OUT OF EGYPT

If you haven’t heard about it, you really don’t need to know. Suffice to say that we have another coalition government crisis! Our coalition government crises are “as tedious as a twice-told tale.”

Instead, I want to repeat a much-told tale that isn’t tedious.  Some of it I mentioned last year, but this time it’s a revised version.

Just before Pesach I wrote “I’m usually preoccupied arranging seating placements for our kibbutz Seder. Last year we were in lockdown and had to forego the communal Seder. This year we are out of lockdown, but still limited by participant numbers restrictions, so we are celebrating at home with small family Seders.

In the past I have raised the question of the Exodus narrative in the context of the Pesach festival.

This year I want to quote again from author Ian Shaw (“Israel and Israelites”) who claims there is an almost universal consensus among scholars that the Exodus story is best understood as myth; more specifically, it is a ‘charter’ (or foundation) myth, a story told to explain a society's origins and to provide the ideological foundation for its culture and institutions.

While a few scholars continue to discuss the potential historicity or plausibility of the Exodus story, for historians of ancient Israel it is no longer seen as viable and archaeologists have abandoned it as a fruitless pursuit.

There is no indication that the Israelites ever lived in Ancient Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula shows almost no sign of any occupation for the entire 2nd millennium BC

In contrast to the absence of evidence for the Egyptian captivity and wilderness wanderings, there are ample signs of Israel's evolution within Canaan from native Canaanite roots.

Professor Israel Finkelstein is one of the scholars quoted by Ian Shaw. Finkelstein and other scholars of the “minimalist” school are an accepted part of the academic landscape in Israel.

Israel Finkelstein is Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University. He is active in the archaeology of the Levant and an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history.

Contrary to the biblical story that recounts the tale of the people of Israel leaving Egypt, the common view among mainstream archaeologists is precisely the opposite: the ancient Egyptians were the ones who ruled the land of Canaan, and they are the ones who left the Land of Israel to return to Egypt.

Explaining the background of the biblical Exodus story as revealed from archaeological excavations Professor Finkelstein says, "In the Late Bronze Age, from the 15th century to the 12th century BCE, Egypt dominated the Land of Israel. Of course, after 350 or 400 years of Egyptian rule in Israel, influences of Egyptian culture entered the Land of Israel in various areas of everyday life. Then two things happened that are related to that same issue: there was a complete collapse of urban centres and of kingdoms and empires in the ancient Middle East, and Egypt withdrew from Israel!"

I think it’s apt here to include the opinion of one of the ‘maximalists;

Dr. Scott Stripling, provost at The Bible Seminary in Katy (Houston) Texas, has been sifting the sands of Israel for over 20 years. Using the Bible as a guidebook he is now digging in Shiloh, which he surmises may be the true site of the Tabernacle. However, some of his fiercest critics are Israeli archaeologists who claim the Bible cannot be relied upon to tell historical truth.

Arthur Szyk's "The Exodus from Egypt" Paris 1924

Stripling serves as the archaeological director for the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), a Christian organization that brings together Biblical research and archaeology to mutually advance both disciplines.

Stripling and his team began digging at Shiloh a few years ago.

“I can tell with 100 percent certainty that there were Israelites in Shiloh because of the many indicators we have,” Dr. Stripling said. “The pottery shows that they were there when the Bible says they were there.

Professor Israel Finkelstein who led the dig at Shiloh in the early 1980’s, disagrees with Stripling and does not concur that the Biblical description of the Tabernacle is historically accurate. Unlike Stripling, Finkelstein said that a lack of physical evidence is proof that the Jewish Tabernacle never stood at Shiloh.

“Biblical traditions should be read on the background of their time of composition, the ideology of the authors, etc. One cannot approach them in a simplistic manner,” The story of the Ark of the Covenant is fascinating; but it can teach us mainly about the world of the authors who lived centuries after the destruction of Iron [Age] I [which ended around 1,000 BCE]..”

Stripling is at odds with Finkelstein and many other Israeli archaeologists over the site, but more importantly, over a greater issue that touches on the entire discipline as it is practiced in Israel. Stripling uses the Bible as a historical guidebook.

“I use the Bible as a serious historical document to the same extent that I use any serious literary source,” Stripling explained. “It would be foolish not to. I have found numerous synchronisms between the archaeological data and the Biblical text. That does not hinder me from doing vigorous scientific research. If anything, it empowers me.”

Dr. Stripling addressed this very issue in his book,” The Trowel and the Truth”. He explained that the dispute is framed as minimalism versus maximalism.

“There is an accusation some make that if you happen to believe what you are reading in the Bible, it disqualifies you as a scientist,” Stripling said. “In Israel, most of the archaeologists are secular and atheists. They do not accept the Bible as a historical text. That puts me outside of the mainstream of archaeology but that’s precisely where I want to be.”

“Minimalists, like Finkelstein, say that you can’t trust the Bible,” Stripling said. “Maximalists, like me, maintain that the Bible is a historical document.”

This has indeed set him at odds with his peers in Israel.

“This is a hot topic in Israeli archaeology today and there’s not a day that goes by that someone isn’t angry at me,” Stripling said. “In the past, the minimalists were able to ignore maximalists. They can’t do that anymore because we are bringing in results.”

Stripling speculated that there could be several causes of this anti-Bible approach in the world of Israeli archaeology.

“It may be driven by the personal religious inclinations of the archaeologists,” he said. “It may also be driven by their personal political agenda since the historical narrative has implications in current politics.”

“It may also be that a lot of these archaeologists were trained under a secular paradigm that said that there is no relationship between the archaeological data and the Biblical text.  Some secularists, when they see the evidence, they are fair-minded and open.”

“I engage these people in the arena of ideas,” Stripling noted. “If my ideas, based on the Bible as a historical text, can’t stand up to scrutiny, then they are not very good ideas.”

 I want to conclude by repeating what I said last year:

"Incidentally, Israel Finkelstein sees no contradiction between holding a proper Pesach Seder and telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, and the fact that, in his opinion, the exodus never happened."

 

Chag Pesach Sameach

Beni                                                                            8th of April, 2022