MELOL died who had reigned 94 years in Egypt – that year was 2444 from Adam.
And all the Egyptians called the name of ADIKAM PHARAOH like the name of his fathers,as was their custom to do in Egypt.
And all the wise men of PHARAOH called the name of ADIKAM, AHUZ which is short form in the Egyptian language.
And at the end of 210 years YHVH brought the the children of Israel out of Egypt with a strong hand – that year was 2448 from Adam.
Joseph entered Egypt on 15th day of Nisan the Israelite’s left Egypt on 15th day of Nisan 430 years to the day after the covenant made with Abraham By YHVH in Genesis 15:12 -18 that year was 2018 from Adam.
The Bible does not always give a persons name – but other books are available to tell the us.
Hope this helps answer your questions.
The Hebrews/Israelites did not write literal history. They did not have the Western 21st century concept of history. They employed stories strictly for their contemporary religious purposes.
It is thus critical to uncover the reasons they wrote and each time they amended the stories.
So we must ask: “Why did they write what they wrote?”; “What motivated them at that time?”; “What were they trying to achieve with their contemporary community?”
To comprehend the Mosaic legacy means it needs to be comprehended in the context of the times when it was prepared and when assembled and when edited.
By far the period with the greatest influence on the Mosaic stories was the period following return of the elite from Babylon. The accounts have to be read in the context of that community.
Interesting. I believe the Biblical account and that it was Thutmoses III. The reason the Bible does not state the name of the Pharaoh could be that God just did not want his name remembered – sort of a reverse Egyptian curse as they believed that if their memory was erased – so was their soul. Ironically appropriate ending for a vicious unbeliever.
I am not a Jew so I do not have a huge interest in proving the historicity of the Exodus, BUT, as a scholar, I’m willing to give it a try:
1.There appears to be no logical reason to write Moshe as marrying Zipporah, a Midianite (the arch enemies of the Israelites) unless such were the case.
2. No ancient people would invent an ancestry that was composed of slaves (as opposed to being divine beings).
3. The phrase “harden one’s heart” is unique to Egyptian culture and has no precedent in the cultures of Israel’s neighbors.
4. The name “Moshe” (lit “born of”) appears to have been derived from the same root word as found in the name “Thutmose” and similar Pharaohs, and is not Hebrew in origin.
5. The account of childbearing in Exodus is unique to Egyptian society and has no precedent in First Temple or exilic Israelite/Judahite societies.
6. “Outstretched arm” is a phrase unique to Egypt.
The use of stereotypical Egyptian names and phrases in the Book of Exodus does not in any way prove that the Exodus really happened, because there was plenty of contact between the Judahites and the Egyptians throughout ancient history; the authors of the Book of Exodus could have easily known such phrases from contact with Egyptians without the story of the Exodus being true.
It’s also silly to claim that “no ancient people would invent an ancestry that was composed of slaves.” The story of the Exodus was clearly told to show that YHWH, the god of the people of Israel, was superior to the deities of the Egyptians and that he would always deliver his people from oppression.
Furthermore, as I explain in the article above, the Book of Exodus was most likely composed while the Jews were living in captivity in Babylon. A story about their ancestors being rescued from slavery in Egypt by their god YHWH would have therefore been seen as comforting, because it would have reassured them that YHWH would rescue them from their current captivity—just as he had rescued their ancestors all those centuries ago.
Good response, but there are still some reasons not to reject the Exodus as historical:
The dating of the Mernepta Stele coincides with the traditional dating for the period of the Judges when the Israelites were not under any central government and while the Stele is not a “smoking gun” it is something that may be used as corroborating evidence for an Exodus.
In Ex. 1:8 it is mentioned, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”(ESV)
I think it would have been easier to simply have the new king, despite knowing about Joseph, decide to treat the foreigners as slaves anyway.
