In his book ‘When God formed a people’(Koinonia Press, Manchester 1978, page 7), speaking f the Book of Exodus, Michael Maher MSC writes: #

‘It is obvious that a book which tells of Redemption, Passover, Covenant, Law, Sin and Forgiveness, Divine Grace and Human Response, and of God’s Presence among us, must have meaning for the Christian to whom all these themes are familiar.’

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Prior to the Greek Period (late 4th century BC) writers in the Ancient Near East, though just as interested in reality, generally expressed their insights, not in ‘history’, but in epic, saga, song and story. Other writings from the ancient world chose the elevated, poetic and sophisticated style of epic literature, a style typical of an aristocratic and ruling class. Not so, Israel. In the Bible we find a more popular style, open to everyone, the style of story-telling. This style links immediately with experience, and provides a simple and effective way of sharing experience, and so truth (see Jesus’ parables!). This brings us to a key insight that we must have as we approach the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the entry into the Promised Land. It is that, for the most part, the Older Testament offers us truth as truth is expressed in story. The stories draw on facts, but only rarely do we find in them what we would regard as ‘history’.

Story-telling cultures

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Those responsible for the Exodus story (found in the Books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) were interested in history, in the sense that they were interested in real people and thei r l i ves , but the i r a im was to connect the i r contemporaries with the precious religious insights that had come down to them from their ancestors, and they used folklore and legend when this helped to achieve their aim. Like all the writings of the Ancient Near East, they drew on oral tradition, in which the aim is on-going interest not historical accuracy.

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‘The Hebrew writers manifestly took delight in the artful limning [depicting] of these lifelike characters and actions, and so they created an unexhausted source of delight for a hundred generation of readers. But that pleasure of imaginative play is deeply interfused with a sense of great spiritual urgency. The biblical writers fashion their personages with a complicated, sometimes alluring, often fiercely insistent individuality, because it is in the stubbornness of human individuality that each man and woman encounters God or ignores Him, responds to, or resists, Him. Subsequent religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man, and the perilously momentous realm of history.’

Robert Alter: The Art of Biblical Narrative (page 189):

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‘History’ for them was a way of understanding their destiny in the world as a people special to YHWH. To be an Israelite is to share in the faith of a people who believe that God liberates from slavery, and that the way to receive the special blessings promised them by God is to listen to YHWH and do his will.

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The biblical writers are not seeking to give their readers historically accurate information about their past; they are interested in forming the consciousness of the nation by keeping before them the stories that remind them of who they are and what they are called to be. Their explicit focus was not on accurate historical detail but on the way they understood God to have acted in the past and to be acting in their present, and on how they are to respond if they want to receive God’s blessing.

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When YHWH your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you — the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you — and when YHWH your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

‘The Hittites constituted an empire in Anatolia [central Turkey] and Syria in the fifteenth and fourteenth century B.C.E. After the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the end of the thirteenth century, when the ‘sea peoples’ attacked the Anatolian and Syrian coast, there came down to Palestine hosts of refugees and immigrants consisting of various ethnic groups including Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites and Girgashites, who settled in the densely populated areas in the hill country. They seized power in the few existing cities in the mountains such as Shechem, Gibeon, and Hebron.’

Weinfeld

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• The three main ethnic groups are reflected in Ezekiel 16:3.#

• ‘Thus says the Lord YHWH to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite’. #

• The Jebusites controlled Jerusalem till David captured the city and made it the capital of the United Kingdom (see 2Samuel 5:6-10).

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To get some idea of the early history of Israel we turn to the discoveries of archaeology. Our earliest glimpse into Canaan comes f rom the Amarna tablets (14th centur y BC) , which consist in correspondence between Egypt and cities in Canaan, notably Jerusalem, Shechem, Megiddo, Hazor and Lachish. The tablets reveal that the cities were quite weak, and were paying heavy tribute to their Egyptian overlord. They had no city walls and consisted of little more than a palace, a temple compound and a few public buildings. The Egyptian provincial capital was at Gaza and there were Egyptian garrisons in Joppa and Beth-shan.

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From the B ib le i t se l f i t i s impossible to establish a date for the Exodus. 1Kings 6:1 places it as 480 years prior to the fourth year of Solomon’s reign; in other words c.1436BC. Such a date poses too many problems. When it is recognised that 480 is 12 by 40, we have every reason to suspect that the number is symbolic, not chronological.

Exodus

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A more likely historical background for the exodus story is the late 13th century BC. Ramesses II (1279-1213) had a massive building programme in the delta of the Nile, partly as a defence against the ‘Sea Peoples’. He used slave labour. It was at the end of his long reign that the small Canaanite states sustained by Egyptian power collapsed, which entailed the ‘liberation’ of some local populations from the ‘slavery’ of Egyptian rule.

