San Diego (special) -- Why was this decade different from all other decades for UCSD Prof. William Propp? 

Because from 1987 through this year, he labored on a book that his colleagues at UCSD believe will be regarded as the world's most authoritative commentary on the Book of Exodus.

Covering the first 18 chapters of Exodus, the 1,000 page manuscript will add another book to the 70-volume Anchor Bible Commentary series edited by Propp's colleague in UCSD's Judaic Studies program, Prof. David Noel Freedman. The manuscript was just submitted to the publisher. 

Propp painstakingly analyzed every word that appears in Exodus, using traditional Torah commentary as well as such disciplines as linguistics, archeology, cultural anthropology and history to shed as much light as possible on the text which includes the bibilical portions on which the Passover celebration is based. While taking cognizance of traditional religious belief that the Torah was given to Moses on Sinai, Propp analyzed the text from the standpoint of academics who contend the Torah was written not by God but by man, and that the text is an amalgam of four preexisting documents. Propp plans to tackle the remaining chapters of the Book of Exodus (19 40) in the next decade of his life, and he is reserving his final judgment on the question of What Really Happened--"which I always write with capital letters"--until Appendix B to Volume Two. But Propp said he is leaning toward a theory that sees Moses rather than Abraham as the first monotheist,

MANUSCRIPT--Prof. William Propp flips trough his 1,000 page commentary on Exodus--the first volume project, with his editor, Prof. David Noel Freedman.

and which suggests that Israel began after a small group of Levites migrated under extraordinary circumstances from Egypt, and later integrated with Israelite tribes already living in Canaan.

In an interview, Propp outlined some of the building blocks leading to this hypothesis.

"Internal biblical chronology puts Moses in the 15th Century BCE," he said. "The problem is that we have minute descriptions of the Land of Canaan from the 14th century BCE and what these are, specifically, are over 300 letters written on clay tablets discovered in Egypt that constitute diplomatic correspondence between the kings of Egypt and their vassals who ruled Canaan.

"There is no indication that there are 12 tribes or millions of Israelites settled in the highlands," Propp said. "There are non-settled bands of people who have a name similar to the name 'Hebrew' and it is possible that they may be some precursors to the Israelites, but they may not be." Whether they are or not, they are "nothing like what you would get the impression of in the Books of Joshua and Judges."

Further complicating the chronology issue, he said, is the fact that "Israel is first mentioned archeologically in the late 13th Century (BCE) in a stele (monument) of Pharaoh Merneptah, who claims to have destroyed Israel. Also in the 13th Century BCE archeologists have discovered a population explosion in the highlands of Israel which is where the Bible indicates that they were first able to settle--the reason being that the highlands were rocky and forested and, at that point, undesirable to the Canaanite city-states which used the chariot to dominate areas, and (whose people) were farmers....The Israelites deforested the highlands and settled them."

From these pieces of evidence, Propp said, "we get the impression that whatever was the origin of Israel, it happened in the 13th century BCE, not in the 15th Century as the Bible would indicate." He said it is possible biblical chronologies exaggerated the ages to which people lived, creating the discrepancy.

A more major problem, Propp said, is that "it would seem that the population numbers of Israelites leaving Egypt are also inflated: 600,000 adult males yields a population of 2-3 million, which is a vast population," yet archeologically there is no evidence of such a mass migration. 

"They would fill the Sinai, let alone get lost in the Sinai," Propp says. "So it appears that those numbers too are not reliable. But there again too, almost all biblical numbers describing military encounters appear implausibly inflated with the count. The Bible says how they counted: they took a shekel tax, but probably those numbers reflect some later situation."

Another problem is that "most archeologists believe there is cultural continuity between these highland settlers of the 13th century, whom we would call the proto-Israelites or the Israelites, and the earlier population of the Canaanite lowlands."

If millions of people migrated from Egypt to Israel, after living in Egypt for 400 years, one would expect that they would bring with them a different language and different pottery styles. 

