Abstract
The Exodus was a fable inspired by possible events of Israel’s past although its historical genesis will be as irretrievable to us as will be its original narrators. It is important to understand that the text’s modern discussants to not wield the tools necessary to confront the epistemological challenges that we face. The true question is: “What do we need to know in order to know what we want to know?” Faced with storytellers and their audiences who contributed historical detritus while adding artistic value to the story, the subject’s sole value is to recover the story’s magic: to understand Israel’s modes of social thought over time and the culture that immortalized the Exodus.
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Notes
- 1.
A later Brahmin, Emerson (1836: 1) reports: “Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.... The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? . . . Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” Newton’s Book of Nature is a child of the paleolithic, and an adult in the seventh century BCE.
- 2.
2 Sam 7:23 = 1 Chr 17:21; Deut 4:7, 34–39, for example. The motif of incomparability in conjunction with the Exodus begins with Exod 15:11. Cf. also Deut 33:29; Ps 147:19–20; contrast, 2 Kgs 18:35 = Isa 36:30 and 2 Chr 32:14. The specificity of the comparison is absent in post-exilic texts.
- 3.
Halpern 1993. To the treatment of Joseph’s Egyptian name there as a Semitic-Egyptian portmanteau should be added a possible tie to the god, Baal Zaphon, on whose prominence particularly in the New Kingdom see Bietak.
- 4.
Based on interviews conducted at Bedouin encampments and settlements in the company of Emmanuel Marx, 1984.
- 5.
After 1967, Israeli police found over 70,000 stolen automobiles buried in the Sinai for resale in Egypt.
- 6.
In 1983, Yigael Yadin described (in conversation) his first meeting with the cabinet of Jordan’s King Abdullah. The king introduced his ministers by name and role, and in some cases added the remark, “He’s an Arab.” Asked what distinguished “Arabs” from the others, Abdullah responded that they had epic poetic traditions. Yadin asked, “Like this?” and recited the few lines of Bedouin epic he recalled from his student days. The king embraced him: “Ya Yadin! You're an Arab!” Cf. Talmon 1966; Dozeman 2000.
- 7.
Exod 12:1–27, 43–49; 13:1–16. Friedman (2003) assigns 12:1–20, 40–49 to P, and 13:1–16 to E. Neither envisions the sacrifices of Pesah/Mazzot as public, but rather as particular to households or compounds.
- 8.
Hendel's intimations lead to the inference, it was town elites who eventually shed Egypt's longstanding sovereign demands for logistical support. The model of the Peloponnesian War or of Byblos in the Amarna archive suggests a rise of competing parties in each town. Initially, the ruling elite and their village client elites depend on the Egyptian network; their counterparts ally with mobile elements, who disrupt the crops and the caravans of the rulers. More difficult to account for is the role of Philistia in this equation.
- 9.
- 10.
Of course, land armies did traverse that terrain, without leaving detected archaeological traces. As Friedman observes, the census numbers are from P.
- 11.
That intentional amendment is communal is a lesson that should have been learned already when the Samaritan Pentatuech was introduced into text-critical discourse in the eighteenth century.
- 12.
For one trajectory of this concept from Collingwood to Gadamer, see Lucas 1997: 111–112.
- 13.
The last is a warning: it is a terrible misreading, with a bearing on the evolution of the book itself. Note the survival of DtrH as the definitive account of Israelite history, or of Deuteronomy, or of other Josianic partisans (Zephaniah and Ezekiel) and the canon all these appealed to (Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah): our informants left a very specific discussion, within a narrow tradition, first to themselves and ultimately to us, as David Vanderhooft has pointed out (in conversation); all this material, like summations of pre-Socratic fragments, was party literature. Likewise, the survival of the ideology of the reform in 2 Isaiah, 3 Isaiah and the whole establishment of the post-exilic era. Churches have a penchant for portraying themselves as marginal, particularly in their first centuries. The zeal of reform abates only long after a party licenses its intellectual terrorists to conduct witch-hunts. At first, parties plead for pluralism, diversity. Power diminishes their tolerance. It also bears recollection that Jeremiah was appointed one of the top (three) officials of the Babylonian provincial administration. His story is reminiscent of that of Yohanan ben-Zakkai's relationship with Vespasian (T.B. Gittin 56a-b), and probably a model for it. This is an established authority (Sommer 1998; Halpern 1998), the founding figure, the truest oracle, of a post-exilic party. Even from Egypt, even under the Persians, his position and faction emerge from the Exile with the upper hand. Pseudepigraphic recourse to Isaiah is meant to undermine his influence.
- 14.
