There is a broad responsum on this on the site.

There are 2 principal datings – the 12th century BCE and the 15th century.

* The 15th century BCE – this is the approach of the Israeli researchers Dr. Meitlis and Rabbi Professor Yoel Elitzur. This approach fits the plain meaning of the Bible best.
* The 12th-century approach – the approach of most researchers is Rabbi Dr. Yoel Bin-Nun’s approach.

In honor of Passover and for the public benefit, I am hereby attaching a draft of parts of the summary and introduction * of a broad article I wrote on the subject (and abandoned for lack of time. For those following: the difficulty I had with the article was solved). Indeed, there may be mistakes and inaccuracies here and there, but this is (part of) what I have in hand. For all the points below in the summary, the article included sources and expansions in the body of the article, with explanations of various objections that can be raised against them. All in all, I think the argument stands.

Again, I emphasize-
1. This is a draft, and as such it is preliminary and may contain mistakes. I didn’t have time to formalize the footnotes in academic form.
2. I’m not going to conduct discussions about these things here. The matters are detailed in the full document.

(When copying it here I added a few small expansions so there would be no need to consult the full article in order to get a picture of the matter. Because of lack of time, the things are written in a less formal way.)

I suggest that the non-expert reader read only the summary without the notes.

I warn in advance that I was not blessed with dazzling writing talent; I tend to be long-winded and cumbersome. My apologies to the reader.

I thank my friend Gili Stern, with whom many of the ideas in parts of this article draft were clarified together, and who always knew how to add information and enrich me greatly, time after time. Part of the original idea came up after reading a post by Ariel73 on the “Stop Here Think” forum, an idea that was improved, expanded, and changed following criticism.

I also thank Rabbi Dr. Yoel Bin-Nun, Dr. Yitzhak Meitlis, Rabbi Professor Yoel Elitzur, and others who contributed advice and assistance. Everything written here is my own view and does not always reflect their views.

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From the introduction (part):

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One of the well-known and difficult questions in the tension between Torah and science is the realistic possibility of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Any beginning archaeologist belonging to the minimalist school will proudly tell you that no such thing ever happened, that the Exodus from Egypt is a myth with nothing to do with reality. He will enlist all the findings from the ancient Near East in support, since in his view they contain not even the faintest hint of the biblical ethos. Could it be that the central ethos of the Jewish people is one great historical fiction?

While the scholarly debate over the historical reality of the Exodus from Egypt takes place in academia, in the public square and on the internet there is a parallel discussion conducted with dishonesty and ignorance. On the one hand, religious outreach organizations sometimes twist findings in order to prove their thesis, and on the other hand atheist organizations present the state of research in a one-sided way; in their view it is clear from scholarship that the tradition of the Exodus has no supporting evidence, and it is clear to all scholars that the story has no historical basis. In this article we will show that this is far from the case; presenting the facts this way is a one-sided and dishonest presentation of the data.

In this article we will review, for the first time in concentrated form, the findings of the scholarly world regarding the Israelite ethos. We will see that, contrary to what is commonly accepted, there are actually quite a few pieces of evidence for the story underlying the Israelite ethos, and they can serve as important testimony that at the basis of that story stands a real historical event. We will also see that the simplistic picture presented by various parties, according to which there is no basis for the Israelite story, stems from different interpretations of the findings, lack of knowledge, distortion of findings, and failure to ask the right question.

The atheist claim we wish to address is as follows:
1. There is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus from Egypt – all the evidence brought so far is lies or things taken out of context.
2. There is contradictory evidence proving that the story of the Exodus from Egypt is implausible – the Egyptian kingdom in the period of Ramesses II was a very powerful kingdom; it is not plausible that the story of the Exodus happened, because otherwise we would feel it.
3. All scholars assume that this story has no historical basis.

Accordingly, this article will discuss these questions. On the one hand, we will survey all the evidence for the story, and on the other hand we will discuss the significance of that evidence and whether it can be seen as sufficient to establish a rational argument for the reality of the events. We will also try to understand whether the claim of a scholarly consensus has any basis.

It is important to note: the article does not discuss, nor does it try to persuade or prove with signs and wonders, that the Exodus from Egypt is a historical event. Its purpose is to show that given the existing evidence, reason tends toward the view that the biblical story is true, and it is certainly rational and reasonable to accept it. After presenting the facts, each person can judge whether the claim that there is no evidence for this story is accurate or stems from manipulation and ignorance.

I will mention another key point for understanding the article: the purpose of the article is not to prove that everything written in the Bible about the story is correct (a claim I personally do accept), but to show that the story has a historical basis. Therefore, we will pay attention to the center and not to side details (for example – the size of the population that left Egypt or its exact route). That is, we will see that there is good and strong evidence that the national memory of the Exodus from Egypt is indeed well-founded, and even if it is not accurate in every detail – the basis is still correct.

I do emphasize – I personally accept all the details of the story, and as we will see, in my opinion there is no real reason not to accept it in its many details. Even so, my purpose in saying this is to explain that this is not the essence of the article. A person may be convinced that a certain detail is mistaken or exaggerated, but this need not prevent him from accepting the rest of the story, which, as we shall see, is certainly anchored in the findings we have.

I will add further that the article also does not intend to touch on the religious question of the Exodus from Egypt, but rather the historical event of the mass departure of the people of Israel from a house of slavery. Some will see this as a metaphysical event and divine intervention (like me), and some will see it as national history and no more. I do not intend to deal with these issues, and we will leave each person to interpret the matter according to his own belief.

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Summary of the article:

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Many people like to wave around the claim that there is no evidence for the Exodus from Egypt. According to them, there is no doubt that the biblical story is a myth. Those more knowledgeable will argue that there is no mention whatsoever in Egyptian history of the Exodus story, and in Egypt there is no evidence supporting it. In addition, according to them, the story flatly contradicts Egyptian history at the same period (which was a time of prosperity), surveys in the Sinai desert showed there is no evidence for the wandering of the Israelites in the Sinai desert, and it is unlikely that the people could successfully flee from it. To all this they add the fact that Canaanite cities (such as Jericho and Ai) were already in ruins by the time the Israelites entered them, and that the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt contains many anachronistic features (such as the kingdom of Edom, which did not exist in those days).

In this article, we showed that such a presentation is far from the actual state of affairs. These claims stem mainly from unfamiliarity with the material, dating paradigms (such as the mistaken and outdated attribution of the Exodus from Egypt to the days of Ramesses II), or fundamentalism and an obsessive attachment to details. A deeper study of the data actually shows unequivocally that the biblical story has not-bad evidence at all, and there is no obstacle to accepting it.

The purpose of the article, as we defined it, was to understand whether there is evidence for the story, and whether it is reasonable to assume that it has a historical basis. From the very beginning we set ourselves the goal not of proving that all the details of the story are exact, but of showing that there are certainly quite a few good pieces of evidence in favor of this ethos, and that at its base stands a real historical story.

