| Inconsistencies in the Biblical Exodus |
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| Miscellany | |
| Louay Fatoohi, PhD 13 December 2003 | |
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Source: History Testifies to the Infallibility of the Qur'an This section is not intended to assess the Biblical account of events with information from extra-Biblical sources but rather to point out some obvious weaknesses and inconsistencies in the Biblical story itself that are relevant to the subject of the present book. We come first to the Biblical claim that “the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.” This statement is made clearer later when the Bible claims that the number of the Israelite men only at the time of the exodus was about six hundred thousand (Ex. 12:37). This same figure is repeated in the book of Numbers when Moses is shown arguing with God: But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?” (Num. 11:21-22).The Bible mentions the presumably exact number when it refers to a census that was taken in the wilderness of Sinai: “All the Israelites twenty years old or more who were able to serve in Israel’s army were counted according to their families. The total number was 603,550” (Num. 1:45‑46), excluding Levites.[1] This huge number of men only means that the total number of the Israelites, men, women and their children, who left Egypt with Moses was in the region of two to three million. Although this huge number of the Israelites failed to bother the writers of the Biblical text, it has remained a persistent problem for modern exegetes of the Bible (Houtman, 1993: 231-234). Cornelis Houtman, Professor of Old Testament at the Theological University in Kampen in the Netherlands, has pointed out that the historical value of the several hundred thousand figure was rejected since 1862 by J. W. Colenso, one of the fathers of modern Biblical criticism (Houtman, 1993: 70). In fact, the German H. S. Reimarus had already ridiculed the 600,000 figure a century earlier (Hayes, 1977: 50). The problem with the 600,000 figure is that it is at the center of a number of contradictions in the Bible, including its conflict with the combination of the following other two Biblical statements: (i) the total number of Jacob’s descendants, except his sons’ wives, who settled in Egypt was 70 in all (Ge. 46:26‑27; Ex. 1:5); (ii) the Israelites lived in Egypt exactly 430 years to the day (Ex. 12:40-41). In other words, in only 430 years the population of the Israelites rocketed from less than one hundred to two to three million! Some Biblical scholars have attempted to account for the population increase by appealing to extraordinary claims of ancient authors who suggested that Egypt’s natural environment would make its inhabitants very fertile that a pregnancy could result in up to seven children! Rabbinical literature has attributed such fertility to the Israelite women in Egypt. However, Houtman notes that it is not obvious from the Bible whether its writers viewed Egypt as “a land that was particularly suitable to produce a great nation in a short time” and that all that the account in Genesis allows us to conclude is that “Egypt was the land that enabled the forefathers to survive the famine, so that Israel did not prematurely perish”. Houtman also notes that the increase in the Israelite population was regarded by the writers of the Biblical text as “a fulfillment of the promise” of God to the Israelites (Houtman, 1993: 232). Such a religious justification, however, does not compensate for the Biblical figure’s lack of historical foundations. Unimpressed by the impossibility of the six hundred thousand number, some scholars have suggested that the figure was not intended as an accurate representation of the number of the Israelite men but rather a symbolic figure that is used in the Bible to refer to an unspecified large number (Houtman, 1993: 70‑71). However, this explanation brings in yet more problems without resolving the one at hand and there are a number of reasons as to why it should be discarded altogether. First of all, this explanation essentially confirms the unacceptable Biblical claim that the Israelites were a large nation, disputing only their exact number. Secondly, the Bible cites throughout all kinds of numbers which are much less than 600,000 and the Biblical writers could have used any of these figures if they did not mean the number 600,000 exactly. For instance, particularly in the book of Numbers, whose name itself arises from its content of the various censuses and numberings of the Israelites taken prior to breaking camp and leaving Sinai, one finds many numbers smaller than 600,000 ranging between 22,000 (Num. 3:39) and 186,400 (Num. 2:9). Thirdly, the book of Numbers contains the counted numbers of the descendants of each of the twelve Israelite tribes and the sum of these is 603,550 (Num. 1:1‑46). So, the Biblical writers must have really meant the large number of 600,000 which is simply a rounding