Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition

281 Pages·1997·17.63 MB·English

by  James K. Hoffmeier

ISRAEL IN EGYPT
This page intentionally left blank
ISRAEL IN EGYPT
The Evidence
for the
Authenticity
of the
Exodus
Tradition
JAMES K. HOFFMEIER
New York Oxford • Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford NewYork
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta
Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul
Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1996 by James K. HofFmeier
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, NewYork, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1999
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
HofFmeier, James Karl, 1951-
Israel in Egypt : the evidence for the authenticity of
the Exodus tradition /James K. HofFmeier
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1SBN-13 978-0-19-509715-3; 978-0-19-513088-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 0-19-50971 5-7; 0-19-513088-x (pbk.)
I. Exodus, The. 2. Egyptian literature — Relation to the Old Testament.
3. Bible. O.T. Exodus I-XV — Extra-canonical parallels.
1. Title.
US680.E9H637 1997
222'. I 2O95 dc2O 96-3 1595
9
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen
on the occasion of his retirement
from the University of Liverpool in appreciation for
his many yean of friendship,
support,
and encouragement
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE
The biblical stories about Israel's origins in Egypt are so well known to people of
Europe and the English-speaking world that one hardly has to rehearse the details.
Whether people know them from reading the Bible, children's books, or from
viewing epic film classics such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, the
Hebrew heroes Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Miriam, and Joshua are cele-
brated as the founders of the nation of Israel. By and large, historians over the cen-
turies have considered these individuals and the events in which they participated
to be historical. The advent of archaeology and the deciphering of cuneiform in-
scriptions from Mesopotamian and Egyptian hieroglyphics brought the Western
world into direct contact with the world of the Bible, making the fathers and moth-
ers of Israel come alive. Sensational discoveries by Flinders Petrie and Edouard Nav-
ille in the Delta and Wadi Tumilat at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of
twentieth centuries were initially thought to provide firsthand evidence for the
presence of the Hebrews in Egypt. Meanwhile, John Garstang's finds at Jericho
seemed to support claims that the city was burned and its defense walls flattened,
as related in Joshua 6. But subsequent investigations of these sites reversed earlier
interpretations, and the evidence that originally appeared to confirm the stories
concerning Israel's origin was met instead by embarrassing silence; for some this
implied the repudiation of the Hebrew tradition.
Since the pioneering days of Petrie, Naville, and Garstang considerably more
archaeological data has been uncovered in Egypt, and yet, even as the discipline
viii Preface
of archaeology is about to enter a new millennium, direct evidence for the events
and figures of Genesis and Exodus remains elusive. Prior to the nineteenth cen-
tury only a few scholars questioned the historicity of the patriarchal narratives of
Genesis and stories of the sojourn-exodus and Joshua's conquest of the land of
Canaan. Beginning in middle of the nineteenth century and continuing into the
twentieth, however, many western scholars considered these tales to be sagas, leg-
ends, and etiologies, but not historical records. In response to this critical climate,
the biblical archaeologist William Foxwell Albright and his followers set a positive
tone from the 1940s through early 1970s. Within these circles, the veracity of the
biblical stories of Israel's Patriarchs in Genesis to the conquest of the "Promised
Land" as described in Joshua and Judges seemed assured. However, a new gener-
ation of skeptics, or historical minimalists, have come to the fore over the past
twenty years and challenged such a positive assessment.
In the first two chapters, I survey these developments and critique the new ap-
proaches and conclusions. The position of the minimalist school is that there was
no Joseph serving Pharaoh, no Israelite bondage in Egypt, no Moses and the ex-
odus, and certainly no military invasion of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua.
In place of the biblical accounts of Israel's origin, new, provocative hypotheses
have been advanced. While different methodologies have been employed, a new
consensus seems to be emerging within a small but influential circle that maintain
that Israel was a purely Levantine, indigenous development. So important has
been this development that the cover story in the December 18, 1995, issue of
Time magazine was entitled, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?" The subtitle read "Ar-
chaeologists in the Holy Land are shedding new light on what did—and didn't—
