Home

April 20, 2001

The Jewish Journal (JewishJournal.com) devoted several articles to the LA Times article doubting the historicity of the Exodus.

Here's the link to Prager's article (my comments are in italics):

During Passover and on Good Friday the Los Angeles Times published a front-page article titled "Doubting the Story of Exodus." The timing was typical of the insensitivity often shown in mainstream media to religious Jews and Christians. It is unimaginable, for example, that any mainstream newspaper would ever print a front-page article on Martin Luther King’s extramarital affairs on Martin Luther King Day.

I don't think that is unimaginable at all. I've seen newspaper coverage of MLK's misdeeds, though I do not remember its timing. Newspapers are insensitive by definition. Think how they treat the President after his State of the Union address.

Good newspapers routinely cover things in ways that their subjects and many readers find insulting. Good newspapers do not allow their subjects and readers to set the agenda but rather their own journalistic instincts. A story during Passover on the historicity of the Exodus was legit. In fact, there's no better timing.

According to the article, most archaeologists and even some Jewish clergy do not believe the biblical Exodus occurred. That most archaeologists conclude from the alleged lack of archaeological evidence that Jews were never slaves in Egypt and the exodus to Canaan never took place tells us something about these individuals, but nothing about the Bible or the Exodus.

Dennis Prager has no expertise on the question of the historicity of the Exodus. He's not a Bible scholar. He's not a historian. He's not an archeologist. He has no credentials to address the question of what archeology and historical tools have to say about the Exodus and the factual truth of the Bible. None. So it chutzpah for Prager to proclaim that the work of those scholars (archeologists, Bible scholars and historians) who've devoted their lives to this question is meaningless. How can Prager proclaim that the experts in this field have nothing to say? Prager certainly can't speak from experience or education or expertise.

Prager can say that he believes in the historicity of the Exodus and that he believes or disbelieves in this or that part of the historical record or scientific truth, but it is ludicrous. The historicity of Israel and of the Bible is not properly a matter of faith or belief. It is a matter of fact. That God chose the Jews, that God inspired the Bible, and that God guides the destiny of Israel are all properly matters of faith which are immune to scholarly investigation.

What does it tell us? That most of these archaeologists have the same bias against traditional religious beliefs that most of their academic colleagues have. Ten years ago, Dr. Robert Jastrow, an agnostic and one of America’s leading astrophysicists — founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and now director of the Mount Wilson Observatory — wrote about this in his book "God and the Astronomers." Jastrow described a disturbing reaction among his colleagues to the big-bang theory — irritation and anger. Why, he asked, would scientists, who are supposed to pursue truth and not have an emotional investment in any evidence, be angered by the big-bang theory? The answer, he concluded, is very disturbing: many scientists do not want to acknowledge anything that may even suggest the existence of God. The big-bang theory, by positing a beginning to the universe, suggests a creator and therefore annoys many astronomers.

This anti-religious bias is hardly confined to astronomers. It pervades academia, home to nearly all archaeologists.

Take one of the archaeologists’ major conclusions: Because they have found no evidence of Israelites in the Sinai desert, no Israelites made the trip from Egypt to Canaan. That conclusion strikes many of us as so unwarranted — even arrogant — as to demand explanation. According to the book of Exodus, the Israelites spent only 40 years in the desert over 3,000 years ago. What could possibly remain from a mere 40 years in a desert 3,000 years later?

What does Prager know about archeology and its methods? What is Prager's knowledge of historical tools of investigation? Where did Prager get his Ph.D. in archeology and Ancient Near East history or in Hebrew? These proclamations are particularly amusing as Prager constantly proclaims his erotic love of truth, no matter how painful. And how very rational he is.

And since when does the alleged lack of physical proof mean something never happened or doesn’t exist? I have no doubt that many of the archaeologists who are so certain that the Jews never wandered out of Egypt are quite sure that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe. But on what basis? Despite decades of highly sophisticated probing, we do not have a shred of evidence to support the belief that intelligent life exists anywhere else. They choose to believe it because logic suggests to them that intelligent life exists out there.

Well, logic suggests to many of us that Jews were slaves in Egypt and that there was an exodus. For thousands of years Jews have been retelling this story. It is possible that it is all a 3,000-year-old fairy tale, but do logic and common sense suggest this? Why would a people make up such an ignoble history? Why would a people fabricate a myth of its origins in which it is depicted so negatively?

Prager shows no knowledge of the historiography of the Exodus, how, for instance, for hundreds of years, according to the Bible, the Israelites did not observe Passover.

There is no parallel in human history to the Hebrew Bible’s negative depiction of the Jews’ national origins.

The Christian Bible shows most of the early Christians to be just about as miserable as the Jewish Bible shows the founders of Israel.

