But how about the Jewish exodus from Egypt? What was the real cause? Whom shall we credit, the writer of the book called Exodus or other writers? What follows differs very much from the Hebrew story.
Lysimachus relates that “a filthy disease broke out in Egypt, and the oracle of Ammon, being consulted on the occasion, commanded the king to purify the land by driving out the Jews (who were infected with leprosy, etc.), who were hateful to the gods. The whole multitude of the people were accordingly collected and driven out into the wilderness.”
Diodorus Siculus says: “In ancient times Egypt was afflicted with a great plague, which was attributed to the anger of God on account of the multitude of foreigners in Egypt, by whom the rites of the native religion were neglected. The Egyptians accordingly drove them out. The most notable of them went under Cadmus and Danaus to Greece, but the greater number followed Moses, a wise and valiant leader, to Palestine.”
Tacitus, the Roman historian, says: “In this clash of opinions one point seems to be universally admitted—a pestilential disease, disfiguring the race of man and making the body an object of loathsome deformity, spreading all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch, consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer that the kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude, as a race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search the wretched sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vulgar herd was sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that by the wisdom of his counsels they had been already rescued out of impending danger. Deserted as they were by men and gods, he told them that if they did not repose their confidence in him as their chief by divine commission they had no resource left. His offer was accepted. Their march began, they knew not whither. Want of water was their chief distress. Worn out with fatigue, they lay stretched on the bare earth, heartbroken, ready to expire, when a troop of wild asses, returning from pasture, went up the steep ascent of a rock covered with a grove of trees. The verdure of the herbage round the place suggested the idea of springs near at hand. Moses traced the steps of the animals, and discovered a plentiful vein of water. By this relief the fainting multitude was raised from despair.”
In a learned work on Egypt by Mr. William Oxley of England, published in 1884, the author writes: “Taking the records as we find them, if they are real history, and as Palestine is contiguous to Egypt, we should naturally expect to find some reference to the Israelites in the Egyptian annals, but what does appear in regard to Palestine is certainly not favorable to the assumption that it was the home of the Israelites as a nation. I cull the following from such materials as are at present within reach, partly taken from the Records of the Past:
“It has been generally acknowledged by Egyptian biblicists that ‘the cruel bondage of the Israelites, culminated under the reign of Rameses II., nineteenth dynasty, and that the Exodus took place under his successor, Menephtah I., 1326 b. c., who was drowned in the Red Sea with all his host in his attempt to bring the wanderers back again. But, as I have already said, the tomb of this very king at Thebes contains an inscription to the effect that he had lived to a good old age, and was a child of good-fortune from his cradle to the grave. In the annals of Rameses III., who reigned some fifty or sixty years after the Israelites ought to have been settled in their own land, many references are made to the country in which they were located (according to biblical accounts). The king goes to what is known to us as Palestine, Phœnicia, and Syria to receive the annual tribute from the chiefs/ whom he calls Khetas. In the enumeration of his conquests, extending from Egypt east and northward, he enumerates thirty-eight tribes and peoples, and says: ‘I have smitten every land, and have taken every land in its extent.’ In his reminder to the God Ptah of the benefits he had conferred on the god, the king says: ‘I gave to thy temple from the store-houses of Egypt, Tar-neter, and Kharu (i, e. Palestine and Syria) more numerous offerings than the sand of the sea, as well as cattle and slaves’ (Syrians). He also built a temple to Ammon in the same country, to which ‘the nations of the Rutenna came and brought their tribute.’ Making full allowance for the usual Egyptian flattery, the fact is clear that in the time of this king the Israelites could not have been a settled and distinct people; and the incident of their Exodus would have been too fresh and recent to be passed over without some comment by this vainglorious monarch.
“From a papyrus translated in the Records of the Past (ii. 107), entitled Travels of an Egyptian, who gives a full account of Palestine, etc., it appears there was a fortress there which had been built by Rameses II., and which was still belonging to Egypt. This would be about 1350 B. C.; but not the slightest hint of any such people as Israelites, although he tells us ‘he visited the country to get information respecting the country, with the manners and customs of its inhabitants.’
“The next is Rameses XII., some two hundred years after the Exodus, who is the hero of the story of the possessed princess. He was in Mesopotamia at the time when the chief of the Bakhten brought his daughter, who afterward became queen of Egypt. ‘His Majesty was there registering the annual tributes of all the princes of the countries,’ among whom he enumerates Tar-neter (Palestine), but no mention of Israelites.
“I find no further trace until the time of Herodotus (about 420 B. c.); and here we come on historical ground. This great historian travelled through Egypt and Palestine in the reign of one of the kings of the Persian dynasty, about forty or fifty years after the alleged return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and when the temple had been built and the city fortified. He repeatedly alludes to the Phœnicians and Syrians, whose country extended from the coast of the Levant down to the Egyptian frontier, including the isthmus and Sinaitic Peninsula. He says that Necho (about 670 b. c.) fought with the Syrians, and took a large city, Cadytis; but he makes no mention of Jews nor yet of Jerusalem. If they had been there, it is incredible that such a careful and grasping historian should have explored the land without noticing them in some way or other.
“The next is from a tablet erected to Alexander II. by Ptolemy, at that time viceroy under the Persian king, but who soon after himself became king of Egypt, 305 b. c. The inscription states that ‘Alexander marched with an army of Ionians to the Syrians’ land, who were at war with him. He penetrated its interior and took it at one stroke, and led their princes, cavalry, ships, and works of art to Egypt.’