Hello Rabbi.
I’ll clarify the point of difficulty, and I’m sure that as a man of science you’ll understand what I mean.
The archaeologists claim that evidence of the Israelites’ stay in Egypt (the place is known, unlike the wilderness) and of the events of the Exodus had to have been found.
What evidence? I can assume that they know how to answer that question, and are not just asking for evidence that is impossible to find or does not exist (buttons), but rather evidence that has often been found in connection with other historical events, for example: inscriptions and carvings written by the Egyptians (who left behind quite a few inscriptions), evidence of Egypt’s decline in power (which presumably happened after the Exodus), and the like—and from all this, nothing has been found.
Now—I, who understand absolutely nothing about archaeology, am going to come and raise objections to the archaeologists’ claims, such as: “What are you expecting to find?” “Many events have no evidence”? That really reminds me of the way Christian creationists throw out objections to evolution (and there are indeed objections), like: “There are no fossils of intermediate stages,” and on that basis reject evolution, creating pseudoscience for themselves while ignoring the whole chain of evidence in favor of evolution.
That is how I feel in this matter: that the Rabbi raises simple objections to the archaeologists as if they were a bunch of fools looking for things that don’t exist, and as if they all united against the Torah of Israel, instead of addressing this matter in a deep and serious way.
As for the papyrus, don’t the atheists mock this claim justifiably? The archaeologists date it to a different period, so to use it as evidence against the opinion of all the archaeologists is really pseudoscience.
This is well reflected by the fact that the Rabbi directs me to an expert with no academic background at all (Moshe Levi), perhaps because there are no experts (God-fearing ones) with degrees who deal with this?
If one wants to clarify the subject, one needs to bring examples of historical events that have no evidence, and so on.
Because when you think about it, it is strange that there is no evidence for the Israelites’ stay in Egypt, so it is strange to me that this doesn’t trouble the Rabbi. Has the Rabbi never looked into this issue for himself?
I don’t know any experts who deal with the matter, and I thought the Rabbi might know from his academic background.
I’d be glad for a response.

I also don’t have orderly knowledge on the subject, but I read quite a lot in the past. It seems to me that from the entire kingdom of Israel there is not much evidence, and I’m talking about the period of the divided monarchy, which even Finkelstein accepts. One also has to know that archaeological excavations are not carried out along obscure routes in the desert, but usually in cities known to have been inhabited. Also, usually the only thing that survives is pottery, and when inscriptions are found it is only in royal cities and the like, as in Egypt, where all the inscriptions are somehow connected to the king, etc., as in the Egyptian royal city of el-Amarna. Even in Jerusalem, which is a royal city, they found maybe 4 or 5 inscriptions, some of which are hard even to read as inscriptions, since they’re just a few sentences. And in general, in the whole Land of Israel I think you could count on two hands all the inscriptions (aside from bullae, and even those are relatively few compared to the number of people and officials there, and they too were preserved only accidentally through a fire that broke out in the records room) that have survived.

Sorry, I couldn’t fit everything into one comment—a technical limitation…
that survived out of hundreds of years of rule and monarchy, even according to the minimalists. Moreover, even someone who does not accept Velikovsky’s brilliant series of books as entirely reliable should still read it in order to understand how much archaeological science, by definition as a science but without being able to establish a systematic method, is forced to mix hypotheses with truths and answer weighty historical questions with all sorts of speculations, because there is no value in a scientist saying “I don’t know,” and he is forced to say the best he has. But for someone who is not a professional, it is hard to tell what he is saying out of solid knowledge and what he is saying because he has nothing better to say. By the way, I recall that when I dealt with this issue there was a very successful website called “The Age of the Bible” that helped me a lot.
All the best.

Also, Yitzhak Mitleis is an observant archaeologist and… a student of Finkelstein, and he wrote a book on the subject. I don’t remember whether he touches on the Exodus from Egypt, but he does discuss the conquest of the land at length. Also, there is “The Bible Unearthed,” which I don’t know, but which is quoted many times in this context….

See the book by Daniel Moshe Levi and Yosef Goldman, Bible and Archaeology, on the Da’at website. They discuss the problematic nature of dating the Egyptian royal dynasties, which is based on Egyptian chronology from a later period; in their opinion it contains duplications based on a mixture of ancient sources. Among other things, they show that there are entire dynasties for which there is a mismatch between what is told about them and the archaeological evidence in the periods in which they were supposed to have existed.
In any case, there is mention in Egyptian documents of Apiru tribes in Egypt and Shasu tribes in the Sinai wilderness, who may have been our ancestors, the Israelites. I do not expect an Egyptian chronicle to tell of the plagues that struck the kingdom. The only ancient historiography that is not ashamed of its failures is the Bible!

There is a book by Dr. Mitleis, Excavating the Bible. He talks less about the Exodus from Egypt, but he goes into the conquest of the land in detail. He also has a few videos on YouTube, one of them about the dating of the Exodus. Whenever you hear religious PhDs on these topics, they always claim that much ink has already been spilled on the matter. (They say, about almost every find that contradicts the Bible, that there are many studies!!) Sometimes I found a few studies on the subject. The problem is that when you search online, you find nothing! Unfortunately…. It seems to me that the relevant material is in university libraries, like Bar-Ilan. And it’s time for this to be made available to the public, because on the internet the war was settled long ago, unfortunately.

I’d be glad for a response from the Rabbi to my message beginning with the words: “I’ll clarify the difficulty”…

It is impossible to upload all the scientific literature written around the world over many decades to the internet. Anyone who wants to investigate a subject thoroughly needs to check books. For that purpose there are central libraries where thousands upon thousands of books are concentrated for on-site study and lending. The internet helps in locating sources, but it cannot serve as a substitute for in-depth study.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

I’m not arguing with feelings, and certainly not with appeals to authority (= how can we argue with the archaeologists, who are experts). If you assume they are experts and can’t be argued with, then the discussion is over.
I referred you (and others later added more following what I wrote here) to other experts, and that is enough. All the best.

Hello Rabbi, and thank you very much for the responses. One last response, in summary:
A) How does the Rabbi answer (to himself or to others) the claim that no find has been discovered for the Exodus from Egypt? That one shouldn’t have expected to find one? That one doesn’t always find one?
B) The feelings I expressed aren’t feelings but questions, and the question is whether it is not proper to accept the opinion of the majority of archaeologists just as it is proper to accept the opinion of the majority of biologists, for example?

A. I already answered (both answers are correct. Add to them that the event was not necessarily on the epic scale as described in the Torah).
B. I also answered. No (because archaeology is far from being an exact science, and also because the discussions in it are saturated with ideology, and I do not trust the positions of researchers).

Hello. Here are a number of enlightening articles—I selected them from many. One of them charmingly crushes Finkelstein: regarding the claim that no written or archaeological findings were found and therefore there was no Exodus from Egypt—well, even concerning the Hyksos, a Semitic people that ruled Egypt for more than a hundred years, no archaeological findings and no written findings were found. These were not neglected slaves but rulers of the empire, and the Egyptians simply did not write about them—or alternatively erased all information about them after defeating them. They became known only from the writings of Herodotus, hundreds of years later, and from there the detective work following their traces began. From this we learn that not seeing is not proof:
https://mafyahu.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/%D7%93%D7%94-%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A7%%D7%94%D7%93%D7%94-%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%94-7-%D7%9E%D7%94/

The second—an academic article nicely explaining the plausibility of the Exodus, by Dr. Joshua Berman:

פואמת קדש: חיזוק לנרטיב המקראי

מי מפחד מהתנ"ך: האם הייתה יציאת מצרים?

Click to access 8D2B41C5-FA5A-A4AF-0C77-5A3BE2D7C006.pdf

Click to access 6A9825E1-0E26-E2DF-6238-339C071185F0.pdf

I’ll be brief for now. Also look up Yoel Elitzur, and look up Haggai Misgav. They understand these matters very well.
And there is a lot of material on the altar on Mount Ebal, which proves both the reliability of the Bible in the physical sense and the antiquity of (part of) Deuteronomy in the textual sense, and therefore it is stuck like a bone in the throat of the deniers. See the sharp survey by a senior archaeologist in his article “My Enlightened Archaeologist Brothers”: http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1295661
Success,
and many thanks to Rabbi Michi for the wonderful website
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it”

Thanks to all the readers who know more than I do for the assistance. Here is an example of the cooperation I spoke about in the column on going off the religious path.

Hello Moshe.
Since I have dealt a bit with the subject, I’ll expand on it.
I think the communication gap between you and the Rabbi stems from his being a man of the exact sciences who is very familiar with the shortcomings of non-exact sciences, and therefore he sees no need to elaborate on the matter.
The excessive confidence with which experts in these fields speak is what causes the feeling you describe.
For example: when Professor Finkelstein states categorically that the united monarchy of Israel never existed, he backs up his words with the “crushing” fact: “Not a single piece of evidence for the existence of such a kingdom has been found.”
But anyone who reads a bit on Wikipedia under the entry “Biblical archaeology—the united monarchy” will be surprised to discover that many archaeologists (from the Hebrew University) vehemently dispute this claim and say that Finkelstein completely ignores the findings, including some that were discovered only recently.
But Finkelstein climbed a high tree and cannot get down from it when new findings are discovered.
They go on to explain the lack of findings by the fact that much construction took place over the years in the City of David.
Did Finkelstein not hear that claim? From here I come to the important point: the exact sciences (mathematics, and usually also physics and biology) have created for themselves, quite justifiably, an aura of sanctity and certainty in their knowledge. (Of course, anyone with sense understands that even in the exact sciences, fully accepted theories can certainly collapse—and that happens from time to time even nowadays.) The non-exact sciences hitch a ride on the exact sciences and present their claims as if everything were certain to them.
Take for example Talmud research. Anyone who goes through the books of the early scholars from the Haskalah period will remain stunned by the embarrassing mistakes those “researchers” made and the baseless theories they tossed into the air under the cloak of “science.” It is unbelievable what educated people said, whose supposed aim was objectivity but who in fact held many other assumptions (they explained many things in the Talmud as imitation of Persian or Greek culture and the like, but the comparisons are ridiculous). For many striking examples, see Joshua Enbal’s book Oral Torah, pp. 68–85.

