Wads4

I think it was a garbled version of the expulsion of the Hyksos shepherd kings from Avaris by Ahmose , founder of the 17th dynasty. Perhaps Ahmose was Moses,--in which case it happened 400 years earlier than thought, and coincided with the eruption of Santorini (Thera) around 1628 BC, whose fall-out could have polluted the Nile and caused a minor tsunami which reached to the Reed Sea in the Gulf of Suez. The Israelites stole the story when writing up the account in Exodus much later on to give themselves a pedigree.

Anat

I wonder when the tradition of the exodus became widespread among Hebrew speakers. It appears in various prophetic works, but were those works indeed composed at the times a naive reader would assume, or were these later compositions attributed retroactively to an earlier author? Was there a tradition of exodus prior to the retreat of Assyria and the subsequent expansion of Egyptian influence into Palestine in the 7th century BCE?

Fantastic Voyage

My understanding is that trip from Egypt to Canaan is about a two week journey.

Not exactly 40 years of wondering in the desert is it.
To be sure, the term 40 always signifies "unspecified time"...as in it rained 40 days and 40 nights in the Noah story.

Further there seems to be no archeological proof of the Israelites moving across the desert in mass formation.
So either they moved quickly into Canaan or it never happened.

IsItJustMe

The whole baby in the bushel thing... That's Gilgamesh. They were telling that story about him by probably about 2,000 B.C. So either it happened twice, or the authors of Exodus ripped it off from the Babylonians.

Sounds to me like this fellow was actually Egyptian and they stuck that on there to make him not be so. After all, he's supposed to be a prince of Egypt, he has an Egyptian name, and he doesn't talk to the Israelites. Spong says that's cause he didn't speak the language.

darstec

No, 40 does not always signify "unspecified time." Many times is is a magic number as in the 40 days and 40 nights of Noah's flood. It was in fact used as a very magic number.

David B

I've seen speculation in a pop science book (written by a dendrochronologist) that the plagues, the pillar of smoke etc, are garbled folk memories of Santorini and its aftermath. The dates don't quite fit, but they are uncertain, so it's not out of the question that they are compatible.

Santorini was quite a big event - bigger than Krakatoa and Tambora, and would, I imagine, have had a considerable impact on the environment of the Middle East.

I make no claim that this was the case, but it's an idea I take seriously.

David B

Wads4

I thought it was Sargon 1st,-perhaps not, maybe Gilgamesh also.

andrewcriddle

You're right. It is a story about Sargon NOT Gilgamesh.

Andrew Criddle

Berthold

Sigmund Freud wrote an essay with this idea.

That's, of course, assuming that Moses was a reasonably historical person. After all the historical and archaeological doubts that have been raised about the real achievements of Solomon, who could say anything reliable about Moses?