The Exodus: Fact or Fiction?
Evidence of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt
Dated to c. 1219 B.C.E., the Merneptah Stele is the earliest extrabiblical record of a people group called Israel. Set up by Pharaoh Merneptah to commemorate his military victories, the stele proclaims, “Ashkelon is carried off, and Gezer is captured. Yeno’am is made into nonexistence; Israel is wasted, its seed is not.” Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am are followed by an Egyptian hieroglyph that designates a town. Israel is followed by a hieroglyph that means a people. Photo: Maryl Levine.
Is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction?
This is a loaded question. Although biblical scholars and archaeologists argue about various aspects of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, many of them agree that the Exodus occurred in some form or another.
The question “Did the Exodus happen” then becomes “When did the Exodus happen?” This is another heated question. Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.
The article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review1 wrestles with both of these questions—“Did the Exodus happen?” and “When did the Exodus happen?” In the article, evidence is presented that generally supports a 13th-century B.C.E. Exodus during the Ramesside Period, when Egypt’s 19th Dynasty ruled.
The article examines Egyptian texts, artifacts and archaeological sites, which demonstrate that the Bible recounts accurate memories from the 13th century B.C.E. For instance, the names of three places that appear in the biblical account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt correspond to Egyptian place names from the Ramesside Period (13th–11th centuries B.C.E.). The Bible recounts that, as slaves, the Israelites were forced to build the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. After the ten plagues, the Israelites left Egypt and famously crossed the Yam Suph (translated Red Sea or Reed Sea), whose waters were miraculously parted for them. The biblical names Pithom, Ramses and Yam Suph (Red Sea or Reed Sea) correspond to the Egyptian place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf. These three place names appear together in Egyptian texts only from the Ramesside Period. The name Pi-Ramesse went out of use by the beginning of Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, which began around 1085 B.C.E., and does not reappear until much later.
FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.
These specific place names recorded in the biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. This supports a 13th-century Exodus during the Ramesside Period because it is only during the Ramesside Period that the place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf (Red Sea or Reed Sea) are all in use.
A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus. In the 1930s, archaeologists at the University of Chicago were excavating the mortuary Temple of Aya and Horemheb, the last two pharaohs of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, in western Thebes. The temple was first built by Aya in the 14th-century B.C.E., but Horemheb usurped and expanded the temple when he became pharaoh. (He ruled from the late 14th century through the early 13th century B.C.E.) Horemheb chiseled out every place where Aya’s name had been and replaced it with his own. Later—during the reign of Ramses IV (12th century B.C.E.)—the Temple of Aya and Horemheb was demolished.
During their excavations, the University of Chicago uncovered a house and part of another house belonging to the workers who were given the task of demolishing the temple. The plan of the complete house is the same as that of the four-room house characteristic of Israelite dwellings during the Iron Age. However, unlike the Israelite models that were usually constructed of stone, the Theban house was made of wattle and daub. It is significant that this house was built in Egypt at the same time that Israelites were constructing four-room houses in Canaan. The similarities between the two have caused some to speculate that the builders of the Theban house were either proto-Israelites or a group closely related to the Israelites.
Is this a proto-Israelite house? This plan shows the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house in western Thebes next to the Temple of Aya and Horemheb. The house is undoubtedly a four-room house. In Canaan, the four-room house is considered an ethnic marker for the presence of Israelites during the Iron Age. Is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? This favors “fact,” so the question becomes, “When did the Exodus happen?” The presence of such a house in Egypt during the 12th century B.C.E. seems to support an Exodus during the Ramesside Period. Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Bietak.
A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope. The Onomasticon Amenope is a list of categorized words from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Written in hieratic, the papyrus includes the Semitic place name b-r-k.t, which refers to the Lakes of Pithom. Even in Egyptian sources, the Semitic name for the Lakes of Pithom was used instead of the original Egyptian name. It is likely that a Semitic-speaking population lived in the region long enough that their name eventually supplanted the original.
Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.
Another compelling piece of evidence for the Exodus is found in the biblical text itself. A history of enslavement is likely to be true. The article explains:
The storyline of the Exodus, of a people fleeing from a humiliating slavery, suggests elements that are historically credible. Normally, it is only tales of glory and victory that are preserved in narratives from one generation to the next. A history of being slaves is likely to bear elements of truth.
Exodus: Fact or fiction? This four-room house from Izbet Sartah, Israel, shares many similarities with the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house uncovered in western Thebes. Photo: Israel Finkelstein/Tel Aviv University.
So, is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction? Scholars and people of many faiths line up on either side of the equation, and some say both. Archaeological discoveries have verified that parts of the biblical Exodus are historically accurate, but archaeology can’t tell us everything. Although archaeology can illuminate aspects of the past and bring parts of history to life, it has its limits.
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It certainly is exciting when the archaeological record matches with the biblical account—as with the examples described here. However, while this evidence certainly adds weight to the historical accuracy of elements of the biblical account, it can’t be used to “prove” that every detail of the Exodus story in the Bible is true.
To learn more about evidence for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Subscribers: Read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2016.
Notes
1. This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham: Springer, 2015). In Bietak’s article, the scholarly debate about the archaeological remains and the onomastic data of Wadi Tumilat is more elaborately treated.
Related reading in Bible History Daily
Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination
All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library
The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke
Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.
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As with all archaeological issues, the Bible, not scholarly opinion is the foundation for truth. BAR is a good resource but has always leaned more academically liberal chronologically (pushing the Exodus from the 1400’s to the 1200’s BCE) with clear anti-biblical stances on many issues – not necessarily neutral. If you’re looking for a firmly biblical academic opinion I would refer you to The Institute for Biblical Archaeology, The Associates for Biblical Research and World of the Bible Ministries.
Rick Dack
Defending the Bible Int’l.
Minneapolis, MN
I have visited the Associates for Biblical Research on You Tube and their videos. And am appalled that these so-called “seekers after the truth,” engage in silencing any dissent to their views by shutting off all comments to their videos. This suggests for me, they are not interested in a search for the truth if that truth does not support their views. That is to say they are a Christian Fundamentalist Biased organization. Truth will not be found by silencing dissent.
Most likely they blocked comments like that of Josh (10 Jan 24) above.
1. These specific place names recorded in the Biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the Biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period.
2. A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus.
3. A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope.
These mean only that there were Israelis in Egypt during the 13th-century, not that a mass exodus occurred. As Egypt controlled much of the Levant during this period, doubtless Israelis crossed back and forth frequently, often staying for work and settling there if times were good.
For 600,000 men to have left Egypt in such an exodus would have involved approximately 2.5 million men, women, and children, not including livestock, at a time when the entire population of the country consisted of about 3.5 million – the loss of 2/3 of the country’s population would have left more than a ripple in the nation’s economy.
Marching 6 abreast, such a column would have extended for 150 miles – how long would it have taken a group that size to cross the Red, or the Reed, or any other sea?
Does anybody besides me not see any meaningful similarities between the two house outlines, other than that they are roughly rectangular, and has rooms?
I don’t doubt that the Israelites could have been slaves n Egypt. But I think using the narrative that a story in the Bible (Israelites were Egyptian slaves) is evidence for the validity of that story is philosophically circumlocutive (A story is true because the story says it’s true). A more compelling case might be based upon landmarks and events and people which can be verified. All people have some creation story, but few seem to know their origins (e.g. any Native American origin story never seems to indicate hey came over the Bering Strait).
Since Egyptians were paid to work on building sites during Nile river flood, it is unlikely unpaid slaves would have been employed or even needed. Jews were free to come and go as they pleased and any exodus represented a net loss of the Jewish population as they left in small groups to assimilate with the Canaanites. The conquest of Canaan was a mere overwhelming by population than a military conquest. Egyptians were probably glad to see such an intelligent and resourceful people leave.
