Did the Exodus Really Happen?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

Dan Beecher We got a great show coming up. Uh, we're, we're, we're gonna stick to Exodus. We're gonna have some fun- Yeah ... in, uh, in one of the Bible's, uh, weirdest books, I think.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh,

Dan Beecher so let's dive into that.

Dan McClellan Okay. Okay, so our first segment is, uh, entitled That's History, and really the question is going to be, is that history?

Dan Beecher Yeah, it's a big question.

Dan McClellan We're gonna talk about the Exodus narrative. Uh, Moses, the, uh, the enslaved Hebrew peoples, uh, taking off from Egypt, and all of the details that surround it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's, it's-

Dan McClellan How much? ...

Dan Beecher something that I've wondered about a lot. I'm very glad that we're getting into this because as you read Exodus- Mm-hmm ... and, uh, and I have done, the story, and it's a story we're all familiar with, right? Cecil B.

Dan McClellan DeMille gave us

Dan Beecher all a, a wonderful, if fanciful, primer on, uh, on this story of, you know, the, the, the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, uh, going through a whole bunch of stuff.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher God saves them, and, uh, I don't know. Saves is a pretty strong word when you see what happens to these people who then are wandering in the desert for 40 years.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and- They don't,

Dan Beecher they don't feel very saved a lot of the time.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Cecil B.

Dan McClellan DeMille gave us a great representation of that, and then Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey gave us a great soundtrack- ... to that. Um, that was the area, era in which I grew up, and I have, and I am not even joking when I have heard people in, uh, like, Sunday school classes talk about how Moses became brothers with the Pharaoh, and he gave him his ring because he loved him so much. And I had to be like, "Um, you're thinking of the Prince of Egypt." "That's actually not in, uh, the Book of Exodus." That's,

Dan Beecher that's not one of the things. Uh- ... that's not an actual Bible thing. So wait, that's an interesting point right there. Uh,

Dan McClellan Cecil B.

Dan Beecher DeMille just made that part up. Is that right? Like, the, the, the, the, the being raised-

Dan McClellan I don't know what role Cecil B. DeMille had to play in the production of The Prince of Egypt. No, no, no. But, um, one of the- I'm saying, I'm,

Dan Beecher I'm saying the, the being raised as a, as a prince in Egypt part and, uh, like-

Dan McClellan No, no. There's, um, uh- I guess there's- ... in the Book of Exodus, it talks about, um, him being raised as, as the- Okay ... uh, one of the Pharaoh's own wife's- Oh ...

Dan Beecher children.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay. Um, so- That part's real ... yeah, but, but there are,

Dan McClellan yeah, they're expanding on that.

Dan Beecher But the, but the ring is, the ring was, was just- Yeah, they're- ... a cartoon. They're,

Dan McClellan yeah, they're adding details and, and things like that to, uh, to the story 'cause they gotta flesh it out because it is a pretty bare bones narrative at the beginning. You don't really get much in terms of detail.

Dan Beecher Well, and the other part is that, um, the details that you do get, you can't show to children. There's a, there's a heck of a lot of stuff, um, that's there. I... Here, here's one of the big questions, and I think this is the question that we're looking to answer- Mm-hmm ... on this segment today. Uh, in the, uh, in, in the Book of Exodus, uh, we, we get through, you know, Moses goes back, uh, to Pharaoh after having sort of talked with God, game planning with God about, uh, how they're going to get the Hebrews un-enslaved from, uh, from Egypt. And when they go back, there are, we've all heard of the plagues. There are all the plagues. The livestock is all dead. The crops are all gone. The water is turned to blood. Uh, eventually, the firstborn child, uh, of every household in Egypt dies. Then they end up losing, you know, I'm talking Egypt ends up losing, you know, well over a million people, you know, and, uh, and their, of their enslaved workforce.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And after, you know, the, the crossing through, uh, the, uh, the, the Red Sea, Egypt loses basically their entire armed forces- Yeah ... in one big splash.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Did Egypt... Now, I know Egypt as a country, uh, you know, as a society, was not that big on record keeping.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But you'd think that those events all happening within, like, a, a one-month period or whatever, would show up in their records somehow. Like, that seems like you don't ignore that month. That was a bad May.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Th- and there, there are a couple points to make here. One is that the, um, Egypt tended to, to keep fairly, um, not necessarily accurate, but fairly comprehensive records. However, a counterpoint to that is the fact that we only have a tiny, tiny, uh, fraction of all the records that were ever kept.

