March 2007 Archives

Rabbi Waxman makes my point: those who get stuck on an "all or nothing approach" (i.e. proving or disproving the historicity of the Exodus) miss the point of the eternal values the story contains. However, that rule goes for both sides of the argument, not only those who cling to proving how anachronisms could be right, but also those who argue that any anachronism proves that there was no historical event. Theories come and go.

While we will probably never uncover verifiable external evidence of the Exodus, that doesn't mean we should ignore the archaeological material, which enhances our understanding of the historical context of the Biblical text--the peshat in rabbinic terms. History is just one of many tools for drawing as much meaning as we can from the record of the Israelite's experience of God in their communal lives. These "kernels" of history can help us better understand what our ancient ancestors thought and transmitted about their experiences, and helps us get the most of our experience interacting with the text.

--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman

Read the Full Debate: Does It Matter If the Exodus Happened?

• Rabbi Waxman: The History Trap


• Rabbi Stern: History Without Moses


• Rabbi Grossman: The Lack of Evidence Is Not Evidence


• Rabbi Waxman: The Truth of the Exodus
  

Explore Beliefnet's Complete Passover Features:

• The Beliefnet Guide to Passover


• Video: A Visit to a Matzah Factory


• Quiz: More Than 'Four Questions' About Passover


• Gallery: Your Favorite Passover Dessert Recipes

I find it interesting that Rabbi Grossman wants to argue that the Exodus account may contain more historical truth than I give it credit for. Maybe, maybe not--I'm not sure it terribly matters either way. Clinging to the "kernels of truth" argument--sometimes posed as "something happened at the Red Sea, we’re just not sure what" or "something happened at Sinai, we’re just not sure what"--can lead to the trap of feeling like we must defend the facticity of every Biblical statement, lest the whole structure collapse like a house of cards.

In fact, we shouldn't take an "all or nothing" approach to the Bible. Those who try to poke holes in the Bible to "disprove" it really are just buying into the same framework as those who feel they need to strenuously defend every statement in order to "prove" the Bible’s truth. The Bible's power and wisdom don't depend on historicity. Proving a part of it to be "true" doesn’t make the rest of it true, anymore than proving a part of it to be "untrue" makes the rest of it untrue. Ultimately I find that sort of debate neither informative nor helpful.

Instead of debating the historical truth of the Bible as though it were a history or science textbook, which it is not and does not try to be, perhaps we can strive for a more nuanced appreciation, one, which recognizes that the Bible's profound wisdom and insight are not simplistic, and neither should be the way we read it.

Read the Full Debate: Does It Matter If the Exodus Happened?

• Rabbi Grossman: Kernels of History Add Flavor to Exodus Story


• Rabbi Stern: History Without Moses


• Rabbi Grossman: The Lack of Evidence Is Not Evidence


• Rabbi Waxman: The Truth of the Exodus
  

Explore Beliefnet's Complete Passover Features:

• The Beliefnet Guide to Passover


• Video: A Visit to a Matzah Factory


• Quiz: More Than 'Four Questions' About Passover


• Gallery: Your Favorite Passover Dessert Recipes

The question of the historical authenticity of the Exodus story gets into far larger questions, namely, does history matter and if so what are the claims it can make on us? Personally I have gone back and forth on the issue. People care about historical records and for good reason. They want to know if their parents and ancestors were slave owners, anti-Semites, liars--or social heroes feeding the poor when no one was looking. People invest a great deal in knowing their origins. Whether or not people are ever able to get a clear picture of how they really came to be who they are and who they can trace their lineage to, the search and struggle animates many. If you don’t believe me, go down to YIVO in New York City and look at all the people who spend hours of their free time tracing their genealogy. Yet, I would agree with Rabbi Waxman that the historical authenticity of the Exodus is not nearly as important as its enduring messages.

I would go even further than Rabbi Waxman and suggest that the whole nature of the Haggadah is not to narrate the course of historical events. Rather, the historical events are there only to illuminate specific core ideas. For example, in the Passover Haggadah, a text complied over a 1,700-year period, the name Moses never once appears. What could be a greater distortion of the actual story of the Exodus than leaving out the man who freed them from Egyptian bondage? The reason Moses does not appear is because ultimately what is most critical is not the historical event or the specific human actors, but the eternal message of faith, redemption, and collective responsibility.

Read the Full Debate: Does It Matter If the Exodus Happened?

• Rabbi Grossman: Kernels of History Add Flavor to Exodus Story


• Rabbi Waxman: The History Trap


• Rabbi Grossman: Exodus--Lack of Evidence Is Not Evidence


• Rabbi Waxman: The Truth of the Exodus

Explore Beliefnet's Complete Passover Features:

• The Beliefnet Guide to Passover


• Video: A Visit to a Matzah Factory


• Quiz: More Than 'Four Questions' About Passover


• Gallery: Your Favorite Passover Dessert Recipes

I agree with Rabbi Waxman that the power and relevance of the Exodus lies not in whether we can historically verify the details of its story but in the truths it contains. The most obvious are the nature of the experience of oppression and the power of hope in the face of it. These truths transcend the particularities of faith and ethnicity, which perhaps explains African American interest in the story.

