Etz Haim Press

Note: The following is a review by Dr. L. Fried of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. It presents an alternative point of view to that in our book. This point of view is accepted by a number of biblical scholars. Dr. Segall's reply follows the review.

I like the style in which the book was written. It's an excellent style for the reader you have in mind and you maintain it quite diligently -- very impressive.

Your dating of the Exodus is interesting. Most people do not give much credence to the 430 years of the Hebrews in Egypt and so cannot connect the Hyksos to the Merneptah stele. Most people rely on the mention of the Israelites building the store cities of Pi-Rameses and Pithom for dating the Exodus. Pi-Rameses could not have been built before the reign of Rameses I, so that limits the time of the Exodus to the 13th century. This precludes a release from captivity in the 14th century and leaves out the Hyksos. This is why people place the Exodus in the 13th century, not the 14th. Yet, you have Moses living in the 14th century.

I suppose one could ignore the fact of the Israelites building Pi-Rameses in the Nile Delta. Maybe the Israelites didn't really build that city -- or any city. In any case, the fact that the Bible states that the Israelites built Pi-Rameses is taken as prima facie evidence for a dating of the Exodus after Rameses I.

It should also be considered that there is evidence of a people living in the central highlands of Canaan in the Bronze Age who unlike their neighbors on either side of them were not eating pork. They were a distinct ethnic group which the archaeologists call Proto-Israel. They were there long before the Merneptah stele. Therefore, most archaeologists do not believe in an Exodus, so before trying to date it, it would be necessary to show that there was such a thing. Evidence from trading patterns, architecture, ceramics, also indicates that this was Israel, that they were there continuously from the Bronze Age, and are indigenous.

Your dependence on Manetho bothers me because it's thought that Manetho got much of his knowledge about the Exodus from the Greek translation of the Torah. The bit about the Hyksos is primarily from Manetho, for example. It's circular therefore to bring Manetho in as corroborating evidence, when he is the source of much of what we know about Egyptian history.

The Israelite belief in one god was not monotheistic, but henitheistic. That is, they believed that there were many gods, but they were committed to worshiping YHWH alone. Their beliefs were not different from the belief of the Moabites in their one god Chemosh, or the belief of the Edomites in their one god Qos. So you would have to show the Israelites' belief in YHWH differed from the beliefs of these other peoples who also had only one god in their pantheon, if you want to show Egyptian influence.

You assert a relationship between belief in one god and law codes. Such a relationship does not exist. Law codes do not imply only one god (witness Hammurabi); nor does one god imply law codes (Moab, Edom). You assume a linkage which isn't there.

Moreover, the law codes in the Hebrew bible could not have been developed in Egypt since Egypt did not have a tradition of law codes. The law codes in the Torah are extremely similar to those of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. To demonstrate that the source of the Law of Moses is Egyptian and not Babylonian, you'd have to demonstrate that Egypt had law codes. This is going to be impossible to do since there are no codes extant from Egypt, and the codes from Babylon are ubiquitous.

By the way, Hammurabi does not claim that he received the laws from Shamash (or from any god). Rather, Shamash gives Hammurabi the symbols of justice and the keys of sovereignty, not the laws. In fact, YHWH is the only god I know who actually dispenses laws. (Kaufman makes a big deal of this.)

You mention a parallel in religious reform between Hammurabi and Ikhnaton, but Hammurabi did not engage in religious reforms. Hammurabi did not live in a world that worshipped only one god. Shamash is the sun god and the god of justice, but Enlil, Anu, Enki, etc. were the high gods in the pantheon. Marduk became the Enlil of the gods at some point. Shamash who is shown on Hammurabi's stele was never the head of the pantheon, let alone the sole god.

You state (p. 64) that the holidays the Israelites celebrated were based on the Exodus traditions. I don't see that. The holiday of Matsah was celebrated by the Jews in Elephantine and does not appear connected to the Exodus but simply to the harvest. It is the putting aside bread long stored before the new grain ripens (Shavuoth).

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you haven't proven your case over and against the ideas that are now prevalent in biblical studies.

Lisbeth S. Fried, Ph. D.
Department of Near Eastern Studies
University of Michigan

Dr. Segall's reply

I would like to thank Dr. Fried for her very thoughtful and extensive critique of the subject of my book. Biblical scholars like her are very concerned about the appearance of professionalism in their field. They therefore demand that only biblical legends that can be verified by archeological findings or independent ancient documentation be considered true. Everything else written in the Bible is suspect.

