the ancient Hebrews¶
The story of the Exodus is the foundation myth of the ancient Hebrews. It's the story of ethnogenesis, which is a concept that applies to basically every culture in human history. The archaeological record of early Hebrews specifically is pretty scant, but there are some clues. There are records of ancient Near East peoples, some of which seemed to have worshipped a sort of proto-Yahweh. The 18th dynasty of Egypt conquered and ruled over this territory in the 14th century BCE, which seems to be an obvious source of the idea of "slavery to Egypt". Leading up to the bronze age collapse, Egypt's control over the region waned, both due to internal domestic turmoil and persistent rebellions in the region. My guess is that, during this time, the cultural group who would come to be known as the Hebrews grew in influence. They would come to exert dominance over the other ethnic groups as Egypt withdrew, eventually leading to the tribal confederation of Israelites. This confederation would, over the next few centuries, coalesce into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. (Side note: in the Hebrew Bible, the beginning of Israel is portrayed as starting with a united monarchy under a series of divinely-annointed kings, which eventually underwent a north-south schism. But again, there's no corroborating evidence of anything pre-two kingdoms.) As these polities solidified, folk tales, religious traditions, and oral history would have given rise to this ex post facto reading of "Egypt used to rule us, then they got ousted" as "We were slaves in Egypt, then our God freed us and told us to conquer the Promised Land." Chronologically, the earliest text in the Tanakh comes from Judges, which was likely the period when an increasingly organized religious order would have been exerting cultural power during this pre-kingdom stage. This may have been the beginning of formal Hebrew religious unity. The formula for all the Judges in the text is as follows:
- Israelites stray from Yahweh
- Yahweh delivers them into the hands of enemies
- Yahweh elevates someone as a spiritual and military leader
- This Judge defeats the enemy
- Israelites return to Yahweh, under the Judge. A sociological interpretation of this can be as allegory, with Judges being both prominent military leaders and cultural hegemons, uniting an emerging culture under both religious and political rule during a period when external administrative rule was on its back feet. The Song of Deborah is a victory hymn, detailing the triumph of Israelite tribes over the Canaanites, and is dated by some to the 12th century BCE. This may be the earliest text compiled into the compendium of Jewish tradition, specifically because of its foundational relevance. Others date all of the text of Judges, including Song of Deborah, to the 8th century BCE. But whether this latter authorship is true or not, it makes the most sense that the late bronze age Judges period was formative in the establishment of a distinct Israelite identity. Again, due to the paucity of the corroborating historical record, a lot of this is simply speculation; a narrative that I think gives a satisfying context to why these stories would have been considered authoritative by the compilers of the Tanakh. The earliest period of Jewish history I feel confident calling "definitely historical" is the Hasmonean period, which is the earliest period NOT included in the biblical canon. It's likely that this is when the canon was established, including the national foundation myth.