It still boggles my mind that BAR continues to ignore David Rohl’s New Chronology and Immanuel Velikovsky’s Revised Chronology, both of which present near iron-clad evidence that the problem is not the biblical dates for the Exodus, but academia’s faulty reckoning of Egyptian chronology. I suggest readers check out the documentary Patterns of Evidence: Exodus for a better understanding of that, and to see the compelling evidence for the historicity of the Exodus account.
I did, they’re not wrong it still doesn’t prove anything, you still have giant holes in the narrative that does not conform to reality. Where you hiding a migrant population of 2 million people that couldn’t exist because 2 million people didn’t exist in Egypt.
Here is the story of Moses and his nation as it is told in the Koran, as much I could sum up.
The name of Moses is the most frequently occurring one in Quran – twenty-five times more than the name of Mohammed himself . His life story represents an epic of miracles from the very outset: to the deep humiliation of the tyrant Pharaoh, who was taking all precautions to prevent the rising of the savior of the then-enslaved nation of Israel, Allah predestined that Moses would be born during the year in which the Pharaoh was killing all the newborn males of his Jewish subjects, and, moreover, predestined that the baby would be brought up within the Pharaoh’s court itself. Growing to manhood, Allah bestowed Prophecy upon him, and provided him with many miracles that stand as the most distinguished among those given to His Prophets and Messengers.
With the settling down of Jacob, whom Allah had named Israel, and his twelve sons and their families in Egypt began a long story of a people’s tragedy. Jacob was the founder of the Jewish nation, and his twelve sons represented the seed of the twelve branches into which this nation was initially divided. They came to live in Egypt, as we have seen, when the family’s most brilliant member, Joseph, was occupying one of the highest offices in the land, and their number was constantly increasing throughout the following centuries until they became a distinguished ethnic group in Egypt’s demography.
The Egyptians lived in peace with the Children of Israel for many centuries following, and traces in Quran indicate that Joseph’s calling to worship Allah gained considerable followers among the heathen nation, initially because Joseph’s gift in exegetics had saved the nation of Egypt from a disastrous famine. The esteem in which the Egyptians had held the Children of Israel was thus accrued from the interpretation of a vision seen by the King, and all this was changed, ironically enough, as a result of the interpretation of another vision seen some centuries later by another Egyptian monarch.
It came to pass that a certain Pharaoh saw in a dream a great fire originating in the land of Jerusalem and sweeping over all the land of Egypt, destroying it all except the areas inhabited by the Israeli people. The Pharaoh’s high priests interpreted that to be a baby son to be born among the Israeli nation, who would eventually be the cause of the collapse of the Egyptian kingdom. From that time on, the Pharaoh was not slow to take precautions to save his kingdom from the predicted menace, and every effort was made to purge the Children of Israel of any newborn male.
The Egyptians had a firm hold over the Israeli citizens, and resistance was impossible. The Children of Israeli were kept in a constant state of servility: all newborn male babies were slaughtered, while the women and girls were always taken as servants to the nobles’ families. This unjust policy towards the male babies, however, was seen to be threatening in the long run the number of the Israeli people, who were necessary for the many humble works in the land, and so it was changed in due course to be practised biennially: sparing their lives a year, and putting them to death in the next.
Accordingly, a certain pious Israeli woman was fortunate to give birth to a baby son, whom she named Aaron, in the year of condoning, but since she was again expecting during a killing year, she was anxious and tried to keep herself away from the eyes of Pharaoh’s spies, in case she bore a male baby.
When the faithful woman was nearing her time, and in the midst of her oppressive feeling of fear, she was ordered by Allah that she would give birth to a baby son, and that if she feared danger she should nurse him and then cast him into the river! Time passed and she did give birth to a male baby, and news came that the tyrant’s spies were searching in the nearby precincts. The affectionate mother, without hesitation, began to act on the Heavenly instructions: she nursed her baby, put him in a wooden sarcophagus, and, before the baby was even given a name, she threw him into the river. “Don’t fear and don’t feel sad! We will return him to you and We will make him of the Messengers,” Allah promised.