I should mention that, despite my own acceptance of the Documentary Hypothesis, it is not set in stone (pun totally intended) and has already been revised (scholars now no longer accept a separate “E” source).
Lastly, to make a comparison to another controversial subject, there is no solid archeological evidence for the Aryan Migration Theory, and yet it is almost unanimously accepted by both early and contemporary Indologists (both Anglo-American and Indian) primarily on the basis of linguistic analysis.
No, these are not “stereotypically Egyptian names”. They are simply Egyptian names. As I noted in a comment below, we know that some of these Egyptian names went out of currency in the late 2nd millennium BC, and so originated in whatever version of the exodus story had existed in the 2nd millennium BC. In other words, your explanation is factually wrong – the author of the Book of Exodus didn’t simply borrow whatever Egyptian names he knew of at the time, because the author of the Book of Exodus lived in the exilic period. In addition, the explanation is loaded with assumptions – namely, that the author of the Book of Exodus was intentionally trying to trickle the story with seemingly authentic details to make it look true. But we have absolutely zero evidence that this was happening.
Your next point is worth quoting in full:
“It’s also silly to claim that “no ancient people would invent an ancestry that was composed of slaves.” The story of the Exodus was clearly told to show that YHWH, the god of the people of Israel, was superior to the deities of the Egyptians and that he would always deliver his people from oppression.”
I’m sorry, that’s not at all silly, and this is a really bad counterargument. The idea that Israelite’s wanted to just prove that their God was the best God, and so invented a whole history of slavery under Egyptians for the sole purpose of proving the superiority of their own deity, is frankly absurd. This would require everything all the way down to the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt was devised for this sole, eventual purpose, that actually comes about in a different text. Scholars on the issue but who do not accept the historicity of the Exodus are far more sophisticated than what you’ve offered. For those who do not think it happened, they appeal to reshaped and re-remembered cultural memory of Egyptian hegemony over Canaan, or perhaps conflation of stories from a slow trickling of escaped slaves from Egypt into Canaan over centuries. But almost everyone agrees that there very well could have been a group of a couple hundred or a couple thousand Asiatic slaves to make their way into Canaan. And finally, you write;
“Furthermore, as I explain in the article above, the Book of Exodus was most likely composed while the Jews were living in captivity in Babylon. A story about their ancestors being rescued from slavery in Egypt by their god YHWH would have therefore been seen as comforting, because it would have reassured them that YHWH would rescue them from their current captivity—just as he had rescued their ancestors all those centuries ago.”
Once again, this is extremely confused and no serious scholar, perhaps some unlettered minimalists, could possibly suggest this. Everyone agrees that the story of the Exodus far predates the Babylonian exile, even if it was only written down then. This can, in fact, be directly proven.
Hosea 12:13: The Lord used a prophet to bring Israel up from Egypt, by a prophet he cared for him.
Everyone dates Hosea to the 8th century BC (like Amos), and here’s a clear reference to the Exodus. In addition, the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) is a form of archaic poetry that everyone agrees goes back even further. So no, the Exodus story was not invented to “comfort” anyone. In addition, the logic does not follow. The Jews in Babylon wanted comfort, and so they invented that they escaped from Egypt? Clearly there’s a lot of missing steps here. In any case, you should do your research before writing these articles or comments. Since you don’t really list sources here, the average person can’t just fact-check you like they would normally do.
Corrections and clarficiations:
I wrote: “In other words, your explanation is factually wrong – the author of the Book of Exodus didn’t simply borrow whatever Egyptian names he knew of at the time, because the author of the Book of Exodus lived in the exilic period”. This is demonstrated because, if the names were taken in the 2nd millennium BC, then they had already been part of the exodus story for centuries and it was certainly not the author of the Book of Exodus who could have made it up (which, as I demonstrated, is an absurd suggestion).
I wrote: “Once again, this is extremely confused and no serious scholar, perhaps some unlettered minimalists, could possibly suggest this.” I meant to say “except perhaps”, not just “perhaps”.
