Sources and parallels of the Exodus

Common card · No. 291659

The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites. The scholarly consensus is that the Exodus, as exactly described in the Torah, is not historical, even though there is a historical core behind the Biblical narrative. Modern archaeologists believe that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan. According to John J. Collins, there is no evidence that the Israelites were 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, it is also commonly argued that some historical event may have inspired these traditions, even if Moses and the Exodus narrative belong to the collective cultural memory rather than history. According to Avraham Faust "most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some of the highland settlers came, one way or another, from Egypt." Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that the Exodus narrative combines, among other things, the expulsion of the...

Read on Wikipedia