The Torah’s depiction of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt to Canaan portrays the Jews as ingrates, rebels and chronic complainers, undeserving of the freedom God and Moses brought them. Moreover, aside from Moses, the heroes of the story are nearly all non-Jews. It is the daughter of Pharaoh who saves and rears Moses (later Jewish tradition actually holds her to be his mother); it is a Midianite priest, Jethro, who tells Moses how to govern the Jewish people; and the two midwives who refuse the pharaoh’s order to kill all male Jewish babies are almost certainly Egyptians. As for Moses himself, he is depicted as being raised an Egyptian.

That is one of the three reasons I am certain of the Jews’ slavery and exodus. Any people that makes up a history for itself makes sure to depict itself as heroic and other peoples as villains. That the Torah’s story does the very opposite is for me an unassailable argument on behalf of its honesty.

Second, I do not believe that a nation tells a story for 3,000 years that has no experiential basis. Moreover, the text has allusions to Egypt that only contemporaries could know. Even the name Moses is Egyptian (compare the pharaohs’ names Thutmose, Ahmose and Ahmosis).

Third, I choose to believe the story despite the archaeologists’ (subjective) claim of no evidence just as, despite the powerful arguments of history and of archaeologists of the past generation, some archaeologists — and those who trust archaeologists more than the biblical narrative — choose to believe the exodus never happened.

As for the argument of some Jews that they do not depend on the veracity of the Exodus for their faith, from a Jewish standpoint this is destructive nonsense. If the Exodus did not occur, there is no Judaism. Judaism stands on two pillars — creation and exodus. Judaism no more survives the denial of the Exodus than it does the denial of the Creator. Creation and Exodus are coequal Jewish claims. A creator God who never intervened in human affairs is Aristotle’s unmoved mover, not the God the Jews introduced to the world. Moreover, any Jews who believe the Exodus did not occur should have the intellectual honesty to stop observing Passover. They should spend the week studying the truths of archaeology — that is their haggadah — rather than what they regard as the fairy tales of the haggadah and Torah.

Fifty years ago, when anti-religious dogma was less suffocating, archaeologists showed time and again how archaeology confirmed essentials of the biblical narratives. Today, most archaeologists argue the opposite. In a couple of decades, they will probably change their minds again. I didn’t rely on archaeologists for my faith when they confirmed it, and they have no effect on my faith when they deny it. They will continue to find meaning in their lives from excavating ancient ruins and deconstructing the Bible. And I will continue to find meaning in life telling my children, and hopefully one day my grandchildren, what Jews have told their children and grandchildren for 3,000 years. "We were slaves in the land of Egypt and with a mighty hand, God brought us out."

Luke says: Has Prager ever had a Bible scholar as a guest on his show? What about a Biblical archeologist? I don't remember one, and I've been listening since 1986.

And is Prager's source of values really the Bible? I suspect that his values would correspond with those who graduated from his high school (Yeshiva of Flatbush) and received a similar amount of secular education (elite graduate school, Colombia).

Steve writes on the Prager List: Boy, i must say i was really amazed by this article, by its dishonesty and by its stupidity, but then i remembered that one of Dennis's job requirements is to provoke. In any event here are some of my responses to his piece:

Of course, even if astronomers are annoyed by G-d, they all accepted that the Big Bang best described the available evidence. Prager on the other hand dismisses current archaeology precisely and solely because of his own bias, instead choosing to engage in ad hominem.

Also according to Exodus, over 600,000 grown men left Egypt (meaning more than a million counting women and children) of which most died in the desert and they spent 38 of those 40 years in the same spot, which has been extensively escavated. Archaeology has found evidence of nomadic peoples living in the Sinai dating before and after the time of the Exodus, but nothing matching the described Exodus. And of course there's much more: For Example Moses is said to have been denied passage by the King of Moab, yet Moab became a nation long after the supposed time of Moses. (Moab was well known in the time that these stories were written yet did not exist in the time the story is set.) There are many such anachronisms in the Bible. (Another example: Egypt controlled Canaan in the time of the Exodus yet the Bible never mentions this, because of course the writers of the Bible didn't know.)

If Prager doesn't know these facts he's an ignoramus. If he does he's a cravenly immoral propagandist. Take your pick.

"Why would a people make up such an ignoble history?"

Since much of the Bible was likely compiled and written by priests living in Babylon during the exile (after the fall of both Israel and Judah), the story of an enslaved people going on to found a great and united kingdom (it also appears now that David and Solomon did not rule a great or united kingdom, and that Israel was always Judah's superior) would be quite noble and inspirational to an exiled people struggling to retain and forge their national identity.

Furthermore the Exodus may well be based on reality: the reality of the Hyksos. They were Palestinians who came to and settled in Egypt during a time of famine, like the story of Israel in the Bible. They rose to great power (and in fact ruled) in Egypt, again like the story in the Bible. Then a wave of nationalism in Egypt led to their expulsion back to Canaan. But they were not Israel, and they were expelled some 500 years before the time of the Exodus. Certainly this historical memory could've been part of the Canaan culture from which the people and nation of Israel did arise.

