I quite frankly am not convinced by Richard E. Friedman’s case for a historical Exodus. Whilst certainly interesting, I find Friedman is too reliant on the somewhat flimsy JEDP hypothesis, his reading of the Song of Deborah is also, problematic, since it does not mention all tribes except Levi, contra his claim. I also doubt that a historical Exodus is essential for Judaism or Christianity. What is really important, at least for the former religion is the revelation at Sinai. I have ‘faith’ that this happened, but alongside this, it is not unreasonable that it may have happened in history, even without a historical Exodus. Even critical scholars accept that there is a strong link with YHWH to the deserts around Mount Sinai, found in Exodus 3, Deuteronomy 33:2, and other verses, and many scholars suggest that YHWH worship originated amongst the tribal people (Qenites) of that area. I’d be in agreement with them, as I have stated elsewhere (largely due to the possible Arabic etymology of YHWH, and the fact that Cain, who seems to be linked to the Qenites was seen as one of the first to worship YHWH).
So I think we have a historical Sinai event, with the tribes around Sinai being the first to experience the Biblical God.
In my view the Exodus account is two parts, historical national foundation and religious foundation that follows up into Leviticus. The national one continues where we left off with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What we left off as a small family has become a large tribal people group, basically nomads living in the lands of Egypt. They get taken into slavery, Moses is made to be their prophet and liberator from pharaoh and he leads them out into the wilderness in where the nation of Israel starts to form. The religious part is that the national god of Israel, Yahweh, reveals Himself and desires to be their god. They form a covenant on Mt. Sinai and later the Law is developed in Leviticus. While I take a conservative view in that the Exodus event did happen, I do believe that the stories of the events were made to be a blow by blow cut for it to fit into a story narrative in how we have it and it was probably more complex and complicated to the events that really historically happened. Just my take on the whole deal.
I am generally a conservative, I accept the existence of the patriarchal age for example, and also see no reason to doubt the biblical account of the originally monotheistic Yahwists falling into apostasy, rather than the critical view of Israelite monotheism evolving from polytheism. I think the apostasy probably occured because the Israelites, not understanding the Qenite language (Proto-Arabic?) didn’t understand the meaning of YHWH’s name, which, as Israel Knohl suggested, meant ‘Impassioned’, in the sense of wanting sole love.
Of course, I am not an inerrantist, the Exodus certainly did not happen as the Bible said so, the Book of Daniel is clearly Maccabean in origin, and it would seem as though the Biblical Authors themselves were not immune to polytheistic corruption.
Am i correct that God made covenant with abraham but only gave commandments to moses? This may be important because the covenant with abraham could be interpreted to relate to Abraham’s blood line, the commandments are universal.
I haven’t read his recent book on the historicity of the Exodus but I am not sure the basics behind the documentary hypothesis are flimsy. In my own thoughts on Mosaic authorship](http://vincentsapone.com/writings/authorship/moses.html) after listing his 31 doublets and going through some of them previously, I ended with a lengthy quote of the chief argument for it since so many conservative authors tend to butcher it:
Above all, the strongest evidence establishing the Documentary Hypothesis is that several different lines of evidence converge. There are more than thirty cases of doublets: stories or laws that are repeated in the Torah, sometimes identically, more often with some differences of detail. The existence of so many overlapping texts is noteworthy itself. But their mere existence is not the strongest argument. One could respond, after all, that this is just a matter of style or narrative strategy. Similarly, there are hundreds of apparent contradictions in the text, but one could respond that we can take them one by one and find some explanation for each contradiction. And, similarly, there is the matter of the texts that consistently call the deity God while other texts consistently call God by the name YHWH, to which one could respond that this is simply like calling someone sometimes by his name and sometimes by his title. The powerful argument is not any one of these matters. It is that all these matters converge. When we separate the doublets, this also results in the resolution of nearly all the contradictions. And when we separate the doublets, the name of God divides consistently in all but three out of more than two thousand occurrences. And when we separate the doublets, the terminology of each source remains consistent within that source. (I listed twenty-four examples of such terms, which are consistent through nearly four hundred occurrences, above, in the Terminology section.) And when we separate the sources, this produces continuous narratives that flow with only a rare break. And when we separate the sources, this fits with the linguistic evidence, where the Hebrew of each source fits consistently with what we know of the Hebrew in each period. And so on for each of the six categories that precede this section. The name of God and the doublets were the starting-points of the investigation into the formation of the Bible. But they were not, and are not, major arguments or evidence in themselves. The most compelling argument for the hypothesis is that this hypothesis best accounts for the fact that all this evidence of so many kinds comes together so consistently. To this day, no one known to me who challenged the hypothesis has ever addressed this fact.
Vinnie
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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So. Everything happened except the Exodus, including Cain and Abel etc, which is essential for Christianity? So the Heresy of Peor and other horrors perpetrated by gentle Jesus before He was a guy happened?
PS How does one determine what OT fables, just so horror stories, are actually historical truth and which aren’t? By what anachronistic modern taste? And what is the divine inspiration behind them?
Suppose we read what the Rabbi’s had to say about Israel, Moses, and what happened at Sinai, minus everything that Genesis says happened before Israel arrived there.
The story begins with Moses and Israel at Sinai, with absolutely no clue how they got there and what’s going to happen.
Shabbat 145b-146a Revised:
[New Beginning: Contamination remained in all human beings.]
When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai, their contamination ceased, whereas gentiles did not stand at Mount Sinai, and their contamination never ceased. Rav Aḥa, the son of Rava, said to Rav Ashi: What about converts? How do you explain the cessation of their moral contamination? Rav Ashi said to him: Even though they themselves were not at Mount Sinai, their guardian angels were present, as it is written: “It is not with you alone that I make this covenant and this oath, but with he that stands here with us today before the Lord our God, and with he that is not here with us today” (Deuteronomy 29:13–14), and this includes converts.
Especially because devout Muslims believe that every word of the Qur’an was given by Allah to Mohammad via the angel of revelation, Jabrāʾīl. Necessarily and unavoidably, every Arabic Qur’an is the word of Allah: perfect, complete, and sacred.
So, if “Allah”, which means “god” in English, is both “what” god is AND his name, did he forget his name, which he gave to Moses to give to Pharoah, is YHWH?
By the way, Vinnie, I followed the link and enjoyed reading over your webpage and blog, you had mentioned it before, but I had not seen a link. Your article on whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch was helpful as my wife and I were just discussing that.
Vinnie, I’ll second @jpm regarding your website. Thanks for the link. It’ll be good to explore it more, when I have some more time. Nice quote at the bottom of your home page, by the way.
(Aside from the writing, I am looking forward to your waterfall photography. I didn’t get to the UP (Upper Peninsula) this summer, and it’s kind of killing me.)
What, in your opinion, are the names of Allah in the Qur’an. Which name did He instruct Mohammad to use when telling non-believers about him.
Your suggestion that the Hebrew name which YHWH told Moses is compatible with both religions is unusual, to say the least, and, I believe, unjustifiable. But let us test your claim. Let us go to a Muslim cite and praise their worship of YHWH and commend their submission, obedience, and trust in Him and Him alone, and see what the reaction is.
We don’t agree on many things, but I do believe that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the God of Abraham. That is why they Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are referred to as the “Abrahamic religions.”
Why not do this with a Jewish site instead? The problem is different. God-Allah is infinity. If you take out infinity out of infinity then infinity remains. So Allah and Yahweh are both infinity but different dimesions/parts/aspects of the same infinity. A Muslim/Jew is justified in saying his/her Infinity is unique. The same Muslim/Jew is not justified in saying his/her Infinity is the only Infinity. The core problem is that there can be no One God if God is infinity.
Possible? Yes. We can’t say some of the material or traditions that show up in the Pentateuch do not ultimately originate in that time period. Establishing that is another matter.
Glad you enjoyed it. Hope to keep adding to it over time. Working on the historicity of Jesus’s burial right now.
Thank you. Yes, I loved that quote! It resonated with me immediately. I love it outdoors and being buried in books indoors as well
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
19
What problem? God is not infinite in terms of extent. He needs no extent. All infinite extent is within Him. From eternity. He is trans-infinite, trans-eternal.