"There is a difference in the pottery but it seems to derive largely from earlier types," Propp said. "The language is not any different from the language of the Canaanites; there are Egyptian words into Hebrew but very few if they had really spent four centuries living in Egypt."

Propp said among archeologists, the prevailing view "about which I have some doubts, is that the majority of Israelite population was indigenous to Canaan in stark contradiction to the biblical account. However, an interesting thing is that several biblical characters have names that are Egyptian etymologically--Moshe, Phinehas, Hophni, Pashhur, ..and what is interesting is that every one of them is a member of the tribe of Levy.

"Now the Levites were also the tribe that had no tribal territory and were the tribe that contained the holy men of Israel-- the religion's teachers and leaders," Propp said. "So a common sense theory adopted in some form by almost every scholar is that the Exodus was largely composed of the Levites and they were the catalysts of some religious revolution that happened in the land of Canaan. And then people vary as to what extent the non-Levites were immigrants or people who just went up the hill to get away from the exploitation of the Canaanite state."

Before Propp gets to Appendix B of Volume II--when his now tentative theory is committed irrevocably to print--he would love to see greater investigation of two issues.

First, he would like to see more data that could help in "mediation of the contradiction between the Bible's clear implication that the bulk of the Israelites were migrants into the land of Canaan and what the archeologists see as cultural continuity between the earlier Canaanites and the Israelites."

Second, he said, unlike many of his colleagues who believe that the Israelite religion was a natural outgrowth of other religions in the Middle East, "I believe that Israelite religion requires the positing of a founder"--
and that "we might as well call him Moses."

He explained: "Like Islam, ancient Israelite religion appears to be a synthesis of two previously independent streams of religious thought. In Arabia, monotheism arose (in the 7th Century CE) when the polytheistic, native Arab religion worshipping God surrounded by other gods and goddesses came into contact with Judaism and Christianity.

"For ancient Israel, we have clear continuity with the mythological poetry and theology of ancient Canaan," Propp added. "At the same time, the idea of monotheism, a monotheism without statues, as far as we know came out of Egypt a century before Israel, namely Pharaoh Akhenaten. I see a parallel between the monotheism in Arabia and the birth of monotheism in Israel, and just as I think Islam requires a founder to mediate and synthesize so too must we posit an inventor of Israelite religion."

Propp distinguishes between Moses and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. "Even more so than the story of the Exodus, the story about the patriarchs lack a historical milieu. There are no historical figures that we can identify. It is true that the pharaoh of Exodus is not named but at least the name 'Rameses' occurs as the name of the city. We know that there were Semitic slaves in Egypt; 'Israel' appears on the Merneptah Stone. We can say something."

Compare that with the patriarchs, who "have a much more fabulous--in the sense of fable--air about them to me and to many scholars," Propp said. "Some scholars would say that Moses antedates the patriarchs. What they mean by that: there was a Moses who was the catalyst for a religious and social movement that started in Egypt and culminated in Israel...When it came time to write the national history, the biblical authors cast around for models to understand what their ancestors must have been like, and looked to contemporary semi-nomads as a way of visualizing the patriarchs."

Propp said other scholars believe that Israelite religion came about with a merger of the Egyptian group's beliefs with those of the beliefs of the larger Canaanite group. The Egyptian group referred to God by the four letter Hebrew name (yud, hey, vuv, hey) while the Canaanite group referred to Him by the name of El.

"The God of the Moses group was a militant fighter who defeats the sea, and defeats the Pharaoh," Propp said. "The God of the patriarchs was a God who had a personal relationship with the patriarchs, who led them by still waters. A synthesis of these two peoples created Israel."

The professor's problem with the latter theory is that "there is so little evidence about what created Israel that it sounds plausible but it sounds like fantasy. It is too hard to locate the patriarchs historically. It is possible that the Israelites entered Egypt as monotheists; I suppose so. If so, you really have to turn what I said before on its head and say that Akhenaten did not inspire Israel, but Israel inspired Akhenaten." 

He added: "Almost all scholars view the similarities between the religion of Akhenaten and the religion of Israel as meaningless, whereas I think they are absolutely crucial." 

