In
2001 on the first day of Passover, Rabbi David Wolpe told his congregation that
the story of the Exodus could not be verified by archaeologists and most likely
did not happen as Torah describes. This being the age of the internet and
social media, news of the sermon spread through the larger Jewish community at
the speed of light. Many people responded with anger, derision, and
disappointment. Anger because they heard in Rabbi Wolpe’s words a
challenge to the veracity of the foundational story of the Jewish People, the
narrative that explains our origins as a nation and our purpose as a people,
and which provides a paradigm for just about everything we do as Jews: it’s all
focused on redemption. Derision because a rabbi suggested that Torah isn’t
“true” (of course, this depends upon a very narrow understanding of what
constitutes truth). Disappointment because the story of the Exodus is
stimulating and inspiring and the thought that it is largely (or entirely?) fictional demotes it from “history”
to “fairytale. Fairytales are far less inspiring than historical accounts and
we Jews have long taken religious and ethical cues from our own history. Those
who did not respond with anger, derision or disappointment nodded in
recognition because Rabbi Wolpe said what academics have been saying for a long
time. But hearing it in synagogue on chag—the religious track of life—rather
than on a college campus or reading it in an academic book felt different.
Recently,
Prof. Michael Satlow of Brown University published How the Bible Became Holy,
in which he goes several steps further along the academic track. Satlow’s
provocative book argues that the collection of writings that have come to be
called “the Bible” were not widely disseminated and taught—or even widely known—during
the biblical period, nor considered holy books with normative authority until
rather late in the game: they were promoted by the Sadducees at the end of the
Second Temple period. Prior to that, they sat in Temple and royal archives, the
province of scribes who composed them and used them for training exercises
(freely altering and amending them at will), or were considered oracles. Satlow
points out, for example, that the Book of Chronicles reflects the
Deuteronomistic history. He writes: “Chronicles portrays a Jewish society
firmly entrenched in the land of Israel with a well-functioning cult.
Chronicles does not even mention the story of Israel’s sojourn in and exodus
from Egypt. Israel, according to the Chronicler, did not ‘settle’ the land of
Canaan; it was always there.”[1] No enslavement to Pharaoh in Egypt? No plagues? No
Exodus? No crossing the Reed Sea?
Some
academics have argued that there is no evidence to prove the Exodus narrative
is based on historical fact: There are no written records from ancient Egypt
attesting to Hebrew or Israelite slaves (and certainly not to a man named
Moses). There is no mention of any of the plagues, let along a series of them.
There is no archaeological evidence of an Israelite settlement in Egypt, nor
movement of even a fraction of the 600,000 souls Torah claims wandered for you
decades through the wilderness of Sinai (and that number includes only
military-age men; women and children would bring the tally closer to two
million). The Torah account includes supernatural events (for example, the
parting of the Reed Sea) which cannot be accepted as historical in any regard.
There is no evidence at all of a conquest of the Land of Israel on the timeline
of the Bible.
Others
have decried that an absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Ancient
Egyptian texts would have referred to “Asiatics,” not Hebrews or Israelites.
Archaeological evidence of West-Semitic populations in the area called Goshen
in the second millennium B.C.E. does exist. The biblical account includes
details of ancient Egyptian culture from the time of the purported Exodus and
long before the texts were written down. The Torah’s description of Israel’s
journey reflects knowledge of the geography and conditions of the area Israel
is said to have traversed. Migrants don’t leave archaeological evidence precisely
because they move around rather than settle down. While the two million number
is clearly hyperbolic, perhaps a much smaller group left Egypt (which is more
in keeping with the Torah’s own description of the size of the Israelite
encampment in the wilderness). Other ancient texts—particularly from the Roman
period—are accepted as having historical value despite their use of wildly
inflated numbers and supernatural claims.
Joshua
Berman, professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, points out that among
academic disciplines, Bible studies stands apart for the double standard that
is applied to biblical texts alone, perhaps stemming from the fact that many
students of Bible are also “believers in” the Bible. The fear that students of
Bible will lean on their faith and justify their views with, “The Bible says it’s
true!” or worse, “God said so!” and call this academic scholarship is alarming
to many academics. Berman says that, “In the drive to keep fundamentalists at
bay, some scholars have wound up throwing out the Bible with the bathwater,
preemptively downgrading its credibility as a historical witness.” What is
more, Berman claims, the power struggle we find within biblical studies today
is, “an aspect of the larger culture war that rages between liberals and
conservatives in the U.S. (and, with different expressions, in Israel). In that
war, the place of religion in the public square is a major battleground, with
skirmishes over hot-button issues ranging from abortion and gay marriage to
public display of the Ten Commandments.” In this culture war, the Bible has
been co-opted on one side to suppress evolutionary science, on on the other
side, to claim that all of Ancient Israel is a fictional fabricatione.
The
cultural Zionist, Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsburg, 1856–1927), long ago dismissed
the challenge of scholars who denied the historicity of the Exodus account. He
was unmoved by the attempt of scholars in his day to prove that Moses never
existed. Focusing on the character (in both senses of the word) of Moses, he
wrote in 1904:
I care not whether this man Moses really existed;
whether his life and his activity really corresponded to our traditional
account of him; whether he was really the savior of Israel and gave his people
the Law in the form in which it is preserved; and so forth. I have one short
and simple answer for all these conundrums. This Moses, I say, this man of old
time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to
nobody but scholars like you. We have another Moses of our own, whose image has
been enshrined in the hearts of the Jewish people for generations and whose
influence on our national life has never ceased from ancient times till the
present day. The existence of this Moses, as a historical fact, depends in no
way on your investigations. For even if you succeeded in demonstrating
conclusively that the man Moses never existed, or that he was not such a man as
we supposed, you would not thereby detract one jot from the historical reality
of the ideal Moses—the Moses who has been our leader not only for forty years
in the wilderness of Sinai, but for thousands of years in all he wildernesses
in which we have wandered since the Exodus.[2]
Ahad Ha’am
said that we are asking the wrong question. Rather than ask, “Who is Moses?” we
should ask, “What is the meaning of Moses?” Moses is the figure of leadership
that is loyal to God, loyal to his people, and a loyal advocate for justice and
righteousness. The meaning of Moses’ life—whether the biblical account is historical,
fictional, or a hybrid—remains a shining example of why the Jewish people
exists and how we see our mission in the world.
Where
does this leave us, who wish to find religious and moral meaning in the story
of the Exodus? I cannot share Ahad Ha’am’s lack of curiosity at what legitimate
academics can teach us about our history and the origin of our sacred texts; I
do not worry that what they will reveal will make them any less holy. I believe
that, in fact, they will challenge us to use our religious imaginations to dig
deeper into our texts to inspire our religious lives. I believe we can learn to
balance academic knowledge with our need to find spiritual direction and
meaning by studying these texts. With a Moses and an Exodus that are very much
alive in our imaginations, vivid in our religious memory, and inspirational in
our souls, we will learn that there are different kinds of “truth” and that no
one has a monopoly on either truth or wisdom. For after all, as Talmud (BT
Shabbat 55a) teaches, “God’s seal is truth.”
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
