Re: Digest Number 46

John Croft wrote,

> >F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth & Hebrew Epic (Harvard: 1973) (this
> > book, recently repub'd. in paperback, has justly obtained legendary
> > status in the world of Biblical Studies), and also his more recent
> >From Epic to Canon (Johns Hopkins, 1998) (a sort of sequel).
>
> Can you give me the bibliographic details. The Biblical Scholars I
> am
> familiar with, Kenyon, Albright, Noth, de Vauz, Aharoni, Soggin,
> Jagersma, Yadin, and Redford I know. Cross I have never heard of.

You're in the ballpark. Cross is the currently reigning emeritus at
Harvard. The books I listed are considered on par with the others you
mentioned; some of them, I think, were his students; he, I believe, was Albright's.

> The equation between Mount Horeb and Sinai, I have seen is very
> dubious and due to a very late interpretation. St Catherine's
> Monastry on Mount Sinai claims it was Moses's mountain, but there is
> no evidence of the case.

A point Cross was making on his way to the other point about Sinai being
in Edom-Midian.

> > While I'm at it, though, and just for information, I doubt that you
> > will find a scholar (well, an academically respectable one, anyway)
> > who has any idea that the idealized picture of the Exodus that you
> > find in the
> > Pentateuch actually took place as the grand epic it is portrayed as
> > having been. There isn't much doubt that there was a band that left
> > Egypt-- the usual date is 1250 BC but there is also some uneasiness
> > about this date; that it was joined in its journeys by other groups
> > (the Bible refers to them as "rabble");

> You say that there isn't much doubt that a band left Egypt. Firstly
> I
> would argue that there is a great deal of doubt! Certainly there is
> no independent evidence of such a thing.

Actually there's enough evidence to suggest a strong Egyptian
connection-- names in the priestly families, that sort of thing. (Even
"Moses" itself-- cf. Thutmoses, etc).

When I say a "band", however, I mean a "band". One estimate I read was
maybe about 70 people. Who knows. Can we take the story about there
having been only two midwives for the entire Hebrew population of Egypt
when Moses was born as any kind of indicator? A band that small is quite
plausible, yet it's an escape large enough to become the stuff of
legend, and yet again would have been completely overlooked in any
official annals of the empire. Maybe some police actually did get bogged
down by the Red Sea!

> Reconstructing a date at 1250 has been done in contravention to the
> dates in the Bible. Solomon was supposed to start building his
> temple
> (962 BCE) 480 years after the exodus, giving a date of 1438 BCE.

I mentioned that the dates are contested; nothing is settled. One can't
argue out of both sides of the mouth, in any case; if other things are
questionable, then the Solomonic dating can't be taken absolutely for
granted either. I'm not equipped to argue the date of the Exodus one way
or the other, so I'll stay with 1250 because it seems to make sense
given what I know.

Thank you for the long dissertation on Egyptian history. Among other
things, I think we need to determine when the OT was written before we
can figure out why the story it tells has the characteristics it does.
There are of course several theories. I'm inclined to an Exilic and
slightly pre-Exilic dating for most of it, drawing of course upon
earlier traditions. The Tendenz, and thus the form, has more to do with
concerns of that time than any concern with historical accuracy about
events 5 to 7 hundred years earlier. The Exile is considerably later
than Solomon's building program, so the dates have their own interest
and structure, and may even be completely artificial. It is known that
there are number games going on in some of them.

> Secondly, the Biblical account pulls no punches regarding the Exodus.
> It speaks of a mass exodus of a whole ethnic group, who had been
> living in Egypt for a length of time, not the expulsion of a few
> wandering shepherds. As far as the Egyptian records show, this only
> occurred twice.
>
> 1. The expulsion of the Hyksos
> 1. The resettlement of the Peoples of the Sea in the Promised Land.

Again, I don't think you necessarily need to look for a mass exodus or a
mass expulsion.

> You seem to be accepting the 1960s theory of G.E.Mendenhall, as
> elaborated during the 1970s by N.K.Gottwald regarding the "peasant
> revolt theory" which was based on three theses

Yes, as Cross says, "they are not simply wrong...."

Sorry, I don't have time to answer in any detail or to look up stuff I'd
need to look up, to sustain an argument. I only wanted to mention those
items by Frank Moore Cross because they seemed germane and are about as
highly respected as things can get in the field. Other than that,
though, I'll just have to keep monitoring in the background, for the
most part. Thank you for an interesting discussion.

Regards,

John Burnett