These scholars have concluded that the story of the Exodus is a myth based on the fact that there is no explicit archeological evidence that the Exodus ever took place, that some of the laws in the Law of Moses appear to have been taken from the Code of Hammurabi, and that pottery fragments and building remains from ancient settlements in the land of Canaan could be interpreted to imply the Israelites evolved from an indigenous Canaanite tribe.

As a result, they have invented their own version of the origin of the Israelites and the Law of Moses that is contrary to the legends the Jews themselves have about their origins. According to these scholars the Law of Moses was created during the Babylonian exile and attributed to a person named Moses, whom legend says led the Israelites out of Egypt. They point out, however, that there is no evidence that the Israelites ever were in Egypt, that they were ever slaves, that the Exodus ever took place, or that Moses ever existed. The Torah (the first five books of the Bible describing the Exodus) they assert was written to create a history of the Jews that never happened.

When one takes this approach there is no need to try to connect the Exodus to historical events taking place in Egypt. Dr. Fried admits that she is not familiar with Egyptian history during this period of time.

There is, however, a good deal more archeological evidence about the Exodus than these biblical scholars are ready to admit. I will now review some of this evidence.

Archeological evidence

Dr. Fried mentions that there was an indigenous tribe living in the central highlands of Canaan during the Bronze Age that has been identified with the early Israelites. Therefore, she concludes that there probably never was an Exodus. It is true that the people to which she refers were the original Israelites, but it is not true that they were indigenous to the central highlands of Canaan. To understand this we will review the archeological findings.

The Exodus is believed to have taken place during the late Bronze Age – sometime between 1550 and 1150 BC. During this period of time the regions through which the Israelites were said to have passed – the Sinai, Arabian Peninsula, Negev and Transjordan Plateau were very sparsely populated with no evidence of cities or permanent settlements of any kind. This route probably was intentional, since the Israelites leaving Egypt were incapable of confronting any significant military force. The Israelites were nomads and any groups they came into contact with were also nomadic tribes. These wandering nomads leave little or no evidence of their passage. The central highlands of Canaan in which the early Israelites were said to have settled was also very sparsely populated at the beginning of this period with no more than a few thousand people living there.

Then, during a few decades in the 1200s BC, the population of the central highlands grew enormously from a few thousand to several tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of new settlements were established throughout this region. These settlements were established by a nomadic group that migrated westward from east of the Jordan River. They were originally herders, but after establishing these settlements they also engaged in farming. The settlers survived at a subsistence level and had very little contact or trade with the Canaanite cities of the coastal plain. They do not appear to have had any king or central authority capable of mobilizing an army to attack the Canaanite cities of the coastal plain or more densely inhabited valleys. If provoked, local leaders may have arisen to organize resistance to invaders, but after the threat had passed, these local leaders would have returned to their villages. This type of social organization is similar to that described in the Book of Judges and persisted for a few hundred years.

This group of settlers is generally agreed to have been the original Israelites. There is evidence to indicate that they were a distinct ethnic group different from their neighbors. One indication that they were different is that no altars to local gods or idols have been found in their territory from this period of time. A second indication is that these people did not eat pork, whereas all of the tribes that surrounded them did eat pork. This indicates that they at least had dietary customs or laws, and if they had dietary laws they probably had other laws and customs that differentiated them from their neighbors. From the estimated size of the settler population in the central highlands of Canaan, the number of people participating in the Exodus would not have been more than a tenth the number described in the Bible.

There is some debate about the time period over which this settlement activity took place. Some archeologists believe the settlements were established gradually over several decades as a result of continuous migration from nomadic tribes east of the Jordan. Others believe that nomadic wanderers may have been crossing the Jordan for centuries, but at some point conditions were conducive for establishing permanent settlements. My conclusion is that the settlements were established as the result of a large migration over a short period of time.

The Jordan River was a formidable barrier to the passage of nomadic tribes into the central highlands of Canaan. Although the river is not very wide, it is deep and has a current that would make transporting flocks of animals extremely difficult. In ancient times there was much more water in the river than today as a result of recent water diversion projects. The reason the central highlands were sparsely populated for centuries was that nomadic tribes could not migrate across the Jordan and Canaanites preferred to live along the flatter more fertile coastal plain and northern valleys.

