Some will say to you - myth just pure myth
During the the 19th century a view such as JEDP was taken - where Genesis 1-11 and most of Exodus was created as propaganda for Israel either around Ezra’s time. The argument is Gen 10 has late names that should not be there. They argue there was no exodus, no Moses, no Red Sea. Abram left the Sun-god worship of Ur and the Canaanites from which emerged these shepherd people. These arguments are based on lack of Egyptian evidence of occupation etc, and Exodus. These question are raised based on what one expects regarding evidence.
I mean in the US you would have some problems finding some evidence from your civil war, putting it in a frame / a genuine story of what happened - that was 200 years ago > let alone thousands of years ago.
The reading below may help:
The vehicle in and through which this word of God is addressed is a story about Israel’s past. Yet no historiographical purposes or methods are evident, and the text makes no such claims for itself. The concern is not to reconstruct a history of this earlier period but to tell the story of a people in which God has been actively engaged. Nevertheless, the concern for “what really happened” has often occupied the attention of modern scholars. This task has been made difficult not only by the nature of the material but also by the fact that no extrabiblical sources document what the book narrates. It is a matter of reconstructing the history from dues of various sorts, both within and without the text.
Much remains uncertain in this reconstructive effort. There is some consensus that some of later Israel’s ancestors lived in Egypt for a time, as did other Semitic foreigners during the second millennium. Some linguistic influence is evident, seen, for example, in Moses’ Egyptian name. Construction activity by certain pharaohs in which slave labor was employed, particularly in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., lends a certain plausibility to the Egyptian oppression of Israel (see 1:11). This suggests an early thirteenth century B.C. date for the exodus. Yet the times and places associated with the exodus or the wilderness wanderings or the Sinai event are all quite uncertain, occasioning much ongoing scholarly debate, but on the basis of little evidence (see at 14:1–18; 17:1–7; 19:1–8). It is probable that stories of a number of movements by various tribal groups have been integrated to form a single narrative (for a helpful survey of the issues, see Ramsey).
The end result, without going into detail, is that Exodus contains a very mixed set of materials from a historiographical perspective. While a nucleus is probably rooted in events of the period represented, the narratives also reflect what thoughtful Israelites over the course of nearly a millennium considered their meaning(s) to be. In such an ongoing reflective process, the writers no doubt used their imaginations freely (e.g., when they put forward the actual words of a conversation); in so doing, they believed they were doing justice to what they had inherited. It is also likely that the celebration of these events in Israel’s worship generated materials for these stories; liturgy has shaped literature (see at 12:1–28). Such a community valuing of these materials means that they have a continuing value quite apart from the question of “happenedness.” Even where the historiographer’s judgment may be quite negative, the material does not lose its potential value to speak a word of God across the centuries, in Israel’s time or ours.
A question often raised in this regard is, How important for faith is the happenedness of the reported events? To paraphrase the apostle Paul: If the exodus did not occur, was Israel’s faith in vain? A few interpreters would make no distinctions among biblical events; the happenedness of every event is crucial for faith. But most would say that certain biblical texts give us an innerbiblical warrant to make distinctions among events. So-called historical recitals are found throughout the Old Testament (e.g., Deut. 26:5–9; Josh. 24:2–13). Certain key events—for example, the exodus itself (in a general way, not in detail)—are isolated in these confessions. It would appear that such events are so specified because they are considered constitutive of the community and hence important for faith, while other events are not given such significance. As a constitutive event, the exodus is recognized as an event of such import that the community would not be what it is without its having occurred. Generally, the pervasiveness of the references to the exodus in the Old Testament would seem to constitute a warrant for such an understanding. The event so captured the imagination of Israel that it not only served to illuminate Israel’s most basic identity but also functioned as a prism for interpreting all of Israel’s subsequent history (e.g., Isa. 43:14–21; 51:9–11).
Fretheim, T. E. (1991). Exodus (pp. 8–10). Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.