(The Preface of my novel mentioned that the Exodus is now in
serious doubt. Here is a fuller presentation of the arguments.)
Nothing is known about the historical Moses, and even his
existence is now seriously doubted. The stories about him found
in Philo, Jospehus and the Midrash and Talmud have long been
recognized as secondary and unhistorical, and our sole “primary”
source for the leader of the Exodus is the Old Testament, which
is itself derivative. The first five books of the Bible, called
the Pentateuch or Torah, are manifestly not historical
documents, but rather the final version of a tradition that
constantly revised stories handed down through perhaps thirty
generations. Like Homer’s Iliad, most of the Old Testament is
oral history that was subsequently written down, though unlike
the Iliad and the Odyssey, whose texts were thus frozen, the
books of the Bible continued to be revised and edited. Biblical
scholars have discerned four major “authors” or strands
interwoven in the text of the Pentateuch