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The Exodus: sources and parallels

The scholarly consensus is that there was no Exodus as described in the Bible. Nevertheless, there is also a general understanding that something must lie behind the traditions, even if Moses and the Exodus narrative belong to collective cultural memory rather to history. Most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some highland settlers came from Egypt.

The Expulsion of the Hyksos

Canaanite populations first appeared in Egypt towards the end of the 12th Dynasty c. 1800 BC, and either around that time, or c. 1720 BC, established an independent realm in the eastern Nile Delta. In about 1650 BC, this realm was assumed by the rulers known as the Hyksos, who formed the Fifteenth Dynasty.

It has been claimed that new revolutionary methods of warfare ensured the Hyksos the ascendancy in their influx into the new emporia being established in Egypt's delta and at Thebes in support of the Red Sea trade. However, in recent years the idea of a simple Hyksos migration, with little or no war, has gained support.

In any case, the 16th Dynasty and the 17th Dynasty continued to rule in the South in coexistence with the Hyksos kings, perhaps as their vassals. Eventually, Seqenenre Tao, Kamose and Ahmose waged war against the Hyksos and expelled Khamudi, their last king, from Egypt c. 1550 BC.

The saga of the Hyksos was recorded by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), chief priest at the Temple of Ra in Heliopolis, which is preserved in three quotations by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus. In Manetho's History of Egypt, as retold by Josephus, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their invasion and dominion over Egypt, their eventual expulsion, and their subsequent exile to Judaea and their establishing the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Manetho defined the Hyksos as being the Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings" or "Captive Shepherds" who invaded Egypt, destroying its cities and temples and making war with the Egyptian people to "gradually destroy them to the very roots". Following a war with the Egyptians a treaty was negotiated stipulating that these Hyksos Shepherds were to exit Egypt.

The ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus said that Manetho's Hyksos narrative was a reliable Egyptian account about the Israelite Exodus, and that the Hyksos were 'our people'. Martin Bernal found that a direct relationship between the Hyksos and Israelites is plausible, although it cannot be proven. He noted that the name of the pharaoh Yaqub-Har is similar to the name of the Israelite patriarch Jacob, and that the highest density of Hyksos scarabs is found in the Israelite West Bank. Donald Redford said that the Exodus narrative is a Canaanite memory of the Hyksos descent and occupation of Egypt.

Most modern historians reject any identification of the Hyksos with the Israelites, largely because it is generally believed that the early Israelites evolved within the land and culture of Canaan, rather than emerging from Egypt. There is a current scholarly consensus that if the Israelites did emerge from Egypt, it must have occurred sometime during the 13th century, because there is no archaeological evidence of any distinctive Israelite material culture before that time.

Akhenaten and the end of the Amarna period

Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. This Pharaoh presided over radical changes in Egyptian religious practices. He established a form of solar monotheism or monolatry based on the cult of Aten, and disbanded the priesthoods of all other gods. His new capital, Akhetaten or 'Horizon of Aten', was built at the site known today as Amarna. The city was built hastily, mostly using mud bricks. After Akhenaten's death, it was abandoned. The temples, shrines, and royal statues were razed later, during the reign of Horemheb.

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars. One of the first to mention this was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism. Basing his arguments on a belief that the Exodus story was historical, Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve. Following his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, an Israeli archaeologist - along with most interpreters of Osarseph's story or legend - suggest that conditions in the Amarna period ending with the reign of Tutankhamun very closely match those described in Exodus:

• a large mudbrick city having been just constructed by slaves of Akhnaten in two years at El Amarna, a site with little straw, and being abandoned with his religion
• a disenfranchised monotheistic priest class displaced by followers of the old gods of Saqqara & Luxor being restored
• extremely specific predictions of disaster - recorded on his restitution stele - claiming "old gods would punish him if they were not given back their old rights and positions:
  • Hapi, the androgynous god of the Nile, would make its waters undrinkable;
  • Kermit, the goddess of fertility, would release her frogspawn to swarm over the land;
  • Osiris, the god of corn, would not prevent the locusts from consuming his cereals, and
  • Ra, the sun god, would refuse to shine."
• strong resemblance (cherubim, carrying poles) between a pharoah's battle shrine and the portable Mishkan or Tabernacle that went into the desert with other riches - from a city that was abandoned
  • extremely strong similarity between the treatment of this portable shrine and the Temple rituals (inner and outer room) at Jerusalem.

