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The Exodus: An Egyptian Story
Did the Exodus occur? This question has been asked in biblical scholarship since its origin as a modern science. The desire to resolve the question scientifically was a key component in the funding of archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century. Egyptian archaeologists routinely equated sites with their presumed biblical counterpart. Initially, it was taken for granted that the Exodus had occurred. It was simply a matter of finding the archaeological data to prove it. So far, those results have been for naught.
The An Egyptian Story takes a very real-world approach to understanding the Exodus. It is not a story of cosmic spectaculars that miraculously or coincidentally occurred when a people prepared to leave Egypt. There are no special effects in the telling of this story. Instead, the story is told with real people in the real world doing what real people do.
Peter Feinman does not rely on the biblical text and is not trying to prove that the Bible is true. He places the Exodus within Egyptian history based on the Egyptian archaeological record. It is a story of the rejection of the Egyptian cultural construct and defiance of Ramses II. Egyptologists, not biblical scholars, are the guides to telling the Exodus story. What would you expect Ramses II to say after he had been humiliated? If there is an Egyptian smoking gun for the Exodus, how would you recognize it? To answer these questions requires us to take the Exodus seriously as a major event at the royal level in Egyptian history.
Table of Contents
1. The Egyptological Search for the Exodus
2. Egypt, Egyptology, and the The Egyptian Cultural Construct
3. The The People of the 400 Year Sojourn
4. The The Triumph and Defeat of Apophis
5. Ramses, the Pharaoh of the Exodus
6. The Exodus
7. Post-Exodus Stress Disorder
The An Egyptian Story takes a very real-world approach to understanding the Exodus. It is not a story of cosmic spectaculars that miraculously or coincidentally occurred when a people prepared to leave Egypt. There are no special effects in the telling of this story. Instead, the story is told with real people in the real world doing what real people do.
Peter Feinman does not rely on the biblical text and is not trying to prove that the Bible is true. He places the Exodus within Egyptian history based on the Egyptian archaeological record. It is a story of the rejection of the Egyptian cultural construct and defiance of Ramses II. Egyptologists, not biblical scholars, are the guides to telling the Exodus story. What would you expect Ramses II to say after he had been humiliated? If there is an Egyptian smoking gun for the Exodus, how would you recognize it? To answer these questions requires us to take the Exodus seriously as a major event at the royal level in Egyptian history.
Table of Contents
1. The Egyptological Search for the Exodus
2. Egypt, Egyptology, and the The Egyptian Cultural Construct
3. The The People of the 400 Year Sojourn
4. The The Triumph and Defeat of Apophis
5. Ramses, the Pharaoh of the Exodus
6. The Exodus
7. Post-Exodus Stress Disorder
224 pages, Paperback
Published October 22, 2021
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June 6, 2024
This book purports to examine the historicity of the Biblical Exodus story by placing it in its Egyptological context. However, the author's approach is to assert what he believes to be the truth of the story. He does examine an exhaustive array of publications, listed in an extensive bibliography, by Egyptologists over the centuries, to restate widely differing positions and suggest motivations for those opinions. But because he does not include page references it is impossible to check the context and accuracy of his quotations (some are clearly misquoted).
His entire writing style is amateurish. For much of the early part of the book he repeatedly states what he will not discuss as being outside the scope of his investigation. What he does limit himself to discussing he asserts as fact, referring to future chapters for a full discussion and justification. Yet, when the reader eventually reaches these chapters, no such balanced discussion occurs. By that time the author's whole hypothesis has become fixed in the reader's mind as if it had already been justified. The author is even oddly illiterate in his command of English. He frequently uses the definite or indefinite article when they are not required, conversely omitting them when they should be there. In his last chapter his use of English becomes particularly incorrect: 'to be a form a popular social entertainment (165); 'Goedicke seemed to change tact' (167); the Quarrel between Apophis and Seqenenre is described as a 'literary tractate' (167).
The whole book feels as if it has been cobbled together from research notes and quotations with no attempt at rigorous editing. To be charitable to the author he does assert a plausible interpretation of the extant historical and archaeological evidence. But, in his own choice of terminology, this hypothesis is pure 'speculation'. He has proved nothing. Despite his assertion that the Exodus and Moses are historical fact, he has said nothing to demonstrate this.
His entire writing style is amateurish. For much of the early part of the book he repeatedly states what he will not discuss as being outside the scope of his investigation. What he does limit himself to discussing he asserts as fact, referring to future chapters for a full discussion and justification. Yet, when the reader eventually reaches these chapters, no such balanced discussion occurs. By that time the author's whole hypothesis has become fixed in the reader's mind as if it had already been justified. The author is even oddly illiterate in his command of English. He frequently uses the definite or indefinite article when they are not required, conversely omitting them when they should be there. In his last chapter his use of English becomes particularly incorrect: 'to be a form a popular social entertainment (165); 'Goedicke seemed to change tact' (167); the Quarrel between Apophis and Seqenenre is described as a 'literary tractate' (167).
The whole book feels as if it has been cobbled together from research notes and quotations with no attempt at rigorous editing. To be charitable to the author he does assert a plausible interpretation of the extant historical and archaeological evidence. But, in his own choice of terminology, this hypothesis is pure 'speculation'. He has proved nothing. Despite his assertion that the Exodus and Moses are historical fact, he has said nothing to demonstrate this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review