Dan Beecher Of course. Yeah. Uh, and,

Dan McClellan and there is a, there is a, uh, what's called a, uh, a bias towards particularly funerary and mortuary remains because those are the ones that tend to get sealed up and buried in dry parts of the, the nation, where they're more likely to be preserved. Uh, and many of the records that survive only survive because maybe they are carved into rock, or they are, um- ... carved into little stones or, or survive in clay tablets or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right. Uh, it's...

Dan McClellan The survival of papyrus for that long is, uh, is very, very unlikely, and particularly if we're talking about the Delta. When we get further south in Egypt, where, uh, the floodplains and the, and the Nile are, uh, more narrow and you have more stuff going on beyond the boundaries of that floodplain where the floodwaters would rise to, it's more likely that stuff is gonna be preserved. But the Delta, where much of this is supposed to have been going on, it's, it's rare that we find records. And e- and we have found lots of records that have yet to be, um, transcribed, that have yet to be translated, that have yet to be, uh, studied. And so I do wanna make the point that there's a lot we don't know about Egypt based on, on record keeping. However, back to your point, we should have noticed something about this because we have a pretty good idea of who was reigning, we have a pretty good idea of population size, we have a pretty good idea of what was going on in, in what cities based on the material remains that we do have, and this would have entirely devastated the entire society. Uh, the economy, the, uh, their food supplies, this would have absolutely devastated everything. There would be a very large gash in the historical record, in the material record if this happened the way it is described in the biblical text. And the simple fact is that we see absolutely no such data whatsoever. Things just seem to be, uh, carrying on as usual. Now, another issue here is when we place this chronologically, because you have- Yeah, I was gonna say,

Dan Beecher you, you, you, you,

Dan McClellan you were talking about the, the where and the when of this. I, I,

Dan Beecher I don't actually know the where and the when, of when this is meant to take place.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Do we have a sense of that?

Dan McClellan There's a, there's a rough window with kind of fuzzy boundaries, uh, where there are folks who will argue for an early date that, like, the earliest I think I've ever heard is somewhere around 1450 BCE, all the way down to a late date, which would put it 1250 into close to 1200 BCE. So we've got a period of about 200 to 250 years where s- where, um, uh, folks want to try to date the Exodus. And, and they're usually, they're usually moving things around within this window because they're looking for the most likely period where these things could have happened. Uh, the biblical text is not incredibly clear, and, uh, you have to make some judgment calls in trying to do the math to find out when we're talking about, which itself assumes that the numbers and the ages and the chronologies and everything like that in the Bible are historical, which is problematic in and of itself. Um, but I think the, the folks who come the closest or come the closest to thinking critically about this would say if this happened at all, it would've had to have happened probably 1250-ish, around there. So I think the later date is, uh, the most likely. That's not to say probable, but the closest we get to plausibility, I think would be, um, a later date.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, uh, but that is also not without problems because, um, we still don't see these societal upheavals. We still don't see this sudden, uh, the death of every firstborn child in Egypt. We still don't see the army, uh, the armed forces being decimated. Uh, we s- we see none of this- Right ... in the material remains. So not just the text, not just people writing down, "Dear diary, this is what happened in Egypt today," but just looking at the houses that we have, looking at the remains that have been, uh, dug out of the earth, we don't see any indication of any of this having happened.