The event that triggered the migration of the Israelites across the Jordan was a gigantic earthquake that created a temporary land bridge across the Jordan. This land bridge permitted nomads to cross the river with their flocks. Knowledge of this earthquake was preserved in the legends of the Israelites and was eventually written down in the Book of Joshua.

The first mention of Israel as a distinct group is on the Merneptah stele, a monument erected by King Merneptah of Egypt describing his military victories over various peoples. The existence of this stele indicates that the Israelites had already settled in Canaan by the time of King Merneptah. Merneptah ruled Egypt for 10 years. If the Israelites took a few decades to establish themselves in Canaan, they must have settled in Canaan no later than the reign of Merneptah's father Rameses II. If there were an Exodus from Egypt a few decades before the Israelites settled in Canaan, this would be consistent with the Exodus having occurred towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt.

It has been proposed that if an exodus occurred, it might have been associated with the defeat of the Hyksos by the Egyptians and the retreat of remnants of their army and population back to Canaan. Since this occurred about 300 years before the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan, this possibility can now be excluded as the Exodus described in the Bible.

If the entire region through which the Israelites were supposed to have traveled was very sparsely populated before the Israelite migration, it is reasonable to ask where these tens of thousands of people who settled in Canaan originated. There is no evidence of large indigenous populations of this size in the area east of the Jordan River at this time, and it is reasonable to assume that such a large homogeneous group may have originated outside this region. Egypt is one possibility. Legends that have been preserved from this period of time indicate that this is what happened. There do not appear to be any contradictory legends. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the Israelites who settled in the central highlands of Canaan in the thirteenth century BC actually did come from Egypt.

If an Exodus from Egypt did take place, it then becomes relevant to ask what events in Egyptian history may have triggered the Exodus. Knowledge of Egyptian history, therefore, becomes important in understanding the origin of the Israelite nation and their religion. Understanding the Exodus examines the relationship between Egyptian history, the Exodus and the formation of an Israelite nation.

The Israelite conquest of Canaan

The Israelite settlers in the central highlands do not appear to have had either the desire or ability to attack any large Canaanite cities. They probably were content not to be attacked themselves. Therefore, the scorched earth campaign described in the Book of Joshua does not appear to have been carried out by these settlers. However, about the time the Israelites were settling in the central highlands, many Canaanite cities were attacked and destroyed by invaders. If these invaders were not Israelites, who were they?

At the beginning of the thirteenth century BC the eastern coast of the Mediterranean was controlled by Egypt in the south and the Hittite empire in the north. Canaanite princes were vassals to these two powers. However, Egyptian and Hittite control over the coast was lost when the coast was invaded by groups of sea people, who defeated their armies and burned down the cities of those who opposed them. These invaders, who appear to have been of Greek origin, then settled in the land and merged with the local population. The Philistines and Phoenicians were descendents of these sea peoples.

During the time of King David the Israelites from the central highlands extended their control over at least part of the coastal region of Canaan. The legend of the twelve tribes of Israel may have been an attempt to portray all of the tribes living under Israelite rule as part of a single nation with a common ancestor, Jacob. As part of this process the legends of the various tribes appear to have been merged into a single story in which the destruction of the Canaanite cities became part of the campaign of conquest and settlement led by Joshua. It is therefore likely that at least some of the twelve tribes in the Israelite kingdom of David and Solomon were not descendents of the people who left Egypt during the Exodus.

Conclusions derivable from the biblical text

Biblical scholars will contend that using the story of the Exodus to justify the story of the Exodus is circular reasoning. However, there is a great deal of information that can be obtained from the biblical text, and excluding biblical legends from an analysis of biblical history is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

One kind of information we can infer from the biblical text is the time period during which the orally transmitted legends were first written down in their present form (The final version of the Torah was composed by combining a number of pre existing versions of these legends after the Babylonian exile). Even if the core of a legend is true, the way the legend is told is a reflection of the political and religious environment at the time the story was written down. Knowing when a story was written can help us distinguish between parts of the story that may describe the original event and parts that were later embellishments.

