Was there an Exodus? I have no doubt. The Jewish Bible is centered around that event and circles it repeatedly in later generations as a template for understanding the return to Jerusalem after the exile. One of the oldest, perhaps the oldest, existing documents found in the OT (the Song of Moses, Exodus 15) is the song of triumph at the Red Sea.
Does Exodus relate that event exactly as it occurred?
Hmmm, that would seem to be the next question, but before I answer it I have another: Does Exodus intend to relate the event exactly as it happened?
I ignore the history question because it really requires an indepth investigation into things better wrestled with in a history seminar. I have come to see that the exodus experience of Israel is intended to serve as a model of Spiritual life. It is, in other words, not only true about the past, but is equally true about the present. In my understanding, much of ancient culture embraced the idea that the literal meaning of things was in many ways the least interesting. In fact, a spiritual or metaphorical reading of a text revealed the deeper meaning. One aspect of this is typology, the belief that a "past event" was a type of a future event. This is Paul's approach to numerous OT stories. He sees Adam as a type of the Man to come (Jesus). He says that "don't muzzle the ox when he is treading the grain" refers not to oxen, but preachers of the Gospel. And he pointed to the wives and offspring of Abraham as types of the two people to come (children of grace and children of slavery/law). The first leaders of the Christian church, by and large, embraced this approach as well. (Though recognizing its danger, it can manipulate the text)
Thursday we did a VBS day for a group of innercity youth. My task was to tell the Exodus story. I told it as a story about our lives, as much as theirs (ancient Israel). Like them, we are slaves (slaves to sin, Jesus and Paul both expand this idea). I spoke to them about the powers that have control of us, things like donuts and anger. I said Egypt is the land of slavery.
Then we looked at the journey to the promised land. It is hard walking. It is hunger and thirst and desert sun. God does not make it easy. His miracles are not much use for us day to day. And so we think back to Egypt. "Dang, it was better then!" we convince ourselves. And that is the battle. The pull of our "bellies" vs. the power of the Dream of A Better Place. We know where to go, but we turn back because of fear, or laziness, or a lack of faith. WE do, today, here and now. Us.
These young black teens understood what I was talking about. One of the adult volunteers offered that he found it more graspable hearing the story told in that way. Which is why I think the story was really written for the contemporary Jew (in whatever BC), hearing the story of his people (and God's people) a story set in even more ancient times but lived in their today. To visit the OT for history is to shield ourselves from the story. It becomes data to memorize and debate rather than a map for our own journeys of sin, faith and deliverance. It hides the fact that life today is like it was then, a wandering (and wondering)...
I have a BA in history. I really like history and value it. But history is about the past. And the Bible transcends time. The Bible is a living word. We need faith and the Holy Spirit to hear it, to take it in and to be taken in by it. When we Pray & Read we become His people more deeply. When we remember the story we find our own story. When we walk with them in the journey of faith, we become who we are and who we are called to be.
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