The river was not less kind with the baby than his mother, though it moored the sarcophagus at the very shores where the Pharaoh’s palace stood. There, one of the Pharaoh’s family saw the floating wooden sarcophagus, picked it up from the water, and was astonished at finding a baby in it. The baby, whose Allah has “cast over him a Love of His,” was taken to the Pharaoh’s wife, who, being childless, ordered the Pharaoh “not to kill him; that he might benefits us; or we might adopt him as a son,” and named him Mu-Sa , which means “son of water.”
Meanwhile, being informed of the incident, “the heart of Moses’ mother became empty because of fear; and she would have unconcealed her secret had not We fixed calmness on it.” Moses’ sister, Miriam, who was one of the queen’s maidservants, secretly watched her brother, and she found a chance to recommend to the queen a certain woman to be the baby’s nurse, for Allah “had forbidden for Moses all the nurses” – a matter that had much worried the queen about her adopted baby.
The proposed nurse came to the court, and to the pleasure of the queen, Moses sucked her milk cordially, for the proposed nurse was not but his mother. At once the queen ordered that the nurse should immediately take the baby to her house for that purpose: and Moses’ mother became the only mother in all the history of humankind to nurse her baby through a royal warrant! In such a way Allah “returned him to his mother, to make her heart tranquil, and may not she be sad, and to let her know that the Promise of Allah is a truth.”
After a two-year period, Moses was returned to stay with his royal foster mother, though he continued to frequent the house of his “nurse.” In his late childhood, Moses was aware of the truth of his real family, and that he belonged to Israeli nation, but the matter remained as a secret among the Israeli people, who might have recognized through the correlative miracles that that boy would be their savior whom they had long dreamed of.
One day at the royal court, it is said, the child Moses pulled the beard of the Pharaoh in such painful way that the reminiscence of the old nightmare of his kingdom’s collapse was awakened in his memory. He determined at once to kill the child, of whom he had become very suspicious, but the queen managed to make him reprieve the verdict by suggesting putting the boy to a test. An ember and a piece of fruit were introduced to the child Moses, in an examination of his awareness, and fortunately he picked up the ember and put it to his tongue. Thus Moses had escaped punishment, but he grew up with a speech impediment thereafter.
Years passed, and Moses was now in his manhood. One day, Moses entered during a hot summer noon into the town, whose citizens were compelled, because of the fierce heat of the day, to retreat to their houses earlier than usual. In one of the empty roads Moses found two men – one Egyptian, the other Israeli – quarreling. The Israeli man asked the help of Moses, who came forthwith to his rescue and, in frenzy, boxed the Egyptian. It was a mortal blow, and at once Moses repented of his wrong deed and asked Allah’s Pardon.
Allah “forgave him, for He is the Most-forgiving and the Most-merciful,” but Moses was in danger of losing his life for the murder he committed. On another day, Moses met the same Israeli, who was quarreling with another Egyptian, and asked the support of Moses. Just as Moses came to his fellow’s rescue, the Egyptian recognized, somehow, that it was Moses who had dispatched the Egyptian assailant the other day. “Do you want to kill me as you had killed one aforetime?” the Egyptian anticipated Moses, “you want to be of the tyrants in the land, then; and you don’t want to be of the conciliators.”
The confrontation was broken up peacefully, but the incident placed Moses in grave danger more than before. While at home, and before long, “a man came from the furthest end of the town” to Moses to tell him that the Egyptians were conspiring his murder, and advised him to depart the town as soon as possible to save his life. No place in Egypt was deemed a safe refuge, of course, and so Moses was obliged to leave the Pharaoh’s entire domain. He absconded and traveled east, with no vision to guide him as to where to go. On reaching the tip of the eastern “horn” of the Red Sea, he turned down southwardly along the coast until arriving at a settlement in the deserts of Arabia called Midian.
