Every year for Pesach, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz publishes an article or two that argues the Exodus never happened, didn’t happen the way the Haggada tells us, or actually did happened. This year, Haaretz published on April 5 an article by Phillipe Bohstrom, an archeologist.
Bohstrom acknowledges that “The Exodus could be a distant Semitic memory of the expulsion of [the] Hyksos, or small-scale exoduses by different tribes and groups of Semitic origin during various periods. Or it is a fable.
He suggests there is a logic to accepting that there is something real in the Exodus story: “Psychologically …. why would scribes invent a tale about such a humble and humiliating beginning … as slavery? Nobody but the Jews describe their community’s beginning in such lowly terms. Most people prefer to connect their leaders to heroic deeds or even to claim a direct lineage to Gods.”
Bohstrom counters skeptics who doubt that an exodus occurred at all. He argues the lack of documentary evidence of Israelite slavery is unsurprising since the delta’s mud swallowed up buildings, let alone documents. He argues there is no reason to expect that the desert would provide evidence of nomads from so long ago. He refers to the argument that the huge Biblical numbers described in the Exodus would have generated contemporary references to it which we shold have found. Bohstrom says the numbers were not so great. Better translations suggest the number wandering in the desert was closer to 20,000 people, not millions.
Bohstrom also argues, “there were historical figures and events that could have inspired the Exodus account.”
Egypt was the wrold’s breadbasket. “…[W]hen famine hit neighboring lands, starving peoples often made their way to the fruitful soils of Egypt.” “…at least some of these peoples were of Senitic origin, coming from Canaan specifically and the Levant in general”
In the 20th century, BCE, 4,000 years ago, “The tomb of the high priest Khnumhotep II of the 20th century BCE …. shows a scene of Semitic traders bringing offerings to the dead”. Bohstrom says “Some of these Semites came to Egypt as traders and immigrants. Others were prisoners of war, and yet others were sold into slavery by their own people. A papyrus [from the 20th century BCE] mentions a wealthy Egyptian lord whose 77 slaves included 48 of Semitic origin.”
In the 17th century BCE, Bohstrom says “Canaanites had actually achieved … power, in the form of a line of Canaanite pharaohs ruling the Lower Kingdom”. These Canaanites remained at peace with the pharaohs of the Upper Kingdom. The “Canaanite pharaohs included the mysterious “Yaqub,” whose existence is attested by 27 scarabs found in Egypt, Canaan and Nubia and a famous one found at Shikmona, by Haifa.” Bohstrom suggests some connection between “Yaqub” and the Biblical Jacob.
In 1650 BCE, in the middle of the 17th century BCE, the Canaanite leaders were replaced by the Hyksos whose origins were in Lebanon or Syria. Despite their rulers being displaced, Bohstrom argues that evidence from burial practices that the Canaanite population continued to thrive.
In the 1539 BCE (the sixteenth century BCE), Theban kings drove the Hyksos out of Egypt and united the Upper an Lower kingdoms. Bohstrom notes that Josephus cites an Egyptian scribe’s account of the Hyksos wandering in the desert and identifies them with the Israelites. Bohstrom also points out, though, that the Hyksos were rulers, not slaves. It is possible that it is more important that the Theban Kings Ahmose I and Thutmoses III expanded the Theban empire to include Canaan and Syria. Those conquests yielded captured and enslaved prisoners who further populated Egypt with Semites. Bohstrom describes the slavery of these prisoners, their brickmaking out of mud and straw resembling Biblical descriptions of Israelite slaves as did a 1450 BCE or (15th century BCE) tomb which showed slaves making bricks of mud and straw.