Did the Jews Really Flee Egypt for the Holy Land?

Richard N. Ostling, in the Associated Press (April 3, 2004):

There's been unending debate about whether the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt -- which Jews commemorate each year at Passover (which begins at sundown Monday) -- was an actual event, a national legend or a blend.

Some scholarly doubts about the literal history are reflected in the new "Jewish Study Bible" (Oxford University Press, $40), the first one-volume commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures comparable with several top-notch Christian study Bibles.

But one expert has produced another important work that's more favorable toward the Bible's accounts: "On the Reliability of the Old Testament" (Eerdmans, $45) by K.A. Kitchen, professor emeritus of Egyptology and archaeology at England's University of Liverpool -- and a Christian conservative.

The Study Bible's commentary on the Book of Exodus was written by Jeffrey Tigay of the University of Pennsylvania, who agrees with Kitchen that at least the rough outlines fit with what's known from sources outside the Bible.

"If there is a historical kernel" to the Exodus story, Tigay cautiously concludes, the overall situation is "not inherently implausible."

Kitchen grants that the Exodus events can never be proven absolutely from evidence outside the Bible. But he says they correspond with the "attested realities" and known culture and language of the late second millennium B.C., and that favors "acceptance of their having had a definite historical basis."

Some specifics: Experts agree that ancient Semites from the Holy Land (Canaan) often moved into Egypt for food, water and work. Some reached high office; others were enslaved. There's evidence for the biblical slave cities of Pithom and Rameses built by Pharaoh Rameses II.

Then there's an inscription from the reign of Rameses' successor Merneptah (1213-1203 B.C.) that identifies a people called "Israel" living in Canaan just after the Exodus period (though some set an earlier Exodus date). Archaeological remains indicate that many settlers entered Canaan in this period. And the Exodus-related lands of Edom and Moab are mentioned in Egyptian records.

If the Israelites had invented their origin, Tigay writes, they likely would have portrayed themselves as the Holy Land's original inhabitants, "rather than interlopers with a humiliating background as slaves." On that, Kitchen comments, "Nobody else in Near Eastern antiquity descended to that kind of tale of community beginnings."

It's often noted that Egyptian inscriptions which survived didn't mention the Exodus. But Kitchen says the Egyptians never made inscriptions marking defeats or slave rebellions.