Almost worn out, Moses stopped for a rest at the point of Midian’s water-well, where he found a group of shepherd men watering their cattle and two women keeping back their animals.
“What is the matter?” addressed Moses the two women.
“We cannot water our cattle until the shepherd men have finished their undertaking; and our father is an old man,” they replied.
Thereupon Moses undertook watering the women’s animals, and they thanked him and left for their home. Shortly afterwards, while he was seated in the shadow of a tree near the water-well, one of the two girls came to him and told him that her father wanted him to come to their house to recompense him for his good deed. Moses went with her, met the old man, and told him his story. The old man assured him that he was safe at Midian, and offered him one of his two daughters in marriage on the terms of working for him as a wage earner for ten years.
Moses accepted the offer, and at the end of the ten years, homesick, he wanted to return to Egypt to visit his mother. He set out with his little family during winter days, and at a certain point on the long journey, near Mount Al-Tour in Sinai, Moses thought that he had confused the right way to Egypt. Stopping for a while, he looked about and could see in the distance a burning fire. Leaving his wife there, he headed to that spot intending to obtain a blazing brand for warming, and, if possible, directions to Egypt.
As he arrived at the fire site, Moses heard: “O Moses, I am Allah, Lord of the existence!” It was at that “Sacred Valley” that Allah commissioned him to the mission of Prophecy, and showed Moses two miracles that he would be possessed of during his mission to call the Pharaoh to worship Allah and to ask his permission to let the Children of Israel get out from Egypt to the Sacred Land, Jerusalem.
“What is that thing in your right hand, Moses?” Allah asked.
“That is my wooden stick; I am leaning on it, attend my sheep by it, and I have other purposes in it,” replied Moses.
Allah ordered Moses to cast off his stick, and when Moses did, the stick turned into a snake, which terrified Moses and stirred him to “take to his heel and never to turn around.” But Allah calmed him down, and gave him another Sign of His: “Push your hand into your pocket; when you get it out, it shall appear of pure white color; these are two proofs to the Pharaoh and his people, who are a dissipated folk.”
Moses did not accept the heavy task without debate, however. He remarked that he had killed one of the Egyptians, that he was afraid of being put to death for it; and that his speech impediment would make it difficult to argue with them. He therefore asked to be assisted by his more talkative brother, Aaron. Allah agreed, and promised that they would be given strong shoulder from Him during their Prophetical mission until they were victorious. Moses, trusting and resigned, returned back to where his wife was waiting, and the journey was resumed.
Arriving in Egypt, Moses and Aaron immediately undertook their mission. It was not easy to appoint a meeting with the Pharaoh, who was said to neglect their request for no short time. At last, when the interview was held, in the presence of the Pharaoh’s viziers, Moses imparted to the monarch the purpose of that meeting:
“We are the Messengers of the Lord of existence; so you should let the Children of Israel go with us, and do not put them to torture,” said Moses.
“Have not we brought you up among us, while a child, and you stayed with us for several years?” said the monarch grimly. “And you have done your murder, proving that you are one of the ungrateful.”
“I have done it as I were of the misguided, and I fled your land when I feared you. Then Allah has bestowed upon me a Sound Verdict, and made me of the Messengers. And it is not a favor that you have enslaved the Children of Israel.”
“What is that Lord of the existence?”
“He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth and what in between.”
“Hear what he says,” said the Pharaoh, turning to his viziers.
“He is the Lord of you all and your fathers of old,” went on Moses.
“The messenger sent to you is mad,” ridiculed the Pharaoh, and the courtiers laughed. But Moses never turned a hair, and, keeping a phlegmatic mood, he continued:
“He is the Lord of the East and the West and what is in between.”
“If you would consider any god but me, I will make you of the prisoners,” thundered the tyrant.
Seeing himself confronted with a man deaf to argument, the Messenger decided to show the Pharaoh and his courtiers the Signs Allah had given him: he cast his wooden stick onto the ground, and it turned into “a grand snake”; and put his hand into his garment’s pocket, and drew it back to “appear to the onlookers of a white color.”
