Of all the stories in the Bible, the Israelite exodus from Egypt is one of the most critical
to the overall narrative of salvation history, if not the most entertaining.
Filled with intrigue, powerful revelations about God, and the foundation of a covenantal
relationship that will forever bind God with Israel, the story is a literary masterpiece
of faith.
And yet, for many people, there is but one question that matters: did the exodus really
happen?
While an interesting question for sure, and scholars certainly have put forward a variety
of possible answers, there is truly only one appropriate response this question: what do
you mean by the exodus?—— This is Catholicism in Focus.
Whether you’ve seen the story play out on the silver screen or heard it read in Sunday
school, there is probably no one in the Western world who is not familiar with the extraordinary
events of the exodus story; scenes like the Ten Plagues and the crossing of the Red sea
are not just religious stories; they’ve entered the collective imagination of our
world.
[bruce almighty, other clips]
It’s no wonder, then, when a story that is so central to the faith of two religions
is filled with such other-worldly events, that many, both religious and not, would want
to know if there’s any historical basis to it.
So, let’s look at the evidence.
From a strictly biblical perspective, there is not a lot of historical material to work
with, as neither Pharaoh is named, few Egyptian words are used, and the cities mentioned have
no historical records of their own.
So, that’s not much help.
What’s worse is that the details we do have are a bit far-fetched.
Beyond the plagues and miracles themselves, there is definitely a problem with numbers.
In Exodus 12, we read that the Israelites all leave together in the night towards the
wilderness after being freed from the Pharaoh’s control.
Verse 37 claims that the total that escaped numbered six hundred thousand men, not including
women, children, or livestock.
We’re talking at least a couple of million people here.
To put that number in perspective, the entire kingdom of Egypt, which at the time would
have been the largest in the world, was estimated at having only about .
That number of people, all together, is just unfathomable.
If the entire crowd walked in rows of ten, they would form a line over 150 miles in length,
and it would take them eight or nine days to cross a single point.
To think that a people almost the entire size of the host nation could leave in one night
and there be no historical record of it, casts some doubt on the historicity of the story.
Again, this is without even considering the extraordinary plagues and miracles themselves.
As it is written, it is difficult to accept a literal reading of the text.
It’s for this reason that there is no shortage of people, including people of faith, who
want to argue that the story of the exodus is nothing more than a mythological explanation
of a people’s origin.
Given the miracles, given the unlikely nature of the historical events, many see the story
as nothing more than a way to remind the people of Israel that God loves his people, that
they are saved from harm, and that they are bound to a covenant of morality.
In asking whether or not the Exodus really happened, the answer for them is an unequivocal
no.
And that makes a lot of sense.
The Bible itself is not a history book concerned with facts and dates, but a theological book
concerned with truth and relationships.
To suggest that the Exodus story is purely mythological is not to say that it is not
true; myths are by their very nature true, and what this one reminds us is that God does
love his people, that they are saved, and that they are bound to a covenant.
And yet… what good is a story about how God loves his people, saves them, and binds
them in a covenant… if none of that ever actually happened?
We can call the creation stories myths without challenging our faith because we know that,
even if God didn’t create in the exact way that it is told in Genesis and Job, God did
in fact create.
Something actually happened.
If we try to suggest that the Exodus story is purely mythological, that it has no basis
in history, that God didn’t actually do these things… well, then the story bears
no truth at all.
Luckily, this is not the case, as there is plenty of evidence to suggest that something
did happen.
Archaeological evidence does not give the impression that millions of people left a
country all at once, but hundreds of new settlements were formed in the land around Israel in the
13th or 12th centuries BCE.
These were formed by nomadic people, all at once, roughly the same time that the exodus
is believed to have happened.
Similarly, the description of the harsh labor experienced by the Israelites in the Bible
matches the historical record of what would have been experienced by Asiatics, slaves
of the Egyptian empire that made bricks and lived in the delta area.
Add these two details to the fact that the biblical account offers a generally accurate
knowledge of the geography, weather phenomenon, and politics of the Egyptian and desert regions,
and there is certainly evidence to suggest that, while largely peppered with mythological
language, the core of the exodus story reflects a real historical event: there was an oppressed
people who experienced their freedom from bondage as the work of God.
Maybe they were . Maybe they left in waves rather than all at once.
Maybe there were multiple individual events experienced by different peoples that came
to be understood as the same event.
Scholars have proposed theories as to how it happened, but many agree that something
happened.
Which leads us back to the original question: what do we mean by the exodus?
If by exodus we mean that millions of Israelites left Egypt all on one night, were pursued
by the Egyptian army, before crossing the Red Sea… then no.
We can say pretty definitively say that it didn’t.
But if by the exodus we mean that God heard the cries of his people, that his love and
demand for justice led him somehow to actively engage with their oppressors, freeing them
from bondage and marking them as his special people, then yes.
It is a distinct possibility that this happened.
Which is really important.
Just as a purely literalist reading of the text in which we accept everything at face
value is a bit ridiculous, so too is a purely mythological reading of the text in which
the only thing that matters is the message, not the facts.
Both are completely illogical.
In order for there to be truth, there must also be action.
The Exodus story does not simply remind us that God loves us in a general sense, that
we are called to be in relationship—it points to the very fact that God did love us, in
history, and created an actual covenant with us.