Ytsyat mtsryM [The Exodus from Egypt: Reality or Illusion (Exodus 1-15)

Abstract

Galpaz-Feller, both an Egyptologist and a biblioist by training, addresses the Egyptian background of Exod 1-15. Although a number of scholars have illuminated the Egyptian coloration of the exodus story before, Galpaz-Feller's work stands out because she offers a greater integration of Egyptology and biblical studies in a series of short essays that constitute a running commentary on Exod 15. Galpaz-Feller's analysis of the plague narratives shows her intellectual integrity. She examines and then dismisses the theory that each plague was directed against a particular Egyptian deity, showing that a number of plagues, such as lice, wild animals, and boils, cannot be linked to any Egyptian god. Rather, in Galpaz-Feller's analysis, the plagues are generated from the undoing of creation according to the biblical account of it. However, the special emphasis devoted to the plague of locusts reflects the special valence of locusts in Egyptian culture, and the biblical author's use of heavy and rigid verbs to characterize the pharaoh's heart portrays his guiltiness in the context of Egyptian death religion's emphasis on the lightness of an innocent heart. Galpaz-Feller's discussion of the origins of Israelite monotheism also exemplifies her reluctance to engage in Egypto-parallelomania. She argues that Israelite monotheism was influenced by many theological/cultic concepts of the religions of the ancient world, one of which happened to be Egyptian. The true name of the Egyptian god Ra is a secret, and Galpaz-Feller offers the suggestion that the secrecy of the true name of a deity might be reflected in the name YHWH. She asks whether the revealing of the name YHWH is a true revelation of the deity's name or whether the name YHWH lacks specificity and therefore should be linked to the concept of the secrecy of the true name of a deity. Galpaz-Feller also demonstrates that Akhenaten's religious revolution, worshiping the sun-disk via the king, died with Akhenaten and that certain fundamental aspects of his religion are contradicted hy the contours of Israelite religion in the Bible. Creation, for example, was not an issue for Akhenaten's monotheism, but was certainly a major facet of biblical religion. Galpaz-Feller argues that beyond the Egyptian coloration of the exodus narrative, there are elements that have historical value. Beyond the details that reflect ancient Egyptian culture as it was generally practiced throughout Egyptian history, there are elements that reflect Egyptian culture and history only in the time of Raamses II and the Nineteenth Dynasty. The particular cities that the Hebrew Bible records as having been built by the Israelites were attributed in Egyptian texts to Raamses II. A city in the Nile Delta, Pi-Raamses, not Memphis or Thebes, was the capital during the reign of Raamses, and the brevity of the journeys that Moses and Aaron undertook to visit the pharaoh implies that the capital was near the Israelites in the Nile Delta. …