Talk:Book of Exodus

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Pitre

Pitre is WP:FRINGE, see Talk:Brothers of Jesus#Pitre. Jedi mind tricks only work upon simpletons. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:47, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

In response: Brant Pitre most definitely does not represent a "fringe opinion;" on the contrary, he represents a significant number of Catholic theologians currently teaching and writing. He earned a Ph.D from Notre Dame, has been published by reputable companies, and is a leading voice in Catholic biblical theology.

Simply applying a false label does not constitute grounds for removing any reference to Pitre's work, particularly when it pertains directly to a disputed edit. Wikipedia policy clearly states that "all majority and significant-minority views published in reliable sources should be represented fairly and proportionately." I provided a reliable source, and could provide many more--not just from Dr. Pitre--to support the claim made in my edit. This is not a dispute over the historicity of Exodus; it is a dispute over the views of scholars on this topic. To continue to remove reference to the view that Bergsma and Pitre articulate is, in my view, wholly unfaithful to the explicit policies of this site as well as its stated goal.

Secondly, the description of "mainstream biblical scholarship" you provided is flatly wrong in its characterization of how Scripture scholars view the Bible. It sounds more like a manifesto than an objective description. While many scholars certainly do subscribe to the views it enumerates, many others do not.--AchatesFortis (talk) 05:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

This is a fringe book by a catholic fundamentalist, we have multiple statements that his position is fringe. Almost no mainstream scholar argues that the exodus is “essentially historical “.—Ermenrich (talk) 13:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

A scholar is mainly concerned with facts. Pitre is not a scholar, but an ideologue. His reasoning is something like "It is theologically true, so it must also be historically true." He thinks that if the Doctors of the Church agree it's true, that makes it scholarly true.

And, hey, it's a free country. If that's all he wants to be or all that he can be, he is allowed to be an ideologue. But the idea that he writes WP:SCHOLARSHIP is disinformation.

But it is good that you have deleted some of your own arguments. I heard those many times, and they never worked inside Wikipedia. There is no particular reason to admit those would have worked this time.

Why? Because Wikipedia is a WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia, heavily based upon mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP, i.e. that sort of scholarship from the Ivy League, described at WP:CHOPSY. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Your opposition to my revision is based on either innocent ignorance or an undetected bias. Let's avoid ad hominems about authors and look at the facts. The fact that concerns me is that the scholarly consensus is not that Exodus be construed as a myth. Ermenrich, as a Ph.D. in medieval literature, you've been adjacent to theology for long enough to know this. It is simply false to assert that scholars have reached a consensus on this sort of interpretation.

My wording of "essentially historical" could certainly be improved, I fully own; but even it is a far sight better than what preceded it. Ermenrich, you have carefully curated the general "Exodus" page and you actually cite several sources that bear out my contention about the lack of scholarly consensus on the historicity of the Exodus. If there is division in mainstream scholarship on the historicity of the Exodus itself, it would be nonsensical to suggest at the same time that the book is construed as myth by virtually all scholars.

We all agree that the article should not endorse any particular religious viewpoint on the Bible; we are concerned with stating facts, not endorsing beliefs. But if this is so, then we ought to carefully consider what we state about scholarly consensus.AchatesFortis (talk) 07:01, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I tried to adjust my wording to be more accurate; I think it could still be improved, as the scholarly positions are legion and do not fall as simply into the black/white dichotomy of "fact" or "fiction." But to say that scholars just say "fiction" is much worse. Here is an example of a middle position from a Jewish scholar: "Like most peoples, the Israelites developed a story of their origins that is based partly on fact, partly on a particularistic reading of much larger events, and partly on folklore" (Schendlin, Raymond P. A Short History of the Jewish People. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.) This text was used in undergraduate courses at Northwestern University circa 2010. This directly contradicts the prior claim of the article that Exodus is construed as myth by virtually all scholars. If this source is not considered reputable or mainstream, then I am a monkey's uncle--and Wikipedia's claim to objectivity is pure fantasy.AchatesFortis (talk) 07:28, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Saying that "Wikipedia is biased" or that "Wikipedia fails to follow its own neutral point of view rules" is not a set of magic words that will cause Wikipedia to accept your favorite conspiracy theory, urban myth, pseudoscience, alternative medicine or fringe theory.

