Dreadnought

In his book "Who wrote the bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)" Richard Friedman casually suggests that only the Levite tribe were in captivity in Egypt. He doesn't go into much depth about it, but just drops this line of reasoning in passing. His reasons are that Egyptian names were not uncommon among Levites, but not among the other tribes. The Levites were without land of their own which fits with them being a later (re-)arrival. Also Levites commonly traced their ancestry to either Moses or Aaron.

What he doesn't mention explicitly, but which I think gives added plausibility to the scenario is that the Pentateuch is mostly written by Levites who naturally would emphasize their history and not neccesarily that of all the Jews.

The number of Levites leaving Egypt would be hard to estimate, but I doubt that there could be more than a few thousand and for the sake of argument we can assume that they went straight to Israel without messing about in the desert.

Having read this I found myself for the first time entertaining the possibility that Moses and the Exodus actually are historical. Questions:
Is this scenario contradicted by anything solid, i.e something other than the bible? Is there still evidence that should have been found for this (arguments from silence)? Does anyone know about a more in depth treatment of this hypothesis?

Headache

Isn't the only known so called exodus from Egypt by the Hyksos people?

Dreadnought

The connection between the Hyksos and the Hebrews is confusing as the Egyptians portray the Hyksos as rulers for 100 years that were subsequently thrown out while the Hebrews claim they were slaves. If the Hebrews and the Hyksos were really one and the same it's remarkable that the Hebrews didn't describe themselves as the former rulers of Egypt in the bible. However Josephus does claim that the Hyksos were the Hebrews I think.

Anyway this is an entirely different hypothesis.

Jayhawker Soule

What scenario? That someone 'left' Egypt at some time or another?

Minimalist

You might find this article of interest, Dreadnought.

http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Refe..._(Harpers).htm

Sauron

Minimalist, your article doesn't seem to address the OP. I don't think the original poster was as clear as he could have been. Let me try to rephrase.

1. 90% of the Israelites were indigenous to Palestine - no exodus for them, in spite of the OT story.

2. One group of people, the Levites, were in Egypt, for reasons unclear. That group a people called themselves a tribe (or later became one). It wa that tribe - and *only* that tribe - that wound up leaving Egypt and going to Palestine.

3. Since the Levites wrote the OT, they made the story of their tribe into the story of the whole Israelite nation.

ETA: I wonder if this could be the source of the Cohen Modal Haplotype that shows up in Jewish populations....just wondering out loud here.....

Dreadnought

I thought I had put it clearly, but yes, that about sums it up. I assumed it was common knowledge that the Hebrews were traditionally divided into 12 tribes each with their own specific territory except the Levites who had no territory, but were priests.

And yes Aaron is the speculated source of the Cohen Modal Haplotype. According to the bible, Aaron, the high priest during the Exodus and the assumed Cohen ancestor, and Moses were brothers and later priests traced their pedigree to one or the other.

Thanks for the article, minimalist, which more or less sums up the documentary hypothesis, but with a rather tabloid twist. I think it goes a bit too far in deconstructing history, but there are definitely gross exaggerations, distortions and some free fantasy in the OT. I do recommend the book I mentioned in the OP. It's remarkably accesible and well written for a book on the bible.

gstafleu

In The Bible Unearthed, Silberman and Finkelstein come to the conclusion that there is no (archaeological) evidence for the exodus as presented in the bible. They further say that, given the scale of the exodus, it would be impossible for it not to have left evidence, and hence they conclude it didn't happen.

A way around the lack of evidence is to reduce the size of the exodus (and hence of the number of Jews in Egypt) to something that would not necessarily have left evidence: the lack of it then no longer weighs as heavily. The problem with this is that it may state the problem in an unfalsifiable way. A proponent would have to adduce solid evidence that it did happen that way, just saying there is nothing to prove it didn't doesn't work.

BTW, I don't know if this is what Friedman did, as I haven't read his book.

Gerard Stafleu

Dreadnought

Thanks, I'll definitely check out Silberman and Finkelstein then. Actually I've heard of them before and they were on my list, but I'll give them a higher priority. And just to not put Friedman in a bad light, he didn't put it forward as a theory, just mention it as a possibility with some clues to why it would be one.

Minimalist

I don't know, Sauron. This was what he asked.


25 years of archaeological research which indicates that there was no Exodus ( and thus, no Moses, no Joseph, no Conquest, no Sojourn in the Desert) would not seem to leave a lot of room for the Levites.

Some people are still trying to breathe life back into that corpse. Finkelstein seems to have convinced his fellow archaeologists that "Israel" arose in Canaan at the end of the Bronze Age. Even Bill Dever agrees with him, now.