Dan Beecher Yeah, one of the things that I, the, that interests me is that, like, I mean, you know, I do have Cecil DeMille's Ten Commandments sort of... The, those images are seared in my brain.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. I mean, forget Nefertari in her gauzy dress. Uh,

Dan Beecher I'm also thinking of, like, the giant structures that, that these, you know, Hebrew slaves were in the process of building. I don't know, you know, we don't know what they were actually doing at that time, supposedly, but it does seem like a whole lot of work was halted in that moment. Like, like- Mm-hmm ... when you lose a million-strong, uh, workforce, you'd think that even, even just in y- you know, whatever they were making, whatever they were doing would stop. Even just that would be somehow present in the record.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The... And then, and that's, we don't see... We see indication that there were, um, a variety of different types of workers coming from outside Egypt, whether they are enslaved, uh, or corvée workers. Uh, a lot of scholars think that, uh, that the, uh, workers who were doing this were not so much en- enslaved as just locals who just had a, an annual responsibility to go dedicate so much time to the work. Uh, we do see indications of that. That doesn't, however, support the notion that there was this discreet, kind of compartmentalized community of people who are identified as Hebrews who had grown to, um, to this massive size. And, um, and we have some, some records- from before this time period that, uh, have lists of names, and some of these are Semitic names. Uh, and we have, uh, we even have some drawings of some Semitic peoples in the, uh, in a tomb for, uh, Beni Hasan, uh, where, uh, the color is still preserved. So they had, um, uh, pretty colorful, um, pieces of clothing that they were wearing, but they're identified as Semitic peoples.

Dan Beecher And so some people- And Semitic in this, in this case is a reference to a, a, a language group?

Dan McClellan Is that... So, um, yeah. So people who are speaking Semitic languages, which are going to be people from, um, ancient Southwest Asia, so up the coast of, of Syria, Palestine, uh, and probably not too much further to the east, so, uh, but into the desert, uh, a bit. We see in, in, uh, some of the different Egyptian discussions, they, they had a few different names for these people. They called them Asiatics. Uh, they, uh, call-- They have a name, um, for the, uh, the Habiru, which, uh, or Hapiru, which some people think sounds an awful lot like, um, what could have turned into Ivrit, uh, the Hebrews. Uh, there's still debate about the degree to which, uh, that is the case. Uh, but we have, uh, references to a bunch of different societies that come from that area that is now, um, Syria, Palestine, Israel area. And so, um, there were many people that spoke Semitic languages at this time. Uh, and it's even within, it's even, um, workers in mines and in other places on the Sinai Peninsula who are, uh, probably Semitic, uh, in origin, who develop, begin to develop what we now know as the Phoenician alphabet, uh, by taking Egyptian hieroglyphs, uh, and different forms of these hieroglyphs and basically turning them into an alphabet. So Egypt has a long history of relations, usually tense relations, but sometimes, um, cooperative r-relations with the peoples of ancient Southwest Asia. And so it's no surprise to see Semitic names. It's no surprise to see this kind of stuff. And some people try to leverage that as evidence. These are, you know, we see Semitic names, and it's like, "Ah, that must be the Hebrews." Well, no, it could be Moabites. It could be Ammonites. It could be Amorites. It could be, uh, people from Ugarit. It could be, uh, Midianites. It could be a number of different societies that, uh, are doing that. Um, so yeah, we, we don't see, we don't see evidence that points in the direction of Israelites being enslaved in Egypt. We see evidence that does not absolutely preclude the presence of enslaved Israelites in Egypt, but that doesn't necessarily say this is how it had to be. It's ki- Th-this is something that, um, that kind of frustrates me about some apologetics. We have, we have data that indicates something happened or points in the direction of something happening. If we follow the data where it is leading, if we follow the data, uh, if we allow it to operate on its own terms, sometimes it points us in a specific direction. It points us to a conclusion. Other times, it's ambiguous, but among the variety of different conclusions that are plausible, we could, we could say the conclusion we want falls within that range.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is what a lot of apologetics is. It's not showing that the data lead to our conclusion, but showing that the data don't preclude our conclusion. Right.

