Religion: The Exodus, did it really happen?

As a Christian, I commemorate Good Friday and celebrate Easter Sunday.

In my part of town, there are a good number of Jewish Los Angelinos and they celebrate Passover.

I have to say that if I wasn't a Protestant Christian, I think I would like to be Jewish because the Passover Seder sounds like such an interesting way to remember God and His work in the world. The Seder is a powerful teaching device. It uses words to communicate Jewish beliefs but because it is set in a meal, there are visual, tactile, aromatic and taste sensations to emphasize the wonder of the Exodus story.

Because the Exodus happened so long ago, there is a debate as to whether it really happened.

This rabbi says, no. Excerpts of his reasoning:

Three years ago on Passover, I explained to my congregation that according to archeologists, there was no reliable evidence that the Exodus took place--and that it almost certainly did not take place the way the Bible recounts it. Finally, I emphasized: It didn't matter.

Some argue that there is no evidence to back my assertion. Endlessly reiterated is the mantra "absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence." In other words, the fact that we have never found a single shred of evidence in the Sinai does not mean the Israelites were not there.

This is nominally true. We have found Sinai evidence of other people who predated the Israelites, and while it is improbable that 600,000 men crossed the desert 2,500 years ago without leaving a shard of pottery or a Hebrew carving, it is not impossible.
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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.

Dennis Prager thinks it did happen. Excerpts from his argument:

For thousands of years Jews have been retelling this story. It is possible that it is all a 3,000-year-old fairy tale, but do logic and common sense suggest this? Why would a people make up such an ignoble history? Why would a people fabricate a myth of its origins in which it is depicted so negatively?

There is no parallel in human history to the Hebrew Bible’s negative depiction of the Jews’ national origins. The Torah’s depiction of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt to Canaan portrays the Jews as ingrates, rebels and chronic complainers, undeserving of the freedom G-d and Moses brought them. Moreover, aside from Moses, the heroes of the story are nearly all non-Jews. It is the daughter of Pharaoh who saves and rears Moses (later Jewish tradition actually holds her to be his mother); it is a Midianite priest, Jethro, who tells Moses how to govern the Jewish people; and the two midwives who refuse the pharaoh’s order to kill all male Jewish babies are almost certainly Egyptians. As for Moses himself, he is depicted as being raised an Egyptian.

That is one of the three reasons I am certain of the Jews’ slavery and exodus. Any people that makes up a history for itself makes sure to depict itself as heroic and other peoples as villains. That the Torah’s story does the very opposite is for me an unassailable argument on behalf of its honesty.

Second, I do not believe that a nation tells a story for 3,000 years that has no experiential basis. Moreover, the text has allusions to Egypt that only contemporaries could know. Even the name Moses is Egyptian (compare the pharaohs’ names Thutmose, Ahmose and Ahmosis).

Third, I choose to believe the story despite the archaeologists’ (subjective) claim of no evidence just as, despite the powerful arguments of history and of archaeologists of the past generation, some archaeologists - and those who trust archaeologists more than the biblical narrative — choose to believe the exodus never happened.

As for the argument of some Jews that they do not depend on the veracity of the Exodus for their faith, from a Jewish standpoint this is destructive nonsense. If the Exodus did not occur, there is no Judaism. Judaism stands on two pillars — creation and exodus. Judaism no more survives the denial of the Exodus than it does the denial of the Creator. Creation and Exodus are coequal Jewish claims. A creator G-d who never intervened in human affairs is Aristotle’s unmoved mover, not the G-d the Jews introduced to the world. Moreover, any Jews who believe the Exodus did not occur should have the intellectual honesty to stop observing Passover. They should spend the week studying the truths of archaeology — that is their haggadah — rather than what they regard as the fairy tales of the haggadah and Torah.

I find that Prager's points are reasonable.

In the field of archaeology and the Bible, one can assume the Bible is false until archaeology gives us some evidence it is true. However, since archaeology has often found things the Bible describes we don't need to take such an extreme position. Thus, when archaeological data is silent, we don't have to automatically assume the Bible is wrong.

As a Christian, I also believe in the Passover because Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples. Of course critics will say, well, the Jesus you believe in is as much a fairy tale as the Exodus!

When it comes to saying something historical is true, we can only operate in probabilities. We can't jump in a time machine and go check it out. We can't roll the videotape and see what happened. Rather, what we do is gather the available circumstantial evidence.

If one takes the collective memory and existence of the Jewish people as circumstantial evidence for the reality of the Exodus then one would take the persistence and expansion of Christianity as circumstantial evidence for the reality of Jesus.

We also have the Christian Scriptures as evidence.

Some argue that Christian writers fabricated the story of Jesus out of bias. However, is it possible that Christian writers would want to accurately preserve the story of Jesus because they believe it is so valuable and life changing?

Once one chooses to invoke fabrication as an explanation then one will have to question all ancient documents. I suppose there are some scholars who doubt the writings of ancient Greek and Roman historians. Do we assume that Greeks writing about Greek history would fabricate all (most) of their history? If that view were widely held, we would have to shutter all the history departments in the universities.

Interestingly, there is also evidence outside of Christian Scriptures that point to the reality of Jesus. A Google search with the terms, "Jesus extra-biblical history" yields lots of web pages.

Certainly, these sources are not as voluminous or contain as much detail as the Christian Scriptures but they are consistent with them.