Rosenberg further suggests that this date can be reconciled easily with Exodus 12:40 claiming 430 years in Egypt - since 1760 BCE - and the theory that the Israelites came to Egypt with the semitic Hyksos, as proposed by Josephus Flavius, which modern scholars place within decades of that time. An also, that if the Solomonic Temple was built 12 generations after the Exodus (I Kings 6:1) and these are actually 30 not 40 real years, 360 years after 1330 is 970 BCE, again within decades of modern estimates.

However, Donald Redford said that there is little evidence that Akhenaten was a progenitor of Biblical monotheism. To the contrary, he said, the religion of the Hebrew Bible had its own separate development beginning 500 years later.

Other non-biblical sources seem to parallel the events which occurred at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, when the new religion of Akhenaten was denounced and his capital city of Amarna was abandoned. These tales often combine elements of the Hyksos expulsion. For example, Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE) tells how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. There are more than a dozen versions of this story, all of them adding more detail, most of them profoundly anti-Jewish. Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition. Josephus vehemently disagreed with the claim that the Israelites were connected with Manetho's story about Osarseph and the lepers. The stories told by Hecataeus and Manetho seems to be related in some way to that of the Exodus, although it is impossible to tell whether they both bear witness to historical events, or Manetho is a polemical response to the Exodus story, or the Exodus story a response to the Egyptian stories.

Three interpretations have been proposed for Manetho's story of Osarseph and the lepers: the first, as a memory of the Amarna period; the second, as a memory of the Hyksos; and the third, as an anti-Jewish propaganda. Each explanation has evidence to support it: the name of the pharaoh, Amenophis, and the religious character of the conflict fit the Amarna reform of Egyptian religion; the name of Avaris and possibly the name Osarseph fit the Hyksos period; and the overall plot is an apparent inversion of the Jewish story of the Exodus casting the Jews in a bad light. No one theory, however, can explain all the elements. An influential proposition by Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory.

References

Assmann, Jan (2009). "Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt". Oxford Bible Commentary. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674020306.

Booth, Charlotte (2005). The Hyksos Period in Egypt. Shire Egyptology. ISBN 0-7478-0638-1.

Breasted, James H. (2003) [1909]. History of Egypt from the Earliest Time to the Persian Conquest. Kessinger. ISBN 0-7661-7720-3.

Callender, Gae (2003). "The Middle Kingdom Renaissance". In Ian Shaw (ed.). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280458-7.

David, Rosalie (1998). Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195132151. Retrieved 18 September 2017.

Droge, Arthur J. (1996). "Josephus Between Greeks and Barbarians". In Feldman, L.H.; Levison, J.R. (eds.). Josephus' Contra Apion. Brill. ISBN 9004103252.

Faust, Avraham (2015). "The Emergence of Iron Age Israel: On Origins and Habitus". In Thomas E. Levy; Thomas Schneider; William H.C. Propp (eds.). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-04768-3.

Feldman, Louis H. (1998). Josephus's interpretation of the Bible. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520208537.

Geraty, L. T. (28 March 2015). Thomas E. Levy; Thomas Schneider; William H.C. Propp (eds.). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-04768-3.

Gmirkin, Russell E. (2006). Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and The Date of the Pentateuch. T & T Clark International. ISBN 9780567025920.

Hengstenberg, Ernest W. (1843). Egypt and the Books of Moses: Or, The Books of Moses, Illustrated by the Monuments of Egypt: with an Appendix. Allen, Morrill and Wardwell. ISBN 978-1-330-05724-7.

Johnston, Sarah Iles (2004). Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01517-3.

Josephus, Flavius (2006). Against Apion. ReadHowYouWant.com. ISBN 978-1-4250-0063-9.

Lloyd, A.B. (1993). Herodotus, Book II: Commentary, 99-182 v. 3. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-07737-9. Retrieved 23 December 2011.

Merrill, Eugene H.; Rooker, Michael A.; Grisanti, Mark F. (2011). The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 9780805440317.

Meyers, Carol (2005). Exodus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521002912.

Redford, Donald B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-03606-9.

Ryholt, K. S. B.; Bülow-Jacobsen, Adam (1997). The Political Situation in Egypt During the Second Intermediate Period, C. 1800-1550 B.C. Museum Tusculanum Press. ISBN 978-87-7289-421-8.