I wrote: “So no, the Exodus story was not invented to “comfort” anyone. In addition, the logic does not follow.” This refers to the argument that the Exodus could possibly have been made up to comfort the Jews during the Babylonian exile. Since it predates the Babylonian exile by at least centuries, that explanation is impossible.
I don’t have time to respond to all your very lengthy comments here, since I am very busy with schoolwork, but I feel I should note that you are attacking a straw man.
I have never at any point argued that no version of the Exodus legend existed prior to the Babylonian exile, nor have I at any point argued that the story of the Exodus was invented entirely out of whole cloth during the Babylonian exile. On the contrary, in my article above, I mention that the Israelites probably had some kind of Exodus story before the period of the Babylonian exile. My argument here is that the version of the Exodus myth that has been passed down to us in the Book of Exodus is a product of the Babylonian exile and is fundamentally shaped by the concerns that the Jewish elites were facing at the time.
Likewise, I never argued that the Israelites “invented a whole history of slavery under Egyptians for the sole purpose of proving the superiority of their own deity.” All I argued is that there are plausible reasons why the ancient Israelites might have told a story about their ancestors having been enslaved in Egypt other than that their ancestors actually were enslaved in Egypt, that the superiority of YHWH over the Egyptian deities is an important aspect of the Exodus story as it is recorded in the Book of Exodus, and that this is one of several reasons why the story of the Exodus may have had appeal. I said nothing about the story being “invented” out of whole cloth for this sole, explicit purpose. On the contrary, I personally think that the story of the Exodus most likely developed gradually over time and that it was not wholly “invented” by any single author.
I also don’t deny the possibility that, at some point, a small group of enslaved people speaking a Canaanite language could have escaped from Egypt and become a part of the Israelite population and that their experiences may have later been exaggerated into the Exodus legend. I, however, see no reason to assume that something like this must have happened, since I think it is possible to explain the existence of the Exodus story without assuming from the beginning that it must automatically have some basis in historical fact.
Moreover, even if there was a historical event that inspired the beginning of the Exodus legend, I see no justification for calling this “the historical Exodus,” since it must have been something markedly different both in nature and in scale from the story that is recorded in the Book of Exodus. If there was some kind of historical event that inspired the beginning of the Exodus legend, we have no way of knowing what it was, since we cannot trace it or its eventual development into the story that we are familiar with today.
I do not think that the “Song of the Sea” proves that the Exodus really happened. For one thing, it is impossible to date the poem with both precision and accuracy, since our surviving corpus of extremely early Hebrew literature is so small that there isn’t much to compare it to and it is possible for people to imitate older language and older styles of poetry. I think that some version of the “Song of the Sea” probably predates the Babylonian exile, but I don’t think it goes all the way back to the second millennium BCE.
In any case, even if the “Song of the Sea” were composed in the second millennium BCE, this would only prove that some version of the Exodus story was being told at that time; it would not prove that the Exodus really happened historically, nor would it prove that the Exodus story being told at the time the poem was composed was identical to the story presented in the Book of Exodus as we have it today.
Just saw this. This is a markedly more restrained comment and tone than you offered in your article, so it seems you’ve fine-tuned your position to some extent. You could argue that it was largely devised in the Babylonian exile, but I find this lacking much evidence. Whose to say this didn’t happen in the Assyrian period, or earlier? Likewise, your explanation for inventing a whole history of enslavement in Egypt (helping to establish the superiority of a deity??) is dramatically unconvincing. Dramatically more convincing is the position of the majority, i.e. that a historical event lies behind the story in its current form that was exaggerated over time (entirely in keeping, of course, with the nature of pre-modern historiography – see Joshua Berman’s paper “But is it History?”).
