The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  The biblical Exodus account has been understood on a number of different levels. Literally, and apparently historically, the Exodus tells of the Israelites’ slavery under a harsh Egyptian pharaoh, followed by their freedom flight from Egypt to Canaan, led by Moses. During this flight, God intensifies his special relationship with Israel and sets forth a comprehensive set of regulations and religious precepts for the community. Theologically, the Exodus embodies the themes of God acting through history, of divine promise and fulfillment, of eternal covenant, and of human suffering and redemption. Finally, paradigmatically, the Exodus is a powerful image of what Northrop Frye called “the definitive deliverance”; as the archetype for all subsequent redemption and liberation experiences, it has become a powerful symbol in Western political thought.

  Two issues dominate contemporary scholarly discussion of the Exodus: the extent to which the narrative is historical in the usual sense of the word, and the placement of the various events in an ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern historical and geographical framework. Who was the pharaoh who did not know Joseph? What was the route of the Exodus? When did the Exodus occur? Are there any independent witnesses to the Exodus events? To answer such questions, it is first necessary to consider the character of the Exodus account itself, because its theological nature affected its recollection, literary formation, and interpretation, and because the ancient conception of history differed from our own. Only then can we evaluate historical issues as they relate to the biblical narrative, and place that narrative within a broader context.

  The Biblical Narrative

  The Exodus saga in the Bible incorporates events in Egypt after the death of Joseph through the Israelite departure, the wilderness wanderings, and the Sinai revelations, up to but not including the conquest of Canaan. The account, largely in narrative form, spreads over four books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.

  As the book of Exodus begins, Joseph and all of his generation have died, and Joseph’s descendants “multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exod. 1.7). There is now a new pharaoh ruling Egypt, “who did not know Joseph” (Exod. 1.8). This new king fears the Israelites as a large and potentially dangerous fifth column in his land. So he enslaves the Israelites, forcing them to build the supply cities of Pithom and Rameses, and making “their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor” (Exod. 1.14). But harsh treatment only makes the Israelites grow more numerous and strong, so the pharaoh orders all male Hebrew babies thrown into the Nile. In this context we read Moses’ birth narrative; to avoid the slaughter, the baby’s mother places him in a reed basket along the bank of the river, where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter and, ironically, raised in the Egyptian royal court.

  After reaching adulthood, Moses one day impetuously kills an Egyptian abusing a Hebrew. He flees Egypt, settles in nomadic Midian, and marries. Meanwhile the Israelites in Egypt groan under their harsh bondage. The old Pharaoh dies, only to be replaced by a new, equally pitiless ruler. Eventually God calls to Moses from a bush burning in the wilderness and commands him to return to Egypt to deliver his people from their oppression and lead them forth “to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. 3.8). Reluctantly accepting his commission, Moses goes back to Egypt, and initiates a series of patterned confrontations with Pharaoh. In each, Moses pleads with Pharaoh to “let my people go,” Pharaoh is obdurate, Moses dramatically performs a miracle that devastates the Egyptians, Pharaoh first relents and then recants. In this way, nine spectacular plagues descend on the Egyptians: bloodwater, frogs, gnats, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness. The series culminates with the tenth and deadliest plague, in which all firstborn Egyptians, human and animal, die; this both leads into and explains the origin of the Passover ritual. At long last Pharaoh permits the Israelites to leave, only to change his mind one last time and send his army after Moses. But his Egyptian soldiers meet their death in the Red (or Reed) Sea, whose waters miraculously part for the fleeing Israelites and then close over Pharaoh’s doomed army.

  Delivered from their oppressor, the Israelites continue their journey into Sinai and camp at the base of the mountain of God. There, in one of the most momentous theophanies of the Bible, God appears to Moses and the Israelites. With Moses as mediator, God makes a covenant with Israel, whose stipulations include the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, and the series of laws known as the Covenant Code or the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 20–23; 24.7). In addition, God reveals to Moses the specifications for building, furnishing, and staffing the tabernacle, where God will dwell in the midst of the congregation (Exod. 25–31). Almost as soon as it is made, the covenant is broken as the Israelites disgrace themselves in the golden calf incident (Exod. 32). The covenant is immediately reestablished, however, revealing God’s mercy, and the tabernacle is constructed so that the glory of God may descend upon it.

  The books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy continue the Exodus epic. More laws and ritual regulations are given, and the Israelites travel through the Sinai wilderness by stages, their itinerary provided in detail. The people are a tiresome and faithless lot during their long and arduous journey. They murmur, whine, and rebel constantly, blind to God’s favors and signs. God’s anger is kindled almost continuously, but he invariably forgives the Israelites, despite their unfailing intransigence, through the intercession of Moses, who continues to act as covenant mediator and interpreter of God’s redemptive work. Finally, after an abortive attack on Canaan during which the people transgress yet again, God has had enough; he informs the Israelites that those whom he brought out of Egypt will not be permitted to enter the Promised Land. Rather, they will remain in the wilderness, and after forty years (that is, after the death of their entire generation) their children will be the ones to fulfill the covenant promise and occupy Canaan.