Richard Elliott Friedman, the founder of UCSD'S Judaic Studies program and author of Who Wrote the Bible, also was asked by HERITAGE what in the Book of Exodus can be confirmed, what is contradicted, and what remains beyond the pale of research.

"Here is my understanding," he replied. "When major figures in the story of the early Israelite priesthood have Egyptian names --Moshe, Phinehas, Hophni, (some people think Aaron, others not) -- that is evidence that something happened. Linguistic evidence is usually the most powerful because nobody's opinions or ideologies are coming in to color it. And the fact that the early leadership of Israel had Egyptian names was evidence that the Israelites were in Egypt. My name is Richard. Ten generations from now someone will know that I was a Jewish guy living in some English-speaking country. So a name is very important."

Further, said Friedman, "Moses is so central to the story so early, it is inconceivable to me that he could be made up. The usual line among mainstream Bible scholars is 'if it wasn't Moses, it was another man with the same name.' And similarly, the notion that there were Israelite slaves in Egypt. The standard question of the historian when they question the tradition is 'is there any reason why somebody would have made that up?' Normally you would make up a story that your ancestors were kings, or gods; you don't make up a story that your ancestors were slaves. There is no advantage in it. So precisely the unlikelihood of making that up supports the idea there really was some historical root."

While the events of the Book of Exodus cannot be corroborated by other sources, Friedman said he feels comfortable making this minimal historical statement: "There were Israelite slaves in Egypt who were led out by a man named Moses under some kind of extraordinary circumstances involving some event at the Red Sea when an Egyptian force got wet."

Like Propp, however, Friedman points to the skepticism surrounding the biblical account that 600,000 adult male Israelites left Egypt: "One scholar calculated that if the Israelites were marching 8 people across, by the time the first ones get to Mount Sinai half of them are still in Egypt," Friedman said. "To which you might respond 'Okay, they are marching 50 across!'"

Saying its "an historian's job to question," Friedman said there also is considerable controversy in academic circles over the historicity of the Ten Plagues and of the parting of the Red Sea.

Nevertheless, he said, "I am capable on one hand of studying the history behind the tradition, and on a different day, just loving the tradition."

"When I sit down to my Passover seder with the children, if they ask me questions about evidence that it happened or it didn't happen, I am comfortable telling them anything I told you," Friedman said. "But the main function of that night is not that; the main function of the night is to tell the story to my children and help them to feel the beauty, the power, the meaning of that story-- and that it is our story."

While the concept that migrating Egyptians blended with a Canaanite people who had other traditions seems to find favor throughout UCSD's Judaic Studies program, not so of the hypothesis that Moses was the founder of the Israelite religion and that the patriarchs were literary prototypes invented by later writers.

David Noel Freedman, the Anchor Bible Commentary's editor, said Genesis 49--in which Jacob bestows his blessing upon his children--"reflects the original picture of the 12-tribe league" which was "located in the land of Canaan" and "already existed before the time of Moses."

Freedman is highly regarded in the field of biblical scholarship for his analyses of biblical poetry. Some 50 years ago, after examining the forms of various poems in the Bible, including those in Exodus 15 (The Song at the Sea) and Judges 5 (The Song of Deborah), he wrote a doctoral dissertation in which he suggested that the Song at the Sea may in fact be the oldest poem of the Bible. The dissertation is considered a seminal work of biblical scholarship.

The song, which the Children of Israel sang by the side of the Red Sea after God saved them from the Egyptians, perhaps dates to the time of the Exodus itself or to within a generation of the people who experienced it, Freedman suggests.

"The form of this poem corresponds very accurately to the ancient forms which were later abandoned," he said. "In the poetry of every nation there is a tendency to preserve older forms of speech, and that is the case with Exodus 15. 

"The issue is, is this a learned reconstruction by someone who is trying to fool us, or is this an actual reflection of the original composition? I go with the idea that these people weren't trying to fool us, weren't trying to make things appear differently from what they were."

