Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

People often wonder whether the biblical Exodus actually took place. Unfortunately, there are no extra-biblical testimonies that  directly speak of the sojourn of Israel’s ancestors in the land of the Nile. However, Egyptian sources do confirm the general situation that we find in the end of Genesis and the beginning of the Book of Exodus. There are several reports in Egyptian writings about a certain group of nomadic people called Habiru, who came into Egypt from the east while fleeing from famine.

Assuming the Habiru are related to the Hebrews of the Bible, this term referred to a group of “nomadic invaders” who originated from the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia  who made trouble for the Egyptians along their borders. Habiru are described in the Egyptian writings as rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, servants, slaves, and migrant workers.

Like many peoples of antiquity, there is some extra-biblical evidence that Egypt used slave labor in building projects (Exod. 1:11). At one time the land in Egypt was owned by many landholders; but after the reign of the Hyksos kings the Pharaoh owned most of the land, and the people were serfs of the king (Gen. 47:20). Many Bible scholars accept the essential historicity of the Exodus–with reservations.

The movement of Israel’s ancestors into Egypt and out again is hard to reconstruct. Some groups may have gone there as early as the late eighteenth century B.C.E., at the start of foreign (Hyksos) rule; others may have arrived in the late 14th or early 13th century, only a few years before the oppression reflected in Exodus 1. Similarly, groups of these ancestors may have left Egypt at different times, separated by many years, and under varied circumstances. The latter Israelites preserved  stories from the period of their ancestors’ earliest movements into Egypt until the oppression and exodus, but they knew it had been very long–perhaps 430 years, (Exod. 12:40) or 400 years  (as indicated in Gen. 15:13). According to Rashi, the great medieval commentator, he wrote that the 430 years actually had to be reckoned from the birth of Isaac! Clearly, the rabbis were justifiably confused by the figures.

Even the Tanakh itself fails to give an incontrovertible date for the Exodus. Indeed, there are too many inconsistencies to ignore. According to 1 Kings 6:1 says, “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.” But this verse refers primarily to the beginning of the building of Solomon’s Temple and only in a general way to the time of the Exodus. We do not know the precise dates of Solomon’s reign. If we use 961 B.C.E. as the beginning of Solomon’s reign, his fourth year would have been 957 B.C.E. If we take the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1 literally, then it would appear that Exodus ought to be dated in 1437 B.C.E.

On the other hand, Exodus 1:11 says that the Israelites in Egypt built the store cities of Pithom and Ramses for Pharaoh. Evidently the name Ramses II was not used in Egypt before 1300 B.C.E. If one of the store cities was named for a king by that name, the Exodus could not have happened before 1300 B.C.E. Thus some scholars believe the Exodus must have taken place after 1300 B.C.E.

Most scholars tend to date the (final) Exodus from Egypt early in the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (ca. 1290 B.C.E.), so that the oppression would have begun not long after the nineteenth dynasty took power (ca. 1350 B.C.E.), and the invasion of Canaan would have started some years before the end of Ramses’ reign (ca. 1230 B.C.E.).

Another view is that the Hebrew tribes entered Egypt from Canaan at the time of the Hyksos, that the rise of the eighteenth dynasty (ca. 1580 B.C.E.) began the oppression, and that the Exodus occurred during the reign of Thutmose III (ca. 1450 B.C.E.). This would seem to be in harmony with the statement (1 Kgs. 6:1) that the construction of Solomon’s Temple (ca. 970 B.C.E.), which began 480 years after the Israelites left Egypt. This figure (twelve generations of forty years) is too exact and probably secondary.

Another difficulty in dating these events is that although the term “pharaoh” is used over a hundred times in the first fifteen chapters of Exodus to refer to the king of Egypt, the title is always anonymous. No personal name of any individual pharaoh is used. The text does not indicate the identity of the pharaoh of the oppression nor the one of the Exodus. Bible scholars have generally agreed that the Exodus occurred either during the eighteenth (1570 1310 B.C.E. ) or nineteenth (1310 1200 B.C.E.) dynasties.

There seems to be a general consensus based upon the study of modern Egyptology suggesting that the Exodus likely occurred during the reign of Ramses II in the nineteenth dynasty about 1270 B.C.E., although many Bible students attempt to date it in the earlier eighteenth dynasty about 1447 B.C.E. Several variations of these dates have been suggested, ranging all the way back to 2000 B.C.E. None of these attempts to predate the Exodus has gained widespread acceptance. Perhaps the best estimate of the date for the Exodus remains about 1270 B.C.E., but this is far from a proven fact.

I think it is important to keep in mind that the ancient Israelites were not scientific in their study of history; in all likelihood, the people’s memories consisted of fragments of the past, which may have incorporated several aspects of a variety of different kinds of Pharaohs–thus, the fact that Pharaoh’s name was left out, indicates the Israelites had long forgotten the tyrant’s name.

While these discrepancies do not necessarily refute the reality of the Exodus, it shows that we are dealing with a jigsaw puzzle that may never completely fit together no matter how much we try to reconstruct its history. What is really important is the impact that the story of the Exodus–as a mythical event–has exerted upon the history of the Jewish people and the world. Although I use the term “mythical,” please bear in mind that most mythic stories of antiquity do have a basis in the “real” time of history.