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There was an age-old rhythm of migration of people to Egypt from Canaan. Egypt was watered by the Nile, whereas Canaan depended on rainfall for its crops. When the rains failed, they sought help from their neighbour, Egypt. In the thirteenth centur y there were Canaanites in Egypt for purposes o f t rade and a s pr i soners o f war (Finkelstein and Silberman page 54). Furthermore, in an attempt to ward off the incursions of the Sea Peoples, Pharaoh Ramesses II was bui lding fortified cities in the land of Goshen in the eastern delta of the Nile and using the forced labour of refugees, sometimes called ‘Habiru’(Exodus 11:4; 12:38) because they were stateless and so without any protection against the mercenary armies pillaging their way through the Near East and profiting from the ready market for slaves.

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The Book of Exodus states that the Israelites in Egypt were ‘more numerous and more powerful’ that the Egyptians (Exodus 1:9), How can we accept this as a fact when we can find not one s ing le re fe rence in Egy pt ian literature to Israelites even existing in Egypt? We do know that there was frequent contact between Canaan and Egypt, and there would have been people from Canaan in Egypt, but they never outnumbered the Egyptians, nor were they ever seen as a threat to the greatest of the pharaohs, Ramesses II.

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Pharaoh Ramses II fortified and closely controlled the border with Canaan . As Finke l s te in and Silberman (‘Unearthing the Bible’) say: ‘The escape of more than a tiny group from Egyptian control at the time of Ramses II seems highly unlikely, as is the crossing of the desert and the entrance into Canaan … Except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a s ing le camps i te or s i gn o f occupation from the time of Ramses II and his immediate predecessors and successors ha s e ver been identified in Sinai … not even a single sherd’(page 60, 62-63).

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Signs of habitation in the Sinai peninsula from the third millennium have been found, but not f rom th i r teenth century. If the escaping slaves were at Kadesh-barnea, they left no trace. There are no traces at Ezion-geber. In the thirteenth century BC Arad was deserted. Heshbon, the city of Sihon, did not exist at th i s t ime , and Edom and Ammon were spar se l y populated by nomadic tribes.

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Though we ha ve no evidence of a significant group of slaves escaping f rom Egy pt , there i s nothing to contradict that such escapes happened. But ‘six hundred thousand men [gbr]’(Exodus 12:37)! Add the women and children, th ink o f the supp l ie s needed, and factor in that archaeology has found not one trace of their presence in the Sinai.

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The imagery for the first nine plagues is drawn from natural phenomena. Isn’t this all we need to know? As a story it would have spoken powerfully to people who experienced such ‘plagues’. Do we need to read the text as giving us historically reliable facts; namely, that sometime in the late 13th centur y over a short per iod God intervened to produce all these plagues through Moses?#!

We should not miss the point that in the first plague YHWH defeats Hapi, the god of the Nile, and in the 9th plague YHWH defeats Ra, the sun-god!

The plagues of Egypt

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Exodus describes the crossing of the Red Sea (yam suf). suf can mean ‘reed’(see Exodus 2:3,5; Isaiah 19:6). Do we need to try to make the story more plausible as history by translating the text as ‘Reed Sea’, and imagining that the authors of Exodus are describing a crossing that took place in a marshy area somewhere between the western arm of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, or can we leave ‘Red Sea’(as in 1Kings 9:26) and let the drama of the story carry its full weight of amazement as a story? There are allusions to the creation and flood narratives, which give the ‘sea’ an almost mythical character. God is once again conquering chaos. Do we have to believe, as an historical fact, that ‘the waters formed a wall for the Israelites on their right and on their left’(Exodus 14:22), but that they ‘returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained’(Exodus 14:28)’?

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The thirteenth century was a tumultuous time throughout the ancient Near East. Empires clashed and collapsed, armies of mercenary soldiers wrought havoc in the area, and with the collapse of the Mycenean Empire the ‘Sea Peoples’ ravaged the shores of Egypt and Canaan. #!