The Pharaoh was dazed by these, and he had soon the inspiration to command a consultation with his viziers, who, thinking that Moses was a magician, advised their king to sent messengers of him throughout the width and breadth of the land to call for the most skilful magicians. Before the meeting was broken up, Moses and the Pharaoh agreed on the time for the contest with the Pharaoh’s magicians, and the chosen time was the forenoon of the “Day of Embellishment” – a day of a gorgeous public festival of ancient Egypt.
Volunteer magicians came from all over Egypt to the Pharaoh, who accommodated them in his royal palaces and promised to bestow special favors upon them if they won the day. At the predetermined time, the open court of the great temple, with the Pharaoh and his viziers at the forefront, became overcrowded with people, who came to the capital city of Egypt to see the “wizards’ battle.”
Breathless with excitement, all who came there saw with their own eyes the Egyptian magicians casting onto the ground some sticks and ropes, and, as they all, including Moses and Aaron, were bewitched, the magicians’ tools appeared to them as if they were moving like snakes.
“Moses felt fear within himself,” but Allah told him that he would overcome just as he cast his stick. When Moses did as he was ordered, the great sensation came: his wooden stick became a grand snake and swallowed all those tools of the magicians, who, recognizing that what Moses had done could only be from a True God’s power, prostrated on the ground, and announced: “We have believed in the Lord of the Existence, the Lord of Moses and Aaron.”
The “rebellious attitude” of the Egyptian magicians added bitterness to the Pharaoh’s defeat, and he hastened to strike at them by professing that “it was a plot which you and Moses had planned together,” and so he announced his verdict concerning the new proselytes: “I will wed you all to the balm trunks; and I will cut your hands and feet off from your bodies.” But still much more bitterness was in store for him, as the new faithful magicians’ reply came back in open defiance of his punishment: “We will never prefer you to what has come to us of the truth; so, dispense what you like to do – you are only dispensing in this worldly life!”
Many years passed before Allah ordered Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt. During that time, the Egyptians returned to their policy of killing the newborn Israeli males and enslaving the females. Thereupon Allah descended upon the Egyptians His Punishment, which made them suffer from a number of afflictions and hardships, including drought, lack of crops, the infesting of frogs, locusts, and lice. But still they refused to submit to Allah. “Whatever you show us of the Signs, we will not believe in you!” they addressed Allah’s Messenger haughtily.
But the plagues lasted for a long period, becoming unbearable, and so they asked Moses: “Pray to your Lord God on our behalf to turn away from us His afflictions; if you do, we shall believe in Allah, and shall send the Children of Israel with you.” Nevertheless, “when We turned the plagues away from them, they abjured their allegiance to Us.” The inevitable sequence of the Pharaoh’s wrong deeds was nearing, and the Children of Israel, acting on Moses’ commands, had long prepared for the Exodus and were waiting for Allah’s Order.
In the same time, the Pharaoh had previously sent to the provinces of Egypt for a mobilization against the Israeli people, and vast crowds of Egyptian soldiers were gathered and equipped in the capital city. Allah’s Command was given to Moses to start out from Egypt on a certain night, and under his leadership the Children of Israel traveled eastwards, aiming for Sinai. When they were almost at the east coast of the Red Sea, the Egyptian army, under the command of the Pharaoh himself, appeared at their heels.
“We are caught up,” said the followers of Moses to him as they saw the vanguard of the pursuers, but Moses, who had had an abiding faith in Allah, did not turn a hair: “Nay, my Lord will guide me.” At this very moment Allah ordered Moses to strike with his stick at the sea, which was miraculously parted into two parts: “each part was like a momentous mountain.” Between the two parts of the divided sea was a “dry road” through which Moses and the Children of Israel removed safely to the other side. As the last one of them reached the west coast, Moses wanted to strike the sea again to close up the road, but Allah ordered him: “Let the sea open; they will be drowned soldiers.”