Dan Beecher Saying- It's possible that it happened.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it's possible, and, and there are some data that we could say it's even plausible that it happened. And so I would say it's plausible that there were, um, people who would later be identified or would later be incorporated into the, uh, the people group that we now known, know as Israel, who were enslaved in Egypt and who escaped enslavement to make their way into the northern hill country to become a part of the people known as Israel. If that happened, however, this was a very small group, and the events of their escape do not resemble in any way, shape, or form whatsoever the events described in the Book of Exodus. So it's certainly plausible that there is a historical core to what's going on here. But what we see described in the Book of Exodus is centuries of elaboration and innovation and, um, flourishes and all these things added to the text in order to make the text more useful, uh, for the time period. And, you know, the, the story of a people who are trapped in a foreign land, who are coming out and are going to return home sounds an awful lot like people who are, um, part of the Babylonian exile, who are in, trapped in a foreign land, who are going to be allowed to leave and return home. And so it's not to say that it's entirely mythological, but it is to say that the way the story is told is likely, um, intended to resonate with the audience for which it is being told. Uh, and-

Dan Beecher Which is the, the post-exilic, uh, audience, or?

Dan McClellan Yeah, I, I think the tradition of the Exodus predates that, but I think the form in which we have it now is largely attributable to the way the story would be told for, um, people either trapped in exile or, um, returning from exile. And, and we have similar, uh, scholarship, uh, has similar ideas about what's going on with, um, with Abraham and others who are moving into a land that they have not occupied either ever or for a while and so are, have to kind of adjust. And it's a way to kind of forge a relationship with this earlier group in our own social memory.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So we're just like them. We're doing the same thing that they were doing. Here's a story that helps us think about our relationship with the God who is making this possible and what is expected of us and how we can maintain our, our social cohesiveness and integrity. And this also is the, uh, is the context for the development of all this legislation, some of which predates the Babylonian exile, but some of which also was probably, uh, written in response to the Babylonian exile and the return from exile. And so even from a literary point of view, the most likely context for the composition of the story as it has come down to us, as we find it in the Masoretic Text, uh, the most likely context is the middle of the first millennium BCE, during or just after, uh, the Babylonian exile. And so what we see in the data on the ground in Egypt don't really support the overwhelming majority of the details of the story, but it is certainly plausible that there is a historical core where a much, much, much, on a much, much smaller level, uh, there was a group that escaped. Uh, the details of the story as they have come down to us fit a much later time period rhetorically, literarily. Uh, there are folks who argue, well, you've got, uh, a high concentration of Egyptian words in the Hebrew, loan words from Egyptian into Hebrew. So like tortilla and taco and quesadilla, those are loan words from Spanish into, uh, English, and- I thought you were gonna say they were Egyptian, and I was... My mind was gonna be blown. No. I'm giving an example of, of what's called, what, a loan word or a borrowing. Yeah. Something that originates into another language, uh, in another language. We bring it into our own, and it becomes a part of our vocabulary. Well, there are a number of words in Hebrew that are loan words from Akkadian, from Egyptian, and from other languages, and so scholars have noted there is a high concentration of these loan words in the story of the Exodus. And so some folks will argue, "Oh, that means that it was most likely written when they were in Egypt." No, because we can, uh, give rough kind of, um, uh, not necessarily dating, but, um, chronological relationships, um, to the, uh, when these words came into the Hebrew language. Some of them come in early, some of them come in much later. Uh, and so I, I think the most likely explanation for what's going on there is that the authors are aware of what things are coming from Egypt or sound Egyptian and so are infusing the story with this sense of authenticity and archaism and things like that. And, and another thing to, to note is that Egypt frequently had close relationships with this area. In fact, King Hezekiah, we have, uh, was under, uh, vassalage to Egypt in the, uh, late eighth s- century BCE, so around 700 BCE. King Hezekiah had, um, we have these, they call them lamellaic jar handles. They're, um, state-produced jars and, and dishes and, and things like that, and they have a little stamp seal on them, um, for the king is what it means. And they include, many of them, and have a little Egyptian scarab on them because there were a lot of resources that were coming from Egypt based on this, uh, vassalage relationship. And so there are frequent and very comprehensive points of contact between Israel and Egypt, not just when they would have been, uh, enslaved in Egypt. So we can account for a lot of these details that apologists will say are indications of the historicity of the Exodus in ways that don't require we just accept the historicity of the Exodus.