We began with the point that every group of people has some kind of founding memory – where they came from, how the group was founded, and so on. These stories often reflect truth; there is a good reason for this: peoples generally preserve their national memories, and experience also teaches that national memories are, overall, a relatively reliable thing, at least at the basic level. The Jewish people also has a story: the forefathers of the nation came from across the river and lived as a small, wandering minority among the peoples of Canaan. Because of famine, the family moved to Egypt, and after some time Pharaoh enslaved them. After a long and hard period of slavery, Moses appeared with the message of redemption and took them out of bondage by subduing Egypt, which was a superpower. After the departure from Egypt, God gave them His Torah, and after a generation of wandering they conquered the Land of Israel from the Canaanites and settled in it. This is the story they told, according to the earliest literary testimonies the people has – the books of the Bible. It is important to note that this story appears not only in the Torah – it is also woven into the words of the prophets, the former and latter, and in many Psalms. In the prophetic books the prophets address the people and remind them how God brought them out of Egypt. Notice: they do not try to persuade the people that this happened, but simply remind them of famous facts known to all. Therefore this story is not the possession of a spiritual elite, but a shared group memory of all strata of the people (even in Chronicles, which has a tendency to glorify mainly the monarchy, there are ostensibly several references to the Exodus from Egypt). In addition, we saw that the Exodus story is a story with a distinctly anti-mythical character, a story that usually does not belong to the school of stories that ancient peoples used to invent for themselves. It begins with the fact that in the ancient pagan world the lowest social status was that of a slave. One can understand that a people whose origin was from slaves would tell of itself that it was really descended from gods or kings or heroes. But who ever heard of a free people living in its own land inventing that they had been slaves? To this we should add that although Moses our teacher is described as a singular prophet, he is also a stammerer (unlike other leaders who glorified themselves). The priestly stratum, too, does not emerge untouched by the criticism written about it in the episode of the making of the calf by Aaron, and especially the people, who are consistently described as a troublesome and childish people. The Israelites panic at every problem, and Moses and God are repeatedly required to prove their power and concern for the people. They are not heroes and not geniuses, but a “stiff-necked people.” What people invents stories like that about its ancestors? specifically the Torah’s description, which is not flattering to the image of our ancestors, is a sign that the things were probably true and not made up. As a result of all this, and because the story is full of details, locations, and chronology (which is not very characteristic of myths), there is at least a considerable suspicion that it is not a myth, all the more so given that this is a central, unique, identity-forming national myth. (My personal opinion is that the very fact that the story is an agreed-upon founding national myth already gives it credibility. Philosophically, perhaps the burden of proof is on the one who claims it is false. All the more so when it is a myth that does not look like a myth, but that is not the concern of this article.)

Later, we saw that the nature of the story itself creates a number of difficulties for finding documentation for it. It begins with what we learned about the region where the story takes place (Goshen): because of the wet character of the area, not only is there no papyrus documentation about the Israelites, there is in fact no papyrus documentation at all from all of Egyptian history there. It is simply a place that does not allow inscriptions that are not carved on temples to survive. More than that: it turns out that a story like this is the kind of story that, if it happened, would generally be expected to be suppressed by ancient empires. We even proved this claim empirically by the identical lack of documentation for another comparable period in which Egypt was humiliated by foreigners for 200 years (!), a period the Egyptians made efforts to suppress successfully (no direct Egyptian texts about the episode survived!). In fact, without the later record of the Egyptian historian Manetho, about a thousand years after the event, we would know nothing about it, because the Egyptians succeeded in destroying every written trace of the period (the inscription at Beni Hasan is also not documentation of that kind). This fact, regarding Egyptian methods of documentation, has already been mentioned and supported by several important Egyptologists such as Professor Nili Shupak and Professor Kenneth Kitchen.

And yet, we saw that although it is likely that such an event would not be documented, there nevertheless are echoes of it in Egyptian historical works, in Manetho, the greatest of Egyptian historians—the very one thanks to whom we know today about the rule of the Hyksos. That historian documents the expulsion of the Hebrews because they brought diseases on Egypt, but he describes a completely different version that may teach us about the existence of such an Egyptian national memory. In any case, later Egyptian documentation certainly does exist.

Later, in what was one of the innovations of the article, and on the basis of the understanding in the previous paragraph, we decided that the paradigm must be changed and that one must distinguish between those kinds of evidence for the biblical ethos whose probability of being found is low (because of documentary bias and preservation problems in Goshen), and evidence that, if the story were true, despite the documentary bias we would still likely be able to identify with high probability. As examples of these hard-to-hide pieces of evidence, we mentioned Egyptian weakness in the period of the departure, many building projects, destruction of cities in the land, and more. After that, in what was the second innovation of the article, we explained that because we are unable to know the exact form of the counting system in the Bible[1], we proposed looking for evidence across a period, not for one exact year – a period. That is, one cannot know from the biblical descriptions exactly when we are supposed to look for the Exodus from Egypt; at best we have a possible time range. Therefore we need to check whether at some point during the 18th–19th Dynasties there are those clues we would expect to find if the Exodus from Egypt really occurred. If we find such evidence, we then need to determine whether we are dealing with one or two hints, or with an accumulation matching the whole framework of the story. After this paradigm shift, we saw that, upon a careful examination of the full map of findings in Egypt in the time range in which the story occurs, we discover that most of the central elements of the story are in fact documented—and well documented. All this despite the implausibility of such documentation, and despite the preservation problems in the region where the story takes place.

As part of the list of findings, we saw that about 200 years before the broad time range of the Exodus from Egypt (depending on how one counts), a pro-Semitic dynasty ruled in Egypt (the Hyksos), a dynasty that could have been fertile ground for the entry of the Hebrews and that would enable Eastern Semites to attain power (something that happened more than once even during Egyptian dynasties). During the reign of this dynasty, several familiar names are mentioned in Egypt, such as Yaakov-Har and others (to remove any doubt, I am not claiming the Hyksos were the Israelites). At the end of the period of this dynasty, a famine passed over Egypt and it fell to a new dynasty of kings. The new dynasty made it its goal to erase every trace of the previous pro-Semitic dynasty with which it had fought and which it feared. This dynasty would obviously harbor resentment toward anyone associated with Hyksos rule. Later we learn that this new dynasty carried out many building projects using thousands of slaves of Semitic origin, and among other things built food storehouses in a city in the land of Goshen, which would later be called in Egyptian documentation ‘Ramesses’[2]. When we examine the end of this period (1350 BCE, the closing years of Amenhotep III), in the broad time range in which according to the biblical dating the Exodus from Egypt was supposed to occur, we witness the rise of a new king, Amenhotep IV—Akhenaten. This king is not the crown prince (who died for unclear reasons), and parallel to his rise we witness a total collapse of the Egyptian empire and its veteran colonies in the Middle East (Egyptian rule in Canaan, the kingdom of Amurru, and so on, and the Egyptians sign a peace treaty with the Hittites, who themselves destroy Egyptian allies). These colonies cry out for help and do not receive it, and they even complain that the endless gold that Akhenaten’s father used to send them simply stopped arriving. In the same period in which the Egyptian empire collapses, a religious change also passes over Egypt, and a revolution takes place that constitutes a kind of initial and undeveloped version of monotheism (or henotheism – one supreme god with a pantheon of gods beneath him). We also noted that according to a very small number of researchers, it is possible that a contemporary document has been preserved in our hands (the notorious Ipuwer), concerning upheavals, diseases, and disasters in Egypt in that period (although it does not necessarily have complete identity with the biblical story—an identity that is very far from how people usually like to present it), though the overwhelming majority of scholars think that this dating of the inscription is wrong (for linguistic reasons). To this disputed inscription we should add another inscription, documenting neighboring peoples of Egypt already during the period of enslavement; on that inscription appears the broken name of a people which, according to several scholars, is most plausibly (and some say uniquely) to be completed as the name ‘Israel.’