Ralph Ellis (author)

Ralph Ellis is an English author. He is primarily noted for his works in alternative biblical history and paleo-climatology.

Solomon, Pharaoh of Egypt

In his book Solomon, Pharaoh of Egypt (2002), Ellis said that the Hebrew biblical patriarchs were one and the same as the Hyksos pharaohs. Ellis further claims that the descendants of those Hyksos Fifteenth Dynasty rulers were later able to return to Egypt and recapture the throne. Specifically, he said that King David of the Old Testament was actually the Tanis pharaoh Psusennes II, and Solomon was Shoshenq I. Most historians believe that David and Solomon, as the wealthy and powerful rulers depicted in the Old Testament, did not exist.

Jesus, King of Edessa

In Jesus, King of Edessa (2012), Ellis identified King Agbar Manu VI of Osroene as the same monarch named by Josephus as King Izates bar Monobaz. He further identified this king as the biblical Jesus. Ellis admits that his view contradicts mainstream views of historical Jesus.

Ice ages, precession and dust-albedo feedbacks

Along with co-author Michael Palmer, Ellis proposed a mechanism for the modulation of ice ages by the Milankovitch-precession cycle. They suggest that decreasing concentration of CO2 eventually causes desertification and dust storms. This dust production, in turn, causes lower glacial albedo and increasing global absorption of insolation, forcing the climate into an interglacial period.

Exodus

Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. This Pharaoh presided over radical changes in Egyptian religious practices. He established a form of solar monotheism or monolatry based on the cult of Aten, and disbanded the priesthoods of all other gods. His new capital, Akhetaten or 'Horizon of Aten', was built at the site known today as Amarna. The city was built hastily, mostly using mud bricks. After Akehaten's death, it was abandoned. The temples, shrines, and royal statues were razed later, during the reign of Horemheb.

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars. One of the first to mention this was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism. Basing his arguments on a belief that the Exodus story was historical, Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve. Following his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.

Donald Redford said that there is little evidence that Akhenaten was a progenitor of Biblical monotheism. To the contrary, he said, the religion of the Hebrew Bible had its own separate development beginning 500 years later.

Other non-biblical sources seem to parallel the events which occurred at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, when the new religion of Akhenaten was denounced and his capital city of Amarna was abandoned. These tales often combine elements of the Hyksos expulsion. The earliest of these was a history of Egypt written by the Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE), who tells how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. There are more than a dozen versions of this story, all of them adding more detail, most of them profoundly anti-Jewish.

In another version of this story, Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition. Josephus vehemently disagreed with the claim that the Israelites were connected with Manetho's story about Osarseph and the lepers. The stories told by Hecataeus and Manetho seems to be related in some way to that of the Exodus, although it is impossible to tell whether they both bear witness to historical events, or Manetho is a polemical response to the Exodus story, or the Exodus story a response to the Egyptian stories.

Three interpretations have been proposed for the story: the first, as a memory of the Amarna period; the second, as a memory of the Hyksos; and the third, as an anti-Jewish propaganda. Each explanation has evidence to support it: the name of the pharaoh, Amenophis, and the religious character of the conflict fit the Amarna reform of Egyptian religion; the name of Avaris and possibly the name Osarseph fit the Hyksos period; and the overall plot is an apparent inversion of the Jewish story of the Exodus casting the Jews in a bad light. No one theory, however, can explain all the elements. An influential proposition by Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory.

IP editor suggestions

Reign of Tutankhamun (1330 BCE)

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, an Israeli archaeologist - along with most interpreters of Osarseph's story or legend - suggest that conditions in the Amarna period ending with the reign of Tutankhamun very closely match those described in Exodus:

• a large mudbrick city having been just constructed by slaves of Akhnaten in two years at El Amarna, a site with little straw, and being abandoned with his religion
• a disenfranchised monotheistic priest class displaced by followers of the old gods of Saqqara & Luxor being restored
• extremely specific predictions of disaster - recorded on his restitution stele - claiming "old gods would punish him if they were not given back their old rights and positions:
  • Hapi, the androgynous god of the Nile, would make its waters undrinkable;
  • Kermit, the goddess of fertility, would release her frogspawn to swarm over the land;
  • Osiris, the god of corn, would not prevent the locusts from consuming his cereals, and
  • Ra, the sun god, would refuse to shine."
• strong resemblance (cherubim, carrying poles) between a pharoah's battle shrine and the portable Mishkan or Tabernacle that went into the desert with other riches - from a city that was abandoned
  • extremely strong similarity between the treatment of this portable shrine and the Temple rituals (inner and outer room) at Jerusalem.

