Evisceration of the Exodus myth

[goodwithoutgod]

“The Exodus from Egypt is unknown to history save what is written in the Hebrew Bible. Outside of the most meager a circumstantial evidence we possess nothing to substantiate the text.”

   -Dr. Michael D. Oblath. The Exodus Itinerary Sites (2004)

   Michael D. Oblath received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Religions from the University of California and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Currently, he is Adjunct Professor at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and St. Mary’s College of California. His publications include articles on the patriarchal narratives and the Exodus from Egypt.
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   This is just one of a copious number of scholarly experts who have spent years studying and investigating the Exodus. I will endeavor to eviscerate the myth of the Exodus. To recap the fairytale; 600,000 Jewish slaves, their families, Egyptian booty, and a plethora of animals numbering between two and three million spent 40 years stomping around the Sinai desert which is only about 130 miles across, fleeing to the promised land, guided by God who tested them greatly.

Nonbiblical references

   The earliest reference to the Exodus story can be found in the writings of the Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera (fourth century BCE). It is surmised that he had a copy of the Pentateuch before him, based upon what appears to be a direct quote from Deuteronomy. Of course, there exists no contemporary literary record of any sort depicting the Exodus as a historical event, and this silence was maintained for many centuries, until the story started circulating after the Jewish Scriptures began to emerge publicly in the latter half of the first millennium BCE.

Logistic Implausibility

Exodus 1:5 - and all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were 70 souls…

Exodus 12:37 - and the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about 600,000 on foot that were men, beside children.

Exodus 12:38 - and a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even a very much cattle.

Exodus 12:39 - and they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither have they prepared for themselves any victual.

   First is the amazing explosion of the Israelite population; they went from 70 to more than 1 million in about 400 years (Ex 12:37, 38:26, Num 1:45-46). They must have been very bad at mathematics back then. It is reminiscent of the great mythical global flood(2348 BCE) which posited that eight humans repopulated the earth in 350 years(2000 BCE) to 27 million people. The sheer impossibility of there even being 600,000 male descendants of Jacob during four generations of Hebrew existence in Egypt(Gen 46) should give a thinking person pause. Most calculations show that the most that could have been produced in four generations would be approximately 7000 males.

   However, let’s wave the wand of magical belief, and pretend that there was 2 to 3 million Hebrews in the time since Jacob entered Egypt. Let’s break down the logistics of moving that many people… About 2000 people can fit comfortably into a mile, with no belongings and a little space between them. If 3 million people were lined up single file, the length of the column would require an estimated 1500 miles. In order to fit into the 130 mile broad Sinai, the Israelites would need to line up more than ten abreast, without belongings such as wagons and animals. The front row of the column would have been safely in the promised land and the last row would have still been in Egypt.

Animals and treasure

   Let us not forget the hundreds of thousands of animals they must’ve had with them. How were these animals fed, and what plant matter did they eat? When you calculate the amount of lambs needed to fulfill the Passover decree at Exodus 12:21 would be something around the number of 240,000, slaughtered in one night. If these are only the lambs, how many other animals were there, including all the adult sheep, cattle, goats and horses, all spared miraculously during the plagues?

   Exodus 3:22 and 12:35 state that the Israelites are to flee through the desert with the enormous wealth of Egypt, taking a massive amount of silver and gold. Why carry all this immense weight of worthless treasure into the desert for 40 years where it has no value? This ridiculous story would’ve left Egypt bankrupt and destitute, and the Israelites extremely wealthy. Oddly, this fairytale is not supported by the historical and archaeological record. Archaeologists have found zero evidence of such wealth among the hill settlers that became the Israelites.

Geography and archaeology

   Sadly archeologists cannot find any clues to support the story of the Exodus as an actual historic event. They cannot identify Mount Sinai and many other place-names in the story; nor were there any remains from this found anywhere in the Sinai. An Exodus of such great size would’ve left a plethora of evidence as I will get into later.

The burning/talking bush

   Surprisingly, this great universe and life creating deity deemed to speak to Moses through a burning bush. It is even more amusing that(Exodus 3:5) the great and powerful Oz was more concerned about Moses wearing shoes to walk on the patch of dirt in front of him: “do not come near, put off your shoes from your feet, for the place in which your standing is holy ground”… What is not surprising, is this same tale differs little from the Greek or Roman myths about Zeus and Jupiter, as well as a number of other gods and goddesses that manifested themselves to humans over the millennia. Then the great and powerful Oz (Exodus 3:19)tells Moses that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. Then God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. After all, the story needs a little spiking.

The 10 Plagues

The first plague - all the water was turned to blood and that he killed all the fish in Egypt. How in the world did this event escape the notice of all literate Egyptian writers, travelers, historians, Royal scribes, and any other literate person who witnessed this amazing event? The death of all the fish, as well as under the ability of water everywhere in Egypt, would’ve been something historical to say the least. To no surprise, there is not one scrap of contemporary, literary, or historical evidence to corroborate this ridiculous story. Fiction.

The second plague - frogs covered Egypt, again; there exists no historical account anywhere of such an extraordinary event. The economic cost of a pandemic frog invasion would have been enormous, as would the potential illness when hundreds of millions of frogs died and rotted away everywhere. Fiction.

The third plague - the supernatural invasion of lice or gnats which spread everywhere. Again, such a pestilence would be very costly to their economy, as did all of these plagues, and there exist no scientific, historical, or contemporary evidence for this claim. Fiction.

The fourth plague - and invasion of flies next attacks Egypt. At this point, it is difficult to comprehend much being left to plague at this point. I apply the same point as the third plague. Fiction.

The fifth plague - now it gets interesting, the all-powerful deity kills all the cattle, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep of Egypt, sparing only the cattle of Israel (Exodus 9:3-6). The economic cost would’ve been staggering, and the resulting epidemic of disease from all the rotting animals would’ve been extraordinary… Fiction. And again, no evidence exists to support this myth. But wait there’s more…

The sixth plague - the attack of the boils, the all-powerful deity had Moses sprinkle some ashes toward the heaven in the sight of the Pharaoh, and a dust spread across the land inflicting man and beasts with painful boils… Wait a minute, what beasts? In the previous plague, God had destroyed all the beasts, sparing only those owned by the Israelites. To no surprise, no evidence supports this.

The seventh plague - next the all-powerful deity rained hail down upon every man and beast that shall be found in the field, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die (Exodus 9:19). Hey, wait a minute… What beasts? Where these beasts come from? They were killed in plague five, and then again in plague six…. Something sounds suspicious here. Fiction.

The eighth plague - wait there’s more, the plague of the Locust since the previous plague of hail would have destroyed most of the foliage, what in the world were the Locusts going to destroy? Whatever, so now there is no foliage.

The ninth plague - the three days of darkness  *key dramatic music* Dunh Dunh Dunh..the Pharaoh must’ve been quite the hearty individual, having survived eight plagues so far, having lived through bloody water, mosquitoes, boils, hiding inside during the great hailstorm that killed every living thing caught outdoors, and the famine that would’ve followed the locust plague, and now a three-day blackout. Curiously, there exists not one word written anywhere outside of the story in the Hebrew Bible, of three days of darkness. One would surmise that this would’ve been a great time for the Israelites to sneak away from their master as by this point everyone would’ve been hiding inside, and three days of darkness allows one a lot of time to leave. Fiction.

The tenth plague - this infamous plague (Exodus 12:12-29) is the event commemorated during Passover: the killing of all firstborn humans and other living things, except of course the Israelites putting the mark of Lamb’s blood upon their doors. One would question, why would an all-powerful God, all-knowing God, require a drop of lambs blood upon the doors of his chosen people to identify them? Are they suggesting that God did not know who his chosen people were? Truly? Logistically, how does one inform 2 million Israelites in one night, to mark their door with blood? Where did the Israelites immediately obtain an estimated 240,000 or so lambs necessary for this mass sacrifice? Why would the universe and life creating God require animal sacrifice?