Close to the end of the period we proposed for the enslavement, after, according to the biblical testimony, the people headed toward the Land of Israel by a long and circuitous route in order to avoid military confrontation on the way (apparently because Egyptian fortresses stood in the coastal area—fortresses that exist only in the New Kingdom period! the period of the Exodus from Egypt), and parallel to the upheaval in Egypt and the dramatic decline in its power—in our hands there is a good deal of significant archaeological evidence for the entry of a new ethnic element from the east into the Land of Israel, settling there in the thousands from east to west, in Transjordan and in the central hill country.

Some time before this settlement, in Canaanite-Egyptian correspondence from the same period that we possess (the Amarna letters), there is also an account of a factor called ‘Apiru,’ a term known to describe generally people of low status in the ancient Near East, invading the land and burning its cities. According to these letters, the peoples of Canaan ask the Egyptians for help in stopping the Apiru (in my view – only the ma’apilim from the desert), help that is not provided, perhaps because of the chaos taking place in Egypt at that time (this although the Canaanites ask them for only minimal help, minimal help that may take into account the chaos in Egypt and perhaps is intended to send a message to the invaders that they are dealing with the Egyptian superpower and not with the Canaanites alone). Very strangely, according to these documents the residents of Shechem cooperate with those Apiru, right alongside the fact that if we check the Bible we discover that, oddly, Joshua does not conquer Shechem—a city located in the hill country where the Israelites settled—and even in Chronicles there are hints of an early settlement of this city by the sons of Ephraim, parallel to the enslavement in Egypt.

Indeed, we do not know for certain who this factor is[3], but it is not implausible that this is a contemporary record of an initial infiltration into the land by part of the early Israelites (the ma’apilim), who were still few in number at that stage. And behold, in parallel, a bit later, as far as we know from the archaeological excavations, the cities of the land really do lie in ruins one after another (among them Jericho, Ai, Hazor, Gibeon, and perhaps even Heshbon, which, because of a mistaken dating of the Exodus from Egypt and problems in the chronology of the Land of Israel, was claimed not to have existed at the time of the Israelites’ entry. This solution was proposed by the archaeologist Dr. Yitzhak Meitlis).

Interestingly, from the excavations we learn that the factor entering the land destroys both Canaanite and Egyptian idolatry in its path and establishes its own cultic sites, several cultic sites where only kosher animals are sacrificed and where worship is conducted that contains monotheistic hints. These sites are built in the shape of footprints, and the settlers go up to offer sacrifices there. In addition, we explained that it is possible that one of these cultic sites discovered on Mount Ebal, which looks suspiciously like the biblical altars and the story in Deuteronomy, is dated to this period (and in this summary we will not enter into the various objections to this statement).

In addition, we learn that the people entering the land has national characteristics different from the peoples of the area (for example, a different pottery style influenced by the neighbors in the lowlands), and it shows signs of a people that came from the desert region (it does not eat pork, a clear sign of peoples who wander in the desert), and perhaps even has hints that it came from Egypt (the footprints, the form of the Tabernacle, and so on). This people, in a process of 200 years, resettles the central hill country of the Land of Israel as well as some places in Transjordan. All this accords with the biblical story. At the end of this period, after the end of the above settlement period, we already have explicit and agreed Egyptian documentation in the Merneptah Stele of a factor called ‘Israel’ dwelling in the land (in addition to an earlier indirect mention of factors called Dan, Asher, and Manasseh), a factor whose destruction the Egyptians boast of: “Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more.” In parallel to it, there is also puzzling documentation of a Midianite tribe dwelling in the Sinai desert that likewise begins to worship a deity called Y-H-W, a deity forbidden to be represented by statue or image. That tribe also builds bronze serpents and structures similar to the form of the Tabernacle. At the same time, in the land, that same factor settling there seems to spread across the entire hill country with hundreds of settlements and develops a new form of writing that will later become known as ancient Hebrew script, a script whose early version is found only in southern Egypt and in the Egyptian mines in Sinai, where they were carved by Semitic slaves working there (Proto-Sinaitic script).

Later we saw that there are also difficulties with the claim about the lack of remains in the desert. It is entirely possible that we do have such remains, although it is not clear that the nature of the place, settlement, and research even allows their discovery[4]. To these findings we should add the discoveries at Har Karkom, an ancient holy mountain where carvings were discovered on stone in the shape of the Tablets of the Covenant, bronze serpents, calves, 12 standing stones, and carved inscriptions with the name of the God of Israel. The excavator of the site dates it about a thousand years before the Exodus from Egypt, but it is not impossible that his dating is mistaken and that it belongs to the New Kingdom period. The excavator himself acknowledged this as a real possibility.

In addition to these findings, we saw that the author of the biblical story displays a surprising, intimate, and unlikely familiarity with Egypt in a very specific period—the New Kingdom period (the period in which the story is supposed to occur), familiarity with a very specific period that, if the story were a late myth (as its deniers claim), should not have appeared as such. We saw that several books have been published recently documenting dozens of examples of this, among them: the Egyptian practice of employing thousands of Semitic slaves (among other names called ‘Apiru’), the fact that Pharaoh is called simply ‘Pharaoh’ and not ‘Pharaoh So-and-so’—something that fits specifically the time of the Exodus from Egypt and not afterward, the fact that the Israelites leave specifically from the south and not the north, “lest the people regret when they see war” — an area that was fortified only at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the use of reeds and pitch in Egypt for boats, Egyptian names such as Moses (or ms in Egyptian form) known in ancient Egypt, Joseph’s appointment fitting wonderfully with ancient Egyptian patterns of appointment, the form of the Tabernacle, many Egyptian names and titles in the episode (Avrekh, Potiphar) and among those who left (Kehat and Merari and more), and many more proofs and examples that can be brought from these books written by Egyptologists. All these indicate that the author of the story knows far too well what is going on in Egypt in that period, and most likely a late writer could not have known all this (even under Egyptian rule in the land, one must remember that the rule was in the lowland region and not in the hill country—where the early Israelites lived—and in any case it is not plausible that such tiny details of Egyptian life would be preserved for hundreds of years). To all this we should add that in parallel there is countless evidence for mutual penetration of customs and words between the two peoples, evidence showing a clear ancient connection between the peoples (though some would argue that this particular point can be explained in additional ways). We also saw that the claims about anachronisms, as well as other claims against the Exodus from Egypt, simply do not withstand criticism, the latest findings, or comparison with findings from parallel events with the same characteristics[5].

Finally, we also saw that contrary to the picture many like to paint, not a few Bible scholars, archaeologists, and Egyptologists do in fact accept that the biblical ethos preserves a story with a historical core about escaping slaves. Among these scholars are some of the greatest Bible scholars and archaeologists ever. The later scholars among them openly admit that the tendency not to accept the story may stem more from worldview than from the findings themselves—a worldview in which, as we showed, there are quite a few absurdities, and a double standard vis-à-vis other archaeological studies in the Middle East.