Another need: a serious discussion of the claim that archaeologists are licensed to choose just any interpretation of text, after having rejected text, because they cannot distinguish between those who date texts rationally and those who do not. A tit-for-tat response would be, archaeologists find Noah's Ark, Atlantis, alien colonists, and “Malibu Barbie” (Rowe 1994), on occasion. Hard to distinguish between those archaeologists and the others?
- 15.
P’s conception intentionally demands the plural.
- 16.
That earlier commemorations of the action at the Sea of Reeds do not describe the cleavage was observed by Cross 1973. Instead, they use terms such as “turned dry” (= was fordable?). But the agreement is with the Jordan River division in Joshua: as in J, and evidently in E, the Sea is withheld, and then restored to its flow. That J incorporated Exodus 15 is certain, since the E doublet has Miriam sing the incipit: RJE relates both, rather than combining them; J's account thus ended with Exod 15:1–18. Antique poems are used by all Pentateuchal sources as warrants, evidence for, their narratives. This is not a strategy one finds, however, in the layers of the Deuteronomistic History from the late seventh century forward. A question arises, then: what event is in mind in Psalm 68? Zebulun and Naphtali are singled out as in SDeb; Benjamin is youngest; Yhwh's in Jerusalem. We have flooding and kings fleeing, as in SDeb; there are echoes of Deut 33, probably Gen 49, and a J reflex of its processional use in Num 10:35 f. (Halpern 1981: ch. 3; cf. Knohl 2010). Booty and tribute eventuate. This song requires fresh attention, as do a number of lesser early compositions.
- 17.
P has the wind as the first principle in Gen 1. In J’s Exodus 14, wind is motive, driving water back; in P, Moses divides water without wind. In Exodus 14, P reenacts the flood, the divided water combined again, reversing the cosmology of Genesis 1. Versus J, where the change back to dry land as in Gen 2:2 ff. is more natural.
- 18.
Judg 6:3, 33; 7:12; cf. 3:13; 10:12. There is also a mixture of Moab and Midian in the Balaam story.
- 19.
Num 22:4, 7. Friedman (2003) 280 argues that Midian enters the Balaam text secondarily, as a reaction to the RJEP combination of J's Moab narrative in Num 25:1–5 with P’s Peor dalliance in 25:6–19. This division, to begin with, is problematic. There is no JE conclusion in Num 25, a genuine rarity, as Friedman has shown. Further, there are no close parallels in R's technique: the gratuitous intrusion of Midian into Moab seems sudden, not subtle. I understand Midian here as a representative of the mystical east, as though their elders are magi. They are thus appropriate porters of magical tokens to Balaam—tokens used in divination (hair, hems, figures, arrows). Balaq in Num 22:15 sends weightier ambassadors than those in 22:7, indicating that Midian’s elders were recruited to impress the seer. In the continuation, it is the god who yields to their import. (The mockery of Balaam for not divining his ass's message perhaps engages the purposeful straying of asses in 1 Sam 9.) God’s acquiescence to the journey is a doublet: 22:20–21//22:22–35. Balaam's foot being crushed as a result of the angel's action (22:25) also relates to Jacob's lamed thigh in Gen 32:26, 32–33, with the pun on ngd (C) in the same passage. That Israel “covers the eye of the land” (22:5, 11) relates to the locust plague (Exod 10:5, 15, E; and note Deut 33:28, which relates, too, to Num 23:9).
- 20.
P tying the same name to Gad (Num 2:14). Josh 13:21–22 follows P (Num 31). In Num 10:29–32, J also assigns Moses's in-laws to Midian. J makes the assignment in Exod 2:16–22, E in Exod 3:1; 4:18. That Judges 4 follows J rather than E probably has to do with Judahite antecedent exegeses of the Song of Deborah. Note further that P agrees on the name of the mountain (Sinai v Horeb) with J against E. However, the more freighted revelation of the divine name has PE agreement against J (along with the Midianite execration and the absence of imprecation against Amaleq; and, plague narratives). Since so important a concurrence suggests other such choices are charged, P's relegation of Reuel to an Edomite lineage is probably a comment on J's naming of him as Moses's father-in-law, like the separation of Qen from Amaleq in 1 Sam 15. In fact, E refers to one of Moses's wives as a Cushite (Num 12:1). Some identify her with Cushan, parallel in poetry to Midian in Hab 3:7.
- 21.
The text may comment on Saul's handling of Amaleq in 1 Samuel 15 and simultaneously on David's distribution of spoil in 1 Sam 30:24–25. It also establishes the rules of Holy War in P. The term, zikkārôn in 31:54 obliquely recalls the Amaleqite issue. A Midianite woman violates the tent in Nu 25:6, 14; Midian are children of Qeturah in Gen 25.