One indication of when a legend was written down is references to places and people that did not exist during the period the legend was supposed to have taken place but did exist at a later time. For example, references to the Temple in Jerusalem in the story of the Exodus indicate that this portion of the legend was not written down until after the Temple was already in existence. References to the Philistines and to cities that had not yet been built at the time of the patriarchs indicate that these legends were not written down until the Philistines had settled in the land and the cities referred to already existed. When the name of a place had been changed and the new name is used in the story, it indicates that the story was written down after the name change.

The name of one of the cities the Bible says was built by the Israelites, Pi-Rameses, does not restrict the time of the Exodus. Pi-Rameses was located on or next to the ancient capital of the Hyksos, Avaris, and the place was probably called Avaris during the time the Israelites lived in Egypt. (The Hyksos were defeated and enslaved by Kamose, Prince of Thebes, and the Israelites were the descendents of these Hyksos.) Well after the Israelites left Egypt the place was renamed Pi-Rameses in honor of Rameses II. When the story of the Exodus was written, the scribes writing the story used the then current name Pi-Rameses rather than the name of the city before the time of the Exodus. We know that the Israelite settlement of Canaan was already taking place during the reign of Rameses II, so it is clear that the Exodus itself must have taken place earlier.

Another indication of when stories were written down is when people are specifically named that did not exist at the time the story was supposed to have happened. For example, King Jeroboam of the Kingdom of Israel is told by a prophet that Josiah, a descendent of King David, would destroy the altars of the pagan gods of the Kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 13:1-2). Josiah was king of Judah three hundred years after the reign of Jeroboam. This indicates that the form of the story in the first book of Kings was written no earlier than the reign of Josiah.

Additional information in the biblical text

There are additional details in the biblical text that can be compared, not with archeological findings, but with known natural phenomena. If these natural phenomena can be clearly identified, a comparison can be made between the biblical descriptions and scientifically documented descriptions of the same phenomena. The extent to which natural phenomena are accurately described in the Bible gives us some indication of the accuracy of the rest of the biblical story.

For descriptions of natural phenomena to support the Exodus legend, the phenomena would have had to be sufficiently geographically specific that they could not have occurred anywhere in the region except at locations where the story of the Exodus was said to have taken place. The phenomena would also have had to be sufficiently rare that none the people transmitting the story in later generations could have witnessed the same or similar phenomena.

This is, in fact, the case with the story of the Exodus. The natural phenomena, interpreted as miracles by those who witnessed them, were specific to Egypt, the route out of Egypt, the Sinai Desert, Mt. Sinai and the route traveled after leaving Mt. Sinai. There is no chance that people repeating the legends would have witnessed these same phenomena. A comparison of these "miracles" with known natural phenomena is detailed in Understanding the Exodus. This comparison makes quite clear that an Exodus from Egypt must have taken place. If the rest of the story of the Exodus is no less accurate than the description of these natural phenomena, we can conclude that at least some of the ancestors of the Israelites came from Egypt. If the story of the Exodus is based on actual events, it is also likely that, as the legend states, the Israelites were led out of Egypt by a person named Moses who transmitted a set of laws to them.

The origin of the Law of Moses

One indication that the Law of Moses was not invented by Babylonian exiles and attributed to Moses is the religion of the Samaritans. The Samaritans were settled in the territory of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians after the Assyrians defeated the army of the Kingdom of Israel and exiled the population of that kingdom. The Samaritans adopted the local religion, which was the religion of the God of Israel. After the Babylonian exile of the population of Jerusalem, there was significant intermarriage between the Samaritans and the Jews remaining in the land of Israel. When the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon, Ezra commanded Jews who had married Samaritan women to return their wives and children to their Samaritan families.

This order caused a rift between the Jewish and the Samaritan communities. Many Jews did not obey Ezra and chose to live with the Samaritans rather than give up their wives and children. The Samaritans did not accept the new laws or customs of the returning exiles, and their religion basically mirrored Judaism as it was practiced in the land of Israel before the Babylonian exile. The Samaritan religion includes the story of the Exodus, celebration of Passover and observance of the Law of Moses. The Samaritans have a Torah that was written in Canaanite Hebrew script, rather than the Aramaic alphabet brought back from Babylon by the returning Jewish exiles. Observance of the Law of Moses by the Samaritans indicates that this law was in existence before the Babylonian exile and was not the creation of people doing the bidding of the Persian emperor.