There are other truths based on the particular nature of the Israelite religion of which we are the heirs: that there is one God who rules the world and is control of all of creation (note the plagues) and that this God not only cares deeply for the children of Israel but expresses that care through an involvement in human history.

This brings us back to the question of history, or more accurately historicity, the study of history, which is where I disagree with Rabbi Waxman.

"Minimalist" biblical archeologists like Israel Finkelstein argue that the lack of evidence of a mass Exodus of Semites from Egypt or a large group wandering the Sinai wilderness shows that the Exodus is a figment of a later author's mind. However, other archeologists point out "circumstantial evidence": Egyptian tomb paintings of Semitic slaves, documents that explain Egyptian clay-brick manufacturing just as it is presented in the Torah, and Egyptian military way stations along the straight route out of Egypt, which may have required a refugee band to head into the wilderness. Most compelling for me, the earliest evidence outside of the Bible of the Israelites in Israel comes from Pharoah Merneptah's victory stele dated 1212 BCE, roughly 40 years after the Exodus (If we date it to approximately 1250 BCE during the reign of Ramses II 1290-1224 BCE). In addition, an Israelite style of housing that appears in 12th Century Israel (after the Exodus) has also recently been found in Egypt, perhaps reflecting the Biblical account that not all the Jews actually left Egypt.

Are all these facts evidence of the Exodus? No necessarily. But such archaeological material can lead us to question scholars who use the understandably limited evidence we have to argue that the Exodus could not or did not happen.

I am always struck by how much traction arguments against the historiocity of the Exodus story get. After all, the first rule of scholarship is that lack of evidence is not evidence. Perhaps what is attractive to such scholars is the thrill of proving an ancient religious text wrong. The argument goes like this: if the Bible is wrong about historical details, then it could be (or is) wrong about other things, like the commandments requiring our personal observance. This is the flip side of the argument Creationists make when they equate teaching Darwinian evolution with rejecting the Ten Commandments. Both sides miss the point: the Bible was not written as a historical text. When we read it as such we do the Bible--and ourselves--a great disservice.

The most important aspect of scripture is the eternal truths it contains. However, the Torah can, at the same time, contain the kernel of historical truths and hints of references to historical memory that our ancestors kept alive in the transmission of the scriptural text that we still read and celebrate today.

--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman

Read the Full Debate: Does It Matter If the Exodus Happened?

• Rabbi Grossman: Kernels of History Add Flavor to Exodus Story


• Rabbi Waxman: The History Trap


• Rabbi Stern: History Without Moses


• Rabbi Waxman: The Truth of the Exodus

Explore Beliefnet's Complete Passover Features:

• The Beliefnet Guide to Passover


• Video: A Visit to a Matzah Factory


• Quiz: More Than 'Four Questions' About Passover


• Gallery: Your Favorite Passover Dessert Recipes

Several years ago, before I had even enrolled in rabbinical school, I was sitting at my parents' table for seder when my uncle looked at me pointedly and said: "You're the religious one. Tell me, did the Exodus really happen?" Suddenly, it got very quiet around the seder table.

The Exodus from Egypt – the miraculous delivery from slavery that marks the formation of the Jewish people – is our core narrative, so central that Jews everywhere gather yearly to retell, and ideally re-experience, the tale. For me, the power of the ritual retelling and experiential re-enactment of this central story stems not from any knowledge I might have that the story is "real," but rather from the connection I have to the truth of Jews past, present, and future who hold the ideas and ideals encapsulated in the story.

A few years ago, Rabbi David Wolpe raised a storm in the Jewish world by airing the same question my uncle did and concluding, based on available archaeological evidence, that it had never happened.

I think that Rabbi Wolpe is right–the Exodus is not a historical event and the Torah’s depiction is not (and does not in fact seek to be) a factual account. The Torah, after all, is not a book of history, as Professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and others have argued, the idea of 'history' comes much later than the Torah itself. Rather, the Torah is sacred story, a telling that forges and shapes the Jewish people. As Rabbi Richard Hirsh writes in the introduction to the Haggadah "A Night of Questions":

Is the story true? No, not if we mean an accurate account of events that happened more or less the way they are told… We do not tell the story of the Exodus because it is historically accurate; we tell the story because it is our story and we need to recover and uncover the eternal ideas that this story conveys.

Put differently, the story of the Exodus may not be historically accurate, but it can still be true. The story is true because it speaks powerfully to us of the experience of oppression, because it embodies God's love for and partnership with the Jewish people, and because it emphasizes God's central commitment to justice and freedom in the world. We, at the seder, feel moved to internalize this sacred story's message – affirming our own distinctive history and identity while committing ourselves to work on behalf of those throughout the world who still are not free. We retell the story every year because its truth teaches, sustains us, and gives us purpose as individuals and as a people.

Read the Full Debate: Does It Matter If the Exodus Happened?

• Rabbi Grossman: Kernels of History Add Flavor to Exodus Story


• Rabbi Waxman: The History Trap


• Rabbi Grossman: The Lack of Evidence Is Not Evidence


• Rabbi Stern: History Without Moses

Explore Beliefnet's Complete Passover Features:

• The Beliefnet Guide to Passover


• Video: A Visit to a Matzah Factory


• Quiz: More Than 'Four Questions' About Passover


• Gallery: Your Favorite Passover Dessert Recipes

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