While the Exodus story might be based upon some nuggets of historical facts, it is far from having historicity. If you want mythologized history is its most accurate description: i.e. it has originated as a sort of Ancient historiography, but it has been embellished beyond any resemblance to historical fact.

E.g. if you want to posit that the Exodus is based upon the escape of 60 slaves from Egypt, I have nothing against that. But not 600 000 adult men (warriors).

Why? Because in the Antiquity it was impossible to move an army larger than 100 000 soldiers.

At the height of its power, the Roman Empire had in total something between 300 000 and 450 000 soldiers.

An army of 60 000 soldiers could be moved only by a mighty empire (they had to eat and drink while the enemy tried to prevent that). tgeorgescu (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

You seem oddly convinced that I am trying to make the article endorse a historical reading of the book. But what I am actually suggesting is that to characterize its interpretation as mythical is a vast and misleading oversimplification. I'm basing this assertion on actual scholarship, of which I have produced two different sources from authors of diverse perspectives.

I'm not concerned with debating the historicity of the Exodus; I am quite concerned with Wikipedia being accurate and objective. AchatesFortis (talk) 17:42, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Here's what The Exodus says on historicity in the relevant section:

There are two main positions on the historicity of the Exodus in modern scholarship. The majority position is that the biblical Exodus narrative has some historical basis, although there is little of historical worth in the biblical narrative. The other position, often associated with the school of Biblical minimalism, is that the biblical exodus traditions are the invention of the exilic and post-exilic Jewish community, with little to no historical basis. The biblical Exodus narrative is best understood as a founding myth of the Jewish people, providing an ideological foundation for their culture and institutions, not an accurate depiction of the history of the Israelites. The view that the biblical narrative is essentially correct unless it can explicitly be proven wrong (Biblical maximalism) is today held by "few, if any [...] in mainstream scholarship, only on the more fundamentalist fringes."

This is more or less what we say in this article as well, in the appropriate section if not the lead. So your original wording arguing that the account is seen by some as historically accurate is certainly fringe. At most we can say that a majority of scholars believe that the "myth" has some basis in history.

Note that myth does not mean "untrue story", but has a specific meaning in religious studies. I've advocated for using legend in the past to avoid this ambiguity, but that got shot down pretty hard at talk:The Exodus/Archive 20#Rearrange the lead for consistent flow - simple fix should satisfy all parties, I don't think that it's going to fly here either.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:14, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Yup, others suggest that it is based on factual history is incorrect;

others suggest that it is very remotely based on factual history is correct. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that Pitre is no scholar, this sentence is confused: "The other position, often associated with the school of Biblical minimalism,[5][6] is that the biblical exodus traditions are the invention of the exilic and post-exilic Jewish community, with little to no historical basis." (1) Biblical minimalism is the idea that the Bible is a late text motivated by theological concerns, and therefore should take second place to archaeology and archaeologically-based philology (i.e., texts of the period discovered in situ). This has no relevance to the historicity of the Exodus, except in so far as the Torah, our only source for it, is a late text (c.450 BC by the majority opinion, c.200 BC by the minority). (2) The Exodus TRADITIONS are much older than the Torah, as they can be traced back to the pre-exilic period - i.e., they're not an invention of the exilic and post-exilic communities. What these communities invented was the exodus NARRATIVE, the one in the Torah. (3). The historical basis of the narrative is the traditions; the historical basis of the narrative is irrecoverable, and the idea that it draws on the Hyksos experience is attractive, but speculative. Achar Sva (talk) 09:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what you’re getting at. We have sources connecting the exodus debate specifically to minimalism and maximalism, as well as for the Hyksos theory (among others). This isn’t the hard sciences, humanists are allowed and even encouraged to speculate based on the evidence. The question is whether the speculation is mainstream and common or not in the RS, which in this case it is.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The point is that the article is confusing traditions and narratives. The exodus story in the torah is a narrative, the traditions behind it are something else (they're found in the prophets and some old poetic passages). Achar Sva (talk) 23:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Historicity