As examples of these absurdities, we asked: why, for example, is the mention of the name ‘Edom’ as an organized people in the 12th century BCE in the Israelite national memory (which has quite a few hints of preserving ancient elements), or in Israelite historical writings (even according to those who think they were written later), considered an anachronism—while on the other hand a brief mention of that exact same name in Egyptian, Hittite, Assyrian, or Babylonian historical writings (which are no less religious or politically tainted) is considered proof of its existence? Why do we expect the Egyptians to document explicitly, in detail, and extensively (more than what has been found) such a humiliating story for them as the Exodus from Egypt—especially when we have additional examples of such periods? How many such examples do we know in history? Why is the absence of such documentation proof that the story is a myth? Moreover, we showed additional absurdities, such as the fact that scholars reject the whole story of the Exodus from Egypt appearing in Exodus because of anachronistic elements (which by now have already been disproven) in Deuteronomy? (Which, according to them, was written by a different author several hundred years before Deuteronomy?) Why is it that when these same scholars deal with the history of other peoples in the Middle East they tend to accept the national documentation, and at most assume that part of it is merely inflated (in scale), but they do not apply the same principle of reduction to Israelite national documentation and assume that it is true at root but inflated? Why do those same scholars who dismiss the story of Israel’s wanderings in a vast desert like Sinai because, in their view, there are not enough findings for it (a claim we saw is far from simple), continue in a completely biased way to accept the authenticity of Egyptian military campaigns that passed through those same deserts and for which no remains have been found either? Why is the failure to find inscriptions in Goshen evidence for the unreliability of the story, when in all the history of Goshen not even one papyrus has been found because of the damp nature of the region? These few examples, out of the array of examples we brought in the article, easily demonstrate the complete lack of honesty in the modern examination of the evidence for the biblical story, a lack of honesty that stems from worldview and not from facts.

If we summarize the matter: the Israelite people has an ancient, central, founding tradition concerning its having been enslaved in Egypt. This tradition is so central that it is taken as self-evident among the people, and almost its entire religious cycle is based on it. As we learned, the tradition is very different from parallel traditions, which usually glorify the people and do not present it as enslaved or its leader as stammering. If we are not captive to the old dating paradigms, we see that in the period in which the Exodus from Egypt is likely to have occurred there is a Canaanite people ruling in the land that could have served as fertile ground for the Joseph story; that people is eventually expelled from Egypt, and Egypt tries to harass anyone associated with it. The kings who replaced that people employ many slaves, and at some point in the middle of the dynasty there is a sudden decline in the power of the kingdom and also a religious rupture. A short time after this event, and alongside it, tribal invasions of the land begin, and later a total destruction of many fortified cities, while in their place there settles a people of nomads from east to west, a people with a monotheistic religion that does not eat pork, and that in time invents Hebrew script and establishes a kingdom in the land. This people, which preserves a tradition of a passage from slavery to freedom, knows far too well what happened in Egypt in the New Kingdom period, things the people should not have known or preserved just like that. All this, together with the many other proofs I brought in the article, decisively shows in my opinion that the biblical story is anchored in historical reality.

Indeed, I know it is possible to dispute some of the proofs I brought on their own (and I tried to address these criticisms, with which I disagree, in the body of the article), and indeed many have done so. However, one should remember that my aim was not to show that there are unequivocal proofs for the biblical story, but to show that it is certainly possible, and that we do have a considerable number of proofs pointing to the reliability of the story. At the same time, in my opinion the overall map of evidence (national story, anti-mythic and humiliating character, suppression of embarrassing events by ancient empires, documentation by Egyptian national historians, evidence for each part of the story on its own, contemporary inscriptions that perhaps even document the event, internal familiarity with the New Kingdom, evidence of mutual influence between the peoples, and more) paints a picture giving very high credibility to the biblical ethos, even if not to all of it, then at least to its basis.
And yet, although I would understand if someone claimed that none of this proves the reliability of the story unequivocally (though in my personal opinion, as stated, the evidence does show unequivocally that such an analysis would be completely mistaken), what is certain is that with such a broad map of evidence as I presented, even according to those who think there is no conclusive proof for the story, there is no doubt that there is a very broad rational basis for adhering to it, and no reason not to accept it—as, as I showed, many scholars also do. Therefore, in conclusion, the claim that there is no evidence at all for the biblical story, and that it is crystal clear that the story is a myth, is precisely what is unfounded—completely unfounded.

[1] It is commonly said that the Exodus from Egypt took place 480 years before the building of the Temple, and according to this in 1445 BCE, and this also apparently fits Jephthah’s words about Israel dwelling in Transjordan for about 300 years and the lines of priestly succession. But all this is only apparently so. In antiquity there was extensive use of typological numbers whose exact meaning we cannot know (and therefore 480 may symbolize several generations or something else entirely). We also cannot learn anything from Jephthah’s words in the period of Judges; we do not know whether he meant 300 years literally, and in addition—and most importantly—we do not know the exact order of the judges or whether they ruled synchronically (which, if so, also complicates the plain sense of biblical chronology). It is very possible that a large part of the judges acted in parallel, some in the north of the land, some in Transjordan, and some in the south, and in fact the stories of Judges are stories occurring in parallel. Thus it is possible that Jephthah actually operated toward the close of the period of the judges and not 120 years before its end. Recently Dr. Yuval Vadai in his doctoral dissertation viewed the Book of Judges as two parallel sections. In our view, it is quite possible that there are even 3 such sections, and therefore no precise timing can be learned from the Book of Judges. An exact time estimate according to the priestly lineages is also not possible and can fit a range of between 300 and 500 years. Therefore, according to our argument, it is impossible to mark a specific time when the Exodus from Egypt occurred based on the Bible, and one must search for evidence for it across a range of time. Breaking this paradigm is one of the central innovations of the article.
[2] The name Ramesses may also have been earlier, as the Egyptologist Professor Abraham Shalom Yehuda showed, or it may be a later editorial note as Ibn Ezra says.
[3] Indeed, Apiru is the name of a social class in the ancient Near East and not the name of a people, but let us remember that Apiru describes people of low status, nomads, or slaves. It is quite possible that Abraham belonged to this class and was therefore called Abraham the Hebrew, which, as is known, led to the association of that name with his descendants and the land. On this point see Rabbi Dr. Yoel Bin-Nun in his article “The Land of the Hebrews.”
[4] Indeed, no remains from the Late Bronze Age were discovered in the desert (although scholars assume the place was not empty). This claim against the reliability of the Bible has several methodological problems or unfounded assumptions—without even getting into the fact that the research method is problematic (a survey and not more than that): it is possible that desert dwellers used more primitive ceramic methods, and in fact the desert findings from the Early Bronze Age are findings of the people of Israel. In addition, this is a known phenomenon in the whole study of the ancient Near East, which has difficulty dealing with migrations of peoples in general and nomadic settlement in particular. This phenomenon is especially known in Sinai, where no remains were found of Egyptian military campaigns and more, though we know for certain they took place in Sinai. A desert is not a place that makes preserving nomadic remains easy.
[5] In the course of the article we mentioned in the notes the main objections raised against each of the proofs we brought, and we saw that for the most part they have no substance, and the proofs still stand.

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I am also attaching here an appendix from one of the chapters of the article that deals with the claims about an academic “consensus” that the story never happened at all. The goal is not to show that smart people agree with the story, but only to refute the claim that nobody accepts it.