The Persians may have encouraged the Jews to write an official version of the laws governing their nation. The Persian emperor Darius ordered the laws of the Egyptians to be compiled and organized into a single code. This work took 16 years to complete. The Persians did not tell the Egyptians what to include in their code except that it was to include those laws that existed before the Persian conquest of Egypt. Likewise, the Persians may have wanted other regions of their empire to have legal codes to make the empire more governable. The Persians did not tell the various peoples what their codes should contain, but they wanted them in a written and officially sanctioned form. In this sense the Persians may have exerted influence on the Jews through their appointed leaders (e.g. Ezra and Nechemia) to produce an official code of laws for the Jews. This effort resulted in the final form of the Torah.

Concerning some of the other objections raised by Dr. Fried - the use of Manetho as a historical source is questioned. Manetho was an Egyptian historian living in the third century BC. While he may have been familiar with the Greek translation of the Torah, the information he provides about the date of the Exodus, the historical background leading up to the Exodus and the identity of Moses are independent of the story in the Bible. Manetho is not the only source of information about the Hyksos and their connection to the Israelites. A number of other references on this subject are given in my book.

It is clear from any objective reading of the Torah that the belief in one God in the Mosaic religion was exclusive. God created the Universe and rules everywhere. The 10 Commandments forbids the worship of any other god or the creation of statues that could be worshipped as gods. Whether individual Israelites believed that there could be gods other than the God of Israel is irrelevant. The Israelites were willing to worship a golden calf at Mt. Sinai, but the Mosaic religion preserved by the priestly clan was an exclusively monotheistic religion.

The religious beliefs of the Israelites were shaped and influenced by the beliefs of the peoples with whom they interacted. However, the Babylonians and Persians were polytheists. If one wishes to show that the contents of the Torah were influenced by the Babylonians and the Persians, one would also have to show that Judaism accepted the existence of more than one god, but that its god was the God of Israel. This is the reason biblical scholars who believe the Torah was created as a result of Persian influence assert that Judaism was not exclusively monotheistic. Supporting this thesis requires mental gymnastics that would not be accepted by most reasonable people. If the Jews accepted the existence of other gods, they would have accepted the existence of these gods in Babylonia, Persia and Egypt. But Jews living in these countries rejected the local gods and exclusively worshipped the God of Israel. This also confirms that Judaism is exclusively monotheistic.

The question then arises - where did exclusive monotheism originate? The answer is that it arose in Egypt in the fourteenth century BC during a golden age of Egyptian civilization. An attempt to convert Egypt to exclusive monotheism was part of a program to unite the Egyptian empire with a single religion and single set of laws. One of the consequences of the failure of this campaign was the Exodus and the creation of an Israelite nation to perpetuate this religion. This is described in detail in Understanding the Exodus.

Whether Hammurabi can be described as a reformer is a matter of semantics. Hammurabi worked to unite his empire of diverse ethnic and religious groups around a common religion and a common set of laws. In this sense he was a reformer and a model for the Egyptians who faced a similar situation a few hundred years later. While Hammurabi was not a monotheist, he was a worshipper of the sun god, as were those Egyptians who were trying to unite their empire around a common religion and set of laws.

There is no direct linkage between belief in a single god and a legal code. However, the monotheistic priests of Egypt tried to create such a linkage. The legal code developed by the priests of Egypt included some laws that were also in the code of Hammurabi, who lived a few centuries earlier and whose laws were known to the Egyptians. The assertion that Egypt did not have a tradition of legal codes is not relevant, because up until this time Egypt also did not have a tradition of exclusive monotheism. When the attempt to introduce monotheism in Egypt was rejected, the code of laws developed for this religion was also rejected. The Law of Moses itself is evidence of the attempt to establish a legal code in Egypt.

Lastly, the Jewish colony in Elephantine did not exist before the Persian conquest of Egypt. It was set up as a military garrison by the Persians to help guard the southern border of the Empire. As such it did not represent a source of ancient tradition against which the traditions of the Torah could be compared. Over time, as an isolated colony, it could have developed some independent traditions that might have differed from common practice in the land of Israel. These variations of tradition do not necessarily shed any light on the origin of holidays and traditions described in the Torah.

References:

The Bible Unearthed, I. Finkelstein and N.A. Silberman, The Free Press (2001)

Persia and the Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, J.W. Watts, editor, Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Symposium Series, Atlanta 2001