I thank my fellow biblicists Richard Hess, Ronald Hendel, and Benjamin Sommer for sharing their insights into the question of the historicity of the exodus. As I mentioned in my essay, more and more people are interested in what professional Bible scholars have to say about this issue, and the editors of Mosaic have done a true service by offering something unavailable elsewhere on the Web: an extended discussion from different perspectives, pitched to general readers and educated non-specialists. Readers need to know that one cannot rely on a single scholar’s blog post or essay any more than on the advice of a single surgeon or financial analyst. There is simply no such thing as “what biblicists say” on a given topic, since biblicists construe the data in different ways.
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More about: Biblical criticism, Exodus, Hebrew Bible, History & Ideas, Postcolonialism, Religion & Holidays