Of course the Song of the Sea doesn’t prove the exodus happened, nevertheless, the bulk of the philological evidence imputes a date of about 950 BC or earlier to it. I don’t know why your opinion on the dating of this passage contradicts the clear bulk of the scholarship on the topic. What this shows is that the exodus story is an extremely early on. Joshua Berman has also showed direct borrowing of Exodus 15 from Ramesses II’s Kadesh inscription. On that note, there’s a whole comment of mine further below you missed.
I haven’t really changed my position; I’ve only expressed it differently. I still think that no event that is worth calling “the Exodus” actually happened in historical reality. For what it’s worth, I have a very similar opinion with regard to the Trojan War.
As for your comment below, I haven’t “missed” it; I’ve read all your comments in their entirety. The problem is that all your comments are long, I get literally dozens of comments on my website every week nowadays, I have extremely little time for responding to comments, and it takes at least half an hour to an hour to write a proper response to a long comment. I genuinely do not have time to respond to every comment that every person writes.
I am also fascinated by Jewish and Egyptian history and read your article with interest. I have come accross a thesis at Sorbonne Paris France by two quiet gentleman. This was translated by Lous Banta and he did good job. The two quiet gentlemen are Jewish rabbi and obviously have access to old documents and folklore that we never see.
They pose answers to the better part of your questions and I would suggest you download the book that followed the translation. If you are not aware of it yet I think you will not put it down and look totally different at old Jewish history.
In short everyone ignore the chronological problem. The Jews moved out of Egypt – years before the Jews even existed. Yes they rewrote their history to ” hide” the egyptian origin. Moses is short for a pharoah / Abraham probably existed as Ab Rah Hor and Miriam as Meri Amun.
Download ” Secrets of the Exodus” by Messod and Roger Sabbah and I look forward to your article after you devoured this information.
Bux
With all due respect, here is a scholar and source that shows both the events of The Exodus and the historicity of Christ to be authenticated: https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/is-the-exodus-historical
Check out Module #4 for Jesus: https://magiscenter.com/7-essential-modules/
In Christ & Mary,
Dennis
This is the worst analysis of the Exodus text that I’ve, quite frankly, ever read. Sorry, but virtually no credible archaeologist could agree with an analysis this simplistic. Maybe Thomas Thompson would but, then again, Thompson is not an archaeologist or an Egyptologist but a biblical historian and, more importantly, a minimalist – and minimalists are not taken very seriously by any archaeologists. Even Israel Finkelstein refuses to associate himself with the minimalist group. Then again, it’s more than obvious that this article was written with virtually zero engagement of any literature outside that written by the small group of minimalists.
Is the name of the pharaoh ever mentioned? No, but the city of “Ramesses” is quite explicitly referred to in Exodus 1:11. Given the fact that it was built by Ramesses himself, the most famous pharaoh of Egyptian history, that itself is a bit of a problem for the tangled idea. The name “Ramesses” almost disappears after the Ramesside era, but there are a few, wide and far references to the name here and there over the next millennium. In other words, it’s a big bell ringer for traditions that go back to the 2nd millennium BC. In addition, Ramesses is described as a store city. This almost certainly refers to the massive storage depots located at the site which supplied major areas with vast quantities of food (see David Falk, “Brick by Brick: What did the Israelite’s Build in Egypt”, BAR, 2020). And that Ramesses contained such massive storage depots is certainly is not memory that post-dates the Ramesside era.
Per Pithom, I can’t blame you for only knowing outside of what Lemche has stated, but there’s a Ramesside site that happens to be called Tell el-Retaba. The name Per-Atum initially applied to this place and, after it ceased to exist, the name was moved to Tell el-Muskhata. Manfred Bietak writes;
“Pithom was a toponym known from the Ramesside Period onwards. It ties up with Per-Atum (the house of the primeval sun god Atum) and is most likely identifiable with the fortress and town at Tell el-Retaba in the Wadi Tumilat, including impressive Ramesside remains. The location of Pithom at Wadi Tumilat is, apart from pap. Anastasi VI, inferable from Herodotus II:158 (there as Patumos). Its identification with Tell el-Maskhuta can be at best considered a relocation of the temple of Pi-Atum from Tell el Retaba to Tell el-Maskhuta.”