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On the “academic consensus”

One of the favorite things of people online who understand nothing about biblical studies is to present the state of scholarship in a one-sided way. According to them, it is clear to every sensible person and every scholar that the story never happened, and more than that, that there is full agreement about this in academia. This argument is, unfortunately, a lie—a complete lie. Indeed, many scholars do not accept the story, and it seems to me they are even the majority, among them important scholars such as Professor Israel Finkelstein, Professor Ze’ev Herzog, Professor Neil Asher Silberman, and others. Amihai Mazar even went so far as to say: “The biblical narrative, which includes the Exodus from Egypt and Moses our teacher, has long since been taken off the table as a historical event.” Indeed, this fact cannot be denied; many serious scholars think this way. On the other hand, the picture is more complex, both because of research paradigms which, if we do not adopt them, show that there are indeed findings, and not a few of them, and because very many scholars do in fact accept the reliability of the basic story of the Exodus from Egypt[1].

Among these Bible scholars are important scholars such as (all are Bible scholars/archaeologists):

Professor Yehezkel Kaufmann[2] (former head of the Bible department at the Hebrew University), Professor Moses David Cassuto[3] (former head of the Bible department at the Hebrew University, and one of the greatest Bible scholars), Professor Yehoshua Meir Grintz[4] (head of the Bible department at Tel Aviv University, and one of the greatest Bible scholars), Professor Kenneth Kitchen[5] (considered the greatest Egyptologist of our time), Professor William Albright[6] (one of the greatest archaeologists of the Land of Israel), Professor Benjamin Mazar[7], Professor David Ussishkin[8], Professor Yigael Yadin[9], Professor Yoel Elitzur[10], Professor James Hoffmeier[11], Professor Emmanuel Anati[12], Professor Menachem Haran[13], Professor Ernest Wright[14], Professor Adam Zertal[15], Professor Eliyahu Shmuel Hartom[16], Professor Joshua Berman[17], Professor Abraham Malamat[18], Professor Oded Bustanai[19], Professor Shmuel Loewenstamm[20] (one of the editors of the Encyclopaedia Biblica), Professor Abraham Shalom Yehuda[21], Professor Moshe Zvi Segal[22], Professor Nili Shupak[23], Professor Yehuda Elitzur[24], Professor Shmuel Yeivin[25], Professor Baruch Halpern[26], Professor Richard Hess[27], Professor Benjamin Sommer[28], Professor Frank Yurco[29], Professor Richard Elliott Friedman[30], Dr. Haggai Misgav[31], Dr. Yitzhak Meitlis[32], Rabbi Dr. Yoel Bin-Nun[33], Dr. Penina Galpaz-Feller[34], Dr. Zvi Ilan[35], Yehuda Kiel[36] (head of the Da’at Mikra commentary project), Hershel Shanks[37] (head of the American association for biblical archaeology[38]), and many more.
As can be seen – indeed, no scholar accepts the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

This short list of 36 scholars is a partial and limited list[39]; these are examples of only some of the supporters of the biblical narrative. The sharp reader will see that most of the scholars whose names I brought are Israeli scholars. Recently several books were published[40], edited after a few academic conferences that discussed the reliability of the biblical narrative at universities in the United States. These books contain more than 50 articles by scholars discussing the probability of the truth of the Exodus from Egypt (some accept it and some do not), and in these books many scholars write who were not mentioned here, and they too accept the biblical narrative.

I know that to the uninformed reader these names may not mean much, and therefore it is important to note that scholars such as Kaufmann, Zertal, Albright, Mazar, or Kitchen are among the greatest Bible scholars of the last century. These facts can easily be verified online[41].

Another point that should be noted – as I already said, I am not claiming that almost all scholars, or even most of them, accept the story of the Exodus from Egypt; that would be dishonest. On the contrary, it is likely that the situation is the opposite (though I did not check statistics[42]). However, my critical claim is different: indeed, many scholars do not accept the reliability of the story, but the claim that “it is clear to all scholars that the story is a myth, and no one in academia accepts it” is nothing more than a lie, an absolute lie. I do not know whether this comes from ignorance or malice, but it is simply a lie. Everyone is invited to check my sources about the scholars under discussion and verify this.

In conclusion, unlike what laymen like to write on the internet, there are many important scholars who do accept the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and there is no scholarly obstacle to doing so. Anyone claiming that only an ignorant and uneducated person accepts this argument does not know his right hand from his left. Again we have seen that this argument is an unfounded one.

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[1] As stated, our purpose is to examine whether at the basis of the Israelite story there is a true core concerning a departure of slaves toward the land and the origin of the Israelite people, and not to focus on details such as the ten plagues, the number of those who left, and so on—matters connected more to religious worldview or side details. These scholars can think that the Exodus from Egypt occurred because of natural phenomena or a mass or limited slave escape, and not necessarily through a miraculous event. These scholars can also think that the Torah tells a true story but that it was written many years after the event.
[2] Yehezkel Kaufmann, Toledot HaEmunah HaYisraelit, vol. 2, Bialik Institute.
[3] Encyclopaedia Biblica
[4] Yehoshua Meir Grintz, The Uniqueness and Antiquity of Genesis, Magnes Press.
[5] In his book On the Reliability of the Old Testament
[6] In his book The Religion and Archaeology of the Old Testament, and in William Foxwell Albright, The Archaeology of the Land of Israel, translated by Aharon Amir, Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1951
[7] Benjamin Mazar, “The Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the Land,” Canaan and Israel: Historical Studies, Bialik Institute and the Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 1980; and also Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak, “The Exodus from Egypt: Invention or Reality,” News1, 21.11.16
[8] Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak, “The Exodus from Egypt: Invention or Reality,” News1, 21.11.16
[9] See his book Hazor: “Head of All Those Kingdoms,” 1975, and also Na’aman and Finkelstein, From Nomadism to Monarchy, Ben-Zvi Institute, p. 361.
[10] Yoel Elitzur, A Place in the Portion, Yedioth Ahronoth, 2015.
[11] Israel in Egypt: Evidence for Authenticity of Exodus
[12] Emmanuel Anati, “Har Karkom – In Light of the New Discoveries,” Ariel Publishing, 2001.
[13] Menachem Haran, Bible and Its World, Magnes Press.
[14] Ernest Wright, The Bible in Its Setting, Hadar Press.
[15] Avital Lahav, “Is There Evidence for the Exodus from Egypt?”, ynet, 06.04.09. See also in Zertal’s book: A Nation Was Born, Yedioth Ahronoth. In that book he thought Israel entered from east of the Jordan. After his latest research he changed his mind.
[16] Commentary on Exodus, introduction.
[17] Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt.
[18] The Rise of Ancient Israel: Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1991
[19] Encyclopedia Olam HaTanakh, Exodus, p. 12.
[20] Encyclopaedia Biblica, entry “Exodus from Egypt,” Bialik Institute.
[21] The Accuracy of the Bible: The Stories of Joseph, the Exodus and Genesis Confirmed and Illustrated by Egyptian Monuments and Language, London: W. Heinemann, Ltd. 1934.
[22] Introduction to the Bible, Carta.
[23] His words are quoted in Until This Day, Amnon Bazak, Yedioth Sfarim 2013, p. 281.
[24] In his Da’at Mikra commentary on Exodus. Mossad Harav Kook.
[25] Shmuel Yeivin, “The Exodus from Egypt,” Tarbiz 30, 1961.
[26] The Rise of Ancient Israel: Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1991
[27] How to Judge Evidence for the Exodus, Mosaic Magazine, March 2015
[28] How to Judge Evidence for the Exodus, Mosaic Magazine, March 2015
[29] Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective
[30] See his lecture at UCSD. Professor Friedman is an excellent example of our principle: this is a scholar who fully accepts biblical criticism and is not suspected of religiosity, and he thinks that from reading the sources it is crystal clear that the Exodus from Egypt really occurred.
[31] “The Exodus from Egypt – Did It Happen or Not?”, 929 website.
[32] Yitzhak Meitlis, Excavating the Bible, 2005, Reuven Mass.
[33] The Polemic over Historical Truth in the Bible, Ben-Zvi Institute.
[34] The Exodus from Egypt, Reality or Imagination.
[35] Zvi Ilan, Yesterdays – Studies and Discoveries in the Land’s Past, Modan, 1988
[36] Da’at Mikra, Genesis, part 4, Mossad Harav Kook, 1981
[37] Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus, published by the American archaeology association, 2016.
[38] It should be noted that this is not a religious organization. Hershel himself is, to the best of my memory, an avowed atheist.
[39] Important scholars, archaeologists, and Egyptologists such as Professor Avraham Biran, Professor David Rohl, and others were not mentioned.
[40] Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt, Israel in Egypt; Evidence for Authenticity of Exodus
[41] The knowledgeable reader will see that some of the names I listed here are scholars from the beginning of the second half of the 20th century (Cassuto, Kaufmann, Grintz, Albright, Wright, Yehuda, and Segal), and today there are those who no longer agree with their method. That is indeed true. Still, first of all, these scholars are among the greatest Bible scholars in history, and therefore their opinion is important and makes it very hard to claim that no one accepts the biblical story (and in addition, as we saw, many scholars do continue to accept it). Second, the question is: why? What changed? After all, the map of findings in Egypt at the beginning of the century was not stronger in favor of the biblical narrative—if anything, the findings known 50 years ago made acceptance of the story harder, and yet they accepted it. So what changed? Simple. We already quoted Professor Amihai Mazar: “The interpretation of archaeological data and its relation to the biblical text is often a matter of subjective judgment… influenced by the values the researcher holds, by his beliefs, by his ideology, and by his approach to the data…” Indeed, unfortunately, experience shows that this is so.
[42] The size of the lists I brought should not be seen as evidence that there are more people who accept the story. It was brought in order to note the most central scholars who hold this thesis.