- 22.
Linguistic features of Exodus 15 precede standard Hebrew. Semantically, it deserves and has not received thorough review, but “driver” for rkb seems to fall out of the lexicon, as do nd (but for Isa 17:11) and transitive r`ṣ (otherwise, paired with rṣṣ, in phonetic play (r`d may be related), both used in quotations; note ṣll with the meaning, “plumb” and transitive nwy (cf. Hab 2:5; and, the pun in Exod 15:13). The absence of light cavalry, consonant with Egyptian practice, no longer characterized Israel by the late ninth century. The poem is not twelfth-century, as it presents Philistia as a regional designation (though not as a polity). Its political geography, including Edom and Moab as regions (without naming Ammon, possibly for poetic reasons), is more plausibly Iron IIA than Iron IA. Another archaic poem, Balaam's “El, who brought …,” denies wizardry in/against Israel (23:23; 24:1) and may have inspired P's contest with Egyptian magicians. The use of the verb yṣʼ, C, of god in these passages perhaps programs its use in E and P, principally, in connection with the Exodus. The other verb commonly used for the Exodus, `lh, C, often takes Moses as a subject, negatively in P especially (with exceptions). Like this, other poetry with Exodus or Conquest associations, including Balaam on Amaleq and Qen, deserves detailed treatment.
- 23.
That seventh-century concept is absent from Isaiah (11:15–16; 19:5), with his seven branches of the “Sea of Egypt” and Yhwh's five towns, altar and stela in Egypt, and repetition of Egypt's humiliation (19:17–25). The idea of a sea's division comports with his imagery, as with the language of hydrological engineering, but enters the Reed Sea tradition afterward. (Sennacherib, in 2 Kgs 19:24; Isa 37:25, boasts of drying up the Niles.) Drying also appears in Isa 42:15; in a closer echo of Exodus in 44:27; and with passage across waters, 50:2; 51:10; Ps 106:9. Jer 51:36 connects it with Babylon; Hos 13:15 has east wind drying, but not connected with Exodus. Am 7:4's dried Tehom is cosmostrophic, as Nah 1:4. bq` as a verb here occurs in Exod 14; Isa 63:12–14; Ps 78:15; Neh 9:11; it is cosmogonic. Ps 74:15. ybš C appears in Josh 2:10; 4:23; 5:1, referring, respectively, to the Reed Sea, the Jordan and Reed Sea, and the Jordan; the deverbal noun appears in Exod 14; 15:19; Ps 66:6. Note the relative paucity of reference to the event at the Sea in any form, especially in earlier materials.
- 24.
Here, the test of historical intellect is most acute: what can be confirmed or refuted, will, for a time. First, fallacious arguments and, then, dead assumptions are by-products of inadequate tools. So some historians dwell among contemporary horizons of assumption; others imagine developments beyond that 360° horizon. Yet scholarly contributions about even a minute issue have a butterfly effect. Anticipating, not trends in emplotment or rhetoric but in areas where evidence will be sought, is more like writing Verne-like science fiction: futurology more than divination.
- 25.
- 26.
Remembering always that the sacrifice is for a kinship unit, and thus, the yāḥîd is the representative not of a nuclear family, but of a community, QR yaḥad.
- 27.
Starting at least with the case of Tiglath-Pileser I, who erected a stela in the Lebanon in sight of the one that he encountered of Anum-hirbi.
- 28.
For self-working prophecy and double causation in texts from 2 Samuel and the Joseph story down to Josiah's death and Oedipus, see Halpern 2001.
- 29.
One might see in Balaq another ruler whose own naiveté renders him the object of divine trickery as well, and question how the Gibeonite deception fits the pattern. The reversal of divine permission for Balaam's journey is probably a result of JE source combination (see above on the doublet); the divine attempt on Moses may, oddly, be more ironic. It certainly turns on Zipporah's having outwitted god by fulfilling the condition that Moses be “a bridegroom of bloodguilt,” perhaps that he kill for her, but with respect to circumcision. For further divine trickery, see Jer 4:10; 1 Kgs 18:37; 22:19–23; Ezekiel 20.
- 30.
I prescind from the division of J from E in this narrative chapter, but insist that within JE's plague sequence diachronic development is easily discerned.
- 31.
So, blood kills fish, and frogs therefore mature in numbers, but their death leads to a profusion of insects, etc. See for example the National Geographic “documentary,” The Ten Plagues of the Bible, which aired 4 April 2010 on its channel.
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Halpern, B. (2015). Fracturing the Exodus, as Told by Edward Everett Horton. In: Levy, T., Schneider, T., Propp, W. (eds) Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_21
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