Another field in which this issue is amazingly expressed is biblical criticism.
Despite the many correct things said by biblical critics, anyone with some familiarity with this literature knows many examples of utterly baseless inferences at best and absurd ones at worst, which biblical scholars present as “scientific research.”
I quote, for example, a short paragraph from the Wikipedia entry “Tree of Life”:
“Some believe that the Tree of Life is a late addition to the biblical Garden of Eden story and did not originally appear in it. The reason is that the tree is mentioned only at the beginning and end of the story, whereas the body of the story deals only with the Tree of Knowledge.” The intelligent reader can judge for himself.
Biblical critics laughed at the “absurd” interpretation of the Sages of the Hebrew Bible—and created for themselves, in many places (again, not everywhere), a dubious interpretation riddled with fantasies.
But the naïve reader (often also the skeptical atheist) does not dare declare aloud that “the emperor has no clothes,” because it doesn’t seem plausible that a researcher/professor/doctor would say something so ridiculous. But for someone who knows their claims, the truth slaps you in the face.
Researchers sometimes say bizarre things which, had they come from religious people, people would laugh in their faces (and justifiably), but the “titles” protect the experts from the sword of criticism, because who can question experts? They know everything (“surely they have an answer to that”), and anyone who dares say something different from the academic consensus is publicly stoned.
The sharp atheist, who usually argues and examines every claim, exempts himself from really dealing with these subjects because “most professors say otherwise.” There is no answer to an innocent claim that ignores the obvious fact that in non-exact sciences, the researcher’s conclusions derive directly from his worldview and preconceptions.
Imagine: is it a coincidence that scholars at the Hebrew University accept the Bible as a more factual source (not entirely) than at Tel Aviv University, where they suspect the Bible of lying more than any other historical source?
Each side explains the findings in its own direction.
And similarly each side explains the lack of findings according to its own approach.
Therefore I also do not accept attempts to prove the Bible from archaeology; there is no point doing so because we are not dealing with an exact science.
A different field, but similar, is criminal law. Israel has experienced two especially stormy cases in recent years: the Roman Zadorov case and Nissim Haddad (see there).
Anyone familiar with these cases in depth knows that the answers to questions such as: “Should there have been forensic evidence?” “Do the confession and reconstruction match the pathological data?” (a dispute that is supposedly factual and not interpretive) “Are the shoe prints those of the suspect?”—all depend on which side the expert is on, the prosecution or the defense.
Take the issue of the shoe prints, for example. This is not an exact science, so is it any wonder that an expert for the defense determines with high probability that the shoe belongs to the suspect, while an American expert says it is impossible to determine whether it is even a shoe print (notice the distance between the experts’ views)?
A striking example of this can be seen in the case of Dr. Maya Forman-Raznik, who claimed from the beginning of the Zadorov affair, against all the experts, that the knife with which the murder was committed was serrated, not smooth. The reactions against her were vicious. The experts and judges treated her like someone who understands nothing in the field, like a fraud misleading the public, etc. They canceled her appointment to an important position at the Institute of Forensic Medicine and slandered her (whoever wants to see the exact quotations can find them online). The result is well known: on appeal to the Supreme Court, the court criticized the district court on this point, to the extent that it was forced to retract and admit she was right and even compensate her with thousands of shekels.
Regarding the Institute of Forensic Medicine, heavy suspicions have arisen (and well-founded ones—see “Uvda” about Haddad) concerning the manipulation of pathological reports at the prosecution’s request. A report on the subject is supposed to be published very soon.

It is important to remember that the institute decides people’s fates with its reports. This is a body whose decisions have heavy consequences, not a body like the academic establishment where it makes no practical difference which king ruled in which year in Egypt.
If there are biases, fraud, and inaccuracies there, is the academic establishment free of them?
Back to archaeology: here is a quote from Wikipedia showing how even carbon-14 testing, which seems impossible to challenge, gets different results depending on the opinions of the testers:
“Carbon-14 dating tests, which can date archaeological layers by chemical tests, supported Finkelstein’s low chronology. However, Saar Ganor, together with Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, published a carbon-14 test that contradicts Finkelstein’s method and supports the traditional dating.”
I am not claiming that one test can give two different results (an error like that is rare). The point is that this again shows that everything depends on where you test and what you measure.
And what would we have done without Yosef Garfinkel (who had motivation to strengthen his non-minimalist position)? We would have remained with the “crushing fact” that scientific dating proves Finkelstein’s view unequivocally, and we would have been considered supporters of pseudoscience had we continued believing in the united monarchy according to the Hebrew University.
See an article in which archaeologist Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis claims that Tel Aviv University ignores findings and distorts them to fit the theory they built:
www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/190230
And also see Mitleis’s lecture regarding the dating of the Exodus from Egypt.
And see in the previous comments the enlightening lecture of Professor Adam Zertal, who claims something similar about Finkelstein regarding the altar found on Mount Ebal, and the intelligent viewer will decide whether there is no bias in the interpretation of the finds according to the archaeologist’s side.
See an article about Zertal

Zertal claims there are also findings that fit what is described in the Bible regarding the Exodus from Egypt. He was one of the most important archaeologists, managed the entire Manasseh Hill Country survey, and was not religious.
The amazing thing is that many atheists excuse themselves from substantive discussion with the claim: “That archaeologist is religious”—such a foolish claim that it is hard to believe it comes from the mouths of people who consider themselves thinkers.
In their view, you need two degrees for your opinion to count: professor (preferably from Tel Aviv University) and secular.
Zertal was not religious, but he was a believer, so maybe we should add one more condition: you have to be an atheist. And with those three conditions combined we arrive at pure objectivity.
So yes, professors who accept the Exodus from Egypt (even if not on the scale described in the Bible), and whom it does not trouble that “there isn’t a single piece of evidence,” certainly do exist, and not all of them are religious.
It doesn’t trouble them because in their opinion there is some evidence.
For example, if the Apiru tribe (-Abiru, Hebrews, because b and p interchange) is indeed Israel, then there is Egyptian documentation about it.
Back to Zertal: here is a quote from Wikipedia: in 1991 Professor Larry Stager of Harvard University said regarding the findings: “If a burnt-offering altar stood on Mount Ebal, the impact on our research is revolutionary. All of us (biblical archaeologists) must go back to kindergarten.”
From here we learn two things:
A) Why certain archaeologists rejected his claims—because it ruins a life’s work and whole books they wrote.
B) How an archaeological theory that is “solid and proven” can collapse because of one altar that is found.
Regarding your desire that only experts with academic degrees speak on these matters—I can understand that. It comes from the fear that this is a pseudoscientific person bringing half-truths and distorting facts.
I don’t know whether it is worth dismissing that outright because of such fears; one should simply examine each case on its own.
Do atheists refrain from expressing opinions in fields where they have no formal education?
To sum up, archaeology is not a problematic field, together with the known fact that the Bible does not always tell the historical story, but the important messages to be taken from it.

Honorable Rabbi, hello –

It’s not so simple. The claim that they should have found something is based on the fact that from prehistoric periods we find evidence (sporadic, true) of societies that contained at most twenty people and lived in each settlement place only for a short time, as well as evidence of their pens and so on; whereas a story about 600,000 men, besides children, wandering for 40 years in the desert (and whose culture was much more developed—they had pottery vessels, for example) together with all their donkeys and livestock—does not yield even a single piece of evidence. And it’s not as though the Sinai desert was not surveyed. True, I wouldn’t expect to find every settlement station of this mighty people. But I would expect that considering the efforts that were made, at least one nomadic station would be found (yes, nomadic stations can be identified in archaeology) dated to the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Sinai desert. This is not “I didn’t find”; this is “I labored and did not find,” and at least from what I remember—about that it was said: “Do not believe.”

And also regarding the discussions about the united monarchy, there is a lot to expand on, but I’ll go into it briefly: Yadin argued that he had found Solomon’s architectural style: at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer a uniform gate type was found (“the six-chambered gate”), and since they are mentioned in one verse as cities that Solomon built, those gates were dated to Solomon’s period, and thus evidence was found for the period of the great and powerful united monarchy, glorious and fortified.
But the problem is that, at least in Megiddo, the pottery associated with this stage of the gate is dated, in light of the excavations at Jezreel, to the time of Ahab. Now—there simply is no city at Hazor before this stage, and after the Bronze Age, that belongs to the Canaanite period. There is a barely-there rural settlement, whose meager remains are cut through by the wall that goes together with the gate Yadin attributed to Solomon’s period. In Megiddo too there is no monumental construction before the relevant stratum (Gezer is a problematic site in terms of the area exposed there). So the conclusion is that Solomon’s kingdom was not all that. And that is really not what emerges from the verses.
So the claim that archaeologists just say things when it is unclear what they expected to find is simply not true. In a tell that has been excavated there are continuous layers; there is no reason that specifically Solomon’s layer should “disappear.”

Now, there are explanations (that the duration of time for which the pottery found at Jezreel and also associated with the monumental phase at Megiddo was in use is long—from the days of Solomon until the days of Ahab—that is not absurd). But that doesn’t “destroy” the problems; it solves them (and not all of them—for example, now it is not clear exactly about what it says in the summary of Ahab’s reign, “and all the cities that he built,” since all the cities that can be dated to his days were actually built in Solomon’s days, except Jezreel…).

In short—it is true that many finds and many assumptions are subject to dispute and interpretation. But it is not true that “there is no basis for it at all” and therefore “it isn’t interesting” and can be dismissed out of hand.

(Sorry for splitting it into three messages. Something on the site is problematic and only allows clicking the “reply” button up to a certain response length… or is that on purpose? …)

Hello Hananel.
First, your reasoning is absurd. The fact that they find evidence of 20 people does not mean they will find evidence of six hundred thousand. Only if they find evidence for every group of twenty people. Consider that carefully. That is a common statistical error (in fact that is what I discussed in post 38 on the law of small numbers).
Second, I wrote that in general I do not have much trust in archaeology. That does not mean there is no such or such claim that is worth checking and thinking about. But in dividing my time and attention I chose not to become interested in and expert in it, because it does not seem to me to have significant potential. That’s all. If there is a specific problem, one can try to think about it. Therefore I recommended turning to people whose expertise is in this.

I do not know of a limit on comment length (there have been longer comments here than these three of yours). it is worthwhile contact Oren, the site editor.

Believe me, Moshe,
instead of getting tangled up in all the verbiage of the studies, listen to Professor Adam Zertal.
He speaks well and to the point. And he also proves very well the antiquity of the Bible.
There is a light lecture of his on YouTube called “Friday in Sdeh-Hemed with Professor Adam Zertal.”

I think that alone is already enough.

Thanks for the referral to Professor Zertal’s lecture.
A fascinating lecture!

In this week’s Makor Rishon Sabbath supplement (Parashat Toledot) there is an article by Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun criticizing the television series “And the World Was Tohu and Bohu.” He addresses several of the points raised here. It still hasn’t appeared on the site yet. I assume it will go up there soon.

Here is a link to Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun’s critique (published in the Makor Rishon Sabbath supplement) of the series “And the Earth Was Tohu and Bohu”:

סדרה של תוהו ובוהו | יואל בן–נון

Interesting that M. A. keeps saying in all his books (which, aside from Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon, which is excellent, I wasn’t impressed by) that one must accept scientific conclusions and not bend them to private faith, but when it comes to archaeologists claiming there are no findings for the Exodus from Egypt, suddenly everything is fine. The experts become “experts” and everything passes smoothly. Never mind that according to the plain meaning of the text, more people left Egypt than the population of Tel Aviv, and never mind that in practice they camped most of the time in the same place and supposedly it should not be hard to locate such a place. Because after all, the story of the Exodus, with all its miracles and wonders, is from the outset a reasonable story that doesn’t need overly conclusive evidence…

To Or Novo.
Read Yair’s response above; I think everything is explained there.
The explanation in the Rabbi’s words is that there is an essential distinction between exact science and non-exact science, which is often biased by agendas.
Again I say: read Yair’s comment in the thread above, and watch Professor Adam Zertal’s lecture, and then decide again fairly.

