http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus.
Historicity
Most histories of ancient Israel
no longer consider information
about the Exodus recoverable
or even relevant to the story of
Israel's emergence.[14]
Nevertheless, the discussion of
the historicity of the exodus
has a long history, and
continues to attract attention.
Numbers and logistics
The consensus among biblical
scholars today is that there was
never any exodus of the
proportions described in the
Bible.[15] According to Exodus
12:3738, the Israelites
numbered "about six hundred
thousand men on foot, besides
women and children," plus
many non-Israelites and
livestock.[16] Numbers 1:46
gives a more precise total of
603,550 men aged 20 and up.
[17] The 600,000, plus wives,
children, the elderly, and the
"mixed multitude" of non-
Israelites would have
numbered some 2 million
people,[18] compared with an
entire Egyptian population in
1250 BCE of around 3 to 3.5
million.[19] Marching ten
abreast, and without
accounting for livestock, they
would have formed a line 150
miles long.[20] No evidence has
been found that indicates Egypt
ever suffered such a
demographic and economic
catastrophe or that the Sinai
desert ever hosted (or could
have hosted) these millions of
people and their herds.[21]
Some scholars have
rationalised these numbers
into smaller figures, for
example reading the Hebrew as
"600 families" rather than
600,000 men, but all such
solutions raise more problems
than they solve.[22] The view of
mainstream modern biblical
scholarship is that the
improbability of the Exodus
story originates because it was
written not as history, but to
demonstrate God's purpose
and deeds with his Chosen
People, Israel.[3] Some have
suggested that the 603,550
people delivered from Egypt
(according to Numbers 1:46) is
not a number, but a gematria
(a code in which numbers
represent letters or words) for
bnei yisra'el kol rosh, "the
children of Israel, every
individual;"[23] while the
number 600,000 symbolises
the total destruction of the
generation of Israel which left
Egypt, none of whom lived to
see the Promised Land.[24]
Archaeology
A century of research by
archaeologists and
Egyptologists has found no
evidence which can be directly
related to the Exodus captivity
and the escape and travels
through the wilderness,[3] and
most archaeologists have
abandoned the archaeological
investigation of Moses and the
Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit".
[4] A number of theories have
been put forward to account
for the origins of the Israelites,
and despite differing details
they agree on Israel's Canaanite
origins.[25] The culture of the
earliest Israelite settlements is
Canaanite, their cult-objects are
those of the Canaanite god El,
the pottery remains in the local
Canaanite tradition, and the
alphabet used is early
Canaanite, and almost the sole
marker distinguishing the
"Israelite" villages from
Canaanite sites is an absence of
pig bones, although whether
even this is an ethnic marker or
is due to other factors remains
a matter of dispute.[26]
Anachronisms
Despite the Bible's internal
dating of the Exodus to the 2nd
millennium BCE, details point to
a 1st millennium date for the
composition of the Book of
Exodus: Ezion-Geber, (one of
the Stations of the Exodus), for
example, dates to a period
between the 8th and 6th
centuries BCE with possible
further occupation into the 4th
century BCE,[27] and those
place-names on the Exodus
route which have been
identified Goshen, Pithom,
Succoth, Ramesses and Kadesh
Barnea point to the
geography of the 1st
millennium rather than the 2nd.
[28] Similarly, Pharaoh's fear
that the Israelites might ally
themselves with foreign
invaders seems unlikely in the
context of the late 2nd
millennium, when Canaan was
part of an Egyptian empire and
Egypt faced no enemies in that
direction, but does make sense
in a 1st millennium context,
when Egypt was considerably
weaker and faced invasion first
from the Persians and later
from Seleucid Syria.[29] The
mention of the dromedary in
Exodus 9:3 also suggests a
later date of composition the
widespread domestication of
the camel as a herd animal did
not take place before the late
2nd millennium, after the
Israelites had already emerged
in Canaan,[30] and they did not
become widespread in Egypt
until c.200100 BCE.[31]
Chronology
The chronology of the Exodus
story likewise underlines its
essentially religious rather than
historical nature. The number
seven, for example, was sacred
to God in Judaism, and so the
Israelites arrive at Sinai, where
they will meet God, at the
beginning of the seventh week
after their departure from
Egypt,[32] while the erection of
the Tabernacle, God's dwelling-
place among his people, occurs
in the year 2666 after God
creates the world, two-thirds of
the way through a four
thousand year era which
culminates in or around the re-
dedication of the Second
Temple in 164 BCE.[33][34]
[Notes 1]
Route and date
Main article: Stations list
Possible Exodus Routes. In
black is the traditional Exodus
route; other possible routes are
in blue and green.
