extra-biblical evidence of the exodus - by brenner

8/12/2019 Extra-Biblical Evidence of the Exodus - by Brenner

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EXTRA BIBLICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EXODUS

REEVE ROBERT BRENNER

Ever increasingly, a plague of scholars, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, descendson the historicity of the Exodus. They are comrades in intellectual arms, march-ing shoulder to shoulder to the refrain: "The Exodus never-never happened,"rendered in the rousing rhythm of the song from the Passover Seder eelu hotzihotzi-anu.

They might admit that there were perhaps modest waves of Hebrew nomadicwanderers seeking a better life in the land of milk and honey. A few may haveeven filtered through out of Africa. But nothing like the biblical report of mi-raculous signs and wonders, upheaval and disaster, plagues and death, and lib-eration. "Never, never happened "

One of the latest authorities numbering himself among those challenging thebiblical testimony of the Exodus and rejecting the "scriptural myths" is RabbiBurton L. Visotsky . His Passover article-of-doubt in the Washington JewishWeek (April 14, 2005), entitled "Pondering the Riddle of the Sphinx," assumesthat the scriptural account is fabrication, and takes as self-evident that it is amy th. But do not feel that all is lost. He reassures us that

. . . some of the most important truths in life we leam from readinggreat fiction. The story of Exodus, the story of Israelite slavery, theirredemption and their journey to Mt. Sinai, are extremely importanttruths whether they happened exactly the way the Bible says they did isbeside the point.

Did not happen exactly as related in the Exodus account or did not happen atall? Does he take it as a dramatic story that is entirely fictional, or as an eventdifferently perceived by those experiencing it? Who is to know? After all, thereis only the testimony ofth Exodu s w ritten by the Israelites. Right? W rongReeve RobertBrenner formerly the Jewish chaplain of the National Institutes o f Health, is the rabbiof Congregation Bet Chesed in Bethesda, Maryland.


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5 8 REEVE ROBERT BRENNERIt is one thing to have uninformed dilettantes and amateurish non-scholars

with superficial acquaintance with the subject announce that there is no evi-dence for the Sojoum in Egypt and the seminaliy denning event of the Exodus.It is quite another thing when a such a personage Visotsky, who is Professor ofMidrash and Interreligious Studies at New Yo rk's Jewish Theological Seminary,affirms and perpetuates that fancy. He writes that Nowhere in the ubiquitoushieroglyphic records on Egyptian monuments is there any evidence of Israeliteseven having been captive in E g y p t . . . [or of] the crossing ofth Red Sea. (Heuses here the outdated translation Red Sea for what was much more likely Reed Sea [YamSuJ] that can be identified with the Egyp tian Great PapyrusLake, a swamp now absorbed into the Suez Canal.)

For evidence of the Sojoum in Egypt, there are the Egyptian names of someof the children of Israel of that period. Those names in themselves indicate thatour ancestors were dwelling there. The name of M oses himself is a comm onelement in Egyptian nam es, connoting son or incamation and preceded bythe name of a deity it honors; among the examples are the pharaohs Kamose,Ah mo se, Thutm ose, Ram ose [Ram ses]. The Hebrew nam e Mo she derives fromthe name bestowed on him by P haraoh's Dau ghter when she adopted him, and itniay well have had two elements, of which the first part was the name of one ofthe Egyptian gods - was later dropped. Other now traditionally Hebrew nam essuch as Miriam and Phinehas are also of Egyptian origin, and evidence of a So-joum in Egypt comparable to the Persian origins of the names Esther and Mor-decai, derived from the local deities Ishtar and Marduk.

Beyond the evidence of names, there are other grounds for historical authen-ticity of the Sojoum and the Exodus. Am ong them is the argument put forth b ythe biblical scholar Harry Orlinsky, that a people inventing a past claims descentfrom gods,nobles, and heroes, not from slaves.

