What We Don’t Know About Moses and the Exodus

022

Three recent books deal with the life of Moses and that epoch-making journey we call the Exodus. Although each is different from the other two, a reading of all three impresses one with how little, not how much, we really know.

Two of these books are popular treatments of the subject; the third is more scholarly, but intended for the student rather than the specialist.

Moshe Pearlman^a, a one-time aide to Ben-Gurion, who has written widely for the layman on Israel’s history, presents the life story of Moses more or less as the Bible provides it: he retells the story without giving much attention to the results of Biblical criticism. Nor does he seriously deal with such problems as the route of the Exodus, the location of Mt. Sinai, the number of Israelites who made the trip, or the nature and sources of the various laws that the Bible attributes to the period of Israel’s desert wanderings. However, the story is dramatically and insightfully told, and easily carries the reader along.

Clearly the most outstanding feature of Pearlman’s book is the superb illustrations, most of them taken by Israeli photographer David Harris. These include not only 40 pictures of various scenes, but an additional 35 pictures of archaeological sites and objects. Pictures of plants and animals, of people at work and at worship, and of famous paintings and sculptures depicting Moses and his life complete this effective effort to illustrate visually the Exodus experience.

David Daiches^b, the distinguished English critic, a former lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge and now Professor of English at the University of Sussex, also tells the story for the layman. He pays more attention than Pearlman to the problems, discussing them in a clear way, but without going into much detail—giving to the non-scholarly reader the results of two centuries of scholarly research and debate without leading him through the jungles of learned discussions and arguments. Although in his treatment of the problems, Daiches is superior to Pearlman, Daiches’ pictures are clearly inferior to Pearlman’s. Most of Daiches pictures are artists’ renditions—paintings and sculptures—of Moses’ life and time. Only 19 portray archaeological subjects.

But the serious student who wants to know more about the problems not only of Moses and the Exodus, but of the Pentateuchal stories in general, will turn to Dewey Beegle’s pictureless book.^c Beegle, who teaches Old Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., not only analyzes the various strands of source material, but he judiciously leads his readers to solutions of the various problems 023by suggesting what may have happened and how seeming contradictions and inconsistencies can perhaps be explained. He shows how the different strands of tradition about Moses, the Exodus, and the desert wanderings were put together to form a running story by compiler(s) who wanted to create a harmonious unit.

Yet Beegle’s work also demonstrates that it is almost impossible to disentangle the complex web of sources to arrive at generally acceptable solutions. This fact strongly impresses itself on the reader’s mind when he is repeatedly told that one prominent scholar attributes a certain passage to one source, another equally eminent scholar attributes the same passage to another source, and a third scholar to a third source. For example, consider Exodus 33:7–11, which describes how Moses would pitch the Tent of the Presence of the Lord away from the Israelite camp, and how a pillar of cloud would stay at the door of the Tent while Moses was inside, and how Moses, inside, would speak to the Lord “face to face as a man speaks unto his friend.” This passage is attributed to E (the Elohist) by Walter Beyerlin, to J (the Yahwist) by Murray Newman and to D (the Deuteronomist) by Martin Noth. The fact that after more than 200 years of critical study, scholarly unanimity in this respect has not been approached, let alone achieved, illustrates, in Beegle’s words, “how much subjectivity is involved in a chain of reasoning which attempts to solve inner details of tradition and their development” (p. 249). Although there are of course many passages in the Pentateuch as to which there is great agreement, an honest and serious study can only conclude that its ancient compiler(s) used various materials and attempted to create a set of five books which give a coherent picture of what happened, just as Tatian of the second century of the Christian era and many others after him, combined the narrative material of the four Gospels of the New Testament into a Gospel Harmony which tried to harmonize the various conflicting strands of traditions about the life and work of Jesus.