Meanwhile, neither the Pharaoh nor any one of his soldiers dared to pass through the road between the two water-mountains until the entire hordes of the Israeli people were on the other shore. As the sea remained in the same situation, all of the Egyptian army flocked to go through it. When the army reached the middle of the road, Allah crashed the sea down, and they all were drowned.
Quran says that at the time of his death-rattle, the Pharaoh uttered: “I have believed that there is no God but that in Whom the Children of Israel believe; and I am of the Muslims .” But death-bed conversions are not accepted by Allah, and so Allah drowned the tyrant and destined that the waves would wash up his dead body on the eastern shores of the Red Sea. “We will get out your body rescued from the sea to make of you a lesson for the coming generations.”
Moses and his people, after they had seen with their own eyes the fate of their enemy, resumed their journey to the site of Mount Al-Tour, where Allah had first spoken to Moses during his return trip from Midian to Egypt, and there they were ordered to settle down. On their way to that site, however, it happened that the Children of Israel passed by some settlements whose people worshiped idols and images, and Moses was shocked to hear his people asking him: “O Moses, make for us a god just as this people have gods!” Moses reply came back in a fury: “Would I choose for you a god except Allah, Who favored you to all the people of your time?”
On reaching the site appointed by Allah, which was, and still is, a barren desert, Moses asked of Allah salvation from the lack of food and water that they encountered there. So, Allah “bestowed over them with the manna and quail,” as a daily source for food, and “shadowed over them by clouds,” and, to supply each of the twelve tribes into which they were divided, He ordered Moses: “Strike the stone by your stick; thereat sprung from the stone twelve water-spring, each tribe should know their drinking source.”
After the Children of Israel settled down “at the right side of Al-Tour,” Allah promised Moses an appointment after thirty nights, which should be spent in worship of Him, but as Moses went to the appointed place a little earlier than agreed, Allah ordered him to complete an additional ten nights of worship. “When Moses completed the appointed time of his Lord, he said to his brother Aaron ‘be my successor in command of my folk; conciliate between them, and do not follow the way of the corrupters,’” and then departed for the promised appointment.
“When Moses came to Our appointment and his Lord Allah spoke to him, Moses asked his Lord saying ‘my Lord, allow me to see You,’ but Allah said you cannot see me; but look at the mountain – if it will remain in its stability, then you will be able to see me. Thus, when Allah revealed Himself to the mountain, the revelation caused the mountain to smash down, and Moses fell down swooned. When he was up and about again, he said ‘Exalted You! I have repented to You, and I am the first of the believers.’”
Moses was given, in that appointment, “the Tablets, in which We have written of everything a sermon, and the detail of everything,” and was ordered, too, “to keep a firm hold to the instructions therein, and to order his folk to look upon the best of these.” Before he started back to his folk, Allah told Moses that when he came to His appointment early, one man among his nation misguided them by introducing a golden calf as a god to be worshiped instead of Allah. So “Moses returned to his people angry and regretful.”
“Has not Allah promised you the good promise,” he addressed his people in a rage, “does the promise appear to be attained, or do you want that your Lord’s wrath comes down upon you by breaking my covenant?”
“We have not broken your covenant of our own accord,” they replied to their Prophet, “but we had been compelled to bring with us some jewels of the Egyptians; then we melted these with fire, and that man, Al-Samerie, made up out of this a golden calf that mooing––he said to us that this was the god of Moses!”
Not knowing that Aaron had firmly stood against the wrong act with such persistence that “the folk had nearly killed him,” and that he remarked on the incident by saying “O my people, you have been infatuated by the golden calf; it is Allah who is your God; so you should follow me and obey my order,” Moses turned ferociously on his brother, caught hold of Aaron’s head and beard, and addressed the speech to him in scolding tones: “What had prevent you, when you saw them misguided, from following my instructions? Did you refuse to comply with my order?”