Please explain why the historicity discussion has been deleted? What am I missing? Wdford (talk) 11:16, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I restored it, as it was the only section of the article I found worth reading. User:Achar Sva deleted it, claiming "Historicity belongs in the article on the exodus narrative (the book is about far more than history". Without this section, readers might believe that there was a historical Moses or that Biblical Egypt has a factual basis. Dimadick (talk) 11:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I deleted it because what's being discussed is the historicity of the exodus (an event), not the historicity of the Book of Exodus. Exodus isn't a history book, it's theology, and about half of it is a law code (which no one ever reads). It should be pretty obvious that it isn't history, since its full of miracles and information about god, and it one point it even describes a meal in heaven, which frankly strikes me as pretty improbable. What's needed is a discussion of genre, not historicity. Achar Sva (talk) 16:47, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I think that the average reader of WP is not aware of the fact that "Exodus isn't a history book, it's theology." For the average reader, even as late as this new century, the Bible is not only the word of God. It is history as it really happened. So any reminder of all these basic rational, logical truths is helpful. I'd recommend that it stays... Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 17:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it should stay.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The historicity discussion is definitely needed, but we can also have a genre discussion as well. The two will probably overlap a bit, but not to the point of being a problem. Wdford (talk) 23:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Mosaic authorship

@IP from UK: the Mosaic authorship is dead in the water as far as the mainstream academia is concerned. It is extremely doubtful if people from 1450 BCE could be called Israelites. It is doubtful that Israelites from 1250 CE had their own alphabet, or that they were actually speaking something which is more or less ancient Hebrew. And monotheism such as in the Deuteronomy did not exist in David's and Solomon's time, let alone 1250 BCE. tgeorgescu (talk) 09:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Consensus view

About Instead, they point out how modern archaeology suggests continuity between Canaanite and Israelite settlements, indicating a primarily Canaanite origin for Israel, with no suggestion that a group of foreigners from Egypt comprised early Israel. It is rendered as Finkelstein and Silberman's view, while in fact it could be said that it is the consensus view of mainstream archaeologists. Even William G. Dever agrees, while Dever's POV is to combat whatever Finkelstein posits. According to Shaye J. D. Cohen, a Yeshiva boy who became a Bible professor at Harvard University, "Most Israelites were actually of Canaanite stock; their ancestors did not participate in an Exodus from Egypt; Israelites did not build the pyramids!!!" http://ruml.com/thehebrewbible/notes/09-Notes.pdf https://courses.biblicalarchaeology.org/hebrewbible/notes/09-Notes.pdf tgeorgescu (talk) 19:35, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

"Israelites did not build the pyramids" As far as I know, nobody has suggested that there were Israelites around in the 3rd millennium BCE. The best known pyramids in Egypt date to that period. Dimadick (talk) 15:44, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Using John J. Collins as a source for history

Is John J. Collins really an expert in history? On his Wikipedia page it appears he’s not a historian or an archeologist. I tried looking this guy up and couldn’t find any websites saying he’s an expert in history.

Not to mention I can’t find any indication that his book was written with the help of someone who is an expert in history.

Can’t we just replace him with a better source that is written by someone who actually has knowledge on history?CycoMa1 (talk) 18:30, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

John J Collins does not have to be an expert in history to summary the WP:RS/AC of scholars working on the Exodus.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

The source only said there is a consensus it’s a myth. It didn’t say “there is a consensus that it does not describe historical events.” Or at least it doesn’t directly say that.

The definition of myth is merely a traditional story that explains things.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:48, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Merger

I may have missed this discussion in the past, but why do we have separate articles for The Exodus and Book of Exodus? The Exodus only exists in the Bible, not in real history, so what is actually the difference? Should we not merge them? Wdford (talk) 16:46, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

The Exodus narrative covers four books, not one: "namely Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy". Dimadick (talk) 16:48, 7 November 2022 (UTC)