off of the presumably exact figure of 603,550. If this number is to be rejected as an exaggeration then all numbers that comprise it and which are listed in Numbers should similarly be discarded. In this case we also end up with a wholesale rejection of Biblical numbers, and it would not make any difference anyway as far the historical credibility of the Bible is concerned whether we discount the figures because they are symbolic or incredibly inflated. There are also a number of Biblical passages which explicitly state that the Israelites were in fact smaller in number than other nations, giving the totally different impression that either the Israelites were not 2-3 million as the 600,000 male figure suggests, or that a nation of this size was not large after all! These are some such statements: When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations - the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you ‑ and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally (De. 7:1-2).The problem that the 600,000 figure represents has significant implications that go beyond the question of the consistency of the Biblical text and touch on various aspects of the Biblical account of the exodus, as we shall see later on. Another Biblical claim that has been pointed out by a number of commentators as contradicting the suggested number of the Israelites at the time of their departure from Egypt is that the number of midwives required by the Israelite women was only two (Hyatt, 1971: 60). The women in a nation of some six hundred thousand men would certainly need many more than just two midwives. Professor Martin Noth has also noted that Pharaoh’s desire to prevent any growth of the Israelite population by killing their baby boys and the existence of only two Israelite midwives assume “that the Israelites lived very close together in Egypt, and had not yet grown so excessively numerous” (Noth, 1962: 23). The claim that the Israelites numbered some two to three million and the claim that they had only two midwives are clearly irreconcilable with each other. Scholars have also noted that the Biblical claim that the total period that the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years is contradicted by other Biblical statements (Noth, 1962: 100). There are these words of the Lord to Abraham in the book of Genesis: Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill‑treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Ge. 15:13-16).Firstly, here we have 400 rather than 430 years. This contradiction has been explained away by some researchers by suggesting that the 400 years is a rounded figure of the more precise figure of 430 years (e.g. Kitchen, 1966: 53). As to why there should be any rounding of figures in general and of as many as 30 years in a period of 430 years in particular, there is no answer. Additionally, the Bible stresses that the exodus occurred “At the end of the 430 years, to the very day” (Ex. 12: 41), thus leaving no room for a liberal reading of the figure. Secondly, this whole 400 years or so is said to represent four generations only. Henry Hart Milman noted since 1829 that this is a straightforward contradiction in the Biblical narrative (Hayes, 1977: 57). The reference to four generations is repeated in Exodus (6:14-26) which shows Moses to be from the fourth generation after Jacob. Here the Bible claims that Moses was son of Amram son of Kohath son of Levi son of Jacob who is a grandson of Abraham. However, as has been noted by researchers (e.g. Hyatt, 1971: 140), the “fourth generation” here is that of Jacob whereas the reference in Genesis (15:16) is to the fourth generation of Abraham, i.e. there is a difference of two generations between both versions of the “fourth generation”. So rejecting the 400-430 year sojourn and opting for the four generations assumption, as Noth (1962: 100) does, is not really much of a solution. Houtman concludes his discussion of the problems raised by the genealogy when considered with other Biblical material, including the reference to the length of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, as follows: When one surveys the various explanations for the observed discrepancies one can only conclude that they are of a rather manufactured nature. It seems best simply to acknowledge that the manner in which the author has used material from the various sources at his disposal has led to a presentation which is not in every respect balanced and congruous (Houtman, 1993: 514).It should be noted here that the Biblical claim that Moses belonged to the fourth generation of Jacob, or even of Abraham, renders the other Biblical claim that the Israelite men counted 600,000 when they departed from Egypt absolutely nonsensical. The self‑refuted claim here is that the descendants of less than 100 persons counted some 2‑3 million after four generations! This contradiction has already been picked up by scholars (e.g. Houtman, 1993: 512). One way of harmonizing the above contradictions