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I am also attaching here a short booklet I wrote today that surveys common objections against the Exodus from Egypt in various videos.

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Common claims against it:

* Non-mention of the name Israel in Egypt – first of all, that is simply not true, and we explained in the article about the inscription brought by Hershel Shanks that may predate the Merneptah Stele. Second, in case everyone forgot, the Egyptians call slaves by the general name “Asiatics” and do not use specific ethnic names for slaves.
* Egypt ruled Canaan at the time of the escape to it – a. in that period the control collapsed b. its control was on the coast and not in the hill country where the settlers from the desert lived.
* Cities mentioned in the story were built in the 8th century BCE – too bad they actually did exist at the time of the departure (like Gibeon, which certainly did exist, or Heshbon, which very possibly is actually the fortified mound Tell el-‘Umayri—next to Tell Hisban and not Tell Hisban itself. This is similar to 24 other tells in the Land of Israel where there is a similar phenomenon, as Yohanan Aharoni showed). Beyond that, as we said, if one moves the Exodus from Egypt earlier to the 18th Dynasty there is no dating problem at all in most places, especially not at Jericho and Ai. As for the fact that there is extensive building of these places in the period of the monarchy (and then one sees that these cities exist again) – yes. But the entire land was built up and expanded in the period of the monarchy; dozens of sites were rebuilt in that period, just as dozens of sites were rebuilt over ancient settlement remains in the rebirth of the State of Israel.
* Failure to find traces of settlement at Kadesh-barnea, where the Israelites lived for 19 years – common mistake! The Israelites did not dwell in Kadesh-barnea for 19 years. They dwelt in Kadesh (which was probably in the Transjordan area) for a long period. Several scholars have shown this recently, in line with the commentators who said there were two Kadeshes—Kadesh and Kadesh-barnea. Beyond that, as we already explained, it is quite possible that the findings they found are indeed Israelite findings, as Professor Emmanuel Anati suggested.
* The non-existence of Edom – even if we ignore the fact that there are serious problems in the archaeological study of Transjordan (as Finkelstein himself wrote), Edom did exist in the 13th century BCE as a pastoral tent-kingdom. We know this from the recent discovery of Edomite mines and from contemporary Egyptian inscriptions that mention Edom in the 13th century BCE—a people significant enough that the Ramessides fought wars against it.
* The non-existence of Arad – first of all, it is not clear from the text that the king of Arad was a city king; rather he may have been the king of the nomadic tribes of Arad who sat somewhere in the Negev. And independently of that, in the Egyptian inscriptions at Karnak two cities called Arad are mentioned in the Negev – ‘Arad Rabbat’ and ‘Arad of the house of Yeroham.’ It is quite possible that ‘Tel Arad’ is not the Arad of Moses’ time but the other city named Arad. And indeed, a few kilometers from Arad there is another tell that Professor Yohanan Aharoni proposed identifying as ancient Arad, and there, after excavation was carried out following that proposal, remains of settlement from the time of the Exodus from Egypt were discovered.
* The Philistines did not exist in this period – this view was refuted long ago by Professor Yehoshua Meir Grintz in his famous article and actually constitutes proof of the antiquity of the biblical story. There certainly were settlements of Aegean origin before the invasion of the Sea Peoples, settlements that were in the Gerar area and not on the coast—exactly as described in the Bible. This is really evidence and not a refutation.
* There are no papyri telling the story – indeed. But there are no papyri at all from the region of the land of Ramesses.
* The name of the Pharaoh is not mentioned in the story because it was written hundreds of years later – complete nonsense, and in fact evidence in the opposite direction. In ancient times they called Pharaoh simply ‘Pharaoh’; only after the New Kingdom did they start attaching a name to Pharaoh, like ‘Pharaoh Necho’ and the like. This is actually evidence proving the authenticity of the biblical story, not the opposite.
* The Egyptian border was full of fortresses and they could not have escaped through it – of course, the northern border was fortified. And that is why it says the people do not go by the northern border or by “the way of the land of the Philistines,” which was fortified, but specifically by the south. This is not a counterclaim but proof of the reliability of the story.
* There is no mention of the Exodus from Egypt in Nubian writings – I would be happy to hear how many Nubian texts have been discovered in history. Again, lack of professionalism and charlatanism said with great confidence.
* The Egyptians did document the failures of their predecessors – here too of course the claim ignores that this rule is contradicted by other similar cases in Egypt, and in any case it is not at all clear that a national-religious humiliation would be documented by a later king.
* If there had been an Exodus from Egypt, the Hittite empire or others would have taken advantage and attacked it – that is exactly what happened. The Hittites attacked Egyptian allies in the period after the time in which we proposed the Exodus from Egypt, despite the peace agreement with Egypt, and we also saw a general collapse of the Egyptian empire then, especially in Canaan.
* The Ipuwer Papyrus is not connected to the Exodus from Egypt, and in addition it is earlier – I also tend to think so, and therefore I did not mention it as proof but only as a possibility (which I personally do not accept). But it should be noted that the papyrus itself is indeed from the period when the departure supposedly happened, though it is thought to describe an earlier period, mainly because of linguistic evidence and because it fits the Egyptian description from several centuries earlier (though it also fits the description in the Bible, so this is not really an argument). Even so, there are several Egyptologists who do attribute it to the beginning of the 18th Dynasty or the end of the 17th; these scholars are few but they exist. As for the claims that things were taken out of context in the papyrus – those claims are absolutely correct (for example, the paragraph about blood was taken out of context), though it should be noted that the specific descriptions are not the significant part of the papyrus, but rather that it describes a period of disasters of various kinds and a slave revolt, which certainly fits the biblical description.
* If there had been an Exodus from Egypt, we would find in inscriptions that the neighboring peoples mocked Egypt – nice claim. The problem is that it does not fit the facts. In similar cases in which Egypt suffered an internal defeat, there is no non-Egyptian documentation of it; for example, no people mocks the story of the Hyksos.
* There is no mention of the story in Egyptian historical writings – there is a vague mention in Manetho. Indeed, it can also stem from other reasons, but it proves that the claim of total non-mention is simply false.
* 600,000 slaves would have emptied Egypt of inhabitants – even if we ignore the fact that these numbers may not be literal, or that our goal is to examine the core of the story and not its details—this is still another common mistake. In Egypt in the New Kingdom period, the estimate is between 2.5 and 4.5 million inhabitants (there are various opinions), which completely refutes the claim that Egypt would have been emptied if one follows the plain biblical account and relies on the broader method of estimating Egypt’s population. It should of course be added that bringing this claim is itself quite strange. These numbers are estimates based on various factors—there is no document describing such a census; these are estimates that cannot prove anything (estimates based among other things on a natural birthrate, which contradicts the Bible regarding the non-natural rate of Israelite reproduction, so relying on the assumption of a natural birthrate is begging the question in order to refute the story. Wonderful). The claim that it would have been impossible for them to reproduce at such a rapid rate was also already mathematically refuted by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner in an article he wrote on the issue.
* According to archaeological surveys, far fewer residents entered the land than the 600,000 (+ women and children) described in the Bible – although it is possible that the biblical numbers are not literal (as Cassuto already showed[1]), there are still problems with this claim about the number of settlers in the Iron Age. The first and central problem is that the claim ignores the fact that this information is based on a book from 1998 (!)—a period when only about 250 settlement sites were known, and on estimated density calculations. Today, some years later, more than 650 settlement sites of various sizes are already known just west of the Jordan alone (and dozens more have begun to be discovered now in the Madaba project in the limited area being surveyed on the other side). Interestingly, 450 of them were discovered in the Manasseh Hill Country Survey alone. That same survey changed the research approach and proved that the standard survey method misses 90% of the findings. If that is so, then the Judah Survey, the Samaria Survey, the Ephraim Survey, the Galilee Survey, and the Negev Survey (which together discovered only 200 settlements) cannot provide reliable population estimates. For if we assume they missed the same percentage of discoveries that Zertal proved the previous survey missed (though in my opinion this is somewhat exaggerated, though in Transjordan Larry Herr already proved the miss rate is even higher), and add to this the fact that nearly a fifth of the people remained in Transjordan, and the problems with inferring population size from density estimates (as Meitlis already showed in his book regarding a number of graves disproportionate to the estimated size of the settlement in the Negev), and the fact that much of the area cannot be excavated and some building methods are such that they would not leave ancient remains—then the numbers become more reasonable. To this should be added Meitlis’s latest article in his book on Bible and Archaeology, according to which it is not impossible that the number entering the land was 600,000 people total including women and children, and not only the men. All this, of course, only on the assumption that the numbers are literal (which is not clear even though the biblical numbers are not round), an assumption which, given its possibility, makes this counterargument unnecessary. This, by the way, is another wonderful example of an argument that atheist videos say with great confidence but that is based on partial information and lack of professionalism in the field they are talking about, since any professional familiar with the implications of Zertal’s research method would be much more cautious today about making such a claim.