While our three authors differ in many respects, all believe in the essential historicity of the Moses and Exodus stories, and accept Moses as the historical leader of his people and the great lawgiver. All three authors also accept the 13th century B.C. as the date of the Exodus. Pearlman does so because “current historians and archaeologists” place it there (p. 9). Daiches puts the Exodus under Ramses II “as most scholars think” (p. 27). While Beegle presents some of the evidence, chronological and otherwise, which favors an Exodus in the 19th Dynasty in the time of Ramses II (p. 42), he realizes that it is difficult to see why no mention is made of the powerful kings of the 18th Dynasty who must previously have oppressed the Hebrews if they were in Egypt during all that time.

It is true that much historical and archaeological evidence points to a 13th-century-B.C. date for the Exodus, for which reason the majority of scholars currently accept this date. However, the 15th-century date should not so cavalierly be dismissed or completely ignored as our authors do, for not all the Biblical and extra-Biblical evidence points to the 19th Dynasty as the time when the Exodus took place.

The Bible itself in two chronological statements favors an earlier date. 1 Kings 6:1 says that Solomon began the building of the Jerusalem temple 480 years (the Septuagint has 440 years) after the Exodus. Since the date of Solomon’s temple building is quite well established as 966 B.C. with a margin of uncertainty that is not greater than five years in either direction, the Exodus date would, according to this text, fall in the middle of the 15th century B.C. Furthermore, the Judge Jephthah is said in Judges 11:26 to have claimed that Israel in his time had been in possession of the Transjordanian territory, coveted by the Ammonites, for 300 years. Since Jephthah preceded Saul, Israel’s first king who reigned in the latter part of the 11th century B.C., by at least several decades, the occupation of Transjordan by the Israelites cannot have taken place later than 1350 B.C., if Jephthah’s claim is correct.

Other evidence favoring an 18-dynasty Exodus is of a historical nature. The fact that for three generations the royal families of the 18th dynasty kings of Egypt, from Ahmose to Thutmose II, had no male offspring favors the assumption that Moses, a Hebrew boy, could have become a beloved foster son of a royal princess much more easily than under the 19th-dynasty kings 024when there was no dearth of sons. If Hatshepsut, for example, was the princess who adopted Moses as a baby and perhaps loved him more than the illegitimate son—who was later to become Thutmose III—of her husband Thutmose II, we can understand why Thutmose III had a mortal hatred toward his stepmother Hatshepsut and why after his accession to the throne he did everything possible to eradicate her hated name and memory from history. Also the existence of Semitic slaves employed in the building operations of Thutmose I and III can refer to Israel’s enslavement. With a 15th century Exodus, the Habiru invasion of Canaan in the first half of the 14th century B.C. as depicted in the Amarna letters, could then be connected with the invasion of the Hebrews. The famous relief in General (later King) Haremhab’s tomb at Saqqara—which was constructed about 1360 B.C. and rediscovered in 1974 after its location had been lost for a century—shows Canaanite refugees begging the Egyptian authorities to allow them to enter Egypt, saying that their cities had been burned down and that after having lived like beasts in the field they had finally managed to make their way to Egypt’s border. This scene can be interpreted as representing Canaanites who had been driven out of their country by the invading Israelites. Furthermore, in the famous Merneptah stele which contains the earliest extant contemporaneous reference to Israel (c. 1225 B.C.), Pharaoh Merneptah claims to have encountered “Israel” in a military campaign in Palestine after listing Canaan, Ascalon, Gezer and Yanoam; this does not give the impression that the Israelites had just left Egypt, either under his father’s reign or his own.

It is high time that another detailed and penetrating study on the “Date of the Exodus,” were written, for no serious monograph on this subject has been published since J. W. Jack’s now outdated work appeared in 1925.

It is generally recognized that the numbers in the census lists of Numbers chapters 1 and 26 cannot be correct, and that the original figures were misunderstood either by their transmitters or translators. Similarly with the figures in Exodus 12:37, where it is stated that the Exodus included 600,000 armed adult men, not including dependents (the number in Numbers 1:45–46 is 603,550). If we were to include dependents, the total number of desert wanderers would be approximately two million. Internal Biblical evidence suggests that Israel was quite small, especially compared to its neighbors (see for example Exodus 23:29–30; Deuteronomy 7:7, 22), and geographic, logistic and biological evidence indicates the impossibility of sustaining two million people in the desert. Discussions on this matter have been going on for a long time and some ingenious solutions have been proposed^d—although none has been generally accepted, as can be seen from the fact that Daiches believes, that “a more realistic figure for those involved in the Exodus would be between two and six thousand” (p. 82) and Beegle believes “a total of about 16,000 would be fairly accurate” (p. 142). Perhaps all that can be said is that this is a crux which so far has defied solution.

The difficulties regarding the route of the Exodus stem largely from the fact that the 029majority of place names mentioned in the Exodus story cannot be identified. It is not even certain which lake or sea was involved in the miraculous crossing of the Israelites, because the term Yam Suph, “Sea of Reeds,” is too vague a term to locate it. Although this term is definitely used in 1 Kings 9:26 for the Gulf of Aqaba, which is an arm of the Red Sea, and most probably also in Numbers 33:10 for the Gulf of Suez (another arm of the Red Sea), as Beegle admits (p. 172), most scholars hesitate to identify the Red Sea with the “Sea of Reeds” of Exodus 10:19; Exodus 13:18; Exodus 15:4; etc. The reason for this is that the Red Sea and its arms contain no reeds. Therefore the “Bitter Lakes,” “Lake Menzaleh” or “Lake Sirbonis” (see map on p. 84 of Daiches’ book) have been suggested.

It is equally difficult to locate Mt. Sinai. The tradition placing it in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula goes back only to early Christian times. As a result of the uncertainty, Mt. Sinai has been identified by scholars with Jebel Halal in the northwest Negev (southwest of Arish), or with Jebel Ya’llaq, southeast of Suez, or with Jebel Sinn Bishr, northeast of Suez, or with some mountains east of the Gulf of Aqaba in northwestern Arabia. Consequently, several routes for the Wilderness Wanderings of the Israelites have been proposed. Daiches presents a convenient map on p. 84 of his book (see illustration) in which he indicates four possible routes.

All three of our scholars, after short or long discussions, opt for the southern route. With regard to the identification of Mt. Sinai, Pearlman is uncommitted, Daiches suggests Jebel Katherina and Beegle chooses the traditional Jebel Musa.

Recognizing the tentative nature of all identifications in the present state of our knowledge, I agree that the southern route is the most probably correct one, for it is easier to explain the events described in the Pentateuch in that way, than if one accepts one of the other routes.

My objection to any of the northern routes passing through either Lake Menzaleh or Lake Sirbonis is the Biblical tradition itself which excludes them by saying, “God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near” (Exodus 13:17). Furthermore, the variously suggested Sinais in the northern part of the Sinai peninsula, Jebel Halal, Jebel Ya’llaq, or Jebel Sinn Bishar, are not very impressive mountains—the highest is below 3,000 feet. Rising as they do out of the surrounding high plateau, they appear more like glorified hills, as this reviewer knows from having visited two of them. In contrast, the impressive granite mountains in the south are 7,000 or 8,000 feet high. Also the Biblical tradition puts Mt. Sinai at a much greater distance from the Negev than the northern mountains are. One text places Mt. Horeb (= Mt. Sinai) eleven days journey from Kadesh-barnea (Deuteronomy 1:2), while another passage says that Mt. Horeb lies 40 days’ journey from Beer-sheva (1 Kings 19:3, 1 Kings 19:8). It is also easier to identify some of the camping sites mentioned in the Exodus story by going south after crossing the Yam Suph, although there is no certainty that any of the identifications proposed is correct: Marah (Exodus 15:23–26) = ’Ain Hawarah, 47 miles southeast of Suez; Elim (Exodus 15:27) = Wadi Gharandel, 60 miles southeast of Suez; the encampment at the Red Sea after leaving Elim (Numbers 33:10)—at Abu Zeneima; Rephidim (Exodus 17:1)—Wadi Refayid, northwest of Jebel Musa, or the Wadi Feiran, 25 miles northwest of the traditional Mount Sinai.