is by suggesting that the Hebrew word dôr is not to be understood as “generation” in the modern sense. Thus, in his attempt to show that his suggestion that four dôr equal in fact to 400 years is not a mere harmonization exercise, Kenneth Kitchen, Professor of Egyptology at Liverpool University, points out that in Ugaritic and early Assyrian sources, the word dāru, and hence the Hebrew word dôr, can mean a span of eighty years or more (Kitchen, 1966: 54). Yet even if this is a valid definition of the term dôr it does not explain why the Bible refers to “four” rather than “five” generations, particularly given that 430 is the exact number of years anyway. This explanatory attempt also implies that it is merely fortuitous that Exodus 6:14‑26 shows Moses to be from the fourth generation of the descendants of Jacob. Kitchen also eliminates the contradiction caused by Exodus 6:14‑26 by suggesting that these verses do not give a full genealogy of Moses, despite the fact that there is no reason, apart from the harmonization motive, to suggest otherwise. Additionally, the problem with any such harmonization attempt is its unjustified acceptance of one Biblical number but not another. Why would four dôr be equal to 400 and not 430 years, the other Biblical figure? Indeed, why would the four dôr be any of these figures at all? Why not 350 or 450, for instance, when Biblical numbers are inaccurate anyway? Setting out from its extravagant claim about the Israelites’ explosion of population, the Bible states that Pharaoh decided to take a drastic measure against the Israelites by enslaving them in forced labor to stop the increase in their number. There is a contradiction here. Pharaoh’s ultimate aim of controlling the number of the Israelites was to prevent them from being an effective power and the possibility that they would side one day with his enemies and, ultimately, “leave the country” (Ex. 1:10). So, Pharaoh’s fear was not that they may support his enemies but rather leave the country. This implies that the Israelites were already used as slaves and Pharaoh did not want to lose their services. Yet we are told in the next verses that in order to prevent this happening, Pharaoh decided to “put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour” (Ex. 1:11)! What the Bible is in effect telling us here is that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and, therefore, Pharaoh did not want them to leave the country so he tried to control their number by enslaving them! Additionally, the fact that the Israelites were already used as slaves cannot be reconciled with the Biblical claim that Pharaoh wanted to control their number because one would want to increase the number of slaves not decrease them. Apart from all this, it is rather difficult to understand why Pharaoh would think that employing the Israelites as forced labor would stop the increase in their number. As this birth control action spectacularly failed, resulting in yet further increase in the number of the Israelites, as the Bible makes clear, Pharaoh moved to the most extreme measure by giving his orders for all Israelite newborn boys, but not girls, to be killed. While the suggestion that slavery could have been used by Pharaoh to limit the Israelite population is rather ridiculous, it is fairly reasonable to expect a ruthless monarch to resort to massacre to control the exploding population of the people that he did not trust. However, the naive and clumsy way in which the Bible says Pharaoh wanted to carry out his plan drives the whole story into looking like mere fiction. The Bible tells us that Pharaoh summoned the two “Israelite” midwives and gave them the order to kill the newborn boys of their “fellow Israelites”! Moreover, it is just inconceivable that the midwives would go about killing each and every baby boy that they help with his birth, something that is supposed to take place in the midst of the babies’ families! The naivety of Pharaoh that this plan suggests is beyond imagination. And it is quite obvious from Pharaoh’s later questioning of the midwives about their reason for not killing the newborn boys that no Egyptian soldiers were accompanying the midwives to carry out the killings and that the midwives themselves were supposed to do the dirty job for Pharaoh. And as if these images of an unbelievably naive Pharaoh were insufficient, the Bible gives yet another in which Pharaoh is shown accepting the Israelite midwives’ justification of their failure to achieve the killings when they tell him that, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive”! One can hardly think of a more self‑evidently ridiculous reply which can be confronted on a number of accounts, yet the Biblical account implies that Pharaoh simply accepted it and never even thought of asking the obvious question about the point then of having Israelite midwives in the first place. Professor Philip Hyatt concludes that the reply of the midwives should not be considered historical: The excuse offered