![]() Assmann suggests that these stories, rather than the biblical exodus, may be a conflation of the Akhenaten story and the Hyksos. He's talking about the various stories told in the last three centuries before Christ by various Greek authors, plus Manetho, concerning the origins of the Jews and certain events in Egypt in the distant past. Assmann is talking about something different. The "mixed multitude" phrase, taken from Exodus, is an attempt to merge these two facts. This theory seeks to explain the following fact: all the archaeology points to Israel arising within Canaan and from Canaanites, but (a) the Pentateuch says they came from Egypt, and (b) some names in the exodus story seem to be Egyptian (Moses's own name, for example). Killebrew is talking about the theory of the "mixed multitude", which is that the exodus is remembering multiple instances of slaves escaping from Egypt, not just a single case. That story is known from a tablet dating from the 8th century, although Sargon lived long before that. She's opposing it to the theory that is popular, namely that the birth of Moses is based on the legend of the birth of Sargon of Akkad. This theory isn't original with her, but it's not popular. ![]() She says the birth story is based on a story about the birth of Cyrus of Persia found in Herodotus - she's not saying that the entire exodus is a fiction by the Persians. He or she is talking only about Exodus 2 and the birth narrative of Moses, not the entire exodus story. Thanks for pointing out the paper by Zlotnick-Sivan, I hadn't been aware of is. JerryRussell ( talk) 19:44, 27 August 2017 (UTC) Hello JerryRussell: Hi Jerry. I don't see that the degree of scholarly consensus is sufficient to state a conclusion, on behalf of all scholars, in Wiki voice. There is also the suggestion from "Moses the Persian" by Zlotnick-Sivan 1 that the entire Exodus story was fabricated by the Persians. "Two" events is not exactly the same idea as "numerous" events. Also, as you mention, Jan Assmann suggests that the biblical Exodus story may be a conflation of two historical events, the Hyksos expulsion and the suppression of Akhenaten's religion at the end of the Amarna era. She also admits that Kitchen would dispute this: he would argue for a single historical Exodus event in the 13th century. But if you follow Killebrew's sourcing, she gives the names of three scholars (Na'aman, Malamat, Hendel) in support of her statement that ".the Exodus doesn not represent a specific historical moment but rather numerous "exoduses" of runaway Asiatic slaves that were 'telescoped' into a single event". PiCo ( talk) 05:35, 24 August 2017 (UTC) Hello PiCo:, in view of the guidance suggesting to avoid editing controversial materials while an RfC is in process, I'm leaving this alone for now. Anyway, I do believe this is something we could go into further in the article. The major name in this is Jan Assmann, whose book is also in the bibliography: he suggests that the Manetho story, which is told with variations in other texts of the late Classical period, is a conflation of two events, the Hyksos and the reign of Akhnaten and he also raises the possibility that the Exodus story comes from the same setting, though whether the author of Exodus was taking this Egyptian and Greek story and turning it against them, or whether it worked the other way, is something we'll never know. They don't, however, think that it was a single event, as the phrase "a sequence of events" suggests. ![]() Many, many scholars believe that the exodus story represents a memory of something that happened. Then the interesting part: Jerry wants to add a phrase about "collective memory". In other words, this is the majority view, and such an overwhelming majority that we can simply use it without saying "some". Other authors say the same thing (see, for example, the book by Moore and Kelle, which is in the bibliography). I've reverted it to the original form, which is: "The lack of evidence has led scholars to conclude that it is difficult or even impossible to link the exodus story to any specific point in history." My reason is, first, that Killebrew doesn't say "some scholars", she says "scholars". Editor JerryRussell has edited a sentence in the article as follows: "The lack of evidence has led some scholars to conclude that it is difficult or even impossible to link the exodus story to any specific point in history, but rather that it may be a collective memory of a sequence of events." This sentence already existed in a slightly different form, and is sourced from Killebrew 2005 p.152.
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