  The Israelites remain at Kadesh-barnea for much of these forty years, but eventually move into Transjordan. There they encounter the kings of Moab and Edom and conquer the kings of the Amorites and Bashan. Anticipating the conquest of Canaan, the Israelites divide the land among their tribes by lot, delineate the borders of Israelite dominion, and designate the Levitical cities. In the book of Deuteronomy Moses gives a series of farewell addresses to his people: he reviews the mighty acts of God, stresses the Israelites’ escape from Egypt with its associated miracles, reiterates the Decalogue, proclaims a second extensive corpus of laws and regulations, warns solemnly of coming temptations in the land of Canaan, and adjures the people to love and to remain loyal to God in the Promised Land. At long last, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses climbs to the summit of Mount Nebo and gazes across the Jordan River to the Promised Land. God shows Moses all the land and then tells him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there” (Deut. 34.4). And Moses, the servant of the Lord, dies, while below him on the fields of Moab his people ready themselves to conquer Canaan.

  The Literary and Historical Character of the Exodus Narrative

  This seemingly straightforward, historical account of Israel’s escape from Egypt and sojourn in the Sinai wilderness is in fact a multilayered document, the culmination of a complicated, centuries-long process of composition, compilation, and transmission. A variety of sophisticated analytical methods have been brought to bear on the Exodus narrative since the advent of modern biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century CE. Initially, and until recently, critical methodologies concentrated on tracing the origins and historical development of the biblical narrative and stressed the predominantly historical character of the Bible. Textual criticism has sought to establish an original biblical text by comparing and contrasting all relevant documents surviving into the modern world. Thus, based on a gloss in the ancient Greek translation of the Bible (the Septuagint), one s
cholar equates the place called Pithom in Exodus 1.11 with Heliopolis, an ancient city whose remains are now covered by a modern suburb of Cairo, rather than with a site in the eastern Egyptian delta.

  Literary or source criticism has pursued underlying sources, arranged these in historical order, and identified points where different sources were redacted, or edited together, to form larger units. This method of analysis produced the “Documentary Hypothesis” that, with variations, remains widely followed today. The Documentary Hypothesis posits for the Pentateuch four primary literary sources (J, E, P, and D), dated to different periods in the first half of the first millennium BCE, which were woven together by a series of mid-first-millennium redactors. Among those who accept this approach, however, major areas of dispute persist, including disagreements over the Exodus account. Scholars have differed about which passages belong to which hypothesized source, about whether the Exodus and Sinai traditions were originally separate, and, if so, to which, if either, the Moses story belonged. But there are also areas of substantial agreement, such as the dating of the D (Deuteronomic) source to the seventh century BCE and the placement of the Deuteronomic History (the books of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings) at the end of the present Exodus narrative, where it preempted an earlier conclusion to the saga. Thematically, the Exodus chronicle culminates with the conquest of Canaan, but in the canon we now possess this climactic event is postponed until Joshua, a book not part of the Pentateuch.

  In recent years, challenges to the Documentary Hypothesis have increased steadily. The content, the date, and even the existence of some of the sources have been questioned, and the validity of the approach itself impugned. A few authorities have concluded that the core events of the Exodus saga are entirely literary fabrications. But most biblical scholars still subscribe to some variation of the Documentary Hypothesis, and support the basic historicity of the biblical narrative.

  Form criticism endeavors to recover older stages of biblical traditions by identifying primary literary or oral genres, or “forms,” and by establishing, as far as possible, the Sitz-im-Leben, or life setting, of these forms in order to understand how they functioned within their social contexts. There is general agreement that the Exodus account synthesizes a variety of primary forms, including narrative, folk tradition, etiological legend, myth, ritual instruction, covenant formulary, and hymn. Many of these forms are not, and should not be considered, historically based; Moses’ birth narrative, for example, is built on folkloric motifs found throughout the ancient world.

  Tradition or redaction criticism concentrates on later levels of textual development, where editorial activity becomes apparent. The redactors often functioned not merely as editors who integrated various preexisting materials into a smoothly flowing whole, but also as creative theologians who stamped their own beliefs on what they considered to be a definitive interpretation of the biblical text. Thus considerable literary effort has been expended to link, at one end, the Egyptian portion of the Exodus account with the prior ancestral narratives of Genesis and, at the other end, to join the wilderness sojourn of the Exodus narrative with the subsequent conquest of Canaan. Even more broadly, the biblical books of Genesis through 2 Kings have been placed purposely in sequence to create a continuous history running from creation to exile.