We will not deal here with arguments against religious outreach arguments (which I too strongly disagree with). I will say briefly that using Ron Wyatt as an example of a religious researcher (and not, for example, bringing Professor Kenneth Kitchen, the leading Egyptologist for the Ramesside period, who wrote a book about the reliability of the Exodus from Egypt) is nothing more than building a straw man and complete dishonesty. It is no coincidence that they argue with those guys and not with professional scholars.

[1] Cassuto in his commentary on Genesis and Exodus showed that even the non-round numbers in the Bible have typological significance in the ancient Near East. His claims are not completely persuasive, but they are certainly possible. Another point should be added: as I already noted, it is possible that there were earlier waves of departure from Egypt that settled in the Shechem area. It is possible that the counting in the desert includes all Israelites, including those already dwelling in the land, and not only those entering it and wandering in the desert.

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I am also attaching here a short booklet I wrote on the claim about the lack of findings in the Sinai desert—a claim refuted from so many independent directions.

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Indeed, no remains from the Late Bronze Age were discovered in the desert (although scholars assume the place was not empty). This claim against the reliability of the Bible has several methodological problems or unfounded assumptions:

1. Because of the enormous size of the desert (3 times the size of the State of Israel!), the nature of the excavation (a survey and not an excavation—see below), the nature of habitation which leaves no remains visible to survey (see below), and especially the nature of desert preservation in Sinai, which does not allow one to discover traces of nomadism but only traces of construction—it is by no means certain that remains from the journey of wandering in the Sinai desert should be found. One can call this apologetics, but it has been proven empirically! There is a similar failure in discovering remains of other nomadic peoples that were in the area, of migrations of peoples in general in the ancient Near East (as in the footnote in Kitchen’s book), and likewise of Egyptian military campaigns or camping sites that also passed through the Sinai desert. The fact is that no remains have been found for all of these. This is not a problem of biblical archaeology but a general archaeological problem. Indeed, several scholars and archaeologists already wrote that nothing can be learned from the Sinai surveys (among them the minimalists Ze’ev Herzog and Nadav Na’aman). These claims are true also of sites that were excavated and not only surveyed—there is definitely a problem in locating nomads who use tents and not houses.
2. It is possible, and even likely, that we do in fact have quite a few such findings. It is not far-fetched to think that the character of the pottery of desert dwellers lagged behind urban pottery, and accordingly it is possible that the findings in Sinai from the Early Bronze Age are nothing less than the wandering remains of the Israelites. This is an opinion that important scholars have said is quite realistic. And indeed it is also known that the character of Israelite pottery discovered in the central hill country during the settlement period itself is relatively primitive (though more advanced than that in Sinai, but in desert conditions it is reasonable that they would be even more primitive).
3. It is important to explain the nature of the archaeological survey. In most of Sinai no archaeological excavation was conducted (obviously), but rather an archaeological survey. An archaeological survey is a technique in which one examines what is visible on the surface today (mainly in aerial photographs, though not only), and it is not far-fetched at all that the desert character would not leave traces of nomadism on the surface. Indeed, there were also sites that were excavated, but these are a relatively negligible number compared to this huge desert; see 1 and 2.
4. We should add what we learned from the “Manasseh Hill Country Survey” carried out by Adam Zertal. This archaeological survey was conducted in a place that had previously been surveyed by archaeologists. Zertal decided to change the search method and instead of walking in only a few places and relying mainly on photographs, he walked on foot hill after hill. And behold the wonder: Zertal discovered that no less than 90% of the archaeological findings he discovered had been missed by the previous survey—in other words, they failed to discover 90% of the material. Where the previous survey discovered 45 settlements, Zertal discovered 450! This raises serious questions about the existing survey method, all the more so in a place like a desert that is not quick to leave pottery sherds on the surface, and in an area as vast as the Sinai desert. The situation in Transjordan is worse, and recently it was discovered that the percentage of findings not discovered in surveys is even more significant. This joins the general methodological problems in Transjordan surveys regarding dating of findings, superficial surveying, and ignoring unique pottery, as Finkelstein and Meitlis already proved, each from a different angle in his book. Finkelstein, in an article surveying Transjordanian research, went so far as to say: “At this stage, nothing can be learned from the research regarding the settlement of Transjordan in the Bronze Age.”
5. Several scholars have already proposed that the wanderings were actually in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and not in the Sinai desert itself. This claim deserves separate examination.

