Although the Hebrew exodus is dated by most historians to the thirteenth century BCE, on the assumption anything resembling an exodus occurred, various factors, such as vagueness, anachronisms, and redaction, indicate a much later period of composition for the Book of Exodus, among other books in the Pentateuch. This is the consensus of contemporary biblical scholarship: “There are, to be sure, some points that approach a consensus in critical scholarship. we find general agreement that the Persian period [which began in the sixth century BCE] constituted the decisive period of the formation of the Pentateuch” (Rômer 2009, 157).

Part 1: The Story
Part 8: Rebutting the “Early Date” (The Problem of Edom)
Part 10: The Number of the Migrating Hebrews [P1]

Anachronisms

A major anachronism is the story of the Kingdom of Edom, or, rather, the king of Edom, whom Moses requested allow the Hebrews to travel through Edomite territory (Num. 20:18–21). The Edomite king rejected this request and marshaled his troops to strike at the Hebrews should they try entering his territory. Yet Edom had no king until the seventh century BCE when it became a monarchy (Knauf and Brown 2018; Bienkowski 2022), meaning that Moses and the Hebrews could never have met an Edomite king, since Edomite kings would not exist for the next 500 or so years.

We read also of the king of Arad, “who dwelt in the Negeb” (Num. 33:40), during the Hebrew wandering period. King Arad attacked the Hebrews, taking some of them captive and leading them to appeal for divine assistance to destroy all the Canaanite cities (Num. 21:1–3). Archaeological findings do not cohere with this scenario (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 72). Intensive excavations at the site of Tel Arad east of Beersheba have produced remains of a twenty-five-acre Early Bronze Age (c. 3000–c. 2100 BCE) city and an Iron Age (c. 1200 BCE–c. 550 BCE) fort, but no remains from the Late Bronze Age (1595–1155 BCE) when the location was deserted: “Arad simply did not exist in the Late Bronze Age” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 72).

Across the Jordan, the wandering Hebrews were forced to engage in battle at the city of Heshbon, the capital of Sihon, against the king of the Amorites, who tried to block the Hebrews from passing through his territory on their way to Canaan (Num. 21:21–25; Deut. 2:24–35; Judges 11:19–21). Excavations at Tel Hesban, south of Amman, the location of ancient Heshbon, showed that there was no Late Bronze city, not even a small village (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 73).

Although these kings exist historically, they did not at the time of the Hebrew exodus.

Chronologically Reflecting Much Later Details and Periods

According to Finkelstein and Silberman, “The most evocative and consistent geographical details of the Exodus story come from the seventh century BCE, during the great era of prosperity of the kingdom of Judah—six centuries after the events of the Exodus were supposed to have taken place” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 74).

They emphasize the pharaohs of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (c. 664–c. 332 BCE), such as Psammetichus I (reigned 664–610 BCE) and his son Necho II (reigned 610–595 BCE), who commissioned building projects throughout the delta to increase Egypt’s economic and military power. Necho notably established a project in the eastern delta for a canal to be cut through the isthmus of Suez to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. There was the presence of large numbers of foreign settlers in these areas, making this period one of the best historical examples for the phenomenon of foreigners settling in the delta of the Nile. Many migrants from Judah were also present in the delta, forming a large community by the early sixth century BCE (Jer. 44:1; 46:14).

Finally, the name Goshen, which was the location where the Hebrews settled in the eastern delta (Gen. 45:10), is not an Egyptian name but a Semitic one (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 75). What is the source of this non-Egyptian name? Starting with the seventh century BCE, the Qedarite Arabs expanded to the fringe of the settled lands of the Levant, and in the sixth century reached the delta. Later, in the fifth century, they became a dominant factor in the delta. The name Goshen derives from Geshem, a dynastic name in the Qedarite royal family (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 75).

Absence of Evidence for Settlement

Ezion-Geber was a Hebrew campsite toward the conclusion of their forty years in the wilderness and where the Hebrews settled on their way toward the plains of Moab (Num. 33:35–36; Deut. 2:8).

Later, during the reign of King Solomon (flourished in the tenth century BCE), Ezion-Geber became a seaport. King Solomon produced a fleet of ships for trading (1 Kings 9:26-28). The ships brought almugwood, gold, and precious stones, among other items (1 Kings 10:11).

The biblical descriptions of Ezion-Geber as a later seaport on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba have led to its identification by archaeologists on a mound located on the present-day border between Israel and Jordan, halfway between the towns of Eilat and Aqaba (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 72). Although excavations there in 1938–1940 found Late Iron Age (400–800 CE) remains, no evidence of Late Bronze (1595–1155 BCE) occupation was found. Finkelstein and Silberman conclude that, “From the long list of encampments in the wilderness, Kadesh-barnea and Ezion-geber are the only ones that can safely be identified, yet they revealed no trace of the wandering Israelites” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, 72).

Textual Interruptions

Although the Hebrew exodus and the Pentateuchal narrative appear to offer a more or less continuous story, most biblical historians have recognized interruptions and redactions in the sources.