However, I still defend the northern end of the Gulf of Suez as the point of crossing, in spite of the fact that its salt water contains no reeds, as the name Lake or Sea of Reeds would imply. My identification is based on the fact that in the Biblical texts where the term Yam Suph can more or less clearly be identified—1 Kings 9:26 and Numbers 33:10—the Red Sea is meant. In defense of a possible crossing through the northern bay of the Gulf of Suez, I refer the reader to a description of the hydrographic situation there and some experiences of people who crossed this bay on foot before the Suez Canal was constructed, all as described in Ludwig Schneller’s Durch die Wuste zum Sinai (Leipzig: H. G. Wallmann, 1910), pp. 21–24:

“A wide sandbank connects here the western and eastern shores of the sea. At high tide it is completely covered by the sea, but at low tide it is to a great extent 031dry. Four small sandy islands are connected with it which rise out of the sea north of Suez. These islands are separated from each other by deep water, so that they cannot be used to cross the sea, but the near sandbank is high enough and leads in a straight line from one shore to the other, so that the Arabs who are acquainted with the local conditions of depths can wade through the sea at low tide, except where the Canal interrupts it now, while deep water basins are to their right and left.

“[Joseph] Russegger, a very reliable traveler, who traveled [1835–1841] there about 25 years before the construction of the Canal, describes in a detailed way how and where he crossed the bay in the water on horseback. Napoleon I, who during his Egyptian campaign came to this place, wanted to cross the Red Sea at the same place. First he made good progress riding on horseback, but before he reached the other shore, the tide came in, and the brave general was almost swallowed up by the waves like Pharaoh. He was happy to escape by the skin of his teeth and said after safely reaching the opposite shore, ‘If I had drowned here, the pastors in Europe would have gotten another interesting text.’

“If for example a northeastern wind of story-intensity blows, the waters of the sea are swept with irresistible force into the southern part of the small bay with the result that the natural sandbank becomes completely dry and two separate sea basins are formed, one in the north and the other in the south. If after such a forceful drying up, a sudden change in the direction of the wind occurs, the sea, being driven with double force, by the returning tide and the raging wind, returns with tremendous power into the northern part of the bay.”

Finally, a few errors noticed in reading Daiches’ book should be pointed out: Not Isaac, as stated on p. 11, but Abraham’s servant was sent to Haran to find a wife for Isaac; the Amarna letters never refer to the ’Apiru in this spelling as is said on p. 19, but spell it Habiru in the Amarna letters written by the king of Jerusalem, while the other Amarna letters present this name in logograms as SA-GAZ (and variant spellings); the picture on p. 21 depicts a battle scene of Seti I and not of Ramses II; Hyksos names connected with Jacob are Iqb-hr and Ikb-mw, but not Ya‘qub-‘al and Jacob-baal, as stated on p. 23; the picture on p. 37 shows the front of the Luxor temple reversed, for the obelisk stands on the eastern side of the gate, and therefore should be to the left of the gate on the picture; the Enuma-elish myth does not “follow exactly the same course of events as we find in the opening chapter of Genesis,” as stated by the author on p. 103, in fact the order is different; and it is not quite correct to say that “we know of no ancient stones engraved on both sides” (p. 135), because the “Palermo Stone,” containing Egyptian annals of the early dynasties is engraved on both sides and the round Stele of Hammurabi’s law code is engraved on all sides.

Three recent books deal with the life of Moses and that epoch-making journey we call the Exodus. Although each is different from the other two, a reading of all three impresses one with how little, not how much, we really know.