The Exodus Revealed

INTRODUCTION

A friend of mine has a "Far Side" coffee mug on which is displayed a colorful cartoon depicting Moses and an apparently hesitant group of Israelites standing before a freshly parted Red Sea. The caption, conveying Moses' words to the people, reads: "What do you mean it's a bit icky?!" I love that mug. It brings out and throws into sharp relief an element of the human heart that we know all too well: small-minded ingratitude. No sooner do we recognize God for having done something extraordinary in our lives than we start harboring second thoughts and focus in on the details of what could be better about God's provision.

At the same time, the mug also raises an interesting historical question. When Moses parted the Red Sea on the night of the Exodus, assuming that the exposed mudflats were indeed "a bit icky," just how icky were they? Did the crossing Israelites sink ankle-deep in the mud bottom, or was there much less moisture than that, allowing them to walk along on virtually arid ground? And if you were there, would you have actually met members of the Israelite party who, frightened at the prospect of walking between the parted waters, had to be talked into it? And if so, what would they have said about the icky bottom? Nothing at all? Maybe, for all we know, some Israelites, perhaps small children, could not help but comment on the ick-factor of the Red Sea floor. We will never know. There is a lot that we will never know about the Exodus. But we can pay close attention to what we do know from the biblical text and employ along the way a historically responsible imagination.

Let me unpack that last phrase. First of all, by "historically responsible," I refer to that which is answerable to the constraints of history. Simply put: As readers of the Bible, we have to take its contents seriously as history. Now before you nod too quickly in agreement, let me explain exactly what I mean. Over the years, I have met countless Christians who agree with the authority of the Bible in principle and agree that its contents "really happened" but at the same time do not really take the story of the Bible seriously as history. Here's how I know. Because when they talk about things like the Ten Plagues or the parting of the Red Sea, I realize that they often have not allowed themselves to ask good questions of the text, questions such as, "When God sent plagues of various animals, was the choice of animal completely arbitrary?" or "Do the laws of hydrodynamics actually allow for the theoretical possibility of the sea parting?" Time and time again I am astonished when I meet people who, despite being extremely well educated, highly successful in their fields, and intellectually curious in regards to "real world" issues, fail to get beyond a second-grade level in terms of their understanding of biblical history. Regarding all things biblical, it is as if they are intellectually stuck in Miss Magillacutty's Sunday school class from thirty or forty years ago.

The truth is that Miss Magillacutty never encouraged you to ask, "Do the laws of hydrodynamics actually allow for the theoretical possibility of a sea parting?" Of course that wasn't her fault. She was just doing her job, spiritually nurturing you when you were still learning to tie your shoes. But perhaps you have picked up this book because you realize you need to go deeper. The Apostle Paul says, "When I was a child, I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish things" (1 Corinthians 13:11). Perhaps you are reading this book because you want to get past childish ways of thinking in considering the Exodus. If this happens to be you, you should be commended. Whether you are casually interested or highly interested in the Exodus, I believe that undertaking learning projects like these are just part of what it means to love God with your mind. While this book certainly cannot answer all of the questions raised by the second book of the Bible, it will be, I hope, a good start.

Let me come back to the phrase, "historically responsible imagination" and focus on the last word of the phrase. Sometimes folks get nervous with the word imagination. They want (with echoes of Sergeant Joe Friday) "just the facts, Ma'am." They might say, "Don't muddy the waters by bringing imagination into it." I want to push back on this line of thinking; I want to engage people's imagination about the Exodus. The best way I know how to do this is to engage my own imagination a bit and then talk about it. Some say that this means taking liberties with the text. But the very nature of reading the Bible actually requires us to connect dots, and once we begin to connect the dots, we are using our imagination.

When I was first approached to write this book, I confess I was hesitant. I thought to myself, "My specialty has been in the New Testament and not so much in the Old Testament" (although I would also say, "Show me a New Testament scholar who doesn't know his or her way around the Old Testament, and I might as well show you a plumber who doesn't know his or her way around pipes"). I am well aware that a good number of scholars have logged far more hours than I in studying the Exodus. At the same time, I also realize that such scholarship has not done a lot to connect the dots on an imaginative level, at least not when it comes to this part of the Bible. Again, I'm not talking about wild, unbridled imagination. But sometimes thinking things through in a self-disciplined way can be helpful, asking: "What would it have been like if I were there?" Perhaps the scholarly and semi-scholarly genres tend to discourage such ruminations. As a rule, we academics don't like the thought of starting out to write a serious scholarly work only to find that we have blended genres by lapsing into an exercise in Ignatian spirituality. In this book, I am an unrepentant rule-breaker and genre blender. My hope is to bring the results of cutting-edge scholarship on the Exodus to bear on how we imagine it historically. When we do, I believe we end up with more interesting questions.