Many biblical scholars have distinguished between an older exodus story in Exodus 1-34 and a later Deuteronomistic redaction (Albertz 2011, 247). A linguistic analysis of Hebrew terminology in Exodus 1:11 shows that verse 11b is a much later post-exilic (516–70 BCE) insertion by an author biblical scholars call a Priestly redactor (Redford 1963, 415).

The passage introducing the tent of meeting (Ex. 33:7-11) interrupts the sequence between Yahweh’s order for the Hebrews to depart from Egypt, including his announcement that he will no longer go in the midst of his people (Ex. 33:3b-6), and Moses’ reaction to this threatening order (Ex. 33:12-17) (Albertz 2011, 246). The use of the same verbs, as in qal (verse 1a) and hip`il (verse 12), suggests the scenes belong closely together.

The “Cultic Decalogue” in Exodus 33:11-27 is a later insertion (Albertz 2011, 249–250), while the references to the gods of the patriarchs (Ex. 3:6a, 15, 16a, and 4:5) appear detached from their contexts and may also be later insertions (Albertz 2011, 247).

There is an interruption in Exodus 33:1b. This verse contains the reference to the promise of the land given to the patriarchs and constitutes a syntactical doublet to v. 3a, where the adverbial qualification naming the goal of the Hebrews’ departure has to be repeated because of the interruption (Albertz 2011, 245–246).

Vagueness

The vagueness of many details in the Pentateuchal descriptions suggests a recollection of significantly removed ancient past events and personages rather than eyewitness testimonies or anything remotely “early” or near contemporaneous.

This possibly reflects what Michael Schudson calls “distanciation” (1995, 346–364), which is when, as an event or person recedes further and further into the past, the intensity of a memory becomes weakened and/or distorted.

Various clues in the Book of Exodus suggest this. The Pharaoh of the Hebrew exodus is never named. Although some scholars find the anonymity of the pharaohs a “deliberate literary feature, designed to convey the idea that these Egyptian kings are in reality nonentities, in spite of their supposed divine status in ancient Egypt” (Alexander 2016, 5–6), others find it odd: “The fact that they did not name the first Pharaoh who enslaved them or the next Pharaoh whom Moses confronted is a bit odd, especially seeing how biblical writers are elsewhere quite willing to identify enemy kings by name. The common explanation, which I agree with, is that the book of Exodus recounts the long, long gone past…” (Enns 2021, 13).

Further, there is a lack of topographical detail and knowledge, by which the Exodus “account of Israel in Egypt (including the Joseph story) displays surprisingly little authentic detail regarding time and place,” which would “indicate that the Hebrew tradition grew up more or less independent of whatever facts—if such there were—the Israelites remembered about the sojourn” (Redford 1963, 19).

There is no mention of the eastern names of the delta and the names given during the New Kingdom (c. 1570- c. 1069 BCE) and later to towns, bodies of water, and other geographical features of the district in which the Hebrews lived, which are strikingly absent. Besides Pithom, Raamses, and Heliopolis, the only other toponym to figure prominently in the narrative of the sojourn is Goshen, a name that is not only non-Egyptian but is nowhere found in Egyptian texts (Redford 1963, 19).

Redford believes the vague Hebrew tradition probably originated in a time when south-western Asia and the delta had an uninterrupted connection: “Such connexion existed only between 525 BC and the end of the fifth century. Prior to the former date the hostility between the Neo-Babylonian empire and the Twenty-sixth dynasty would have rendered the interchange of ideas between Egypt and Asia extremely unlikely” (1963, 19–20).

References

Albertz, Rainer. 2011. “The Late Exilic Book of Exodus (Exodus 1-34*): A Contribution to the Pentateuchal Discussion.” In The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research, edited by Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz, 243–256. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.

Alexander, T. Desmond. 2016. Exodus. Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States: Baker Publishing Group.

Bienkowski, Piotr. 2023. “The Emergence of Edom: Recent Debate.” The Ancient Near East Today. Available.

Enns, Peter. 2021. Exodus for Normal People: A Guide to the Story-And History-of the Second Book of the Bible. Lansdale, Pennsylvania, United States: The Bible for Normal People.

Finkelstein, Israel., and Silberman, Neil Asher. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York City, New York, United States: Simon and Schuster.

Knauf, Ernst Axel., and Brown, Robin M. 2018. “Edom.” Oxford Bibliographies. Available.

Redford, Donald. 1963. “Exodus I 11.” Vetus Testamentum 13(4):401-418.

Rômer, Thomas. 2009. “The Exodus Narrative According to the priestly Document.” In The Strata of the Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and Future Directions, edited by Sarah Shectman and Joel S. Baden, 157–174. ‎Zürich, Switzerland: TVZ – Theologischer Verlag Z.

Schudson, Michael. 1995. “Dynamics of Distortion in Collective Memory.” In Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, edited by Daniel L. Schacter and Joseph T. Coyle, 456–464. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States: Harvard University Press.

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