I am completely willing to accept the scientific determination that there are no findings for the Exodus from Egypt (assuming that is correct; it is probably not precise). So what? The historical question of whether there was an Exodus from Egypt is a different question, and it depends on interpretation. That is beyond the distinction between natural sciences and humanities (which are seriously agenda-driven). Next you’ll surely ask me why I don’t accept the findings of “gender studies” or something like that.

So for what reason should one accept the story of the Exodus from Egypt, which is already an implausible story if it has no findings? And more than that—even if one accepts the existence of Abraham, because overall it is plausible that one would not be able to find where he lived, but a massive number of people who camped for almost forty years in the same place? I would very much expect findings. In this case, lack of findings is not only lack of proof, but almost a full decision in favor of the other side.
I hope the answer won’t be tradition, because good luck dealing with inventions of people from thousands of years ago, when already today you can see how people believe that the judge in the Elor Azaria case is Tali Fahima’s sister…

On what interpretation does the historical question of whether there was an Exodus from Egypt depend?

1. First, the story is not implausible. If there is a God, there is no obstacle to His performing miracles. Second, the Exodus from Egypt is not dependent on the miracles that occurred in it (those can be part of the story regardless of its factual core). And third, you can also reject the story of the Exodus from Egypt. What depends on it?
2. One should not expect findings when one does not know the place and what objects to search for.
3. The answer is definitely yes: tradition. But it is supported by side evidence. See about this in the fifth notebook and in my book Truth and Stability on the witness argument. According to your logic, one should not believe anything anyone tells you, since there are people who say that Heller is Fahima’s sister.
[The question is how long the perception that Heller is Fahima’s sister will last, and who among the public believes it. The fact that there are a few fools does not mean much.]

How is it possible not to accept the story of the Exodus from Egypt?
A) If the story of the Exodus from Egypt never happened at all, then by the same token a myth that there was a revelation at Mount Sinai could have entered the Jewish people too, no?
B) This harms the credibility of the whole Torah, for if the Exodus from Egypt did not occur, then the Torah was not given by God.
This seems to contradict the Rabbi’s critique of Rabbi Kula’s book, which says that even if there was no revelation at Mount Sinai one can still believe in the Torah.

Honorable Rabbi. There is a much simpler answer regarding the missing findings. Presumably these are pottery shards and broken vessels that should have been where they were. The Torah says that there was a miracle that during 40 years their clothing did not wear out on them (and their feet did not swell). There was a miracle that the clothes did not wear out. I assume that as part of this miracle, certainly no vessel was lost either…. In any case there are no findings to find. This is part of the miracles of the Exodus to which the Torah testifies.

1. The claim that the story is implausible is not because it is technically impossible, but because it is unlikely. Even if it is technically possible that I won the lottery, for someone to believe I won the lottery I would have to bring evidence. I have no reason to believe someone who says God performed a miracle for him (especially since I have never seen a miracle), even if technically God can perform miracles. In any case, the burden of proof is on the storyteller.
2. From that quantity of people and that amount of time, I would expect to find, for example, eating utensils, graves, maybe even scrolls. Because I’m not an expert on this subject, maybe those are things that aren’t supposed to survive such a span of time—that is already a question for the experts.
3. I’m in the middle of reading it; I’ll write my comments there.

1. What is unlikely about it? By the way, if someone claims he won the lottery, there is no reason not to believe him. For any person who wins, it is equally unlikely, and yet someone always wins.
2. It’s not only because they aren’t supposed to survive, but mainly because one does not know exactly where to look. In how many places in the Sinai desert have archaeological excavations been conducted? Beyond that, as far as I know there are findings about the Exodus from Egypt, about the crossing of the Jordan, the altar on Mount Ebal, and more—but as is the way of archaeology, there are disputes about them (usually agenda-dependent. Another reason to treat it skeptically).

To Y,
A. One can reject the Exodus from Egypt and still accept another story. Are all stories a package deal? Maimonides himself interprets part of the Torah’s stories as allegory or dream. And certainly certain details (such as some of the miracles) in the story of the Exodus can be rejected in their plain sense.
B. I didn’t understand. Why, if the Exodus from Egypt did not happen, does that mean the Torah is not from the Holy One, blessed be He? What does one have to do with the other?
C. There is no contradiction. I spoke specifically about the revelation at Mount Sinai.

1. The miracles described in it are unlikely. The more far-fetched the story is, the stronger evidence I’ll want. You would believe anyone who tells you he won the lottery?… It seems quite obvious to me that proof is needed.
2. I’ll try to read more; from what I know, I haven’t seen that there are findings on the subject.

Unrelatedly, how can one obtain That Which Is Present and That Which Is Not, Man Is as Grass, and The Spirit of Justice?

To Or Novo—I recommend that you look at the links brought above, especially Zertal’s lecture.
To Rabbi Michi—the logic seems simple to me: the Torah tells of the Exodus from Egypt as a completely real event. There is no possibility of saying it is an allegory for two reasons, either one of which is enough on its own:
A) It is absurd that it would be an allegory about an entire people (unlike the Book of Job, for example).
B) There are many commandments that are a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt.
So God commanded commandments in memory of an event that never happened?
And if so, since it is clear that the Torah claims that the Exodus from Egypt really happened, and it is not an allegory, while on the other hand we (supposedly) know for certain that it did not happen, then an error is written in the Torah.
If so, the book and the religion (for, as said, there are many commandments in memory of the Exodus) are not true, because God does not err.

I would certainly believe him if he seemed credible to me.
You can get the latter two from me. That Which Is Present can no longer be obtained, though not long ago I received notice that there is a place where it still exists, and you can check there: http://www.kodeshbook.co.il/product.asp?productid=436

To Y,
You took this too far. There was some event of the formation of the people, and the surrounding details are not essential.

Do you sell the books at Bar-Ilan University?

Yes. 052-3320543

I didn’t understand.
The discussion here is not about the surrounding details, but about the question whether we left Egypt.
A) What is the point of commanding commandments in memory of the Exodus from Egypt if it did not happen?
B) Why would the Torah tell about an event that never happened, as if it did happen?

The main discussion for me is indeed about the details. I only said that not much depends on the Exodus from Egypt as such. In the Midrash it is brought that Lot ate matzah even before Israel was in Egypt, meaning the commandments are not necessarily dependent on the Exodus itself. By the way, one can command a commandment as a remembrance of an act that is a myth, as one may say regarding the miracle of the cruse of oil. We celebrate our becoming a people through the myth of the Exodus from Egypt, and we celebrate the victory and purification of the Temple through the myth of the cruse of oil. But this is a pointless discussion. What I mean here is that there was an Exodus, but not necessarily with all the details that appear in the Bible, and certainly not in the midrashim.

Following the discussions here, and as a known archaeology enthusiast, I decided to really dig into the issue of the remains in Sinai and check for myself what the situation really is. Unlike Rabbi Michi, I was actually bothered by it, and the counterarguments seemed very apologetic to me.

As a result I read more than 12 academic articles on the issue of the Sinai desert (in addition to books that dealt with the subject in the past, such as the Encyclopedia of Israeli Archaeology and others), and I saw that the situation is not so simple as it was presented.

First, let me preface that indeed dozens of surveys were carried out in Sinai (81 in number; they stopped in 1993), and hundreds of sites from various periods were found there (mainly of the tumuli or nawamis type). The problem is that there are remains up to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age and then again from the Iron Age onward.

The only period in which there are no remains is the Late Bronze Age (the period of the Exodus from Egypt), to the point that Professor Herzog writes that no archaeologist today even tries to look for findings connected to the Israelites in the desert.

Even so, there are several research directions for answering the issue (each raised by professionals):

The preservation and research problem in the desert –

At first glance this sounds like a stupid apologetic claim, because after all remains were found from almost every period in history except this one! On the other hand, Professor Ze’ev Herzog and Finkelstein (well-known minimalists, and in different articles!) brought strong evidence as to why there is a severe problem finding remains in the desert if we are talking about temporary settlement. A few quotations to support what I’m saying:

* Professor Herzog – “There is no doubt that nomadic populations always lived and operated in the expanses of the Negev and Sinai, and they certainly left remains behind them, but these are not yet visible to the eyes of the ordinary surveyor. In order to discover the existence of the ancient camps and the sheep and camel pens beside them, new research methods must be developed; classical archaeology will not succeed here.”

* Professor Finkelstein – “For a long period … the southern nomads left behind no remains in all the broad regions of the Negev and Sinai. However, it is clear that this absence of remains does not reflect a human vacuum.”

* Professor Nadav Na’aman – “Since nomads do not leave remains that researchers can trace, the fact that no remains of nomadic shepherd groups have yet been found has no significance… archaeology has no power to assist in the debate over the historicity of the Exodus from Egypt.”

* Professor Kenneth Kitchen – “It is foolish to try to find traces of everyone who passed through the various routes of the peninsula. The state of preservation is utterly uneven… the possible absence of finds from Israel’s camp is meaningless.”

They looked in the wrong place –

The Sinai desert is enormous (2.5 times the size of the State of Israel!), so it is not unreasonable that findings would not be found. But here too one could seemingly say that if remains were found for the rest of history, it is strange that nothing was found. But it turns out… that in most of the surveys in which findings were found, this was only in places where the findings can still be seen on the surface to this day… or alternatively in areas close to known water sources, or places where there is a Bedouin tradition of settlement (such as the area identified as Kadesh-Barnea). In other words, they are searching only in very specific places.

Because of the nature of the Israelites’ wanderings (temporary), the problems raised in the previous point, and the size of Sinai, it is hard to locate findings this way. It may be that the Israelites did not pass through places where there are remains visible on the surface or Bedouin traditions about them. More than that, that is even likely.

A bit of evidence on this point—after all, the assumption in research is that the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt—best I understand, the remains of their wanderings were not found either. Likewise all the remains of the many military campaigns that passed through Sinai. Another example—there is Egyptian documentation about a tribe that lived in the Sinai desert (I don’t remember the name right now), and its traces too were never found. Israel is not the only people for whom there is documentation and yet nothing was found.

The remains were dated incorrectly –

This claim is possible; it may be that the findings attributed to the Middle Bronze Age are actually later. Why? Because due to the lack of finds that can be dated, the dating is based on very isolated data, such as the technology used by the nomads (pottery, etc.), which may simply have been less advanced among the nomads… or bones, about which some researchers say they do not teach the rule (because the structures were only for secondary burial).

Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis’s theory –

Dr. Mitleis in his book Excavating the Bible, for completely different reasons, moves the Exodus back by 200 years to the Middle Bronze Age (and brings dozens of proofs for this) and shortens the Late Bronze Age. All this brings us to the Exodus occurring in the 15th century BCE, and now if we go back for a moment to what I wrote in the introduction, we see that very near this period many finds are indeed found even in the Sinai desert (although they are a bit earlier because they are from the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, but here we’re already talking about hair-splitting: the findings fit the period, and it makes sense that the desert population would be a bit more primitive than the urban one, though one should ask Mitleis himself about this if anyone has his email).