Route
The Torah lists the places
where the Israelites rested. A
few of the names at the start of
the itinerary, including
Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth,
are reasonably well identified
with archaeological sites on the
eastern edge of the Nile delta,
[28] as is Kadesh-Barnea,
where the Israelites spend 38
years after turning back from
Canaan, but other than that
very little is certain. The
crossing of the Red Sea has
been variously placed at the
Pelusic branch of the Nile,
anywhere along the network of
Bitter Lakes and smaller canals
that formed a barrier toward
eastward escape, the Gulf of
Suez (SSE of Succoth) and the
Gulf of Aqaba (S of Ezion-
Geber), or even on a lagoon on
the Mediterranean coast. The
biblical Mt. Sinai is identified in
Christian tradition with Jebel
Musa in the south of the Sinai
Peninsula, but this association
dates only from the 3rd century
CE and no evidence of the
Exodus has been found there.
[35]
Date
Main article: Pharaoh of the
Exodus
The two major proposals for
the date of the Exodus are the
15th century BCE and the 13th.
[36] The former is based on the
statement in 1 Kings 6:1 that
the Exodus occurred 480 years
before the construction of
Solomon's Temple, which
would imply an Exodus c.1446
BCE, during Egypt's Eighteenth
Dynasty.[37] However, it is
widely recognised that number
in 1 Kings is symbolic,[38]
representing twelve
generations of forty years each.
[39] (The number 480 is not
only symbolic the twelve
generations but schematic:
Solomon's temple (the First
Temple) is founded 480 years
after the Exodus and 480 years
before the foundation of the
Second Temple).[40] There are
also major archeological
obstacles to the 15th century
date: Canaan at the time was a
part of the Egyptian empire, so
that the Israelites would in
effect be escaping from Egypt
to Egypt, and its cities were
unwalled and do not show
destruction layers consistent
with the Bible's account of the
occupation of the land ( Jericho
was "small and poor, almost
insignificant, and unfortified
(and) [t]here was also no sign
of a destruction" - Finkelstein
and Silberman (2002), page
82).[41]
The lack of evidence for a 15th
century Exodus led William F.
Albright, the leading biblical
archaeologist of the mid-20th
century, to propose an
alternative 13th century date of
around 12501200 BCE for the
Exodus event and the entry into
Canaan described in the book
of Joshua.[42] (The Merneptah
Stele indicated that a people
called "Israel" were already
known in Canaan by the reign
of Merneptah (12131203 BCE),
so a date later than this was
impossible). His argument was
based on many strands of
evidence, including the
archaeologically attested
destruction at Beitel ( Bethel)
and some other cities at
around that period and the
occurrence of distinctive
house-types and round-
collared jars which, in his
opinion, were "Israelite".[42]
Albright's theory enjoyed
popularity at the time, but has
now been generally abandoned
in scholarship:[42] the so-called
"Israelite" house-type, the
collar-rimmed jars, and other
items which Albright thought
distinctive and new have now
been recognised as
continuations of indigenous
Canaanite types.[43] In a similar
vein, while some "Joshua"
cities, including Hazor, Lachish,
Megiddo and others, have
destruction and transition
layers around 12501145 BCE,
others, including Jericho, have
none or were uninhabited
during this period.[44][45]
Other attempts to date the
Exodus to a specific century
have been equally inconclusive.
[46] Details in the story in fact
hint that a complex and
multilayered editing process
has been at work: the Exodus
cities of Pithom and Rameses,
for example, were not
inhabited during most of the
New Kingdom period, and the
forty years of wilderness
wanderings are also full of
inconsistencies and
anachronisms.[47] It is
therefore best to treat the
Exodus story not as the record
of a single historical event but
as a "powerful collective
memory of the Egyptian
occupation of Canaan and the
enslavement of its population"
during the 13th and 12th
centuries