Q&A: The Exodus from Egypt
The Exodus from Egypt
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Based on what we know, the demographics of Egypt’s population in the years dated to the Exodus from Egypt were no more than 4–5 million people,
whereas in the Exodus from Egypt, together with the mixed multitude, about 6 million people left!
That means that in realistic terms all of Egypt went out with the Jews, and we’re still missing another million people….
So in practice, on the face of it, this doesn’t make sense at all — it’s really an overdraft of people.
What does the Rabbi say about this alleged proof against the truth of Judaism?
Is the Rabbi familiar with this argument?
Answer
Well, the wording “proof against the truth of Judaism” is a bit bombastic.
There are calculations within the Torah that show that the number of those who left was probably not literal (calculations involving the number of firstborns, among other things). It may be that the number 600,000 is typological, as the Maharal writes, meaning that the entire people went out. But in actual fact we may be talking about a few thousand.
Beyond that, these historical calculations themselves need to be examined carefully, because in these fields there is a great deal of speculation. In particular, one must check whether slaves were included in the total count, or whether they counted only citizens.
Discussion on Answer
P.S.
What the Rabbi is saying is a bit problematic:
“And these are those who were counted of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses: all those who were counted of the camps according to their hosts were six hundred and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. But the Levites were not counted among the children of Israel, as the Lord commanded Moses. Thus did the children of Israel; according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so they encamped by their standards, and so they set out, each one by his families, according to his fathers’ houses.”
Apparently it really is six hundred thousand.
Indeed, it is clear that this is not the plain meaning of the Torah. But as I said, there are several points here that require examination.
Does the Rabbi think it’s possible that science’s estimated number for Egypt’s population is incorrect?
Does the Rabbi think it’s possible that a quarter of Egypt’s population (because yes, there are maximum statistics that support this) was Jewish?
And there is no testimony to that? This is a major crisis after all….
Can you show where you got the idea that 6 million left Egypt, including children, old people, sons, daughters, and the mixed multitude?
Moshe — I have a tradition from my forefathers that in the pyramid southeast of Egypt near the city of Raamses there is a scroll hidden between the stones of the inner pyramid, and they also hid Moses’ ark in the pyramid. Do you know anything about that?
But it explicitly says exactly how many there were in each tribe, so it can’t be typological.
In the book of Numbers (3:43) it says that the count of firstborn males in Israel from one month old and up was 22,273.
Assuming the number of males and females is equal, all the firstborns (sons and daughters) in that generation were 44,546.
Assuming every family has a father, a mother, and eight children, the number of all those who left Egypt, men and women, of all ages, is 445,460.
And of course we should remember that not every family has 8 children.
I understood what you wrote, but it doesn’t answer my question:
How did you get to 6 m i l l i o n
and not half a million?
Regarding the calculation of the firstborns in the wilderness, see Rabbi Elhanan Samet’s article on that Torah portion.
He says that it goes back to the Exodus from Egypt.
And regarding the question of the word “thousand,” which certainly does not mean family,
it is still possible to interpret it in terms of families, and true, it is forced, but still.
For example: “according to their hosts were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty” —
six hundred families, plus 3,550 people.
(When “elef” is said in the singular it means a family, and in the plural it means 1,000.)
And one can still compare with other examples and press the point.
In any case,
assuming each generation = 20 years,
then in order to reach roughly the number of 2.4 million people who left Egypt,
you need each set of parents to have about 5.2 children. (Everything rounded.) Let’s say even 6 children.
And about this the Torah already says, “and they were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied very, very much,” to the point that the Sages say that six were born from one womb (it may be that they include the people who died, according to the midrash, in the plague of darkness),
which means that apparently the Egyptians had only about 3 children….
And the plague of the firstborn killed all the firstborns in Egypt, meaning that the calculations made today are not correct, and need to be multiplied by the dead firstborn — meaning by 1.5,
so assuming the calculation is five million (and even that is very speculative — see the site from which you took those numbers),
then it may actually have to be more than 7.5 million, and so on.
So if the Jewish population was a quarter of Egypt, now it stands at 1/6, and so on,
and it may be that Egypt’s population was in fact somewhat larger than those estimates.
In short, it needs to be checked more carefully at the source site: http://reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/index.html
See here for my detailed breakdown about remains in the wilderness, Egypt, and the possibility of attributing the number of the children of Israel to a typological number
https://mikyab.net/Responsa/The Exodus from Egypt in Archaeology-2/#answer-1942&comment=2983
If the Rabbi agrees, I suggest continuing the discussion there for the sake of concentrating the material in one question.
I would suggest opening a somewhat more formal page on the matter,
because this topic troubles many people. Streetwise teenagers love using it (with lots of inaccuracies; for example, the six million figure, if I’m not mistaken, comes from that).
It is written in the Torah that the Egyptians were afraid of the children of Israel,
To illustrate what it means for a quarter of the people, it would be nice to take the minorities here,
for example, let’s focus on the Arabs.
For the sake of the example, let’s imagine there were not all the Arabs in the country and not the Arabs in the Gaza Strip, but only the Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
The question everyone should ask himself is whether it is really so far-fetched that the population of the children of Israel would be a quarter, just as today the Arabs in Judea and Samaria are a quarter of the Jews.
The real question that should be asked is:
Why did crazy Pharaoh say to kill all the newborn males, instead of selling the Jews to foreign lands while they were still young? That way the number of Jews would decrease and he’d also profit from the sale. In the same way he could have sold whole families into slavery in different countries around the world — what are the chances they’d come back to take revenge on him while still slaves? Zero.
This thought comes from the Scroll of Esther: “Had we only been sold as slaves and bondwomen, I would have kept silent,” Esther said to Ahasuerus!
Including the slaves….
Even if it’s typological, the Rabbi should remember that they left Egypt in clans…..
And besides, this weakens Judaism the moment the Rabbi retreats on the number of witnesses..
But respected professors write this….