I. When did the Exodus take place?

Judeo-Christian-secular’s scholarship has developed in the main three paradigms concerning this question with various shades and innuendo within each:

1. The liberals’ viewpoint

These scholars reads Exodus (1:11) literally when it says that the Israelites built for the Pharaoh two cities. “Ramses” and “Pithom”.

They view “Ramses” as the “Pi-Ramses” or “Avaris-Tanis”2 which was deserted after 1500 and was resettled by Seti I (photo 1) who reigned from 1291 through 1278 BC3. Ramses II (1303 – 1213 B.C) (photo 2) began to reign right after Seti I and is known to have embarked on extensive building projects, which could explain the use of Hebrews for slave labor as depicted in Exodus (1:11)

More to the point, liberals argue compellingly that toward the end of the reign of Ramses II, Egyptian power declined markedly, which would make it easier for the Israelites to engage in conquering Canaan, than during the time of Thutmose III (1490-1936 BC) (photo 3) who is known historically to have conducted extensive campaigns in Canaan.

2. The conservatives’ viewpoint

These scholars and apologists consider another text of the Bible, chiefly; 1 Kings (6:1) which states that Solomon began to build the temple in the 480th year after the Exodus, in the fourth year of his reign.

So fixing the date for the beginning of Solomon reign around 961 – 962 B.C, would place the Exodus around 1437- 1438 BC4.

The conservative paradigm, according to the secularists, their “bête noire”! Is generally represented by pious Jewish and Christians “scholars” who do their utmost in denying anything discovered that contradicted what the bible upheld! And would not hesitate at massaging data in order to nudge them into fitting!

For these reasons and others, most of these scholars are dubbed Biblicists by the secularists and are represented by the likes of (from left to right); William Foxwell Albright (1891 – 1971)5, Kenneth Kitchen6 , Gary A. Rendsburg7, Adam Zertal8, Rabbi David Lichtman9 (no photo), Anson Rainey10 among others.

One Characteristic of the Biblicist archaeologists, according to the secularists, is that they spare no effort or occasion to fit the historical facts into the biblical jar! Irrespective of the evidence at hand!

3. The secularists’ viewpoint

Scholars of this shade are dubbed by the Biblicists; “minimalists”! “Copenhagen - Sheffield school”, “revisionists!” ad even nihilists. Slanders which fall short of doing them justice, just being different from mainstream conservatism!

Secularists, on the other hand, view the Hebrew Bible as worthless when it comes to writing the history of ancient Israel!

A stand they share without knowing, with one of the leading Muslim Andalusian’s scholar; A’li Ibn Ahmad Ibn Sa’id Ibn Hazm (994 – 1064) of Cordoba  (shown in this Spanish commemorating stamp photo 4), who is considered the father of biblical criticism.

He was the first to have coined the non flattering expression; “Petty historians” to the biblical scribes, after coming across so many inconsistencies in the Bible, concerning, events, dates, numbers, names, genealogies.,.., etc, in his famous seminal work; “Al-fasl fil al-Milal wal-Nihal” (The Separators Concerning Religions, Heresies, and Sects).

Themes rediscovered seven centuries later in the “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus” ( 1670) of; (ברוך שפינוזה) (1632 – 1677) (photo 5), and in the two renown treaties; “The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures” (1695) and “A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity” (1695) of (1632 – 1704) (photo 6) , and which will be reverberated also in the writings of European renaissance biblical critics, who understandingly frowned at risking their lives at the burning stacks under the mischievous Church inquisition !, by citing a Moslem scholar of the caliber of Ibn Hazm for their findings.

Contemporary secularists are represented by; the Scandinavian Marit Skjeggestad12, Dever William13, Thomas Thompson14, Philip Davies15, Keith Whitelam16, Niels Peter Lemche17, Ze'ev Herzog1819 and Israel Finkelstein20) among others.

The group is not as monolithic as the rhetoric of their conservative antagonists, who repeatedly disparage them, would suggest.

Here Ideology is at play and renders hollow the conservatives’ reasoning, when they lump all the secularists cited above and throw all of them into one and the same bin, while one can discern at a glance by reading their respective works, that there is as much differences and shades among them, as exist between them all and other scholars!.

It is just not fair for a scientist, worth his salt in the field, to engage in such groundless invectives.

It goes without saying that this excessive criticism has nothing to do with open minded inquiry, and bears the stamp of polemics and demagogy not objective science.

Suffice to mention that Dever, who is a staunch foe of the revisionist, and has developed his own version of the history of ancient Israel, is also a secularist!

But most important of all, secularists, irrespective of their beliefs and credo, which has no bearing whatsoever on scientific enquiry, where facts, and facts alone should count, represent today, the main renovating force in the field.

This is mainly due to their questioning of the age old conservative’s paradigms and inherited wisdom, which had served science badly for eons past.

Secularists for sure should have their say in the field at least for three objective reasons;

1) They are the ones who are proposing new lines of research by not upholding the conservatives’ paradigm which is accepted by the latter without proofs!

2) Their motto is to question any age old premise, and never satisfy themselves with a-priories, clichés, stereotypes and ready made answers.

3) it is their God given right, to doubt any assertion biblical or other, which does not satisfy their intellect or fall short of providing tangible data to support it. The onus of proof is on the conservatives’ shoulders, should they have one.

It is crystal clear from the above, that short of this, the whole conservatives’ impetuous behind their scholarly drive, will be no more than a mere reaction, opposite for sure, but never equal to the driving action of the secularists. A fact which shows where the future lies.

Unfortunately, whenever passions are high and ideologies strive hard to hijack the field at the expense of true enquiry, producing their own artificial factoid instead of letting true facts speak for themselves , aberration sets in and one can’t avoid coming across some ultra demagogues, of the variety of the avowed Zionist Gary Rendsburg , who disparage vehemently and passionately these free secular’s scholars, just because they don’t share his conservative’s paradigm21 saying;

..To give you the names of the four best known among them, they are Thomas Thompson, Philip Davies, Niels Lemche, and Keith Whitelam. Some of them are driven ... by Marxism and leftist politics. Some of them are former evangelical Christians who now see the evils of their former ways. Some of them are counterculture people, left over from the 60s and 70s, whose personality includes the questioning of authority in all aspects of their lives. But the two most important elements in the profile of these scholars are the following. First, almost without exception, these scholars have no expertise in the larger world of ancient Near Eastern studies !22 .... Second, almost without exception, the scholars of this group are not Jewish.23...Furthermore, and I do not hesitate to use the terms, these scholars are driven by anti-Zionism approaching anti-Semitism24.

It goes without saying, that the last sentence is usually used as a sword of Damocles in order to frighten the opponents or the recalcitrants!