As one reads about the Exodus on the internet, one will find reasons or arguments why the Exodus never happened. The most common conclusion is that since the Exodus never happened, then it must a fairy tale or a glorified history of Israelites.
Most liberal scholars date the writings of the Old Testament to the 6th or 5th BCE. The reason being is that they dispute the historical record of the Assyrian and Babylonian records of conquering the Israelites. The question then becomes if the Assyrians captured the Northern Kingdom in 722 and the Southern Kingdom fell in 586 BCE, then at what point in the Israel’s history is fable and history. One is left wondering what the Israelites were like before the Assyrians conquered them. Were they a small nomadic small tribe or a kingdom? Is King David and King Solomon historical figures or fictitious characters made up by the captive Jews in 586 BCE or later?
To me, if the Jewish history is a falsify record, made up by the exiled Jews during the Babylonian captivity with their new history, I can’t imagine that the Jews would accept a false history when they had no history of their own! They would write in their own moral laws that they are not to bear false witness and here they are lying about their own history! That doesn’t make sense to me.
The Jews date their history from the time of the Exodus. They have celebrated the Passover for centuries even millenniums. Their feasts and worship of YHWH as a monotheistic religion didn’t come from the Babylonians as some scholars suggested that they adopted a minor deity of the Babylonians to become their god. That doesn’t make sense of a people adopting a minor god over the belief of the Babylonian gods who conquered the known world. What did this minor god for the Jews that would elevate him or her to be their god? One would think that they would import the gods of the Babylonians to be their gods, not some minor deity.
Would the falsify writers be so detailed in the description of the Tabernacle and the furniture, the clothing of the priests, and the required sacrifices in making up their history, knowing that it is just a story? Writers do not spend a whole book unless there was some practice to it.
True, there are little artifacts or historical records of the Hebrews being in Egypt and conquering the Promised Land. The Egyptian records implies that something happened to their kingdom that a queen would rise to be the ruler of Egypt or for them to adopt a monotheistic religion which was later overthrown.
One can say that archaeologists have not verify the Exodus. Archaeological discoveries are still be made in Egypt. It is faulty to think that 600,000 enslaved men only lived in one area. They were servants throughout Egypt living along the Nile River and in their cities. One wouldn’t expect to find artifacts in the Sinai Desert since their clothes and shoes never wore out. They didn’t build any permanent settlement so one wouldn’t expect to find any artifacts. The topical environment would be different then from today as they had to find grassland for their animals.
The explanation given by some scholars for the Jews is to falsify or to give the Jewish people a fairy tale history so that they would have something to believe it. I don’t believe the Jews would be that naive to accept a fairy tale history written in their lifetime and pass it on as “history” for the Jewish people.
Summary: The Bible record is history, nothing else makes sense. That’s just my opinion.
-Kingston