   Additionally, the Egyptian population itself throughout the entire nation is estimated to have been 3-3.5 million people. Is one to believe that the slaves equaled the Masters? After the utter decimation of the Egyptian population by God, why would the slaves need to flee in the first place? Surely the Egyptians, having gone through 10 levels of plague, had other things to worry about besides where the 3 million slaves went too. How could the few survivors have even tried to stop it? If Egypt was so devastated, with nearly every living thing killed, including most able-bodied men, it would be easy for the millions of spared Hebrews to overwhelm the remnants of the Egyptians and take over the entire country, rather than fleeing into the relatively poor and inhospitable wilderness.

Unleavened bread

   Exodus 12:8 talks about the unleavened bread and bitter herbs to be eaten as Passover. As the story goes, they had to flee so quickly that they did not have time for the bread to rise. This is a simplistic and anachronistic story. The Bible (Gen 19:3) records the use of unleavened bread by Abrams nephew, Lot, centuries earlier, according to the story.

No formal organization

   As per the story, the Israelites had no formal and centralized organization until after they were already settled in the desert. How could any of the Exodus events have been organized with millions wandering around aimlessly with no chain of command? Exodus 13:18 claims the Israelites left Egypt “equipped for battle.” Where did the slaves get the equipment? How could Moses have executed “brilliant” military tactics with these untrained fighters? Where did these slaves learn these military tactics? Such a massive force on the move would surely have left some mark in the desert. To no surprise, despite the wishful attempts by various devout researchers, not a single unambiguous and scientifically verified artifact has ever been found from such a vast and long-term migration.

Exodus encampments

   Biblical literalist like to claim the existence of purported ancient encampments along the supposed Exodus route, now visible using technologies such as Google Earth, and that this evidence proves the biblical story to be true.

First, if these were the biblical sites, they would need to be enormous. Regarding the massive encampments of the Israelites and their animals, the latter that is estimated to be at least the same as the number of Israelites, over 2 million, consider the following:

Every one of the 42 times the camp was pitched (Num 33) there must be suitable space found for some 250,000 tents, laid out (Num 2) regularly four-square around the holy Tabernacle, after that was constructed, and with the necessary streets and passages, and proper spaces between the tents. A man in a coffin occupies about 12 ft.², 6’ x 2’. Living people would not be packed in their tents like corpses inside a sardine can; they must have at least, say, three times that space, 36 ft.² or 4 yds.² each. A tent to house ten persons with minimum decency must occupy an average of 40 yds.². If 241,420 such tents were set one against another, with no intervening space or separating streets, they would occupy 9,656,800 square yards, or over 1995 acres of ground, a little more than 3 mi.².

Second, where did all the tents come from? It is estimated that the amount of tents needed for this proposed 2 million refugees would be at least 200,000. Who would’ve owned so many tents inside Egypt, or how did the Hebrews construct them all in the desert wilderness? Exodus 12:39 says the Israelites fled in a hurry, without even their bread time the rise, yet they are depicted as hauling a huge amount of Egyptian gold and other precious artifacts, along with the massive animals and, apparently, an enormous quantity of tents.

Water Sources

Two to three million people and hundreds of thousands of animals would have required a huge amount of water. In Exodus 15:25 we find that the well was bitter, and God gave Moses direction to make it sweet. Calculations show that the Israelites and their livestock would’ve needed some 8000 m³ of water per day.

Heavenly manna

   At Exodus 16:4 appears the magical story of “bread from heaven,” elsewhere known as manna. This magical and supernatural manifestation is described as made with honey, or taste like fresh oil, and described as a flake-like a thing, round thing, or coriander seed. Of course, there’s never been any evidence of this magical food raining from heaven, or any residue of it.

Bird sacrifice

In the book of Leviticus, we read about the numerous animal sacrifices, including thousands upon thousands of birds per day, but we are not told where these birds come from in the middle of the desert. Indeed, throughout the entire book appeared detailed instructions on how to sacrifice all these animals, repeated abundantly; yet the common people apparently were kept out of that feasting and were fed flake-like round things (manna)found on rocks instead.

Wait there’s more, while the Israelites were starving subsisting off manna and water, the great and powerful Oz required not only the sacrifice of thousands of animals but also heaps of “shewbread” (Exodus 25:30) made with fine wheat flour (exodus 29:2, 40). Now where did the Israelite priest obtain this “fine flour” out in the middle of the desert, where people were starving? It seems rather odd that 600,000 lawyers would subsist solely on manna while watching their wives and children go hungry, while thousands of food animals were being immolated, and expensive and difficult to procure fine wheat flour was given as bread to God.

29 trillion quails?

   At Exodus 16:13, the great and powerful Oz brings forth a huge amount of quails from the sea to feed his chosen people. Let’s examine this, we read at Number 11:31 that these quails were “stacked up on the face of the earth” to a height of two cubits, equivalent to about 44 inches high, in a row the length of “a day’s journey around the camp.” Estimates show based on the settlements descriptions at Numbers 2 and 24, that the camps total mass would be 4,569.76 square miles or 452,404,727,808 cubic feet of birds. This equates to approximately 29 trillion individual birds. Let’s say this estimation was 99% inaccurate, we would still be discussing 290 million birds, to be picked up immediately, cleaned, cooked and consumed by couple million people, providing dozens or hundreds of quails per person. Where do they get all the wood to cook with, and what did they do with the birds remains?

   I could go on at great length, but who truly wants to read all that? In conclusion, scholarly consensus asserts that there is no archeological evidence to support a late bronze age Exodus, and no historical proof for the Exodus can be placed within any specific period. Not a single shred of credible physical evidence has ever been discovered anywhere in over a century of scientific excavations, and scouring of the Sinai desert for any sign of the Israelites 40-year journey. The entire Exodus story appears unreal, even beyond supernatural miracles. The Pharaoh is never named, in dozens of pages of text, despite the fact that Egyptian kings were well-known and inscribed their names all over monuments.

   Furthermore, the biblical text contains abundant anachronisms including the names of people’s such as the Philistines, Edomites and Midianites who did not exist as such at the purported time. The inclusion of these anachronisms fits in with political issues during the seventh century. Clearly, the Exodus account was written long after the purported events, revealed in its anachronisms and simplicity in many instances. The setting reflects an era centuries later and unfamiliarity with the milieu of the purported Exodus period.

   The Exodus is not a historical event fictionalized but a mythical motif historicized. Again, the difference may seem subtle but is highly important. The archetypal myth existed first and was utilized as a framework upon which to build a national epic. The fact that anyone can purport to believe that this ridiculous tale has even a grain of truth to it, is disingenuous, and hubris in nature.

References:

Finkelstein, and Amihai Mazar. The quest for the historical Israel. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. 2007. Print.

Frankee, William. The Exodus Epic: Universalization of History through Ritual Repetition.Lanham, Md: Association and University Press of America, 2012. Print.

Murdock, D. M. Did Moses exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver. Seattle. Stellar House Publishing. 2014. Print.

Redford, Donald. Aspects of Monotheism. Biblical Archaeology Review, 1996.

Tait, John. Never Had the Like Occurred: Egypt’s View of its Past. London: UCL Press, 2003. Print.

Wheless, Joseph. Is It God’s Word? New York: Cosimo, Inc. 2007. Print.

[Baruch]

Yes, I like Dr Finkelstein too ;-)

The Torah was written in the time of King Hezekiah to King Josiah ... 750 - 600 BCE.  It was written for political purposes, not historical ones.  Though in fact Semites and Hamites have been enemies for a lot longer, going back to pre-Dynastic times in Egypt.

[TomFoolery]

Great essay with interesting points.

The problem is, devout Christians would read it and say, well of course your points make sense but it's in the Bible silly, it doesn't have to make sense. God doesn't owe us an explanation and God can do whatever he wants. #winning

[Baruch]

Rabbis make a similar excuse for G-d's nonsense ... called "Chok" in Hebrew.  They say G-d is just testing how blindly obedient we are.  If so, G-d shouldn't pick on Jews ... we don't obey very well, just ask the know it all Christians etc.

[goodwithoutgod]

True, all I can do is provide facts to counter the misinformation posited by the delusional, maybe one person who is sitting on the fence reads it, starts actually applying logic and reason, and validates the info I provided, thus starting down the path to freedom from the blind fold of faith....if so, was worth the research and time typing it up.

[sdelsolray]

True, all I can do is provide facts to counter the misinformation posited by the delusional, maybe one person who is sitting on the fence reads it, starts actually applying logic and reason, and validates the info I provided, thus starting down the path to freedom from the blind fold of faith....if so, was worth the research and time typing it up.

Excellent post in the OP.

[ApostateLois]

Someone needs to clean up all the typos and spelling errors in that article; otherwise, it's very good. Christians never bother to think about what they believe, they just accept whatever the pastor tells them. The idea of 2 million or more Hebrews wandering around a small patch of desert for 40 years that a healthy hiker could traverse in about a week, AND leaving no evidence whatsoever of their passage, is totally lost on them. People tend to drop bits of their possessions everywhere they go, which is why clean-up crews are needed to pick up the trash in camping areas. Two million people, occupying a land for four decades, would have left vast piles of junk along the trail and at every stop they made: shoes, clothing, old water skins, the remains of sacrificed animals, broken crockery and weapons, misplaced utensils and tools, charcoal pits from cook fires, etc. Not a single item ever has been found that could be linked to the Exodus. I guess God has clean-up crews, too.

[goodwithoutgod]

Absolutely. To posit that this actually happened is to deny the zero substantiating evidence.

I use talk to text, and upon rereading it I see where that went horribly wrong :P I will endeavor to scrub it and fix.

[Baruch]

Text that is appreciated, even if cherry picked ... is an illustration of what is going on in the mind.

Pastors don't wave watches in front of people, they induce sleep, not hypnosis.  I was married to a Christian pastor.  What a successful pastor does, is they know what the congregation expects to hear ... and they give it to them (reinforce group think) in novel and entertaining ways.  This is why "high church" was so influential early on, going back to ziggurats ... it was the only show in town.  Particularly if there were temple prostitutes at the base of the ziggurat ;-)

[Hakurei Reimu]

Wow, the deeper you go into Exodus, the worse it gets. Forgotten from this essay is why the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Babylonian empires (neighbors to the incoming Israelites) never noticed that a tribe of people numbering that of Egypt established themselves within a stone's throw of their boarders, or noting Egypt in its weakened state, never rushed in to conquer it.

Again, 1500 BCE was a time of great empires and diplomacy. There would have been dignitaries from each of these empires in Egypt to witness the plagues to communicate back to their homes that Egypt had been laid low by this tribe of slaves and would have been very interested in knowing their whereabouts ("Whatever you do, my King, don't fuck with the Israelites!"). And if the dignitaries met their doom in Egypt? Then it would be a perfect excuse to invade!

[Baruch]

Correct about lack of contemporary evidence.  Only in circa 1200 BCE, in Palestine, does the Pharaoh mention decimating some tribe called Israel.  Not a kingdom or nation, just a tribe of bedouin.  The somewhat earlier Amarna Tablets don't mention them much either, just all the backstabbing going on in Palestine under Egyptian colonization.

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/amarnaletters.htm

[goodwithoutgod]

Good reason why it is called blind faith I suppose :)