“O my mother’s son,” answered the courteous Prophet Aaron, absolving himself from what Moses had thought, “do not pull me by head and beard! It happened that the folk regarded me a weak one, and they had nearly killed me. So, do not make my enemies crow upon me… I feared you accuse me for sowing division among the Children of Israel; and for not acting on your order.”
Aaron was absolved of the sin, and it became clear that it was Al-Samerie who was responsible for the aberration. In answer to the charge, Al-Samerie said that he could get a handful of the dust that bore traces of Gabriel’s horse, on his coming to execute Allah’s Order of drowning the Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, and that by casting this dust into the furnace he could achieve the miracle of a mooing golden calf: “In such way had myself abetted me.”
Accordingly, Moses threatened Al-Samerie Allah’s punishment for his wrong doing in this world and the hereafter, and the golden calf was seized and put into a furnace until it reached an excessive temperature, and then it was thrown off into the sea to explode into pieces.
“When anger had become dormant within Moses, he took the Tablets, which in its copy is found a Guidance and Bless for those who fearing their Lord.”
Moses had now to select from his people seventy men to go out for Allah’s appointment, to ask His forgiveness concerning with the wrong deed of worshiping the calf. When they went to the appointed place, they were seized by a tremendous tremor, and Moses beseeched Allah: “My Lord, if You had wanted to destroy them and me formerly, You would have done that. Would You punish us for what the debauched among us had done? It is but Your trial, by which You mislead whom You will, and You guide whom You will. You are our Protector – so, forgive and bless us: You are The Best Forgiver.”
Allah subsequently ordered that the Children of Israel should start out for the Sacred Land of Jerusalem to obtain it from the heathen people inhabiting it. The Order of Allah included that if they did that and entered the gates of the town prostrated and submitted to their God and asked Him His Forgiveness, Allah would forgive their sins and He would bestow additional favours upon the benevolent of them.
“O Moses,” they commented on the Order, “there is a tyrant people living in the Sacred Land, so we will not enter it until they get out of it: if they will do, we will enter.”
Nonetheless, there were more pious people among the Israeli who tried to make the rest of the folk believe that if they would only submit to Allah’s Order and enter the Sacred Land, they would be victorious. But the vast majority of the Children of Israel lingered: “Moses, we will never enter it; so go you and your Lord together to fight them – we are seated here,” they ignominiously retorted.
Thereupon, the Children of Israel were punished by Allah for their lingering: “It is forbidden for them to enter it for forty years, during which they will wander in the land; so, Moses, do not feel sorrow about the debauched folk.” During those forty years, not one of the entire Israeli nation could get out of the wilderness for any other land, and thus the liberator of Israel’s Children died in the wilderness of Sinai before accomplishing his desire for reaching the Sacred Land, and so did Aaron.
Would you use the “DaVinci Code” to prove the events in “Humpty Dumpty” took place?
Just finishing Velikovsky’s “Ages in Chaos”, had never heard of him until last month… has there been any serious refutation of the solid reasoning behind his work? It seems solid. I’ll be ordering his other books soon.
Fact or fiction? The “truth” then (as now) for any historical account lies somewhere in between these. Complete fabrication seems highly unlikely as a whole cloth fiction serves no historical function in culture. Interpretation of events and understanding is dependent upon the author(s) and may not agree with the understanding/interpretation of others–but differences of opinion don’t equate with fiction. We also lack access to the author(s) and their perspective. Establishing the facts–places, people, and events over 3000 years past is thus a fairly high order undertaking. I doubt that many historians consider the Exodus accounts to be non-historical–the problem for archaeology is finding evidence, the problem for all academic inquiry is how to understand the interpretation of the events.
I think exodus started in 1159 BC, 10 days after the spring equinox, when there was a lunar eclipse. There was a cooler time 1159-1140 BC. 40 years in that context means a generation.
It was during the Hyksos period that the Israelites were expelled from Egypt. It is well known that large numbers of people left Egypt upon their defeat.