Josh
I searched around the net after replying to you, and it looks as if a symposium on this very subject is being published this year… including a whole chapter on Egyptian loanwords. One to look out for.
One contributor to that book has posted an interesting hypothesis that the Song of Moses is a polemic response to Rameses II’s victory poem - apparently widely published in Egypt, but not elsewhere, and only during his reign. Bear in mind that late Babylonian influence on the Pentateuch has sometimes been assumed on far less secure literary links (such as Enuma elish and the Genesis 1 account).
Almost more interesting than the evidence is what this author - an Israeli scholar - says as an outside observer about the sharp divisions within the US biblical studies guild, to the effect that if someone tells him whether or not they believe in the Exodus, he’ll tell them how they voted in the last presidential election. That’s typically Israeli hyperbole, but it resonates with me as another outsider (I’m English) not only in biblical studies, but in attitudes to origins. It seems that, to many, the main criterion for deciding any issue is whether it’s supported by conservatives or liberals - you just have to decide which of those two you are, and the rest is easy (that’s English hyperbole, by the way!).
It underlines the truth that what seems most plausible in any area - not only the theological but even the scientific - is very much bound up with geography and sociology. You can seem to be out on an intellectual limb believing something - even struggling to hold on to that belief - and yet take a plane journey and find that you’re mainstream and that the opposing view is marginal.
I’m not sure what’s the best lesson to take from that - maybe it’s that in the end, you must seek out whatever evidence there is, and assess it from your own worldview without being intimidated by what happens to be in fashion, because sure as hell the fashion will change.