Professor Anati – Bin-Nun theory –

Professor Anati found hundreds of findings in the Sinai desert, some of which look very similar to the biblical story (he claimed he found Mount Sinai itself—see Har Karkom on Wikipedia) that predate the biblical period by hundreds of years (and we should emphasize that everyone disputed him because of the dating). In a conversation with Rabbi Dr. Yoel Bin-Nun, Anati argued that from what he learns about the period, desert nomads tended to use existing structures and tools rather than build new ones. Therefore, even if the find is earlier, there is no reason at all it could not have been in use hundreds of years later by later nomads, and in any event it is reasonable that the find would appear early. As evidence, the Bedouins in Sinai until not long ago (!) used structures from the Early Bronze Age that still stand above ground to this day (tumuli)… and all the more so local nomads who came for a very short period.

________________________________

An answer to a question I received from Rabbi Bin-Nun on this issue:
”
My working assumption on this subject is that the Intermediate Bronze period continued in the desert throughout the entire Middle and Late Bronze Age, and that nothing replaced it –

In inhabited areas, cities and urban and rural settlements arose in the second millennium BCE, but in the desert the intermediate culture continued to exist with its characteristics – therefore, Anati’s findings (in my opinion, from Mount Paran) may be from the second half of the second millennium BCE, and the early dating depends entirely on stratigraphy in inhabited areas.

To examine this, one would need to excavate several hundred tumuli graves in the desert expanses, date fruit pits carefully, and check whether here and there one finds Middle Bronze and Late Bronze pottery shards.

In the Golan, they excavated several graves initially attributed to the Intermediate Bronze Age, and it was indeed proven that they are from the second half of the second millennium BCE.

All this requires broad preparation, and I do not know what the chances are (politically and security-wise) of carrying out such tests in Sinai, but within our Negev it is certainly possible.
I said this to Professor Anati, and he heard it, and although he tends to move the Exodus back by hundreds of years, he did not reject the possibility that seems likely to me.

I hope a research group will arise that will examine the subject in depth.

With many blessings,
Yoel Bin-Nun
”
______________________________

Chronology-change theories –

Moving the Exodus from Egypt hundreds of years (500–1000) earlier than the accepted period (Etzion, Velikovsky, Levi, Rotenstein, etc.). But these claims, which completely solve the problem (because there are hundreds of nomad sites in Sinai in slightly earlier periods), are not accepted in scholarship at all. Even so, I mentioned them only so that the answer would be comprehensive and to show that there are many disputes about almost every detail (even if in this case some were raised by people for whom this is not their profession).

To sum up –

In my opinion, Mitleis’s solution or the Bin-Nun–Anati solution completely solves the problem (even though I brought them only near the end), and even if not… as Rabbi Michi taught us, even if each argument by itself is not sufficient, a combination of many arguments can produce plausibility. Add to Mitleis’s solution the fact that we are dealing with a nomadic population that archaeology itself does not know how to handle (in its own words), add the fact that we are dealing with an enormous region where research is based mainly on evidence still existing on the surface or traditions, add to that that remains have not been found for other early traditions about peoples who lived in Sinai in this period, add to that Professor Anati’s and Dr. Bin-Nun’s refinement about the attribution of the findings, a bit of dating error, and you get the state of research in Sinai… (and this is without even beginning to discuss, like Rabbi Michi, whether there really were 600,000 people or whether that is a typological number or something of that sort). What is certain… is that the situation is not settled at all on either side.

I suggest that anyone confronted with questions like these consult the relevant professionals. In the case of archaeology:
Professor Yoel Elitzur
Rabbi Dr. Bin-Nun
Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis
Dr. Haggai Misgav
Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman
and more…

And as an aside—if in this generation people do not arise who will study these professions, in this generation we will be in trouble.

All the best.

To M, first of all, respect for the investment.
Are all these things also true for the enormous number of 600,000 people who camped in the same area for almost forty years (unlike the nomads)?

First, with the exception of Kadesh-Barnea, our ancestors were indeed nomads; they dwelt permanently only in Kadesh-Barnea (38 years, if I remember correctly); all the rest of the time they moved from place to place.

Indeed, no remains from that period were found at the known Kadesh-Barnea, but:
1. All this is under the assumption that the tradition (or traditions) about it was accurate.
2. Remains were found from earlier periods, and maybe as I noted the problem is the dating (Anati, Mitleis, Bin-Nun, etc., each in his own way).

Regarding the specific points I wrote:
1. Regarding the areas they did not check—in the method by which they search for findings, that is true.
2. Regarding Mitleis’s theory—the theory stands on its own, but as I understand it, the findings we have are not about hundreds of thousands but smaller quantities. It is always possible that there were more remains that were lost in those areas, since in general mainly permanent structures were found. There may also have been temporary structures that would naturally disappear… and it may be that the few findings from them that did survive were attributed to the inhabitants of the permanent houses, and thus to a smaller number of people (if, say, I found 100 permanent houses and 10,000 potsherds, they would automatically attribute them to the inhabitants of the houses, although the pottery may actually have belonged to additional people who lived in tents and those tents did not survive).
3. Regarding dating mistakes / the Anati-Bin-Nun theory—the theory still stands, though as I understand it there too we are not talking about hundreds of thousands. Here too one should note, of course, the qualification from the previous point.
4. Regarding findings that were lost—the truth is that this is indeed a lower probability. My intuition says something should have remained, and even so, see the words of the scholars (whom I quoted above) who understand more than I do, and who nevertheless wrote that the reality in Sinai really is challenging for research with respect to this specific topic. I think they wrote this because traces of nomads are lost that way, there is a problem in dating accurately, and Sinai is enormous.
5. Regarding the remains of Egyptian military campaigns or of the Hyksos that were not found—indeed those involved significantly smaller quantities, but best I know they simply found nothing (nothing!) from them, and yet these are quantities from which some trace should have remained… The lack of findings apparently stems from problems similar to those in the case of the ancient Israelites (the size of Sinai, destruction of the material, wrong dating, and so on).

In summary—the points stand.

I strongly recommend also asking Mitleis / Elitzur / Misgav themselves about this matter. As far as I know they accept the story of the Exodus from Egypt as a historical fact (that is what they write). it is worthwhile ask them about this point. If someone does, please share.

Wow, what work!
Thank you very much for the work and for the effort you put into writing the summary here.

To M. Much kudos. I’ll add that the question of the absence of the skeletons of the generation that died in the wilderness can also be solved with a few assumptions (and this is under the assumption that the question is indeed real and that they checked and looked for skeletons, or that perhaps in the future they could check by some sort of X-ray or sound waves and the like. Here I’ll note that near the tumuli found in Sinai there were also skeletons).
A. If we assume there were only a few tens of thousands of those who left Egypt, or fewer, the sting is taken out of the lack of findings. This is according to accepted biblical scholarship whereby 600,000 “hosts of the Lord” who left Egypt is a typological number indicating a large number of “thousands” = military units (“armed they went up”… “all who go out to the army,” etc.). Pharaoh had 600 chariots and Israel had 600 military units.
Regarding the count of units in Numbers there is room to discuss elsewhere, but briefly one can say that these are midrashic numbers aimed at deeper meaning—for example, that the Tabernacle was founded on the socket-donations of all Israel. And therefore the calculation of the judges is like the calculation of the judges, etc. Like the Sages speaking of 400 study halls, each with 400 students in Betar, and the 400 years of Rabbi Perida. The Maharal already proved that these are typological numbers. In the ancient Near East everyone who heard such a number immediately understood what was meant, just as we understand “I will strike you sevenfold for your sins”… “the righteous falls seven times”… “in seven ways they shall flee before him”—all expressions of multiplicity.
B. It is possible that they carried the bodies of those who died in the wilderness with them into the Land of Israel, with Joseph’s bones serving as an example of a custom common among believers. It may have been unbearable to them to bury their loved ones in the impurity of the wilderness.
C. Another possibility is that they burned the bodies, as we find was done to Saul and his sons. (I am not discussing the later halakhic prohibition.)

Similarly one may explain the absence of findings of Pharaoh’s chariots in the Red Sea (without considering Wyatt’s forgeries, and also assuming someone searched enough and knows where): it may be that there is no point in trying to find them at all, because those were made of wood, as is known—and therefore they floated! With the first high tide they would have already found themselves on the shores of the Red Sea, subject to the plunder of travelers and the teeth of time. Pharaoh’s soldiers should be sought in the bellies of tiger sharks and the like.

And I’ll finish with an amusing but sharp anecdote relevant to our subject. On a Christian return-to-religion website I saw someone brazenly ask: if there was a Garden of Eden as described in Genesis, why don’t we find it today? Everything is spread out before the satellites (this was even before the Malaysian airplane…). The questioner barely had time to say “Jack the Ripper” and was immediately answered: what do you mean? The Garden of Eden was washed away in the Flood! Enough said.

If anyone is really bothered by this, there is treatment of it in an article (not translated into Hebrew) by Rabbi (Dr.) Joshua Berman:

First, the section published on the Mida site (to which the English part afterward refers):

And since we are dealing with archaeological evidence, allow me to get rid of the issue of the “massive” exodus of two million Israelites. This figure stars in arguments against the historicity of the Exodus from Egypt—but it functions as a distraction and deserves a brief discussion of its own. The truth is that despite the apparently clear declaration of the Bible about 600,000 men who left Egypt, the Torah is full of hints teaching that the number was dramatically lower, perhaps even by whole orders of magnitude.

Thus, for example, in Exodus it is said that the Israelites are too few to fill the promised land in place of its current inhabitants: “I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land” (23:29–30). A similar statement appears in Deuteronomy, according to which Israel is the smallest of all peoples: “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord desired you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all peoples” (7:7). In Numbers (3:43) a count is recorded of the firstborn males in Israel of all ages: 22,273. To get from this to a nation of two million people requires extraordinary natural increase. Every woman would have had to bear dozens of children. The Torah does not note such an unusual phenomenon, and there is no documentation of anything like it in any source about any family in the ancient Near East.

Beyond this, a camp of two million people—nearly three times the whole population of Jerusalem—which is not built in multi-story buildings, would stretch over an area taking days to cross. Yet the Torah (Exodus 33:6–11) describes leaving the camp and entering it as an everyday matter. There is also no trace of the commotion and traffic jams that would necessarily arise from two million people having, as Leviticus says, to slaughter all their sacrifices in one place, at the Tabernacle. Moreover, in Exodus (15:27) it is told that the Israelites camped at an oasis adorned with seventy date palms; a population of the stated size would require each palm to sustain 30,000 people.

Why then is the figure of 600,000 fighting men given, a number that so wildly deviates from so many other components of the Torah’s wilderness stories? We are dealing here with a strangeness characteristic of the Bible in general. Measurements and dimensions in the Bible are for the most part reasonable; this is so, for example, regarding the Tabernacle and Temple. The exceptions are found almost all in one specific arena: the military sphere. There we find magnificent numbers, giant scenes on “biblical” scales.

In biblical Hebrew, as in other Semitic languages, the word elef means also “tribe” or “company,” groups whose specific identifications we know for certain do not include a thousand persons, nor anything close to that. In the military context, then, the word elef functions simply as a language form of exaggeration, as in the verse “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:8)—or it serves some typological or symbolic purpose, like the numbers 7, 12, 40, and others. A report of a census totaling 600,000 fighting-age men may, in itself, be accurate, but when it comes against so great a wealth of contradictory data as those above, it is difficult to know what the real number was. [For a survey of the topic see New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis vol. I, pp. 416–417, and Jerry Waite, “The Census of Israelite Men after Their Exodus from Egypt,” Vetus Testamentum, 60 (2010), pp. 487–491.].

It may be, then, that the population of Israel was not so enormous—and therefore one should not be astonished at the absence of archaeological traces of Israel’s camp in the wilderness and of their entry into the land.

The section from the second article that was not translated:

The census figure of 603,550 squares perfectly
with the tally by tribe. How could that be anything other than a literal number?

This is a sensitive issue, as much rides on it. The Kuzari bases our trust in the revelation at Sinai upon the testimony of “600,000” people. That number is commonly thought of as the basis for our definition of a reshut ha-rabim.
As I noted in the essay, there are a long list of passages that are really problematic if that figure is literal, which is what prompts the re-examination in the first place. Interestingly, we have only one other place in the Torah where there is a census, which includes a total figure, and then a detail of how that figure is tallied: the list of the “70” descendants of Yaakov in Bereshit 46. Although all 70 are listed by name, all commentators, rabbinic and modern, assume that that figure is symbolic, and that the actual number was significantly larger.

I can hazard a rough guess as to the significance of the census figures in Sefer Bamidbar. Nearly all the tribes are approximately the same size in chapter 26 as they are in chapter 1, with the exception of stunning growth in Menashe and stunning loss in Shimon. The Torah seems unconcerned with accounting for these idiosyncrasies with recourse to events that caused these shifts. I believe that it is not a coincidence that we have in Sefer Bamidbar positive stories about the tribe of Menashe and negative stories about the tribe of Shimon. Due to those events, Menashe receive a “raise” in numbers, and Shimon a “penalty”. The numbers are reflective of status. What is fascinating here is that the relative sizes of the tribes in the final census of chapter 26, neatly mirror their relative importance in the blessings of Yaakov to the brothers in Bereshit 49. There, the two most celebrated tribes are Yehudah and Yosef. The least “blessed” tribes are Reuven, Shimon and Levi, who come in for censure from Yaakov. The other tribes receive brief blessings. In Bamidbar 26, Yehudah and Yosef (i.e. Menashe + Ephraim) have much larger populations than any other shevet, both in excess of 75,000. At the bottom of the list, are Shimon (22,000) and Levi (20,000), with all the others bunched between 45,000-64,000. The clincher is this: Reuven is twice the size of the smallest tribe (Levi). The Torah emphasizes that Reuven’s size, the Korach rebellion notwithstanding, would have been 43,900. That is, Reuven, as a censured first-born, receives the smallest double portion possible of blessing, at twice the size of Levi. You can see through this prism that the key is not to know how many fighting men Israel had. Numbers are manipulated in the census as a way of encoding status to the tribes in accordance with Yaakov’s blessings.

Understanding the census numbers this way should pose no difficulty for normative belief or practice. The Kuzari refers to the mass-witness of the revelation at Sinai by Israel. Naturally, like all before him, he assumes this to be a population of 600,000 men. Yet, the real gist of his argument is that a huge assembly bore witness to this event. His argument is no weaker if we assume that present was “only” a stadium-full of people.

Although the common perception is that the definition of a reshus ha-rabim was defined by the size of the population of Israel present in the desert – no authority at all holds this to be the case. The gemara doesn’t even mention this figure and most medieval authorities (Rishonim) define a reshus ha-rabim without reference to any number of people at all. Tosafot and other Ashkenazic halakhic decisors did. But their use of the numbers is itself instructive. Tosafot is the first to recognize (Eruvin 6a d”h keitsad) that there were not 600,000 people in the desert. There were 600,000 men of fighting age. In their own way, Tosafot admit that we use the figure 600,000 to define a reshus ha-rabim, because that figure symbolically represents the people as a whole. To be sure, Tosafot believed that there were indeed 600,000 men in the desert. But their adoption of the figure towards symbolic ends suggests a way that pre-moderns related to numbers in literature, in a way greatly removed from our obsession with metrics, data and statistics.

Thank you very much. Could you send a link to the full article in English? Dr. Joshua Berman also has an English article on the antiquity of Deuteronomy from comparison to Hittite literature and more, and also a wonderful Hebrew article on the flexibility of biblical law—which softens the difficulty of contradictions—and this appeared in the book, less wonderful, In the Eyes of God and Man—The Believer’s Confrontation with Biblical Criticism.

I will note that the biblical proofs for smaller scales than 600,000 are not all that convincing. Regarding the spread of the camp, one cannot object, since it is possible that the nomadic tribes were not spread uniformly around sheep-herding in the wilderness. A reminder of this is Joseph’s brothers’ migration from Shechem to Dothan in Genesis 37, a distance of about 80 km (The World of the Bible, there), and likewise the tribes of Gad and Reuben in Numbers 32 spread over all the expanses of Gilead and Bashan, and the discussion is long and not for now. Likewise, the difficulty about the firstborn: “In Numbers (3:43) a count is recorded of the firstborn males in Israel of all ages: 22,273. To get from this to a nation of two million people requires extraordinary natural increase. Every woman would have had to bear dozens of children. The Torah does not note such an unusual phenomenon, and there is no documentation of anything like it in any source about any family in the ancient Near East.” This can be resolved by saying that the firstborn counted were not from all Israel but only the firstborn born in the Sinai wilderness—which significantly reduces their number (Rabbi Elchanan Samet discusses this in his first book, though I don’t have the book before me right now, and admittedly he refuted this suggestion of mine).

In any case, there is truth in the matter regarding the size of the population. (But the question of the calculation of the Tabernacle shekels, as well as the exact numerological detailing of the tribes, still needs study.)

Here is another interesting (though old) article trying to explain the splitting of the Red Sea in connection with a date in the month of low tide plus east winds, which would allow passage on a topographical rise in the sea floor (documented there) for several hours—this makes sense only with a limited population of about 25,000 people, including elders, women, and children; see there:

Click to access 23503770.pdf

And as an addition to the previous issue concerning the truth of the Bible, here is a reference to a new article from this month documenting a solar eclipse in the Jerusalem-Gibeon-Aijalon region in the year 1207 BCE, matching the period of the beginning of settlement, the Mount Ebal altar, the burning of Hazor, and more. (See the article summary around note 130.)

Click to access BM_61-2_196_238.pdf

And here is the interview with the geophysicist on the London and Kirschenbaum program (who also served, in time of need, as a synagogue for Rabbi Michi) from 18.1.17, beginning from the end of minute 0:39:

http://10tv.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=1228298

In the learned article, the researchers explain that perhaps this is the historical core of the miracle of the sun at Gibeon, when the term “stand still” indicates cessation of activity from shining, as found in Akkadian astronomical writings, cessation of activity because “the moon stood,”
that is, stood over the “zebul”—its house, domain—of the sun. In the Middle Ages these were Joseph ben Abraham Ibn Waqar, and perhaps also the Baal HaTurim, who interpreted the miracle as a solar eclipse—something known from Greek wars to have caused great panic on the battlefield because it was interpreted as intervention by the gods (a nice new homiletic point: the panic could have been mutual had Joshua not proclaimed in a mighty voice like a shofar: “Sun, stand still at Gibeon,” etc.—which was immediately interpreted among Israel as intervention by the Lord, who indeed made that eclipse already from the six days of creation—and this created one-sided panic among the enemy).

What then was the miracle? Perhaps that Joshua knew of the event before it happened. In any case, the event was engraved in Israel’s heart as heavenly intervention for victory in battle, and indeed occurred.

Connected to one of the questions—this was written here in order to gather the material in one place:

Until now (as can be seen in my posts) I referred to the Ipuwer Papyrus as pseudoscience used by people bringing others back to religion (there are a few sentences there that are indeed taken out of context, in my humble opinion), since the document was written 400 years before the dating of the Exodus (it was connected by Velikovsky, who thought there was a bug in the structure of the Egyptian dynasties). Recently I discovered that this is not so.
First I’ll say that I am relying on Dr. Mitleis’s theory of the Exodus during the 18th dynasty.
So here it is: the papyrus was written in the 18th–19th dynasty, the period in which the Exodus is assumed to have occurred (!). But the researchers’ *assumption* is that it is a copy of an older papyrus, and this is based on two pieces of evidence. The name Ipuwer was a name common in earlier dynasties, and the papyrus mentions anarchy carried out by “Asiatics,” the term the Egyptians used for the people who ruled Egypt hundreds of years earlier. All of this evidence, of course, is not proven. The name could also have remained in use later, and it may be that Asiatics also harmed Egypt in the 19th dynasty (or more simply: usually the enemies are called “paupers,” and only once Asiatics. Probably the Jews were supporters of those Asiatic Hyksos who had already long been expelled from Egypt, which would fit the story of Joseph). Bottom line, we have a document testifying to anarchy in Egypt in the centuries in which the Exodus occurred. Researchers who assume there was no anarchy at that time (and then it doesn’t fit for them because there is no other evidence for it in that period) move it earlier (to a period in which there was anarchy), but this is an evaluation resulting from not relying on the Bible. Bottom line, the document was written in those same days.

This may not be conclusive proof for the existence of the biblical story, but given this fact, one cannot say there is no evidence in Egypt for the Exodus (and from here prove that the event did not occur). There certainly is such evidence, but they choose to move it earlier, which is not proven. On the contrary, if there is also biblical evidence for anarchy in the same period, and a document testifying to it, there is no reason not to think this is the same testimony.

Another datum strengthening the connection to the biblical story—the above document speaks with a monotheistic god (something that does not fit the introduction to the document), and not with an Egyptian god, from whom the writer seems disappointed. This would fit very well the blow suffered afterward by the gods of Egypt. And indeed after the Exodus (according to this dating) there was a monotheistic period in Egypt.

In addition there is evidence of Egypt’s weakness in the generation after Ipuwer (copied here from a blog post):

During the reign of Amenhotep III a civil war broke out in the kingdom of Mitanni (a regional power on the Euphrates), which until then had been a loyal ally of Egypt. The war was fought between supporters of Egypt and its opponents. At the end of the war Mitanni split into two parts, and then attacks began on the Egyptian-aligned half.

After that, the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I began a series of attacks against Egyptian Mitanni. The king of Mitanni begged Egypt for help, help that never came. Why? “To Mitanni’s misfortune, religious ferment had already by then grown in Egypt… and diverted the royal court’s attention from matters of foreign policy.” (Sagas, The Greatness That Was Babylon, p. 92)
In the end Mitanni fell. Suppiluliuma also conquered various kingdoms in Syria that had been under Egypt’s patronage, among them Arzawa and Amurru.

In the land of Canaan an anti-Egyptian element appeared called the Habiru. They threatened all the cities in Canaan and even captured many of them. In the Amarna letters one sees the fear and despair felt by the miserable kings when the hundreds of desperate letters they sent to Egypt were answered with a pathetic response, if at all.
If such a thing had happened a hundred years earlier, in the days of Thutmose III and his great successors, there is no chance the situation would have looked like this.

And the strangest thing is that Amenhotep III himself had still gone on military campaigns to Syria. Yet now, with the deterioration of his empire, he decides to stay home. It looks as if something happened to him. Something big that caused Egypt to take its attention away from managing its empire.

Burna-Buriash king of Babylon tells Tutankhamun king of Egypt (the son of Amenhotep III, who ruled after Akhenaten) that “in the days of Kurigalzu my father, all the Canaanites wrote to him saying: come to the border of the land! and we will rebel against the king of Egypt and support you.” Kurigalzu I ruled in the days of Amenhotep III. (He died approximately in 1375, around the same year Suppiluliuma came to power in the land of the Hittites.)

We see that Egypt was one step away from losing its rule in Canaan in the period under discussion.

Thus the entire Egyptian empire in Asia fell apart as a result of the above events. As noted, according to Ipuwer there were also some invasions of Egypt itself.

All the kings whose letters appear in the Amarna correspondence demand that the king of Egypt send them gold (or other precious materials). They mention that in his fathers’ days much larger quantities of gold of much better quality were sent to them, and wonder why now such disappointing shipments are being sent. After all, “in Egypt gold is like dust” (from the way this sentence is quoted, it appears this was a famous saying in those days).

I quote a representative letter from the correspondence of the king of Mitanni:

As for the gold my brother (the king of Egypt) sent, I assembled all the foreign guests, my brother, and in the presence of them all all the shipments of gold were opened. They had been sealed, but the gold (was fake?) …and they cried greatly, saying: “Is all this gold? It did not look like gold!” They said: “In Egypt gold is more plentiful than dust, and moreover your brother loves you greatly. But if there were someone he loved, he would not give him such things”… Let my brother send me much gold that has not been worked.

Why did Egypt stop sending gold to its neighbors? It may be connected to its economic decline, as the Talmud says: “And they emptied Egypt—that they made it like a pool without fish.” (Ipuwer explicitly writes, “gold is lacking.”)

The evidence for the penetration of an ethnic element called Abiru in the centuries afterward is well known and need not be detailed here (destruction layers, the Amarna letters, and more).

To conclude, in an Egyptian inscription from the 14th century five tribes wandering around the land of Midian are described (the identification of the place is not certain); one of them wanders in the “land of Y-H-W.” Researchers, who date the Exodus to the 13th century, tried to claim that this tribe was a Midianite tribe that worshiped the Lord, and that this is the source of the worship of the Lord among the Israelites.

Once we date the Exodus to the beginning of the 14th century, we can assume that this refers either to the Israelites themselves during their wanderings in the wilderness, or to members of the Kenite tribe.
In the Midrash it is brought that when Jethro left Israel, he returned to Midian and converted his family, who are the Kenite tribe. These things are fairly explicit in the Bible: “And the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went up from the city of palms…” and more. [The Kenite tribe, which traces itself to Jethro’s descendants, first appears in Balaam’s prophecy as a tribe dwelling somewhere south or east of the land of Canaan.]

Now I saw that in the Open University’s Introduction to the Bible, a number of scholars were brought who also think that Ipuwer is dated to the 18th dynasty, as I wrote. The additional papyrus describing disasters (“The Prophecy of Neferti”) was also written in that period but is also attributed to an earlier period (here the evidence is more plausible), but the papyrus has several copies containing information in different versions. It may be that the original version was shorter, and it was only expanded in the 18th dynasty under the inspiration of current events to show that Egypt had already gone through hard days like those it was going through now.

And I also saw that my reasoning about the weakening of Egypt in that period is also brought by Dr. Mitleis in his lecture on the issue.

All these are not proofs, of course, but they make it difficult to say that “there are no hints at all to the story and it makes no sense against the background of the period” (without getting into the story’s fit with Egyptian culture, the people’s entry during the Hyksos period, etc.).

Two more interesting sources on the attitude of researchers toward findings that do not fit their thesis, and on the fluidity of archaeology, where whole theories fall because of one find:

* Professor Adam Zertal, of blessed memory, on archaeologists’ attitude toward the Bible:

לכו להר עיבל – אומר מתנגדו של הרצוג, אדם זרטל

* Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis, on Adam Zertal’s work:

האיש שחפר את ראשית ישראל: נפרדים מפרופסור אדם זרטל

I added a more orderly summary of the arguments regarding the story of the Exodus from Egypt (not the wanderings here):

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%95%D7%95%D7%93%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%99%D7%93%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%94-2/#comment-4347

To M. Your deep study of the subject is astonishing and amazing. More power to you. I’d be glad to get your email and correspond. I too have quite a bit of material on the subject. The matter I mainly want to discuss is your need to move the Exodus back by 200 years from what is accepted in scholarship (that is, in scholarship that accepts a core to the story). To claim that the Exodus preceded the days of Seti–Ramses–Merneptah is a major statement that, in my opinion, really cuts off the branch on which tradition supported by scholarship sits. I won’t list all the reasons, but generally speaking all the signs supporting the story point to the 12th century BCE, not the 14th. Starting with the mighty wave of settlement in Israel that came from the east—as Zertal revealed. Joshua’s altar built around 1250 BCE. The destruction of Hazor by fire—in those same years. Edom and Moab as kingdoms founded only then. The Song of the Sea in Ramesside style. The arrival of the Philistines only in this period (“the way of the land of the Philistines”). The building of the city of Ramses specifically. All the Ramesside sources mentioning the bondage of the Apiru. The famous watermelons and fish of Ramses’s artificial lakes, the garlic and onions fed to the slave Apiru, and the rest of the sources brought by Penina Gal-Paz. And even the comforting eclipse—the standing = cessation of the sun in 1208 BCE at an angle seen in the Gibeon and Aijalon Valley region. All these and many, many others do not allow moving the date earlier without entering into great forced answers. This idea was expressed with great clarity in Menachem Haran’s article in his new book Institutions in the Bible; see there. And a last dessert: for years I was distressed that Pharaoh’s chariot remains were not found in the Red Sea—aside from the fraud Wyatt. Until I realized that apparently they won’t be found either. The chariots were made of wood—which floats on water and as such never sank to the depths of the sea at all. It drifted to the shores and there decayed or was taken by desert travelers. My email is giladstn@gmail.com and I’d be happy to share with you the sources I have.

Aside from the building of Pi-Ramesses, most of the points you raised can also be arranged around the earlier dating. See all this at length here:

Click to access Cohen.pdf

There are, of course, additional points not mentioned in that article, such as—
the Apiru who are mentioned as slaves also in the 18th dynasty, the Philistines already mentioned in el-Amarna,
and more and more.

In my opinion, the fit with the background story in Egypt (entry with the Hyksos, and so on) and the signs of internal Egyptian collapse in this dynasty are the most important cube that was always missing from the story of the bondage, and they even allow association with other important findings that is not possible in the time of the 19th dynasty (such as el-Amarna, the collapse of Jericho’s walls, and more). Therefore, as a layman, it seems to me that this is the most suitable time. All of this, of course, is not some brilliant insight of little me, but of Elitzur and Mitleis.

We can continue by email.

In my opinion it would be worthwhile for you to ask the questions here and answer here.
That way other people can read too……

It’s clear to me that it’s better to have maybe a lot of unnecessary verbiage here but with quality content, than to correspond by email and then “spare” the readers on the site the unnecessary verbiage..

According to Mitleis’s approach, where he moves the date of the Exodus earlier, does he give up on the Mount Ebal altar?
Or does he move its dating earlier as well?

He doesn’t give up on it. At this stage I don’t remember with certainty how he integrates it into the dating framework.

I’ll keep sharing with you the findings I have on the issue –

Recently I started reading academic literature from abroad on the subject. I must admit I’m very surprised: unlike in the Land, where the researchers are indeed much more skeptical on the issue, abroad there are many researchers who accept the Israelite story (for reasoned causes). Recently two study days were held (by two different universities; in one conference they brought mainly scholars in favor of the story, and in the other mainly against) in which the best scholars and archaeologists in the world came to discuss the Exodus story (for according to atheists it is obvious to everyone that it is a lie and there is no point discussing it at all). It turns out that a large proportion of the researchers accept the story, and there is much more evidence considered unfamiliar in Israel.

I’ll give you two examples of new things I didn’t know:
1. It turns out that the Egyptian building style in the 18th–19th dynasties (the dynasties of the bondage) is a distinctly Canaanite building style (four-room houses). This is the only period in which that style appears.
2. One of the strongest and best-known claims for the Exodus story is the Merneptah Stele—an ancient extra-biblical Egyptian document mentioning a people called Israel. What is interesting is that it turns out there is another inscription that, in the opinion of many scholars, mentions the people of Israel about 200 years (!) before the early inscription (matching the time of the bondage itself). This is a stele containing a list of the peoples near Egypt; next to the Canaanites, Nubians, and Ashkelonites appears another name, half of which is broken. The name contains letters found in the name Israel. This becomes interesting when one adds the fact that the only place or people-name known to us in Egypt that contains those letters (in all its history) is the name Israel. In other words, we have an inscription containing names of peoples neighboring Egypt and among them a damaged name, the only way to read which is “Israel.” Amazing. How does no one in Israel know this?

This is just another example of my conclusion that atheist websites presenting a picture in which “obviously there is no evidence at all” or “obviously all scholars think this is a lie” are presenting a totally distorted picture. You don’t have to rely on me or exert much effort—the proceedings of these study days have all become books, and one can read in them the lectures of the best scholars, who somehow did not hear about the scholarly consensus that it is a myth, and each brings his own evidence. The statement that there are no findings or that there is a consensus that it is a myth is an outright lie.

Books by scholars:
* Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective – one of the collections of articles. The “against” book (also contains quite a few pro articles)
* Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt – one of the collections of articles. The “pro” book
* On the Reliability of the Old Testament – written by Professor Kenneth Kitchen, considered one of the greatest Egyptologists today, and he too somehow did not hear about the atheists’ claims.
* Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
* Israel in Egypt: Evidence for Authenticity of Exodus

A few more articles so they’ll be here:

Click to access ancient-israel-in-egypt-and-the-exodus.pdf

– excellent articles by several scholars

https://books.google.co.il/books?id=xpe1BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=%22Exodus,+of+a+people+fleeing%22&source=bl&ots=Md5XwnwrCz&sig=afbLcQdjlC7XWwadbvHYuL9_Wbs&hl=iw&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwierPvXv7bUAhWCPBoKHUL0DBYQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=%22Exodus%2C%20of%20a%20people%20fleeing%22&f=false – one of the study-day books

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hcVgwNWtGWHFOTG8/edit

The Exodus: Fact or Fiction?

https://www.academia.edu/1651319/Is_the_Exodus_Story_Possible

In short—there is much more material from abroad that is not known in Israel.

These days I am writing an article that will summarize all the findings I know (historical, archaeological, philological, direct, indirect, and more). Everything is beginning to come together for me, from the background story to the general realia of the story and the hints that anticipate it in Egypt—and there turn out to be many of these.
If I don’t abandon it halfway, I intend to submit the article to knowledgeable people for review, and if indeed (without a vow) I continue with this project and its final form pleases me, I will publish it here, without making a vow.

Huge well done! We need people like you!!!!!!!!!!

Wow. I’m really impressed by M’s words. Waiting eagerly for the publication of the article.

M, you’re simply amazing, I have no words.
Waiting eagerly for the article. How long do you estimate it will take you to finish it?

I wrote an initial draft, but I didn’t like its form. Since something like this is expected to receive a lot of criticism, it needs to be written at a high level, every claim in it must be sufficiently reasoned, and that takes time. After exam period I’ll get back to it, without making a vow, and we’ll see whether it progresses.

I too am waiting and looking forward to M’s material.

I’d be glad to know whether there is information on the size of Egypt’s population in the 15th century, or more precisely in the second half of the 15th century.

There are various population estimates; the average estimate speaks of around 4 million people.
These estimates are based on a combination of calculating reasonable natural increase (growth rate × time), land size, comparison to other countries, plagues, the economic state of the country (grain stores), size of the cities found, graves, and more and more.

These are estimates only, and you can see for yourself that these are total speculations (there could have been a period of great natural increase and we would not know it), and it is very hard to know what was there. Personally I don’t find these data very exciting.

Update: there is documentation of famine in Egypt at the end of the Hyksos period (and that Egypt had grain storehouses ready for it). The Hyksos period, as I wrote above, is the period in which, in my opinion, the story of Joseph took place. More details in the book The Bible from the Field, by Leibel Reznik.

M, very nice.
Everyone is of course looking forward to the final presentation.

I’ll just say that maybe it’s worth bringing another source, because I don’t know whether Leibel Reznik is a certified archaeologist.
Not that I doubt what he brings, but of course people will make claims to you about the source.

Thanks for your clear answer regarding Egypt’s population. If there is a source regarding 4, and also regarding 5, 6, and even 7, I’d be glad for a reference.

1. I’m not bringing Reznik as an archaeologist; Reznik only quotes the Egyptian source in his book. You can see his references there. The book isn’t in front of me right now. As best I remember, he quotes an inscription from the tomb of someone who in his old age was an officer in the Egyptian army, and he notes that earlier he had been responsible for supplying food from the storehouses because of the famine. He brings the exact source there.
2. I don’t know what you mean when you say 4, and also regarding 5, 6, and even what 7 is.

1. Thank you, definitely interesting.

2. I mean the population estimate—if you could direct me to sources in your free time. I saw one source about 4 million inhabitants; if there are sources that wrote more, I’d be glad to see them too.

3. The conquest of the land was, after all, a long process. How does that fit with the altar on Mount Ebal and the period of Joshua?

In addition, you wrote that in the 18th dynasty and also the 19th dynasty in Egypt there was a four-room building style.

But the 19th dynasty was also after the Exodus. Seemingly this strengthens those who think Egypt ruled the Land of Israel in that period and there was no Exodus. Rather, Egypt left the land at some stage.

2. You can see references here:
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/
or here:
http://thetorah.com/ancient-egypt-population-estimates-slaves-and-citizens/
The estimates range between 2.5 and 5.

3. If you’re asking about how the dating I’m talking about fits Joshua’s findings, then in my opinion it is strengthened even more if one places the Exodus in the 18th dynasty, for several reasons:
1. Ai and Jericho are destroyed precisely in this period (Jericho by earthquake, as described in Joshua)
2. The earliest evidence of collar-rim jars (Israelite pottery) appears in this period.
3. The Canaanite cities are destroyed at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the settlement is at the beginning of the Iron Age, so it comes out that the Israelites arrive exactly when the land is in ruins. Indeed, one needs to maintain that the settlement happens in stages and not all at once, but many have already dealt with this and it fits well with the picture in Joshua.

Regarding Joshua’s altar—this does indeed make it difficult to identify that altar as Joshua’s specific altar, but the central importance of this find is not the fact that it fits specifically with Joshua, but that it is evidence of early monotheistic worship in the land, so it may be an Israelite altar from the period of Joshua/Judges, but not the altar of Mount Ebal itself. Toward the end of his life Zertal found additional finds teaching about monotheistic worship in the land; he called them “foot-shaped sites.” You can find information on this online.

Regarding the four-room house –

On the factual level:
1. The four-room house appears in the period of Merneptah (19th dynasty), not in the 18th; what I wrote was not correct on that point.
2. Egypt loses its grip on Canaan at the end of the 18th dynasty (Akhenaten) and regains it only in the 19th dynasty under Seti and Ramses II.
3. Some place the Exodus in the 19th dynasty, and then it fits. I (and not only I) think otherwise.

Regarding the connection between this and the biblical story:
1. Indeed, according to my view, the four-room house cannot serve as proof; it can be explained in various ways (Canaanite slaves; if I remember correctly, we have evidence of captive slaves whom Ramses brought from the land).

If you ask what is more likely—that the story arose from Israel leaving Egypt or that Egypt left Israel—many have already discussed this; it is Knohl’s thesis. In my opinion it does not stand the test of the facts and is certainly less plausible. For:
– It explains the national slavery myth less well (according to them, although it is known that Egypt employed Semitic slaves in its territory, it is more likely that the myth arose from conquest and not from the Semitic slaves we know for certain it employed. That sounds to me like the less plausible theory.)
– It does not adequately explain the traditions of the Egyptian historians about the slavery story.
– It does not explain the new identity of the people entering Canaan at the beginning of the Iron Age.
– It does not explain why specifically in the lowland (the cities under Ramses’s control) sit peoples with idolatrous worship who do not preserve a slavery tradition, while only at Israelite sites is there an Israelite national identity (pigs, smashing idols, etc.).
– It does not explain why the Israelite people smash both Egyptian idols and Canaanite idols.
– It does not explain the familiarity with the kingdom’s internal realia (according to this approach, if the story was written at a late stage, it is not logical that it would preserve so many distinctively Egyptian details while the story framework itself is completely different. In other words, they preserved the minor details but forgot the important ones).

Our rabbi M, admittedly this is not connected to the discussion here, but I knew I’d be able to reach you here.
What is your view on the mass-revelation arguments in other nations (the Su tribe, the Song of Hiawatha, and the like. See the video of “Israeli Logic and Science” about Mount Sinai, which brings additional peoples)? Is there an essential difference between the revelations? Do those peoples really claim mass revelation, or is that just innovations of later writers who write such things about them?
I would be glad for your perspective on the issue. You can comment in the Q&A on the second “mass revelation argument” question on Mount Sinai in the leading Q&A.
Thanks, Yosef.

I haven’t checked. The question is what the source of the testimony is, how solid it is, and how much one can believe those who transmit that testimony. There was someone here who brought a survey of such revelations and rejected them. One should search the site.

M
(I’m A—previously I wrote from another email)

1. You wrote that the main importance is that the altar is monotheistic. But if so, what then is the Mount Ebal altar itself? The one in the Book of Joshua. Where is it? There is no other altar in that area, so it must be Joshua’s altar; it fits all the biblical parameters. Doesn’t it?

2. I definitely agree with what you wrote. But as far as I know, Knohl does accept an Exodus from Egypt, only that it involved a small group of slaves who left, and thus the story was transmitted. So it’s not relevant to speak about the Semitic slaves.

(I’d also be glad to get your email)

1. You can get my email from Gil (see above)
2. I didn’t understand what you are asking / trying to say.

I asked him, still waiting for him to send it.

If you are saying that the altar discovered on Mount Ebal is just an ordinary monotheistic altar (which is of course also important), fine. But the Book of Joshua describes the altar built in Joshua’s period. Where is it? If you give up on the idea that it was built specifically by Joshua, that is a problem—it connects to the previous question of how this fits with dating the Exodus to the 15th century, and with the big gaps.

What I’m saying is a remark on the first point you wrote regarding Knohl’s thesis.
It doesn’t challenge him all that much, because he thinks there really was slavery, and from that the “myth of the Exodus from Egypt” was created—according to his view—by a small group of slaves that joined two other groups, and then the people of Israel were formed.

Does anyone here have Dr. Mitleis’s email?

On the Herzog College website the following email appears: itzhakme@013.net.il
But so far I haven’t received a response to the questions I sent to that address; maybe it’s better to call him.

I don’t know whether this is Joshua’s altar or not. If I hold that the Exodus was in the 14th century BCE, then that is a reasonable estimate. Where is the real altar? I don’t know. But because half of Shechem is inhabited today, I’m not sure it will ever be possible to know….

As for Knohl—it still stands. If, for example, the people had 4 historical traditions (one of the slaves, and three of the others), the logic says that the tradition that would spread over the entire people would not necessarily be the most embarrassing one. In addition, it should be remembered that the slavery tradition is the most dominant tradition of all.

Is it plausible that there was an Exodus from Egypt if the number of people in it was half of Egypt?!
M, what do you think? Do you have any new insight on this part?

In general, unfortunately I don’t have a convincing and clear answer I’m willing to sign my name to on this. I’ll tell you some of my thoughts that perhaps soften the difficulty a bit on these issues; I hope it helps.

To begin with, one should of course note that:
1. It’s not half, more like a third or a quarter. Beyond that, if you think about it deeply, there really is no difficulty even if we say half of Egypt left. So what?
2. The population size is only an estimate. One cannot derive a negative proof from this.
3. The Bible itself also notes that the increase was miraculous, so it may have exceeded the norm.

— up to this point these are the familiar points; now I’ll note a few additional less familiar possibilities:
1. As is known, it has always been claimed that these may be typological numbers (600 families, etc.). Indeed, there is a difficulty with this, since the numbers in the census of Israel are not rounded and it is hard to argue that this is typological. So it’s not certain… First, from the Bible itself it seems the quantity may have been smaller (for example, from the fact there were only 23,000 firstborn), and second—and here’s the interesting part—it’s not very well known… but Cassuto has a suggestion for how to organize even the non-rounded numbers (of Israel and of the ages in Genesis) in a typological way (something connected to the counting method in the ancient Near East, and that’s not the place). In my opinion, I’m not sure his proposal is 100% convincing (though it is based on parallels in the ancient Near East), but it’s worth knowing it exists. In the book Palace of Time by Gabriel Zeldin, another attempt is made to develop these ideas of Cassuto on other numerical issues in the Bible. I haven’t studied his book deeply, but in brief I saw he has some not-bad arguments. I stress again so as not to mislead: it is not clear that Cassuto’s proposal really holds water (it leaves a large margin of maneuver). When I corresponded with Rabbi Michael about it a few months ago, he said he tends not to be convinced by it. But there is indeed a typological proposal, based on research into counting in the ancient Near East, even for these numbers—and note that carefully.
2. There is another direction I’ll mention briefly; it’s a bit radical but possible. There are quite a few hints in the Bible (for example in Chronicles) that part of Israel remained in the land during the bondage (or left earlier). There are even hints of this in the physical finds here and there (el-Amarna and more). It may be that when Israel left Egypt, later some of the people who were already in the land joined them, or that in the numerical censuses they also included those who were in the land. This is, of course, only a suggestion and needs discussion, but it is a real possibility that solves a lot of the difficulty.

And therefore, to sum up, there are several ways to solve this difficulty. Personally I think there is no need to reach radical solutions here, but it is important that you know such solutions exist. Give to the wise and he will become wiser.