  More recently, partly as a result of diminishing returns from and perceived limitations of the more traditional, historically based techniques, some scholars have taken a broader, holistic approach to the biblical texts. Canonical criticism, born in the 1960s, has aimed at comprehending the Bible as an integral part of a holy scripture that belongs to a believing and worshiping community. The final version of this canon of scripture has its own validity, meaning, and artistry, independent of the development of the parts. It is this overall unity that provides access to theological truth and religious experience, not the analysis of origins, sources, and layers of tradition, even though these may exist.

  Finally, especially since the 1970s, some scholars have focused on the Bible predominantly as literature. In this newest form of inquiry, called synchronic or final form interpretation, the biblical text is treated as an organic whole with its own intrinsic artistic integrity. As with canonical criticism, the interpretive focus falls not on the historical background or development of the document, but on the completed text itself as a literary creation. In general, those espousing canonical or final form interpretations are less interested in historical approaches and less concerned with issues of historicity. Adherents of both these methods stress that the present canonical text of Exodus comprises a carefully organized document with a deliberately calculated literary structure and a compelling theological message.

  Except for those conservatives who insist on Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (thereby giving Moses the unique privilege of recording his own death in Deut. 34.5–8), scholars of all critical schools agree that the Exodus account as it stands today is a composite, a literary construct, carefully composed and edited to achieve historical and theological coherence, and that this composite is made up of smaller units that have been transmitted and redacted over centuries. Ironically, despite—or possibly because of—our expanded analytical base and broader understanding, there is less agreement than ever as to the history, development, and character of the Exodus account, and biblical scholarship in general is in ferment.

  Innumerable analyses, undertaken from many perspectives during the past century and a half, underscore that the original Exodus account, whatever its content and its time and place of composition, was something vastly different from the complex Exodus saga we know today. But this original version lies beyond our reach. The growing dissonance of scholarly opinion underscores the impossibility of tracing the details of the Exodus narrative’s intricate evolution. Occasionally, however, partial outlines of the saga’s long development can be sketched.

  Most of the Exodus material was composed or collected long after the events narrated. In some cases additions were retrojected in time for placement within the legitimizing framework of Mosaic law—especially later ritual, legal, and regulatory matters. In other cases alterations or augmentations were introduced to bring events closer to an audience increasingly separated by time and circumstance from the original experiences. Such procedures introduced historical material into the narrative—but material that dated from long after the original happenings. Where detected, such later accretions or substitutions can be identified as anachronistic. Recent research indicates that even more of the extant Exodus account than previously thought comes from periods during or after the Israelite monarchy or even the exile. Presumably an original Exodus story lies hidden somewhere inside all the later revisions and alterations, but centuries of transmission have long since obscured its presence, and its substance, accuracy, and date are now difficult to determine.

  The historicity of the Exodus narrative is thus a complex issue. Clearly, significant portions are not and were never intended to be historiographic. Yet the overall intent of the narrative was historical, despite nonhistorical elements in its compilation. In this context it is important to remember that the biblical writers’ conception of history, particularly within what was primarily a theological document, differed from our own. The dominant historical concern of the Exodus account is to demonstrate that God acts in history: that Israelite bondage and salvation took place in history; that God’s covenant with Moses and the Israelites was made in history; and that the fulfillment of that covenant also took place in history. All other historical concerns are secondary, but this underlying, elemental historicity suffices to make the account historical, and this dominating concern made it permissible to shift historical particulars in order to make the Exodus chronicle more accessible to successive generations. A similar process can be seen at work in European Renaissance art, where biblical figures are anachronistically dressed in contemporary clothing and biblical locations transformed into contemporary surroundings so that the material might s
peak more directly to its intended audience. Mythic events, too, were incorporated into the Exodus epic to enhance, rather than detract from, the basic historical foundation of the account. It was the enduring reality—expressed in the core historicity of the central events of the Exodus—not transient specific historical detail, which was important and eternal. Ultimately it is this compelling historical grounding of the narrative that sustains most scholars’ belief in an actual historical origin for the Exodus events.

  The biblical Exodus account was never intended to function or to be understood as history in the present-day sense of the word. Traditional history, with its stress on objectivity and verifiable, detailed facts as the building blocks of historical understanding, is a modern obsession. Not that the ancients were incapable of bald, factual rendering if they deemed it appropriate—they, too, had accurate tax records. But for most occasions, and especially for documents that expressed deeper truths and fundamental values, facts as such were not always valued, consistency was not always a virtue, and specific historical particulars were often irrelevant and therefore variable. In the end, it was necessary that the theologically informed events of the Exodus epic relate to history, in the sense that a true historical heart to the narrative exist, but not that these events be bound by history. Particular, individual historical details were superfluous.