: The biblical account of the Plagues that fell upon E gypt have striking paral-lels in the writings of the Egyp tian Ipuw er, who laments The river is blood . . .plague is throughout the land. Bloo d is everyw here, and there also references todarkness. The generally accepted date for Ipuwer places him at least severalcenturies before the Exodus, but the similarities are notable if only for the kinds


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EXTRA BIBLICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EXODUS 1 5 9Another source for cohipadsons is a hieroglyphic inscription at a shrine in el-

Arish, telling that . . . the land was in great affliction. E vil fell on this earth . . .there was a great upheaval in the residence [of the pharaoh] . . . nobody couldleave the palace during nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval, nei-ther men nor gods [the royal fam ily]. There is also a reference to a pharaohwho pursued fieeing slaves as far as Pi-ha-hirot, where he was plunged in a wh irlpool. This inscription also seems to pre-date the Exodus, but at least pro -vides a precedent that slaves were likely to flee and be pursued by way of Pi-ha-hirot.

The significance of the findings in the early 1970s, by a team of geologicalsurvey scientists of Israel, is relevant in several ways. It discovered the remainsof a canal whose embankments were confirmed by aerial photography. Theseimages show a canal exactly where one would be expected according to the ac-count in Exodus, and explaining why the Israelites backtracked to avoid the gar-rison stationed at the canal. Now we know the likely location oft ispartly m an-made partly nature-created w aterway - with near certainty but not pinpoint ac -curacy - given the shifting of the terrain of a canal. The precise footprint in themarshes for the location of the drowning pool may never be known with exacti-tude. But other methods may yet reveal, with even greater precision, the oneplace identified in both Egyptian and Israelite records as the location of thedrowning of a pharaoh at the watery mouth of the canal Pi-ha-hirot/Pi-hiroti, thevery place appearing in both the biblical Exodus and Egyptian el-Arish records.The discovery of the remains of the canal elevates the importance of thetoponym Pi-ha-hirot and its location; it requires a reconsideration of the dates,now necessitating an alignment with the biblical narrative. That alignment re-quires Ipuwer, an eyewitness to the account from the Egyptian side, to coincidewith the Exodus account. And the shrine report must refer to the same occur-rence regardless of when it was inscribed in stone, perhaps as an account of arecent and still raw incident. The place name of the Egyptian king's plunge in awhirlpool, chasing evil doers refers to where only one such pursuit came tosubmersion. Corroborative reporting, therefore, originating from biblical andextra-biblical sources relate an account of a pharaoh's drowning on such a chaseat Pi-ha-hirot/Pi-hiroti.


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REEVE ROBERT BRENNERit can now be reasonably argued that both the ancient Hebrew and Egyptian

records at Pi-hiroti/Pi-ha-hirot support the authenticity and reliability of thebib-lical texts. Minimalists have been insisting that the biblical text requires extra-biblical documentary corroboration and that the biblical reports are suspectwithou t it. Pi-hiroti/Pi-ha-hirot shifts the burden aga in from off the back of thetraditionalist/maximalists - perhaps even reproachfully according to the extentof the particular minimalist's hidden agenda. Now minimalists and skepticsmust pick up the burden to dis-authe nticate and disprove biblical testimoniesarid repo rtage, not the other way aroimd.

James Hof&neier, in his excellentIsrael in Egyp t: The Evidence for the Au-thenticity ofth Exodus Tradition, may be too cautious in failing to cite the el-AnsVbiblical parallels at Pi-ha-hirot. Another student of the Exodus/Egyptianaccount might view the canal, the verses in the biblical account, and the shrinereference to Pi-hiroti, as disclosures convincing enough to solve the argument ofwhether the Exodus is history or fiction.

According to Hoffnieier, the growing consensus concem ing the place nam e ortoponym Pi-ha-hirot, is that it derives from the Hebrew lettershet, resh and tof.Accordingly, the word retains the same meaning to this day; namely, to cut intoor engrave. W hether it is Egyptian and translated as Canal City or Semitic andtranslated as the place at the mouth [ peh ]of the can al, James Hofftneierwrites that the toponym describes a point where a canal opens or empties into a

body of water . . . . Now that there is evidence for a canal from Pharaonictitnes,the reading of Pi-ha-hirot as the juncture between the canal and one of thelakes in the Isthmus of Suez takes on credibility. W e might add, regardless ofits precise pin-point location, perhaps unknow able, given the shifting terrainalongside the canal. The Eastem Frontier Canal was meant primarily as a defen-sive safeguard against attack and to impede escape. Migdol, in close proximity,nieans tower, a fortress where an Egyptian garrison was stationed.