By the way, a wonderful article on the Exodus from Egypt by Dr. Liora Ravid, a historian who gave an online lecture in the middle of Yom Kippur (so there is no reason to suspect her of excessive religiosity):

http://www.ranlevi.com/2017/06/20/osim_tanah_exodus_from_eygypt_part_1/
http://www.ranlevi.com/2017/07/03/osim_tanah_exodus_from_eygypt_part_2_of_3/
http://www.ranlevi.com/2017/07/17/osim_tanah_exodus_from_egypt_part_3/

(She of course does not accept the real possibility of miracle and therefore tries to explain that every part specifically speaking of that is legendary and happened naturally.)

Another article on the Har Etzion Yeshiva website showing that the story in Exodus is very well suited to Egyptian realia even in tiny and minor details:

http://etzion.org.il/he/02-%D7%96%D7%9B%D7%A8-%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D

Literature dealing with the Exodus from Egypt usually shows that these details were correct specifically for the relevant Egyptian period, and therefore a later writer should have written the story differently. The fact that the things are written specifically in this way shows that the story was written at the time of the events.

It is definitely plausible that a third or a quarter of Egypt’s population consisted of the Israelites; there is no lack of empires that suffered a loss and after a few years recovered quickly (Germany, for example).

Nice, I know that article too, lots of “indirect evidence.”

M, one more interesting detail I didn’t see mentioned here in the discussion: regarding Pharaoh’s name. Seemingly later in the Bible his personal name is mentioned too, and supposedly the things in the Exodus story are fictional and the “author” could not have known his personal name. But actually I saw the exact opposite in Dr. Berman’s words:

“ In the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, the kings of Egypt are called simply ‘Pharaoh.’ By contrast, later in the Bible they are called by their full names, such as Pharaoh Necho (2 Kings 23:29). This reflects a phenomenon that existed in Egypt itself in those periods: from the middle of the second millennium BCE until the 10th century BCE, they used to write ‘Pharaoh’ without any addition.”

And in addition I saw there in one of the comments, in the name of Professor Grintz, an interesting point: “The bare title ‘Pharaoh’ is a clear marker of the New Kingdom, as Professor Grintz writes (The Uniqueness and Antiquity of Genesis, p. 102). The New Kingdom began around the 15th century BCE. And the Torah’s style only proves it was written at the time of the events. In the days of the prophets no one could have known how Pharaoh was referred to in the days of the New Kingdom.”

If anyone has more information like this, or a quotation from Grintz, I’d be glad to see it.

A few more questions,

Did the Egyptians distinguish between the Semitic slaves? Did they divide them up among themselves, or relate to all of them as Semites?

Are there sources in our Sages or in the Torah that support a conquest that lasted many years?

How, in your opinion, do the words of the Sages about the mixed multitude fit? Because if we accept the Mekhilta, their number definitely included far more people than the whole population of Egypt.

1. Beyond the example with Pharaoh’s name, there are countless examples like this, both in the Exodus story and in Genesis. Grintz’s book is wonderful but hard to read if one is not used to reading this kind of literature.
2. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes they noted they were Asiatics; sometimes by other names.
3. I don’t know. Rabbi Bazak wrote about this in his book, and also Rabbi Bin-Nun, but it is not before me right now.
4. In general, Egypt’s supply of slaves in this period came either from the people’s tax to the king or from military campaigns. Usually there was a mixture of slaves in Egypt. Regarding numbers, I don’t know; that enters the general issue of how much the Sages intended to describe precise details.

1. A and all the questioners. Better not to mix midrash and plain meaning. One cannot ask whether in the opinion of our Sages there is support for a long conquest, or how the Mekhilta fits with the mixed multitude being more numerous than those who left Egypt, and so on. These are aggadic statements written 2,000 years after the events. Why link the things?! Would you challenge the Exodus from Egypt based on the Tzitzim LeDavid or the Shoshanim LeMoshe?? And why should the Sages be different?! Both were crowned with divine inspiration, but that is not at all the point of relating to their words as biblical history! True, sometimes by chance they preserve very ancient traditions, but only when external support is found for this; otherwise, the claim remains as it was. And most of their words are homiletical, said in their day for Torah purposes and others. This in no way lowers the need to labor over their profound words.

2. And regarding the non-mention of Pharaoh’s personal name—the last interpretation is especially lovely. Well done! (Except that there is a difficulty with your words: “The bare title ‘Pharaoh’ is a clear marker of the New Kingdom, as Professor Grintz writes (The Uniqueness and Antiquity of Genesis, p. 102). The New Kingdom began around the 15th century BCE.” The difficulty: Pharaoh as a bare title also appears in the patriarchal stories, which preceded the 15th century by a great deal.)

It also seemed to me possible to say that the Torah intentionally omits his name so as not to turn the event into something that happened once, in the days of king so-and-so. Rather, in every generation a person must see himself, and so on. (Admittedly those are words of the Sages! But they fit the plain meaning of the Bible completely.) As Israel Eldad writes, Biblical Reflections, p. 80: “The Bible… does not treat this whole episode from the historical-factual side, but rather from the essential side”—all this regarding the side of the Egyptians. But with respect to what happened to Israel there is importance to every historical detail not only from the side of eternal essence but also regarding concrete reality in history.

Another explanation for the bare title “Pharaoh”: in the name Pharaoh by itself and in isolation is hinted the violent power of the bondage. Israel Eldad there:

“Pharaoh means in Egyptian ‘the great house’… and from a historical point of view the name was justified more objectively than all the others, for are not the great houses what remained almost as the sole value, as the sole exhibit, from all that culture of four thousand years, the history of ancient Egypt? When you say Greece, you say: art, philosophy, culture… and when you say Egypt—you say: pyramids. There you have the essence of all that culture: the great house. That is Pharaoh, and that is his memorial… in the end everything goes back to the tremendous quantity of working hands; all Egypt are Pharaoh’s slaves, and needless to say the people of the other nations…” (And I do not mean to claim that Israel built the pyramids.)

3. However, for a hint to the name of the king of Egypt around the time of the bondage (Seti, father of Ramses), see Haggai Misgav’s website:
http://misgav.blogspot.co.il/2017/01/blog-post_18.html
And here is a short quotation:
“From Egyptian eyes, Moses’ story was clear to every reader. Moses’ mother did not throw him into the river, and did not let his ark drift away. On the contrary, she hid him in the reeds at the Nile’s edge so that he would not drift away; Pharaoh’s daughter, mischievous girl that she was, came down to the water and then noticed the ark hidden there. The end, the reed marsh, is the place of rebirth of the one who will come and challenge the wicked ruler of the land. The decree about the sons also now receives new light—the wicked king who decrees that the sons be thrown into the Nile in order to kill them is the god Set; the first king in the nineteenth dynasty was called Seti, after him. Ramses II, the greatest king of that dynasty, is the one who built the city of Ramses, which the Bible says the Israelites were employed in building. The one born in the marsh—or at least found there by his daughter—is Horus, who one day will defeat Set.”

And I would add the verse “But Pharaoh did not set his heart…” as a linguistic hint.

In his book Biblical Reflections, Israel Eldad adds another hint to the identity of the enslaving Pharaoh (Ramses II):
“Among the stone figures adorning the colossal statue of Ramses II, there is a figure of his daughter named Bint-Anat. This name, clearly Canaanite-Semitic, Bat-Anat, in its Hebrew-Israelite adaptation would be Bitya, with a dotted bet, as preserved in Chronicles in Bithiah daughter of Pharaoh (though there she is the wife of one of Judah’s descendants), and it sheds new light on the whole story of Moses’ rescue. This Canaanite daughter, or perhaps Tyrian daughter (if we do not go so far as to see in her the daughter of an Israelite-Canaanite woman from Goshen), had a particularly warm heart for persecuted Hebrew children. If her mother, one of Pharaoh’s wives, gave her such a Semitic name, that means her education too was not entirely in the spirit of Egypt. Bint-Anat, daughter of Ramses II, one of the greatest pharaohs, perhaps the greatest of them, is the one who drew Moses from the Nile.” End quote, pp. 79–80.

With the help of Heaven, 26 Av 5777

To Gil (flexible?) – Greetings and much joy,

It may be that the Torah did not mention the names of the different pharaohs because their names were names of idols, about which the Torah commanded: “And the name of other gods you shall not mention.”

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

It is worth noting that in the descriptions of the bondage and Moses’ birth (Exodus 1:8–2:9), no one is mentioned by name except the midwives Shiphrah and Puah. “A man from the house of Levi,” “the woman,” “the child,” “his sister,” “Pharaoh’s daughter” are mentioned. No person has a name, as befits a dictatorial regime in which no one has an independent personality and is merely a “cog” in the machine. The first to receive a name is “Moses,” whose name expresses his destiny—to draw the world out of the depths of slavery and restore to every human being his name and identity.

M – thank you very much for all your answers.

Gil – indeed, usually I do not attach great importance to midrashim (except sometimes to their message, and that is the main intent), and in any case many midrashim contradict one another.
However, because the mixed multitude is mentioned in the Torah, it was important to me to ask in passing.

Known objections to the story of the Exodus from Egypt were raised here, and this is one of the difficulties people raise, so I attached importance to it.

Well done everyone. I want to add an article I wrote on the topic, touching on certain additional perspectives regarding what was raised on the subject of the building of the city of Ramses and more. http://emetmerets.xyz/2017/01/08/the Exodus in archaeology/

Hello M, I’d be glad to know if the article you’ve been working on is ready..
Holiday blessings

To Avraham, thanks for a comprehensive article. One small note for now: finding an early scarab at the Mount Ebal altar poses no difficulty—contrary to what you wrote—since it can be preserved for hundreds of years in a family, like grandma’s jewelry today and then too. And this is very common in archaeology. What does pose evidence is the presence of a late scarab, from the time of Ramses, which testifies that at the very earliest the altar was active in his days. If the Exodus was in the middle of the 15th century BCE, then you would be forced to assume that it remained active until the end of the 13th century, close to 300 years, which does not emerge from the archaeological documentation regarding the altar, which was active only about 70 years. Moreover, carbon-14 tests show that the animal bones are from Iron Age I, meaning the 13th–12th century. So one of two things seems to follow: either it is Joshua’s altar and the Exodus was around the time of Ramses (late), or the Exodus predates it by centuries and the altar is from the period of the Judges. That is according to the plain meaning. And there is room to discuss. Thanks for your broadening article.

Gil, thanks! I remember seeing a source saying that the dating of the bones on Mount Ebal is “at the latest” to the 13th century. In addition, it is important to add the fact that there are parallel periods that have the same amount of carbon because of changes in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which causes the average margin of error in carbon tests to be around 300 years, although theoretically the deviation should have been about 13 years according to the “clean” measure. Also worth noting is that at the Mount Ebal site one sees that the altar was built on top of an older structure, circular, which was probably also an altar. In short, there is definitely room to discuss.

See also here, a promo for M’s article—
on the Exodus from Egypt from the archaeological-historical aspect, which was first revealed yesterday.

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%90%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%90%d7%aa-%d7%9E%d7%A6%d7%A8%d7%99%d7%9D/