occur in the greatest story ever told." This subtitle reflects the mood and think-
ing of some involved in the origins of Israel debate. In this book, I will challenge
the premise that the absence of archaeological evidence can prove what did or did
not happen in Bible history.
The "origins of Israel" debate of the past two decades has, by and large, been
an intramural exercise with biblical historians and biblical/Syro-Palestinian ar-
chaeologists leading the way; however, little if any, attention has been given to ma-
terials from Egypt, except the Merneptah (Israel) stela, that might shed light on
Israel's origin. While historians of ancient Israel have not seriously considered
Egyptian sources, neither have Egyptologists over the past fifty years shown much
interest in the Hebraic connection to the Nile Valley. This is a strange attitude for
Egyptologists considering that the Bible has been a partner in historical inquiry
from the beginnings of Egyptology. In recent decades, though, Egyptology has
developed into a discipline in its own right, independent of Old Testament stud-
ies, and consequently there has been little interest in studying the Hebrew Bible
and even a reluctance to enter biblical debates. This reticence is evident in an ar-
ticle by Manfred Bietak, the director of the Austrian excavations at Tell el-Dabca.
In response to a paper presented by Donald Redford at a symposium on Egypt
and the Bible, Bietak confessed, "Being an Egyptologist I feel somehow embar-
rassed to comment on problems surrounding the theme of'the Exodus,' "' but he
later demurred, "I do not necessarily share Professor Redford's pessimism." Bietak
went on to offer helpful insights into the various biblical sources bearing on the
Preface ix
geography of the exodus and how the terms should be understood in the second
millennium and in the first. Thus Bietak, a brilliant Egyptologist, presents a cred-
ible argument for the authenticity of geographical descriptions in Exodus, while
remaining dispassionate about the Old Testament material. He seems to have no
agenda for or against the historicity of the Hebrew narratives.
Thus, when Egyptologists do write about connections between Egypt and the
Old Testament, they have generally accepted the Bible's claims. In Nicolas Gri-
mal's A History of Ancient Egypt, the French Egyptologist seems totally unaware of
the controversy brewing among biblical scholars and comfortably observes, "It is
considered possible that the Jewish Exodus may have taken place during the reign
of Ramesses II."2 He finds the lack of surviving evidence for this event "not in it-
self surprising, given that the Egyptians had no reason to attach any importance to
the Hebrews."3 Grimal's approach seems to be fairly representative of most Egyp-
tologists over the past twenty years.
While as a rule Egyptologists have not occupied themselves with scholarly in-
tegration of Egyptian and Hebrew sources, there have, of course, been a number
of outstanding exceptions over the past thirty years. Two of my graduate-school
mentors from the University of Toronto, Donald Redford and Ronald Williams,
along with Kenneth Kitchen from Liverpool University, are examples of Egyp-
tologists who were also trained in Old Testament studies and other cognate Near
Eastern languages. All three have published widely on matters of contact between
Israelite and Egyptian history and culture. Over twenty years ago, Williams
identified why biblical scholars tend to ignore Egyptian sources when studying
the Hebrew Bible:
By the very nature of their training, Old Testament scholars are more likely to have
acquired a first-hand knowledge of the Canaamte and cuneiform sources than they
are to have mastered the hieroglyphic and hieratic materials of Egypt. For this rea-
son they have had to depend to a greater degree on secondary sources for the latter.
It is not surprising, then, that Israel's heritage from Western Asian in such areas as
mythology, psalmody, theodicy, proverb collections, legal "codes" and practices,
suzerainty treaties and royal annals has been more thoroughly investigated. Yet
Egypt's legacy is by no means negligible.4
He, of course, believed that Israel had its birth as a nation in Egypt and, by virtue
of being a neighbor in the following centuries, had ongoing contact with it. Hence,
Williams maintained that Egyptian influence could be found within the pages of
the Old Testament. He concluded his seminal essay by saying, "Due caution must
always be observed in assessing the claims of direct influence, but the evidence is
overwhelming that Israel drank deeply at the wells of Egypt. In a very real sense the
Hebrews were'a people come out of Egypt (Num. xxii 5, 11).'"5 While this book
was in the early stage of preparation, the scholarly world lost Professor Williams
after a lengthy illness. His sagely approach, command of a wide range of sources and
positive contributions to Egyptian-Old Testament studies will be sorely missed, but
I hope that something of his legacy will be borne out by this volume.
On the other hand, Redford's important contributions to biblical studies have
leaned in the minimalist direction, although he did reject the prevailing status quo