The Lowdown on the Riffraff
Do these obscure figures preserve a memory of a historical Exodus?
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Footnotes
The Hebrew term for “mixed multitude,” ‘
See Abraham Malamat, “‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’—What It Really Means,” BAR 16:04.
On the Hyksos, see Aharon Kempinski, “Jacob in History,” BAR 14:01.
Endnotes
A first-century C.E. Aramaic translation rendered ‘
Earlier, in the patriarchal narratives, the term “stranger” (
This message is subtly anticipated in the etymology provided twice for Gershom, the firstborn son of Moses in Midian, whose name incorporates the Hebrew term
One might argue that the legal distinctions among Hebrew and non-Hebrew citizens were incorporated into the law codes at a later date in history, when settlement in Canaan brought the Israelites side by side with diverse ethnic groups in the Promised Land. This may well be the case for such classes as slaves, hired laborers, foreigners and “natives” (Hebrew, ’
It is often assumed that the legal and moral principles invoked in laws concerning the
On the text, see Alan H. Gardiner, “Davies’ Copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscription,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 32 (1946), pp. 43–56. Gardiner rendered the word
To be sure, there have been modern proposals for an early Exodus date. During his excavations at Jericho in the 1930s, John Garstang proposed a 15th-century B.C.E. date. More recently, John J. Bimson (Redating the Exodus and the Conquest [Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1978]), having reexamined archaeological evidence from key sites in Canaan, argued for an Exodus c. 1470 B.C.E. But these remain a minority view. We should note that rabbinic reckoning, based on an oral tradition, placed the Exodus in 1312 B.C.E., in the so-called Era of Contracts, exactly one millennium before the beginning of Seleucid rule in 312 B.C.E. (see Barry Weitzel, “The Era of the Exodus in the Talmud,” Mizraim 8 [1938], pp. 15–19).
But for a different view, on the archaeological evidence for several “Exoduses,” see Abraham Malamat, “Let My People Go and Go and Go and Go,” BAR 24:01