http://www.wsj.com/articles/joshua-berman-searching-for-the-historical-exodus-1428019901
Houses of Worship
Searching for the Historical Exodus
The Passover story seems to be echoed in earlier accounts of Ramesses II in ancient Egypt.
On April 3, Jews the world over will gather around the Passover table to recall how God delivered Israel from the Egyptian house of bondage “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” as the Bible puts it.
Most would be surprised to learn that this phrase originated as a plaudit in ancient Egyptian inscriptions to extol the pharaohs, the very oppressors of the Israelites. But the Bible in fact extensively appropriates the royal propaganda of one particular pharaoh. This relatively recent finding suggests that the Bible’s assertion that the Israelites were delivered from the subjugation of an Egyptian pharaoh has basis in historical reality.
Photo: Franz-Marc Frei/Corbis
Meet Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, who reigned from 1279-13 B.C. His paramount military feat occurred early on, when he achieved victory over his Hittite rivals at the battle of Kadesh on the modern-day border between Lebanon and Syria. Upon returning home, Ramesses erected monuments to his triumph—thought to have been the biggest chariot battle in history.
They arose across the Egyptian empire, commemorating the victory in both pictorial representations known as bas-reliefs and hieroglyphic inscriptions, which made it the most publicized event in the ancient world. Many Egyptologists believe that a widely disseminated and so-called “Kadesh Poem” stirred public adoration of Ramesses’ valor and grace. Ten original copies survive.
What does this have to do with the Exodus? The Book of Exodus seems to echo the Kadesh poem again and again as it describes God’s victory over the pharaoh.
Some 80 years ago, archaeologists discovered an affinity between the Bible’s descriptions of the Tabernacle erected by the Israelites in the desert and the bas-reliefs of Ramesses’ military camp at Kadesh. Even the layout and proportions of God’s inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, as depicted in Exodus, match the pharaoh’s inviolable throne tent exactly. Scholars have suggested an ideological purpose in the Bible, with God displacing Ramesses as the most powerful force on earth. For a weak and oppressed people, after all, one well-documented form of resistance is to appropriate the symbols of the oppressor and put them to competitive purposes.
It turns out that the affinities are more than visual; they are also textual. Both written accounts, hieroglyphic in the case of the Kadesh inscriptions, Hebrew in the case of Exodus chapters 14-15, follow a similar plot, sometimes line for line, and feature a sequence of motifs seen nowhere else in battle accounts of the ancient Near East.
Here are a few examples. Ramesses’ frightened troops break ranks at the sight of the Hittite chariot force—precisely like Exodus describes how Israel cowers at the sight of the Egyptian chariots. Ramesses pleas for divine help, as Moses does—and is encouraged to proceed with victory assured, as Moses is promised by God. In the ensuing rout, the corpses of Hittite enemies are depicted floating in the Orontes River; pharaoh’s army drowns in the sea.
Most strikingly, Ramesses’ troops return to survey the enemy corpses and, astounded at his accomplishment, offer up a victory hymn praising his name, invoking his strong arm, and extolling him as the source of their strength and their salvation.
In Exodus 15, the Israelites survey the Egyptian corpses and offer a hymn to God replete with many of the same motifs. Both the Kadesh poem and the Exodus account conclude with the respective “kings”—Ramesses and God—leading their troops peacefully home, intimidating foreign lands along the way, arriving at the palace and being accorded eternal rule.
Perhaps a biblical writer living centuries later fabricated the Exodus to inspire his own people? Counting against this is that the latest copies of the Kadesh poem in our possession are from the 13th century B.C., and there are no attempts to imitate it in later Egyptian literature. There is no evidence that any historical inscriptions from ancient Egypt ever reached Israel.This leaves aside the puzzle of what would have motivated an Israelite scribe to pen such an explicitly anti-Egyptian work in the first place.
And so it seems Israelites were a minority under Ramesses II. Yet perhaps this literary effort was an imagined salvation?
The fact that the Kadesh poem remained imprinted in biblical Israel suggests another explanation: Exodus preserves the memory of a moment when these Israelites were relieved from Ramesses II’s subjugation. Reaching for language with which to exalt the mighty virtues of their God, they found material in the tropes of one of the best-known accounts of perhaps the greatest Egyptian regent—and proceeded to trounce the pharaoh at his own game.
Mr. Berman, professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is the author of “Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought” (Oxford University Press, 2008). This is adapted from a March essay in Mosaic Magazine.
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