by the midwives belongs in the realm of folklore, and is designed to show the superiority of the Hebrew women. In point of fact the Hebrew women may have been stronger and healthier than the Egyptian women of the upper classes, but they were hardly more so than all the Egyptian women. There is a touch of humour here (Hyatt, 1971: 61).Houtman offers a similar view: Taking the reply of the women seriously is the wrong approach. The narrative does not give information about the mode of delivery among Israel and in Egypt. The writer aims to tell that the king of Egypt has the wool pulled over his eye by two women who dish up a fantastic story (Houtman, 1993: 257-258).Let’s also not forget here that Pharaoh was not alone in his court and he would have been surrounded by advisors. So in fact the incredible naivety that the Biblical text attributes to Pharaoh must have been characteristic not only of Pharaoh but also of his court. An extreme example of exaggeration, to say the least. Another indication on the historical incredibility of the Biblical account is what Houtman (1993: 188) terms as “the village atmosphere” of the story where, for instance, Pharaoh is shown to be in direct contact with the two Israelite midwives (see also Rogerson & Davies, 1989: 354). The Biblical claims that Pharaoh ordered the murder of all Israelite newborn boys and that he enslaved the Israelites are also inconsistent with each other because the former would make the latter impossible (Houtman, 1993: 261). And given that the Bible says that the Israelites were already numerous, hence a danger, and that Pharaoh wanted to annihilate the Israelites, Houtman also raises the reasonable question as to why Pharaoh would think of killing only the young boys and not the men as well. Scholars have also pointed out discrepancies in the Biblical etymology of the name “Moses”. The Bible claims that the name that Pharaoh’s daughter gave to the baby means in Hebrew “I drew him out of the water”. This claim has been rejected on a number of accounts. Firstly, it suggests that the Egyptian princess knew Hebrew (Hyatt, 1971: 65). Secondly, the explanation given for the name depends upon similarity in sound rather than scientific etymology, for the name “Moses” (Hebrew: Mošeh) could be an active principle of the Hebrew verb “mašah”, which means “to draw out”, whereas the Biblical explanation of the name requires a passive principle. In other words, one would expect the baby to have been called “he who is being drawn out” rather than “he who arises out of” (Houtman, 1993: 289; Noth, 1962: 26). The Biblical etymology of the name reflects a misunderstanding of the meaning of the Egyptian root from which the name Moses is derived (Thompson, 1977: 155). Contrary to the Biblical view, scholars agree that Mošeh is an Egyptian rather than a Hebrew name. It is a shortened form of an Egyptian name whose first element was the name of a god. Examples on such names are Ahmose, Tuthmosis, Amenmesses and Ramesses. Such names were widely used in Egypt during the New Kingdom period (1570-1070 BCE). Noth has commented that, “Ancient Israel did not know that Moses is in reality an Egyptian name, that it is a shortened form of Egyptian names like Ahmose, Tuthmosis, etc. The narrator of Exodus (2:1‑10) did not know this either; otherwise he would hardly have missed the opportunity of explaining the strangeness of the name by the adoption and naming of the child by a daughter of Pharaoh” (Noth, 1962: 26). The name of Moses’ father-in-law in Midian is another Biblical discrepancy. He is called “Reuel” in Exodus (2:18), “Jethro... the priest of Midian” in Exodus (3:1, 4:18, 18:1)[2], “Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite” in Numbers (10:29), “the Kenite” in Judges (1:16) and “Hobab” who is one of the Kenites in Judges (4:11). Hyatt points out that these variations are usually attributed to the fact that “the traditions concerning Moses’ father-in-law gave him different names, sometimes identifying him as Midianite, sometimes as a Kenite” (Hyatt, 1971: 67). This is how Kitchen, for example, viewed this issue (Kitchen, 1966: 123). Kenites are usually considered to be a subdivision of the Midianites or a clan with some sort of association with the Midianites. However, Moses’ father‑in‑law definitely cannot be “Reuel” and “Hobab son of Reuel” at the same time. The Biblical account shows definite confusion. Attention should also be drawn to two issues in the following text: Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive”. Jethro said: “Go, and I wish you well”.Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead”. So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand (Ex. 4:18-20).Firstly, it is difficult to understand why Moses would not tell his father‑in‑law about the real purpose of his return to Egypt when his mission is anything but secret. Rather than telling him that he is going back to Egypt at the command of God to take the Israelites out of the country, Moses claims that his intention of going back is “to see if any of them are still alive” (Ex. 4:18). Secondly, while the New International Version translation of the Bible, which is used in this book, has in Exodus 4:19 “the Lord had said”, other, older translations, such as the American Standard Version and King James Version, have the verb in the past not past perfect tense, i.e. “said” rather than “had said”. This difference is significant because the older translations do show a clear contradiction in the Biblical account. For the Bible states that God commissioned Moses to go to Egypt to deliver his people and that he went to his father-in-law to ask him for permission to leave to Egypt, just to state after that, according to older translations: “And Jehovah said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt; for all the men are dead that sought thy life”! Hyatt (1971: 85) thinks that this must be due to the fact that Exodus 4:19 is from a different source of Biblical text. The Bible also seems confused about the age of Moses when he left Midian heading to Egypt. The Bible states that “One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour”, where he ended up killing an Egyptian. The next day he tried to kill an Israelite and his flight to Midian happened right after that as Pharaoh wanted to kill him in punishment for what he did (Ex. 2:11-15). The Bible is also quite clear that Moses got married soon after arriving in Midian when he helped the seven sisters whose father invited him and married him to one of them, Zipporah (Ex. 2:16-22). Then there are two passages suggesting that Moses’ sons were still young when they left Midian with their parents heading to Egypt: “So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt” (Ex. 4:20), “At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. ‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me’, she said” (Ex. 4:24‑25)[3]. Therefore, Moses would have been young when he arrived in the land of Midian and would have stayed there for only a few years when he left heading back to Egypt to see Pharaoh. However, in Exodus 7:7 the Bible is explicit in claiming that Moses was “eighty years old” when he left Midian. This is also implied in Deuteronomy 34:7 which states that Moses was “a hundred and twenty years old when he died”, a death that happened at the end of the forty‑year wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness after leaving Egypt (Num. 14: 33‑34), for the Bible is also explicit in suggesting that immediately after Moses’ death the forty years ended as God ordered Joshua, Moses’ assistant, to lead the Israelites into the promised land (Jo. 1:1). In the book of Jubilees[4] (48:1) it is also claimed that Moses remained in Midian for “forty two years”. So, the Bible contains obviously irreconcilable statements about Moses’ age when he left Midian. There are also inconsistencies in the Biblical narrative in Exodus about the miracles that God granted to Moses. For instance, there is no mention of Moses showing Pharaoh the miracle of making his hand leprous after Pharaoh’s rejection of the first miracle of turning the staff into a snake, although God had told Moses that this would be the second miracle he would show to Pharaoh (Ex. 4:6‑8). Additionally, the claim that the Egyptian magicians were able to repeat the first two plagues, the plague of blood (Ex. 7:22) and the plague of frogs (Ex. 8:7), contradicts the fact that God granted these miracles to Moses to show them to Pharaoh as paranormal feats that can be produced by the power of God only. Another inconsistency, though of less significance, that has been pointed out by researchers is implied in the story of the birth of Moses. The beginning of the story (Ex. 2:1‑2) indicates that Moses was the firstborn child of his parents yet later an older sister comes into the picture (Hyatt, 1971: 63‑64; Noth, 1962: 25). Exodus 7:7 also claims that Aaron was three years older than Moses. FootNotes [1] The total number of all male Levites who were one month or older was 22,000 according to Num. 3:39 or 22,300 when computed by adding the numbers of the population of all males one month old or more of the clans of each of the three sons of Levi: 7,500 (Num. 3:22), 8,600 (Num. 3:28) and 6,200 (Num. 3:34). Some Greek manuscripts of the Bible have 8,300 instead of 8,600, giving also a total of 22,000. . [2] Some Hebrew manuscripts have the name as “Jether” in (Ex. 4:18). . [3] The appearance of these two verses in that particular context as well as their meaning both remain a mystery. [4] This is one of the books known as “Apocrypha” which are not part of the Hebrew Bible but are included in the Greek version of the Old Testament (thought to have been prepared about 270 BCE by 72 translators) and the Latin version (prepared mainly by St Jerome in the late fourth century), known as the Septuagint and the Vulgate, respectively. Copyright © 1999 Louay Fatoohi & Shetha Al-Dargazelli All Rights Reserved |
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