Long before the concept of “fake news” became a thing, scholars have been challenging the veracity of the Exodus story. Two million Hebrews traversing the Sinai, really??? A burning bush? Ten plagues? The splitting of the sea??? A respected American biblical historian, Baruch Goldstein, called it a fairy tale, and famed Egyptologist, Donald Redford, accused the ancient Israelites of borrowing from Canaanite folklore. And, then, the event many of us following Jewish sources remember well, the great Conservative rabbi, David Wolpe, out of LA, announced in a Passover sermon in 2001: “the truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened… “ In other words, fake news.
Or was it? Years of listening to these experts had more than convinced me that the Exodus had never occurred. And, that is why I was so delighted to see a Jewish scholar as respected as Richard Elliot Friedman, of “Who Wrote the Bible” fame, present an entirely new reading of the story in his new terrific contribution to popular bible studies, called simply “The Exodus.” In short, he does believe the Exodus happened, just not with two million Hebrews. He traces the story not to twelve tribes, but to one, the Levites, the tribe of Moses, and the only tribe in biblical tradition with Egyptian names. The Levites, whose name likely derives from the Hebrew word for outsiders, likely did live in Egypt, and likely did make a journey through the Sinai Peninsula to ancient Canaan. There they met and intertwined with another people called Israel, creating a new identity that incorporated both the stories of Abraham and Sarah, and Moses and Miriam. Along the way, they developed a new form of writing, we call prose, and a theology called monotheism. And, Friedman argues, an intense desire to protect the stranger that is so embedded into Jewish thought.
As we begin our journey into the Book of Exodus, let us be reminded that, as Friedman points out, even fairy tales contain truth. In his book, he cites the example of Cinderella, who even though readers know never existed, still grasp that her shoe was a historical reality and could teach us about the time period where the story takes place. Friedman reminds us not to get caught in the binary of true vs. false, and instead use the label “fake news” as an opportunity to investigate beyond what lies on the surface of our lives. Keep turning the pages of Torah, the rabbis tell us, because everything is inside of it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex