What does the Bible say?
According to the book of Exodus, the ancestors of the Hebrews (descendants of Jacob, later called Israel) migrated to Egypt to escape famine in their homeland of Canaan. They remained under the rule of the pharaoh for 430 years, and over time they multiplied and became a formidable power. One of the new pharaohs (name not given) began to fear the children of Israel and therefore ordered them to be exhausted by hard work.
When this did not work, the ruler ordered all newborn Israelite boys to be thrown into the river.
Newborn Moses miraculously escaped this fate and was forced to flee Egypt when he grew up. Years later, God appeared to him in the form of a burning bush (a bush that burns but does not burn) and commanded him to return to the land of Egypt and demanded that Pharaoh release the people of Israel. Moses did this, but Pharaoh initially refused to comply. Then God began to bring down ten plagues on the Egyptians, one after another: all the water turned to blood, the earth was filled with frogs, gnats and locusts, fiery hail rained down from the sky, and the sun disappeared in broad daylight, and even torches did not help from the darkness. Pharaoh surrendered and agreed to release Moses and his people only after the tenth plague – the death of all Egyptian firstborn.
Six hundred thousand grown men left Egypt with Moses, but Pharaoh suddenly changed his mind and sent an army to bring back and re-enslave the Jews. The army reached them at the Red Sea, which separated the waters before Moses, but closed them again when the Egyptian army chased the Jews at the bottom. The Jews then made a Covenant with God and received the 10 Commandments, but they still had to wander for 40 years before entering Canaan, the Promised Land. The Kingdom of Israel was established in Canaan, with its capital in Jerusalem, where the Temple was built under the rule of King Solomon.
leave it unnoticed
Since the Christian church was considered “Israel in spirit and not in blood,” the Exodus became an important element of the self-identity of the Jewish people and, by extension, Christian civilization. Muslims also partially accept the Old Testament and the events of the Exodus. So it’s no surprise that historians and archaeologists have been searching for evidence of large-scale ancient migrations for centuries. There is no exact date in the biblical text, but interpreters believe that Moses lived no later than the 12th century BC. to. -A later date for the Exodus would contradict other known events in Jewish history.
Researchers every few years to announce They discovered archaeological evidence of the reality of the Exodus, and recently physicists have proven that it is possible to divide the waters with the help of wind forces – but this is where a miracle happens must Depart from the Red Sea towards the Nile Delta.
So what do Egyptian written sources (papyri and stone inscriptions) say about the Exodus? The search is hampered by the anonymity of the biblical pharaoh, but not a single Egyptian chronicle describes anything even remotely resembling the Exodus. Thus, texts from the New Kingdom period mention Asian workers and slaves, but not their mass flight. Moreover, the Merneptah stele (13th century BC) speaks of a people whose name can be translated as “Israel” – but this people lived precisely in Canaan.
But in Egyptian history there were cases when unpleasant events could be almost completely erased from the chronicles. For example, therefore there was myth It’s about the Persian army disappearing in a desert storm, even though it was actually destroyed by the rebels. If the events of the Exodus truly unfolded according to the biblical text, this was the greatest shame to Pharaoh’s power that should be forgotten.
Biblical “misfits”
The search for the Exodus in the chronicles can be carried out endlessly; for example, some researchers have identified these events with the expulsion of enemy Hyksos. But since modern Egyptology has made it possible to accurately reconstruct the history of this country, large gaps have become noticeable in the text of the Book of Exodus.
It’s really hard to imagine Egypt without camels, but these animals were domesticated Only In the immediate vicinity of Canaan in the 10th century. Until this moment, Pharaoh could not own camels and caravans could not carry goods with their help (Genesis 37:25). Moreover, the Bible lists numerous lands that the Jews conquered during their arrival in Canaan, such as the cities of Edom and the Midianites. However, Edom was not settled until the 7th century, and the Midianites did not establish a city until the same period. The same is true for the area of the city of Arad, which, according to archaeologists, was abandoned until the 8th century BC. to.
Thus, the author of the Book of Exodus made a mistake typical of many historical and science fiction novels: he filled the period with anachronistic objects and phenomena. It was as if the boyars were asking Tsar Ivan the Terrible to spend their holidays in a Crimean sanatorium, although this territory belonged to the Crimeans, and sanatoriums became a cult phenomenon only in the Soviet period.
Likewise, the Egyptian pharaoh in the book of Exodus feared that the Jews would cooperate with a powerful enemy force: “He too will join with our enemies.” In reality, Egypt at that time had no such enemies as the “great powers” until the rise of Assyria in the 8th century.
Finally, archaeologists were able to help solve the mystery. There are at least two reliable methods for identifying people: typology of metal, clay and stone artifacts and DNA analysis. According to this research Jews, like the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Israel, are more than half descendants of ancient Canaanites, geneticists say, and genetic relatedness has been recorded as far back as the Bronze Age. Archaeologists also see no evidence for the emergence of an alien cultural group at any point in ancient Canaan; But it makes sense that the Jews brought with them from Egypt a style of making clay pots, for example. On the contrary, according to archaeologists, the culture of the oldest Israelite settlements is Canaanite.
What happened?
One hypothesis is that the book of Exodus reflects not a single historical event but a long period during which people migrated from Egypt to Canaan. This version is difficult to prove or disprove, as people have migrated back and forth throughout human history. However, almost all scholars who study the Bible from a scientific perspective agree that the book of Exodus could not have been written in its present form before the 7th century BC. Perhaps the prototype of this story appeared in the 10th century, but strongly changed Under the influence of Babylonian captivity and the return from it to Israel. With idea According to renowned archaeologist William Dever, the search for archaeological evidence of the Exodus is clearly fruitless.
In the next period, from IV BC. By the 1st century BCE, during the Jewish struggle against the pagan Hellenistic and Roman worlds, the Exodus myth played an important role in Israelite national identity. Interestingly, even today many right-wing Israelis cite the Bible and say that modern Israel is the Promised Land that God commanded the Jews to do. Paradoxically, for non-religious people, the debunking of this myth confirms the last thesis even more strongly: Jews are the indigenous people of Canaan and have lived there since the Bronze Age.