Hofftneier does not make the connection or draw the conclusion that el-A rish's Pi-hiroti can be aligned w ith Exodus 14:2 and Num bers 33:7 as descrip-tions of the same location and the same event. But a pharaoh's death by drown-ing really happened at Pi-hiroti/Pi-ha-hirot.


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EXTRA-BIBLICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EXO DUS gfor the designation Yam Suf That could be the very place for an event that wasliterally and figuratively a watershed. W e can say retrospectively that the Isra-elite leadership showed good intelligence gathering, a good plan of an escaperoute, and tactics that took advantage of the terrain and natural co nditions.

If the events of the Book of Exodus and the Book of Joshua rise and fall to-gether, as most biblical critics pro and con trustworthiness maintain, then theJoshua narrative is also to be deemed largely reliable. The peaceful infiltrationthesis, the indigenous imm igration hypo thesis, and various other creativeminimalist views are to be rejected in favor of the biblical text-based model of conquest, in its broadest definitions - by war, treaty, take-over, absorption orany num ber of ways one peop le conquers another (and a region) forcefullyand/or otherwise. This, in tum, supports and strengthens the moorings of theSojoum-Exodus tradition. The Book of Joshua, principally the reports in Joshua1-11, are - but are more than - ideological and etiological sagas. And certaincore elements in the biblical traditions, including Isra el's arrival by conquest -however understood - to the land of Canaan from Egypt is likely basically asound factual report.

Herbert Spencer said: There is a principle, which is a bar against all informa-tion, which is proof against all arguments and which carmot fail to keep a personin everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation. AndKarl Giberson adds, Our imaginations pose curious limitations on our searchfor truth. Often it seems impossible that something could be the case, not be-cause the evidence is not there, but because the intellectual machinery to get ourminds around the problem seems to be m issing.

Were it only for the testimony of all the Egyptian-derived Hebrew names ofthe biblical participants and the many place names in the Exodus epic, it wouldhave been dayenu

Were it only for the global evidence of the Plagues or only of the reports ofthe universality of the blood everywhere in the waters of the world, gatheredand collated by Israeli scholars such as Aharon Sharif and especially ImmanuelVelikovsky - it would have been dayenu

Were it only for the fact that nations create noble origins and do not invent


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1 6 2 R EEV E R O B ER T B R EN N ERbondage which Isiael experienced as divinely determined, it would have beendayenu

And above all,hadthere been onlytheshrineinel-Arish tellingofhurricanes,darkness,the pursuit by theE gyptians of the fleeing slaves- whereupon hismajesty leaped intothe placeof the whirlpool . . . (and was then) lifted by agreat force, itwould have been dayenu

And had nothing else but that drowning-pool place been identified on theshrineasPi-hiroti correspondingto thebiblical P i-ha-hirot- it would have beenmore than enough. DayenulN O TES1, James K.Hoffmeier, Israel in Eg ypt: Th e Ev idence for the Authenticity of the Exo dus Tradition(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

THE TRIENNI L BIBLE RE DING C LEND RD E D IC AT E D T O T H E M E M O R Y OFC H A IM A B R A M O W IT Z

2008JulyAugust

SeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember

[WITH ECCLESIASTES WHICH IS READ ON THE HOLIDAY OF SUKKOT, WECOMPLETE THE TR IENN L\L BIBLE READING CALENDAR. STARTING WITHSEPTEMBER, WE AGAIN COMMENCE TH E NEW T HREE-YEAR CYCLE]

II ChroniclesII ChroniclesEcclesiastesGenesisGenesisExodusExodusLeviticus

1-262 7 - 3 61 - 1 2 *1-22

2 3 - 5 01-24

2 5 - 4 01-10


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extra-biblical evidence of the exodus - by brenner

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