Manfred Bietak, “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Israels Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective, Springer, 2015, pg. 26
Amazingly enough, both Pi-Ramesses and Pithom were named under the reign of Ramesses II. Another miraculous coincidence, I guess.
Much of the post is a complete and utter strawman. Sorry mate, but it’s not 3 million Israelite’s suddenly leaving or nothing at all happened ever. The census list of the population of Israelite’s in Numbers is obviously gigantic literary exaggeration, and various other texts in the Pentateuch point to an exponentially lower number of Israelite’s (Exodus 23:29-30; Numbers 3:42-43; Deuteronomy 7:7). From these texts, the number of intended Israelite’s could very well have been in the couple of hundreds or couple thousand at best. And almost everyone accepts that there were a couple hundred to a couple thousand who took off at some point, almost certainly in the time of Ramesses II – at least among archaeologists and Egyptologists. Since we can only expect a couple hundred to a couple thousand to have left, the lack of archaeological remains is a red herring. The 40 year wandering is also a red herring. Obviously, “40 years” is just biblical numerology for “a generation”, and the whole idea was that the Israelite’s wandered in the dessert for 40 years (== a generation) so that the older generation of Israelite’s would not live to join the promised land, and only the new generation would. In other words, the wandering is an intentional story to teach a moral message. The Israelite’s probably got to Canaan relatively quickly.
I love the italicized “really” in one of your subheadings “When the Book of Exodus was really written”. Of course, it was written sometime in the exile or something. But that, too, is a red herring. Almost everyone agrees that the Song of the Sea, though first written down then with the rest of the text, goes back to the 2nd millennium BC. See, for example, Brian Russel’s The Song of the Sea: The Date of Composition and Influence of Exodus 15:1-21 (2007). Plenty else clearly goes back to the 2nd millennium BC. Various individuals mentioned in Exodus have Egyptian names – and some of those Egyptian names are only attested from the 2nd millennium BC (Richard Hess, “Onomastics of the Exodus Generation in the Book of Exodus” in Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?, Eisenbrauns, 2017, pp. 37-48). No archaeologist would disagree with that. Benjamin Noonan’s massive linguistic analysis on the whole Bible shows that the grammar of Exodus is about as Egyptianized as the dialect of Egyptian Aramaic (as can be seen in the Elephantine papyri, for example). What’s more, he finds that there are some grammatical features preserved that date back to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC.
The question is not whether or not an exodus happened. Without strawmanning how it had to be, almost everyone agrees that some sort of exodus out of Egypt took place – a couple hundred to a couple thousand (read: NOT “hundreds of thousands”) around the reign of Ramesses II took off to Canaan. And various traditions surrounding it certainly go back to the 2nd millennium BC. Asiatics lived in Egypt all throughout the 2nd millennium BC. Heck, the Hyksos dynasty was basically all Asiatics concentrated at the site of Avaris (which is located 2km south of Pi-Ramesses). Asiatic slaves existed in Egypt throughout the entire 2nd millennium BC. In fact, the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC) in specific can be described as “the epoch of foreign slavery” per Egyptologists (Antonio Loprieno, “Slaves and Servitude”, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012). I can go on and on and on, but it wouldn’t hurt to do an iota of research.
Also should probably drop this quote here from Na’aman, someone who doesn’t actually think there was an exodus:
“Since in most cases, nomads do not leave remains that archaeologists can identify in the area, it is insignificant that remains of pastoral nomadic groups have not been discovered either in the Egyptian Delta or in the Sinai Peninsula. Thus, clearly, archaeology is of no help in the debate over the historicity of the Exodus story.”
Nadav Na’aman, “The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition”, Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions (2011), pg. 56