Agreed.
With the exception of Shanks, he posits bias over evidence.
He ignores this below and it something he will have to deal with because the evidence is hard and solid.
Nothing can be found to turn this over.
The Exodus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.
When we put the exodus mythology next to Noah and Babel, and creation mythology, why even try and place it in a historical context? it is theology that is beautiful, not history.
The Exodus (from Greek ἔξοδος, exodos, "going out") is the "charter myth" of Israel;
The reality is that below probably describes what we have closer to any truth possible.
In a recent work, Stephen C. Russell traces the 8th century prophetic tradition to three originally separate variants, in the northern kingdom of Israel, in Trans-Jordan, and in the southern kingdom of Judah. Russell proposes different hypothetical historical backgrounds to each tradition: the tradition from Israel, which involves a journey from Egypt to the region of Bethel, he suggests is a memory of herders who could move to and from Egypt in times of crisis; for the Trans-Jordanian tradition, which focuses on deliverance from Egypt without a journey, he suggests a memory of the withdrawal of Egyptian control at the end of the Late Bronze Age; and for Judah, whose tradition is preserved in the Song of the Sea, he suggests the celebration of a military victory over Egypt, although it is impossible to suggest what this victory may have been
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