In The Bible Unearthed: archaeology’s new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts Finkelstein, an Israeli archaeologist, and Silberman, an Israeli historian, write:

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‘The Ugaritic and Egyptian records of the early twelfth century BCE mention these marauders. A text found in the ruins of the port city of Ugarit provides dramatic testimony for the situation around 1185 BCE. Sent by Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, to the king of Alashiya (Cyprus), it frantically describes how “enemy boats have arrived, the enemy has set fire to the cities and wrought havoc. My troops are in Hittite country, my boats in Lycia, and the country has been left to its own devices’. Likewise, a letter from the same period from the great king of Hatti to the prefect of Ugarit expresses his anxiety about the presence of a group of Sea People called Shiqalaya, “who live on boats”. Ten years later, in 1175 BCE, it was all over in the north. Hatti, Alashiya, and Ugarit lay in ruins. But Egypt was still a formidable power, determined to make a desperate defence. The monumental inscriptions of Ramses III at the temple of Medinet Habu in Upper Egypt recount the Sea Peoples’ purported conspiracy to ravage the settled lands of the eastern Mediterranean’(page 87).

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A number o f c i t i e s in Canaan were destroyed in the late thirteenth century including Debir, Bethel, Lachish, and Hazor. This destruction could have been the result of clashes between Israel and these city states. It could also have resulted from the clash between Egypt and the Hittites, or the result of struggles between the city states themselves as trade was disrupted due to the ravages brought about at this time by the ‘Sea Peoples’, including the Philistines. It is likely that the Sea Peoples themselves were the main cause of the destruction of the small city states and so of the need for the herders to escape the disorder of the p la ins and sett le the highlands – the settlers we know as ‘Israel’.

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The oldest extant record of the existence of a people called ‘Israel’ is an Egyptian stone inscription from the time of Merneptah (1207BC), son of pharaoh Ramesses II. Israel Finkelstein, an Israeli archaeologist, in his The Archaeology of the Israelite settlement (Israel Exploration Society 1988) notes evidence of an increase in settlement in the highlands of Canaan in the 13th century BC, and writes: ‘The vast majority of the peop le who se t t l ed in the h i l l countr y and in the Transjordan during the Iron I period must have been indigenous’(page 348).

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Their settlements were not fortified. They lived a simple lifestyle and their settling in the hill country was peaceful. Archaeology re vea l s ear l i e r s imi la r se t t l ements in the highlands of Canaan, the first being about 3,500BC (100 sites), and the second about 2,000BC (220 sites). The people called ‘Israel’ represent the third such attempt at subsistence farming there.

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These settlers belonged to a number of different tribes. The largest tribe was that of Joseph (so large it was divided into Ephraim and Manasseh). With the small tribe of Benjamin, the Joseph tribes occupied the central hil l country west of the Jordan (Manasseh spilled over to the east side of the Jordan as well). The tribe of Judah occupied the southern highlands. The tr ibes of Reuben and Gad occupied the mountain region east of the Jordan. The smaller tribes of Simeon and Dan occupied the areas at the edge of Judah. Under pressure from the Philistines, the tribe of Dan later moved to the extreme north. North of the valley of Esdraelon in the highlands of Galilee were the tribes of Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali and Asher.

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These t r ibes inhab i ted the mountainous region of Canaan, and the thorough and extens ive archaeological surveys carried out since 1967 reveal a culture different from that of the city states and agricultural lands of the coastal plain and lowlands. The Israelites were herders who had turned to farming when the collapse of law and order in the lowlands meant that they could no longer rely on traditional barter. They had to provide their own grain (eastern highlands) as well as vines and olives (western highlands).

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The key historical question is: Where did the highland tribes (‘Israel’) hear about and embrace the worship of YHWH? The answer given in the Bible tells of a group of slaves who escaped from Egypt, and, after journeying in the Sinai desert, crossed the Jordan River and entered Canaan from the East. The books of the Bible that tell this story (The Books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) form the heart of the Older Testament. In them we have ‘story’ rather than ‘history’ as we would use the term, but the stories and legends draw on a long oral tradition, and express the essential identity of Israel.

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As the story goes, this group originated in Canaan (see the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in Genesis 12-50), but had been enslaved in Egypt, and had escaped under the leadership of a man called Moses. They were formed into a people during their years in the Sinai desert, and had a unique understanding of God as being the god of the oppressed. #!

The biblical text is liturgical, exhortatory and dramatic. The lack of corroboration from outside the Bible is no reason to doubt that there was a historical kernel that is the source of the Moses narratives that are central to the Torah. It was perhaps a small group of the enslaved Habiru led by Moses who made their escape into the Sinai peninsula at this time.

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Not being strong enough to force their way north they spent a generation wandering the desert lands till they were able to enter Canaan from the east across the Jordan. During this long desert experience they formed into a religious community, bound together not by race or geography, but by their commitment to each other and to God under the name of YHWH, the liberator God whom they believed was responsible for their miraculous escape. It was they who introduced the cult of YHWH to the highland tribes. #!

