Re: When did belief in an exodus from Egypt emerge?
Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 11:00 am
If you read my last sentence, you'll see the reason for this "issue": I was not allowed to post URLS, but I offered the option to PM me for my sources. The source you came across contains some of the same information as those I used, but here are mine: thetorah dot com/the-historical-exodus/ and youtube dot com/watch?v=H-YlzpUhnxQ.semiopen wrote:An issue with John's post was that a source wasn't given. It's probably this -
The Priestly source is relatively easy to identify, but discerning J from E is known to be a knotty problem. It may be better to simply speak of P and non-P sources in the plagues narrative. William Propp, Friedman's former colleague at UCSD (Friedman now teaches at the University of Georgia), like Friedman assigns the non-P plagues material to E. In The Bible With Sources Revealed, Friedman states that since E is responsible for the burning-bush pericope, he sees no reason to assign the plagues narrative that follows to J.semiopen wrote:I don't understand this, unless Dr Friedman is a Yahwist Plague denier
What Dr. Friedman said is: "Indeed, significantly, the first biblical mention of the Exodus, the Song of Miriam, which is the oldest text in the Bible, never mentions how many people were involved in the Exodus, and it never speaks of the whole nation of Israel. It just refers to a people, an am, leaving Egypt. It wasn’t until a much later source of the Exodus—the so-called priestly source, some 400 years later—that the number 603,550 males was added to the story." Note that he dates P 400 years after the Song of Miriam/Song of the Sea, not the actual Exodus. It's true that Friedman dates P before D, to a time not long after J and E were combined, and he claims that linguistic evidence supports this view.semiopen wrote:Placing the Priestly source only 400 years after the Exodus is getting to be anachronistic in this day and age.