Rosenberg further suggests that this date can be reconciled easily with Exodus 12:40 claiming 430 years in Egypt - since 1760 BCE - and the theory that the Israelites came to Egypt with the semitic Hyksos, as proposed by Josephus Flavius, which modern scholars place within decades of that time. An also, that if the Solomonic Temple was built 12 generations after the Exodus (I Kings 6:1) and these are actually 30 not 40 real years, 360 years after 1330 is 970 BCE, again within decades of modern estimates.

Referring to Osarseph who was claimed by later translators of Manetho (not likely Manetho himself) to have been the Egyptian name for Moses, his religious conflict was with the pharaoh, Amenophis, while the name of Avaris and possibly the name Osarseph fit the Hyksos period, implying Hyksos descent of at least his own family. Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests Osarseph's story combines the Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory. Josephus Flavius relied on Manetho apparently to conclude that the Hyksos were Israelite forefathers.

Possible sources and parallels

Ipuwer Papyrus

Tutankhamun's abandoned city

Akhnaten had according to Egyptian records built a city at El Amarna in just two years but after his reign (the Amarna period) it was abandoned along with its monotheism and all priests of that religion as the old gods were restored, after specific threats of plagues that are nearly identical to Exodus'. An abandoned pious monotheistic city quickly made of mudbrick by harshly taskmastered slaves in a location with little straw simply does not occur at any other time in Egyptian recorded history.

The Osarseph story or legend clearly associates Hyksos invaders with outcasts (such as lepers) and rebel priests and claims they caused chaos before being forced out. Some names match the Amarna period, and Osarseph was claimed to be Moses by Greeks translating Manetho who had (by the time of translation) seen the Book of Exodus.

Text from Hyksos article

Canaanite populations first appeared in Egypt towards the end of the 12th Dynasty c. 1800 BC, and either around that time or c. 1720 BC, established an independent realm in the eastern Nile Delta. In about 1650 BC, this realm was assumed by the rulers known as the Hyksos, who formed the Fifteenth Dynasty.

It has been claimed that new revolutionary methods of warfare ensured the Hyksos the ascendancy in their influx into the new emporia being established in Egypt's delta and at Thebes in support of the Red Sea trade. However, in recent years the idea of a simple Hyksos migration, with little or no war, has gained support.

In any case, the Sixteenth Dynasty, and the 17th Dynasty continued to rule in the South in coexistence with the Hyksos kings, perhaps as their vassals. Eventually, Seqenenre Tao, Kamose and Ahmose waged war against the Hyksos and expelled Khamudi, their last king, from Egypt c. 1550 BC.

The saga of the Hyksos was recorded by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), chief priest at the Temple of Ra in Heliopolis, which is preserved in two quotations by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus. In the first volume of Manetho's History of Egypt, as retold by Josephus, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their invasion and dominion over Egypt, their eventual expulsion, and their subsequent exile to Judaea and their establishing the city of Jerusalem and its temple. In the second volume Manetho defined the Hyksos as being the Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings" or "Captive Shepherds" who invaded Egypt, destroying its cities and temples and making war with the Egyptian people to "gradually destroy them to the very roots". Following a war with the Egyptians a treaty was negotiated stipulating that these Hyksos Shepherds were to exit Egypt.

Several authors have identified the Hyksos with the Israelites of the Exodus, beginning with Josephus. As Donald Redford pointed out, aspects of the Exodus narrative might very well represent a Canaanite memory of the arrival of Semitic peoples in the Delta region of Egypt, and their subsequent expulsion. The popular documentary film The Exodus Decoded by Simcha Jacobovici goes further, claiming that the Exodus tale more or less accurately represents the actual events of the Hyksos expulsion. These claims have been vigorously challenged by scholars. Most modern historians reject any identification of the Hyksos with the Israelites, for a variety of reasons.

