Bible Stories

Is Exodus a True Story?

Some people are sunshine, others are lugubrious rainclouds. Then there are those who enjoy sowing seeds of dissention and doubt...

Exodus did happen. The Bible and other Jewish writings provide the greatest details, but it is possible that some of it was allegorical.

Here is a simple rebuttal to the "It never happened" crowd who point out that no Egyptian history of the time mentions the Jewish people:

The question can be asked however: How complete are the Egyptian records from this period? There is no real literature, no actual books or chronicles, which have survived from that period of Egyptian history. (Actually the Bible is by far man’s earliest chronicle.) We have only a very limited number of inscriptions that have been recovered and translated.

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The eruption of the Thera volcano c. 1600 BCE can help to illustrate the problem. The eruption was perhaps four times as powerful as the Krakatoa eruption in 1883. The eruption occurred 450 miles from the Nile delta with the force of a 600 megaton hydrogen bomb.

There would seem to be no question that the sound, smoke, ash and tsunami had a major impact on Egypt. However there is no reference to it, “not even a single clue”, in surviving Egyptian records even though we know from geological evidence that this certainly did happen.

It therefore seems silly to draw any conclusion from the gaps in Egyptian records. Obviously, in this case an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Torah Philosophy)

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that references to the Jewish People and Israel can be found inscribed on Egyptian monuments. Israelites and their eventual settlement in Palestine are mentioned on the inscriptions, so there are Egyptian historical records, although the timelines are muddled. It's a short article but not easy to excerpt. I invite you to go read it yourself: Merneptah I

Finally, here is something from a Rabbi who says the Exodus probably did not happen, at least as explained in Exodus, but he goes to to explain why that doesn't matter. Biblical literalists will disagree with it, but it is based upon solid scholarship.

He bases his view not on absence of evidence in Egypt, but on archaeological evidence in Israel:

Therefore, not the wandering, but the arrival alerts us to the fact that the biblical Exodus is not a literal depiction. In Israel at that time, there was no sudden change in the kind or the volume of pottery being made. (If people suddenly arrived after hundreds of years in Egypt, their cups and dishes would look very different from native Canaanites'.) There was no population explosion.

The probability is, given the traditions, that there were some enslaved Israelites who left Egypt and joined up with their brethren in Canaan. This seems the likeliest scenario, a beautiful one that accords with the deeper currents of biblical tradition. The Exodus was a very small-scale event with a large, world-changing trail of consequences.

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Knowing the Exodus is not a literal historical accounting does not ultimately change our connection to each other or to God. Faith should not rest on splitting seas. At the Passover Seder we declare: "In each generation, each individual should see himself as if he (or she) went forth from Egypt." The message does not depend upon whether 3 or 3 million individuals left.

He quotes an orthodox rabbi who believes that Jeremiah's prophesy that the Jewish liberation from Babylon would be more important than their liberation from Egypt also has something to do with it, and why the story is not repeated in Chronicles.

In the future the very story of the exodus is omitted, for it is not the specifics of history, but the theme of liberation and of God's providential care that is the theological center.

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The Torah is not a book we turn to for historical accuracy, but rather for truth. The story of the Exodus lives in us. Standing at the Passover Seder, I see in my mind's eye the Israelites marching out of Egypt, the miracles at the sea, and the pillar of fire leading them through the fearful night. I feel an enormous gratitude to God. For although we cannot know exactly how God has saved our people, we have been saved (Rabbi David Wolpe)

So sneering smartasses can make the stupid statement that "The Exodus never happened," but Christians and Jews know it ain't so simple.

As a final note, it is useful to see how educated people of God discuss controversial issues.  No one used curse words or vulgarity, all comments were based upon scholarship and references to sacred texts, with personal feeling and trends of the time blessedly absent.

See Also these excellent sites that examine archaeological evidence of the Exodus, courtesy of Elmer's Brother (who I believe is a sola scriptura literalist):

Biblical Chronologists
Bible Archaeology - The Exodus Controversy
Christians and Archaeology
Biblical Archaeology
Biblical History