Dan Beecher Yeah, and, and again, like, those, those things that could account for, uh, for those apologetics, um, don't disprove the apologetic, but it's an, it's an interesting note.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. And it-

Dan Beecher It's part of the data.

Dan McClellan Yeah. In history, we're, we're weighing probabilities. Right. And frequently, what we have to consider is a whole series of concerns or questions, and we're looking at what we want to try to do is maximize the probability across the board to try to come up... The best theory is going to maximize probability across the board. 'Cause if we have something that's s- some things are plausible, a lot of things are implausible, and then a handful of things are impossible, that theory is not very strong. If we have some things that are probable, loads of things that are plausible, and nothing is impossible or, or, uh, nothing is too implausible, that theory is going to be, on the whole, on, um, on balance, is going to be stronger.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so if we consider all of the different arguments that we have to make and all the different theories that have to come together for the Exodus to be historical, there's just not the, it's not a strong argument. Right. It is a very weak argument, and it includes a number of things that are literally impossible. Miracles are, are literally impossible. And so the fact that, oh, we can highlight some things that are plausible, that's not, that's not strong enough evidence to overcome the fact that we would have to accept a bunch of things that are totally implausible or totally- ... impossible. Right. And so on balance, I, um, I and most scholars, the overwhelming majority of critical scholars, would say the Exodus as it is told in the Book of Exodus is entirely implausible. There, it is plausible that there's a historical core, some kind of little kernel of history that just grew and grew and grew as these stories were being told over the centuries, that involved a small group of, uh, of people who were enslaved, who escaped, who made their way to the northern hill country and were incorporated into the people known as Israel. And we know there were peoples known as Israel around the end of the 13th century BCE, so around 1200 BCE. We have an inscription from an Egyptian pharaoh named Merneptah, dating to around 1208 BCE, where he talks about, uh, beating the Libyans, uh, and, you know, it doesn't say it, but I wish it said, uh, "They found me. I don't know how they found me, Mordy- ... but they found me."

Dan Beecher I was gonna do a Doc Brown. I knew you were gonna go there. I knew you were gonna go there.

Dan McClellan But he talks about defeating the Libyans in the west, but then he talks about the, um, the east, the Asiatics, and, uh, and regions that he defeated, and he, he mentions Israel. Says, "Their seed is not," and this is a reference to their grain. Mm. Um, and basically that they, they devastated this group known as Israel, and the determinative that accompanies that name, and the determinative is a little hieroglyph that categorizes what they're talking about, is a people determinative. So it's not a state, it's not a nation, it's not a city-state, it's a people.

Dan Beecher Okay. Um, and,

Dan McClellan and so this likely indicates that there was a, some kind of group, uh, that was not, uh, established as a kingdom. Probably did not have a capital city or anything like that, but they were known as Israel. So- And, and some people will point to that as saying, "Oh, look, that's, that's Moses wandering in the wilderness. They don't have a capital yet. They're..." And try to leverage that as evidence, but this is another thing where that's, eh, it's possible, but the data make far more probable a, a different explanation for this. S-