Text from Tatelyle's version

Dating the Exodus

Attempts to date the Exodus to a specific century have been inconclusive. William F. Albright, the leading biblical archaeologist of the mid-20th century, proposed a date of around 1250–1200 BCE, but his so-called "Israelite" evidence (house-type, the collar-rimmed jars, etc.) are continuations of Canaanite culture. The lack of evidence has led scholars to conclude that it is difficult or even impossible to link the exodus story to any specific point in history. Finkelstein and Silberman also place the Exodus in the 13th century BC and debate the accuracy of the biblical account. They state that Jericho was unwalled and does not show destruction layers consistent with the Bible's account (e.g., Jericho was "small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified (and) there was also no sign of a destruction".) Finkelstein and Silberman's assessment is based upon a 13th century chronology for the Exodus, and would not necessarily apply if the Exodus took place at an earlier date. It is universally accepted that Jericho was a substantial fortified city before its destruction in the 16th century BC.

Although controversial, earlier dates for the Exodus are assumed in several ancient texts and modern analyses. The biblical Book of 1 Kings 6:1 places the Exodus 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple, and based upon the accepted date for King Solomon's reign this places the Exodus in c. 1446 BCE. However it is widely claimed that the time period in 1 Kings merely represents twelve generations of forty years each. In a similar fashion Professors R. A. Freund and E. W. Hengstenberg concur with Flavius Josephus, who says that the Israelite Exodus was the Hyksos Exodus, which would again place the Israelite Exodus in an earlier era. Prof Freund quotes Josephus when he says:

It is evident ... that these shepherds as they are here called (the Hyksos Shepherd Kings), who were no other than our forefathers, were delivered out of Egypt, and came thence and inhabited this country.

Possible sources and parallels

Ipuwer Papyrus

Manetho and the Hyksos

The Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE) wrote a history of Egypt in which he told how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. A similar and more famous story is told by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), chief priest at the Temple of Ra in Heliopolis, which is preserved in two quotations by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus. In the first volume of Manetho's History of Egypt, as retold by Josephus, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their invasion and dominion over Egypt, their eventual expulsion, and their subsequent exile to Judaea and their establishing the city of Jerusalem and its temple. In the second volume Manetho defined the Hyksos as being the Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings" or "Captive Shepherds" who invaded Egypt, destroying its cities and temples and making war with the Egyptian people to "gradually destroy them to the very roots". Following a war with the Egyptians a treaty was negotiated stipulating that these Hyksos Shepherds were to exit Egypt. It is Josephus who identifies the Hyksos with the Jews, not Manetho. Professor Freund quotes Josephus when he says:

[The Hyksos] kept possession of Egypt five hundred and eleven years. After this ... the shepherds were subdued and were driven out of other parts of Egypt, but were shut up in a place named Avaris ... Despairing of taking the place by siege [Thummosis] came to an agreement with them: that they should leave Egypt ... After this agreement was made, they went away with their whole families and effects, not fewer in number than two hundred and forty thousand; and took their journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, for Syria. ... where they built a city in ... Judea ... and called it Jerusalem. In another book Manetho says, “That this nation thus called shepherds, were also called captives in their sacred books.” And this account of his is the truth. For feeding of sheep was the employment of our forefathers ... and as they led a wandering life in feeding sheep they were called shepherds. Nor was it without reason that they were called captives by the Egyptians, since one of our ancestors, Joseph, told the King of Egypt that he was a captive.

Both Freund and Hengstenberg agree with Josephus' analysis of the accounts by Manetho, which equate the Hyksos people and Exodus with the Israelite people and Exodus. Freund says: "It is clear from this account that neither Josephus nor Manetho connects the Exodus with Pharaoh Rameses." Freund also notes that the biblical Ramesses, which has been identified with Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta by many Egyptologists, was located on the same site as Avaris, leading him to add:

[Avaris] was probably the ancient city of Rameses mentioned in the Book of Exodus (1:11) ... If so, the Book of Exodus preserves an accurate and historically verifiable fact: that the 16th century BC Exodus began from Avaris, which was indeed at a later time a city of Ramesses.

In conclusion Hengstenberg claims that the Egyptians adopted the Israelite Exodus story to construct their own history of the Hyksos; while Freund believes that the biblical redactors took the history of the Hyksos and blended it with other events to create the account of the Israelite Exodus. Manetho's second account of an exodus relates how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition. Josephus strongly disassociates the Israelites from this second account.