And let us conclude with quotations from several well-known scholars:

* The well-known minimalist Professor Ze’ev Herzog – “There is no doubt that nomadic populations always lived and operated across the expanses of the Negev and Sinai, and they surely left remains behind them, but these are not presently visible to the ordinary surveyor’s eye. In order to discover the existence of the ancient encampments and the sheep and camel pens beside them, new research methods must be developed; classical archaeology will not succeed here.”

* The well-known minimalist Professor Israel Finkelstein – “Over a long period … the southern nomads left behind no remains in all the broad regions of the Negev and Sinai. Yet it is clear that this absence of remains does not reflect a human vacuum.”

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

* The famous Egyptologist of the Ramesside period Kenneth Kitchen – “It is foolish to look for traces of everyone who passed along the various routes of the peninsula. The preservation situation is entirely uneven… the possible absence of remains of Israel’s camp is meaningless.”

Therefore, the claim that one can learn anything from the Sinai surveys about the biblical story, and that this is proof of its falsity, is refuted from every direction one looks at it. Moreover, it is possible—quite possible—that the findings are in our hands after all….

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Selected bibliography and sources for further reading:

Mikraot – Yitro
A Place in the Portion
Excavating the Bible
Bible from the Field
About the Site – Z
Crossroads
The Polemic over Historical Truth in the Bible
Footprints of King David in the Elah Valley (Khirbet Qeiyafa)
King David’s Palace – Eilat Mazar
Biblical Archaeology
The Beginnings of Israel
Introduction to the Archaeology of the Land of Israel – Open University
The Exodus from Egypt – Reality or Imagination
The Bible as History
On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective
Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
The Rise of Ancient Israel
Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt
Israel in Egypt: Evidence for Authenticity of Exodus
The Bible Really Happened
The Tradition of the Exodus from Egypt in Its Development
Moses and the Children of Israel – Corman
Ipcha Mistabra – On the Exodus from Egypt
Ancient Israel in Sinai
Ancient Israel in Egypt
The Land of Israel in the Biblical Period – Aharoni
The History of Israelite Faith, Yehezkel Kaufmann
Israel in the Biblical Period – Malamat
The Archaeology of the Land of Israel – Albright
Until This Day
The Land of Israel: Studies in the Knowledge of the Land and Its Antiquities, 25, 1996, Finkelstein on Transjordan
Kadmoniot issue 110, Tell el-‘Umayri and Transjordan
Archaeology and Religion Israel
Archaeology of the Land of the Bible – Mazar
Eastern Transjordan – Aharoni
The Jordan – Glueck
Across the Jordan – Glueck
Eastern Transjordan – GlueckFrom Nomadism to Monarchy – Finkelstein
Hebrew and Arab – A. S. Yehuda
The Archaeology of the Period of Settlement and the Judges – Finkelstein
Judah Samaria and Golan – Archaeological Survey
From Nomadism to Monarchy – Finkelstein
Origins of the Generations – Grintz
The Uniqueness and Antiquity of Genesis – Grintz
The History of Israelite Faith – Kaufmann
Where Did We Come From – Konohel
In the Eyes of God and Man – Humanity and Bible Research
The History of the People of Israel – The Patriarchs and the Judges – Mazar
Canaan and Israel – Mazar
The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 5: Supplementary Volumm
Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land
Redating the Exodus and Conquest
The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian – Abraham Shalom Yehuda
The Accuracy Of The Bible – Abraham Shalom Yehuda
Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament – Currid
Anchor Bible – Exodus
Sinai Antiquities, Finkelstein
Secrets of the Negev – Beno Rothenberg
Sinai Discoveries – Beno Rothenberg
Studies in the archaeology of the nomads in the Negev and Sinai
The Beginnings of the History of the Alphabet – Gonen
Settlement of the Tribes of Israel in Upper Galilee – Aharoni
Invitation to Archaeology
Egyptian Mythology
The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra: An Historical Survey

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One could go on at greater length, but the heart desires what it desires, etc.

All these are parts of a broader article.

Conclusions –
* There is indeed very good evidence for the Exodus from Egypt.
* Most of the counterarguments are nothing but a fundamentalist reading of the text, reliance on outdated information, or unproven assumptions.
* There are quite a few respected scholars who do accept the historical reliability of the story.

With wishes for a happy and kosher Passover,
Signed, M.

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There’s an M for Bible too!

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

And about this it was said, “If you have labored and found, believe.”
As is known, Esau is Edom, which corresponds to Christianity, which corresponds to heresy.
Maybe because of this the following verse will come true:
“15 For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations; as you have done, it shall be done to you; your recompense shall return upon your own head. 16 For as you drank upon My holy mountain, so shall all the nations drink continually; yes, they shall drink and swallow down, and they shall be as though they had never been. 17 But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance, and it shall be holy; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. 18 And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble; and they shall kindle in them and devour them, and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken. 19 And they of the Negev shall possess the mountain of Esau, and they of the lowland the Philistines; and they shall possess the field of Ephraim and the field of Samaria, and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. 20 And the exiles of this host of the children of Israel, who are among the Canaanites, as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem, who are in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the Negev. 21 And saviors shall go up on Mount Zion to judge the mountain of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”

Regarding the treatment of “thousand” as a typological number, or as a family,
the Bible itself treats it with utmost seriousness when it calculates how much money was collected from the half-shekel.
These numbers in turn are used for the architecture of the Tabernacle.
Everything is numbered.

25 And the silver of those of the congregation who were numbered was a hundred talents, and one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels, according to the shekel of holiness:
26 a beka per head, that is, half a shekel, according to the shekel of holiness, for everyone who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men.
27 And the hundred talents of silver were for casting the sockets of the sanctuary and the sockets of the veil; a hundred sockets for the hundred talents, a talent for each socket.
28 And of the thousand seven hundred and seventy-five he made hooks for the pillars, overlaid their tops, and banded them.

M, did the Israelites build the pyramids?

See a good concluding lecture on the topic here:

M, I would be very happy to read your full article. Could you upload a link or something? If so, I’d really appreciate it. I deal with this topic quite a bit, and I find it hard to find enough material on it.

Ask Rabbi Michi privately for my email address and we’ll talk from there.