Free The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman

Sea, the appearance of manna in the wilderness, and the revelation of God’s Law on Sinai, all of which were the visible manifestations of God’s rule over both nature and humanity. The God of Israel, previously known only by private revelations to the patriarchs, here reveals himself to the nation as a universal deity.
    But is it history? Can archaeology help us pinpoint the era when a leader named Moses mobilized his people for the great act of liberation? Can we trace the path of the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness? Can we even determine if the Exodus—as described in the Bible—ever occurred?Two hundred years of intensive excavation and study of the remains of ancient Egyptian civilization have offered a detailed chronology of the events, personalities, and places of pharaonic times. Even more than descriptions of the patriarchal stories, the Exodus narrative is filled with a wealth of detailed and specific geographical references. Can they provide a reliable historical background to the great epic of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and their reception of the Law on Sinai?
Israel in Egypt: The Biblical Saga
    The Exodus story describes two momentous transitions whose connection is crucial for the subsequent course of Israelite history. On the one hand, the twelve sons of Jacob and their families, living in exile in Egypt, grow into a great nation. On the other, that nation undergoes a process of liberation and commitment to divine law that would have been impossible before. Thus the Bible’s message highlights the potential power of a united, pious nation when it begins to claim its freedom from even the greatest kingdom on earth.
    The stage was set for this dramatic spiritual metamorphosis at the end of the book of Genesis, with the sons of Jacob living in security under the protection of their brother Joseph, who had come to power as an influential official in the Egyptian hierarchy. They were prosperous and content in the cities of the eastern Nile delta and had free access back and forth to their Canaanite homeland. After the death of their father, Jacob, they brought his body to the tomb that had been prepared for him—alongside his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron. And over a period of four-hundred thirty years, the descendants of the twelve brothers and their immediate families evolved into a great nation—just as God had promised—and were known to the Egyptian population as Hebrews. “They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1 : 7 ). But times changed and eventually a new pharaoh came to power “who knew not Joseph.” Fearing that the Hebrews would betray Egypt to one of its enemies, this new pharaoh enslaved them, forcing them into construction gangs to build the royal cities of Pithom and Raamses. “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied” (Exodus 1 : 12 ). The vicious cycle of oppression continued to deepen:the Egyptians made the Hebrews’ life ever more bitter as they were forced into hard service “with mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field” (Exodus 1 : 14 ).
    Fearing a population explosion of these dangerous immigrant workers, the pharaoh ordered that all Hebrew male infants be drowned in the Nile. Yet from this desperate measure came the instrument of the Hebrews’ liberation. A child from the tribe of Levi—set adrift in a basket of bulrushes—was found and adopted by one of the pharaoh’s daughters. He was given the name Moses (from the Hebrew root “to draw out” of the water) and raised in the royal court. Years later, when Moses had grown to adulthood, he saw an Egyptian taskmaster flaying a Hebrew slave and his deepest feelings rose to the surface. He slew the taskmaster and “hid his body in the sand.” Fearing the consequences of his act, Moses fled to the wilderness—to the land of Midian—where he adopted a new life as a desert