Historians agree that the stories told by Hecataeus and Manetho are clearly related in some manner to the biblical account of the Exodus. However, it is impossible to tell whether these accounts bear witness to actual historical events or whether they are a polemical response to the Exodus story, or indeed whether the Exodus story is a response to the Egyptian accounts.

9/7 Version

Behind the Exodus traditions: Possible sources and parallels

The scholarly consensus is that there was no Exodus as described in the Bible. Nevertheless, there is also a general understanding that something must lie behind the traditions, even if Moses and the Exodus narrative belong to collective cultural memory rather to history. Traces of this cultural memory can be found in accounts from non-biblical sources that seem to parallel the biblical tradition. The earliest of these was is history of Egypt written by the Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE), who tells how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. There are more than a dozen versions of this story, all of them adding more detail, most of them profoundly anti-Jewish. The most famous was told by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE) and preserved in two quotations by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus. In the first, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their dominion over and expulsion from Egypt, and their subsequent foundation of the city of Jerusalem and its temple. In the second, in his History of Egypt, he described the campaign of the Hyksos to exterminate the "root and branch" of Egypt. Following war with Egypt, a treaty decreed these Shepherds to exit Egypt. Josephus (not Manetho) identifies the Hyksos with the Jews. In the second story Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition. The stories told by Hecataeus and Manetho seems to be related in some way to that of the Exodus, although it is impossible to tell whether they both bear witness to historical events, or Manetho is a polemical response to the Exodus story, or the Exodus story a response to the Egyptian stories.

Date

Attempts to date the Exodus to a specific century have been inconclusive. 1 Kings 6:1 places the event 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple, implying an Exodus at c. 1450 BCE, but the number is rhetorical rather than historical, representing a symbolic twelve generations of forty years each. There are major archaeological obstacles to an earlier date: Canaan, also known as Djahy, was part of the Egyptian empire, so that the Israelites would in effect be escaping from Egypt to Egypt, and its cities were unwalled and do not show destruction layers consistent with the Bible's account of the occupation of the land (e.g., Jericho was "small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified (and) [t]here was also no sign of a destruction". (Finkelstein and Silberman, 2002). William F. Albright, the leading biblical archaeologist of the mid-20th century, proposed a date of around 1250–1200 BCE, but his so-called "Israelite" evidence (house-type, the collar-rimmed jars, etc.) are continuations of Canaanite culture. The lack of evidence has led scholars to conclude that the Exodus story does not represent a specific historical moment.

My lede

Adolf Hitler c. 1933; photo by Heinrich Hoffmann

Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs have been a matter of debate. Raised by an anti-clerical father and practising Catholic mother, Hitler was baptised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, but he ceased to participate in the sacraments after childhood. After rejecting the tenets of Catholicism, Hitler flirted with the occult, which he also ultimately rejected. In his book Mein Kampf and in public speeches he often made statements that affirmed a belief in Christianity. Hitler and the Nazi party promoted "Positive Christianity", a movement which rejected most traditional Christian doctrines such as the Apostles' Creed, as well as Jewish elements such as the Old Testament. Hitler claimed that he continued to believe in an active Deity, and to hold Jesus in high esteem as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against Jewry.

While a few scholars accept these views as genuine, most believe that Hitler was skeptical of religion generally, but recognized that he could not be elected if he expressed his true opinions. Rees and various Hitler historians find no evidence that Hitler, in his personal life ever expressed belief in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Hitler's remarks to confidants, as described in the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer, and transcripts of Hitler's private conversations recorded by Martin Bormann in Hitler's Table Talk, are further evidence of his anti-Christian beliefs.

Hitler himself was reluctant to make public attacks on the Church for political reasons. Goebbels wrote in April 1941 that though Hitler was "a fierce opponent" of the Vatican and Christianity, "he forbids me to leave the church. For tactical reasons." Hitler himself remained a member of the Catholic church until his suicide, and was never excommunicated.