The tribes of ‘Israel’ committed themselves to organise their communities on the principles of justice that followed from worshipping a God who ‘hears the cry of the poor’.

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Decisions were supposed to be made not by custom, for it benefited the status quo and proved ineffectual as an instrument of justice; not by authoritarian law enacted by the powerful; not by ‘wisdom’ which, as practised, was a form of self-interested know-how for the benefit of those who were influential; not by necromancy, fate, chance or random superstition; but by remembering the deeds of YHWH and by listening to YHWH’s voice. Success was to be measured, not by the achievement of personal kudos, but by what gave glory to YHWH; that is to say, by what attracted people to praise YHWH and his action in favour of his people. The land belonged to YHWH and so could be used only so long as the occupants were faithful to YHWH.

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When the tribes met at the covenant-shrine at Shechem, the various tribal ancestral legends were shared, and the story of the Exodus was told and re-told. Writing was a rare phenomenon in a peasant community where trade was mostly by exchange. Traditions were handed on in oral form. Religious traditions found expression especially in liturgical forms that were committed to memory by usage. It is these traditions which were later written down and which we now read in the Bible. Knowledge of the oral origins of the material warns us against reading the biblical narratives outside such a context. We can be confident that we are reading material which puts us in touch with truth, so long as we recognise that it is the truth of religious experience expressed in the ritual language of cult.

Shechem •

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• ‘Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God’ (Joshua 24:1). #

• Joshua 24 recalls the story of the patriarchs and continues:

Shechem

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‘Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst; and afterwards I brought you out. When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. When they cried out to YHWH, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt. Afterwards you lived in the wilderness a long time.’

Joshua 24:4-7

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• Gottwald (‘The Hebrew Bible’)suggests that the Exodus functioned as an ‘umbrella metaphor’ for Tribal ‘Israel’.#

• A people oppressed by kings unites to escape from physical and mental bondage to the oppressor.#

• A people freed from an imposed social order unites and experiments to create a tribal/ inter-tribal community.#

• A people whose leaders had been imposed now struggles to create necessary leadership in the absence of coercive state power.#

• A people threatened by disease and plague struggles to reproduce and preserve itself by adequate hygienic measures.

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• The Exodus story would have encouraged the northern kingdom in the struggle against Assyrian power. The prophets certainly used it in their critique of the abuses of government and life which they opposed in the name of YHWH (see Amos 2:10; 3:1-2 and Hosea 11:1-5; 12:14). #

• Some parts of the story may have been written prior to the destruction of Samaria (721BC)

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• The Exodus story supported Josiah’s movement to re-conquer and liberate the Promised Land.

• ‘You shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but YHWH brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. YHWH displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors’(Deuteronomy 6:21-23).

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The Exodus story inspired those living in exile in Babylon. It inspired them to return to the ‘Promised Land’.#!

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It inspired the post-exilic community, attempting to form a renewed Israel, and recalling the experiences of their beginnings, determined to be faithful to the covenant with God made in their name by their ancestors, a covenant which defines them as a people.

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Ezra proclaimed: YHWH, you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea. You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted insolently against our ancestors. You made a name for yourself, which remains to this day. And you divided the sea before them, so that they passed through the sea on dry land, but you threw their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters. Moreover, you led them by day with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire, to give them light on the way in which they should go. You came down also upon Mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known your holy sabbath to them and gave them commandments and statutes and a law through your servant Moses.

Judah: mid-5th century: Ezra & Nehemiah

Nehemiah 9:6-21

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For their hunger you gave them bread from heaven, and for their thirst you brought water for them out of the rock, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you swore to give them … You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them. Even when they had cast an image of a calf for themselves … you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness; the pillar of cloud that led them in the way did not leave them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night that gave them light on the way by which they should go. You gave your good spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness so that they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

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• Besides narrative, Exodus is a handbook for religious festivals and a law code. This material is mainly contributed by the Priestly School [P]. It is important that we read these laws as expressions of practices that have come down through the tradition, a tradition which they understood to be guided by their God, YHWH. #

• These laws express ways in which their ancestors, and they themselves, have solved various problems that have emerged in the community, as well as ways of organising personal and communal life in ways that are consistent with their religious insights.

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We are invited to see the continuing activity of God in each new present by recalling those events in the past that have proven themselves to be of revelatory power. This is expressed well in a speech placed on the lips of Moses by the writers of the Book of Deuteronomy:#!

‘YHWH our God made a covenant with us at Horeb; not with our fathers did he make this covenant, but with us, all of us, who are alive here this day’(Deuteronomy 5:3).

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