THE EXODUS AS THE BASIS OF THE NATION OR OF MONOTHEISM?
I recently had the pleasure of reading Richard Friedman’s book on the Exodus. As is typical of his writing, the book is well argued with great scholarship and a touch of humor.
The core project of the book, it seems to me, is to tell the story of the triumph of monotheism and validate a more traditional reading of the Hebrew Bible as the story of the one true God who is the father of what is sometimes called “ethical monotheism.” As he writes, “The bottom line is: arrival at belief in one God” (p.188).
What does the question of the historicity of the exodus from Egypt have to do with this? Friedman has two concerns, as far as I can tell. The first is that the denial of the Exodus will weaken the truth claim of the text as a whole, and thus the truth claim of YHVH as the true God. The second concern is that he thinks texts aren’t created out of nothing, so the idea that there was no exodus just isn’t accurate.
He argues compellingly that the Levites, whose name means something like resident alien or join, were indeed in Egypt and did sojourn in Midian where they encountered a deity named YHVH and they adopted Him as the true God. Here’s a summary quotation “The Levites were the ones with the Egyptian names, Egyptian cultural elements in their ark, their tabernacle and circumcision. Only the Levite sources develop the idea that the world did not know YHVH’s name until He first revealed it to Moses. “(p.200)
Friedman doesn’t reject the idea that the core of the Hebrew people were never in Egypt at all. He acknowledges the lack of Egyptian influenced material culture, the lack of Egyptian religious influence, the lack of any mention in Egyptian texts of any kind of mass exodus. Further, he even points out that “The Levites are not mentioned among the people of Israel in the song of Deborah [a very early piece of text].” (ibid) His thesis is that the Levites were in Sinai, and the rest of the people were native to Canaan. The Levites left Egypt and came to Canaan via Midian with a God named YHVH.
Does this rescue the whole idea of the Exodus? Friedman certainly thinks so. The book has this oddly triumphant tone, like look what I showed. I get it from his perspective, if you think the Levites are the core of the Jewish people because they are the religious specialists and the source of Jewish monotheism and much of Jewish religion.
However, as a national Jew, the story of the Exodus is the story (myth) of the creation of the Jewish people. If it is only the story of one not even tribe, that’s just not the story of the people. What I care about is who our ancestors were as indigenous people—and they were indigenous to Canaan, not to Egypt, even if they were later on joined by these folks who had sojourned in Egypt and then left.
Friedman and I have radically different projects, so even as I can concede all the points that he makes, it doesn’t change how I read the Exodus story at all, because it remains true that the people of Israel were simply not in Egypt.
