Exodus as Described in the Bible Never Happened

As I have already said earlier, the Old Testament is a book of historical fiction inspired by true events. Or a collection of heavily fictionalized true stories, if you prefer (I do). And the Exodus from Egypt is a prime example.

The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites – cut and dry, plain and simple. The scholarly consensus is that the Exodus, as described in the Old Testament, is not historical, even though there may be a historical core behind the Biblical narrative… unfortunately, no one knows exactly what it was.

Modern archaeologists believe that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan and were never in ancient Egypt, and if there is any historical basis to the Exodus it can apply only to a small segment of the population of Israelites at large.

Nevertheless, there is also a consensus that some historical event may have inspired these traditions, even if the Exodus narrative belongs to the collective cultural memory of the Jews rather than history.

Most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some of the Jews came, one way or another, from Egypt. There is no indication that the Jews ever lived in Ancient Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula shows almost no sign of 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 Canaanite roots. While a few scholars continue to discuss the plausibility, of the Exodus story, the majority of archaeologists have abandoned it as a fruitless pursuit.

The biblical narrative contains some details which are authentically Egyptian, but such details are scant, and the story frequently does not reflect Egypt of the Late Bronze Age or even Egypt at all (it is unlikely, for example, that a mother would place a baby in the reeds of the Nile, where it would be in danger from crocodiles).

A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness.

Archaeologists generally agree that the Israelites had Canaanite origins. The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite gods, the pottery remains are in the Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite.