Guidance for the Perplexed Regarding the Exodus

helpFor those who may feel lost about the Exodus question, I’ve briefly collected a few helpful links and references here. I’ll start with a bottom-line summary, then provide articles, YouTube lectures, and books below.

Bottom-Line Summary

Those who simply want an evangelical crutch to give assurance of Biblical accuracy will find the gate wide and road broad. I leave such readers to brace their insecurities as they wish. But for those who want to understand the state of knowledge and agreement within the overall community of evidence-based research, I offer the concise summary of the moderate scholar William Dever, given in a 2013 lecture:

To make a long story short, today not a single mainstream biblical scholar or archaeologist any longer upholds Biblical Archaeology’s “Conquest Model.” Not one. Various theories of indigenous origins [for the people of Israel] prevail, in which case there is neither room nor need for a Biblical Exodus — at least of that [Biblical] proportion.

~ William Dever, UC San Diego Exodus Conference, June 1, 2013 (YouTube)

[Read more…]

Quote: Kitchen Summarizing The Exodus

Cover of "On the Reliability of the Old T...

Cover of On the Reliability of the Old Testament

The Exodus and Sinai events are not hereby proven to have happened, or the tabernacle and covenant, etc., to have been made then. But their correspondence not just with attested realities but with known usage of the late second millennium B.C. and earlier does favor acceptance of their having had a definite historical basis.

~ K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament

It is widely kn…

It is widely known that the book of Exodus and the conquest narratives in Joshua and Judges do not give us a journalistic recounting of freed slaves and the beginnings of an independent nation.

Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam (Ch. 4)

Three years ago…

Three years ago on Passover, I explained to my congregation that according to archeologists, there was no reliable evidence that the Exodus took place–and that it almost certainly did not take place the way the Bible recounts it. Finally, I emphasized: It didn’t matter.

~ Rabbi David Wolpe
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2004/12/Did-The-Exodus-Really-Happen.aspx

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