However, once in office, the regime sought to reduce the influence of Christianity on society. From the mid-1930s, his government was increasingly dominated by militant anti-Christians like Bormann, Goebbels, Himmler, Rosenberg and Heydrich whom Hitler appointed to key posts. It was these anti-church radicals who were generally permitted or encouraged to perpetrate the Nazi persecutions of the churches. The regime launched an effort toward coordination of German Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church (but this was resisted by the Confessing Church), and moved early to eliminate political Catholicism. Hitler agreed to the Reich concordat with Rome, but then routinely ignored it, and permitted persecutions of the Catholic Church. Smaller religious minorities faced harsher repression, with the Jews of Germany expelled for extermination on the grounds of Nazi racial ideology. Jehovah's Witnesses were ruthlessly persecuted for refusing both military service and allegiance to Hitler's movement. Hitler said he anticipated a coming collapse of Christianity in the wake of scientific advances, and that Nazism and religion could not co-exist long term. Although he was prepared to delay conflicts for political reasons, historians conclude that he ultimately intended the destruction of Christianity in Germany, or at least its distortion or subjugation to a Nazi outlook.

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Adolf Hitler c. 1933; photo by Heinrich Hoffmann

Aspects of Adolf Hitler's views on religion have been a matter of debate. Hitler's Table Talk by his private secretary Martin Bormann, the Goebbels Diaries and the memoir of Albert Speer present Hitler as having been skeptical of religion, but opportunistic and shrewdly aware of its impact on politics, and thus prepared to delay conflicts with the churches for political purposes. Leading Hitler historians such as Kershaw, Evans, Bullock, Overy, and Rees share this assessment of the Nazi leader's religious beliefs. Historians conclude that he ultimately intended the destruction of Christianity in Germany, or at least its distortion or subjugation to a Nazi outlook.

Hitler was raised by an anti-clerical father and practising Catholic mother. Baptised and confirmed Catholic as a boy, he expressed skepticism from an early age, and grew to be hostile to Catholicism. After leaving home at age 18, Hitler never attended Church again. Rees and various Hitler historians find no evidence that Hitler, in his personal life ever expressed belief in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Goebbels wrote in April 1941 that though Hitler was "a fierce opponent" of the Vatican and Christianity, "he forbids me to leave the church. For tactical reasons." Speer believed that Hitler had remained in the Catholic church until his suicide, though considered he had "no attachment" to it and planned a "reckoning" after the war.

In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf (1925-7), he refers to "God", "the Creator" and "Providence". The book outlines a nihilistic, social darwinist vision of history as a constant struggle for racial survival. It criticizes the churches for failing to appreciate the "racial problem" and advocates separation of church and state. As a politician in the 1920s, Hitler presented the phrase "Positive Christianity" as an acceptable brand of Christianity, provided it did not offend Nazi ideology. Steigmann-Gall sees an "inner logic" to such terminology but notes that historians generally consider its use to be a tactical ploy. Campaigning for office, Hitler said he was a Christian and that National Socialism was a Christian movement. Rees writes that, given Hitler's personal animosity to Christianity, the most persuasive explanation of such statements is that "Hitler, as a politician, simply recognised the practical reality of the world he inhabited... his relationship in public to Christianity—indeed his relationship to religion in general—was opportunistic." Hitler courted support from conservatives who opposed "atheist Bolshevism". When taking power in 1933, he promised not to threaten the churches. The promise was unkept - his regime went on to oppress the churches, and worked to reduce the impact of Christianity on society.

Nazism was not formally atheist and generally permitted religious observance. Hitler's religious policies involved widespread repression, tempered by pragmatism in the face of widespread belief. He moved early to contain Catholicism via the Reich concordat, but routinely breached the treaty and Catholics faced persecutions. He sought to control and manipulate Protestantism under a united Reich Church, but the attempt failed amid resistance. As a result, around 1934, he lost interest in politically backing positivist Christianity. Disdain for Judaism was central to his ideology, and he also sought the extermination of Jehovah's Witnesses. He made some favourable remarks on Islam and Japanese religion, and cultivated warm relations with Japan and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. From the mid-1930s, his government was increasingly dominated by militant anti-Christians like Bormann, Goebbels, Himmler, Rosenberg and Heydrich whom Hitler appointed to key posts. "However much Hitler on some occasions claimed to want a respite in the conflict [with the churches], his own inflammatory comments gave his underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat on the 'Church Struggle', confident that they were working towards the Fuhrer" noted Kershaw: Hitler said he anticipated a coming collapse of Christianity in the wake of scientific advances, and that Nazism and religion could not co-exist long term. He said he would destroy the churches when the war was over.