Dan Beecher sure. Let- let's talk about those people, because one of the, one of the things, one of the questions that I've had for a long time, um, you know, I've, I, I've, I've heard people saying that there's no, you know, that there was likely no exodus or whatever. But I don't... Do we have any sense if Moses was a real person? Because Moses is an enormous figure in- Yeah ... all three of the Abrahamic religions. Moses is just an insanely, uh, he looms over, over, you know, everything.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. One of the, it's one of the tent poles of, of, uh, ancient Judaism. I, I would say that we don't have eviden- evidence for the existence of a figure, uh, named Moses that is anything remotely associated with the story we have in Exodus. However, there, there is a piece of evidence that suggests there could be, um, another historical core somewhere in there, and that's the name Moses. Which, um, in the text, it tries to associate it etymologically with this idea of drawing out. Uh, however, Moses is also an element in ancient Egyptian names. In fact, Thutmosis and Ramesses and, uh, a bunch of other, um, famous Egyptian pharaohs have this element in them, uh, where Moses means born of or son of or something like that. And when you have that name, you have a deity associated with it. Thutmosis, born of or son of Thoth. Ramesses, born of, son of Ra. Um,

Dan Beecher and so Moses would- So is the, is the connection... Sorry, is the connection that we're making there, the, the S-E-S on the end,

Dan McClellan is that- Uh, no. The- The, the M-O.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay. Or the,

Dan McClellan the M and the S. Uh, and the, the vowels are, uh, kinda squishy because we're not exactly sure how they vocalized- Right ... uh, the syllables in ancient Egyptian. We have some pretty good guesses, uh, but they can, they can vary as well, depending on where, where these consonants are appearing in the word and how they're being used. Um, and so Moses would, if it is a name, it could be a, a, a legitimate Egyptian name, but it would be incomplete.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because it would mean son of. And so there's an argument that this was originally an Egyptian name, and there was an Egyptian deity's name associated with it that was taken away because of embarrassment, because we don't want this, um, figure who looms so large, who plays such a significant role, to have a pagan name, a pagan deity associated with him. So there's an argument to make that, that Moses could be an actual name of a person who came out of Egypt.

Dan Beecher Okay. Uh,

Dan McClellan whose name was altered to give us this incomplete Egyptian name, uh, precisely because they didn't like that it would've been associated with an Egyptian deity. So that is plausible. I don't, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's probable, but that is certainly plausible. And that, and that's one of the pieces of evidence that I think contributes to having to take seriously the notion that there could have been something there. But certainly not as we see, uh, in the text as it has come down to us and all the traditions and all the miracles and all the, um, fabulous events associated with it.

Dan Beecher Yeah, it's a pretty, uh, it's a miracle-heavy story.

Dan McClellan It is a- Very much so,

Dan Beecher yeah ... it is a, a magic-laden story. Um, and we may have to get back to it and, like, dive into the, uh, the actual bits and bobs of what- Yeah ... actually occurs in it, 'cause it's, uh, it's a lot.

Dan McClellan Yeah,

Dan Beecher I think- There's a lot going on there ... I think

Dan McClellan covering the, the plagues would be interesting.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I think talking about, uh... Yeah, there, there are lots of things we could cover in the Exodus.

Dan Beecher Well, and, and also, you know, we talked about it a little bit when we were talking about, you know, the, uh, the, the pantheon of gods. Uh, you know, the, the fact that in, in that story, uh, the Hebrew god does battle, essentially, or at least does, like, who, who's got the best tricks with the, uh, Egyptian gods.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And the Egyptian gods show up. They actually, they actually are, are part of the story. So that's fascinating.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We may have to get to that. Um, but that's a, that's a story for another time.

Dan McClellan Yes, sir. Uh,

Dan Beecher if you, friends at home listening, viewing us, uh, on the YouTubes or in your, in your various pod blasters, if you would like to become a part of making this show go, please feel free to become one of our patrons over on patreon.com, uh, slash Data Over Dogma. If you'd like to write in to us about anything, uh, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. And, uh, we'll talk to you again next week.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody. Hope you have a good week.