The Exodus and the Absence of Evidence

[Jayhawker Soule]

The event is suppose to take place in Egypt, yet Egyptian sources know it not. On the morrow of the Exodus Israel numbered approximately 2.5 million (extrapolated from Num. 1:46); yet the entire population of Egypt at that time was only 3 to 4.5 million! The effect on Egypt must have been cataclysmic -- loss of a servile population, pillaging of gold and silver (Exod. 3:21-22, 12:31-36), destruction of an army -- yet at no point in the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic impact such an event would have on economics or society.

[and later ...]

... we can now genuinely speak of unanimity of the evidence. Whoever supplied the geographic information that now adorns the story had no information earlier than the Saite period (seventh to sixth centuries B.C.). The eastern Delta and Sinai he describes are those of the 26th Dynasty kings and the early Persian overloards: his toponyms reflect the renewed interest in the eastern frontier evidence for this period by fort building and canalization. He knows of "Goshen" of the Qedarite Arabs, and a legendary "Land of Ramessses." He cannot locate the Egyptian court to anything but the largest and most famous city in his own day in the northeastern Delta, namely Tanis, the royal residence from about 1075 to 725 B.C., ...

-- Egypt, Cannan, and Israel in Ancient Times by Donald B. Redford

 

[Ardhanariswar]

who needs proof?

its just a story to fill in the regions where people question where they came from and what happened.

or its a moral story... though i cannot find the morals.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

who needs proof?

It's not a question of need. People have the right to excavate their real history undistorted by myth and superstition. An honest West Semitic history and archaeology is an intellectual human right, not some totem in the service of one religion or another.