Tanakh and Archaeology

Until recently, doubts as to the veracity of the story of the exodus were rejected out of hand by most biblical scholars in Israel for two reasons:

1. The unlikeliness that a people would invent a tradition of subjugation at the very outset of their existence.
2. The many mentions of the Exodus from Egypt in the Bible as a central event in the life of the nation.

Nevertheless, the arguments that are raised against the veracity of the Biblical story of the Exodus and deny the servitude in Egypt are based on various claims of lack of evidence and instances of anachronism.

It must be emphasized that theories based on a lack of evidence must be treated with much reservation. As to the absence of any mention of the exodus in Egyptian records, we must take into account that kings of the ancient world, including the pharaohs, used to construct monuments glorifying their victories and achievements, not their defeats and failures.

In the case of the exodus there is proof that the narrator possesses extensive knowledge about the details of the period in question, and especially the sort of details that changed in later times. Had the biblical account indeed been written only in the 7^th century B.C.E, it hardly seems likely that the narrator could integrate such precise details of Egyptian reality some six hundred years prior to his or her own time.