Prager's simpleminded approach to this subject is either intended for the simpleminded, or indicative of his grasp of this subject. Again take your pick.

"As for the argument of some Jews that they do not depend on the veracity of the Exodus for their faith, from a Jewish standpoint this is destructive nonsense. If the Exodus did not occur, there is no Judaism. Judaism stands on two pillars — creation and exodus. Judaism no more survives the denial of the Exodus than it does the denial of the Creator. Creation and Exodus are coequal Jewish claims. A creator G-d who never intervened in human affairs is Aristotle’s unmoved mover, not the G-d the Jews introduced to the world. Moreover, any Jews who believe the Exodus did not occur should have the intellectual honesty to stop observing Passover."

What a load of crap this is! Prager has shown himself (or at least his public persona) to be a fundamentalist of the worst sort. First of all Judaism is about deeds more than beliefs. Doesn't Prager know this? Even atheists can be good Jews. (Not me of course.) Don't atheists deny the creator? Has Dennis Prager's ego now grown so large that he rules the rabbis, and the he alone decides what Judaism is? Furthermore one of the best things about religion, about celebrating Passover, is the connection you get to your family, to your people, to your fellow man, knowing that your father, and that his father and his father before him also followed the very same rituals. Judaism is about observance, not about belief.

Prager has drawn a line in the sand: you can't be a modern man and a Jew at the same time. He's a fundamentalist pure a simple. And a bigger fool than even I ever thought.

Shannon writes on the Prager List: A masterful response to Prager's meandering folly. Unfortunately he will neither read nor respond to it. A fanatic religious polemicist of Prager's ilk finds the celebrating of religious ritual and ceremony by the nominally religious or atheists completely incongruous... But the joke's really on him.

My response [to Prager's essay]: I am curious why the archaeological veracity the Exodus tale holds such pivotal interest to Prager in the practice of his Judaism. Why not too the account offered for humankind's origins in the Garden of Eden? No doubt, under the scrutiny of scientific evaluation, Adam and Eve, a talking snake and our incestuous intermarriage origins implied in Genesis look rather feeble.

Equally so, the Flood account, a literal interpretation of which, is scientifically preposterous. Religious faith by its very nature absolves itself of the usual empirical strategies employed in determining truth. It is, plain and simple, an insistence that a theological claim or tenet is true and factual purely by virtue of a mass held belief. Religiosity largely functions by affirming metaphysical assumptions, thinly veiled by history.

So, whether or not the Exodus occurred; and at this juncture it appears that there is no tactile evidence to believe it did, the theology of Judaism, as the theology of all religions, remains untainted. Religion operates outside the realm of the real, and in that aspect its claims warrant no serious evaluation by the scientific community.

Steve Zimmerman writes: I think if one were to sit down with a rational, thinking Orthodox Jew, that person would have to agree that taking the Torah as the literal word of G-d is a belief, not a fact. It has to be because there is no objective proof that it is the literal word of G-d.

It's no different from Christians taking on the belief that the words of Jesus as quoted in the Christian bible are Jesus' actual spoken literal words. Again, there is no objective proof since they were written down minimum 30 years after allegedly spoken.

I don't think Judaism needs proof of the Exodus to exist. The Torah is a collection of stories meant to give Jews a roadmap on how to live in the world. It is designed to inspire our people...which it has for thousands of years. It has confounded rabbis and sages throughout the centuries.

Because it is a collection written by different authors at different times, with different writing styles, it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies (as is the Christian bible). To try to take every word literally sets one up for controversy at the least and failure at the max.

DP's last sentence above makes no sense. I personally believe something like the Exodus occurred...but it's a belief, not a fact. And absence of proof is not denial. So I have no difficulty remaining Jewish no matter what the archeologists find or fail to find.

April 27, 2001

The Jewish Journal (JewishJournal.com) again devoted space to the LA Times article doubting the historicity of the Exodus.

Dennis Prager writes to the Journal:

In his article on the Exodus controversy, Jewish Journal Editor Robert Eshman wrote: "Radio talk show host Dennis Prager spent almost two hours fielding calls from across the region, and let callers know of his own strong disagreement with Wolpe."

It is entirely understandable why Eshman wrote this, as I mentioned to him that I discussed the issue for two hours on my radio show. But I never discussed Rabbi Wolpe or his sermon.

The reason is simple: In 19 years of radio I have never discussed anything I myself did not hear or read, and I certainly was not going to make an exception in the case of my friend Rabbi David Wolpe.

Both on the air and in print I discussed the issue, not a talk that I never heard.

The error was, as noted, entirely understandable, but it is important that it be corrected.

Luke says: I wonder about Prager's statement: "In 19 years of radio I have never discussed anything I myself did not hear or read..." But Prager all the time comments on quotations in newspapers. Yes, DP often uses the disclaimer, if so-and-so was quoted accurately, then...