"I don't think Moses actually composed the thing, but he could have," Freedman said. "Probably some anonymous poet did, like Homer, and we have a genuine article because poetry does not change that much. 

"That it the beauty of music and rhythm and meter; poetry is much easier to memorize and tends to be more accurately preserved," Freedman said. "With prose they are constantly picking it up and improving it."

For Propp, writing a biblical commentary was a precise step-by-step process. 

"The traditional Jewish commentary doesn't have to break its text up, because it has marginalia, but I need more room than that so I had to break up the text into units for discussion," he said. "The first part is just deciding what is a responsible way to break up the text. Whenever it changes scene in time or space, I say 'I will stop here to talk about it.' That is the first process.

Whereas Exodus like the other books of the Torah have been copied over the centuries "relatively faithfully," there have been some known minor variants such as spellings, he said. Therefore, various versions of the Torah need to be compared "so we can figure out what the most reasonable original reading was; it is my goal to present a range of possible readings."

"Then the next step is to produce my best guess, sometimes arbitrary...of the original Hebrew to translate into English," Propp said. He said he chose to be "hyper-literal" in his translations because "for very technical discussion it maximally matches the original I am talking about. Also, and this was my main motive when I started, it allows the non-Hebrew reader to share in, get a feel of, what Hebrew is like. They can go word by word, expression by expression and see how the language works."

In his quest for literalness, Propp "waged a war" against the English word of; which he said lacks a Hebrew equivalent, is imprecise and leads to wordiness. Thus, the "tent of meeting" was rendered the "meeting tent" and the "King of Egypt" as "Egypt's king." Additionally, Propp rendered certain idioms literally. "Instead of saying the 'shore of the sea,' I say 'the sea's lip,' thinking it is sufficiently clear what the import is and context is, and if it is not I add an explanatory note."

Next, "each section of translated text is followed by a text critical apparatus where I discuss the manuscript, readings that underlie the translation," he said. "That is followed by a source analysis section where using the documentary hypothesis--the theory that the Torah was not written at one stroke by one mind but is a collage of four preexisting documents--I analyze the text, in the sense of break apart or destroy or take it into its pieces. I do this at great length."

A fault of past commentaries, Propp said, "is that they simply stamped 'J' or 'E' (as the identities for the source documents) and they don't explain the reasoning behind it. This has a couple of problems. One is that graduate students and undergraduate students always come and say, 'well how do we know that?' I have to say, 'well, here is the reasoning' and they will say 'well that is very convincing' or 'that is not very convincing.' The truth is often we are not sure what source is the author of what; other times we have a pretty good idea. "

"I thought that if a scholar who basically upholds the documentary hypothesis would frankly and exhaustively discuss its problems, it might dispel some of the misleading attacks upon the theory."

"The next stage is to discuss the editing of the Torah; the goal is not only to break it apart but then to reassemble it, both to see what might have motivated the editors, what they were trying to do, and to look at the process the editing wrought irrespective of whether the editors knew what they were doing," Propp continued.

"Here, by the way, traditional Jewish biblical interpretations are extremely helpful because lacking the documentary hypothesis, the rabbis of the Midrash and of the Talmud as well as the medieval commentators...sought to make sense out of the confusing text, often coming up with the only logical answer. "

Notes follow "where I take any problematic word, sometimes going word by word to discuss the section's meaning," Propp said. After the notes come comments "where I write essays about the preceding unit of text from any number of perspectives...If I am discussing the Ten Plagues, I might discuss natural phenomena that have been invoked to explain the plagues, or the notion of God's justice in hardening Pharaoh's heart. 

"If I am discussing Passover, I discuss anthropological parallels to the Passover ritual as a guide toward interpreting the acts prescribed and described."

Propp said he was guided by the credo of the Anchor Bible: "to make the bible accessible to the modern reader...to arrive at the meaning of biblical literature through exact translation and extended exposition and to reconstruct the ancient setting of the biblical story as well as the circumstances of its transcription and the characteristics of its transcribers."