This should not deprive us of theological reflection but, rather, should help set the stage for it. And that, I think, is the final reason why I believe this book needed to be written: to offer a lay-accessible work that speaks to the theological significance of the Exodus. Again, since this book is primarily about history, I don't assume any faith persuasion on the part of its readers. At the same time, however, I suspect that a good number of this book's readers will be interested in occasionally connecting the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and from Old Testament history to modern-day practice. For those who want to go beyond only occasionally connecting these dots, I would recommend the sequel to the present volume, Finding Jesus in the Exodus. In the meantime, in the present volume, we will largely have our feet anchored to the sands of Egypt and Sinai, with our theological Ray-Bans fixed firmly on the brim of our noses. No Torah-reading Jew of antiquity would have dreamed of reading about the Exodus without doing theology. Perhaps we could benefit by following suit.

Before entering into the subject matter, I wish to register several notes in regards to the biblical text and the history of this pivotal event. First, unless otherwise stated, all biblical translations from the Hebrew and Greek are my own. I have done this to provide a certain freshness to the study, although of course those who have little familiarity with the text will hardly know the difference! I have also done this so as to render the text in a slightly more colloquial way, at least compared to most major translations.

Second, while I am well aware that the proper dating of the Exodus is a much-debated topic (an "early Exodus" dating in fifteenth century B.C. versus a "late Exodus" dating in the thirteenth century B.C. versus "no Exodus"—a minimalist view within the academy that holds the Exodus to be holy fiction), for the purposes of the book I have very intentionally decided (1) to rule out the third option ahead of time and (2) to refuse to adjudicate between the first two options. This is partly because I believe that the debate between an "early Exodus" and a "late Exodus" would distract from my purposes; this is partly because I believe a strong case can be and has been made on both sides. We should, accordingly, also give due respect to both sides. While some advocates for an early Exodus have framed this as a battle between what the Good Book says and what craven archaeologists say (given the lack of material evidence for an early Exodus), this is simply an unfortunate and unfair construal. In truth, the issue is complex and will perhaps remain intractably so. Having no intention of making my own case either way, I will leave it to curious readers, interested in settling out on this question, to do their own homework with an open mind and a good dose of intellectual humility. Wherever you stand or don't stand on this issue, this book will still be for you.

The third note has to do with contemporary source-critical hypothesis. Without going into too much detail, I need to inform or remind my readers (as the case may be) that modern-day scholarship around the Exodus cannot be undertaken without entering into the very complicated question of documentary sources, what biblical scholars have called J-E-D-P. These letters correspond respectively to the so-called Yahwist source (J), the Elohist source (E), the Deuteronomist (D), and the Priestly source (P). The bulk of the material in our purview belongs to the Priestly source (P). But because there are a number of methodological problems that immediately present themselves on a serious consideration of P and the other alleged sources (some of which have brought the entire paradigm to a virtual breaking point), I will bracket this entire discussion and instead strive to get to the history behind the texts. I am well aware that the issue of sources (who recorded this and when did they do so?) cannot entirely be separated from the issue of history (what actually happened?), but for the sake of simplicity, I will do just that. Again, students who wish to delve deeper into this subject are free to consult the appropriate secondary literature. That will not be our gig.

With these disclaimers in place, we are ready now to follow in Moses' footsteps. Be forewarned: his is a circuitous and winding route. If you think that the wilderness generation excelled in moving about hither and yon, the same is actually true of Moses even before he crossed the Red Sea. He got around—both in terms of geography and in terms of life. Highs and lows—he had them both. And of course, in life so do we. On some level, Moses' story is also our story.

But even more so, Moses' story is actually a story about God. This was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was the God whom Moses had met at the burning bush. This was also the God who would vanquish Egypt's idols and deliver Israel. For that reason, when we follow in Moses' footsteps, we are bound to meet God. Of course meeting God and encountering God are two separate matters. Pharaoh may have met God but he never (so far as we know) encountered God the way that, say, Moses clearly did. As you read this book about the Exodus, remember that God did not ultimately give the second book of the Bible so that we might merely meet him but so that we might encounter him—more exactly, be encountered by him. And we are encountered through Israel's first encounter. Thus, I hope in some sense, this book will help open not only the window of history but also the window of the heart touched by the one who revealed himself as I AM. More on that name and lots of other things in the pages ahead.